Time Makers Read online

  ‘The Tide of Time is going out,’ Five shouted.

  When the roar and thunder reached a mighty crescendo, it suddenly stopped. For a few seconds there was total silence.

  ‘It will come back,’ replied Skin. ‘I have locked in a distress call to Professor Perdu, asking her to transmit a Constant Emergency Exit Beam. But right now, 005, you must prepare for the worst.’

  As Skin spoke, a monstrous wave appeared, as high as a skyscraper, surging towards them.

  Five gulped, slipping the DataBlok inside a security pocket on Skin.

  ‘Whatever happens we mustn’t lose this data chip. Understood, Skin?’

  The roar of the wave was so great that Five couldn’t be sure if Skin had replied or not.

  ‘Skin? Are you with me?’ he shouted. ‘Skin?’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Professor Perdu huffed, drumming her fingers on the control panel.

  ‘What’s the problem, Prof?’ Nine asked. She’d left Alpha One for a moment; he was resting well.

  ‘Still no word from anyone. I’m not so worried about TEX and Four, but Five should’ve made contact at least once by now. And whenever I try to get through to him I hit a wall of silence. I should never have let him go off like that.’

  ‘Yes, but he has gone off,’ Nine replied. ‘And regret is not going to change anything. Bottom line: there’s not a lot we can do right now.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Nine. That makes me feel a whole lot better.’ The professor jabbed angrily at a few buttons and then punched the desk hard. She looked up from the control panel and glanced over the various info-screens and data displays on the walls around her, coming to rest on the text of Alpha One’s ramblings.

  She read the jumble of broken words and letters again. There was still more that A1 was trying to tell them. There was something else of importance buried in that mess.

  What was the word ‘stone’ doing there? Alpha One used it twice, clearly, and almost a third time. And on each occasion it was preceded by the word ‘no’. ‘No Stone’. What could that mean?

  And what did ‘cro’ mean? Alpha One had used it six times, so it had to be important. What word started with those three letters? C R O?

  Professor Perdu highlighted one of the lines of text:

  No rights . . . no freedom . . . no. No! Cro, cro . . . cro . . . no . . . No stone!

  She sat back, blurring the letters, running them together.

  Suddenly she shrieked and leapt up.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she shouted. ‘That’s impossible. It couldn’t be!’

  ‘What is it, Prof?’ asked Nine.

  ‘It’s . . . ’ The professor struggled for words. ‘It’s disturbing. That’s what it is. Quite disturbing.’

  * * *

  ‘Down!’ TEX hissed at BA004. They dropped to the pavement and rolled sideways so they were flush with the wall. ‘Ghost Birds!’

  They lay on their backs staring up at the dark sky as a fleet of aircraft passed high overhead. Four had to peer hard, for the Ghost Birds were nearly invisible and almost silent. It took TEX’s super-sensitive hearing to pick up their approach, and his powerful hawk vision to see them clearly.

  ‘Those are not the usual security drones,’ said TEX focusing on them. ‘They’re much bigger than normal. They’re personnel carriers, six of them. Looks like some important people are coming to town. And quite a few.’

  ‘I wonder who?’ said Four.

  When the Ghost Birds had passed over, TEX and Four continued on their way. They were heading for the Time Store they’d visited with Five and Nine. Their brief: to investigate what was happening underground in that area, with instructions to collect images if possible.

  They intended to enter through the fire door they’d used before, but when they reached the Time Store they saw two guards in their way.

  ‘They’re both smaller than you, TEX,’ said Four. ‘They look half-asleep as well. I reckon we’ll be fine, as long as you remember that we’ll only get one go at this.’

  TEX nodded. ‘So let’s make the most of it.’

  They straightened up, stepped around the corner and marched briskly towards the guards, Four blinding them with a high beam spotlight.

  ‘What’s this?’ he barked in his most commanding voice. ‘Slacking on the job! Not good enough.’

  The guards snapped to attention, squinting into the glare.

  ‘Sorry, Sir,’ one replied. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘You’re darn right it won’t happen again,’ Four shouted, stepping right up to them and shoving the spotlight in their faces. ‘My assistant will see to that.’

  Before the guards could say another thing, TEX banged their heads together, knocking both out cold. They slumped to the ground. Four punched the entry code into the wall panel and the door opened. TEX dragged the guards off the street, then bound their arms and legs while Four taped their mouths.

  ‘This will do for them,’ he said, opening a storage area under the stairs.

  TEX bundled the guards in and slammed the door shut. Then he turned to the wall next to the exit, where the secret entrance was hidden, scanned it and quickly located the entry button. The heavy steel door slid open, releasing a gust of hot air as it had before. They could hear the deep rumbling noise.

  TEX stood back, knowing he’d trigger the alarm if he stepped through, and scanned the perimeter for the security system.

  ‘There it is, a basic laser beam,’ he said, and fused it with a zap of his Electro-Mag Disintegrator.

  ‘Are you sure that’s all?’ Four asked.

  ‘Sure as I can be,’ TEX replied, waving his arm up and down the length of the doorway. ‘Looks good,’ he said and stepped through. ‘Come on.’

  Four followed and they bounded down a long spiral staircase. The air became hotter the further they descended, the darkness thickened, and the rumbling gradually grew louder. By the time they reached the bottom, the heat was unbearable, the darkness so dense that Four’s spotlight was as effective as a flickering candle, and the rumbling so intense they could feel the ground trembling beneath their feet.

  ‘What kind of place is this?’ said TEX as he and Four stepped towards a thick metal wall that had a number of slit-like vents across it.

  ‘Ouch,’ cried Four, touching the wall. ‘That’s really hot.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said TEX, peering through one of the vents. ‘Look at this.’

  Four peered through the vent and saw a vast cavern carved out of the base rock. In the middle of it was an enormous furnace-like structure that reached high into the cavern. Wide at the base, but narrowing towards the top, the thing was monster-like, groaning and creaking, and trembling with a strange pulsating glow.

  ‘That has to be the reactor the prof talked about,’ said 004, quickly recording images of it.

  ‘I think so,’ TEX agreed. ‘And I also think this is as close as we’ll get to it. Look at all those guards.’

  ‘It’s crawling with them,’ Four added, collecting audio and air-content data as well. The guards stood behind a clear safety screen several metres high.

  About twenty white-coated figures stood around the reactor. Some were conferring together, others worked on data-pads.

  Four backed off from the vent, rubbing his eyes from the heat and glare. ‘I reckon we’ve got all we need. Let’s move out.’

  They stepped away from the wall and were about to start climbing the stairs when TEX stopped.

  ‘Wait,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think we’re alone. Shine your spotlight around, nice and steady.’

  Four slowly panned the room with the torch, its beam struggling to penetrate the dense darkness.

  ‘There!’ TEX snapped. ‘Over in the corner.’

  A body lay slumped against the wall, crumpled and twisted, as though it had been thrown there, or had fallen from higher up.

  ‘It’s a person,’ said TEX.

  ‘Dead or alive?’

  As Four spoke, a gr
oan came from the heap on the ground.

  ‘Sounds like a bit of both,’ said TEX. He rushed to the person’s side. ‘Alive, but only just.’ The figure lay in a pool of blood. ‘Not for much longer, I fear. These wounds are fatal.’ He carefully turned the person over.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Four when he saw the bruised and battered figure. ‘It’s Horace Horologe.’

  ‘So they got him in the end,’ said TEX.

  Horace moaned and slowly opened one eye. It peered up at them from a puffed and swollen face.

  ‘You!’ He gave a bitter laugh, and spat blood. ‘You’re a curse, you and the others in that damned Omega Squad. I had it made until you came along. Made! Now I’m . . . ’ He finished the sentence with a fit of coughing.

  ‘Don’t blame us,’ said TEX. ‘You led a crooked life. It was your choice.’

  ‘But at least you can still do something decent before you die,’ added Four. ‘Tell us what’s going on here. What’s this whole thing all about?’

  ‘Why should I tell you anything?’

  ‘Because you have nothing to lose. You’re dying – you know it. Come clean while you can.’

  Horace shook his head. ‘There’s no point. You’re too late. It doesn’t matter what I tell you. It won’t make any difference now.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because everything is in place. The Aeon is ready.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Aeon Reactor. Listen to it. It’s fired up and ready to . . . ’ Horace laughed, ‘. . . to change eternity.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Four.

  ‘Time. That’s what this is all about. Time as you know it will soon cease to exist. No past, no present, no future. I won’t be here to see it, but you will – the temporal equivalent of nothing – total NoWhen.’

  TEX shook his head. ‘He’s lost his senses.’

  ‘Oh no, I haven’t,’ Horace continued. ‘The planet is about to be plunged into a chronological vacuum that will change life on Earth forever. They’ve been secretly planning it for ages.’

  ‘They?’ said Four. ‘You mean MANIC?’

  Horace spluttered with a mix of laughing and coughing. ‘MANIC! You don’t have a clue, do you? This is Evolution’s last laugh: you’re the joke and you don’t even know the punch line.’

  ‘Bah,’ sneered TEX. ‘Now he really is raving.’

  ‘You’ll see. The Future is coming to a world near you. And sooner than you think. One more piece, that’s all they need to set the whole grand design in motion.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said TEX. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Why, the stone, of course. Haven’t you figured it out?’

  ‘Stone?’ Four asked. ‘What stone?’

  Horace Horologe reached up and clutched Four’s arm with his bloodied hand, a twisted grin scrawled across his face. ‘Chronos,’ he hissed, and then he died laughing.

  ‘The Chronos Stone.’ Professor Perdu shook her head. ‘I haven’t heard it mentioned in scientific circles for years. And I must say I find it difficult to take seriously now, except that there’s no doubt Alpha One was trying to warn us about it in his ramblings. And now you tell me it was Horace Horologe’s dying words. Incredible.’

  The professor was in her office with Nine. TEX and Four had just returned from their mission to the Time Store district.

  ‘It’s bound up with Greek mythology,’ she continued. ‘Chronos was the god of Time, or at least one of them; there were two, in fact. Chronos appeared in different shapes and forms, from a wise old bearded man, Father Time, to a snake with three heads: those of a lion, a man and a bull.’

  ‘What was the other god like?’

  ‘Quite different. You see, Chronos was lord of the three periods into which we divide Time: the past, present and future. The other Time god was in charge of measureless time, time with no start or end, what we think of as eternity. His name was Aeon.’

  ‘That’s what Horace Horologe called the reactor thing,’ said BA004. ‘The Aeon Reactor.’

  Professor Perdu frowned. ‘What are they up to?’

  ‘How does the stone fit into the picture?’ asked Nine.

  The professor took a deep breath before replying.

  ‘I’m always in two minds when I think about the Chronos Stone,’ she said, exhaling slowly. ‘As a scientist my first reaction is to treat it as just another fake scientific notion like alchemy and crystals and the elixir of life, more fantasy than fact. But a number of highly respected scientists do actually take it seriously. So perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps there is substance to it.

  ‘These scientists argue that billions of years ago there was no such thing as time on Earth. There was just a great nothingness, a timeless void around our lifeless lump of rock. They claim that time began here when a crystal, said to contain an ancient fire known as the Flame of Eternity, fell to Earth encased in a meteor, arriving at precisely the same moment as life began here. They called this crystal the Chronos Stone, and claimed that all time flowed from it.’

  ‘Does anyone know where this crystal is meant to be?’ asked Nine.

  ‘No, but many have searched for it, and many still do. You see, it is thought that the Chronos Stone confers special power on whoever possesses it.’

  ‘What sort of special power?’

  ‘The power to control time.’

  ‘How do you mean? Like slowing it down and speeding it up?’ said Nine.

  ‘Yes, manipulating time in all sorts of ways.’

  ‘Even stopping it completely?’ asked Four.

  ‘Yes, even making time stand still.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Nine. ‘You can’t stop time.’

  ‘Don’t you manipulate time when you’re in the Battle Books?’ said the professor. ‘You use the Battle Edit Kit, for instance, to pause time and adjust things.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s only inside the Battle Books themselves, not out here in the real world. Real time can’t be pushed around like that, surely.’

  ‘Real time? What’s that? For all we know, the vast universe in which we live might be nothing more than a huge Time and Energy casket, a kind of Battle Book on a massive scale.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that, do you, Prof?’

  ‘I’m not sure what I believe when it comes to time. That might sound strange coming from someone who has spent the best part of their life studying it. But time is a most complicated thing, and we are still far from truly understanding it.’ The professor paused, allowing her words to sink in. ‘That’s why I can’t completely reject the Chronos Stone. It may exist, and it may well bestow special power to control time.’

  ‘Horace Horologe believed it did,’ said 004. ‘He insisted that everything was in place, that the Aeon Reactor was ready to change eternity. All that was needed was the stone. He said that time as we know it would disappear, that there’d be no past, no present, no future. He talked of a chronological vacuum, a kind of eternal emptiness. It sounded so crazy at the time, but now listening to you it’s hard to know what to think.’

  ‘That fits with Alpha One’s intel too,’ said Professor Perdu, highlighting bits of his text on her screen:

  No time! No future . . . no fu . . . No future . . . past, the past is . . . no . . . time

  The professor sat back and stared thoughtfully at the screen.

  ‘There’s a pattern emerging here, and I don’t like it. The pieces of a plan are beginning fall into place. But it’s such a weird plan it seems incredible, even crazy. They’re tampering with time on a big scale. No, bigger than big . . . universal. And that’s truly frightening. The impact on the planet could be devastating.’ Professor Perdu glanced at her control panel, checking for any updates on BA005’s whereabouts.

  ‘Still nothing?’ asked Nine.

  ‘Not from Five himself,’ the professor replied. ‘Skin sent that distress call, and I’ve locked in a Constant Emergency Exit Beam. It will sea
rch for 005, but in a MetaBook that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

  Four, Nine and TEX joined Professor Perdu at the control panel. They stared at its empty flickering screen, hoping for a miracle.

  ‘Come in, Five,’ the professor whispered. ‘Where are you?’

  * * *

  ‘Skin!’

  Five screamed as the towering wave hit and tore his breath away, catapulting him forward and then swallowing him in its swirling power. Gasping for breath, he was sent tumbling and twisting until it felt as if his limbs would be ripped from their sockets.

  Bits of Gettysburg whirled around him in a great stew of life – men, women and children; soldiers and civilians; rifles, cannons; dogs, cats, horses and carts; shops and houses.

  Five struggled against the deadly forces, trying to fight his way upwards, but he kept being dragged deeper all the time, his strength draining away.

  ‘Help!’ Five thought-channelled Skin. ‘I can’t last much longer. You’ve got to take over. ABC!’

  To Five’s surprise, Skin suddenly thought-channelled back.

  ‘Apologies, BA005. Electro-magnetic turbulence from the NoWhen Wave caused technical difficulties with software downloads. Problem now rectified. Activating Automatic Body Control as we speak.’

  Five knew there was nothing else he could do now. This was beyond his control. Skin had taken over and would get him out of this mess, if it was possible. He felt his Boot Boosters surge, and was aware of pushing upwards through the churning liquid. He could hear battle sounds – guns firing, cannons blasting, bombs exploding, men yelling, horses thundering, chariots charging. The sounds grew louder and louder, until his head was filled with the deafening wail of universal war.

  At that he broke the surface, his lips and nose instantly unsealing, and he drew in a great gasp of air.

  ‘Emergency Exit Beam nearby,’ Skin reported, and kept the Boot Boosters active, sending 005 skimming across the surface towards the beam as another monster wave loomed right behind. Five reached the beam just in time, and was sucked to safety as the wave struck.