Long!’) was Sal’s find. She’d come across the little eatery on one of her many trips to Exmouth Market. A narrow three-storey building of uneven floors and oak beams askew. Each floor was a maze of nooks and crannies and cosy side rooms, each room filled with wooden tables and stools that wobbled on the undulating bare floor. They were sitting in a lead-lined bay window on the top floor, looking down through fogged glass on to the narrow street and a busy fishmonger below.
Inside Bentham’s it was quiet now. The breakfast rush of early-morning pie-eating patrons had subsided and the lunchtime rush was yet to come.
The seven of them were crowded around one small table, and the perforated, oven-browned pie crusts spilling small smokestack plumes of beef-flavour steam into the air made the pie feast between them look like a miniature table-top village of round houses.
‘Smells good,’ said Adam. ‘I haven’t eaten anything warm in days.’
‘The meat is real beef,’ said Rashim, plunging a fork into his crust. ‘Not synthetic protein jelly but actual meat.’
Liam made a yummy sound as he hung his nose over his own pie. ‘I’m starving, so I am.’
‘All right. I suppose I better start,’ said Maddy, ‘since this was all my big idea.’ She tapped her fingers together. ‘Becks – who you now know, Adam, is a support unit – dumped out a whole load of data and what we got from it,
all
we got from it, was the word “Windtalkers”. So that’s why we came to get you, Adam. That’s the only lead we have here.’
‘A lead to cracking that message –’ Adam glanced at Becks – ‘in her head?’
‘Yup. So, the truth is we’ve found ourselves kind of cast adrift from the agency that set us up in the time-policing business.’
‘Cast adrift?’ Liam shook his head. ‘That’s putting it mildly. More like “hiding from them for fear of our lives”.’
‘All right, we’ve gone and done something that’s made the agency want us all dead for some reason.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘I think it’s because I made the mistake of asking what the hell “Pandora” was.’
‘You didn’t just ask,’ said Sal. ‘You sent a message saying we weren’t going to correct any more contaminations until someone gave us an answer. That was pretty stupid, saying it like that. You made us sound like we were turning against them.’
Maddy did a double-take at Sal. It was so unlike her to lash out like that. She’d been withdrawn and quiet recently, more so than normal. Then this – there was even the tone of a direct challenge in her voice. So unlike her.
‘Well, yes … I might have worded it a bit better, I guess,’ she replied. ‘And, so, because I made it sound like they had a problem with us – sorry, guys – we ended up with a squad of goons, like Bob here, knocking on our door intent on massacring us. A slight over-reaction, I think. But there you go. Something obviously got lost in the translation. They figured we’d gone rogue. But more than that … I think we clearly weren’t meant to know anything about Pandora.’
‘And this Pandora is …?’ asked Adam.
‘We think it’s the codename for the end of the world. Or, more specifically, a specific extinction event for mankind.’
‘What specific event?’
‘A genetically engineered virus,’ said Rashim. ‘There will be a war between Japan and North Korea in 2070, one of many wars, in fact, that are due in the later half of the twenty-first century. During the opening stages of the Japan–North Korea war, one side will release a Von Neumann virus.’
‘Von Neumann?’
‘A type of smart-virus that feeds on human organic material and breaks it down into an organic soup, which it in turn uses to fuel the propagation of more virus spores.’
‘So,’ continued Maddy, ‘we’ve pieced together the theory that the Waldstein guy I was telling you about earlier – you remember …?’
Adam nodded.
‘He set this agency up
Inside Bentham’s it was quiet now. The breakfast rush of early-morning pie-eating patrons had subsided and the lunchtime rush was yet to come.
The seven of them were crowded around one small table, and the perforated, oven-browned pie crusts spilling small smokestack plumes of beef-flavour steam into the air made the pie feast between them look like a miniature table-top village of round houses.
‘Smells good,’ said Adam. ‘I haven’t eaten anything warm in days.’
‘The meat is real beef,’ said Rashim, plunging a fork into his crust. ‘Not synthetic protein jelly but actual meat.’
Liam made a yummy sound as he hung his nose over his own pie. ‘I’m starving, so I am.’
‘All right. I suppose I better start,’ said Maddy, ‘since this was all my big idea.’ She tapped her fingers together. ‘Becks – who you now know, Adam, is a support unit – dumped out a whole load of data and what we got from it,
all
we got from it, was the word “Windtalkers”. So that’s why we came to get you, Adam. That’s the only lead we have here.’
‘A lead to cracking that message –’ Adam glanced at Becks – ‘in her head?’
‘Yup. So, the truth is we’ve found ourselves kind of cast adrift from the agency that set us up in the time-policing business.’
‘Cast adrift?’ Liam shook his head. ‘That’s putting it mildly. More like “hiding from them for fear of our lives”.’
‘All right, we’ve gone and done something that’s made the agency want us all dead for some reason.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘I think it’s because I made the mistake of asking what the hell “Pandora” was.’
‘You didn’t just ask,’ said Sal. ‘You sent a message saying we weren’t going to correct any more contaminations until someone gave us an answer. That was pretty stupid, saying it like that. You made us sound like we were turning against them.’
Maddy did a double-take at Sal. It was so unlike her to lash out like that. She’d been withdrawn and quiet recently, more so than normal. Then this – there was even the tone of a direct challenge in her voice. So unlike her.
‘Well, yes … I might have worded it a bit better, I guess,’ she replied. ‘And, so, because I made it sound like they had a problem with us – sorry, guys – we ended up with a squad of goons, like Bob here, knocking on our door intent on massacring us. A slight over-reaction, I think. But there you go. Something obviously got lost in the translation. They figured we’d gone rogue. But more than that … I think we clearly weren’t meant to know anything about Pandora.’
‘And this Pandora is …?’ asked Adam.
‘We think it’s the codename for the end of the world. Or, more specifically, a specific extinction event for mankind.’
‘What specific event?’
‘A genetically engineered virus,’ said Rashim. ‘There will be a war between Japan and North Korea in 2070, one of many wars, in fact, that are due in the later half of the twenty-first century. During the opening stages of the Japan–North Korea war, one side will release a Von Neumann virus.’
‘Von Neumann?’
‘A type of smart-virus that feeds on human organic material and breaks it down into an organic soup, which it in turn uses to fuel the propagation of more virus spores.’
‘So,’ continued Maddy, ‘we’ve pieced together the theory that the Waldstein guy I was telling you about earlier – you remember …?’
Adam nodded.
‘He set this agency up
Similar Books
