Eschaton Read online

  The tunnel behind them had a sign with the code ‘TE-3920’ stamped into the tarnished metal. There was a thick layer of dust on it, and spots of rust. The shaft itself was dark and smelled like his grandad’s shed; full of old electrical valves and parts of motors.

  Caitlin walked part way into it, then stopped. ‘It’s a dead-end, it doesn’t seem to go anywhere,’ she observed.

  The tunnel walls were made up of arches of coiled copper wiring, like giant magnets, with thick, heavy-duty electrical cables running between them.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ she added, walking back out and looking around the space. ‘There are hundreds of them.’

  Suddenly, there was a power surge from deep in the shaft below and a circle of light appeared on the opposite side of the hangar. As they shrank into the shadows a figure stepped out of the glowing tunnel. Josh held Caitlin close to the wall and they watched as the new arrival paused for a moment before walking robotically into a well-lit corridor.

  They both recognised the timesuit, the double-F logo etched on the side of its helmet, but neither said a word.

  Josh could feel her heart beating fast against his chest.

  ‘Did he just?’

  ‘Appear out of thin air?’ said Josh, picking up the gun again and looking back nervously at the portal they’d been using for a hiding place. ‘I think we need to get out of here.’

  8

  Talisman

  [Rani Mahal, Rajasthan, India. Date: 11.657]

  The collection was housed within a tower at the southern end of the palace. A gilded, spiral staircase climbed up through the centre of the space, with spoke-like gantries coming off at various points to collections of dusty curiosities.

  The intoxicating aroma of musty old leather mingled with the exotic oils burning in the lamps made Sim feel a little high as he climbed the golden stairs. The tower was an eclectic collection: hundreds of ancient books stacked besides complex astronomical instruments and idols of Hindu gods. Sim recognised a few of them: Brahma, Shiva and the elephant-headed Ganesha.

  He’d retreated back in stages through the last few days, until he could be sure the Protectorate were nowhere to be seen. It was a dangerous gamble, and Sim knew they’d have procedures for locking down a site; ones that involved deploying a parenthesis around the time frame, guarding both before and after their temporal target.

  There was little time and a lot of books. Fortunately, the Mughal prince was an intelligent man who took great care to organise his collection. It took Sim less than an hour to find the books on demons. There were three volumes, each with the pentacle carved into the binding — the seal of Solomon.

  He sat on the steps and opened one of the tomes, finding the pages full of magical writing and invocations. Heavily annotated hexagrams listed the various components and ingredients required to summon a demon — it was an instruction manual for every kind of metaphysical experiment.

  As Sim’s fingers skimmed the pages he could feel the history unwind, the countless times the diagrams had been copied and re-copied by a hundred different scribes. He followed the knowledge back, feeling it change subtly with each transcription.

  Finally, he located the reference to the ring — the talisman that Eddington had told him to find.

  He heard the metallic clang of a steel-capped boot on the metal stair below, and he knew he had to go.

  Grabbing the other two books, Sim ran up a few more rotations of the staircase, putting each one on a random shelf as he went.

  Reluctantly, Sim tore the relevant page from the last book and hid the rest of it between a set of the Kama Sutra, hoping that the clean-living officers of the Protectorate would think twice before touching such a forbidden set of texts.

  Then, using the timeline from the torn page, he found the location of the talisman and shifted into it.

  9

  Lenin

  Walking cautiously around the metal walkway with their backs pressed against the outer wall, Josh and Caitlin came to the well-lit corridor the figure had disappeared into.

  Caitlin looked back at Josh, raising an eyebrow at the gun as if wondering how the inert weapon was going to magically come to life.

  There was another power surge, and across the hangar they saw another suited figure appear from a glowing tunnel.

  They moved quickly into the corridor. It was a metal tube of corroding panels and exposed wires, with running lights down the edges of the walkway. There was nowhere to hide, only the exit at the other end of the passage. They ran hard towards it, as the sound of the stranger’s steps echoed down the passage behind them.

  The next room was like something from an abandoned spaceship, its walls stacked high with dirty, glass-fronted pods. Many were broken, but a few displayed flickering graphs of biometrics on their opaque doors. Caitlin approached the nearest working compartment and wiped away the grime and dust, stifling a scream as she jumped back.

  There was a body inside.

  Josh looked closely at the face of Lenin, whose eyes stared blankly out into the distance. A glowing light on his chest pulsed softly as though he was in some kind of stand-by mode and the power bar on the glass door indicated he was re-charging.

  ‘What the hell is the place?’ asked Caitlin, looking around at all the other occupied bays.

  Josh went over to another cell and brushed away the dirt from the window. Again it was Lenin, but this time the body was much older.

  The footsteps grew louder from the corridor behind them and Caitlin looked anxiously for a hiding place.

  ‘In here,’ she said, pointing to a darkened, empty unit.

  Josh squeezed in beside her and closed the door as the figure arrived in the bay.

  It was another timesuit, the smooth, silvered surface of the armour shimmering as the figure walked into the centre of the room and came to a stop. Josh heard the servos whine and watched the mirror field dissipate as the suit powered down.

  A series of robotic arms dropped from the ceiling and removed the bolts that locked the headgear in place, pulling off the helmet to reveal the face of much older Lenin.

  ‘Consciousness transfer initiated,’ intoned a female voice, as a long cable was inserted into the back of his head.

  Lenin’s head jolted back and his eyes burned with a blue light as the procedure kicked in. A minute later the light faded and his head slumped down onto his chest-plate.

  ‘Transfer complete. Unit X9010 expired. Recycle initiated.’

  Just as it had done in the college grounds in Cambridge, the timesuit split open, but this time the emaciated body of the old gang leader fell out onto the floor. He looked as if he were in his nineties, strands of white hair clinging to his liver-spotted head and his arms were nothing but skin and bone.

  Clamps descended and hoisted the suit away, leaving the feeble body of Lenin on the metal grill set into the middle of the floor.

  ‘Commencing cellular reclamation,’ instructed the voice.

  The floor below Lenin split open and his body fell through the widening hole.

  Josh went to leave the pod, but Caitlin held him back, shaking her head.

  Only when the grill had closed and everything seemed to have returned to normal did she let go of his arm.

  Josh went over to the spot where Lenin had been, careful not to step onto the aperture. Below the metal grid he could see a luminous vat of yellow fluid, and floating within it, the slowly dissolving body of the old gang leader.

  ‘Clones?’ asked Caitlin, coming to stand behind him.

  ‘Maybe. But what’s making them so old?’ replied Josh.

  Caitlin looked at the empty timesuits hanging above their heads, the space above them filled with an array of pods that stretched up into an unseen ceiling.

  ‘Time.’

  10

  Nautilus

  [Cassandra nebula, Maelstrom]

  The Nautilus appeared silently inside a graveyard of old navy warships suspended in space like sharks out of
water. Drifting past the silent hulks, Thomas read off their names, noting where the gaping holes in their grey steel hulls had been ripped open by torpedoes. Some were listing badly, as though they were still taking on water, but never quite sinking.

  ‘I’m going to bring her in next to the Enterprise,’ said his wife through the speaking tube. ‘I think its medical bay is still intact.’

  He watched the manoeuvres from the conning tower of the timeship, marvelling at the grand old destroyers. To him they were like monuments, each one a tomb and a memorial to a lost battle.

  ‘Ten degrees down on your bow,’ said Thomas, ducking to avoid the enormous propeller blade of a minesweeper which was still slowly gyrating. Once clear of the craft, the Nautilus began to ascend towards the aircraft carrier floating high above them.

  This was a sector of the maelstrom that they’d discovered early in their travels. At first, he’d assumed that all the ships had come from one battle, which would explain why they were collected in the same space, but after they’d spent a few months setting up a base, it was clear that this area had a dense magnetic field, and that large metal hulks like these ships were naturally drawn towards it.

  Which also meant it was the easiest part of the chaotic realm to find — the needle of a compass would instantly turn towards it.

  The Nautilus slowed alongside the Enterprise, one of the largest vessels in the forgotten fleet, and Thomas jumped onto the flight deck and secured the lines. Although there was no perceivable current or eddy to move their ship away, there was something within the magnetic flux that pulled at the vessels. More than once they had found their ship adrift in an otherwise stable space.

  The deck of the carrier was a haunting museum of old WW2 aircraft: the painted smiles of Hellcats and Warhawks grinned menacingly at him as they sat chained to the deck, patiently waiting for pilots that would never come.

  ‘Are you going to stare at those bloody planes all day?’ asked his wife from a door she’d opened in the side of the ship.

  Rufius was a heavy man, and even with Da Recco’s help they only just managed to wrestle him onto a stretcher. His condition was unchanged since they re-entered the maelstrom, but his skin was sickly grey and his breathing was shallow.

  Using one of the aviation elevators, they manoeuvred him down into a hangar and from there to the sick bay.

  Juliana went off to search for supplies while Thomas and Da Recco made him comfortable.

  ‘This is a metal ship?’ marvelled Da Recco, touching the bulkhead.

  ‘One of the finest aircraft carriers in the American Pacific Fleet.’

  ‘And she floats?’

  ‘Yes, and planes land on her.’

  ‘What are planes?’

  ‘Machines that fly — like a bird. Only with propellers instead of wings — but they have those too.’ Thomas could see he was only making the poor man more confused.

  ‘They fly how?’

  ‘What happened to the prime directive?’ asked his wife, coming back from the infirmary with an armful of medical supplies.

  ‘I think we abandoned that when we rescued him in a timeship,’ Thomas replied.

  Juliana unpacked the saline drip and plugged it carefully into the Rufius’ arm. ‘This will need to be changed every few hours,’ she said, laying out the extra packs of saline. ‘One of us will have to stay.’

  ‘I will,’ volunteered Da Recco. ‘I wish to explore this magnificent metal ship.’

  ‘Fine,’ agreed Juliana, glaring at her husband. ‘But stay away from the gunnery sections — there may well be live ammo down there.’

  As well as a bunch of dead seamen, thought Thomas with a shiver. The lower levels of the ship were haunted by the last few moments of the ship sinking, and even if you didn’t believe in ghosts it was not a sight you forgot in a hurry.

  11

  Solomon’s temple

  [Jerusalem. Date: 9.070]

  The tomb seemed to have no entrance or exit; the walls were carved from heavy sandstone blocks, each finely cemented on top of the other so there was no discernible gap. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were etched across the surface of the rock.

  A golden throne sat at the far end of the chamber, with lions and eagles resting on the steps that led up to it. Sim used the light from his tachyon to move between the hundreds of grave goods until he reached the steps.

  He had no idea how the ring had found its way to Solomon; Eddington hadn’t really had the time to explain how he knew it was there.

  The King was lying mummified inside the sarcophagus, his head covered with a golden death mask, and the staffs of office lay on his chest held down by his crossed arms. He was hours away from being sealed into his tomb and Sim knew that the priests would be returning soon to finish the ceremony.

  The ring sat gleaming on his embalmed right hand, a pentagram engraved into its seal.

  Putting on the gloves he’d brought especially for the task, Sim carefully prised the ring off the mummy’s finger. He was probably now the most wanted man in the Order and also the most powerful. Sim had to restrain himself from opening its timeline and taking a look at the chronology. The thought that this was a talisman, an object from pre-history, was fascinating — that it alone could transport him millions of years into the past sent a shiver down his spine.

  Eddington had instructed him to hide it in the most ‘improbable place’, and Sim had considered a number of options. The first was obvious: the Antiquarian archives, where it could be said to be lost in plain sight, but there was always the chance that some archivist might come across it while indexing. The other option was one of the out-of-the-way locations, secret paths that Sim’s father had taken him through as a child — places that not even the Nautonniers knew of. But though they were tempting, they too did not feel safe. Most were archaic and the power contained in the ring could no doubt corrupt the timeline irreparably.

  His statistical mind weighed the possibilities, assessing the risks until he found he’d rationalised them down to one.

  He would take it home.

  12

  Sword

  [Eschaton Research Division]

  ‘What do you mean it wasn’t there?’ screamed Dalton.

  The three subordinates stared at their shoes, whilst Jarius tried to explain.

  ‘There were latent traces, like someone had got there before us.’

  ‘So go back earlier.’

  ‘We did. There were no references to the talisman anywhere in the Shukoh’s collection or the timeline.’

  Dalton looked at them in disbelief. ‘You mean it’d been redacted?’

  Jarius nodded. ‘Someone had taken great pains to remove any evidence of it ever existing.’

  Dalton studied each of them in turn, unconsciously caressing the pommel of his sword with his thumb, as if considering which one to kill first.

  ‘Bring me the Scriptorian Grandmaster,’ he said calmly. ‘I assume you won’t have any trouble finding him.’

  With relief they all turned to leave.

  ‘Not you, Jarius.’

  Once the others had gone, Dalton unbuckled his sword belt and placed it on his desk.

  ‘Someone else got to the talisman before us,’ he mused, taking the Katana out of its sheath. Jarius recognised it as the Honjō Masamune, made by the master swordsmith Masamune in 11.328 and supposedly lost at the end of the Second World War. Dalton had made no secret of wanting to own the sword ever since he’d seen it used during his internship with the Tokugawa shogunate. He’d issued a requisition order to the Antiquarians the moment he’d taken command.

  The Protectorate were the only members given special privileges to carry a weapon at all times, although the Dreadnoughts were usually armed too, but that was because no one had the balls to tell them not to be.

  ‘Eddington must have told someone,’ agreed Jarius, eyeing the sword warily.

  Dalton tilted the blade so it caught the light. ‘Do you know what a Samurai would do if he
failed his liege lord?’

  Jarius shook his head.

  ‘Seppuku. To restore honour in the face of defeat. The warrior would use a knife to open his stomach while another Samurai would take off his head.’

  In one swift motion, Dalton swept the deadly blade to within a few millimetres of Jarius’ neck.

  ‘I have a small dilemma — Eddington is dead — making it rather difficult when it comes to finding out who he confided in — a situation that may allow you to redeem yourself.’

  Jarius could feel the blood pumping through the artery in his neck as the cold steel hovered close to it. He realised exactly what Dalton was asking him to do and considered pushing himself onto the blade.

  ‘But he’s dead,’ he whimpered.

  Dalton lowered his weapon. ‘Reaving is not a pleasant task, I have to admit, but sometimes these things have to be done — I suggest you get cracking.’

  13

  Avatar

  Josh stepped back from the steaming soup of body parts and looked around for another way out.

  He spotted a metal door between two of the pods, which had a wheel in the centre, like a pressure door on a ship. Above it, stencilled into the tarnished grey metal, was the double-F logo.

  Putting down the gun, he grabbed the wheel with both hands and tried to turn it, but the thing was rusted shut. By the look of the corrosion on the hinges it hadn’t been opened in a hundred years.

  ‘Lost your superpowers?’ Caitlin asked with a chuckle.

  ‘Do you have any better ideas?’ he replied, giving up and kicking the door.