Eschaton Read online

  So Sim got to his feet and braced himself once more.

  This time he focused on the letter from his mother.

  Alixia was in her roof garden when the raid began. She was hiding the note in one of her more dangerous plants, which Sim could tell by the thick leather gauntlets she wore.

  Suddenly, two Protectorate officers appeared in stillsuits and raised their weapons — she ignored them and finished the re-potting before gracefully removing the gloves and letting them lead her away.

  Sim shifted to his father’s office, where he too was standing passively between two heavy-set guards.

  Lyra and Phileas were brought in, both struggling against their captors. One word from Methuselah calmed them down and they were forced to stand beside them.

  Then Dalton walked in.

  Sim couldn’t believe how much he’d changed since they’d last met. His head was shaved and the stark black uniform made him look like a member of the Gestapo.

  It was too painful to watch in real-time, so Sim scanned forward along their timeline until he found their current location. They were locked in a cell, deep below the Protectorate headquarters. His father’s face was bruised and cut, while the others looked scared and stressed but otherwise unhurt.

  ‘Mum?’ he cried, his heart breaking.

  She looked up, as if she’d heard him.

  The image of the timeline seemed to sharpen slightly, and it was as if he was in the cell with them.

  ‘Sim!’ she cried, tears forming in her eyes.

  His father smiled and tried to stand but his legs were too weak.

  Lyra and Phil’s faces both lit up.

  ‘You can see me?’ asked Sim.

  ‘A projection of you, yes,’ his mother said, and nodded.

  ‘What have they done to you?’

  ‘There’s no time for that now darling,’ she said, wiping away the tears. ‘You have to listen very carefully.’

  Sim nodded, crying too, but he didn’t care.

  ‘Have you found Caitlin and Josh?’

  His bottom lip began trembling. ‘They’re not in the continuum. I think they’ve gone into the maelstrom.’

  His mother considered the idea and then smiled. ‘Or maybe Joshua’s taken her into the future.’

  ‘Do you think he can?’

  ‘Oh, I think that boy can do a lot more than that, but as long as he stays far away from Dalton we have a chance.’

  ‘Dalton’s taken Eddington,’ Sim said quietly. ‘The professor sent me to retrieve a talisman, because he wouldn’t be able to hide it from him.’

  ‘What kind of talisman?’

  ‘A ring — it belonged to Solomon.’

  Alixia smiled. ‘Then it’s good that you’ve kept it out of his reach.’

  Sim sighed. ‘The Protectorate were already searching for it, and they nearly caught me.’

  ‘Then we don’t have much time.’

  ‘For what? The Eschaton Division are taking over everything.’

  ‘Listen, you need to find a way to contact the Draconians and get us out of here. Can you do that for me? Find Derado and tell him about Caitlin, tell him to contact the Augurs.’

  She reached out to touch his face, but he felt nothing.

  ‘Yes mother, but how will I reach them? They’ve blockaded the past.’

  ‘There is a secret way, through the moon garden,’ his father replied.

  Sim knew about the memorial to Caitlin’s parents, but not that it had a connection to the Draconian Headquarters.

  ‘How do you like the Parabolic?’ asked Methuselah. ‘Not making you feel too sick?’

  ‘It’s great, Dad,’ replied Sim, his voice cracking as he tried to hold back the emotion.

  ‘You’d better go,’ said his mother.

  ‘Alright. Love you.’

  Their images faded away and Sim crumpled to the floor and wept.

  17

  Bedlam

  Through the small barred grille of the cell door Dalton watched Jarius, who was staring at the wall, rocking back and forth while murmuring to himself. The cell was covered with the crazed etchings of a hundred previous inmates, which Jarius seemed to be reading like a book.

  ‘Is there anything you can do for him?’ asked Dalton.

  ‘No,’ replied Doctor Crooke, ‘the man is quite insane.’

  ‘Did he mention anything regarding Eddington?’

  The doctor looked puzzled.

  Dalton’s expression hardly changed as he continued. ‘We suspect he murdered the professor. Apparently he was convinced that Eddington knew the location of the second book of the Djinn.’

  Crooke closed the shutter on the cell door and turned to Dalton. ‘His condition may improve over time, but this has all the hallmarks of a reaving. Not many come back from that, at least in my experience.’

  Dalton shrugged and turned to leave.

  ‘There was one thing,’ added the doctor.

  ‘Yes?’ Dalton said impatiently.

  ‘When he arrived he was quite manic, but there were some moments of lucidity. He asked for Simeon De Freis — Alixia’s boy. I sent for him, but he’s nowhere to be found. Did he know him?’

  Dalton smiled. ‘No, but Eddington did.’

  18

  Fermi

  Caitlin was having trouble believing what Josh had just told her.

  ‘What do you mean you left it behind?’ she hissed under her breath.

  While they’d been waiting, Josh had tried unsuccessfully to explain how he might have unintentionally left one of the Order’s most valuable assets, his tachyon, in the hands of a quantum physicist.

  ‘To be fair, I was unconscious.’

  ‘And why exactly were you there in the first place?’

  This was the question Josh was trying to avoid, the part of his past he thought he’d buried when the timeline had altered.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘It always is with you. You’re the epitome of random — Sim thinks it’s part of the nature of the Nemesis. I think it’s more like stupidity.’

  She was right, of course. He always managed to screw things up, no matter how well planned. Bad things just seemed to happen to him — fate or destiny or whatever they wanted to call it never seemed to give him an easy time.

  ‘Were you studying at the university?’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ he mumbled, trying not to look her in the eye.

  ‘Did you work there?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I was on a job — kind of freelancing.’

  Josh couldn’t think of a better way to describe a getaway driver.

  ‘So,’ she began, her voice full of frustration, ‘you think that maybe the old guy in the tank is the same professor, that you may have inadvertently given a temporal device to?’

  Josh shrugged. ‘Possibly. The hologram looks a lot like him.’

  ‘Then I think we should leave, before we make this situation any worse.’

  ‘What about my father?’

  Caitlin looked over to the wizened old man in the tank. ‘Well I hate to break it to you, but I think your old man might be a vegetable.’

  Seven-sigma reappeared. ‘The professor will see you now.’

  Caitlin scowled at Josh as they followed their host over to the glass tank and stopped when it vanished inside.

  The professor looked like a science experiment: hundreds of tubes and cables ran down from the top of the tank connecting to his white, skin-tight diving suit. His face was wrinkled, preserved like a dried old prune, and he was so thin and emaciated that Josh guessed he was probably looking at the oldest living man in history.

  The professor raised his head and a spooky pair of milk-white eyes greeted them.

  ‘Welcome,’ said a disembodied voice, the thin white lips never moving. ‘I have been expecting you.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ said Josh.

  ‘Did you come alone?’

  Josh realised then that the old man was blind. ‘No,�
�� he replied, as there seemed little reason to lie.

  ‘Ah. My calculations predicted a thirty-three percent chance of another. Is she one of them?’

  ‘One of who?’ Caitlin interrupted.

  ‘The engineers, I call them — the ones who created that magnificent device you gave me.’

  Josh went to protest, but Caitlin’s frown changed his mind.

  ‘Yes, I’m from the Order,’ she admitted.

  ‘Excellent, I’ve always wanted to meet one of your kind. Even if you have been interfering in my experiments.’

  ‘Experiments?’ asked Caitlin, looking puzzled.

  The professor’s body began to thrash around inside the water, as if he were having a fit.

  Seven-sigma reappeared. ‘Please do not be alarmed, the episode will last momentarily,’ he informed them in a calming tone and with a reassuring smile.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Josh asked. He’d seen enough of his mother’s spasms to recognise an epileptic seizure.

  The avatar’s smile faded. ‘The professor suffers from an advanced form of Alzheimer’s disease. His treatment has managed to reduce the effects, but the therapy can result in mild seizures.’

  Mild, though Josh, that was a grand mal.

  ‘Thanks to his advances in neural synchronisation most of his mental state was saved and integrated into the Fermian AI. Some of my neural network is based on his memory. I know for instance that you, Joshua, met the professor and have a perfect recall of the event.’

  ‘Great,’ said Josh under his breath. I’d rather you didn’t.

  ‘What’s keeping him alive?’ Caitlin asked as the tremors began to subside.

  ‘The professor has developed technologies to extend the human lifespan far beyond its original design, although his physical body cannot leave the preservation chamber.’ He pointed to the tank. ‘But his mind is very active, and he can experience full physical and sensory input by migrating into a host.’

  Josh looked at Caitlin. They were both thinking the same thing.

  ‘You mean like another body?’ asked Caitlin.

  ‘Of a clone. Yes.’

  Lenin, thought Josh, remembering the last time he’d seen the leader of the Ghost Squad was at the school. How the hell did Lenin end up here?

  ‘The clone is the nearest I have come to immortality,’ chimed the disembodied voice once more as the hologram faded away.

  ‘I have spent the last hundred years trying to stimulate the technological development of the past in order to advance the present — and find a cure for this damned disease.’

  An array of small red lights flashed on his collar and a dark liquid flowed down one of the transparent tubes and into his neck.

  ‘The elixir of life,’ the professor explained, ‘one of my most significant discoveries and the only treatment that has managed to hold back the progression — although it comes with a heavy price.’

  The veins lining his skull darkened as the medicine coursed through his body.

  ‘When I realised you were somehow able to manipulate time, I became obsessed with trying to find a way into the future, but every one of my experiments failed. There were too many variables. So, I began to explore the past but it cost me dearly. Time is a harsh mistress and my condition worsened. The clones allow me to continue my work without suffering further physical deterioration, and I have learned so many things, yet the cure still eludes me.’

  His eyes began to glow as the black liquid flowed into his pupils. There was something about it that reminded Josh of the Pharaoh — as though he were being possessed by a Djinn.

  ‘I assume that since you’re here, you have encountered one of my experiments. I wonder which timestream you’re from. Do you remember the number of the tunnel you appeared in?’

  Josh shook his head.

  ’Three-nine-two-zero,’ said Caitlin.

  ‘Interesting.’ The corpse in the tank seemed to smile. ‘Three hundred years from now. I assume that you have come back to find out who ruined your future?’

  19

  Derado

  [Ascension Island, Atlantic. Date: 11.927]

  The headquarters of the Draconians was located in the tallest lighthouse Sim had ever seen. It was a vast tower, over half a mile high, that sat on Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic, two thousand miles from the nearest continent.

  The water dragon sculpture in Caitlin’s moon garden had taken him directly to the Firedrake that stood proudly in the central chamber of the Draconian command centre, where he found himself immediately surrounded by a group of fearsome-looking Dreadnoughts.

  Sim looked into the barrels of their gunsabres and raised his hands. ‘T-Tell the grandmaster I know where Caitlin M-Makepiece is,’ he stuttered.

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded the grandmaster, two hours later, as the guards deposited him into a chair in his office. ‘And how do you know my goddaughter?!’

  The vast circular space at the very top of the lighthouse had been converted into a war room. Temporal maps and plans had been pinned around the walls, red notes scribbled at key points along the timelines.

  ‘I’m Simeon De Freis,’ Sim blurted, slightly upset the old man didn’t remember him.

  Derado’s eyes narrowed, turning to one of the guards. ‘Has Madame Besant confirmed his identity?’

  The guard nodded. The Dreadnoughts had taken Sim to a seer after they’d searched him for weapons. The woman was nothing like Lyra; she had a hard face, one that had witnessed too many terrible things. Sim had complied with her instructions and let her read his timeline. He had nothing to hide, and in fact it saved a great deal of time not having to convince them of who he was.

  ‘Good!’ said the Draconian grandmaster, pouring two large glasses of brandy and handing one to Sim. ‘You’ll have to forgive our precautions — we’re living in interesting times. So, tell me about my goddaughter. Is she safe?’

  Sim sipped his drink, trying hard to ignore the burning sensation that was cauterising his throat.

  ‘She’s left the continuum.’

  ‘Has she now?’ Derado raised an eyebrow. ‘Probably for the best. Do you know where, exactly?’

  Sim shook his head. ‘My mother believes she’s gone into the future with the Nemesis.’

  Derado sat down behind a large desk which was covered in reports, notes that were continuously rewriting themselves.

  ‘And what do you think?’ the grandmaster asked steepling his fingers in front of his face.

  It was the first time anyone had ever asked Sim what he thought. Usually adults told him what to do and when to do it. It took him a few moments to think of a response.

  ‘I think there’s an eighty-three-point-two percent probability that she’s with him, and that they’re working to stop the Eschaton crisis.’

  Derado clapped his hands together. ‘Spoken like a true Copernican! Tell me, how come the Eckharts haven’t managed to lock you up in a cell with the rest of your guild?’

  Sim’s throat felt tight and hoarse, and he tried to clear it before speaking. ‘Professor Eddington helped me escape.’

  A dark cloud seemed to pass across Derado’s face. ‘Eddington was a good man.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘I’ve had reports that he died while in Protectorate custody.’

  Sim felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He took a large gulp of brandy and then nearly coughed most of it back up. ‘He’s dead?’

  Derado drained his glass and went to refill it. ‘Do you need another?’

  Sim refused with a shake of his head. He was still trying to deal with the news. The professor was someone he’d always thought of as an immortal, the name they gave the old masters, ones who would always be there to guide them.

  ‘You should know that his death will not go unpunished, once this crisis has been averted.’

  ‘Dalton has arrested my family,’ Sim said anxiously. ‘My mother told me that you’d have a contingency plan — something to do wit
h the Augurs?’ he added, having no real idea what an Augur was.

  Derado looked suspiciously at Sim. ‘What do you know of the Citadel?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The grandmaster grunted. ‘Probably for the best — the Augurs aren’t your concern, nor mine for that matter. They only report to the founder.’

  ‘And my family?’ asked Sim, trying not to sound too concerned.

  Derado put down his glass. ‘There’s nothing I can do I’m afraid. We’re only just able to keep the Protectorate away from the major breaches.’

  Sim could feel his anger building, his analytical mind was being short-circuited by a sudden burst of emotion. ‘But, Dalton will kill them, just like he did Eddington!’

  The Draconian grandmaster patted him on the shoulder and sighed deeply. ‘I warned the Founder that Ravana wasn’t the dangerous one. He’s always underestimated her son.’

  Sim put his head in his hands. ‘He’s obsessed with the Djinn. Mum says his father was exactly the same.’

  ‘Valtin? God help us all if we have to deal with another beast like that.’

  Sim had never heard anything about Dalton’s father, other than he’d died in some kind of hunting accident on their estate in the eleventh century. Dalton had never spoken about him, and they all knew better than to ask. He’d always been an arrogant bully — since as long as Sim could remember — but even so, he couldn’t bring himself to imagine that Dalton would hurt Lyra or Phil, let alone his mother, who had welcomed Dalton into their home for years.

  Sim stood up, a glimmer of defiance in his eyes. ‘I have to try and get them out.’

  Derado took a large register out of the desk and swept his hand down the page.

  ‘I have very little in the way of spare resources, and my regiments are stretched to the limit, blockading the paths into the second dynasty as well as containing four separate breach operations. Someone still has to defend us while all this goes on.’