Читать книгу Felix Taylor Adventures 2-Book Bundle - Nicholas Maes - Страница 7

He was standing in a desert. Around him was a crowd of legionnaires, who looked tired and … apprehensive. They were staring in front of them, with such concentration that they failed to notice Felix. Curious, he moved through their ranks, and still they continued to direct their gaze forward. What WERE they looking at?

Wait! The troops were suddenly changing: their faces were spotted, their fingertips were reddening and many were collapsing! He sprinted toward the foremost ranks where a figure was surveying the plain before him. Felix knew this was Marcus Crassus and that the battle of Carrhae was about to begin, one of Rome’s more troubling defeats. Even now the Parthians were approaching, with their fifteen-foot pikes. What was on the end of each? It couldn’t be! Hoisted on high, beneath the blinding desert sun, his father’s head stared lifelessly at Felix.…

Felix awoke with a cry. He’d been napping on the couch and, with the night’s onset, the unit was steeped in shadow. Wait, no. A flashing light intruded from outside, and an angry buzzing was making his ears ring — as if a hive of bees had broken into their dwelling.

“Mentor? What’s happening?”

The flashing light grew brighter. The buzzing, too, rose in volume, until Felix could feel his insides tingle. He struggled off the couch and studied the room. His instincts told him something was wrong.

“Mentor! Answer me! What’s going on?”

Wait. Mentor’s light ports weren’t blinking; a sign his power had been cut. But how? The system was linked to three separate generators, and a short like this was out of the question — unless it had been engineered.

Felix’s hair stood on end. Somehow someone had … murdered Mentor!

“Felix Taylor!” a voice hailed him from outside, “This is Medevac 125037. We are here to transport you to a health facility.”

A Medevac? Here? It was going to transport him? Felix felt his neck and scalp bristle. There could only be one explanation: he’d come down with the virus!

He hurried to a mirror beside the front entrance. Although the only light was from the flashers outside, he peered into it anxiously and tried to spy his features. Were there blisters on his cheeks? Had his fingertips turned red? It was difficult to tell, but everything seemed normal. And far from feeling tired, he was filled with nervous energy.

“Please step onto the balcony. We have dispatched a stretcher.”

No sooner were these words announced than a stretcher hovered into view, its retractable arms as threatening as ever. With a quiet but insistent hum its miniature jets steered it straight onto the balcony. Watching it with bated breath, Felix thought he must have missed his next exam and the authorities were closing in. Mentor, poor Mentor, had been right all along and …

How odd. The old-fashioned clock read 8:46 p.m. So he hadn’t missed his appointment yet. But then why was a Medevac paying him a visit …?

“Please step onto the balcony. You are wasting precious time.”

Felix unsealed the balcony door — a task Mentor would have normally performed. As he stepped outside and savoured the fresh air, the stretcher’s lid opened with a snake-like hiss. Spying it, Felix was taken aback. Once he climbed inside it and the lid wheeled closed, he’d be linked to a series of soul-less machines.

“Lie down on the stretcher,” the voice enjoined him.

He didn’t want to go. Earlier, he hadn’t cared if the authorities swooped in, but now that his freedom was endangered he was sorely afraid. And not just afraid: he was angry and defiant.

“Lie down on the stretcher,” the voice insisted. “We are falling behind schedule.”

“You’re mistaken,” he yelled back. “I don’t have the disease.”

“Lie down!” the voice repeated. “We will not ask you again.”

“Can’t you hear me? I’m not sick. And why did you disable my domestic system?”

He sensed its approach at the very last instant. Glancing around, he saw a fist-sized sphere had stationed itself behind him. It was a BISDM — a Brain Interference Signal Delivery Mechanism. Before he could duck or jump to one side, a wall of energy seemed to engulf him.

As a wave of black struck him, he was thinking he’d never open his eyes again.

“You can open your eyes.”

There was a high-pitched whine far in the background and the continuous beeping of a signal exchange. A blast of air felt nice against his cheek.

“Come on. Hurry. My father’s going to test you once we’ve reached the stratosphere. Open your eyes and talk to me.”

Without stirring, Felix struggled to puzzle things out. His brain had been shocked and his body flung onto a stretcher. And now a Medevac was conveying him to a facility in orbit, unless his refusal to co-operate would land him in jail. Either way, he didn’t care. The trick was to keep his eyes firmly closed.…

“Open your eyes!”

“Stop bossing me around!” he shouted, opening his eyes in spite of himself. To his surprise he was staring at a girl his age, with short, blonde hair, hazel-green eyes, and a chin that suggested she was very self-composed. He also noticed the stretcher’s lid was open.

“The lid is open,” he stated. “So I’m not infected.”

“No.”

“So why am I here? Why did you shock me? Why did you kill Mentor? And who are you anyway?”

“My name is Carolyn Manes. But never mind that. You sound angry, emotional.”

“What do you expect?”

“I mean, you haven’t undergone ERR.”

“No. On my father’s advice, I dispensed with it.”

“It must be odd to experience emotion. My father says it can hamper one’s judgment, but at the same time it can lead to valuable insight.”

“Who’s your father?”

“He’s a general and is in charge of the Temporal Projection Matrix.”

“This is all very interesting, but what’s it all about? Why did a Medevac …?”

“No one can know about the TPM. That’s why we’ve faked that you’re ill and hauled you off in a medical transport.”

“You’ve lost me …”

“My father’s coming,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”

Without another word, she hurried to the far end of the Medevac.

Seconds later, a large, well-groomed man approached. He had short, grey hair, light green eyes, a chiselled chin and, apart from his Chromine uniform, looked the spitting image of his daughter. Beside him was an older man with a lavish white beard. He was thin and wrinkled, and was dressed in a suit that Mr. Taylor might have worn. Although Felix had heard of glasses before, he’d never met anyone who actually wore them. The lenses were distorting the man’s bloodshot eyes.

“I’m General Manes,” the man in the uniform announced, grasping Felix’s hand and yanking him out of the stretcher.

“Hello,” Felix said in a strangled voice.

“This gentleman here,” the general continued, “is Professor MacPherson. Like you, he joined our project only recently.”

“Project?”

“I’ll explain in good time. Just now I’d like you to say something in Latin.”

“Excuse me?”

“You claimed on The Angstrom Show that your father taught you Latin. Please prove to me now that you were telling the truth. Believe me, this is very important.”

With a shrug, Felix spoke off the top of his head. He said the general’s name was odd because “Manes” meant “family spirits” in Latin. He then described his situation, how his father was dead, his mother was off-world, and their domestic system had been disconnected. He would have added more had the general not held up a finger.

“Thank you, that’s enough,” he said. “Well, Professor?”

“It is remarkable,” the old man spoke in a squeaky voice, as if he hadn’t practised speaking in a long, long while. “This lad’s Latin is superb. His grammar’s perfect, his vocabulary’s rich, and he speaks without any hesitation whatsoever. My boy, I do congratulate you.”

“Could he get the job done?” the general demanded.

“In my opinion, yes,” the professor answered.

“Excellent. Thank you very much, Professor.”

By now Felix was doubly confused. Before he could get a word out, however, the general steered him to an alcove and sat him next to Carolyn. At the same time he produced a small box from his pocket that contained a narrow hole in its side. He asked Felix to place his index finger in its hollows.

“You’re about to visit a highly classified facility,” he revealed. “No one can know about the secret it contains, because in the wrong hands it could lead to disaster.”

“And this box …?”

“You’ve just sworn an oath that you’ll reveal nothing about the things you’re going to see. If you disclose the smallest detail to any unauthorized person, I will see to it you end up in a very dark corner of our solar system.”

“I understand. I’ll keep this secret to myself.”

“In that case,” the general said, “please secure your g-force pods.”

Without further ado, the general walked to the front of the ship. Like Carolyn, Felix closed the membrane on his pod: as soon as he had, the fusion thrusters ignited and the craft leapt forward at an impressive speed.

“Where are we going?” Felix asked, over the pod’s speaker.

“You’ll find out soon,” Carolyn said. “I’m glad you passed the Latin test. Would you believe I’d never heard of Latin until my dad found out about your story on The Angstrom Show?”

“The Angstrom Show? Is that why I’m here?”

When Carolyn didn’t answer, Felix engaged the craft’s external monitor. A screen came to life and revealed a view of the globe. He had to shake his head in wonder: its surface was so beautiful, with its sweeping curves and mix of luscious colours. At the same time, against the empty backdrop of space, the earth seemed ridiculous and puny-looking. When one pondered the world in relation to the universe, did it matter humans were faced with extinction? Stars, whole galaxies, had come and gone, so what importance could events on such a crumb of a planet have?

His father came to mind. Felix could picture him standing in his garden, reading a book with heartfelt satisfaction and reveling in the sun’s comforting touch. He was wrong. It was in fact the tiny things that mattered. Never mind the universe’s size: it was people like his father who gave it meaning.

“Dad,” he whispered.

The scene on the monitor changed abruptly and its screen showed a Class 9 station floating in the distance. Felix was impressed. Shaped like an H, it was fifteen stories high and at least a hundred metres across. Its surface was covered with solar panels, signaling equipment and powerful antennae. And despite its obvious ungainliness, the structure was almost graceful as it rotated slowly against the glittering starlight.

A panel opened on the landing port. Felix felt the mildest jolt as a sea-green beam caught hold of the ship and guided it toward the station’s lowest deck — like a trout being reeled in on a fishing line. A wall of electromagnets held the craft in place and an air lock enclosed the Medevac’s door. The pods opened automatically. While Carolyn hurried off to the back of the craft, Felix stood as the general approached.

“I’m glad you’re with us,” he declared. “But I must remind you not to disclose any aspect of this station.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And now I’ll escort you to someone you know.”

“Someone I know? Here in outer space?”

“This way, please.”

The general led him through the air lock into a hallway. The air tasted strange — as if it came from a package. Felix felt less heavy than he had on Earth and realized this was due to gravity’s weaker pull. As his legs bounced upwards of their own accord, he was tempted to see how high he could jump, but this wasn’t the time for any such nonsense.

They entered a small elevator. After climbing four stories, the Vacu-lift opened on a figure in a lab coat. Felix gasped when he spied the man’s tidy features.

“Dr. Lee!” he cried. “Why are you here?”

“Hello,” the doctor replied, shaking his hand. “I’m afraid I owe you an apology, Felix. I was wrong to doubt you. It turns out you were right about everything.”

“You mean…?”

“Aceticus’s virus is the same one that is threatening to destroy us.”

“I’m glad.” Felix smiled. “I mean, I’m happy you believe me.”

“And it appears,” Dr. Lee continued, leading Felix and the general down a maze-like corridor, “that the lupus ridens is a genuine flower.…”

“Then all we have to do —” Felix cried.

“Not so fast,” the doctor cautioned him. “It isn’t so easy.”

By now they’d reached an imposing metal door that was equipped with several security scans as well as BISDMs to prevent unwanted “guests” from entering. Stepping ahead of the doctor and Felix, General Manes placed his hand on a scanner and spoke his name and title aloud: “General Isaiah Manes, commander of the Temporal Projection Matrix.” Instantly, the metal door slid open.

Felix followed the men across the threshold. The sight that greeted him took his breath away.

The room he’d entered was the size of a large stadium. The floors extended the width of the station and from the floor to the ceiling was a height of six stories. In the middle of this cavern stood a shining dome — it was twelve feet high, completely transparent, and contained coloured gases spiralling about its centre. Encircling the sphere was a totalium pipe a metre wide and hooked up to an array of oscilloscopes and signallers. The space outside the sphere was packed with processors, channelers, and flashing consoles, all of them positioned round a house-sized mainframe whose interior contained a colorless plasma. This substance was hypnotic as it swirled in the most complicated patterns.

“What am I looking at?” Felix finally whispered.

“Believe it or not,” the general said, “you’re looking at a transportation device.”

“Transportation to where?” Felix asked.

“We’ll answer that soon,” Dr. Lee broke in. “Let’s talk about our problem first. As far as we can tell, the lupus ridens hasn’t been seen on earth for five hundred years.”

“You mean it’s extinct?”

“Exactly. And because we don’t know its structure, it can’t be replicated.”

“So we’re back where we started,” Felix wailed. “Aceticus is useless.…”

“That’s not quite true,” the general mused.

“Tell me,” Dr. Lee inquired, “have you studied Clavius’s particle theories?”

“Just recently, yes, but I don’t see …”

“Think. What do they imply?”

“That some particles travel faster than the speed of light.”

“And …?”

“Well, in theory, that their time coefficient can be ‘bent’ at will.”

“Precisely,” the general and doctor spoke together.

“Wait, you don’t mean …?”

“That’s precisely what we mean,” Dr. Lee said with emphasis. “This equipment can transport people back in time. In point of fact, we wish you to travel to 71 BC when we know for certain the lupus ridens still existed.”

Felix almost laughed. These people were talking gibberish. The past was gone, over and done with. Aceticus, Spartacus, Marcus Crassus — these figures had been dust for two thousand years and any attempt to visit them would be like attempting to bring the dead back to life.

But Dr. Lee was talking. He was saying the TPM was like a Dispersion Portal, only in addition to mere spatial coordinates, the passenger would enter a precise date as well, past, present, or future.

He also explained how they knew the TPM was functional. One month before the virus erupted, a rat had been placed in the TPM and the coordinates set for London in 1665. Before entering the device the rat had been healthy; upon emerging it was carrying the bubonic plague. There was only one possible explanation: because the plague had existed in seventeenth-century London, the rat had been projected back in time.

“If we can send a rat,” Dr. Lee concluded, “we can send a human being as well, although we haven’t actually done this yet.”

“But … why me?” Felix gasped.

“Two reasons,” the general broke in. “First, it requires too much power to send an adult back. The TPM can handle a separate mass of maximum seventy kilograms.”

“More important,” Dr. Lee continued, “your Latin is excellent and you can speak to the locals.”

“Why not send someone with an auto-translator?”

“Impossible!” Dr. Lee exclaimed. “The TPM can’t handle metal or plastic. These substances would reflect the high-speed particles and trigger a thermonuclear explosion. If you agree to this mission, your equipment will be minimal.”

“Normally we wouldn’t ask you to run such risks,” the general said, “but frankly, we’re desperate. We’re far from discovering a cure for the virus, and it’s just a matter of time before everyone comes down with the plague. If you don’t find this flower, and I mean soon, as a species, we will vanish from the face of the earth.”

“The mission should be simple,” Dr. Lee added. “We’ll send you to a temple near Panarium — that’s the town Aceticus mentions in his book — you’ll venture outside, find the lupus ridens, hurry to a portal and return to the present.”

“And you won’t be alone,” the general declared, “My daughter Carolyn will tag along. She doesn’t speak Latin but she has certain … skills.”

“When would I leave?” Felix asked.

“Our device is powered by the sun,” the doctor answered. “As temporal projection requires vast quantities of power, it must occur when the sun is at an angle of optimum impact. This will happen in twelve hours and eighteen minutes.”

“Will you help us, Felix?” the general pleaded.

Aware he had no choice in the matter, Felix nodded his assent.