The mayan prophecy (Timeriders # 8) by Alex Scarrow Page A

hindquarters of the animal, cut off by the edge of the portal – she thought it might be a dog, but it was hard to tell – and tossed it outside into the street.
    The support unit was now out on an errand to buy a jug of milk, bread and some other necessities. Sal looked around. That idiot walking filing cabinet, SpongeBubba, was in charge-mode again. It was just her and Rashim sitting around their communal table. He was working with a soldering iron on something, sending a thin tendril of smoke up towards the bulb dangling from the low brick ceiling above them.
    ‘Rashim?’
    He looked at her over the rim of his glasses. ‘Hmmm?’
    ‘Maybe Pandora is a bunch of different endings that all occur in 2070.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, in Waldstein’s timeline, humankind is wiped out by a virus in 2070. Right? Perhaps in another timeline, mankind is wiped out in a different way, say, a nuclear war, that also happens in the same year? And in another timeline, mankind is destroyed by …’ She paused for thought, for an idea, ‘… by an asteroid strike.’
    Rashim looked at her sceptically. ‘Coincidentally occurring in 2070?’
    She nodded. ‘What I think I’m getting at is this … perhaps whatever we choose to do, whichever way we steer history, we’re destined to meet our end in that year.’
    He tapped the tip of his nose thoughtfully. ‘You are talking of some kind of predeterminism.’ He shook his head. ‘As if some higher intelligence, some greater being, is the pilot of all things.’
    She spread her hands. ‘And why not?’
    He shook his head. ‘I do not accept that, Sal. I do not accept that anything other than a quantum set of rules governs the sub-particle universe and an Einsteinian set of rules governs the rest of time and space.’ He laughed. ‘And I certainly do not accept that some sort of intelligence is governing events; is watching us like … like the Greek gods playing their games.’
    She shrugged. ‘Foster always said that history has a way it wants to go. Almost like it’s alive. He said it could tolerate some degree of tinkering and yet still self-correct. But perhaps history doesn’t necessarily care what path it takes … it just cares where it
ends
up
.’
    ‘Where it ends up? You mean …’
    ‘Wiping mankind out in 2070. You know, one way or another.’
    ‘You make history sound like it has some manner of a personal grudge against humanity.’ He smiled at that. It sounded silly.
    ‘You’re laughing at me,’ said Sal.
    ‘No. Just at the idea of what I just said.’
    She watched him work in silence for a while before she finally spoke again. ‘I’m worried, Rashim.’
    ‘Worried? About what?’
    She reached out for a discarded loop of wire and began absently winding it round her finger. ‘I’m worried that we might be doing the wrong thing.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ She chewed her lip for a moment, putting jumbled thoughts in the correct order. ‘OK … it’s like this. Everything seemed to go wrong for us, go off the rails, after Maddy sent a message to the future asking what Pandora was.’
    Rashim put down his soldering iron on a rest and reached for his mug of warm ale. ‘We now know for certain what Pandora is.’
    ‘Well, we
think
we do.’
    ‘The Kosong-ni virus. Becks confirmed that.’
    ‘What if she’s lying? Or just been given wrong information?’
    Rashim tipped the ale into his mouth and swilled it around. Thinking. ‘There seem to be no certainties here, Sal. It seems all we have at the moment are educated guesses.’
    ‘Right.’ She nodded. ‘Just guesses.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘Which means Maddy could be wrong about Waldstein. Maybe whoever warned her about Pandora is the real problem, not Waldstein?’
    ‘Indeed.’ He gave that a moment’s thought, then nodded. ‘But perhaps she is right to seek more information before she decides which way to act.’
    Sal watched him return to his