The Tomorrow Code Part 21

"Good luck," he said as Fatboy climbed into the overalls.

"Final test?" Rebecca suggested.

"Suppose we'd better," Fatboy replied.

They had been testing and testing the Chronophone. The last thing they wanted was for it to fail, once it was high above the ground.

"I'll do it." Tane disappeared into Rebecca's room, where her laptop was sitting on a small study desk.

He opened the small program that Rebecca had written and typed in "good luck Fatboy," then clicked SEND SEND.

The small radio transmitter attached to the laptop would now be sending the message to the receiver built into the Chronophone. Inside the case, a small digital readout would be displaying the characters he had just typed, as it encoded it into the gamma-ray disruptor signal. Right now, that was as far as the signal would go. It needed the big satellite dish on the Skytower to be able to transmit the signal to the gamma-ray bursts.

There was no "Okay" from the kitchen to acknowledge the receipt of the message, so he tried again. "Don't look down," he typed, and sent it.

Still silence from the kitchen, which was a little odd. All the previous tests had worked fine.

He was just about to wander out to see for himself what the problem was, when a flas.h.i.+ng light caught his eye on the side of the screen.

Another message!

Rebecca's software now checked the NASA site hourly for new BATSE messages and automatically decoded them.

He clicked on the flas.h.i.+ng light and it opened the BATSE message window. As usual, it was a cryptic jumble of letters and numbers that they would have to try and figure out as quickly as they could.

FTBYDNTGO.WTRBLSTMPS.DSVLETHM.SLTABS.DNTABSRB.

There were still some parts of previous messages that they hadn't fully understood.

WTRWKS for example. for example.

He printed a couple of copies of the message on the inkjet, to show it to the others, and as he was doing so, the first nine characters caught his eye.

FTBYDNTGO.

He caught his breath and tried to make any other interpretation from it, other than the obvious. FTBY DNT GO. FTBY DNT GO. Fatboy don't go! Fatboy don't go!

"Oh c.r.a.p!" He grabbed the printout, knocking the chair over in his haste to get out to the kitchen. The second copy whirred swiftly out of the printer behind him.

He rushed down the short hallway and in through the swing door.

The Chronophone was open on the kitchen table, and even from the doorway he could read the words DON'T LOOK DOWN DON'T LOOK DOWN visible on the display. visible on the display.

Fatboy couldn't see them, though. Neither could Rebecca. He had his arms around her, and she had her arms around him, lost in each other's world. As Tane entered, her lips met his.

Friends forever!

Any remnants of the earlier warm feeling died a sudden cold, jagged death. His breath caught in his throat, and a black rage that he hadn't known existed inside him welled up from deep within his belly. He forced it back down and coughed, loudly. They both looked up, startled.

"What is it, Tane?" Rebecca asked in alarm, taking a quick step away from Fatboy.

Tane stared at them, breathing heavily through his nose.

"What is it?" Fatboy asked.

He looked at them both for a moment longer. "Nothing," he said tightly. There was a ringing in his ears and spots dancing across his vision. He folded the piece of paper discreetly behind his back and slipped it casually into a pocket. "Nothing." He laughed. "I thought the Chronophone had stopped working, because I didn't hear anything from you two, but I see that it's all okay." He gestured at the message on the readout.

Fatboy looked at the message and laughed.

Rebecca just looked at Tane, in a rather strange way, and said, "We were just saying goodbye."

"Yep," Tane said, "I could see."

CANDID C CAMERA When Fatboy left, Tane and Rebecca busied themselves with the supply barge. They called it a barge, but it was really more of a cage. A large plastic-coated wire box with floats attached. Rebecca busied themselves with the supply barge. They called it a barge, but it was really more of a cage. A large plastic-coated wire box with floats attached.

When loaded with supplies, it was just buoyant enough for the Mobius Mobius to tow, without dragging the little submarine to the bottom or floating up to the surface. to tow, without dragging the little submarine to the bottom or floating up to the surface.

Fully loaded, it had room for twelve crates.

The crates themselves were watertight plastic boxes, with a rubber seal around the rim, purchased from a local plastics shop. They would not be able to withstand pressure, but they were being stored in shallow water, so that wasn't a problem.

This was the last load. There were already over a hundred crates stacked neatly in rows on the bottom of Rangitoto Cave, as they had come to call it. By Rebecca's careful calculations, there was enough food and fresh water there to last four people for over a year, or six people for at least nine months. Rebecca's mum didn't know it, but she had a berth booked on the submarine. So did Tane's mum and dad, but they didn't know it either.

How do you explain to your parents that the country you live in is about to be devastated and that the only hope of survival is to live in a submarine in an underwater cave for the conceivable future?

This last load was probably the most important. Oxygen cylinders and Sofnolime cartridges. The oxygen cylinders replenished the air in the sub, and the Sofnolime cartridges removed the carbon dioxide that they breathed out.

While they had the air hose up to the surface, they wouldn't use either, but they had planned for a long period of time when they would not be able to draw in air from above the waves.

They would only do that when they were sure the air was safe and clean, and there was no real way of knowing that, so they planned for at least the first few months to be entirely sealed off from the rest of the world.

They worked as a team in the small wooden boatshed but said little. Rebecca loaded the cylinders and cartridges into the plastic boxes, and Tane stacked them onto the barge. He wanted to talk but found that there was little to say. There was a strangeness about Rebecca that hadn't been there before he had walked in on them in the kitchen. It was as if she had something to say but was afraid to.

He thought about showing Rebecca the message, but was too embarra.s.sed. Instead, he tried to ring Fatboy after a while, feeling guilty about letting him go, when the message said not to. Maybe it wasn't too late. But Fatboy's phone rang and rang, then went to the answering service.

It took them over an hour to load up the barge. There were a few spare cylinders that would not fit in the last few plastic crates, so they just loaded them on board the Mobius. Mobius. You never knew when you might need them. You never knew when you might need them.

Rebecca flopped, exhausted, into one of the lawn chairs in the backyard of the house and stared silently out over the water toward the city. Tane looked around to make sure they had everything and noticed the laptop still sitting on the outdoor table.

He packed it up and took it down to the Mobius, Mobius, holding it carefully as he negotiated the wooden staircases that led down to the boatshed. holding it carefully as he negotiated the wooden staircases that led down to the boatshed.

Halfway back up the staircase he heard the phone ring. He hurried to the top in case it was Fatboy. Rebecca was waiting for him, the phone in her hand.

"It's for you," she said.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know." She shrugged.

So it wasn't Fatboy.

Tane put the phone to his ear but heard only the pip, pip, pip pip, pip, pip of a disconnected line. of a disconnected line.

They walked back to the house together silently, uncomfortably. Rebecca's mum popped her head out of the open window of her room.

"There you are!" she called. "I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"Are you okay, Mum?" Rebecca called back, but her mother interrupted her.

"You're on the TV! You and Tane and um...Tane's brother."

Tane looked at Rebecca. Surely she meant the police sketches. But there hadn't been a picture of Fatboy.

Simultaneously, they broke into a run, hurtling through the ranch slider of the lounge to the big TV in the corner.

No more indentikits. The police now had photos. Photos of all three of them. Not sharp, but clear and easily recognizable.

"Where the h.e.l.l did they get those from?" Rebecca breathed.

"I don't...wait," Tane said. Something about the background of the photos was familiar. Suddenly he got it. The painting on the wall behind them. It was Tuatara Dawn. Tuatara Dawn.

"Oh c.r.a.p, they're from the security cameras on Motukiekie," Tane said. "We should have thought of that. They have gone back through the old security tapes! c.r.a.p!"

"We've got to warn Fatboy!" Rebecca shrieked. "With that moko, moko, they'll recognize him in a second. We've got to stop him!" they'll recognize him in a second. We've got to stop him!"

"I think we're already too late," Tane said. "We've got to get out of here now!"

c.r.a.p! Why had he let Fatboy go off without telling him about the message?

"No! We've got to warn him!" Rebecca said, charging down the hallway to her room. "If he doesn't install the Chronophone, there won't even be a Chronophone. Or a Lotto ticket. Or a submarine!"

She grabbed her cell phone off the desk and started to dial, but stopped abruptly. She remained stuck in the doorway as if transfixed by the frame.

Tane caught up with her and stood beside her.

The second copy of the Chronophone message was still on the printer. In his haste and anger, he had forgotten about it.

"There's a new message," Rebecca said in bewilderment. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I..."

She scanned quickly through the string of letters, then came back to the words at the start.

"Fatboy don't go," she read out slowly. She turned to face him. "Oh my G.o.d! You already knew."

She stared at him, her face just a few inches away from his.

"You knew!"

There was nothing to say.

"You knew and you said nothing. You've destroyed it all. You let Fatboy go, despite the warning. Tane!" She screamed his name out suddenly, from close range. Tane recoiled and tried to think of anything that would lessen what he had done.

"This was because you saw me and him together, wasn't it?" Rebecca said slowly. "You were going to tell us and then you saw us, and then you didn't. You stupid..."

Her legs suddenly seemed unsteady, and she took two short steps and collapsed onto the side of her bed.

"Tane," she said softly, "I just broke up with Fatboy. I told you, I was just saying goodbye."

"Oh, Rebecca," Tane breathed. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

She blocked her ears like a child. "I don't want to hear it!" she screamed. "I don't want to hear it!" She took a long breath and continued, more calmly, "Tane, I've known you all my life, and it turns out that I don't know you at all."

He moved toward her, his arms held out.

"Get away from me!" she screamed, and that was when the roof fell in.

There was a huge flash and an enormous crack of thunder that pulverized his brain. The windows were gone, smoke was swirling around in the draft from outside, and there were men everywhere. Men in black uniforms with black masks and black guns.

In a daze, he saw them dive on top of Rebecca, forcing her facedown onto the bed, her knees on the floor. He thought she might have screamed, but he couldn't be sure. Then the men had him, too, banging his face down onto the carpet, twisting his arms behind him.

The smoke danced around his head, and spots danced around his eyes from the pain of his arms, twisted so high he thought they must already be broken. Rebecca was screaming and someone else was screaming and it was him.

Then everything turned to black.