by Alex Scarrow
‘All right, here’s the thing, guys … it’s a change. And, by the looks of it, it’s clearly going to run and run and develop into a huge one.’
Sal cleared a space on the wooden crate they were using as a table and placed a pot of freshly brewed tea on it. She dealt out a mismatched collection of chipped teacups and enamel mugs.
‘So?’ Liam nudged her. ‘Your suggestion is?’
‘So –’ the rocking-chair creaked as Maddy worked it gently backwards and forwards – ‘this is a test case for our new role, our new function. Time’s been changed, right? So we’re going to take a look forward and see what this contamination gives us. I suggest we go as far forward as we can ideally, get a look at the year 2070 and see if this Pandora thing is still going to happen to us.’
‘You know going forward is very energy-intensive, Maddy,’ said Rashim. ‘I’m not sure how much forward displacement-reach I can coax out of this current set-up.’
‘Well, let’s find out. I mean … look, we don’t exactly have to send Liam and Bob forward all the way to 2070. What if we just open a pinhole camera and take a look-see? Zero-mass, less energy, that’s how it works, isn’t it? Just get a pinhole image. I mean, a picture tells us a thousand words, or something like that.’
Rashim nodded. ‘Yes … yes, of course. Let me get some calculations together.’ He got up and went over to their networked computers, now all linked up, a chorus of CPU fans whirring and hard drives clicking contentedly. ‘SpongeBubba!’
‘Hey, skippa!’ the lab unit squawked, emerging from a dark corner.
‘Come over here, you and I have some work to do!’
‘Yes, skippa!’ it bleated, irritatingly happy to be of service.
‘Retrieve my energy-conversion templates from Exodus.’
‘Yes, skippa!’ It waddled over to join Rashim at the computer table and together they started a hushed discussion of numbers.
‘So then,’ started Liam, ‘we investigate whether this Jack the Ripper contamination needs to be corrected first before we do anything else?’
‘That’s right. That’s how we’re going to operate. From now on we watch and wait for contamination events and when one comes along, the procedure should be that we take a look at what future we get from it. If it’s a good one,’ Maddy said, shrugging, ‘we just let it happen. If it’s bad news then we do like we used to and go fix it.’
‘But … let’s say the future is good,’ said Liam, ‘no Pandora, no virus that wipes out all of humanity; you’re saying if we get that future … we should do absolutely nothing?’
‘Yup. That’s what I’m saying.’
‘I’m going to say it … because I’m sure I’m not the only one here thinking it,’ said Sal.
‘Thinking what?’
‘Well … doesn’t it strike you as unlikely that this Kelly woman could overpower a serial killer like the Ripper?’
Maddy tapped her chin thoughtfully. ‘Not really. She seems a fiery character from what the papers are saying. She’s got a real potty mouth on her too.’
‘No, that’s not what I’m getting at. This is wrong history now, Maddy. We’re in a contamination.’
‘I know that. Somehow Liam and Rashim changed something small that led on to something else, that led on to something else, like dominoes, that somehow resulted in a situation where Kelly had a chance to fight back. Who knows? Liam buying a chest of drawers from one trader instead of another might just have caused the same man to have to make a journey to pick up another chest of drawers that somehow impacted on the plans of the Ripper causing him to mess up somehow?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s impossible to determine for sure.’
‘Or maybe we aren’t alone back here.’
‘Becks!’ said Liam. ‘Maybe she made it back alive!’
‘Crud …’ Maddy stared at them both. ‘Maybe she did.’
‘And maybe it was Becks who killed this Cathcart,’ said Sal.
‘In which case we also have to go back to the night of that murder, then, and see if it is her.’
‘Becks wouldn’t kill someone like that,’ said Liam. ‘Not without having a good reason. It’s an unnecessary change to history. She knows not to do that.’
‘Unless she’s not right in the head, Liam. Maybe that upload wasn’t stable. Maybe there’s stuff going wrong in her head.’
‘Ah Jay-zus, that’s just great! The last thing we need – a wonky support unit going around killing bad guys.’
‘OK, look … it just means we have a bit more work to do here. Right.’ Maddy stopped rocking her chair and sat forward. ‘This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to take a look at the future. If there’s now no Pandora event thanks to this contamination, if mankind appears to be going merrily along and not wiping itself out with a killer gooey virus, then we’ve got a winning contamination. But … we still go back to the night that Mary Kelly should’ve been murdered. We know precisely when and where to go, since the papers have given us nothing but the details of that night for the last month. If it is Becks who did it, or is involved somehow, we grab her.’
‘But if it is Becks who, say, killed Cathcart … we need to let her do that first, right?’ said Sal.
‘Yes, of course. We let her do her thing, then we grab her. On the other hand, if the future is still Pandora, then I suggest we grab her before she can mess with the sequence of events.’
‘And Miss Kelly dies,’ said Liam.
‘Yes.’ Maddy shook her hands subconsciously – Lady Macbeth shaking blood from her fingers. ‘Yes … I’m afraid so.’
Liam pulled a face. ‘That feels a bit like we’re taking advantage of things, so it does.’
‘So?’ She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Sue me.’
Liam looked uncertain. ‘We’re meddling.’
‘Christ, Liam, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last six months for Waldstein – meddling. Worse than that, we were meddling without even really understanding why!’
‘But that last woman, that Mary Kelly lady,’ said Liam. ‘Surely there’s a way we could try and save her?’
‘We could do. We could try and save every one of the Ripper’s victims, Liam. Sheeeez, we could go wandering through time saving everyone who didn’t deserve to die. But we don’t have an infinite supply of energy, and we can’t survive an infinite amount of time travel. So we have to be tactical about this, we have to be smart … surgical.’
She reached over and poured some tea into her mug. ‘Here’s a change someone else has made. Let’s sort of audition it. We’re gonna see if it’s a good ’un. And if not, we’ll fix it like a decent, responsible little team of TimeRiders.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Other than that, we sit tight. We watch. That’s our job. And maybe we even enjoy Victorian London. Maybe even get out and live a little.’
‘Aye.’ Liam nodded slowly. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
Maddy turned to Bob. ‘That OK with your programming, you big lump?’
‘I concur with your assessment. The logic is sound.’
‘So, if Rashim can get our displacement machine to do it, I say we first get a look at a time and place we’re all very familiar with. Something we can compare directly to.’
‘2001?’
‘Yup. The eleventh of September 2001. New York. We know very well how it’s supposed to look, so that’ll be a perfect place to check first to see if this contamination had had knock-on effects, or self-corrected between now and 2001. You up for that, Liam?’
‘Aye.’ His face lifted. ‘Aye, of course!’
‘And then, after that, we’ll try and get a glimpse at 2070, if we can do it. Sound like a plan?’
The others nodded. ‘Plan.’
‘Good. Now … who’s for a nice cup of tea?’
Chapter 62
6 November 1888, Whitechapel, London
‘It’s best to be in pairs, love,’ said Mary. ‘Ain’t so safe on the streets these days with that madman out there somewhere.’
She grasped Faith’s bare arm. ‘That’s why you should stick close to me, you understand? We can look out for each other while we work.’
Faith adjusted the muslin wrapped tightly round her still-healing arm. ‘I understand,’ she replied evenly. ‘I will stay close.’
She wasn’t entirely sure what the woman meant by ‘work’ – they appeared to be doing nothing at all productive; instead, they were standing together beneath the soft amber gaslight glow of a street lamp and calling out peculiar greetings to males who happened to pass them by.
‘What is your “work”?’ asked Faith.
Mary looked at her with a coy grin. ‘A finger-snitch, love.’
‘What is a finger-snitch?’
‘Oi, you serious?’ She sighed. Faith stared at her, awaiting an answer. ‘You really are a funny one, aintcha? I s’pose I better explain. See, what I do is lift a little coin from gents who should be behaving ’emselves better.’
Faith frowned. ‘I do not understand.’
‘Pick their pockets, love. Only the ones who look like they can afford it, mind. And usually gents who’ve had a bit too much of the ol’ drink and rather fancy themselves.’
‘Pick their pocket?’ Faith ran a search for that phrase in her head. ‘You are talking of theft? Stealing?’ she said finally.
Mary laughed. ‘Blimey, you’re a bit slow on the uptake, love. Yes, I steal. I ain’t so proud of that, but it’s that, my dear, or starve. And I’ll tell you there’s plenty of gents in London who make a pretty penny by doing very little but sit on their fat backsides while poor hardworking sods break their backs making ’em rich. It’s a bloomin’ unfair place this city. One world for the rich, and another world for the rest of us.’ Mary shrugged. ‘So, I don’t feel so bad about lifting the odd coin from a gentleman’s back pocket.’ She winked. ‘It’s all in ’ow you go about distractin’ ’em.’
‘Distracting them?’
‘A saucy wink, love. That an’ a cheeky smile.’ She laughed. ‘Men can be such fools. ’Specially when they’ve ’ad a bit too much to drink.’
Faith nodded. ‘I understand. We deploy mating signals to distract them. Then we steal from them.’
Mary shook her head, bemused and tickled by Faith’s choice of words. ‘You’re an odd one, love. But, yes, that’s the gist of it. You can ’elp me, Faith. Two of us? We could make a good team. Pretty girl like you would get plenty of attention. You keep ’em talkin’, an’ I can do the finger work. What do you say?’
Faith gave that a few moments’ thought. ‘We will require money to obtain food. I need food to sustain me.’
‘Don’t we all. Ain’t nothin’ bleedin’ well free in London.’
Faith nodded. ‘Your logic is sound. I will assist you in finger-snitching. You will have to teach me the “saucy winks” and the “cheeky smiles”. I can learn these actions.’
Mary nodded. ‘I’ll teach yer, that and a few saucy things to say to ’em gents. They like that. We should practise on someone …’ She spotted a likely candidate. ‘Hoy! Cooeee, love!’ Mary called out to a gentleman a little worse for wear, tracing a drunken zigzag along the pavement opposite them. ‘You want some company?’
The drunk snarled something back at her and staggered on.
‘Charming,’ muttered Mary.
Faith looked up and down the street. It was almost completely empty apart from them and another couple more women down the far end, like them, huddled in the pool of light at the base of a street lamp.
‘Trade ain’t good tonight. ’S the rain see? All the gents stayin’ at home with their missus.’ She laughed. A throaty sound. ‘Get things for free at ’ome now, dontcha?’
Faith offered the distant women a polite nod, but they ignored her. She wasn’t fully listening to Mary as she talked. Faith was busy evaluating her mission status. It was, of course, still active, yet to be completed. And she knew her targets were close by. They’d come here to this time, this place for a good reason – whatever that was. She was reasonably confident – 76 per cent – that they wouldn’t know she’d actually managed to follow them through the portal. And here in this time with no CCTV cameras, no wireless transmitters, no radios, mobile phones, no computer tracking and monitoring they would probably feel entirely safe.
Which meant they might get careless.
She had identified a search radius of a mile in diameter, the approximate distance she’d been offset by the displacement process. A lot of people in such a densely populated place as London, but her eyes were good, her recognition software exceedingly fast. Yesterday Mary had taken her along Oxford Street to a pie shop that sold ‘proper meat in the middle’. Oxford Street had been a good place to be. Faith had locked on to and evaluated 7,056 faces in just under ten minutes.
Streets were the best place to be, Faith decided.
A sea of humanity out there, plenty of opportunity for her to wait and watch. At some point one of her targets was bound to walk down one of these busy roads, in need of some essential thing: food, drink, clothing. And, if she was standing in the same street, she would spot them, and make her move.
‘… although it is a shame …’ Mary was still talking. ‘Pretty flower like you ’aving to do something like this. ’Aving to be a common thief. But that’s ’ow it is, I’m afraid.’
Faith turned to her. ‘I am a “pretty flower”?’
Mary laughed. ‘Course you bloomin’ well are!’ She sighed. ‘Mind you, even I was pretty once. This place does that to you … sucks all the blimmin’ life out of you.’
Faith sensed that was probably some sort of a metaphor, not to be taken literally. The woman was talking about fatigue, attrition. Being ‘worn down’, to use another human aphorism. Faith considered how long she had been pursuing the targets. Her ‘elapsed mission time’ counter was showing four weeks, five days and seventeen hours. Given that she’d been birthed nine hours before being sent back from 2069 to 2001, she’d effectively been on-task pretty much all of her short life.
She wasn’t exactly tired; the proteins she’d managed to get hold of and consume were keeping her organic chassis fed. Perhaps not ideal forms of nutrition long term; her digestive system wasn’t exactly designed to deal with pigs’ trotters and eels.
No, her body was well-fuelled for now … it was her mind that felt tired.
Her hard drive was filling up with a trillion things observed, heard, smelled, felt, tasted. She needed to compress her data, to offload the unimportant, trivial data and defragment the spaces left behind. Data retrieval, sorting, ordering, filtering, all those necessary processes were getting markedly slower and that was undoubtedly beginning to affect her performance.
She looked at Mary and imagined that her hard drive looked like the skin on this woman’s face: pockmarked, weathered, lined.
A visual metaphor, of course. Not literally.
A drip of rainwater from the lamp-post landed on Mary’s upturned face. She wiped it away. ‘I wanted to be a musician, a piano player when I was a little girl,’ she said. ‘You know, I was brought up near a convent. And they had an old piano there they let me play on. I could play some pretty tunes on that, Faith, I could. Even though I couldn’t never read the music.’ She smiled wistfully and listened to the soft patter of raindrops all around them. ‘We all ’ave silly dreams when we’re children, don’t we?’
Faith felt she should nod at that.
‘Only dream I got left, I s’pose, is taking meself back ’ome ’gain. To me mum and dad. Be a little girl all over again.’ Mary sighed and the soft hiss of drizzle filled the silence.
‘What about you, Faith? Was you a bit of a dreamer?’
Faith hadn’t told Mary much about her past. In fact, Mary had assumed most of it – country girl from a farm? Longed for the excitement of the big city? Came to London with little or no money and soon found herself in trouble? All Faith had really needed to do was nod at Mary’s stated presumptions.
Did she have ‘dreams’? Faith gav
e that a moment’s thought.
[Information: I have goals. Objectives]
But dreams … in a different sense, dreams. She had trace memories: the faintest recollection of pre-born foggy images and muffled sounds. A growth cycle in her tube, before her miniature silicon chip became active and thinking became a digital process.
‘I sometimes dream,’ said Faith finally. She panned her cool grey eyes on to Mary. ‘I dream that I can go back home also.’
Mary laughed. ‘Right blimmin’ daft couple standin’ here, ain’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Faith. ‘Blimmin’ daft.’
‘You an’ me … we should try and save every penny we make. No more of the gin, no more of the bad stuff … just save up all the money we can lay our ’ands on.’
‘Agreed. The gin is toxic to your body chemistry. It does you harm consuming it.’ Faith looked at Mary. ‘What is your intended purpose for the money?’
‘To pay for a train, of course! A train away from ’ere. A train back home. That’s where you an’ me should try and get. Back to our ’omes. This ain’t no decent place to live. Farm animals live a better life than most of the poor sods trapped ’ere in Whitechapel. I wish I’d never come ’ere in the first place.’
‘Correct. Many of the humans here appear to be in poor condition.’
‘It’s so hard to get by.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Even just gettin’ enough to eat. But then you walk no more’n a mile west … places like Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus … and you see ’em posh blighters in their fancy clothes, in their fancy carriages, stepping into fancy clubs and eateries. None of ’em done a day’s work in their lives. Ain’t right.’ She sighed. ‘If I ’ad a say in things … I’d change it all. Take what’s theirs and share it among all them poor beggars out there workin’ all day an’ night just to scratch together enough money to blimmin’ well eat!’
A thought occurred to Mary just then. ‘Where did you tell me your ’ome was, Faith?’
Faith looked at her. ‘I have no … home.’
