City of Shadows tr-6

by Alex Scarrow

  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 gave 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.’

  ‘Then, blimmin’ ’eck, you could come with me!’ Mary’s face creased with a gap-toothed grin. ‘How about that? Would you like that? Wales is lovely, Faith. Mountains and valleys. Nothin’ like London.’ She grabbed Faith’s arm. ‘We could both go live in Wales. Would you like that? You and me? We could pinch as much money as we can… save every penny, an’ buy us some tickets away from this miserable city.’

  Faith’s tight lips curved, producing a practised-several-times, almost genuine-looking smile. ‘That sounds like a blimmin’ good plan, Mary.’

  Chapter 63

  15 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London

  Liam looked down at himself. He was wearing a pair of grey flannel trousers and a white cotton shirt; it was as time-neutral a look as they could get from his Victorian clothes. Maddy as well: just a plain grey skirt and a vanilla-coloured blouse — no frills, lace or bonnet. At worst they’d look like a pair of rather dull nerds in 2001.

  Or a rather unimaginative couple.

  ‘So, it’s Piccadilly Circus, then,’ said Liam. They were heading for London, 2001, instead of New York. Having crunched the numbers, Rashim had come to the conclusion that the charge they could muster was not going to be enough to project them that far into the future unless they compensated on the geo-displacement and aimed for somewhere closer to home.

  ‘We’ll do a one-hour visit,’ said Maddy. ‘One hour then open the return window at the same place. And a two-hour back-up window for just-in-case. OK?’

  Rashim was sitting at the desk. ‘Understood.’

  Liam centred himself in his square. ‘Nice not to be going back wet.’ He grinned. ‘That’s a blessed relief, so it is.’

  Maddy nodded. She tucked a small digital camera into a clutch bag. There were dozens of digital images of Piccadilly Circus on it, pulled from their database. They had a fair idea how it should look and she could reference those images on the camera. If it turned out to be only a moderately different Piccadilly Circus, then perhaps they were now heading along a timeline that was preferable.

  ‘Density probe is showing us a consistent all-clear,’ said Rashim. ‘Countdown is now at thirty seconds. Are you two all ready?’

  ‘Yes, we’re good to go,’ Maddy replied. She’d wanted Bob to go along with Liam. For protection, of course. But his mass was adding too much to the energy cost of displacing them. However, Maddy realized that of all of them, her memories — her programmed memories — were closest in time to 2001. Intuitively she’d have the best idea if London was looking odd, or the way it ought to.

  ‘One hour,’ she said. ‘Time enough to buy a soda and some tacky I’ve-Been-To-London T-shirt and come home again.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And ten… nine… eight…’

  She winked at Sal. ‘Chin-chin and toodle-pip, old girl.’ She grinned. ‘That’s the sort of thing they say in England, isn’t it?’

  ‘Remain still, please, Maddy!’ called out Rashim. ‘… and four… three…’

  ‘And be careful, you two!’ Sal called out, but her voice was lost in the buzz of energy building up.

  ‘… two… one…’

  2001, Piccadilly Circus, London

  A yard, walled in on all four sides and overlooked by a tall, grey stone building lined with soot-encrusted windows and ledges of surly-looking pigeons. Above them, a pale sky of combed-out clouds. They could both hear the dull urban hiss and rumble of traffic, the melodic cooing of the pigeons watching them from the ledge.

  Just then a door opened on to the yard and a middle-aged man wearing trousers, shirt, tie and a dull brown sleeveless jumper took out a packet of tobacco and cigarette papers, sat down on the step and began to roll himself a cigarette.

  He noticed Maddy and Liam standing there. ‘All right?’

  Liam nodded. ‘Aye. You?’

  He shrugged. ‘Middle-bad. But you have to make do, don’t you?’ He tucked a modest row of stale strands of tobacco along the paper. ‘You two new? I haven’t seen you around before.’

  ‘Just joined,’ said Liam. Joined what exactly… he wondered.

  ‘Ahh… you must be with the Licence and Trade Monitoring? Or Weights, Standards and Measures Approvals?’

  ‘The, uh… that’s the one. Started this morning, so we did.’ Liam watched the man lick one side of the paper. ‘You know that’ll kill you eventually, so it will. Smoking.’

  ‘Eventually, huh?’ He laughed at that. ‘Least of me worries, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘We’ll be heading in now,’ said Maddy, tugging Liam’s sleeve.

  ‘Hammer-an’-spades! You got a funny accent there!’ The man looked at her. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Boston. United States.’

  ‘ America? ’ He was taken aback.

  Maddy sensed that might not have been a prudent thing to say. ‘Well… my folks were. You know, originally.’

  ‘Well.’ His eyes were wide. ‘And they gave you a job in the Ministry of Information? I’d keep all that family ancestry to yourself, young lady. Quite seriously.’

  They stepped past him. ‘I… I will,’ she said quickly. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Hang on! Did you lie about that?’ He looked up at them. ‘To get the job? You must have had to lie to the Job Commissariat?’

  ‘I, uh… I may have bent the truth a little,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I guess.’

  Liam grabbed her hand. ‘Enjoy your smoke, sir.’ He pushed the door and they stepped into a dark hallway. It reeked of floor polish and disinfectant. At the end of the hallway the faint pearly glow of a pair of frosted-glass doors leading outside.

  ‘I guess it’s not good to be an American,’ whispered Maddy.

  ‘Aye, it seems it.’

  They made their way towards the double doors, passing an opening on the right that led on to a large office: two long rows of dark wooden desks, with men and women typing away on machines that looked like a cross between typewriters and logic engines, all brass levers and glowing vacuum fuses. The room echoed with the clatter of keystrokes, and the long ring of a telephone.

  ‘It’s like one of them old black-and-white flicks,’ said Liam.

  Maddy nodded. Yes, it was: those old films where every scene was veiled behind a pall of cigarette smoke and every desk lamp seemed to cast its own beam of light through it. Men with trilby hats and trench coats, and every street glistening from a torrential downpour. Noir

  … she remembered. That’s what they called those old films.

  They reached the double doors and pushed them open. At least it wasn’t raining. There was that.

  The roar of traffic, the buzz of activity in Piccadilly Circus, took them by surprise. They were three wide steps up and back from a pavement thick with pedestrians. Maddy quickly located and identified the things she expected to see: the statue of Eros, the circular fountain and plinth on which it stood and the steps surrounding
it. She noticed the signs pointing out the ‘Underground Tramlines’. The tall stone buildings with classic grand entrances and granite pillars. Signs for Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry Street, Regent Street. And as she’d expected, yes… it was busy. Hectic-busy.

  But none of the garish colour she had in the images on her phone. No billboards, no electronic displays with SANYO or TDK or COCA-COLA dancing across them. No street vendors selling plastic double-decker buses, or Beefeater soft toys.

  And no tourists.

  Maddy had expected Piccadilly Circus to look a bit like Times Square: clusters of faces of all colours, people taking pictures of each other posing in front of Eros. But this was very different. It was certainly busy, though — busy with cars, bicycles and electric trams. A network of wires spun like a spider’s web above the hectic thoroughfare. The trams, running along rails in the roads, all had connector arms that reached up to wires, and here and there sparks flickered and fizzed.

  The cars all appeared to be the same, albeit in a variety of unexciting colours: maroons, browns and greys. Small bubble-like cars with oval windscreens that puffed thick dark clouds of exhaust fumes. And as many people on bicycles as there were clogging the pavements on foot; they wove round the trams like a school of pilot fish around a whale.

  On the side of one towering building overlooking Piccadilly Circus was a giant television screen. Huge. Bigger even than the one in Times Square. But the image was blocky and primitive. Two-tone ‘pixels’ of just black and white. Looking more closely, Maddy saw it wasn’t even a light-based display, but each ‘pixel’ was a disc about the size of a dinner plate, that flipped on a spindle. One side black, one side white.

  ‘Now this is different to how it’s meant to be.’ Liam looked at her. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Very.’

  It felt like a London that belonged to a Britain stuck in 1945. Perhaps the early fifties. She wasn’t sure.

  ‘Well now,’ said Liam, ‘we know for sure the Jack-the-Ripper thing has caused a change.’

  Maddy looked at her watch. ‘We’ve got fifty-six minutes left. Let’s split up. Get what you can, any newspapers, magazines, books you can lay your hands on. Back here in fifty minutes, OK?’