by Alex Scarrow
Adam stopped cranking. The shutter was waist height. A quick look at each other, then all three of them squatted down together to look outside.
‘Shadd-yah!’ whispered Sal.
‘Uhh … all right, that’s not New York,’ said Adam.
‘Nope,’ said Maddy almost nonchalantly. ‘No it isn’t … again.’
The cobblestones of their alley ended abruptly where the energy field ended and beyond that was a bed of tidal silt that sloped down to the East River. She spotted several fishing boats of various sizes lying askew on the mud like beached seals, tethered to wooden mooring poles.
Across the East River, Manhattan island was still there, of course. But instead of the forest of skyscrapers, there was a sleepy-looking town nestling on it. She could see a carpet of gabled rooves and chimneys and somewhere in the middle the spire of a church. Along the edge of the town she could see more fishing boats and jetties, and the bustle of activity as fishermen worked their catch ashore, small cranes lifting catch-nets full of squirming sea life out of their holds and on to the dockside as clouds of seagulls buzzed, swooped and complained.
‘We’ve had worse,’ said Maddy.
Adam shook his head. ‘It’s like … like, completely changed!’
‘Duh,’ chuckled Sal. ‘Of course it is.’
‘But there’s power,’ said Maddy. She pointed towards the town where a line of lamp posts carried overhead cables along the shore front. ‘So it’s not like we’ve been thrown back into some total dark age.’
‘But no Internet,’ said Sal.
On this side of the river, where only moments ago the seldom-used dockside cranes and abandoned warehouses of Brooklyn had stood, there was nothing but silt punctuated by hummocks of coarse grass and dozens of tide-marooned fishing boats surrounded by discarded coils of rope and useless torn fishing nets. She spotted a solitary gravel lane to their right, flanked by intermittent wooden telegraph poles. It wound along their side of the river and, a couple of miles further up, she could see the small mid-river humps of Belmont and Roosevelt islands, and – just as in the normal timeline – a bridge spanned the river there. Albeit a very different-looking bridge.
Adam followed her gaze. ‘Can we go and explore?’
Maddy pinched her lip absently. They needed information. They needed some idea when and how this alternative timeline had sprung up. ‘I think we’d better.’
Maddy locked the computer system with a password and they all stepped outside, closing the shutter door behind them. She looked at their archway, nestling low down between two hummocks of grass-tufted mud; it was a jagged hemisphere, a scruffy igloo of old crumbly brickwork that went nowhere. She wondered how visible it was to anyone looking their way from the town across the river. Someone surely would eventually notice the sudden arrival of a squat round dome of rust-coloured bricks nestling amid the mud and abandoned old boats?
Maybe. All the more reason to get a wiggle on. ‘Come on,’ she said, pointing to the gravel lane nearby. They avoided the muddy silt as best they could, picked their way along crests of grass until they stepped up on to the gravel road.
‘It reminds me of – of … Calais,’ said Adam. ‘Normandy maybe,’ he added.
They walked along the coastal road towards the bridge, finally spotting a vehicle as they neared it. A small flatbed truck loaded with wire baskets of chickens. It clattered noisily on to the bridge, a motor that coughed, whined and growled as it sped away from them towards ‘Manhattan’.
‘That looks weird,’ said Adam. ‘Like we’re in the forties or fifties or something.’
Yes, it did. Old-fashioned. The truck looked a little like one of those old Model T Fords you’d see in jerky black and white movies. They crossed the bridge, walking on one side of the road. A dozen other vehicles passed them either way, all looking oddly antiquated and ever so subtly framed with decorative curls and fleurs de lys of brass trim.
On the far side of the bridge they turned left, following a road that weaved into the centre of the village where it became busier with people going about the business of a normal Monday afternoon.
An elderly lady in a black dress and scarf pushed a wheeled basket full of baguettes and looked at them curiously as they approached her. She frowned, puzzled perhaps by their clothes, but then she nodded and smiled at them as she passed by.
‘Bonjour,’ she uttered politely.
Adam looked at them. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘French?’
Adam nodded.
‘America’s gone French?’ Maddy said incredulously.
The road took them into a small town square overlooked by the church spire and tall townhouses that seemed to lean forward over the space. A fountain gurgled pleasantly in the middle, momentarily drowned out by the piercing whine of a three-wheeled scooter whizzing past them, driven by an old man with a child sitting across his knees.
‘This seems quite nice,’ said Sal. ‘I think I like it better.’
‘It’s French,’ replied Maddy defensively. ‘It’s not right.’
A class of schoolchildren suddenly filled the peaceful town square with their voices, a walking crocodile of two-by-twos carrying satchels on their backs and wearing blazers of yellow and green. The TimeRiders watched them spill out of a building and cross the square, chattering, laughing, making the same noise any class of children would make enjoying the novelty of stepping out of school.
Sal pointed at a sign above the door they’d emerged from: BIBLIOTHÈQUE.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Not sure.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘Let’s see – maybe we can get some information there.’
The other two followed her as she crossed the square, took the steps up and inside into a cool, dimly lit interior. Wood-panelled walls and a threadbare carpet; tall avenues of dark wooden shelves thick with volumes of books.
‘I’m guessing this is a library, right?’ said Sal.
Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah … yeah, that’s right.’
But it was unlike any library Maddy had ever been in since first grade. She was used to modern, bright, glass spaces filled with busy Internet stations and orange plastic bucket chairs, and racks of DVDs and magazines … and, oh yeah, one or two books, somewhere.
‘History,’ uttered Adam. ‘We need to find a history book.’ His voice echoed around the quiet library and several pairs of eyes looked up, mildly irritated.
Maddy nodded. They spread out, each picking an aisle, and started to scan the book spines on the shelves, looking for some way to identify a category. After a few minutes, Sal softly whispered for them to come over.
They both joined her in what appeared to be a children’s section. She was holding a large book in her hands. ‘It’s a kiddie history book.’ Sal flicked through several pages, all of them with brightly coloured illustrations breaking up the text. She spotted an illustration of Roman legionaries, a diagram of a sailing ship, a timeline chart. World history, by the look of it. Good enough.
‘I don’t suppose either of you can read any French?’ asked Maddy.
Sal and Adam shook their heads.
‘Me neither,’ she replied. ‘We’ll have to borrow it.’ Maddy took it out of Sal’s hands and, after quickly glancing up and down the aisle, she shoved it under her sweatshirt.
‘It’s a kid’s history book,’ said Adam. ‘You can’t get all the information you need from that, can you?’
She shrugged. ‘No worse than Wikipedia.’
‘Wiki-what?’
‘Never mind.’ Maddy pulled another book from the shelf and flicked through several dozen pages. Finally nodding with approval. ‘This one looks good too.’ She pushed it into Adam’s hands. ‘Well? Hide it.’
CHAPTER 40
2001, New York
Computer-Bob’s cursor blinked silently on the screen for a few seconds.
> I have completed French-to-English language translation from the scanned images. I will be another few moments collating the
data.
‘Right,’ said Maddy, tapping the desk impatiently with her fingers. ‘Quick as you can, please.’
> Affirmative.
She wondered how long it would be before some curious gendarme came knocking on their shutter door. Their odd-looking round brick bunker was visible from the gravel road and although it didn’t seem to be that busy a road, she was sure someone driving past would eventually register the fact that their archway ought not to be there.
She looked down at the library books they’d spent the last half an hour scanning. Not every page, just the pages that dealt with the twelfth century onwards.
Children’s history books. She shook her head. The illustrations were cartoony with bright colours and smiley, rosy-cheeked depictions of knights and maidens, soldiers and peasants. The text was printed large and friendly – little detail there, she imagined.
History for elementary-school kids.
Great research there.
The cursor skittered across Bob’s dialogue box.
> Process complete. I will summarize the data components for you in a chronological sequence.
On another screen a word-processor opened, text suddenly blinking on to the page in sentences and paragraphs, quickly building up, filling the page as Bob rapidly cut and pasted relevant sections of text from the database he’d just constructed.
Adam craned his neck forward, eager to read what was coming up on the screen. Just text. Computer-Bob had not wasted time processing the many illustrations, most of which seemed little more than decorative rather than informative, there merely to break up the paragraphs for younger minds to digest.
‘My God,’ uttered Adam, starting to read the page. ‘1194 … the great peasant rebellion of the north.’ He looked at the other two, wide eyed.
‘That’s a new thing,’ said Maddy, ‘isn’t it?’
He nodded, speed-reading ahead down the page. ‘Great peasant rebellion … the fall of the Plantagenet kings … peasant army led by some character known as the Iron Duke. King Richard retreats to Aquitaine … unrest and war in England … nobles united against the Iron Duke … Iron Duke’s peasant army finally beaten at the Battle of Hawley Cross, 1199. Ensuing civil war between nobles …’ He reached out and hit page down on the keyboard.
‘The Three Generations War … England broken into warring factions … warring factions become independent states.’ He paged down again. ‘1415, King Charles VI invades the United Federation of Anglo Duchies.’ He looked away from the screen. ‘England … there’s no England any more!’
‘That explains why they were speaking French out there, then,’ said Maddy. ‘Doesn’t it?’
Adam read on. ‘1521, first French colony in the Americas … 1563, first Spanish colonies … 1601, The Colonial War, French versus Spanish colonies … King Phillip III of Spain signs peace accord with King Charles XVI, France wins when Dutch Republics come on their side. North Americas divided into French, Dutch, Spanish regions …’
‘My God!’ uttered Maddy. ‘Then there’s no America either!’
‘There is,’ said Sal, ‘but it isn’t English, that’s all.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Hey! It’s not the same, Sal. It’s not America if it isn’t, you know, if it isn’t English!’
Sal shrugged at that. ‘I would still be Indian, English empire or not. You are the soil you are born on, not a flag or a language. Well, that’s what my old ba used to say.’
‘Well,’ Maddy continued, muttering under her breath still. ‘I wouldn’t call this place America without the Stars and Stripes. Just isn’t right.’
Adam was reading on in silence. ‘It’s now called Le Union d’Amerique actually. French is the international language. The language of law …’ He scanned the text. ‘The language of science …’
‘Science!’ spat Maddy. ‘That’s rich. There’s no Internet! And those cars and trucks! They looked like they were from before the war!’
‘But it seems medicine is more advanced,’ said Adam. He pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of the page. The page numbers kept shifting. Bob was still adding chunks of text to the document. ‘The cure for cancer, 1963 … cure for something, can’t read that … cure for something else.’
‘Look,’ said Sal. ‘World population reaches 3 billion.’
‘That’s half the number of people on the planet than in our time!’ said Adam.
‘This is the same time.’
‘I know that,’ he replied, ‘I meant in our version of this time.’
Sal’s eyes narrowed as she skimmed the paragraphs of potted history for the twentieth century. ‘I can’t see any World War Two either.’
Adam nodded, stroking his chin. ‘There’s some wars in Africa. A couple in South America. But it seems far less war in the twentieth century than in our –’
‘What? Because America isn’t there?’ said Maddy snippily. ‘Is that the point you’re thinking of making?’
He shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. Maybe because there are a lot less people? Maybe that means less fighting for finite resources. I don’t know. I’m no social historian.’
There was quiet between them. On the screen the document’s page number was still increasing as Bob continued to add collated data.
‘It does seem a much more peaceful world,’ said Sal eventually. She turned to Adam. ‘I have to say, this is the nicest time wave we’ve had so far.’ She shrugged. ‘Sort of almost feels like a shame to …’
Maddy looked at her. ‘Sal. Don’t even go there!’
‘What?’
‘You know what.’
‘Just saying,’ Sal pouted. ‘That’s all.’
‘Well don’t! We can’t keep this world just because it seems nice. It’s changed history. Majorly changed history!’
‘But …’
‘But what?’
Sal hesitated, uncertain how to finish. ‘But what if we didn’t fix it?’
Maddy stared at her in silence, aghast.
‘Seriously. What if we didn’t? What if we just brought Liam and the others back home … and we left it like this?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Sal … now is not the time for this kind of conversation.’ She glanced at Adam watching their exchange. ‘And certainly not in front of someone else, you understand?’
For the first time she noticed there were tears in Sal’s eyes. ‘All you know is 2010, Maddy. You haven’t seen my time. You haven’t seen New York in 2026 or anywhere else in 2026!’
‘No … I haven’t, but that’s –’
‘It’s all so shadd-yah. It’s falling apart! And we know it gets worse!’
‘Sal!’ warned Maddy. ‘We’re not doing this now! We’re not doing this in front of Adam!’
‘But it does! You know that! I know it! It all gets worse and worse. The pollution! The whole global warming. The Oil Wars! And we don’t know how it all ends up. But this … look at it! This is better!’
Adam looked taken aback. ‘Oil wars?’
Maddy waved him silent. ‘Sal … listen, we made a promise to Foster. To keep history on track. To keep it the same for better or for worse. You remember the things he said? We can’t change history to what we want. We just can’t! Because – because …’
‘Because what? He never told us why? He never explained that!’
He never did … not in detail, anyway.
‘He said history has to go a certain way. Because if it doesn’t, things break down. Things go wrong!’
‘What things?’
‘Space-time … or something. The fabric of space-time. That’s what he said, the stuff that holds those things back from our world.’
Sal knew exactly what she meant. They’d seen one of them – just the once: a seeker.
They stared at each other in silence. A mutual challenge to say that word aloud.
‘What things?’ asked Adam eventually.
Maddy ignored him. ‘Sal, I know we’ve been pulled into this without much help. I know we got
thrown into the deep end. And there isn’t a day I don’t wish to God that Foster was back here telling us what to do. In fact there isn’t a day I don’t wish I could walk out the door and let the bubble reset without me. But we’re here for a reason. If we hadn’t done what we’ve already managed to do … the world could’ve remained a radioactive wasteland – or just a big lizardman-filled jungle! All I know is that what we’ve done so far has worked! Has been for the best! You know? I just –’
‘You don’t know everything, Maddy,’ said Sal quietly.
That stopped her dead. That hit home. ‘No, OK … you’re right; I don’t. In fact all I know is how little I know. And that really scares me! And I don’t know what that warning means either … I don’t –’ Maddy stopped herself. She realized that to continue was to take her towards openly discussing the Pandora message in front of Adam.
‘Adam? How about you just go take a look-see outside. Make sure no French fishermen are gathering to marvel at our … brick … whatever.’
He looked at them both. ‘OK.’ He got to his feet and wandered over towards the shutter door and began cranking it up.
‘Sal,’ she began quietly, ‘all you and I and Liam have is what Foster told us. We have to trust that because that’s all we’ve got right now.’
Sal eyed her silently.
‘But we’re going to learn more, I promise you. We’ll learn more from this Voynich Manuscript … we’ll find out what Pandora is, what it means. We’ll find out what the warning is. And when we know more than we do …’ She smiled. ‘I dunno, maybe one day we can make a choice of our own, you know?’
Sal nodded her head ever so slightly.
‘Until then –’ she fiddled with her glasses – ‘until then … all we know is what’s meant to be, and what isn’t. And this sure as hell isn’t.’
Sal tipped her head at the monitor behind Maddy. ‘I think Bob agrees with you.’
Maddy turned to see the blinking cursor at the end of a message.
> Recommendation: mission priority has changed. History contamination needs correcting.
‘Yup, Bob, you’re right. I think we need to get a message back to Liam.’
