It’s early right now, 7 a.m. I always seem to be the first to wake. The others are all fast asleep. Maddy snores in the bunk below. Liam whimpers like a puppy.
Sal looked up. All was still in the archway. Foster was asleep on an old sofa beside the kitchen alcove, stirring restlessly beneath a quilt. And Bob… Bob rested in one of the birthing tubes in the back room. She wondered what he dreamed about, if anything.
She closed her diary, sat up and pulled on some clothes under her blanket and then climbed down quietly. She grabbed a bin bag full of dirty clothes lying beside the bottom bunk and walked across to the breakfast table.
One duty – collectively agreed – was that every other Tuesday would be a good day to take their meagre supply of clothes down to the laundromat in the morning to collect in the evening.
She checked their small fridge.
No milk.
She sighed. One of the others had finished the last of it without saying. She shook her head and clucked like a mother hen.
They’d starve if it wasn’t for me.
She decided to stop off at the 24/7 store on the way back to pick up some half-fat milk, some bagels and some more Rice Krispies since Liam had discovered a passion for them and seemed to devour bowl after bowl of the stuff.
She punched the red button and the shutter whirred up, quietly rattling and letting in the cool morning air of the city. She breathed in deep and looked up at the clear blue sky. It was going to start out as a lovely sunny day today… as always.
Sal dropped off the laundry with the sweet old Chinese lady who worked at the laundromat. She was a chatty old thing whom Sal was beginning to get to know well, always talking proudly – sometimes in broken English, sometimes in Cantonese – about her nephew whom she announced with pleasure ‘alway wear ’spensive smart soo’ to go for his work’. Of course, it was exactly the same greeting every time she stepped into the shop, as if she was setting eyes on Sal for the very first time.
Which, of course, she was. But Sal decided to politely steer their brief chit-chatty conversation in different directions with every visit… gradually learning a little bit more about her and her family each time.
She headed across the bridge into Manhattan, enjoying the warm sun and watching the city streets grow steadily busier. The air was thick with smells both pleasant and not so, but nothing quite as bad as she remembered in downtown Mumbai – particularly on the smog-heavy days. Entering Manhattan’s lower east side, her nose picked out the acrid smell of exhaust fumes mixed with the delightful odour of freshly brewed coffee and oven-baked bagels billowing from the various coffee shops and fast-food restaurants she passed on the way across to Broadway and up to Times Square.
Tuesday starts so well, she noted sadly. Right now, in the early morning, it was as fine a day as one could ask for. She looked at her watch.
8.32 a.m.
The day would continue to be lovely for another thirteen minutes. She sighed sadly. Then it would turn into the nightmare of nine-eleven. She entered the busy nexus of Times Square and took a seat on a bench – her regular bench – beside a litter bin. She watched the stop-start traffic at a busy intersection and the pavements filled with people on their way to work: men already hot with their jackets over one arm and their ties loosened, women in smart summer blouses and light linen trouser suits.
8.34 a.m. Eleven minutes to go.
The large green face of Shrek, looking equally bemused and irritated by Donkey, hung above the square – as always. She studied the movie billboard and the others dotted around, beginning to find them all very familiar, like bedroom posters long past their time to be taken down and replaced with something else.
8.37 a.m. Eight minutes to go.
A homeless man approached the bench – as he always did at 8.37 a.m. – pushing a shopping trolley in front of him, piled high with cardboard boxes and an old tarpaulin. He smiled politely at her – as he always did – before rummaging through the litter bin and finding a half-eaten sausage McMuffin.
He sat down beside her, his lined and pockmarked face creased with quite possibly the last smile New York would see today and opened his mouth to say the same thing he always said.
‘Hey, lucky me… it’s still warm!’ He eagerly tucked into his rescued sandwich.
Sal politely returned his smile.
‘I’m glad,’ she said. And she genuinely was. She was familiar enough with the next few hours to know this was the last fleeting moment of contentment left in the day, a homeless tramp, chewing gratefully on a discarded sausage in a bun.
8.43 a.m. Two minutes to go.
She looked up at the skyline, seeing in the distance the very tops of the two World Trade Center towers, glistening like polished silver in the morning light. Proud structures that confidently seemed to reach up to the blue sky and actually touch it. And inside… so many thousands of people, sitting down to start a regular day at work, opening their email in-boxes, peeling the lid off their Starbucks coffee, unwrapping their salt-beef and mustard bagels.
8.44 a.m. One minute left.
The tramp finished his breakfast and sighed with contentment.
He turned to Sal and sucked in his breath to say what he always said at this time. ‘Gonna be a helluva day, ain’t it?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘It is.’
The tramp got up off the bench and pushed his trolley away from her, whistling cheerfully as he went.
8.45 a.m. Now only seconds to go.
Sal hated this final countdown. Beginning with the distant drone of an engine in the sky and ending with cries of disbelief from the pedestrians around her, and a moment later the boom and rumble of the plane’s impact.
She’d sat through this at least a dozen times now. And God knows how many more times she’d have to – hundreds? Thousands? Sal wondered if it would get any easier for her, counting down those last few seconds.
She closed her eyes. Foster probably wouldn’t approve of that if he knew, but there were only so many times she could bring herself to watch.
She could hear the plane now.
And then she felt it: a dizzying sense of losing balance, of falling, as if just for a moment the ground beneath her had been whipped away.
She opened her eyes, looked up… and gasped at what she saw.
Maddy studied the screens before her, steaming mug of coffee in hand – black coffee because someone had used the last of the milk and not left any for breakfast – and waited for the first ticker-tape newsflash to report ‘some kind of explosion’ at the World Trade Center.
She checked the clock on the computer. It was 8.45 a.m.
It was due.
The clock display now flickered to indicate 8.46 a.m.
OK, it’s now past due.
‘Hmm,’ she grunted. She looked around for the others. Liam was drowsily slumped on his cot, reading a National Geographic magazine he’d found lying around the archway. Foster, who looked frailer and ill this morning, remained fast asleep on his couch. Bob was still in his tube, being nourished intravenously with some horrible-looking gunk.
‘Er…’ was the best Maddy could come up with right now.
Sal stared dumbstruck at a very different world around her. Shrek and Donkey were gone, so were the posters for Mamma Mia and Planet of the Apes. She noticed some of the more recent buildings looked a little different too.
But, most importantly, the Twin Towers were gone and in their place, not quite so high but easily as grand, stood a giant marble column from which an enormous red pennant proudly flapped.
Her eyes dropped to street level. It looked so much less chaotic: fewer billboards adorned the sides of buildings; the shopfronts looked somehow tidier, more reserved,
more upmarket; the streets were far less clogged with vehicles, which themselves looked strangely old-fashioned, reminding her of some of the odd-looking automobiles she had once seen in a transport museum.
The pedestrians, many more of them than there were a few moments ago, eyed her tatty clothes curiously. She looked down and realized her hoodie with Ess-Zed splashed brightly across it, the ripped and patched drainpipe jeans stood out in stark contrast to the sombre and characterless grey suits everywhere. And something else: virtually everyone was wearing a red armband that featured a white circle and some small black design on it. It reminded her of the old war films; the bad guys used to wear those red armbands…
What were those bad guys called? Oh yeah… Nazis.
She turned to look for the homeless man who’d been sitting on the bench beside her, but he was gone, along with his supermarket trolley. Feeling dozens of curious eyes begin to fix on her, she got up off the bench and quickly hurried across the busy pavement to the mouth of a quiet backstreet. She pulled out her mobile and dialled the field office.
The display showed two words. No signal.
Confused for a moment, she quickly realized she could see no one else talking into a mobile phone either. In fact, she could see no one even holding one, nor any adverts for top-up cards or service providers or deals with free texts, nor stalls selling novelty phone covers… nothing at all to do with mobile phones.
∗
Maddy looked up at Foster.
‘The plane impact just didn’t happen,’ she said. ‘And a moment later most of the news-feed screens went blank,’ she added, pointing to the row of monitors now all synchronously blinking an error message.
Foster, looking bleary-eyed from being woken, and far too pale for her liking, nodded thoughtfully over her shoulder. ‘We’re in trouble… this looks like a big shift,’ he said quietly. ‘Normally they come in waves, subtle ones at first that bring very minor changes, then the bigger ones come later if events up the timeline aren’t corrected.’
One computer screen still seemed to be functioning; beneath a prominent red banner with a logo on it were the headlines of the day’s news.
‘What is that?’ queried Liam, pointing to the logo on the banner.
‘Reminds me a bit of the Nazi swastika,’ she replied, ‘but it isn’t.’
‘What’s a swastika?’ asked Liam.
Foster waved a hand. ‘Sorry, Liam… I’ll bring you up to speed later.’ He looked more closely at it. ‘It looks like a black eel or snake or something, biting its own tail.’
‘Yeah.’ Maddy nodded.
Liam spotted something the other two hadn’t yet. ‘I wonder if you noticed the news is in two languages?’ He pointed to the lower half of the screen where the same headlines had been duplicated in another language.
‘German and English,’ said Maddy, ‘that’s all I can see. No other language options.’
Foster turned to them and gathered his thoughts. ‘OK, well it doesn’t take a genius to work out that history’s been shifted to incorporate a pretty significant alteration.’
‘Er… the Germans won the Second World War?’ suggested Maddy.
‘More than that, Madelaine; it looks like they went and conquered America.’
Liam looked at both of their ashen faces. ‘That really isn’t good, is it?’
CHAPTER 33
2001, New York
The archway’s shutter rattled gently as it whirred up. All three of them spun round anxiously. A pair of Doc Martens boots and skinny legs quickly reassured them.
‘Sal!’ cried Maddy. ‘I was getting worried about you.’
Sal stepped in smartly and lowered the shutter. ‘It’s all… different… out there,’ she said, gasping for breath. ‘I… ran… back… all the way. I was frightened… My phone wasn’t working.’
Foster turned to Maddy. ‘Yes, of course. In this new history maybe they don’t have things such as telecommunications satellites in orbit.’
‘Or mobile-phone masts,’ she added. ‘If this is, like, some Nazi-styled government, maybe they’re not so keen on letting people communicate with each other so easily.’
‘That’s true,’ he replied, hands clasped thoughtfully.
‘And this,’ said Maddy, gesturing at the screen, ‘this looks like some kind of online government-approved news site.’
He made a face. ‘Which means we can’t entirely trust it as a source of information.’
‘But it’s all we’ve got,’ Maddy pointed out.
He nodded. ‘This is true.’
Liam beckoned Sal over. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said, patting an empty seat beside the old man. ‘Let me get you a drink of water or something.’
‘Thank you,’ she panted.
He reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘You all right there, Sal?’
She nodded. ‘I was so… Jahulla! It was so frightening. It’s like another world.’
He headed towards the kitchen alcove and ran a glass of water from the tap.
‘Is there an archive section on this page?’ asked Foster.
Maddy moved a cursor across the screen. ‘Yeah.’ She clicked a button on an info tab.
[HISTORY/GESCHICHTE]
The screen paused and flickered before presenting them with a surprisingly limited menu.
‘Not a lot of info listed here,’ sneered Maddy derisively.
Foster studied the meagre list of menu items. ‘There, click on Timeline… Zeitlinie.’
She did so and a moment later they were presented with the graphic of a time bar with the significant events of the last fifty years laid out along it.
‘My God… look,’ she said, pointing at the screen, ‘1997: end of war with China. 1989: the Führer’s hundredth birthday. 1979: the first man in space…’
‘But look at the beginning of the timeline,’ said Foster.
Maddy frowned. ‘It starts in 1956. Why nothing before?’
‘I don’t know.’
She clicked on a button beside the beginning year and was answered with a red warning dialogue box:
Frühgeschichtenfrugen erfordern Korrekte Ermächtigung.
Access To Earlier History Requires Authorization.
Maddy shook her head. ‘It seems history before that date is out of bounds for everyone. It all starts with 1956.’ She checked the historical marker for that particular year. ‘1956: America celebrates joining the Greater Reich.’
Maddy clicked on the tab and a small article appeared. A grainy black and white photo showed some city street lined with cheering people and a motorcade of vehicles proceeding down it. She read the words aloud.
‘September, 1956: Vice-president Truman reluctantly concedes defeat and signs the terms for an unconditional surrender in the presence of the Führer’s highest ranking field officer, Reichsmarschall Haas. The American nation is now a part of the Greater Reich. The Führer is greeted on the streets of Washington by hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic supporters heartened by his promise to rescue their nation from years of poverty and hardship.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe that! I can’t believe the American people would roll over and welcome Adolf Hitler in as their ruler. That’s just crazy!’
Foster nodded. ‘Well, I agree it’s odd. But whether they did or they didn’t, history has gone off track… wildly off track.’
He turned to Liam. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I feel like I’m throwing you in at the deep end. We need to send someone back to check things out.’
‘Uh… all right,’ replied Liam unhappily.
‘This time, though,’ said Foster, ‘I’m afraid, this time, I can’t go.’
Liam swallowed anxiously. ‘I’m… I’m
going back alone?’
‘No, Bob will go along with you.’
‘I… er, I’m not sure I –’
‘I’m sorry, lad, but there are no choices here. You have to go back and find out what’s going on.’
‘But why aren’t you coming?’
Foster’s eyes met Maddy’s briefly. ‘It’s too far back in time for me.’
‘But, but did you not go back to 1912 to get me?’
‘Yes… yes, I did, but this time… I’m sorry, I’m going to have to sit this one out.’
‘Oh.’
‘We haven’t another moment to lose.’ He turned to Sal. ‘Revive Bob from his birthing tube.’
She nodded and headed off to the back room.
‘Madelaine?’
‘Yes?’
‘We need to prepare a data download for Bob. He needs all of this alternative history downloaded into his brain. Also, he needs to have a complete understanding of the German language and I’d download, from our on-site files, everything we have on Hitler, the Nazi high command, the Second World War. I guess that should do it for now.’
‘What about me?’ asked Liam.
Foster shrugged. ‘Sorry, Liam… It’s come sooner than I expected. I’d hoped to take you through a couple more training trips, but it looks like we’ve run out of time.’
‘Oh boy,’ whispered Liam.
Foster pointed towards the cylinder. ‘You’d better start filling up the tube with water.’
CHAPTER 34
2001, New York
Liam clung desperately to the side of the perspex tube with both hands, unhappily kicking at the warm liquid beneath him. Bob floated beside him, calmly treading water.
‘OK, Liam, you’re going to be there for two hours exactly. We’ve set the co-ordinates for the first of September 1956. We’re sending you to the grounds of the White House – the president’s Washington office. All you and Bob are going to do is observe, OK? Just observe. Do you understand?’
Liam nodded. ‘Y-yes.’
TimeRiders Page 12
