by Alex Scarrow
The New Orleans Bee. Wednesday, April 6th, 1831
‘So, which bit am I looking at?’
Liam placed a steaming mug of coffee on the desk and settled in a chair beside her.
‘Thanks,’ she wheezed.
› I will enhance the image.
The scanned image zoomed in on a short article at the bottom of the page. No more than half a dozen sentences in print that was almost as faint as a watermark. The magnified image was horribly pixellated, like trying to read words cobbled together out of Lego bricks.
‘Sheesh, can you do anything with the image?’ Maddy wrinkled her nose as she squinted at it. ‘It’s just pixel garbage.’
› Just a moment. I shall alias-average the pixels and apply character analysis. There will be a significant margin of error, which I can attempt to contextually interpret for you.
‘Just do what you can, Bob,’ she said, holding a tissue to her face and honking noisily again into it. ‘Oh crud, I hate feeling all blocked up an’ rough,’ she muttered.
The scanned image blurred, softened then hardened again as if a cinema projectionist was messing around with the lens. Then a small highlighted green square appeared in the top left-hand corner of the image, grabbing a portion, analysing it, then moving along and highlighting another portion to the right. Step by step it moved right across the image, stepped down a row and began on the left-hand side once more. On another screen a document opened and words began to appear.
Liam leaned forward and began to read it aloud.
‘Yesterday, in the evening a second fatal collision occurred on Powder Street in as many weeks. A delivery cart belonging to Costen Brothers Distillery was responsible for crushing to death in a most horrendous manner a young dock worker. The ravaged body was identified by a flatboat captain as a crewman he had discharged earlier in the afternoon: Abraham Lincoln of New Salem.’
There was a little more to the article, an editorial rant about the increasing business of the thoroughfares beside the landing docks and the need for some order to be brought to the chaos of foot and horse traffic sharing the same avenues.
Liam looked at her. ‘Do you think …?’
She honked again into a handkerchief, shedding shreds of tissue on to the desk. ‘I fig we definubbly got a winner, Liab,’ she huffed breathlessly, her blocked nose whistling unpleasantly like a flute.
‘Bost definubbly.’
Midday in Times Square. Sal sat on her favourite bench, spattered with a pebble-dash of pigeon droppings and pink globules of discarded gum. Bob sat beside her, taking up the space two other people could easily have used.
‘You are different, though … Bob. Different from when you were first birthed.’ She turned to him. ‘Do you feel different in there … in your mind?’ she said, pointing to his bristly head. Maddy had insisted on shaving his head back down to the nut the other day. To be fair, she was right: Bob was beginning to look ridiculous. Coarse and dark, his hair should have been weighed down by its length — instead it seemed to perch on his head like a large spongy muffin. No way he was going to be able to go on missions looking like a seven-foot mushroom.
Bob was giving her question some thought. ‘I have accumulated large amounts of sensory data. This has altered my operating parameters.’ He looked down at her. ‘These are my … memories.’
‘Memories, huh?’ She smiled. ‘Memories. You sound sort of … almost proud of them.’
He cocked his head. ‘They are my mission log. They are performance data. They are — ’
‘You,’ she finished for him. ‘They are you. They are what make you you. That’s what my dadda used to say. What makes us who we are is all the things we experience.’ She reached out and patted one of his thick arms affectionately. ‘You’re so much more now, more than you were, you big lump.’
‘More than … my operating system?’
She nodded. ‘Does that make you feel proud? Do you feel different?’ She shrugged. ‘Do you even feel?’
‘I have sense receptors in my dermal layer — ’
‘No, I mean in your heart … I mean emotions. Do you ever feel things? Like “scared”, or “happy”, or “sad”? Things like that?’
He scanned his memories, sorting through trillions of bytes of data: fleeting images of stormtroopers and giant airships, prison camps and castles, and a million little interactions with Liam O’Connor.
‘I have experienced sensations of … attachment.’
‘Attachment? Do you mean … affection? What … for Liam?’
‘Affirmative. He is my mission operative.’
‘What about us, me and Maddy? You like us?’
His expressionless cold grey eyes burned down at her as he sorted through data to find an answer. ‘I also feel similar sensations for you and Maddy Carter.’
She hugged his arm. ‘Oh, you big chutiya bakra.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘What about Becks?’
He frowned. Now there was a challenging question for him to chew over. His eyes blinked as he worked hard for an answer.
Finally he spoke. ‘She is … a … part of me. And I am a part of her.’
‘But do you like her? Do you have sensations of attachment to her? I figure she’s like a sister or something?’
‘Sister?’ He considered that for a moment. ‘A sibling?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will consider the question,’ he said. She suspected that was probably going to keep him occupied for the rest of the day. Sal shook her head and giggled at him, then hunkered down, cradled her chin in her hands and resumed watching the world going by.
And then it happened,
Just as she was looking right at it, before her very eyes, the sign above a fast-food restaurant flickered and changed. For a moment she thought she might have been gazing at an LED screen that had finally decided to move on to the next picture in its image list. But it was just a scuffed plastic sign above the glass windows of a fast-food bar. One moment it had said KENTUCKY-STYLE FRIED CHICKEN, the next it simply read FAST FRIED CHICKEN.
She cursed under her breath, pulled out her mobile phone and dialled Maddy.
‘Yeah?’ she answered on the third ring.
‘I think I just saw a … No, I’m certain I just saw another time ripple, Maddy. A small one. You want to know what it was?’
‘It’s OK, Sal, it’s OK. We think we’ve got it nailed. Abraham Lincoln went and got himself squished by a cart in 1831. You better get yourselves back here, asap. If that’s another change you just spotted, then maybe the big time wave is coming right on its tail.’
‘OK.’
She snapped the phone shut and stuffed it back in her pocket. ‘Back home, Bob.’ She punched his arm. ‘Time for us to get busy again.’
CHAPTER 9
2001, New York
‘Can I go this time?’
Maddy looked at Sal. ‘No … that’s not your job.’
‘But I always end up in here … I never get to see anything interesting!’
Maddy shook her head.
‘But why?’
‘Too dangerous.’ Maddy mentally winced at that. That was a lame reason. The poor girl had been in almost as much danger here in 2001 as she might have been with Liam in the past. And Sal could see that too.
‘Come on, Maddy, it’s just as bad here! We’ve had mutants, soldiers … those weird dinosaur things. You’re telling me “here” is safe?’ She shook her head. ‘That is totally shadd-yah!’
Liam and the two units were listening to the row as they were getting dressed.
Maddy closed her eyes tiredly. She didn’t need this. How could she explain to Sal that every trip through a portal could quite possibly strip another year or five off her natural lifespan? That the bombardment of tachyons, the immeasurable forces of chaos space, had a lethal effect on the body: aged it, corrupted it … eventually killed it. How could she explain that to her with Liam just yards away, unaware that soon — far too soon — he was going to be a dyin
g old man?
But then she and Sal were experiencing a milder form of that contamination themselves, living as they did in the archway’s resetting temporal bubble, weren’t they? It was coming for all of them one day, death.
Something her cousin Julian had once said: ‘We’re all dead the moment we’re born. Just, some of us get there faster than others.’ Prophetic really since he died not so long after, lost in the rubble of the World Trade Center’s north tower.
‘Please!’ said Sal. ‘I want to see some history too!’
We’re all dead …
At least this wasn’t a huge jump. A hundred and seventy years. Nothing really in the grand scheme of things, she supposed. The shorter the jump, the less the damage. Their jump to Sunday a while back had probably been little more a dose of poison than the normal Tuesday-night bubble reset. She sighed. Why not? Living here in this archway like mole people wasn’t really the sort of dream life a person would want to last forever, anyway. One trip into history … this trip, a relatively safe trip. Why not?
‘All right,’ she sighed.
Sal yelped and clasped her hands together with excitement.
They had some clothes in the archway that they used to travel back to their 1906 ‘drop point’ in San Francisco. The ‘drop point’ was a stash of support-unit embryos held in suspended animation in the safety deposit box of a bank that was due to be reduced to rubble and ashes by the infamous and imminent Californian earthquake. With a little customization and by losing the headgear — hat fashion seemed to move along far more quickly than other wear — they could pass as 1830s clothes. Maddy’s corset and skirts might be a size too big for Sal, but nothing that would attract any attention.
Liam was already nearly good to go in his brown jacket and waistcoat; Bob wore a striped linen shirt and scruffy cotton trousers. Becks was almost in the corset.
‘Becks, you can stay. Sal’s taking your place.’
She stopped fussing with the ties at the front. ‘Is this advisable?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s New Orleans. What’s to worry about? Anyway, she’s got Bob and Liam with her.’
The support unit dutifully nodded and began to undress.
Maddy pointed towards the small archway where their bunks stood. There was a drape that could be pulled across for a little privacy. ‘Best you do that over there, Becks.’
Last thing she needed was Liam getting all hormonal.
‘Sal, you understand this is 1831?’
‘Yuh.’
Maddy bit her lip. Crud, this is going to be awkward.
‘This is a time of slavery.’
Sal’s eyes were drinking in the details of the dress and its corset, eager to get her hands on it, to try it on. ‘Yeah, I know,’ she replied absently.
‘Well … your, uh … you know … your skin is, like, dark …?’
Sal looked up at Maddy. ‘What?’
Maddy shuffled uncomfortably. ‘I’m just saying you may be treated … you may be called …’
‘I’m not black! If that’s what you’re saying!’
‘No but, what I’m trying to — ’
‘Shadd-yah! Dark means I’m African, now? You can lump us all together simply because we’re not white?’ Her brow furrowed with irritation. ‘I’m Asian!’ She shook her head and rolled her eyes and turned to follow Becks over towards the bunks. The drape swished across the archway behind them.
‘I just meant … people back then might not make the same distinction,’ replied Maddy, her voice fading to nothing.
Nice one, Maddy.
‘Uh … OK,’ she said, stepping back towards the computers. ‘Right, Liam, Bob, the candidate time-stamp is 5 April 1831, and I’m going to drop you in a few hours before the Abraham squashing incident. The paper said “evening”, so I guess that means about five or six. You’ll arrive at four in the afternoon and I’ve found a street map of New Orleans dockside area, circa 1834, which I guess is close enough. We’re opening a window in what looks like a storage warehouse of some kind.’
She checked one of the screens. They had a density probe testing the location for obstructions.
‘Anything on the density probe, computer-Bob?’
› Negative. Nothing has passed through the time-stamp location.
She nodded, satisfied with that. It seemed a quiet enough spot.
‘Young Abe Lincoln gets flattened on Powder Street, which, according to the map we’ve got here, is just a minute or two from your drop location. It’s one of the main streets; I’m sure you’ll find it easy enough. Just follow the smell of horse poo.’
Liam chuckled. Even in 1912 — his time — every busy thoroughfare in Cork was dotted with little molehills of manure waiting to be flattened by a cartwheel or eventually scooped up by a street-sweeper.
‘How do we know which fella to save?’ he asked. ‘I mean … I think I know what he looks like as an old man. A beard and big bushy eyebrows, an’ the like. But he’s young now, aye? We got a picture of him as a young fella?’
‘No, there’s none. Not at the age he is now.’
‘Information,’ said Bob, flexing inside his shirt. It should have been loose on him, but in fact he barely fitted inside it. ‘Celluloid-based portraits were not in common use at this time, even though photographic technology existed.’
‘Right,’ said Maddy. ‘And at this point in time, no one’s gonna think this guy is going to be someone important. He’s a total nothing. Not worth a picture.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, not yet, anyway.’
She glanced at a page of data that computer-Bob had compiled. ‘What we do know is he was described as very tall and thin and scruffy.’ She pointed to a screen showing a JPEG image of Lincoln’s presidential portrait. ‘And check out those freakin’ brows … I mean it looks like he’s got a small mouse living above each eye. Even as a young man, that’s got to be a feature to look out for, right?’
Bob nodded. ‘Information: cranial growth variation around the orbital sockets is limited after a human skull reaches maturity, whereas certain other features — nasal cavity and cartilage tissue, soft tissue around the ears, the lower jaw — continue to — ’
Maddy waved him silent. ‘Which means even as a kid he probably always looked miserable.’ She wiped a runny nose. ‘Anyway, just keep your eyes peeled for a large cart loaded with barrels of booze and Costen Brothers Distillery painted on the side. Any tall, miserable-looking idiot looks like he’s going to step out in front of it, you grab him. Simple.’
Liam lifted his chin to adjust his collar button. ‘Sounds easy enough, eh, Bob?’
Bob rumbled an acknowledgement.
‘How’re you doing, Sal?’ Maddy called out.
‘Almost!’ Her voice came back brightly through the drape, the unintended racial slur already completely forgotten by the sound of it. ‘It’s just a bit big on me.’
‘I am tightening the corset to its smallest setting to compensate,’ added Becks.
‘Hey!’ Maddy frowned. ‘Hey! No … don’t say it like that. Like I’m a butter-troll or something.’ She caught her reflection in the perspex displacement tube. ‘OK, so I’m not just some skin-’n’-bones clothes hanger,’ she muttered to herself.
‘Completed,’ said Becks, and pulled the drape to one side.
Liam held back a gasp and Maddy found herself nodding approvingly. ‘Now that looks better on you than a hoody, right?’
Sal ran her hands over the corset and skirts. ‘Feels so weird.’ She grinned. ‘I feel like a … ugh, jahulla! I know this sounds pathetic, but … I feel like a princess.’
Maddy clapped her hands. ‘I know — it’s kinda cool, isn’t it?’ She cast a glance at Liam and Bob. ‘Good … you all look the part. Now undress and bag your clothes. It’s a wet departure.’
Ten minutes later Liam, Sal and Bob were treading water in their underwear together in the displacement tube.
‘So, a nice and easy mission this time,’ said Maddy, huddled on the top step of t
he ladder. ‘Just find young Abe and grab his collar before he gets himself turned into Lincoln ketchup. You OK in there, Sal?’
She nodded, her teeth chattering. ‘Guess I’m g-getting a bit nervous n-now.’
‘You’ll be just fine. Remember you’ve done this before. It’s no big deal.’
‘It’s the white s-stuff that s-scares m-me …’
‘Chaos space?’ Liam shook his head. ‘Ahh, you’ll be through it in a heartbeat, so you will. Nothing to it.’
‘Could you h-hold m-my hand?’
Liam nodded. ‘I s’pose. Sure, if you like.’
‘Uhh … it’s probably best if you don’t,’ said Maddy. Her eyes quickly met Liam’s and after a few seconds he nodded. He knew what she was thinking. After all, he was the one who’d seen it up close: fused bodies, bodies turned completely inside out. Very messy. He’d told Maddy about it, but not Sal. It was a grisly detail she didn’t really need to hear and, anyway, it only happened rarely. Maddy had no idea what caused it, but when Foster had insisted Liam had to float on his own first time round … well, there was almost certainly a very good reason for that.
‘Works best if you’re all floating freely, Sal. But look,’ she said before Sal could ask why, ‘you’re going together. The other two will be right next to you. And as Liam said, it’s, like, a second, no more.’
‘I’ll sing you a ditty,’ said Liam, ‘so you’ll hear me in there … in the chaos soup.’
‘There you go.’ Maddy smiled. ‘That is, if you can bear to listen to his howling.’ She started to descend the ladder. ‘Right, we should get going, guys. We’ve been more than lucky with only small ripples so far. Let’s not push our luck.’
At the bottom she checked to confirm the displacement machine was green right across the board, then called across to Becks. ‘Punch in a thirty-second countdown.’
‘Yes, Maddy. Thirty seconds … as of now.’
‘Return window at seven in the evening!’ she reminded them. ‘And, remember, the usual back-up windows after that if you miss it!’
She could see Sal’s face through the scuffed plastic, wide-eyed with growing panic. Beside her, kicking water and still holding on to the top of the tube was Liam, saying something encouraging to her. And then Bob, keeping afloat with strong, powerful kicks. All three of them holding Ziploc plastic bags containing their clothes.
