The Eternal War tr-4

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘It’ll be fun, Sal!’ she called out over the increasing hum of the displacement machine. ‘Enjoy seeing 1831 with your own eyes!’

  Sal flashed her an uncertain smile and a wave.

  She stepped back into the middle of the floor as Becks’s countdown reached ten.

  ‘Right! Hands off, everyone!’ she shouted.

  Liam reluctantly let go and began thrashing furiously and ineffectually to keep his head above water. The other two let go and managed to tread water calmly. On five seconds, Maddy bellowed over the rising pitch of the machine for them all to grab some air and duck their heads under the water.

  And on one they were all completely submerged.

  A crescendo of channelled and suddenly released energy merged with the boom of flexing perspex, and in the blink of an eye the three of them were gone.

  CHAPTER 10

  1831, New Orleans

  They were standing on Powder Street nearly a whole hour before six watching the dock workers industriously unloading boats of all different sizes, watching horse-drawn carts clattering up the busy thoroughfare. Although that snippet of digitally archived news from a long-dead New Orleans newspaper had claimed the event had occurred ‘in the evening’, it would be foolish to assume that meant for certain it happened after 6 p.m. Liam told them that in his time people still generally didn’t carry clocks or watches. Time was less specific. You’d arrange to meet someone in the afternoon, not ‘at 2.35 p.m. precisely’ as he noticed most modern New Yorkers seemed to do.

  ‘Just keep looking,’ said Liam, craning his neck to look up and down the busy street. ‘Tall grumpy-looking fella.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Sal nodded. But then it was far too easy to be distracted by the sights and sounds going on around her.

  Nothing can prepare you for what it’s like, Sal … actually standing in the middle of a piece of history. That’s what Maddy had told her after her trip to San Francisco, 1906. And she was right.

  She and Dadda had once gone along to a technology expo, while they’d been in Shanghai on one of her Pikodu tournaments. One of the last as it happened; international relations between China and India were beginning to chill then. A sign of the troubled times ahead. At the expo she had tried out a prototype of a thing they were calling a Reality Hat. It looked like a shower cap with marbles stuck all over it. She’d put it on and almost instantly she found herself smelling things, hearing things that weren’t there, and then finally seeing herself in a Roman street. Of course nothing was quite right. The scene was computer graphics, very realistic, but still there were little jerks in the animation here and there that gave it away. The visuals, the smells, the sounds were being transmitted into her head, stimulating the senses. She had been stunned by how convincing an experience it had been.

  But standing here, now, in history, for real … the Reality Hat seemed like a shallow experience by comparison.

  ‘Hold your horses …’ muttered Liam, ‘look at that fella over there,’ he said, pointing along the street on the far side. Bob and Sal turned to look. Across the thoroughfare they could make out a tall thin man in a scruffy threadbare coat, a battered felt hat stuffed thoughtlessly askew on a mop of dark unruly hair. He had emerged from a tavern, quite clearly the worse for wear. He stood, or more accurately swayed, outside the door, surveying the busy street in front of him.

  ‘Jayzus … he’s had a few!’ Liam turned to Bob. ‘Do you think that’s our fella?’

  Bob’s eyes narrowed for a moment. ‘I have an approximate height match.’

  ‘And he does look a bit like the Lincoln in the painting,’ said Sal.

  He certainly had the thunderous scowl, the dark brooding eyes hooded by a frown that all but hid them in the fading light of the afternoon.

  ‘Right, good enough for me,’ said Liam. ‘Let’s go grab him before he does something foolish.’

  Liam hopped off the store-front porch they’d been standing on. He waited until there was a gap in the horse-drawn traffic before leading them cautiously across the muddy street.

  Lincoln hitched up his trousers, hanging loose round his waist. He should have spent his money on some decent food, not on drink. He shrugged at that. He could find something to steal to eat. The docksides were an easy place to forage for food; there was usually a dropped sack here or there. A man could always work for a cooked meal even if he couldn’t find paid work. A man might find himself sleeping rough, under the stars here in New Orleans, but he’d never find himself starving.

  Lincoln belched. A real howler that turned heads up and down the street and solicited tuts and muttered disgust from a portly gentleman and his sour-faced wife as they walked past him.

  He tipped his hat and grinned at them before congratulating himself on a world-class burp. He ambled drunkenly into the street, his long legs feeling as unstable beneath him as a pair of circus stilts.

  He was just about to take another stride forward when he felt something grasp the back of his coat collar and suddenly found himself lurching backwards, flying through the air and landing heavily on the ground.

  It took him several moments to comprehend the fact that he was lying on his back in the dirt and looking up at salmon-pink clouds lit by the setting sun and three silhouetted heads peering curiously down at him.

  ‘What in … tarnation! Who the …?’ he started to blurt.

  ‘Mr Lincoln?’ asked one of them. An Irishman by the sound of his accent.

  Lincoln groggily struggled to get himself up on to his elbows. ‘Now who … who ishhh the infernal f-fool of a halfwit that … that …’

  ‘Are you Abraham Lincoln?’

  Lincoln’s eyes struggled to focus on the face that had said that. ‘And … and who the d-devil … wishes … wishes to know?’

  A much deeper voice rumbled. ‘Please confirm your name.’

  Lincoln’s eyebrows arched as he took in the sight of Bob. ‘Good g-grief, ssshir … are you a man or a … some s-species of a grizzly bear?’

  ‘Shadd-yah! Liam, check out the mess that wagon’s making!’

  ‘Jay-zus! That’s a pretty pickle. C’mon, let’s get him up,’ Lincoln heard the Irish voice say. He felt a strong pair of hands grabbing him roughly.

  ‘I … AM … FERPECTLY … I mean … p … puh … PERFECTLY … capable of shhhtanding up by my … by myself. Yesh … indeedy. Now UNHAND me D-DIRECTLY!’

  He felt the hands release him. Slowly, with a lot more effort than he’d originally thought he’d require, he managed to pull himself back on to his wobbling-stilt legs. The twilight world of New Orleans was spinning round him like a cartwheel. And those three faces, none of which he could quite focus on, still seemed to be looking at him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ The Irish voice again.

  ‘I AM FINE!’ Lincoln bellowed hoarsely. ‘FINE AS A … a … a … FINE as a goat in a briar patch! Fine as an OIL PAINTING!’ He managed a grin. ‘Ah’m asssh FIT … asssh … a … a …’

  ‘As a …?’

  He opened his mouth. He was thinking of saying horse. But instead what came out was something that sounded a bit like bleurghhh.

  The last thing he heard before the world spun on to its side and he passed out was someone saying, ‘Oh … gross, all over my shoes — charming.’

  CHAPTER 11

  1831, New Orleans

  ‘… he’s a pitiful sight, so he is.’

  It was wholly dark now. Lincoln could hear the gentle lapping of the Mississippi against the hull of a boat nearby and somewhere deep inside his throbbing mind he figured out he was slumped along the docks somewhere. The sky above was clear and the moon high among the stars, casting a surprisingly strong silver light across the river and the city, now finally settled and still for the night.

  ‘You think he’ll be OK if we just leave him here like this?’

  ‘He’ll be fine, I’m sure. He’s a big boy.’

  The voices were speaking quietly, not quite a whisper, but almos
t.

  ‘Well now, since we missed both our return windows we’ve got all of tomorrow to wander around and explore New Orleans.’ A pause. ‘So, Sal … what do you make of 1831?’

  ‘Totally bindaas! It’s so real! But it feels unreal too. Do you know what I mean? Like, I can’t really be back here.’ That particular voice, the female voice, had an odd accent. Lincoln couldn’t quite place it. He’d once met a Welshman who’d had a similar, sing-song, way of talking.

  ‘Aye, I still have to pinch myself. Sometimes I wake up on me bunk still thinking I’m in 1912, the steward’s quarters … and all this time-travel nonsense has been a dream.’

  ‘Me too.’

  A pause.

  ‘So, do you want to see if we can find rooms somewhere to sleep?’

  ‘I’m too excited to sleep.’

  ‘We can walk around a bit. Or wait here until sun-up and explore. Bob, how long until the return window opens?’

  A deep voice. ‘The twenty-four-hour window will open at four. The time is now six minutes past one in the morning. You have fourteen hours and fifty-four minutes until the portal opens in the Jenkins and Proctor warehouse.’

  ‘Well … I could do with a walk. It’s a warm night. It’s nice to be out of the archway for once.’

  Lincoln heard movement and closed his eyes. A moment later he felt a gentle nudge, the grain sack beneath him shifting, and the warm breath of someone leaning over his face.

  ‘He still asleep?’

  ‘Dead to the world, I think.’

  A chuckle. ‘Jahulla, it’s hard to imagine this drunk being the President of America, isn’t it?’

  ‘He’s still got a while to sort himself out, so he has.’

  ‘Information: the American civil war begins in April 1861.’

  ‘Well, there you go … he’s got exactly thirty years to sort himself out. Loads of time.’

  A pause. ‘What do you think, Bob? Reckon we’ve patched up history?’

  ‘The target person is alive. History data files show that he will embark on a career as a lawyer in the next few years. Then go into politics.’

  ‘Lawyer? Shadd-yah! You’re joking!’

  ‘Negative. Not joking.’

  A pause.

  ‘Hmmm … I could imagine him as a lawyer. He’s got the temperament. Argumentative, so he is. Anyway …’ He heard a footstep. ‘Come on, Sal, let’s go and explore New Orleans while we got the chance. He’ll be fine. We should leave before he wakes up. With a bit of luck he won’t even remember us.’

  Movement again. Lincoln heard the swish and rustle of cotton skirts. Then the receding sound of footfalls down the wooden planks of the dockside. He opened his eyes once more and watched the three dark shapes: one a giant of a man, another a slender young man and the third a young woman. His mind was still foggy from the whisky he’d been drinking earlier in the afternoon, foggy … but still able to function. In the last couple of minutes he’d heard enough to make a feebler-minded person than him question their very sanity.

  … 1912 … time travel …?

  As a boy Lincoln had once discussed such an absurd idea with a friend — what if a man could speed up the turning of a clock? Or slow it? Or stop it? Or … even wind it back the wrong way? What if a man could walk in days past? Meet great men from history and talk to them. An absurd idea. A fanciful notion for their imaginative young minds. Yet … here it seemed to be, the very idea he and his childhood friend had playfully considered while resting in the branches of a sycamore tree.

  Is this possible?

  Perhaps in some far-off future time — 1912, for example — it could be possible. The ingenuity of man seemed to know no bounds. Every year it seemed a new device was being invented, new knowledge of how God’s earth functioned uncovered. Who knows what science men would be wielding like magic in the year 1912?

  He eased himself into a sitting position. His head pounded as if some small gold prospector was at work in there with a rock hammer.

  And what was it the much deeper voice had said? That he would be a lawyer? And one day … did the girl actually say it? Did she actually say the word president?

  He felt a shudder of excitement course through him, blowing away the cobwebs of his hangover.

  President?

  If that was true, really true, if those three strangers did actually come from a time beyond his own and could know such things, know his destiny … then they would know how it would be possible that a poor fellow like him would one day lead this country as its president.

  His skittering mind reached out further. Perhaps there was an even greater goal, a greater destiny for him than a life of politics. He realized it would be a far greater thing to be the only man from 1831 to visit the future, to actually see with his own eyes all the wonderful devices on air, sea and land that man’s ingenuity could create. He imagined the cities of this time full of towers of glistening crystal that prodded the very heavens.

  I would truly like to see this future …

  CHAPTER 12

  2001, New York

  Maddy sat with her feet up on the computer desk, her trainers resting on a stack of pizza boxes. She watched the monitor in front of her, a looping display of tragedy unfolding in painful endless repetition.

  The flickering, shaking camcorder footage of a passenger plane swooping low across the skyscrapers of Manhattan … and in those precious heartbeats of time before it finally crashes into the side of the north tower … a hope? Even though you know what happens, isn’t there always that fleeting moment of hope, a possibility that it might actually miss this time? That it just flies between them? That Julian and nearly three thousand other people might return home that day and tell their families of the near miss that terrified them all for a few moments?

  But the loop of footage never changes.

  She watched it in slow motion. It ended, as it always did, with an orange fireball, a quickly growing pillar of black smoke and a million sheets of paper raining down like confetti, like snow to the streets of Manhattan.

  Maddy remembered that day as if it was yesterday. She’d been nine. She’d been at school. An ashen-faced teacher’s assistant had burst into their classroom and blurted out the news. The television set in the corner had been switched on and there it was, the smouldering north tower. She remembered her teacher sobbing, and other girls in her class following suit.

  Or maybe there was a chance that this world with its subtly altered reality — no President Lincoln — was going to be different enough for the American Airlines Flight 11 to take off and arrive at its destination, and no one was going to die tomorrow. It had only been one tiny ripple of change so far … but, not for the first time, she wondered how nice it would be to preserve an alternate world changed just enough to spare Julian, and three thousand others, their lives.

  ‘Maddy?’

  She looked up at Becks, standing beside her. ‘Uh? Hey, Becks.’

  ‘I have finished.’

  Maddy had given her the task of checking on the growth tubes in the back. There were six foetuses hanging in that awful murky, smelly growth solution, being fed a mix of nutrients that kept them in stasis. None of them would grow any larger until they activated the growth mode and cut the mix with steroids. As long as they had power feeding the tubes, the foetuses — future Bobs and Becks — took care of themselves. Although, occasionally, the filters needed to be pulled out, cleared of gunk and put back in. A quite horrible job. Even worse, Maddy mused, than pulling rotting hair and skin and whatever else was in there from a blocked plughole. Even worse, if it was possible, than emptying their chemical toilet.

  ‘All of the growth tubes are performing optimally,’ she said drily. ‘All the in-vitro clone candidates are fine.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Do you wish me to make you some coffee?’

  Maddy could still smell that gunk on Becks’s hands. ‘Uhh … no, that’s OK.’ She picked up a remote control and switched one of the monitors to
show a cable channel. The Simpsons was on. She recognized it as an old episode she’d seen too many times over the years. But, of course, here in 2001, for every kid just coming in from school and watching it now, it was a brand-new episode.

  And one of those kids … is — was — me.

  She had to be out there, right now: a nine-year-old Madelaine Carter, sitting in the kitchen having an after-school bowl of Nugget Crunch, most probably watching the very same episode. And Mom, sitting at the kitchen table beside her, asking her about her day and Maddy grunting answers back.

  What she’d give to just grab her coat, her wallet, walk out of the arch and get the first flight from JFK to Boston. What she’d give to walk up the front yard, on to the porch and ring the doorbell. To say, ‘Hi, Mom,’ when she opened the front door. ‘I’m your little girl all grown up. How’s tricks?’

  Most of all, what she’d give to step in past her mom, cross the hall into the kitchen, hunker down in front of that little girl, with her frizzy hair tied in a ponytail, her hands dirty, her jeans scuffed from playing soccer with the boys.

  ‘Hey there, Maddy, wanna know who I am?’

  Becks sat down beside her. Silent, studying her face intently, before she cocked her head curiously. ‘Maddy Carter. Why are you crying?’

  ‘Uh?’ She shook her head, her mind once again back in the archway, her eyes once more on the screen watching Homer trashing Ned Flanders’s lawnmower.

  ‘Dirt,’ she mumbled. ‘Dirt in my eye.’ She rubbed them dry under her glasses. ‘Becks?’

  ‘Yes, Maddy?’

  ‘You recall our last conversation with Foster?’

  ‘When we went to Central Park?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  That’s where she could find him same time, same day. For him, a moment that passed once; for her, looping back in their forty-eight-hour bubble, it could be a repeated encounter out there in the park, beside the duck pond.