The Eternal War tr-4

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘I recall your conversation with Foster.’

  ‘You remember we asked you when you could unlock that data … the decoded message in the Grail.’

  ‘Yes, Maddy, I remember that.’

  ‘You replied — ’

  ‘The data would be unlocked when it is the end.’

  ‘Yes … “the end”. What did you mean by that?’

  Becks cocked her head on one side. ‘It is the only answer the protocol permits me to offer.’

  ‘But what do you think it means? What is it referring to? The end of what?’

  Becks shrugged. ‘I have no data on that.’

  ‘The end of … me? You? The agency? The world?’

  The support unit’s grey eyes locked on hers. ‘I repeat, I have no data to interpret that message.’

  ‘Is there no way we could dig that hard drive out of your head and access that locked part of the drive? Scan it somehow? Siphon the data?’

  Becks studied her coolly.

  ‘No offence meant, Becks … but hacking open your skull and digging out your brain seems like the only way we’re going to find out what “the end” actually means.’

  ‘Tampering with my on-board computer would trigger the self-destruct mechanism. There is no viable way to bypass this protocol. The information will be revealed to you when certain conditions are met.’

  ‘But you don’t even know what those conditions are!’

  ‘I will know when it happens,’ she replied calmly. ‘Then you will know the contents of the message.’

  Maddy shook her head with frustration. ‘Argghh … you’re so annoying!’

  ‘I apologize.’

  She sighed. ‘Go and make yourself useful. Make some toast or something.’

  ‘Yes, Maddy.’ Becks turned obediently and headed towards their kitchen area. ‘And wash your hands first!’

  Maddy settled back into her chair and watched the world outside through her bank of monitors — the subtly changed world that now no longer recognized the name Abraham Lincoln.

  Secrets and freakin’ lies.

  She resumed her little daydream of going home, seeing Mom, seeing herself and kissing all this insane nonsense goodbye.

  CHAPTER 13

  1831, New Orleans

  The Jenkins amp; Proctor warehouse was quiet. Around them casks of wine and canvas sacks of cornmeal were piled high. Outside through the wooden slat walls they could hear voices of several dozen men, the bray of a pony, the smack of heavy oatmeal bags being dropped on the docks, the far-off hoot of a steamboat. The life of the day indulging in one last surge of activity before the sky lost its sun.

  Sal sat on a pile of sacks, exhausted from hours on her feet, but exhilarated by the world she’d witnessed.

  ‘Information: three minutes until the twenty-four-hour window is due to open.’

  Liam got to his feet and checked over the top of a stack of cargo to make sure, once again, that they were alone in the storehouse. ‘I do hope our friend Mr Lincoln has sobered up.’

  They’d checked back where they’d left him earlier this morning. He was gone. Not that that was surprising. The docks were a busy place from dawn and more than likely he’d crawled away holding a sore head for somewhere quieter to nurse his hangover.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Liam, ‘we’ll soon know if all’s better when we get back.’

  ‘Maybe he isn’t so important to history after all,’ said Sal. ‘I mean it was only a little change we saw, wasn’t it? Maybe that’s all that’s going to happen.’

  Bob retrieved data. ‘Historical accounts from the unaltered historical database indicate his strong leadership and the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 were critical to the North winning the war.’

  ‘The whuh?’

  Bob turned his gaze to Sal. ‘The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order by President Lincoln that all slaves were to be given their liberty. It was an order enacted in the third year of the war and applied only to some of the — ’

  ‘Shadd-yah!’ said Sal. ‘Third year of the war?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘But are you saying for the first three years the North had slaves too?’

  ‘Affirmative. There were slaves in the Union States.’

  ‘But … I thought that war was all about slavery? Started because of slavery!’ said Sal. ‘The North — the blue soldiers — were fighting to end it, and the South — the grey ones — wanted to keep it.’

  ‘There are a number of listed reasons for the war. Slavery was considered a secondary or contributory issue at the beginning of the war, but became a primary issue towards the end.’

  Liam sat down on a bag next to Sal. ‘I’ve been reading up on the civil war. I remember this … some historians said this Proclamation was a tactical decision to weaken the South. It was designed to cause unrest. But, more important than that, the British government was sort of thinking of coming to help the Confederate South …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they saw the North, the Union, as a growing threat. They were becoming too rich, too powerful. Becoming too big for their boots. Threatening British dominance. So the British government thought it might be better if America was divided, so they wanted to help the Southern states, the Confederates, split off and form their very own nation. That’s right, isn’t it, Bob?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘I have some conflicting data files on this. Historians disagree.’

  ‘But here was the problem, Sal … the British people were against the idea of slavery. So it wasn’t going to be easy for the government to convince their people to go along with helping the South. And this fella, President Lincoln, was a smart chap. He realized if this war’s headlining issue was all about slavery, if the British people could see more clearly that one side, the North side, was totally against it … then there was no way they’d let their government support the slave-masters in the South.’

  He shrugged. ‘It was the right thing … what’s the word … the moral thing to do, to free all the slaves,’ said Liam. ‘But, the way I see it, it was also very clever, like a chess move. To make sure the Confederates didn’t have Britain come into the war on their side.’

  Sal shook her head. ‘I thought it was much simpler than that. Right versus wrong.’

  Liam hunched his shoulders. ‘Wars are never about right and wrong. Always seems to be they end up being about power … money … something both sides want for themselves.’

  ‘Information: I am detecting the density probe.’

  Liam got up from the sacks of cornmeal wearily. They’d been walking through the early hours of the morning and most of the day and his legs ached. He turned and offered Sal a hand. ‘Ma’am?’

  She was struggling with the layers of linen and cotton petticoats and the tightly laced bodice to get to her feet.

  ‘Whuh?’ she said, looking at his hand, utterly bemused. ‘What do you want?’

  He sighed, grasped one of her gloved hands and yanked her up on to her feet. ‘Jayyyz, don’t gentlemen offer ladies a polite hand any more in your time?’

  She shook her head. ‘Uhhh, no, not really. I’d probably run if a stranger reached out for me like that.’

  ‘One minute left until extraction,’ said Bob.

  Liam suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘We’re probably going to have to come back here again, once we’re sure history’s been corrected.’

  Sal looked at him. ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Liam is correct,’ said Bob. ‘The distillery wagon represents altered history — ’

  ‘And we’ll need to trace it back and find just who caused them horses to bolt.’ Liam looked at Bob. ‘We should’ve followed it up last night, straight after saving Lincoln.’ Liam cursed, frustrated with himself for having been so dense. ‘Why didn’t you suggest that, Bob?’

  ‘It was not a stated mission priority.’

  Liam cursed again. ‘We’ll need to come back once more and trace back the way
that wagon came. See where it came from, find out what spooked them horses.’ He fumed in silence for a moment. ‘Jay-zus, that was stupid of me.’

  They waited for the window, listening to the bustling activity outside. Bob counted down the last ten seconds and then with a puff of air that sent Sal’s bonnet fluttering the shimmering orb of displaced time hovered darkly in front of them. Sal took a final look around the storage shed, savouring one last time the smells of woodsmoke, leather and horse manure.

  ‘I enjoyed my trip,’ she said, a little wistfully. ‘I wish …’ she started to say, but didn’t finish. She didn’t need to — Liam knew exactly what she was going to say.

  I wish we could stay.

  He nodded just to let her know he felt the same. ‘Best get going,’ he said finally.

  ‘Goodbye, 1831,’ she uttered, then reluctantly stepped through.

  Liam looked up at Bob. ‘Well, better get back home, then.’

  Bob nodded. ‘Correct.’

  They stepped into the displacement window one after the other.

  2001, New York

  A moment later Liam emerged from the milky void into the archway to see the three girls standing beside the computer desk, awaiting his arrival.

  ‘Hey-ho!’ he chirped as he strode towards them. ‘World saved … yet again!’

  Bob emerged from the portal behind him with a heavy grunt as his feet found the firm concrete.

  ‘Stand clear!’ said Maddy as she turned round to the desk to instruct computer-Bob to close the portal.

  Liam stepped towards Maddy. ‘Me an’ Bob need to go back again, Maddy. We didn’t manage to …’ He stopped. Saw Sal’s eyes suddenly wide, a white-gloved hand raised to her mouth.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Behind him the crackling burr of energy around the portal suddenly ceased as it snapped out of existence and the archway was its normal quiet hum of computers and the fizz of tube lights flickering a cool clinical glow down from above.

  ‘Good God! … What is this … devilry?’

  Liam spun round on his heel to see a tall young man crouched and cowering in panic and confusion in the middle of the floor, eyes as wide, terrified and startled as a bull in an abattoir.

  ‘Oh great,’ sighed Liam.

  CHAPTER 14

  2001, New York

  The man recoiled fearfully at the sight of Bob, taking several quick steps away from him. ‘WHAT IS THIS P-PLACE?’ he bellowed anxiously. His eyes darting from one of them to the next.

  It was Maddy who reacted first. She took several steps forward. ‘Liam? Is that …? Oh crud, that’s not …?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, Mads. It’s Lincoln.’

  Her jaw hung slack. ‘Oh my God!’ She advanced slowly. ‘Mr Lincoln? Abraham Lincoln?’

  Lincoln’s manic eyes settled on her. His shaggy eyebrows scowled, covering his fear with suspicion. ‘You … you know me, ma’am?’

  Maddy nodded. She even offered him something that looked like a polite curtsey. ‘Yes, Mr Lincoln. Yes we do.’

  Lincoln’s voice softened from an outraged courthouse bellow to something quieter and altogether more agreeable. ‘Then … please, ma’am, tell me where in tarnation I have suddenly ended up.’ He looked around the brick archway. ‘Just a moment ago I was in the Jenkins storehouse.’ His eyes fell on Liam. ‘Listening to you, sir, and your two friends talking about things incomprehensible to me.’

  Liam cursed his carelessness. ‘Jay-zus, he must have been following us!’

  Lincoln carried on. ‘And then I saw that … that round … doorway appear out of — ’ Lincoln’s deep growl of a voice became a breathless whisper and his mouth snapped open and shut like a fish caught on a hook and landed on a riverbank. ‘It arrived out of nothing! Like smoke, like … like a vision of angels. Like …’

  Sal chuckled at that.

  ‘Fool that I am, I dared to step through.’ He glanced at Liam. ‘To follow you through, sir, through the … that … that doorway, and find myself in a … an unearthly whiteness!’ He scratched anxiously at the thick bristles of his beard. ‘Then I find myself here … in this strange place!’

  Maddy took another step forward, now only a yard from him. ‘You can relax, Mr Lincoln. Please … it’s all right, it’s OK. You’re perfectly safe here.’

  Lincoln studied her in suspicious silence for a moment. ‘You, ma’am. You sound less foreign to me than the others.’ He nodded at Bob. ‘Particularly that ugly ox of a man there. Good God! If I had a dog as ugly, I’d shave its posterior and teach it to walk backwards!’

  Lincoln chortled drunkenly at his own joke.

  Maddy shook her head. He’s been drinking.

  ‘Now you, ma’am,’ he said, eyeing Maddy warily, ‘you have the sound of New England in your voice.’

  ‘Boston,’ she replied. ‘I’m from Boston.’

  Lincoln nodded slowly. ‘And I trust you have a name?’

  ‘Maddy. Maddy Carter.’ She offered her hand to him. ‘We mean you no harm … In fact, we came back in time to save you.’

  For several moments he regarded her hand as if it was a snarling dog ready to snap at his fingers. ‘Save me?’

  She nodded. ‘You nearly stepped right in front of a speeding wagon.’

  ‘Aye. It was Bob here,’ said Liam, slapping his meaty shoulder, ‘that yanked you back out of the way. Do you not remember?’

  Lincoln remembered that. Remembered being winded and lying on his back. But then it was all a confusing mixture of things he might or might not have seen or heard. The only thing he’d been sure of was the whispered conversation in the dark of the dockside. The mention of his name. The mention of a destiny. The mention of the Jenkins storehouse and the specific time of some mysterious rendezvous.

  ‘Yes, perhaps I do remember something of that,’ uttered Lincoln. He cocked a bushy eyebrow, narrowed his eyes as he struggled to make some sense of his whisky-soaked recollection. ‘A big … fast wagon? Barrels on it … was it?’

  Liam nodded. ‘Aye. A distillery wagon. The horses were running wild, so they were.’

  ‘There, you see?’ said Maddy. ‘Liam and the others went back to save you.’

  ‘Back?’ Lincoln nodded. ‘That’s some of what I heard these three say to each other. Back … they came back in time?’

  Maddy shot a look of irritation at Liam and Sal. Careless talk. They should’ve been much more cautious in what they were saying and where they were saying it.

  ‘Yes, Mr Lincoln,’ she admitted. ‘Yes … they actually came back in time.’

  Lincoln’s scowl vanished and was replaced in an instant with a smile that looked horrifically out of place beneath his dark brooding eyes. ‘INCREDIBLE!’ He suddenly grasped her hand firmly and shook it. ‘Most incredible!’ He let her hand go and advanced towards the others.

  ‘Sir!’ he said, reaching out for one of Bob’s large paws. ‘Sir! As unsettlingly strange as you look, I am indebted to you for saving my life as you did!’ Lincoln’s energetic voice filled the archway as he pumped Bob’s arm furiously.

  Bob looked at Liam for help.

  ‘Just say “no problem”, Bob.’

  ‘No problem,’ he rumbled.

  ‘And you, sir!’ he greeted Liam. ‘You, sir, I suspect, by the way you talk, are from Ireland!’

  ‘Cork in Ireland, aye. Liam O’Connor at your service.’

  ‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr O’Connor!’

  He let Liam’s hand go and then graciously bowed in front of Sal, taking a gloved hand and kissing it. ‘Young madam!’

  Sal giggled as if his kiss had tickled. ‘I’m Saleena Vikram. Uhh … just call me Sal.’

  He glanced at Becks, reaching for her hand. She eyed him distrustfully as he grasped it and then, about to kiss it, he hesitated, taken aback by the livid ribs and swirls of scar tissue running across her hand, her forearm, all the way up to her elbow. He quickly released his tight grasp.

  ‘You … you have bee
n in a fire. I am sorry. I hope I haven’t hurt you, ma’am?’

  ‘I am called Becks,’ she said coolly. She looked up at Maddy, who offered her a subtle nod. ‘Yes, that’s right, a fire. But I am all better now.’

  He nodded politely. Finally he turned back to Maddy. ‘And you, Miss Carter, I presume you lead this small and remarkable group of mysterious heroes and heroines?’

  She shrugged self-consciously. ‘I muddle through somehow I guess, Mr Lincoln.’

  He stood back, hands on hips to study them all. ‘Quite remarkable,’ he uttered again. ‘And am I to truly believe that I am standing in a time that is in my future?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maddy.

  Lincoln looked at the row of computer monitors on the desk, different sizes displaying different news feeds from around the world. ‘And those pictures … those moving pictures, they are of this time?’

  ‘Yes … live cable-news feeds,’ she replied, realizing as she did that there was little in that answer he’d understand.

  He leaned forward, studying them closely one after the other. ‘Remarkable. Like … like little windows looking out upon every corner of this world of …’ His words died as he pulled in a gasp.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he yelled, stepping towards the monitor on the end. ‘These buildings! Are they as giant as they appear?’ he said, pointing at one screen. Maddy turned round. On one screen MSNBC was doing a news story on Wall Street. There was a library image taken from a news helicopter of Manhattan’s skyscrapers.

  ‘Oh yeah … that’s New York. Where we are right now.’

  ‘New York, you say?’ Lincoln bent over the messy desk, peering closely at the monitor. ‘That is New York! Remarkable!’

  Liam gently nudged Maddy as Lincoln’s gaze wandered from screen to screen, muttering with ever-increasing incredulity.

  ‘Are we not causing contamination here, Maddy?’ he whispered. ‘I mean he has to go back, so … to be the President of the Union states?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ she replied.

  ‘Surely we can’t send him back to his time knowing about all this?’