by Alex Scarrow
She cursed quietly. ‘He already knows too much. I need to think what we’re — ’
‘GOOD GOD!’ Lincoln suddenly exclaimed. ‘A DISASTER!’
‘What now?’ Maddy pulled away from Liam and rushed forward. ‘What is it?’
Lincoln’s pointed finger was shaking. ‘A calamity, Miss Carter, a calamity I tell you! Right there through this window! Look!’
She followed his goggle-eyed gaze and saw he was watching the looping footage of tomorrow’s trade towers disaster.
‘No … no, see, relax, this isn’t live.’ She shook her head, wondering how she was going to explain the difference between live footage and recorded footage to a man who’d never seen a moving image before.
‘Are there people living in that structure? That tall tower?’ He turned to her. ‘In what city is that explosion happening?’
‘New York.’
‘Tarnation! You mean here? This very place?’ Lincoln turned to the others. ‘Is this future of yours in the middle of some war?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘Well, sort of …’
‘Then we must join the fight!’ Lincoln turned and rushed into the gloom towards the far end of the archway.
‘Mr Lincoln!’ called Maddy. There was no answer. But she could hear the corrugated-iron shutters rattling under the impact of his fists. ‘Oh crud … he’s a real pain,’ she groaned, and made her way across the floor to join him.
‘Mr Lincoln?’
‘Where is the door, Miss Carter? We must join this fight and defend our — ’
‘Mr Lincoln … will you please calm down!’ She pressed the green button to one side of the shutter door and with the whine of the motor and the clank of chains, the shutter lifted, spilling evening light across the archway’s floor through the slowly widening crack.
‘There’s no war going on right now! No invasion of America!’
‘But I saw it just then, Miss Carter, with my own eyes! A vast explosion!’
‘It’s just an image of something that’s going to happen. That’s all. Nothing you need to get all upset about! OK? Look … everything’s fine outside right now!’
The shutter rattled to a halt. For a moment she was unsure whether to show Lincoln the world outside. The more details he learned of the future, the more contaminated his mind was going to be. For an anonymous man with little or no influence on history, that might be an acceptable contamination. But for a man destined to be president …? Well, like she’d said, he already knew too much. A little more wasn’t going to make any difference either way.
‘Take a look … everything’s just fine.’
She gently ushered Lincoln forward, stepping into the cobbled alley. She grabbed his shoulders and turned him to his left, so that he faced the end of their backstreet and the dirty, rubbish-strewn quayside beyond. Above them the Williamsburg Bridge swept across the East River towards the glowing lights of Manhattan. It boomed and rumbled as a train went over above, drowning out the tooting of bridge-borne traffic above and the distant wail of a police siren.
‘See now? Nothing’s going on. There’s no war!’
‘God help me! This … is … quite … rem-’
‘Let me guess. Remarkable?’ she finished for him.
Lincoln didn’t reply. Instead she heard a gurgling sound. She turned in time to see Lincoln’s eyes rolling drunkenly until she could see only the whites. His head lolled to one side; his body slackened like a rag doll, but remained upright and standing. It was then she noticed the thick fingers of Bob’s hand round his throat, and Bob standing behind.
‘My God! You just killed him! You just snapped Abraham Lincoln’s neck!’
‘Negative,’ said Bob. ‘He is unharmed and unconscious. I have compressed a nerve cluster in his neck.’
Sal, Liam and Becks emerged into the flickering amber lamplight of the backstreet. ‘I’m sorry. It was my suggestion,’ said Liam. ‘I gave Bob the order to do that.’
Maddy looked anxiously at Lincoln’s body slumped in Bob’s arms. ‘You sure he’s not … you know, dead?’
‘He will be fine,’ said Becks. ‘Information: he will experience some bruising and some minor swelling only.’
Maddy pulled on her bottom lip for a moment, then finally nodded. ‘Right … yeah, in that case, good idea, Liam. With any luck he’ll wake up back in New Orleans thinking this was all some sort of a drunken dream. He’ll blame it on the whisky.’ She stepped back inside the arch. ‘Quick, let’s get the displacement machine charged up before he comes round.’
CHAPTER 15
2001, New York
It took ten minutes to get three-quarters of the LEDs on the charge display lit up. Maddy was certain that was going to be enough. She only needed to send the unconscious form of Lincoln and Bob, perhaps Liam too, back to 1831. She turned round to check Bob and Sal were still keeping an eye on the man, curled up on one of the armchairs.
‘How is he?’
‘Still out,’ replied Sal, looking up from reading something on the table.
‘OK, computer-Bob, we’ll use the same drop-location data as the last trip. Punch them in to just before they rescued Lincoln from that wagon.’
› Affirmative, Maddy.
‘When he wakes up, he’ll think he passed out right outside that inn you mentioned, Liam.’
‘Right. Then me an’ Bob need to sniff out what caused that wagon to go hammer and tongs.’
‘You got it.’ She turned to the webcam. ‘Oh, and get a density probe running.’
Last thing they needed was a dock worker in there witnessing the arrival of Lincoln and heralding him as some kind of prophet from God.
› Density probe is activated.
Liam was standing beside her. ‘He’s a character, so. That Lincoln fella.’
‘A regular firebrand,’ she tutted. ‘Too much energy for his own good, like a freakin’ toddler on a sugar rush.’ She pulled up the density-probe display bar and nodded with satisfaction that nothing so far had stepped through their drop space. ‘If he’d been alive in my time, I guess he’d make a pretty good children’s TV presenter … except for the fact he’d scare the kids with that monobrow.’
Liam laughed. He got the gist of that. ‘Still … I suppose it’s energy like that that makes a poor farmer’s son a president?’
She nodded. ‘I guess so. I’d like to think that — ’
The MSNBC news feed flickered. Both of them caught the sudden change out of the corner of their eyes — the news reporter standing outside the White House and reporting on President Bush’s sliding approval ratings had been wearing a pale blue shirt and a black tie … all of a sudden he was now wearing a white shirt with a dark red tie.
‘Did you see that?’ said Maddy.
More than the shirt and tie, a second ago his skin had been a coffee colour, now it was white. The same face, the same dark hair slicked back, but the skin had lightened a tone, as if some studio engineer had adjusted the contrast setting on a camera.
Maddy turned in her chair. ‘Sal … I think we just had another wave. Bigger one, this time.’
Sal was on her feet. ‘I’ll go look outside.’ They’d left the five-dollar note just outside the shutter, hidden beneath a discarded McDonald’s carton. On one side was the Abraham Lincoln image. She wondered if this time wave would have wiped his face off the note and replaced it with another scowling president.
Maddy turned in her seat back to Liam. ‘OK, I think we need to put Abe back pretty fast.’ She winced at the sight of the empty perspex tube. It would take too long filling it up again. ‘You guys are going back dry.’ She looked at Liam, still wearing his morning coat and cravat … and Bob, still dressed like a dock worker. ‘And you’re still all dressed right … so we’re good to go.’
The noise of the shutter cranking up echoed across to them. Sal stepped outside into the evening. ‘Looks the same!’ she called in. ‘Manhattan’s still there!’
Maddy sniffed and wiped her nose. ‘Well, tha
t’s something, then.’
‘Jahulla!’ Sal came rushing back in.
‘What?’
She ran over to the computer desk. ‘Look! See?’ She spread the five-dollar note out on the desk. Lincoln’s face was gone and, just as Maddy had expected, in his place was another elder statesman with mutton-chop whiskers and a joyless frown.
Becks joined them, looking down at the note. ‘Lincoln’s presence has been completely removed from this timeline.’
Maddy nodded. ‘No Lincoln memorial in Washington, then … or — ’
‘STOP!’ Bob’s voice suddenly boomed. They all turned just in time to see the heels of Bob’s boots disappear out of sight through the open shutter door and out into the alley. Becks responded immediately and sprinted across the archway to join him.
Liam looked at the armchair where Lincoln had been slumped unconscious just moments ago. ‘He’s only gone and done a bleedin’ runner!’
Lincoln’s long legs carried him swiftly down the cobbled backstreet, the soles of his boots slapping the ground like an audience clapping applause at his death-defying escape into the darkness.
Behind him, two dozen yards and no more, he could hear the heavier footfall of that giant of a man moving with a quite unbelievable agility. Lincoln was a fast runner; as a boy in Coles County, Illinois, he had won every race with his friends — legs like a stallion, his father used to say.
The busy end of the street opened up in front of him. He could see mesmerizing lights of all kinds and all colours: lights on horseless carriages, lights down the sides of buildings, distant winking lights far up in the sky.
He passed a large, barrel-sized bucket of rotting garbage and yanked at it. In his wake he heard it fall, spilling a small avalanche of stinking refuse across the cobblestones. He chanced a glance over his shoulder just in time to see the giant man slip in the rotten mush and lose his footing.
‘Ha haaaa!’ he yelled triumphantly as his pounding feet now found firm tarmac, and instinctively he turned left on to the busier street, resolving not to allow the bewildering sights of the future tempt him to hesitate and lose the hard-earned lead on his pursuer.
But even with his sprinter’s legs carrying him fast and away from those mysterious travellers in time, who quite clearly were intent on taking him back to his hopeless, back-breaking and dead-end life in New Orleans, his mind continued to spin like a yarn wheel at the incredible sights and smells and sounds all around him.
This is the future of America, he told himself … the future, the future, the future … his feet slapping pavement to the rhythm of his mantra. He felt as excited as a dog with two tails.
This is the future! And, by Jove … I think I like the look of it!
CHAPTER 16
2001, New York
‘Oh, come on … you’ve gotta be kidding!’ Maddy slammed her hand on the desk, exasperated. ‘You lost him? Both of you? You actually lost him?’
Becks and Bob stood side by side, both still gasping from the aborted pursuit.
‘Abraham Lincoln is very fast,’ said Becks, a hint of shame in her voice.
‘Yes, and you — and numb-nuts here — are both meant to be superhumans! You know? Super-strong? Super-fast? That kinda thing?’
‘His sudden departure was not something that could be predicted,’ muttered Bob, like a scolded schoolboy. ‘He appeared to be unconscious.’
‘Perhaps he was faking it?’ said Sal. ‘Listening to what we were saying?’
Liam nodded. ‘And didn’t fancy going back home.’
‘Well … duh,’ sighed Maddy, removing her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘You really think?’
Liam missed the sarcasm in her voice. ‘Yup, that’s what I think.’
‘Oh crud.’ She slumped down in one of the office chairs. ‘So how’re we going to find him now? He could be anywhere in New York.’
The five of them stood in a silent tableau for a while. In the background several TV stations quietly babbled the evening news to themselves.
‘Why are we so completely rubbish?’ Maddy muttered rhetorically. ‘Super-secret time-travel-prevention agency? I’ll tell you what we are … a freakin’ joke. That’s us. Three clueless kids and a couple of trained monkeys.’ She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and started massaging away an emerging migraine with the tips of her fingers.
‘Well, to look at it this way,’ said Liam presently, ‘he’s a tall mouthy fella, so he is, wearing clothes from the last century. Someone’s going to notice him soon enough.’
‘And your point is?’
Liam shrugged. ‘He might cause a scene and end up on one of ’em news stations?’
‘Or get himself arrested,’ added Sal. ‘Weirdo like that.’
Maddy shook her head irritably. ‘This is New York, Sal. It’s all weirdos.’
‘But he’s got a mouth on him, so he has,’ said Liam. ‘I fancy that’ll land him in trouble with a policeman soon enough.’
An attitude. He has that all right.
Maddy suddenly opened her eyes. ‘Oh God! And lead the police right here! Right to our door!’
‘Information: we can establish an unencrypted and open link to the NYPD incident-report database,’ said Bob.
‘We could monitor this and respond to any relevant coms traffic,’ added Becks quickly. The pair of them were like two chastised children, both desperately seeking to redeem themselves.
Maddy sat forward, the chair creaking with the sudden lurch of movement. ‘OK, yeah, that’s … that’s something we can do.’
She turned towards the computer monitors and saw computer-Bob was already in the process of establishing a handshake link to the New York Police Department’s computer system.
‘Good boy, computer-Bob.’ She turned back to the others. ‘And maybe we’ll find him anyway, right? I mean he’s got no money so he can’t get a cab or a bus or a train. And he isn’t going to get a room anywhere looking the way he does. Thing is … where might he head?’
‘Over the bridge,’ said Sal. ‘Towards Manhattan … towards the bright lights.’
Liam nodded. ‘It’s what I would’ve done on me first night. You just want to see all that up close.’
‘Yeah …’ Maddy pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘He really did seem to like the big buildings. OK, then. Right, here’s what we do. We’ll split up and search for him. Bob and Sal, you two head over the bridge and go north up Bowery, Fourth and Broadway towards Times Square. Liam and Becks, you head down towards Wall Street. Those are the two glowiest, shiniest parts of town, right? Hopefully, he’ll make like a big dumb moth and head to one of those two places. If we’re lucky.’
She fumbled among the detritus and rubbish on the desk and found what she was looking for. She tossed Liam and Sal a mobile phone each. ‘I’ll monitor the police call-ins here. If we get a likely candidate, I’ll dial it in.’
Liam frowned. ‘Dial it in?’
‘Call you! On the phone … the thing in your hand! I’ll call you on that!’
‘Ahh.’ He nodded. ‘Right you are.’
‘So, is that clear, everyone?’
Four nodding heads.
‘And, Sal, Liam … Bob. Get changed back into your normal clothes. Quick as you can. You look like a convention of Quakers or something.’
CHAPTER 17
2001, New York
Lincoln stood in awe at the confusion of blinking, fizzing, flickering multicoloured lights, the neon signs in Chinese, pedestrian crossings blinking WALK and DON’T WALK, the cars and cabs looking to his eyes like impossible devices that shouldn’t be able to move on their own without the aid of horses in front — and yet they did.
His ears were filled with a riot of alien sounds, sounds he couldn’t begin to make sense of: a rhythmic pounding that spilled out of the back of a vehicle as it rolled past him, a noise so deep he felt his chest shuddering in synchronicity; the pavements and street filled with people speaking languages from all over the w
orld, so it seemed, every one of them holding slim and shiny pebble-shaped contraptions to their ears and talking into them or alternately looking intently at their tiny glowing surfaces.
Languages, so many of them, but the most perplexing ones were those he had an inkling were some form of unidentifiable English. He could make sense of fleeting bits and pieces said, phrases shouted out from one side of the street to the other and peppered with words he couldn’t begin to try to decipher.
It was awe at first, and pride, that almost had him crying. Pride that his nation, his fellow Americans, ambitious and brave men and women, pioneers, adventurers and entrepreneurs, all of them, would one day build something so magnificently, toweringly spectacular and ingenious and colourful as this incredible city of glowing cathedrals.
‘Hell’s bells and tarnation!’ he gasped out loud. Even his thunderous voice was lost amid the bustling din of Chinatown. ‘This is a truly remarkable place!’ He shook his head with utter incredulity. ‘Truly remarkable!’
It was then a short woman standing directly in front of him said something.
He cupped an ear, realizing she was talking to him. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am?’
She looked to him to be Oriental and giggled shyly as she spoke. He bent down low, almost doubling over to hear her better.
‘It is very noisy, ma’am. Pray you might speak a little louder.’
She spoke again. ‘Like yoo hat very much!’
‘My hat?’ He self-consciously touched the brim of his battered felt-topper. ‘Why thank you!’
Then without warning the woman whipped an object out from her handbag. It glistened gun-metal grey, square like a tinder-box, with one glassy eye that glinted dully at him.
‘Ma’am? What may I ask are you — ?’
She pulled the small device up to her face and said, ‘You smile now, please?’
A blinding flash of light suddenly exploded from it and Lincoln staggered back, screaming in abject terror, quite certain the device was some sort of weapon and that he’d been shot at.
