THE H-BOMB GIRL

by Stephen Baxter

  Even Bernadette sounded spooked now. “What do these numbers mean?”

  Laura couldn’t help smiling. “It’s the twenty-four-hour clock. My dad uses it in the air force. 20:38. That’s, oh, nearly twenty to nine.”

  “It’s a wristwatch.”

  “Yes.”

  Joel held it to his ear. “I can’t hear the clockwork.”

  “Whoah.” Now Bernadette pulled out a silver case, the size of a small cigarette packet. “Look at this. It’s cracker.”

  “What do you think it is?” Joel asked. “A ciggie case?”

  “Maybe. Look, it’s got a hinge.” Bernadette delicately pushed her fingernail into a seam. The gadget opened up easily, and it lit up, silver-blue. In its top half it had a little screen, like a tiny telly, and there were buttons in the bottom half with the numbers 0 to 9 set out in a square, and other buttons with arrows and other symbols. Each button glowed individually, like a tiny jewel.

  The soft blue light lit up their faces. Bernadette said, “I want one.”

  Joel said, “They don’t even have stuff like this in America.”

  Bernadette said, “You know, H-Bomb Girl, I thought you were cracked. I only came here for a laugh. I didn’t think we’d find anything in here but a half-bottle of gin. But there really is something going on, isn’t there?”

  Joel was peering at the screen on the little gadget. “But what is it? Look. There’s writing. Beside that green phone symbol.”

  Laura looked. There were two lines of text.

  PEACE THROUGH WAR

  2 incoming calls

  “ ‘Peace through war’? What does that mean?” Bernadette asked.

  “No idea,” Laura said.

  “And, calls? What kind of calls?”

  Joel shrugged. “Phone calls, maybe.”

  Bernadette snorted. “Don’t be a divvy.” She pointed to the clunky staffroom phone that sat on the table in the middle of the room. “That is a phone.”

  “Then you tell me what this little green phone-shaped sign means—”

  The door opened. Light flooded into the room. Bernadette snapped the “phone” shut. The three of them ducked behind the table.

  Somebody came in, singing “Livin’ Doll.” Laura recognised the voice. It was Mr Britten, the head. He crossed to the table, picked up something, turned and left, still singing as he closed the door.

  Joel blew out his cheeks. “He just picked up his fags. He didn’t even notice the locker door swinging open.”

  Bernadette shrugged. “People see what they expect to see.” She looked at the “phone” gadget, which nestled in the palm of her hand, slim and beautiful. “I’m having a souvenir.” She slipped the phone into her pocket.

  Laura hissed, “Bern, put it back.”

  Bernadette put her fingers to her lips. “They’ll hear you.”

  Joel was stuffing the cards back into the leather wallet. And he looked again at the “driving licence.” “Laura,” he said. His voice was flat. “You ought to have a look at this.”

  “We need to go—”

  “I mean it. Look.”

  Beside the picture of Miss Wells there was a list of details. There was a name, but it wasn’t “Wells.”

  1 Mann

  2 Laura Mary

  3 Date of birth 6-9-48 United Kingdom

  4 Date of issue 12-3-07…

  Bern looked at this, and at Laura. “Let me guess what your birthday is.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And what your middle name is. And you must have been born in 1948, the same as me—”

  Laura couldn’t deal with this. “Shut up.”

  “What about this other date?” Joel whispered. “Do you think this means 1907? No, of course not. Two thousand and seven. Forty-odd years from now.” He looked at Laura. “When you will be about sixty.”

  “Like Miss Wells,” Bern whispered. “Blimey, H-Bomb Girl. Miss Wells isn’t your auntie. She’s—”

  There were footsteps.

  Bern shoved the wallet back in the locker and slipped on the padlock, and they all hid in the shadows.

  Friday 19th October. 9:30 p.m.

  Just in from the school.

  The front door had been unlocked. There was no sign of Mort. A wireless boomed out from upstairs, Mum’s room. Mum was probably sleeping off the wine she’d drunk during the day.

  Laura wrote down her thoughts as they came to her.

  I can’t believe it.

  What if it’s true?

  It would make sense. All those times when Miss Wells said things like, “One day they will call you baby boomers.” As if she knew about the future.

  And, “Who can you trust if not me?”

  And when she talked about Mum she called her “Mum.”

  How can she be here? I mean, how can I be here? What do I want?

  Why do I hate her so much?

  It had been easier when she had just thought Miss Wells was a spy.

  She wished she had somebody to talk this over with.

  Restless, she went downstairs. She made herself a cup of tea, and a jam sandwich. Alone in the parlour with the telly, she glanced at a newspaper, the Liverpool Echo, to see what was on. Steptoe and Son.

  She couldn’t be bothered. She was too shaken up for the telly. She prowled around the living room, and the parlour, avoiding all Mort’s neatly stacked stuff, his shirts and his socks. She walked past the old dear’s rows of books on their shelves. Unread Reader’s Digest editions of classics, Dickens and Jane Austen.

  Something looked different.

  She ran her finger along the shelf before the books. There was plenty of dust. It had been dusty when they moved in, and nobody had done much housekeeping since.

  But there was a space where there was no dust at all.

  She stood back, just looking at this gap in the dust, about eighteen inches long. She pulled the books off the shelf, stacking them on the coffee table.

  There was something tucked away behind the books.

  She reached in. It was a kind of tile, eighteen inches square, made of black plastic. It had a couple of symbols on it, an apple with a chunk bitten out of it, and a little silver panel that said “Intel.” Laura thought it was solid at first, but it had a seam running around its edge.

  Remembering Bernadette and the phone, she stuck her fingernails into the seam, and carefully prised the tile open.

  It was like a giant version of the “phone,” with a flat screen in the lid, and buttons in the base. No, not buttons. They were keys, set out in the QWERTYUIOP layout of the typewriters she was learning to use at school. But the keys were just flat pads.

  And, after a couple of seconds, just like the phone, the screen lit up. Swirling patterns ran across it, in colour, unlike the silvery black-and-white of the telly. Images coalesced, of a green Earth in an iron fist, and a slogan written underneath: PEACE THROUGH WAR.

  Whatever it meant, whatever this gadget was for, the slogan proved Mort really was working with Miss Wells.

  Then a message appeared: “Computer ready, Colonel Mortinelli. Wireless link established to central server. Please enter password.”

  Laura had seen computers. Her class in Wycombe had been taken to a bank processing centre in London. Computers were boxes the size of wardrobes with lights and dials, and with tapes and punched cards and paper tapes whirring away. This couldn’t be a computer. So what, then?

  Half of her didn’t believe this was happening. It was so like a scene in James Bond it wasn’t true.

  She would much rather have found nothing but dust behind these books, just as she would rather have found nothing but fag packets in Miss Wells’s locker. With every new bit of evidence she found, it became more obvious that something very odd was happening to her, that she was the centre of a strange and silent conspiracy, even at school, even in her own home.

  And she was becoming more and more convinced that it was all about the Key, a nuclear bomber starter key that she wore around her ne
ck, on the eve of a nuclear war.

  She folded up the “computer,” put it back on its shelf, and restored the books.

  Then she washed the last dishes, locked the front and back doors, checked all the downstairs windows were closed, and went to bed.

  Chapter 10

  Saturday 20th October. 9 a.m.

  One week to Black Saturday. And then what?

  Here’s a spooky thought. If Miss Wells is me from the future, then she must know what happened on Black Saturday. Or will happen. She’s not just guessing.

  I’ll find out in a week. I don’t think I want to know.

  Phone call at 7 a.m. Ran downstairs to make sure it was me who took the call.

  It was Dad. I asked him to give me a number to call him back. I want to be able to talk to him without anybody else listening in. After all, it’s his Key. He didn’t argue. I wrote the number on my hand. Then he rang off. It can’t have been more than a ten-second call.

  At breakfast Mum asked me who rang. Wrong number, I said.

  Mort came in from the parlour wearing a crisp white shirt. Who rang? Wrong number. He stared at me.

  He knows I’m lying. And I know the truth about him. Some of it anyway. And he knows I know.

  All these secrets, all these lies, in my head, and in Mort’s. I hate it. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a spy.

  Mort hasn’t read this diary yet. Well, I don’t think so. After I found he’d been searching my room I put the diary at the back of my chest of drawers, and used the Boy Scout hair trick again. Of course Mort could have stuck the hair back to fool me. But he was stupid about the dust on the bookshelf. I’m keeping the diary with me from now on, in my satchel or a coat pocket. Mort can rummage through my grubby socks all he likes.

  I don’t think Mum has a clue what’s going on. She’s stuck in some fantasy about 1944. She’s no help.

  This morning I’m meeting Bern and Joel in town. The longer I can stay out of this house the better.

  She got off the bus outside Saint George’s Hall, the great black acropolis near Lime Street Station.

  She stopped at the first free phone box she found. Feeding the slot with coins, she called Dad with the number written on her palm.

  Dad got straight to news about Cuba, where things were getting tight. The Americans were preparing for an invasion, which would mean war with the Russians. But the good news was that it might not come to that. President Kennedy had come up with a plan.

  Dad said, “He’s sending out his navy to stop more Russian ships coming to Cuba. They’re calling it a ‘quarantine.’ It sounds less aggressive than a blockade.”

  “Do the Russians know about it?”

  “Not yet. Kennedy will go public in a day or two.”

  “Dad, I don’t see how this is good news.”

  “Because it’s a middle way. Kennedy hasn’t just given up. On the other hand he hasn’t started shooting. He’s talking, really. ‘Look here, Khrushchev old bean, that’s far enough with your ships and what-not. Now let’s talk this over like sensible chaps.’”

  “Why not just phone?”

  “Well, there’s no way to do that,” Dad said. “No direct line between Washington and Moscow. But while the ships are facing each other out in the ocean, the politicians and ambassadors are at it behind the scenes.”

  “But it could still go wrong.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s the other side of the world from Russia. Communications aren’t always very good. If some hothead on either side decides it would be wizard to take a pot-shot—well, the balloon could well and truly go up. But I’m hopeful, Laura. There are still ways to back out of this without anybody getting killed. Still time, too.

  “Look, Laura, you understand I’m only telling you this because, you know, if the worst comes to the worst you might have to get along without me. But you must try not to worry.”

  “I’ll try.”

  There was a silence, except for crackles on the line. “Are you sure everything’s all right, chicken? You sound a bit down.”

  She longed to tell him the truth. Or what she believed was the truth. About Miss Wells and Mort and the Minuteman. “It’s just that things are a little spooky, Dad. And Mum—”

  “I know. She has her own issues. Look, Laura. The situation with Mort is—well, it’s complicated. But he’s a soldier and he’s a decent man, and if the worst comes to the worst he will do the right thing by the two of you. That’s one reason I was willing to let him lodge with you. So you must try not to be anxious, even though I’m not there. And you always have the Key.”

  But the Key, she thought, was the source of all her problems.

  She found herself saying, “Yes, Dad, I’m fine, I’m not worried.” There was a corner of her mind that said, I shouldn’t have to be doing this. The adults are supposed to reassure me. But this was the way things were, and she just had to get on with it.

  They talked a little more, about school and Mum and telly shows. Then he was called away.

  She hung up the phone handset. She rubbed her hands to get the number off her palm. But she memorised it first.

  She walked down Whitechapel towards Church Street.

  It was a bright, sunny Saturday morning, and the city centre pavements were swarming. There were fashion stores with windows full of slim plaster dummies modelling leather coats and finely stitched blue jeans. There were Italian cafes and espresso bars, full of gleaming coffee machines and chatting teenagers. And there were record stores like NEMS, the giant three-floor store on Whitechapel run by the man who, it was said, managed the Beatles, the most popular beat group in the city.

  Laura felt distant from all this. Since finding out who Miss Wells really was, she had felt differently about things. Now it was as if she saw these shopping streets through Miss Wells’s eyes. As if she was remembering this day, when she was nearly sixty years old, off in the year 2007.

  To the shoppers, it was as if this sunny Saturday morning, with money in your pocket and stores piled high with goods, was the way the world had always been, and always would be. But the last war was only seventeen years ago. And the next war might only be a week away. That was reality. All this stuff, the shops and the laughing crowds, was a kind of dream, between the waking-up of wars.

  She found Bernadette and Joel waiting for her outside C&A, as they’d promised.

  Bernadette shot at her, “You’ve got a face like a farmer’s arse on a frosty morning. I don’t know why we bother with you.”

  “Neither do I,” Laura said defiantly. “Haven’t you got any other friends?”

  “None as interesting as you,” Joel said. “H-Bomb Girl.”

  Nobody liked a misery. She’d learned that at her old school, when her parents had started to go through the Separation. Unhappiness was a bad smell people ran away from.

  So she smiled, and linked their arms. “Let’s hit the shops.”

  Joel snorted. “Yeah. And gawp at all the stuff we can’t afford.”

  They started off in C&A Mode, a fashion department. Bernadette nearly wept over a leather coat, three-quarter length and chocolate brown. But it cost seventeen pounds, more than a good weekly pay packet. Still, she tried it on, and for two minutes walked around like a movie star, while Joel wolf-whistled.

  Bernadette looked terrific, Laura thought. She was tall enough to pass for a few years older, and her face, while not beautiful, had good cheekbones and a strong mouth. Her make-up was bold and skilfully applied, and her blonde hair was swept up in a neat beehive. She was pale, though, under her make-up, and Laura remembered her throwing up earlier in the week.

  They went to a Wimpy Bar for lunch. There was actually a queue outside, and they had to wait for a table. It was a fun place, all Formica tables and brightly painted walls. On the table was a wipe-clean menu with pictures of the food you could buy, and a plastic squeezy tomato that you could squirt ketchup out of. Pop music blared out of speakers in the ceiling, Adam Faith and Cliff Richard.

 
There was nobody over about twenty in here. Everybody seemed to like the new American-ness, compared to the drabness of most British stuff.

  They ordered hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and Pepsi Colas, and Laura thought she might have a knickerbocker glory to follow.

  Nick O’Teen strutted in. He sat down and sipped Joel’s Pepsi. “Ugh. That’s so flat they should sell it in envelopes.”

  “Buy your own,” Joel said.

  Laura looked at Nick curiously. Today he wore a long, threadbare frock coat, cowboy boots and drainpipe trousers. He looked a classic Ted, but not aggressive. He was too neat for that, too clean, too intelligent-looking. But the waitress, a big woman with arms like Henry Cooper’s, glared at him. We don’t want any trouble.

  Joel watched Laura watching Nick. “She fancies you,” Joel said, teasing.

  That made her blush.

  And Nick and Bernadette exchanged a glance, a small smile. If Laura had secrets, so did they.

  Actually, she thought, looking at Nick’s thin, handsome face, she didn’t fancy him, not like that. He was good-looking, but something about him made her feel more as if he was a brother, say.

  She asked, “How was your concert on Sunday?”

  “We got chucked out. We all leap about, you see. The groups picked it up in Hamburg. Like the Beatles, and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. You play for eight hours at a stretch, in front of the drunken sailors and the Anytime Annies. They shout at you if you’re boring. ‘Mak show! Mak show!’ That’s before the bottles start flying.”

  “He didn’t stay long in Hamburg,” Bernadette said slyly. “Couldn’t stick it out, could you?”

  “I got addicted to Prellies.”

  “To what?”

  “Preludins. Slimming pills you pop to keep yourself awake. Otherwise I was living off beer and fags. Not healthy, really.”

  “I heard,” Bernadette said, “that somebody broke your heart out there.”