THE H-BOMB GIRL

by Stephen Baxter

  “H-Bomb Girl,” Nick said, “listen to yourself. You are a fourteen-year-old girl, stuck in a hole in the ground, in Liverpool. How can you talk about causing wars or not? How can you talk about choosing futures? Who do you think you are, the Virgin Mary or Supergirl?”

  But she was at the pivot, Laura thought. Because of the Key. She was at the place the futures were fighting over, to become real. She didn’t ask for it to be that way, but that’s how it was. Maybe everybody thinks they’re the centre of the world. But, Laura thought now, maybe whole futures, whole worlds, billions of lives and deaths, really did depend on the decisions she made in the next few hours.

  She looked around at them, her mum, Agatha, battered Nick, troubled Joel, curled-over, pregnant Bernadette. “I’ve made my mind up,” she said.

  Agatha asked, “To do what?”

  “For a start, not to give you my Key. There’s not going to be a Nuclear Spring.”

  Agatha dropped her head.

  Joel asked her curiously, “Are you angry?”

  “I don’t know. I might be angry later. Here and now I’m with you, Mum,” she said to Laura. “That will have to be enough.”

  Nick said, “So what are you going to do, H-Bomb Girl?”

  “I’m not going to start a nuclear war. Any sort of one. And I’m going to save everybody.”

  Nick laughed. “And how will you manage that?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Well, we can’t rely on your dad,” Joel said gravely. “We might have to look after ourselves. We need a Plan B.”

  In fact Laura had a Plan B, in her head. But she didn’t want to tell anybody about it, not yet.

  Bernadette screamed.

  They all rushed over. Agatha brought a torch and held it up.

  Bernadette was lying on the hard brick floor, with dark sticky stuff pooling between her legs. She was crying, her face twisted in agony, and her mascara was all over the place.

  Mum took charge. “Move back. Let me see what’s what.” Her motherly tone got through to them, Joel in distress, Nick in near-hysteria. Mum pulled up Bernadette’s skirt and began to examine her.

  Laura leaned close to Bernadette and smelled her breath. “Gin. I thought you were drunk. You had a bottle of gin in your school satchel, didn’t you?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Bern croaked. She opened her smudged eyes. “Nicked it from my mum. I tried all the usual stuff. Gin. Castor oil. Made me throw up. The baby just did the backstroke in it.”

  “Oh,” Joel said, “you’re trying for an abortion.”

  “And then she used this,” Mum said. She lifted something up, dripping with blood. It was a knitting needle.

  “I hid it in the lining of my blazer,” Bern said.

  Laura looked at it with horror. “Bern. How could you?”

  “What choice have I got? I don’t want my baby growing up like her.” She pointed at Agatha. “If the bomb falls it’s better off dead. So am I. We all are.” She broke down, and Joel cradled her head, rocking.

  “No,” Mum said. She pulled up Bernadette’s blouse, and put her hand on her exposed belly. “You’ve made a right mess of yourself, missy. You need a doctor. But the baby’s still alive. I’m no expert, but I can feel it move. In the end you couldn’t hurt your baby, could you?”

  Bernadette covered her face with her arm. “I’m useless.”

  “Joel,” Mum said now. “Find my handbag. I’ve got a bottle of TCP and some tissues. Let’s get this lot cleaned up.”

  Joel went for the bag.

  Then Nick cried out, and slumped against a wall, limp as a doll. He had blacked out again.

  And a crash on the ceiling brought dust and plaster sifting down on them all. Some of the candles blew out.

  “The rioters are getting closer,” Agatha said to Laura. “We’re running out of time. If they break in here—”

  “I know, I know,” Laura said.

  She looked around helplessly, at Nick, sprawled and unconscious, Bernadette bleeding from a dozen self-inflicted wounds, Joel lost in his concern, Mum bearing up but brittle. Laura had the sense of everything falling apart.

  “Time for Plan B,” she said.

  She dragged the “phone” they had stolen from Miss Wells from her blazer pocket, and opened it up. She pressed the green button with the phone symbol. Then, uncertainly, she held the phone beside her ear.

  Miss Wells replied instantly. “Laura. I’ve been expecting your call,” she said dryly.

  “Help,” said Laura simply.

  “Just don’t touch any buttons. We’ll track the phone and come and get you.”

  Agatha stared. “And this is your plan? To ask her for help?”

  “She said she’d help. She must have doctors. And we can’t stay here. Do you have any better ideas?”

  “But when Miss Wells gets hold of you—”

  “I’ll think of something,” Laura said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

  It took half an hour.

  Then the wall exploded, the bricks bursting inwards.

  A huge steel screw, shining silver, came pushing through, whirring. It was like the bit of an immense drill, on the end of a cylinder maybe four feet across.

  On the cylinder’s flank was a symbol, a green Earth in an iron fist, and a slogan written underneath: PEACE THROUGH WAR. Laura had seen it before, on Mort’s computer, and Miss Wells’s phone.

  When about ten feet was sticking into the cellar, the bit stopped whirring. The sudden silence seemed loud. The cap of the drill hinged down, and blue light shone out.

  Laura walked up to the open cylinder and peered in.

  Miss Wells was crouching awkwardly in the cylinder. She was wearing a featureless grey coverall.

  Laura stared at her. “You took your time.”

  “And you’re pushing your luck. I knew you’d call, in the end.”

  The hammering on the roof got worse.

  Laura said, “You’re the lesser of two evils. It was you, or wait for the looters to get here.”

  “That’s not very nice. After all, I’m you. You’ve worked that out. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?”

  Behind Miss Wells, inside the cylinder, Laura glimpsed a wheelchair, a stocky man sitting in it. It was the Minuteman.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s my boss,” said Miss Wells.

  “He wanted to be here, Laura. When we found you.” That was a man’s voice. Mort stood up behind the Minuteman, and put a hand on his shoulder. “We both did. But you’d expect that, given the circumstances.”

  Looking at them together like that, Laura suddenly saw it.

  They were the same man, separated by forty years and a dreadful injury.

  Miss Wells held out her hand. “Get in.”

  Chapter 24

  Saturday 27th October.

  Black Saturday.

  Time unknown. They took away our watches, when they brought us into this place.

  Miss Wells calls her machine the Burrower. It just squirms its way through the ground, leaving a tunnel behind it. It’s like an underground spaceship. If I was a boy I’d probably think it was pretty neat.

  The crew came out into the cellar and loaded up Bern and Nick on stretchers, and shepherded the rest of us walking wounded aboard the Burrower. Nick was out cold. Bern was crying from the pain, where she’d stabbed herself.

  Joel got away. “I’m off.”

  “Why? Joel, come with us. It’s not safe here.”

  He sniffed. “I don’t see too many black faces inside those grey suits. You get an instinct for that sort of thing. Take care of yourself. And look after Bern.”

  And I looked away, and he was gone.

  Inside, the Burrower is like a military helicopter Dad gave me a ride in once, with canvas bucket seats and webbing. It backed up into the tunnel it had made. It was a noisy ride, like a bumpy underground train. Mum held my hand.

  So we came to Miss Wells�
�s underground lair. Very James Bond. At first we didn’t see much of it.

  Bern and Nick were taken off on stretchers.

  Mum, Agatha and I were put through a shower room. All steel walls and fluorescent lights. We had to strip off, and our clothes were taken away. I knew what was going on. We were being scrubbed clean of any contamination by radiation. It was the same in “Doctor No.”

  So I’ve learned that people from Miss Wells’s future live in bunkers, and are terrified of radiation.

  Without her clothes on, Agatha is thin. Half-starved. I pitied her. But she seemed to enjoy the hot shower.

  We were given clean underwear and shapeless grey coveralls, like Miss Wells’s. “Ugh,” Mum said. “First chance I get, I’m accessorising.”

  Miss Wells led us to a tiny bedroom, with four bunk beds, and its own little toilet. “En suite,” said my mother. “Very nice.” There was a jug of water some fruit. Some of our belongings are here, Mum’s handbag, this diary. Not our watches, though.

  They let me keep the Key, incidentally. But then Miss Wells knows the Key is useless without the code numbers in my head.

  None of us could resist the soft beds. We hadn’t slept much for days. Agatha sighed as she lay down.

  I don’t know how long I slept. Maybe the water was drugged.

  The others are still sleeping. I’m writing this with a make-up pencil from Mum’s handbag. Waiting for the strangeness to kick off again.

  When this is all over, I wonder if I’ll get back my school uniform from Miss Wells. Or if we’ll have to buy a new one.

  Miss Wells called for them.

  She led them through corridors to a narrow balcony that overlooked a larger chamber. On the balcony, a metal table and chairs had been set up under a screen, like a small cinema screen.

  They sat down uneasily, Mum, Laura, Agatha, Miss Wells. Like Laura and the others, Miss Wells wore a steel-grey coverall that zipped up the front. But Miss Wells had epaulettes and shoulder flashes, like Flash Gordon.

  Bernadette was led out by a nurse in a white uniform.

  Laura ran to embrace her. Bernadette, still sore and a bit woozy from anaesthetics, was stiff. “No fuss,” she said. But she hugged Laura back.

  There was no sign of Nick.

  The balcony overlooked the heart of Miss Wells’s complex. “We call it the Hub,” she said proudly. “A little bit of 2007, built under Liverpool, 1962.”

  The Hub was a mess of cramped tunnels, probably cellars and sewers and drains. But they had plated some kind of silvery cloth over the walls, and there were bright striplights everywhere, so it was all flooded with light. It was like a cross between a hospital and a milk bar, Laura thought.

  In the big central chamber under the balcony, computers hummed away, big boxes the size of wardrobes, with tape reels, flashing lights, and chattering teletypes. There was a smell of electrical gear, sharp like seaside air.

  There was also an odd sort of doorway that seemed to lead nowhere, just a frame filled with a milky light.

  And there was a pool, that glowed blue.

  Technicians crawled all over the place, working the computer consoles, taking the temperature of the pool. The technicians wore all-over suits of clear plastic, with sealed helmets. Miss Wells said they were NBC suits, for protection from nuclear, biological and chemical contamination.

  In the middle of the floor they had actually put up a flagpole, with a black flag held out with a bit of wire. The flag had that Earth-and-fist symbol. Above the planet was one word in spiky silver letters: HEGEMONY. And below it the slogan: PEACE THROUGH WAR.

  It was incredible that all this was stuck down a hole, somewhere under Liverpool.

  They all carried guns.

  At the table they sat and looked at each other. Laura. Mum, Laura’s mother. Agatha, Laura’s daughter, from one timeline. Miss Wells, Laura’s older self, from another.

  “What a freak show,” Bernadette said, and she laughed.

  “Well, we’ve a lot to talk about,” Miss Wells said briskly.

  “First things first,” Bernadette said. “How’s Nick?”

  “Recovering,” Miss Wells said. “No thanks to whoever kicked him in the head.” She reached under the table and pulled out a tray, on which sat a keyboard, like a typewriter’s. She tapped at this, and the big screen above their heads lit up with an X-ray image. It showed a man’s skull.

  “We have other scanning techniques, actually, in 2007,” she said. “We brought some gear back. I don’t suppose you know what a CAT scan is, do you? Or MRI? Never mind. The X-ray will do. Look here.” A small arrow appeared on the image and pointed to the curve of the skull. “See the indentation in the skull? The pressure on the brain was causing bleeding of the right ventricle. He should have gone to hospital.”

  “Try telling Nick that,” Bernadette said.

  Laura asked, “But Nick will be OK?”

  “Our doctor operated. Non-invasively. He ought to recover. As for you,” Miss Wells said to Bernadette, “you’ve needed a few stitches. But the internal exam showed you haven’t done any lasting harm to yourself, or your baby. You were desperate. But you weren’t very determined, were you?”

  Mum said, “Leave her alone.”

  Bernadette’s face was twisted. “You don’t know what was going on in my head,” she said to Miss Wells. “You don’t know what it felt like.”

  “No. I don’t. And I’m glad, frankly.”

  “You’re a cold woman,” Agatha said, unexpectedly. She stared at Miss Wells, with a complicated mixture of longing and loathing. “You’re cold. You don’t care about Bernadette, or that boy who might have died. All you care about is using them to get to Mum—Laura. That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “So in another timeline,” Miss Wells said, “in which I spent my life scratching in the dirt of some dismal farm, I spawned you. And here you are, scrawny, skinny, self-pitying. How repulsive you are.”

  “I’m your daughter.”

  “Not my daughter. I have no children. You’re a time-travel accident. You shouldn’t even exist.”

  Laura said, “I can’t believe I will ever become you.”

  “Now, now, ladies,” Bernadette said. She looked at Agatha and Miss Wells. “You both want this stuff out of Laura, the Key and the codes in her head. Why didn’t you just pounce on her? You’ve been sniffing around for days.”

  Agatha shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. As soon as you go back in time, you start to change things. History unravels a different way.”

  “We had to be careful,” Miss Wells agreed. “Remember, we’re both trying to make history come out the way we want. If we were too drastic, we might have made changes we didn’t intend.” She glared at Agatha. “We’re on opposite sides. But we share that much.

  “Just by being here we changed things. You’d think I’d be able to find you, Laura, because I’d remember what you did, when I was you. But things have changed just enough to make that impossible.

  “And anyhow,” she said, smiling at Laura, “isn’t it better this way? I don’t want to take the Key from you, Laura. I want you to give it to me of your own accord. I’ve spent my whole life working to avoid war. That’s why I’m here. I’d have thought you’d be impressed by that. And, after all, we’re the same person, you and I. If we can’t work together, who can?”

  “Go on then,” said Bernadette. “Tell us your master plan for taking over the world.”

  Miss Wells looked at her in disgust. “I can’t believe that in any past life I was ever drawn to you, O’Brien.” She tapped another button on her keyboard, and the screen over their heads filled up with images of planes, ships, submarines, missiles. “This is what’s happening right now.”

  “Cuba,” Laura said.

  “You all slept a long time. It’s now six in the evening. Around one in the afternoon, in Cuba.”

  “But it’s still Black Saturday,” Laura said.

  “Oh, yes. And things are tense on the Q-lin
e.”

  Some shooting was going on. The Russians and Cubans had shot down some American warplanes, and a U-2 spy plane. In the water, American Navy ships were using depth charges on a Russian submarine. Behind the scenes Kennedy was talking to Khrushchev about his deal, how if Khrushchev got rid of the missiles on Cuba Kennedy would dismantle his base in Turkey.

  “Let me tell you what’s about to happen, in my timeline,” Miss Wells said. “Which we call the ‘Phoney War.’”

  Just as in Agatha’s old timeline, the Sunday War, the serious shooting would soon start in Cuba, by accident. An American warship would be sunk by a Russian sub. In retaliation the Americans would launch air strikes against the Russian missile bases. Panicking, the Russians would fire off some of their Cuban missiles at the American mainland. In retaliation again, the Americans would launch nukes from their bases in Turkey at southern Russian cities. Millions dead, within hours.

  “So it begins,” Bernadette whispered to Laura.

  But in this timeline the Soviets held back at that point. The Americans held their fire too. It was just chance, Miss Wells said. A line of communication got through between Washington and Moscow.

  The bombing stopped. The political leaders on both sides, not yet dead, frantically negotiated.

  “The whole world held its breath,” Miss Wells said. “And the combatants backed off. No more bombs.”

  So this was a third way for the war to turn out, Laura saw. Or you could have the Sunday War, global bombing, which Agatha had lived through. You could have America annihilating Russia—the Nuclear Spring Agatha had hoped to set up. Or there was this more limited version, Miss Wells’s “Phoney War.”

  “No wonder you’re frightened of radiation,” Bernadette said.

  “And this outcome,” Laura said, “is what you’ve come back here to muck about with.”

  Miss Wells smiled. “Come and see what we’ve built. I think you’ll be impressed.”

  She led them down a narrow staircase to the floor of the chamber. Bernadette was stiff and a bit dizzy, and Laura helped her.

  The chamber floor vibrated, as if huge energies were stirring all around them. And the computers hummed and whirred. Tape reels spun, paper tape and punched cards chattered, lights flashed and needles flickered.