The Eternal War (37 page)

An hour later they were standing on the side of a road heading north-east out of New Wellington still choked with vehicles and carts heading southwards, making painfully slow progress, but moving at least.

‘Seems like everyone north of here is leaving,’ said Liam.

He wondered why so many civilians would have bothered living so close to the front line anyway. After all, according to McManus the war was an ongoing struggle, a constant ebbing and flowing of the front line, which stretched westwards across New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, with minor skirmishes here and there every summer that shifted the line half a mile one way, then the other.

But it was a stalemate war, wasn’t it? A war with which people had grown used to living. Grown used to it rumbling on quietly in the background like a thunderstorm passing by.

People manage … that’s what they do.

Except, of course, not now. Not with rumours of a big push going around. Not with rumours of killer eugenics being deployed not too far away from them.

‘It’s silly,’ said Sal. ‘The eugenics weren’t dangerous … not the ones that took us, anyway. Were they?’ She looked up at Lincoln.

‘Pitiful beings,’ he said. ‘If truth be told, they were quite sad creatures.’

Liam couldn’t help wondering what to make of the eugenics. Looking at the flood of people going past, he could understand their fear. Back in that farmhouse, the attack had seemed ferocious, quite terrifying at the time. And yet now he realized those creatures had just been a band of runaway workers. Frightened for themselves. Just doing their best to scavenge and survive.

But, if they’d been a frightening sight, he couldn’t begin to imagine what
military
eugenic creatures must be like. Mind you, he’d already met some, right? The hunter-seekers. They hadn’t seemed so bad.

He shuddered with the thought of something.

There must be other types we’ve not yet seen.

‘We should get going. The road looks like it’s clearing up a bit. We should make better time now we’re out of town. How far is New York from here, Bob?’

‘Information: a hundred and eleven miles.’

‘Ahh, well, that’s all right.’ Liam smiled. ‘That’s not so far to go, then. Shall we?’

CHAPTER 69

2001, New York

‘Oh my God!’ cried Maddy. She turned to Becks standing beside her in front of the computer desk. ‘It’s actually working!’

She could see the soft amber standby light of the four-gang plug socket and spike protector. ‘We’ve got enough amplitude coming in!’

‘Affirmative.’

Maddy ducked down and punched on the nearest of the networked PCs beneath the desk. One of the monitors winked on. She switched on the next one and the next, until all nine computers were busy whirring, at different stages of booting up.

Maddy wanted both of the colonels to see this. Although she knew they more than half believed her story, it would do no harm for them to see this machinery stir to life. She trotted across the floor, skidding on loose grit and skipping over the thick flex of power cable running out through the raised shutter door. It snaked round the low entrance to the ‘fort’, and turned left along a freshly dug trench for twenty yards before rising up over the rear trench wall and across several yards of rubble and weed wasteland towards the opened rear engine hatches of Wainwright’s Mark IV tank. The engine casing, bulky and pitted with rust, juddered unnervingly like a feral cat trapped in a hatbox. It was spewing a thick cloud of smoke from an exhaust pipe at the top of its box-shaped iron turret.

The tank’s labouring engine was spinning a flywheel. Around the wheel was a cam-belt – a loop of thick leather – taken off the vehicle’s drive shaft and leading instead to their battered and sorry-looking generator. They’d hauled it out earlier and set it up beside the tank. The belt was turning the generator’s own internal rotor and armature.

Down the slope towards the river she could see Wainwright and Devereau standing above the borderline. Devereau squatted down and talked to someone in the trench, Wainwright smoking his pipe and looking out across the river.

‘Hey! You two! Colonels!’ she shouted above the rumble of the tank’s bad-tempered engine.

They both looked her way and she waved them over. ‘It’s working! We got power!’

She waited for them to jog over, and then led them back down into the trench, following the cable past the fort and ducking inside the archway across the floor to where the row of computer monitors were all now showing the same desktop wallpaper she’d put on several days ago.

An image of Homer Simpson.

‘Good grief!’ gasped Devereau, unsure what to make of the wall of grinning faces.

Maddy pulled a seat out and sat down at the desk. ‘Computer-Bob? You there?’

‘This … this yellow face,’ said Wainwright, ‘… is the face of your computer?’

‘Uh?’ She looked at the monitors. ‘Oh no … He’s just a … a …’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Doesn’t really matter.’

A dialogue box appeared on the monitor in front of her.

> Hello, Madelaine. It appears a significant malfunction has occurred.

He was seeing the wreckage of the archway behind her. That, or he was registering internal problems with one or more of the networked computers.

> I also detect two unauthorized personnel in the archway.

‘That’s OK, Bob … that’s OK. They have my authorization to be here.’

> Affirmative.

Wainwright’s jaw hung open. ‘You have a
machine
that can
talk
to you?’

‘Oh yeah … Bob, he’s … well,
computer-Bob
. Not, of course, to be confused with
Bob
, who’s a … well, sort of a guy-shaped computer and a copy of computer-Bob … and some of Becks, actually, who by the way is also a copy of computer-Bob …’ She looked up at the colonels and realized she was losing them. ‘Just think of Becks here and this computer system as
family
 … sort of.’

‘Family?’ said Wainwright, looking at Devereau, not really any the wiser.

‘Bob, we got hit by a time wave, a big one.’

> This is apparent.

‘The wave was caused by Lincoln being here in 2001 and not back where he should be.’

> That is the most likely conclusion. What is Lincoln’s location now?

‘We do not have that information,’ said Becks.

> Hello, Becks.

‘Hello, computer-Bob.’

Maddy wrapped her knuckles impatiently on the desk. ‘Save the love-in for later, you two. We need to send them a message right now!’

‘The last known location,’ said Becks, ‘was the window opened near the FBI training academy, Quantico, Virginia. That was five days ago.’

> Correct. I have those coordinates in my event log.

‘They’ll have been making their way to us,’ said Maddy. ‘How far is it?’

‘Information: two hundred and twenty-six miles.’

‘They should’ve made it back by now, then … surely?’ She pouched her lips. ‘Unless they’ve decided to stay put and wait for me to open a window right where we dropped them off?’

> This is an equally likely possibility.

Maddy balled her fist and cursed. Both colonels exchanged a bemused look at her colourful choice of words.

‘Hang on!’ She held a finger up. ‘I can give them all the time they need … say a whole month if that’s what they need to –’

‘We cannot hold the British for a whole –!’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Relax … relax. This is time displacement. We can open the portal up as soon as the machine’s charged up enough. Say, in about twelve hours’ time. But I could set the time-stamp to open a space one month from now. Do you see … with time displacement, all time – past, present and future – is effectively
now
 … as long as you’ve got enough energy to reach it. Easy as easy peas.’

A cursor flashed across the dialogue box.

> Negative.

‘What?’

> Diagnostic on the displacement machine indicates the tertiary downstream phase analysis module has failed. We cannot at this time open a window in the future.

She banged her fist on the desk. ‘Why is it always so freakin’… ? Arghhh!’ She shook her head.

‘Does this mean your machine cannot operate?’ asked Devereau.

Maddy sighed. ‘No … no, it just means we have to wait this out in real-time.’ She shrugged. ‘Stupid me … I was hoping for the easy option.’

She settled back in her chair. ‘All right … all right, plan B, then. We pick a place roughly halfway between New York and Quantico, and give them, what? Two days … no, three days – time enough to make sure they can get there.’

‘From now?’ asked Devereau.

She nodded. Then noticed the look of concern on both men’s faces. ‘We can hold on here that long, can’t we?’ Her eyes went from one to the other. ‘Right? I mean … you know, if they attacked, say, right now? Your men could hold this ground for three days?’

The officers’ eyes met. It was Wainwright who broke the long silence. ‘It will depend what force they throw at us … and, of course, how quickly they have decided to respond to news of this mutiny.’

‘And how well our men will fight,’ added Devereau.

Wainwright nodded. ‘The officers in my regiment … I know will fight to the death. As men of rank we all now face firing squads if we were to surrender. The enlisted men? They would face a British military prison.’

Devereau nodded grimly. ‘A similar fate awaits our officers. But I think my men will fight well because there can be no retreat if the South attack. The Legionnaires will be lined up behind us ready to shoot anyone retreating.’

‘So?’ She was still waiting for an answer. ‘Three days, then?’

Wainwright stroked his chin. ‘To be certain … you can promise us this new history?’

‘If I can pick them up and drop them back in 1831, yes.’

And if Lincoln is still alive.

She suspected Bob and Liam were probably fine; so far together they seemed to have been able to weather anything. And Sal would probably be fine with them looking after her. But Lincoln … the guy was a loose cannon. A big-mouth. A hot-head. Anything could have happened to him over the last week.

‘Then our men will give you your three days,’ said Wainwright. ‘What do you say, William?’

Devereau nodded. ‘This is a good defensive position.’

Maddy turned back to face the webcam on the desk. ‘OK, computer-Bob. Three days rendezvous from now, we just need to pick some place halfway between here and Quantico. Somewhere relatively quiet and peaceful if possible.’

> Affirmative.

‘We got enough charge to send a broad-range signal?’

> Affirmative. Information: my diagnostic has also picked up calibration errors on the transmission array.

‘Affirmative,’ said Becks. ‘A replacement component – a conventional radio communication dish – has been connected. I can run the recalibration with you, Bob.’

‘Well, you two sort that out now.’ She turned to Wainwright and Devereau. ‘Either of you got any relatively up-to-date maps we can look at? We need to pick a place for our guys to get to.’

CHAPTER 70

2001, New Wellington

Sparks danced up into the night sky from their campfire, one of several dozen they could see up and down the side of the roadway. Refugees heading south and those on foot, like them, stopping at the side of the road for the night to rest, eat and perhaps sleep.

They were cooking cobs of corn they’d plucked from a field earlier this evening over the fire. Somewhere across on the other side of the road, someone was roasting coffee beans over theirs, and someone else, salted bacon.

‘It’s cooler tonight,’ said Liam.

Sal, snuggled beside him, nodded.

‘You all right, Sal?’ he said.

She nodded again, her eyes on the fire, glistening.

‘I know,’ he started. ‘Look, I know what happened was hard –’

‘Hard?’ she whispered.
Hard
was a lazy, careless word to use for what they’d witnessed. ‘I … I keep seeing it, Liam. You know?’ She looked up at him. ‘I see Samuel looking at me, looking right at me when they shot him. He was …’ Her voice faded to nothing. Together they stared at the fire in silence, watched the cobs slowly blacken on the edge of the fire.

‘I feel …’ She chewed on a fingernail. ‘I feel strange. Like I’m … like I’m not who I used to be. Not the same Saleena I used to be.’

Liam nodded. ‘We’ve both seen a lot, you and me.’

‘It’s like my old life – my parents, my home, my school friends – all that’s become someone else’s life, not mine any more. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Aye,’ he said softly. ‘Me too.’

‘It feels like you, me and Maddy have been together for years.’ Although she knew exactly how long it had been: a hundred and fifty-five days – seventy-five bubble-time cycles plus five days.

‘For me it is,’ said Liam. ‘Six months in 1956 … and another six months in the twelfth century. And another in dinosaur times.’ He looked at her, quizzical. ‘You know what? I’ve lived a whole year longer than you since we were recruited.’

‘I know.’ She looked up at him, tilted her head to look at the tress of grey hair by his temple. ‘You do look older.’

‘Well, I’d be seventeen now, I suppose.’ Mock serious. ‘I went an’ missed me birthday!’

She smiled and punched his arm lightly. ‘Happy birthday, then.’

He reached out and prodded one of the charred cobs with a stick. Still too hard to want to eat yet. On the other side of the fire Lincoln was muttering something to Bob about his childhood, something to do with skinning hares.

‘You’re right, though,’ Liam said after a while.

‘About what bit?’

‘That we’re different people now. You, me and Maddy. I’ve seen things, done things, that I think have changed me.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well … I killed a man, so I did.’

‘Really?’

He nodded. ‘The fight for Nottingham. Killed a soldier with me sword. He looked at me … was staring at me as I did it to him. Like … I don’t know, Sal, it was like he wanted me to
know him
, in his final moment, like he wanted me to make sure I remembered him forever.’ Liam shook his head. ‘And it worked. I see him every night … in my dreams. That same fella. The same face.’