The Eternal War (9 page)

What she’d give to just grab her coat, her wallet, walk out of the arch and get the first flight from JFK to Boston. What she’d give to walk up the front yard, on to the porch and ring the doorbell. To say, ‘Hi, Mom,’ when she opened the front door. ‘I’m your little girl all grown up. How’s tricks?’

Most of all, what she’d give to step in past her mom, cross the hall into the kitchen, hunker down in front of that little girl, with her frizzy hair tied in a ponytail, her hands dirty, her jeans scuffed from playing soccer with the boys.

‘Hey there, Maddy, wanna know who I am?’

Becks sat down beside her. Silent, studying her face intently, before she cocked her head curiously. ‘Maddy Carter. Why are you crying?’

‘Uh?’ She shook her head, her mind once again back in the archway, her eyes once more on the screen watching Homer trashing Ned Flanders’s lawnmower.

‘Dirt,’ she mumbled. ‘Dirt in my eye.’ She rubbed them dry under her glasses. ‘Becks?’

‘Yes, Maddy?’

‘You recall our last conversation with Foster?’

‘When we went to Central Park?’

‘That’s right.’

That’s where she could find him same time, same day. For him, a moment that passed once; for her, looping back in their forty-eight-hour bubble, it could be a repeated encounter out there in the park, beside the duck pond.

‘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 & 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.’