TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) (41 page)

‘Density probe is showing us a
consistent all-clear,’ said Rashim. ‘Countdown is now at thirty seconds. Are
you two all ready?’

‘Yes, we’re good to go,’
Maddy replied. She’d wanted Bob to go along with Liam. For protection, of course.
But his mass was adding too much to the energy cost of displacing them. However, Maddy
realized that of all of them, her memories – her programmed memories – were closest in
time to 2001. Intuitively she’d have the best idea if London was looking odd, or
the way it ought to.

‘One hour,’ she said.
‘Time enough to buy a soda and some tacky I’ve-Been-To-London T-shirt and
come home again.’

‘Aye.’

‘And
ten … nine … eight …’

She winked at Sal. ‘Chin-chin and
toodle-pip, old girl.’ She grinned. ‘That’s the sort of thing they say
in England, isn’t it?’

‘Remain still, please, Maddy!’
called out Rashim. ‘… and four … three …’

‘And be careful, you two!’ Sal
called out, but her voice was lost in the buzz of energy building up.

‘… two … one …’

A yard, walled in on all four sides and
overlooked by a tall, grey stone building lined with soot-encrusted windows and ledges
of surly-looking pigeons. Above them, a pale sky of combed-out
clouds.
They could both hear the dull urban hiss and rumble of traffic, the melodic cooing of
the pigeons watching them from the ledge.

Just then a door opened on to the yard and a
middle-aged man wearing trousers, shirt, tie and a dull brown sleeveless jumper took out
a packet of tobacco and cigarette papers, sat down on the step and began to roll himself
a cigarette.

He noticed Maddy and Liam standing there.
‘All right?’

Liam nodded. ‘Aye. You?’

He shrugged. ‘Middle-bad. But you have
to make do, don’t you?’ He tucked a modest row of stale strands of tobacco
along the paper. ‘You two new? I haven’t seen you around before.’

‘Just joined,’ said Liam.
Joined what exactly
 … he wondered.

‘Ahh … you must be with the
Licence and Trade Monitoring? Or Weights, Standards and Measures Approvals?’

‘The, uh … that’s the
one. Started this morning, so we did.’ Liam watched the man lick one side of the
paper. ‘You know that’ll kill you eventually, so it will.
Smoking.’

‘Eventually, huh?’ He laughed at
that. ‘Least of me worries, wouldn’t you say?’

‘We’ll be heading in now,’
said Maddy, tugging Liam’s sleeve.

‘Hammer-an’-spades! You got a
funny accent there!’ The man looked at her. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Boston. United States.’

‘
America?
’ He was taken
aback.

Maddy sensed that might not have been a
prudent thing to say. ‘Well … my folks were. You know,
originally
.’

‘Well.’ His eyes were wide.
‘And they gave you a job in the Ministry of Information? I’d keep all that
family ancestry to yourself, young lady. Quite seriously.’

They stepped past him.
‘I … I will,’ she said quickly. ‘Thanks.’

‘Hang on! Did you lie about that?’
He looked up at them. ‘To get the job? You must have had to lie to the Job
Commissariat?’

‘I, uh … I may have bent the
truth a little,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I guess.’

Liam grabbed her hand. ‘Enjoy your
smoke, sir.’ He pushed the door and they stepped into a dark hallway. It reeked of
floor polish and disinfectant. At the end of the hallway the faint pearly glow of a pair
of frosted-glass doors leading outside.

‘I guess it’s not good to be an
American,’ whispered Maddy.

‘Aye, it seems it.’

They made their way towards the double
doors, passing an opening on the right that led on to a large office: two long rows of
dark wooden desks, with men and women typing away on machines that looked like a cross
between typewriters and logic engines, all brass levers and glowing vacuum fuses. The
room echoed with the clatter of keystrokes, and the long ring of a telephone.

‘It’s like one of them old
black-and-white flicks,’ said Liam.

Maddy nodded. Yes, it was: those old films
where every scene was veiled behind a pall of cigarette smoke and every desk lamp seemed
to cast its own beam of light through it. Men with trilby hats and trench coats, and
every street glistening from a torrential downpour.
Noir
 … she
remembered. That’s what they called those old films.

They reached the double doors and pushed
them open. At least it wasn’t raining. There was that.

The roar of traffic, the buzz of activity in
Piccadilly Circus, took them by surprise. They were three wide steps up and back from a
pavement thick with pedestrians. Maddy quickly located and identified the things she
expected
to see: the statue of Eros, the circular fountain and plinth on
which it stood and the steps surrounding it. She noticed the signs pointing out the
‘Underground Tramlines’. The tall stone buildings with
classic grand entrances and granite pillars. Signs for Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry
Street, Regent Street. And as she’d expected, yes … it was busy.
Hectic-busy.

But none of the garish colour she had in the
images on her phone. No billboards, no electronic displays with
SANYO
or
TDK
or
COCA-COLA
dancing across them. No street
vendors selling plastic double-decker buses, or Beefeater soft toys.

And no tourists.

Maddy had expected Piccadilly Circus to look
a bit like Times Square: clusters of faces of all colours, people taking pictures of
each other posing in front of Eros. But this was very different. It was certainly busy,
though – busy with cars, bicycles and electric trams. A network of wires spun like a
spider’s web above the hectic thoroughfare. The trams, running along rails in the
roads, all had connector arms that reached up to wires, and here and there sparks
flickered and fizzed.

The cars all appeared to be the same, albeit
in a variety of unexciting colours: maroons, browns and greys. Small bubble-like cars
with oval windscreens that puffed thick dark clouds of exhaust fumes. And as many people
on bicycles as there were clogging the pavements on foot; they wove round the trams like
a school of pilot fish around a whale.

On the side of one towering building
overlooking Piccadilly Circus was a giant television screen. Huge. Bigger even than the
one in Times Square. But the image was blocky and primitive. Two-tone
‘pixels’ of just black and white. Looking more closely, Maddy saw it
wasn’t even a light-based display, but each ‘pixel’ was a disc about
the size of a dinner plate, that flipped on a spindle. One side black, one side
white.

‘Now this
is
different to how
it’s meant to be.’ Liam looked at her. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Very.’

It felt like a London that belonged to a
Britain stuck in 1945. Perhaps the early fifties. She wasn’t sure.

‘Well now,’ said Liam, ‘we
know for sure the Jack-the-Ripper thing has caused a change.’

Maddy looked at her watch.
‘We’ve got fifty-six minutes left. Let’s split up. Get what you can,
any newspapers, magazines, books you can lay your hands on. Back here in fifty minutes,
OK?’

2001, Piccadilly Circus, London

Liam decided the plaque above the grand
building in front of him looked promising enough:
INFORMATION RESOURCES
CENTRE
(
DEPT OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
)
.

He took the dozen steps up and pushed his
way through a heavy wooden revolving door and stepped into a cavernous foyer beyond. He
saw several concentric circles of benches round a cluster of newspaper stands in the
middle. Most of the seats were already occupied with men and women, even some children,
flipping through rustling broadsheet newspapers.

He spotted long tables beyond, glowing
reading lamps evenly spaced along them; they were mostly occupied by people reading
newspapers or books. To his left was a counter and a young woman busily filing index
cards in an organizer.

He wandered over and stood in front of the
counter for a moment, before finally coughing into his balled fist for her
attention.

She looked up. ‘Oh, I’m so
sorry!’

Liam offered her his best lopsided smile.
‘Ah, that’s all right.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘Well now, I’d like to have some
information.’

‘Information?’

‘Aye.’

‘Well …’ Bemused
exasperation on her face, she laced her
fingers and leaned forward.
‘How about we try and narrow that down just a little bit?’

Liam laughed softly. ‘Aye, might help.
I’m after history books, recent history, that is.’

‘All right …’ She nodded.
‘Wonderful start! How recent?’

‘Hmmm … last century or
so.’

‘Or so?’

‘Last century, then. Nothing too
specific, you know … general history, world history.’

She looked at him through a drooping tress
of mouse-brown hair. ‘Just arrived from another planet in another galaxy, have
you, sir?’

‘Aye. Who knows … I might
even choose to stay.’

Her turn to laugh. ‘Well, I have
academic reference texts or general information texts.’ She glanced at his puzzled
face and decided to clarify that. ‘With nice pretty pictures or
without?’

‘Oh, pictures! Please.’

‘Pictures you can colour
in?’

‘Uh?’

She chuckled, raised a hand to cover her
mouth. He noticed she had braces on her teeth. ‘Just teasing you, sorry. Let me
quickly check my info-veedee for some suitable lend-outs.’

He noticed a pale blue glow lighting her
face from below and her fingers began to tap at a typewriter keyboard. He leaned forward
over the counter and noted a small cabinet the size of a cigar box; one glass side
glowed blue, like a small television set. Two metal brackets held a large oblong
magnifying glass screen between the young woman and the mini ‘television’.
She adjusted its hinges slightly; the tiny screen loomed large in the lens, glowing blue
with white text.

‘That’s a veedee, is
it?’

She looked at him. ‘Veedee? You know,
visual display?’

‘Ahh, that’s a computer down
there, I suppose?’

She looked at him quizzically.
‘
Compute-er
? What an odd word.’ She cocked her head. ‘You
really are from another planet, aren’t you?’

‘That’s what me mother used to
say about me.’

She looked back at the magnified screen.
‘We have
The Revolutionary Century: A History of Socialist Britain
.
That’s a bit heavy-going, I think. How about
Two Worlds: The Free Man and the
Profit Slave
? That’s quite a good read.’ She looked up at him.
‘And it’s got lots of pictures too.’

‘Aye, that one sounds good.’

She tapped a key. ‘There, requested
it.’ He noticed her sneak a furtive glance up at him, then her eyes darted
awkwardly back to the lens screen. ‘Now, umm … let me
see … what other works can I recommend for you?’

‘Good to see a library so well
used,’ said Liam, looking back at the rows of eager readers, the gentle whispering
rustle of pages being turned.

‘It’s the news-sheets,’
she replied. ‘Everyone wants to know the latest on what’s happening.’
The teasing smile at the edge of her lips dropped for a moment. Very suddenly she looked
drawn and worried. ‘It’s all so terrifying, though, isn’t
it?’

‘Terrifying?’

‘The blockade! The Americans shipping
in all those atomics for their French friends?’ She pressed her lips together.
‘You can’t help wondering how this is going to end up, can you?’

Liam decided to play along. ‘Aye,
it’s pretty bad, there’s no doubting that.’

‘My mum says,’ she lowered her
voice to a whisper, ‘my mum says if the French get those missile bits and pieces
and decide to put them together, it could end up leading to an atomic war.’

‘War?’

She nodded. ‘
Atomic
.’ She
mouthed the word as if it was a curse not to be spoken out loud. As if merely saying the
word would open the gates of Hell for Satan and his hordes to pour through.

‘It’s so frightening. Mum says
we could
all
end up dying if that happened.’

Liam shrugged that off. ‘Ah, now
I’m sure something like that won’t happen. What’s in it for the big
fellas at the top if they let something daft like that happen? Hmmm?’

She fiddled absently with the index folder
in front of her. ‘No, I suppose not. I suppose it all looks more frightening than
it really is. It’ll all turn out all right in the end, won’t it?’

‘Of course.’ He nodded.
‘Always does. Everyone sees sense in the end.’ He smiled. ‘They always
do.’

She raised that teasing, flickering smile
again, and continued browsing through catalogue pages on the lens screen.
‘Anyway … so do you, uh … you live in London? Only you sound
Irish or is it Scottish?’

‘Irish.’

‘I see. Are you,
uh … visiting? Or do you live in London, or something?’

‘Just visiting.’

‘Uh-huh.’ That sounded to him
more like a disappointed ‘
oh
’.

She tapped the keyboard in silence for a
moment, the soft blue glow on her face flickering with screen refreshes. Finally she
looked up, her lips playing with words silently for a moment before picking one or two
to start with. ‘I … I … don’t normally …’ Her
face flushed pink.

‘Don’t normally?
What?’

‘I wonder …’ she continued,
her eyes firmly locked on the lens screen, far too embarrassed to look up at him and
meet his eyes. ‘Whether you’d care to … care to have some tea and
brancakes?’

‘Tea and …?’

‘Brancakes. Lunchtime? With me?’
She dared a glance up at him. ‘I have a lunchbreak coming soon, at one. I eat it
outside by the fountain.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Sometimes I feed the
pigeons with my cakes if they’re too dry, though.’