TimeSplash (33 page)

* * * *

Bauchet took the call with every eye in the room on him. It lasted all of five seconds. Then he turned to Holbrook. “They’ve lobbed. Two minutes ago.”

Holbrook turned his eyes to Sandra. Sandra nodded and went over to Nahrees. “It’s the Round Reading Room at the British Museum, April twenty-nine, 1902, ten-thirty in the morning. The target is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.”

The teknik and her team began work immediately, setting up the lob parameters. Sandra watched over her shoulder for a moment, then went back to stand with Jay. Porterhouse took her place, scowling at the displays as if they were his personal enemy. Colonel Davidson went into the next room to fetch his team.

“Lenin is not a bad choice, eh?” Bauchet said to Holbrook. “Especially in 1902. He had not yet even formed the Bolshevik Party. He had not yet met Stalin. Without Lenin’s patronage, it is likely young Stalin would never have risen to power. A Russian revolution might still have happened without Lenin, but it would have been a very different beast and, without him to organise it and to crush all opposition, who knows what it would have achieved. Certainly not the communism we all know from our history books.”

Holbrook looked at him blank-faced. “I suppose these times will turn us all into historians.”

“They say Stalin had twenty million of his own people executed by the secret police,”

Bauchet went on. “If this timesplash affects only that, it will be at least as big as Beijing. But there is Russia’s involvement in World War Two to consider, and the Cold War, the oppression of Eastern Europe…” He stopped talking, lost in dark contemplation.

“When can we go?” Davidson asked. He had re-entered with half a dozen men, all suited up and armed.

“I need a couple more minutes,” Nahrees said, not taking her eyes from the displays. Holbrook spoke to Davidson, and the Colonel assembled his men on the platform at the centre of the room.

“You should all get back behind the yellow line,” Nahrees called, and people shuffled away from the platform, leaving the SAS troops isolated.

Jay stepped forward. “Colonel, you know how careful you have to be, don’t you?”

The colonel frowned at him. “We’ve been briefed.”

“You know you have to cross London, that you won’t have much time.”

“What’s your point, Mr.…er…”

Sandra spoke up. “His point is that you look like a biker gang from another galaxy—or you will to the people you see back there. Just walking down the street you’ll create a panic—and that means a splash will start happening all around you. And that means just walking down the street will become almost impossible. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”

Davidson smiled, grimly. “Don’t worry, love, we’ll get through.”

Sandra turned to Jay, her eyes firing sparks. “Shit, I think you were right. This is going to be a complete—”

“We’re ready,” Nahrees called out. “Everybody stand back. Colonel?” She put her finger on the button.

“Ready when you are.” He pulled on his helmet.

“Okay. Good luck.”

Then Nahrees cried out and fell back from the console. Porterhouse shouted, “Oh my God, what has she done?” He reached into the control space and flicked his hands through the controls. Holbrook began to ask, “What the—” And then Porterhouse stabbed down at the lob button. The lights dimmed and the SAS squad flicked out of the timestream. There was silence in the room. No one quite knew what had happened. The teknik was on the ground, holding her head. Porterhouse stepped back from the controls. Everyone looked from Nahrees to Porterhouse in astonishment, until Porterhouse raised his gun and it all became perfectly clear.

“Everybody get back against the wall over there,” he told them. “No one here has to die.”

* * * *

Sniper lay on the ground, winded, trying to reorient himself. Above him, a low grey sky threatened rain. When he pulled off his helmet, he felt a thin, cold wind on his face. He checked the readouts. The lob had lasted a little over four minutes. He would have plenty of air to get back. Klaatu was the man! In the last couple of minutes he had felt the chill of the extratemporal medium seeping through his splashgear and had been glad of the heavy Edwardian clothes he was wearing on top of it. They had made all the difference.

He stood up and looked around. T-800 was already on his feet about twenty metres to Sniper’s right. Edna was nowhere to be seen.

He was standing on a broad paved area, a yard in some grimy, industrial landscape, nothing like the yuppified, neatly trimmed Deptford they had just left. Around him were wooden sheds and, beyond them, gantries and cranes. He tried to get his bearings, but it was difficult.

“Christ, what’s that smell?” T-800 said. He had his helmet off too, and was striding over to Sniper through the puddled yard. The thick, cloying stink of dead meat and live cattle mixed with the sharp, sulphurous stench of burning coal.

“Welcome to 1902, my friend. Now where’s that fucking creek? And where’s Edna?”

“Hey!”

They turned to see the Australian emerging from one of the wooden sheds. He was holding his left arm as if he’d hurt it, and his morning coat was covered in dust and cobwebs. He had his top hat on, and his helmet bulged inside the carpet bag he was carrying.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” he told them when he was close enough. “She’ll be right. I landed on a bloody staircase, would you believe? Fell arse over apex all the way down.”

“It’s there.” T-800 pointed to where a mass of cranes huddled over Deptford Creek. He turned to face away from it. “Creekside’s over that way.”

“Gear up,” Sniper told him, and they spent a few seconds stashing their helmets and putting on their toppers. They each took a stunner from their bags and slipped it into a shoulder holster under their frock coats.

They picked up their bags and all three headed for the road. So far they had seen no one and had not been challenged.

“Fifty minutes to go,” said Sniper.

They reached the road by kicking down a wooden fence and walked quickly down Creekside, turning west at the crossroads toward the train station. Behind them, the broken pieces of the fence jerked back and forth, caught in their own small time loop.

A road called Resolution Way ran under the railway line, and they broke into a jog when they reached it. The road had its own odour of engine oil and coal. The smell was strong but nothing could overcome the stench of death and evisceration that came from the town’s massive gutting sheds.

They reached the station entrance in the High Street and bounded up the steps to the viaduct. By the time they were on the platform at Deptford Station, they had just forty-three minutes left. They were the only people on the westbound platform, for which they were all grateful.

“It should be here by now,” Edna grumbled. The big station clock showed 10:03. The train was a minute late. “I never thought I’d see the day when I had to catch a train to a splash.” Something caught his attention. “Heads up everyone.”

* * * *

The stationmaster, a small rotund man in a peaked hat, hurried toward them across the platform. His round face was almost buried beneath a huge moustache and bristling sideburns. He studied them as he approached, giving most attention to T-800. His eyes widened as he saw the disreputable state of Edna’s suit. For a moment he was too flustered to say what he had meant to.

“The train is late,” Sniper said.

“Er, yes,” the little man said, dragging his eyes off Edna’s suit and up to meet Sniper’s frosty glare. “Yes, it is. My apologies, er, gentlemen. It may be another minute or two.” The strangeness of the group was beginning to impress itself on the man. Although they dressed like gentlemen, there were many odd things about them. None had a moustache or beard, for example, and they had shaved their sideburns right off! Their hairstyles were uniformly wild beneath their rather oldfashioned hats and not a trace of brilliantine between them. All three of them wore boots that were more like rubber galoshes than proper gentlemen’s footwear. They were all quite young—

university men, he guessed—and, on reflection, that probably explained everything.

“Perhaps I could assist you in some way?” he asked uncertainly. “Would you care to purchase tickets for your journey?”

“My servant procured our tickets some days ago,” said Edna, with considerable hauteur.

“You may go now.”

The stationmaster bristled. Impudent puppy! He drew a deep breath, preparing to demand that they produce their tickets, when a racket from behind him announced the arrival of the delayed 10:02 to London, Cannon Street. He bustled off to attend to the train.

* * * *

Sniper took his hand off the grip of his stunner and relaxed. The steam locomotive that pulled into the station with its train of bright red carriages looked like an overgrown toy. It was painted green, with a red undercarriage and a gleaming gold dome on top of the boiler. The letters “S. E. & C. R.” were painted prominently on the tender. It hissed and clanked and belched steam and smoke, brakes screeching like banshees as it slowed and stopped. Sniper and his crew piled into the first class carriage and found an empty compartment with red plush seats and wood and brass fittings. They immediately pulled down all the blinds as planned. The fewer people who saw them, the better. It was clear to everyone that the stationmaster had not liked the look of them.

Edna lifted the blind a little and they all peered out the window. The stationmaster was talking agitatedly to the guard. When the man turned and pointed at the first class carriage, Edna dropped the blind again. “Trouble,” he said, not looking too unhappy about it. They sat in tense silence until the train lurched into motion again. They had been moving for just two minutes when the guard opened the door and looked in. He took in the drawn blinds and the three hatless men with scruffy hair and frowned. “Tickets, please, gentlemen,” he said. The door frame around him was twisting and warping but he didn’t seem to notice.

The guard was clearly looking for a confrontation. Sniper could only see the splash getting worse if they got into an argument. So he drew his stunner and shot the man, hoping it would be the lesser of two evils.

The guard immediately went into paroxysms of falling and bouncing back up, while all around him the railway carriage buckled and twisted. The glass in the door shattered and the wooden panelling began to break and splinter. The reaction was more extreme and violent than any of them had expected.

The three bricks jumped up and pressed themselves back against the outer wall of the carriage, away from the spatial distortions.

“Shit!” Edna shouted. The chaos around the stunned guard was rapidly spreading. The seats on one side of their compartment began to melt into the floor.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” T-800’s voice was unruffled, but it was clear from his face that he too was shocked by the way the carriage was dissolving. Without a word, Sniper grabbed his bag and plunged into the chaos, pushing the guard aside and staggering across the quaking floor into the corridor beyond. The others followed behind him. They managed to get clear of the worst-affected area just as the floor erupted in a shower of planking that hung in the air, oscillating. Below the cloud of broken wood, they could see the tracks streaming past.

They edged away from the hole toward the front of the train but had hardly gone a couple of metres when the guard fell through the gap onto the line. There was a howling scream from the exposed metal chassis beneath them. Sniper shouted “Run!” and they turned their back on the destruction and raced to the door at the end of the corridor. It was locked, but Sniper shot the lock with his QSZ-99 and they scrambled through into the open air. They emerged behind the bucking, rocking coal tender and, one by one, they jumped across to it from the carriage, landing on a narrow metal rim that ran all around it, clinging with one hand to the oily black edge of the steel railway truck. They began making their way to the side, where they could edge forward toward the engine.

An explosive crash drew their eyes, but they could see nothing past the end of the carriage behind them. As the engine lurched to a higher speed, Sniper realised that the first class carriage had broken in half and, most likely, derailed the whole train behind it.

“I hope there was no one important back there,” Sniper shouted over the din of the engine. Something like this could cause a major splash and he didn’t want to be yanked back into a dangerous backwash. “Remember when we get back that we need to leave Deptford fast.”

T-800 poked him with his bag. “We need to get off.” He was looking at the carriage they had just left. It was rocking from side to side, unstable and ready to topple over. If it did, it might easily drag them with it.

Sniper had barely time to utter an expletive when he and the others were slammed against the back of the tender. The engine’s wheels were locked and screaming. The engine driver had also realised the danger they were in and had pulled the brake. Clinging to the tender as the engine shuddered to a halt, Sniper ground his teeth in fury. This was not the way it was meant to go down!