‘Yeah, you tell yourself that,’ Allie jokes.
‘See you tonight,’ Prisha says, walking back across the office and down to the reception desk. ‘We’re having take-away here with Zara tonight now.’
‘Who is?’ Jennifer asks, peering over her desk.
‘We are. Zara’s on an overnighter. Allie said we’ll keep her company.’
‘Ooh, the war job, can we ogle Bear in a soldier’s uniform?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Prisha laughs. ‘Laters.’
She goes out and up the street, nodding here and there to the people of Discovery that pass by. Into the Sheriff’s office and the sight of Lars and Matius stuffing big fresh cream cakes in their mouths. ‘They look nice?’
‘They are nice,’ Matius replies with a mouthful.
‘Lucy?’ Lars asks.
‘Done,’ Prisha replies, dumping the folders on the central desk. ‘Confirmed. Sex this morning.’
‘Lucky man,’ Matius mumbles.
‘Cake,’ Lars says, holding the box out for Prisha.
‘Thanks,’ she takes the last one out, biting into the long donut filled with cream and jam. ‘We doing them today?’ she asks, covering her mouth while nodding at the folders she brought in.
Lars nods once, walking over to grab a third of the folders that he carries into his office as Prisha spots the forlorn look on Matias’s face at the prospect of a day spent dip-testing RLI’s. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘sooner we start, sooner we finish…’
She logs into her screen, reading the subject name in the folder, finds the date, the location and accesses the data systems. How it works is beyond her. How the Old Lady retains live network connections to so many different systems, in so many different countries, across ever-changing time periods is simply unbelievable and the single biggest reminder that they are not in the real world.
Why they do it is also a question they’ve never had answered. The Old Lady can access every single life ever lived, so why ask three human beings to dip-test the few tweaks done by a few more human beings? Why rely on a fallible system? Why rely on deputy Matias skimming through his work to get finished quickly so he can go strut up and down Main Street in his police uniform?
There are more questions than answers and although ninety-nine percent of the population of Discovery are happy to go along with it, she and a few others, including Zara, still want to know how the finite details work.
29
YPRES, BELGIUM, 1917
The hardest thing is not knowing what kills Simmonds. They can’t stay next to him without arousing great suspicion. Nor can they leave him out of sight for any length of time, so while running back and forth with stretchers, while triaging, while rushing to grab clean dressings, while giving morphine and doing a dozen tasks they have to watch him constantly.
They work hard through the evening to night and the hours of darkness, clearing the grounds of men waiting to be examined then tasked to load the dead on the returning wagons. Stacking mangled bodies under an ever-falling rain that soaks them to the skin and when they finally finish, they stand heaving for air with flushed faces, shirt sleeves rolled up and braces hanging down as the last of the wagons rolls away.
‘My back,’ Thomas groans, arching his spine.
‘Stop bending over then, lift with your legs,’ Bear says.
‘Stop bending over,’ Thomas mimics, ‘lift with your legs…I’m Bear…I have sex with doctors that look like models…’
‘Fuck off,’ Bear groans, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.
‘I’m all brooding and mysterious and…whatever man, damn this is hard work. Why can’t someone try and kill that dude already…hey, I got a plan. You try and kill Simmonds then I’ll stop you and we can go.’
‘How does that do it?’
‘Duh? If you’re the one that kills him, and I stop you then he doesn’t die. Time travel man. Get with the programme.’
‘I told you it confuses me,’ Bear says.
‘Everything confuses you. Tying shoelaces confuses you…hey, you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ Bear asks, listening intently.
‘Shelling has stopped,’ Thomas says.
‘Get orf, you filthy bugger…’
They turn quickly, seeing a bloodied man waving his hand at a fat greasy rat licking the blood-stained dressing on the stump of an unconscious soldier. A helmet is launched, whacking it off but the thing scurries through the mud, delighting in this land of plenty so full of blood and flesh.
The rats are everywhere. The sheer number of them boggles the mind. Unafraid for the most part too and left to squeak and squabble with each other and only swatted away when they start eating bodies.
‘Chaps! Over here, quick as you like,’ Corporal Simmonds calls out, striding from the medical building. ‘Orders have come through…’
‘Orders?’ Thomas asks.
‘We’re going over the top with the push at dawn.’
‘The what?’ Thomas asks.
‘The attack,’ Simmonds says, too tired to question Thomas’s lack of knowledge. ‘We’re attacking at dawn. It’s my turn for this one.’
‘Into the trenches?’ Bear asks.
‘That’s the fella,’ Simmonds says, trying to hide his own fear with a jaunty tone. He swallows, looking terrified for a second. ‘Big one by all accounts. The Generals want it done…big advance on the German lines…’
A look between them. From Thomas to Bear at the complexity involved in keeping a man alive during a battle.
‘You’ve not seen it, have you?’ Simmonds asks, a faraway look in his eyes.
‘No,’ Thomas says.
The corporal tilts his head, ‘won’t forget it, that’s for sure… quick brew then we’ll go, it’s a bit of a trek from here I’m afraid.’
‘You didn’t drink the coffee, Prish,’ Matius says, looming next to her with his civilian coat on.
‘Huh?’ she looks up, blinking. ‘You going home?’
‘Gone six, you finishing?’
‘Er yeah, I’ll finish this one and get going.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ he says, walking off.
Footsteps behind her. The heavy tread of Lars walking from his office. ‘Don’t stay late,’ he walks out and away, his gruff manner making her smile.
‘Bye, Lars,’ Prisha says to thin air. ‘Who’s next?’ she glances at the next folder in the pile to be dip-tested, reading the name. ‘Hank Peterson…’ suicide from Verrazano bridge. New York. ‘Assigned to…Zara, Bear and Thomas. Okay, Hank…let’s see you living a long and happy life…’
She finds the right database, opening the screen to bring up the form and types his name and date of birth into the sections. ‘Hank Peterson…Hank Peterson….’ She frowns, checking his date of birth again. ‘Stop being awkward, Hank. I’ve got a takeaway waiting…’
They sit in the back of a canvass covered truck bouncing down the pitted track. Bear at the back staring out to a moonlit landscape that grows steadily worse the further from the town they go. Banks of raw earth and the ground undulating on both sides with coils of barbed wire stretching in every direction with the silhouettes of dead and broken tree trunks the only remaining sign of a once green and fertile land.
Thomas next to him. Corporal Simmonds opposite looking sick to the stomach, licking his lips and swallowing constantly. That the man is terrified to the core is obvious, but then so is everyone else. Bear looks down the bench seats, seeing the admin and medical staff ordered from the relative safety of the town to the trenches ready for the big push. All of them the same as Simmonds. Scared witless and gripping hardly used rifles with trembling hands. Bear looks at Thomas, seeing the tension is getting to the normal jovial American. The chances are they will reset in Discovery if they die here, but the risk of true death is very real and with it comes the fear everyone else is feeling.
A boom in the distance as the artillery guns start back up. Sudden and frightening in the darkness
and now they hear the detonations too. The booming whumps of the earth juddering and the tension in the truck ramps higher with lips growing thin. Men start praying and making the sign of the cross as Bear looks out trying to see the shells going overhead.
The truck stops, slowing and skewing in the mud before the engine cuts out. ‘THAT’S IT…FAR AS I CAN GO…’ the driver yells.
‘Every…’ an officer in the back starts speaking but fear makes his voice break and crack. He clears his throat, trying again. ‘Everyone out, chaps…’
They jump down to slide in the mud, huddling together as a solitary figure looms from the darkness.
‘THE LAST LOT ARE YOU?’ the sergeant from earlier stalks towards them with his cudgel now gripped in his hands with his rifle slung across his back.
‘Shush!’ the officer hisses. ‘Why are you shouting?’
‘He’s deaf, Sir,’ Corporal Simmonds says. ‘The shelling you see…’
‘FOLLOW ME,’ the sergeant booms.
They fall in behind as he veers off across the muddy bank as the shells soar overhead to blow with bright orange flashes in all-too-close-distance.
‘Jesus dude,’ Thomas stays close to Bear who stays close to Simmonds. His hand within grabbing reach of the man they have to protect. ‘Trenches…’ Thomas mumbles the word as they drop down a shallow decline and then they are in it. Inside a trench.
They go on, losing all sense of direction and distance. The doglegs, the junctions, the zigging and zagging. Some are deeper with high sides shored up with sandbags and lit lanterns giving a soft orange glow to the faces of the men trying to sleep, play cards or smoking in silence.
They pass dugouts filled with officers still planning the big assault and thousands of men simply waiting to die.
The further they go, the worse the conditions become. The mud deeper, the side walls rougher. Rats everywhere. Running alongside and scampering over their feet and alongside the shelves and divots in the walls.
It gets worse still. The shells exploding closer. The noise of them now a deafening roar and they have to shout to be heard while the ground quakes with each strike, juddering and trembling. They slip and slide, pulling each other on as they descend into a living hell.
‘Ah’ Prisha says to herself. ‘Makes sense now…’ it does happen sometimes. It’s not normal but then it’s not rare either. Hank Peterson was saved from suicide on Verrazano bridge by Bear and Thomas and left in the care of his sister but died a day later after being run over by truck. ‘Unlucky sod,’ she mumbles, switching programmes to write a brief report ready to send back to Martha who will decide if the Old Lady needs to be updated, or if another tweak should be done.
She startles at the phone ringing next to her, lifting the receiver. ‘Sheriff’s office. Deputy Prisha…’
‘It’s Jen. What do you want to eat? Allie said she can do a run into New York and grab something.’
‘Er that is strictly forbidden,’ Prisha says firmly. ‘But I’ll have Thai in that case.’
‘Thai? Okay, come over in about twenty?’
‘Yep.’ Prisha puts the receiver down and finishes the report, printing it off to attach to the folder and thinking to take the completed ones back with her when she goes to meet the others. ‘One more,’ she tells herself, grabbing the next folder.
The walls shake. Crumbling with mud sliding down that is scooped and pushed back by soldiers cowering with their heads between knees. Others rock back and forth. Driven mad by this constant noise as flares give phosphorous light to a landscape twisted and torn apart.
They stopped walking minutes ago and were told, by way of being pushed into the walls, to stay here and the big sergeant shows no fear to the noise or the horror but walks up and down, glaring at anyone looking like they might try and flee. His cudgel gripped and ready in his hands with obvious intent at what he will to do deserters or cowards.
Simmonds slides down on his haunches. His medical canvas bag hugged like a comforter. His eyes clamped shut. His cheeks wet from the tears falling out.
Thomas feels the fear. The horror. It gnaws inside him. Growing with a sense of dread. At least he has a chance at living and resetting back in Discovery, but still it gets to him, the shelling, the noise, the flares, the fear hanging in the air.
‘I’m off,’ Sally says, leaning into Zara’s office. ‘Everything okay?’ she asks, looking at the monitor.
‘No,’ Zara says glumly. ‘They’re in the bloody trenches waiting to charge the enemy…’
Sally winces, pulling a pained expression. ‘Easy thing to say but try not to worry…’
‘Right,’ Allie says, walking in. ‘Jen and Prish want Thai, you happy with Thai, Zara?’
‘Yeah, that’s fine,’ Zara says, leaning back in her chair to rub her face.
‘Joining us?’ Allie asks, seeing the stunned look on Sally’s face that a programmer is being asked to share a meal with handlers and managers.
‘Pardon?’
‘We’re doing a run into the real world for takeaway to keep Zara company.’
‘Seriously?’ Sally asks. ‘Yeah, okay, you sure I’m not, like in the way or something?’
‘It’s fine,’ Allie says. ‘Just don’t tell anyone.’
‘No way,’ Prisha says, blinking at the screen. She looks away, shaking her head then reads again before checking the details. Jean Stoll. Danish by birth but living in London. Steps in front of a bus but is saved by Bear. Zara’s report indicates it was successful, but the systems show Jean Stoll was stabbed to death in a street robbery less than a week later. Two in one go isn’t right and the hairs on the back of her neck prickle with alarm as she reaches for the next folder.
Bear’s plan is formed. He’ll shoot Simmonds in the leg the first chance he gets. Easy and simple. Simmonds won’t be very happy for sure, but he’ll stay alive.
He fidgets in position, pushing his hand into pocket to pull the necklace out, fingering the delicate links and the word inscribed on the pendant. Are you looking up my dress? He smiles at the memory, because that’s all it is, just a memory of someone he once knew. Did she groom him? Probably. Does he care? Not really. Would he do it again? Yes, without doubt, but it’s gone now. He must look to the future and he decides, at that point, to buy Lucy flowers and ask her to go to dinner with him.
Another whoosh overhead and the shell hits with a huge boom with every soldier wishing it would end while hoping it never ends because the end means they have to charge.
Prisha reads through files and systems, flicking back and forth between the lives of the people targeted in the RLI’s carried out by Zara’s team.
Hank Peterson was killed the day after being saved. Jean Stoll was knifed in the heart during a robbery a week after Bear prevented her stepping out in front of a bus.
Colin Jenson was saved by Bear and Thomas giving him Epinephrine, he was meant to live and guide his son into the army, but he died two days later while alone at his house.
Mary Lieber. American housewife and domestic violence victim. She was beaten to death inside prison while awaiting trial, but she was meant to live too.
Prisha punches deeper into her system to hunt for the flow. There’s nearly always a flow when missions are done back to back this way. It’s how the Old Lady works. Doing a batch of tweaks that all seem random yet are all interconnected.
Hank Peterson not committing suicide means he later opens a charity. That charity eventually stops a young abuse sufferer from gunning down dozens of students at his old school. That same young man then later marries Mary Lieber after she is acquitted of the murder of her husband. They have a daughter that marries a leading scientist and climate change expert. A man that should have died as a child when Jean Stoll’s husband gassed himself and caused an explosion. A scientist that convinces governments to switch from fossil fuels to a new battery system developed by a former combat engineer, the son of Colin Jenson. And that combat engineer was meant to be saved by a US Marine called Mike
y who went to military cadets instead of Sunday school.
The flow is right there as Prisha visualises the golden lines and the glowing dots as those lives entwine and shape the future of humanity.
Except they don’t happen. Hank Peterson is killed. Jean Stoll is killed. Colin Jenson dies too. Mikey still goes into the firefight in Afghan, but without the combat engineer he never calls for air support and he dies too. That means the new battery system is never developed and Mary never marries the former angry young man. They don’t have a child that marries the climate change expert. There is no climate change expert, because Jean Stoll still dies, and her husband still gasses himself and blows the street up.
‘What the hell…’ Prisha mutters as she rushes to Matias’s desk to check through the RLI’s done by other operatives. Marco, Keith, Helmut and others.
All fine. No issues.
She goes into Lars’s office, checking through his and seeing Pete and Jacob’s work is fine. The same with Kathy. All of them are fine.
Only Zara’s team are being targeted.
You know operatives are the worst gossips ever? They can’t keep their gobs shut about the stuff they do, and everyone knows they’ve got a war overnighter on…
Lucy’s words come back. Someone is feeding everything they are doing to Freedom. Zara has to get them back now. She has to recall them. Prisha runs across the office, grabbing her jacket and the folders before running for the door with the sudden realisation that Bear, and Thomas are being tracked.
30
Teams of men for every gun. Fifteen-inch Howitzers lined up with gangs of exhausted soldiers working like demons to load and fire each shell that weighs over six-hundred kilos, winching the pulleys by hand to load the giant metal beast while more men turn the wheels to adjust angle and position. The other Howitzers fire down the line, expending their ammunition but this one on the end is the last of the night and as the dawn lifts and the world turns to bring day so the men run back and away to cover their ears as the huge thing fires with a noise that cannot be imagined.
A Town Called Discovery Page 27