by Alex Scarrow
‘Yes, I would say so,’ said Rashim. He hunkered forward into the narrow cubicle. He lowered his voice. ‘If Waldstein is determined to locate you, he may decide to send more of those military recon units after you.’ He bit his lip. ‘They may be old genetic hybrid technology, but they’re robust, resourceful, tenacious … and very, very hard to kill.’
‘You don’t need to remind us of that,’ said Liam.
‘If he sends more, you really want to make it as difficult as possible for them to track you down. Remaining in the present simply presents one search vector for them: determining your location. But picking another time adds another search vector … when.’
‘Yeah, so we need to think about less obvious places in time to hide,’ added Maddy.
‘Like the past.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But … but how far back can we go?’ asked Liam. ‘We need some power, do we not?’
Rashim nodded. ‘Quite. And that’s going to be the limiting factor.’
Maddy tapped at the keyboard. ‘So … that does pretty much limit us to the age of electricity. When did we start having electric power everywhere?’
Rashim rolled his eyes upwards, thinking. Guessing. ‘1940?’
‘Ahhh … I think there was power a lot earlier than then,’ said Liam. ‘There was plenty of electric on the Titanic, so there …’ His words came to an abrupt halt. ‘Not that, uh … not that I was ever even on the ship.’ He shook his head and muttered something.
‘Liam’s right. Much earlier than that.’ Maddy typed a phrase into Wikipedia’s search box.
‘My history isn’t very good.’ Rashim tried again. ‘1900?’
‘Nope. Earlier.’
The man’s eyes widened behind his glasses. ‘Really? There was electricity in the 1800s?’
The monitor flickered with the result of her search: a page of text, no pictures or diagrams or embedded video clips. This is old Wikipedia, Maddy reminded herself. Just text.
‘There we go. How about this …’ She read out loud. ‘Electricity remained not much more than a curiosity of nature until 1600, when English scientist William Gilbert carried out detailed observations of the relationship between the apparent visible effects between magnetism and the as yet undefined, unnamed force of electricity. He produced and distinguished the “lodestone” effect from static electricity created by rubbing amber. He named this effect after the Latin word “electricus” meaning “like amber”, which in turn came from the Greek word for elektron.’
‘Really?’ Rashim craned his neck forward to read the small text more easily. ‘I never would have believed …’ he muttered, now silently reading on.
Maddy picked out another paragraph further down the article. ‘In 1800, Alessandro Volta created the “Voltaic Pile”, a structure of alternating layers of zinc and copper.’ She looked at Liam. ‘There you go! The first electric battery!’
‘1819 …’ said Rashim, ‘Michael Faraday creates the Faraday disk! The first electromagnetic generator!’
‘Generator?’
Rashim grinned at her. ‘Don’t get too excited, it generated about a couple of volts of direct current. We need output that’s equivalent or thereabout to the domestic feed most people are getting today.’ He read on. ‘There … 1876, Thomas Edison builds the first power station in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Built it to supply power for his laboratory and various experiments.’
‘But it needs to be power that’s available for us to get our hands on,’ said Liam.
Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right, that’s the really important bit. And it needs to be a totally reliable source, not some nutty inventor’s cranky prototype that keeps breaking down or something. We need power that was, like, commercially available … put out for normal people, businesses, to use.’
‘Ahhh!’ Rashim raised a finger. ‘Well then, how about this? The Edison Electric Light Station, built in 1880–81, which then came online in, let’s see … ah yes! 1882.’
‘That sounds promising,’ said Maddy. ‘But I dunno … New Jersey’s still pretty close to where we were. If we’re going to play it safe and put as much distance as we –’
‘It’s not in New Jersey.’
‘Uh! Where, then?’
‘London.’
‘London?’ She took a moment to take that in. Not in America? She’d presumed just now that something as forward-thinking, something so modern as electricity must have been a solely American thing long before anyone else. Even before the turn of the century.
‘You mean London, England?’
‘Yes, of course I mean London, England. A steam-powered 125-horsepower generator beneath –’ he traced his finger down through the text to find his place – ‘beneath a place called the Holborn Viaduct. Yes, and that’s in central London.’ He read the article from where his finger touched the screen. ‘It was built to power the lights on the viaduct, but also to premises in the area, the City Temple and the Old Bailey.’ He looked at them. ‘Whatever that was.’
Maddy stroked her chin thoughtfully. ‘Do you think it might have been churning out enough for our needs?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’ Rashim picked up a biro and began scribbling down scraps of information from the article.
‘No need,’ she said. She clicked her mouse on an icon to one side of the screen and smiled. ‘It’s already printing.’
‘London.’ Liam turned to look at her. He was just about to say he’d always wanted to visit the city as a boy. But once again, there it was, stupid circular thinking; he’d never been a little boy with dreams and wishes. He settled for a thoughtful nod. ‘Aye, London sounds like a good enough bet to me.’
Maddy was grinning like a loon. ‘London!’ Truly and genuinely, a terrifyingly Cheshire cat-sized grin. Something she realized she hadn’t done in a while; an honest expression of excitement. ‘Victorian London! All top hats and posh frocks?’
Her growing excitement was wholly infectious. Liam found himself smiling straight back at her. He remembered their fleeting visit to San Francisco in 1906, the childlike beam of pleasure on her face as they’d strutted down that broad and busy thoroughfare: her with a plume of ostrich feathers on her head and wearing a bodice tight enough to make her want to cough up a kidney, and him with a top hat on his head tilted at a jaunty, gentleman-about-town angle.
‘Aye … I think we just might’ve found ourselves a new home.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘Yup,’ she said right back. ‘Rashim?’
‘Yes?’
‘How long do you think it will take you to rebuild the displacement machine?’
She knew he’d do it – the instinctive response habit of any technician, engineer, plumber – he sucked air in through his teeth. ‘I don’t know. We have the key component boards and they’re still intact incredibly. But I’m going to have to, uh … reverse-engineer them. The basic process pipeline is the same as we had on Project Exodus, but there are implementation differences that I’ve got to learn and adapt to work with these components.’
‘Just give me your best guess.’
‘A couple of weeks? A month, two maybe?’
‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘You asked me to guess.’ He shrugged. ‘So, I’m guessing.’
Chapter 42
1 October 2001, Harcourt, Ohio
‘So that’s twenty-seven dollars and –’
‘Ninety cents,’ Liam finished. He smiled at her and she blushed. ‘I know that off by heart.’
‘And I know what you’re gonna order by heart,’ said Kaydee-Lee. ‘Why do you always order the same thing?’
Liam had been up to the diner virtually every morning since they’d settled into the abandoned elementary school. It was boredom, that’s why he volunteered to do the breakfast bagel run. Maddy, Rashim and SpongeBubba seemed to be spending all their waking hours either poring over pencil-sketched schematics or huddled over a make-do workbench, carefully soldering electrical componen
ts together by the light of a desktop lamp. Sal seemed to be busy on the computers most of the time. They had a similar set-up of twelve networked PCs as they’d had back in Brooklyn, the old hard drives from the archway system installed. Once the W.G. Systems operating code had been loaded up and had successfully kicked Windows 2000 to the kerb, computer-Bob was able to talk Sal through installing all the other bits and pieces.
‘I know what bagel filling everyone likes … saves me having to, you know, disturb them from their work.’
Kaydee-Lee narrowed her eyes. ‘So, what are you guys up to down there at the school?’
‘Oh, it’s … it’s just a little science experiment, so it is.’
‘That sounds kinda cool.’
He curled his lip casually. ‘Aw, it’s nothing too exciting really. Uh, we’re … we’re measuring –’ he scrambled to reach for a few sciencey-sounding terms and words – ‘measuring background particle emissions from, uh … from radio-micron particle toxin materials.’
She gazed at him, none the wiser. An awkward silence hung between them, begging to be filled. ‘Cool!’ she said, smiling. ‘I kinda liked science at school.’ Then she sighed. ‘Wasn’t any good at it, though.’ She huffed a little sadly. ‘Wasn’t much good at anything at school … that’s why I’m here, I guess.’
He followed her doleful gaze out of the broad window of the diner across a high street that was half made up of boarded-up stores. ‘I never see anyone else working in here. Is it just you?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Pretty much in the mornings. Arnie comes in at lunchtimes to cook. That’s when it gets real busy.’ She looked back at him. ‘We get a ladies’ sewing circle come in for lunch, regular as clockwork. Five old dears. The place is totally buzzing then.’
Liam laughed. He picked up the tone of sarcasm.
Yes, it was boredom that brought him up here, that and a chance to get some exercise. It was a fifteen-minute trip into town on the bicycle he’d found in the schoolyard. But … yes, if he was being honest, it was a chance to pop into the diner – always quiet at this time in the morning – and talk to Kaydee-Lee. Over the last few weeks they’d graduated from ‘how ya doing today’ niceties to talking about the weather, to really talking, to finally, politely exchanging their names.
‘Why do you stay here, Kaydee-Lee?’
She filled the silence with getting on with finishing up his take-out order, busy spreading a thick layer of cream cheese on to one of the bagels. She looked up at his question. ‘Harcourt?’
‘Aye.’
She hunched her shoulders. ‘Where else am I gonna go? I got a job and it’s OK, I guess. It’s not like I go home at night all stressed out or anything. I’m bored … but at least I’m not stressed.’
‘But you don’t intend to work in here forever, right? You’ve got a plan, a dream … a goal, so to speak?’
‘Jeeez! I’m, like, seventeen. I don’t even know what I’m gonna cook up for dinner tonight, let alone know where I wanna be when I’m your age.’
‘My age?’
She nodded. ‘You’re what? Like, twenty-five, twenty-six or something?’
Liam stifled an urge to gasp. Twenty-five? I’m sixteen! Sixteen!! But then he reminded himself he wasn’t any particular age. Not really. His false memory calmly tried to reassure him he was a sixteen-year-old boy from Cork, Ireland. But that was all meaningless claptrap now. Someone else’s fiction.
Kaydee-Lee looked up from her work, studied his troubled face. ‘Oh my God, did I just say something wrong?’
‘No … I just, I’m not that old.’
‘Oh God, you don’t have some kinda awful ageing sickness or something? Did I just put my foot in my mouth?’
Liam laughed. ‘No, don’t worry.’ He ruffled the scruffy mop of hair on his head. ‘It’s my grey bit of hair. Some people think I’m older than I am.’ He offered her a disarming smirk: an assurance that he hadn’t taken offence, that she hadn’t clumsily blundered on to uncomfortable ground.
‘Ahh, don’t you worry now. I’ve always had this little bit of grey. Me lucky silver streak, so it is.’
She nodded. ‘Well, I really like it.’ Her cheeks suddenly coloured a mottled pink once more. ‘I mean, you know … it looks cool. Kinda gothic.’
‘Gothic? What the devil does that mean?’
She smiled suspiciously at him. ‘Gothic? Sort of Sabbath-grungy-rocky? Kind of the whole steam-punky thing?’
‘You know,’ he shrugged. ‘I haven’t the first idea what any of that means.’
She laughed at that. ‘You’re so funny. The way you, like, talk … like a sort of young-old man –’
‘Old? Did I hear you just use the word “old”?’ The look of horror on his face was mock-serious.
‘No!’ she yelped. ‘No, I don’t mean that! I meant … I dunno, it’s like you’ve got old-style manners. If you know what I mean? Like you just stepped out of one of ’em ancient black and white movies.’
He spread his hands. ‘Well now, you’re never too young or too old for a dose of good manners, my dear.’
She chuckled behind the counter as she finished fixing the salt beef and cream cheese bagel, wrapped it up in greaseproof paper and put it in the plastic bag with the others. She tossed in some napkins and plastic forks and passed the bag over the counter to him. ‘I know an old-fashioned word that I can use to describe you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Enigma? That’s how you say it, right? You’re en-ig-mat-ic?’
‘You mean, a puzzle?’
She nodded. ‘Oh, you’re that all right, Liam. Exactly that. You’re a puzzle.’
Chapter 43
3 October 2001, Green Acres Elementary School, Harcourt, Ohio
‘It may look a bit random,’ said Maddy, ‘but, trust me, it all works.’
Liam cast another wary glance at the cables snaking across the classroom floor. The displacement machine at the moment was nothing more than an array of circuit boards placed on a row of orange plastic bucket chairs, all of them linked by dangling loops of electrical flex, blobs of solder holding the whole fragile thing together.
The computer system controlling the displacement machine looked very like it had back in Brooklyn: a dozen base units and half a dozen monitors hooked up together and occupying a cluster of school desks pushed together.
They didn’t have their own version of a displacement ‘tube’ filled with freezing cold water. According to Maddy, they didn’t need one of those any more. Since their mission was now a different one – no longer the rigid preservation of one particular timeline with all the necessary strict measures to ensure no unwanted contaminants came back into the past with them – there was no longer the need for a ‘wet drop’. If a minor contaminant, for example a chunk of modern-day linoleum floor, went back into the past, it might possibly result in some minor contamination. But, as far as Maddy was concerned, that was OK; that was an acceptable risk. The rules were different now. And anyway, a minor change, a minor time wave, might just be the thing that ultimately deflected the course of history and resulted in there not being an engineered super-virus known as Kosong-ni in the year 2070.
Totally unlikely that a chunk of classroom floor could alter history that much. But you never know.
‘Don’t worry, Mads,’ said Liam, looking at the guts of the machine spread along the row of plastic chairs. ‘I trust you.’ He hoped his voice sounded as confident as he was trying to look.
Rashim pointed to one of two squares marked out on the floor with lengths of masking tape. ‘That’s where you stand, Liam. It’s a metre square, wide enough for comfortable clearance just as long as you’re not waving your arms around. Each square has its own departure software that controls the distribution of energy and channelling of the field. I enter the precise mass figure into each entry field … with an acceptable nine per cent margin of error, of course,’ said Rashim. He pointed at the square in front of Liam. ‘The left square has your stats, t
he right one has Bob’s.’
Rashim had made his mass calculations several days ago using a rather old-school method. He’d filled a plastic drum with water – cold, of course, straight from a bathroom tap – right to the very top, then asked Liam to climb in and completely submerge himself. The water had spilled out as he’d displaced it. The displaced water was caught in a tray beneath the drum. And that water was then measured carefully to determine Liam’s mass. The process was repeated for Bob, then the girls, then Rashim and SpongeBubba. Provided none of them lost too much weight or put too much weight on in the meantime, the figures were good enough. Comfortably within the nine per cent margin for error.
‘So it’s squares now?’ Liam arched his brows and looked at Maddy. ‘Not one big circle any more?’
She shrugged. ‘Rashim’s deployment method. That’s how they did it with Exodus, separate displacement volumes.’
‘It’s safer. There’s a much lower risk of mass convergence. Plus I’ve calculated for an additional amount of mass. Each time we use the same square, we’ll take a half inch of the floor with us, no more than –’
‘Mass convergence?’ Liam could guess what that harmless-sounding phrase meant. He’d seen ‘mass convergence’ before and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant sight.
He grimaced. ‘You’re telling me that kind of thing happened with your lot often enough that you had a proper technical term for it?’
‘We had thirteen mis-translations in phase alpha!’ piped up SpongeBubba. ‘What came back was real gooey!’
‘Yes, thanks, SpongeBubba. Certainly, we had … uh … a few failed trials. But look –’ Rashim pushed his glasses up his nose – ‘this system, Waldstein’s particle-projection system, is way more elegant than ours. I mean … quite incredible! The man was … is … a genius! It’s the simplicity of the calculation pipeline that amazes me – the way he’s truncated the whole process into a basic two-step process …’ He stopped himself. ‘Sorry … the more I’ve worked on this machine, the bigger a fanboy I’ve become. The point is, Liam, this is a much more reliable system than ours was. Plus we’re dealing with a much smaller mass conversion. Two departure squares at a time. And they’re separate. Which means if one square happens to malfunction in some way, the other person won’t be involved.’ Rashim shrugged. ‘Only one person gets turned inside out, not two. Relax, Liam … you and I will be fine.’