by Alex Scarrow
‘Oh, right… thanks,’ she said.
Liam grimaced. ‘Ahhh, now see that came out all wrong-sounding, so it did. I didn’t mean to say it like that.’
‘No, you’re probably right,’ she huffed. ‘I’ve always been plain-looking. I’m sure shoving on a frilly dress and some stupid feather hat isn’t going to make much of a difference.’
They walked down the alley, sidestepping a toppled crate of festering cabbages until they reached the spot where they’d materialized several hours earlier.
‘Seems harsh that, though,’ said Liam thoughtfully.
‘What?’
‘That fella back there, Leighton. You sure he’ll die?’
She nodded. ‘Yes… it makes sense.’ Yes, it did. But it was the feel of… the feel of… ruthlessness that gnawed away at her; the agency seemed to know everything about everyone — and exploited that knowledge mercilessly. In less than eighteen hours the young man she’d been talking to would be nothing more than a twisted black carcass amid the smouldering remains of that bank.
And I have to learn to deal with that, she told herself.
Liam seemed to sense her turmoil. ‘Well, this is the job now, Mads. We don’t have much of a choice in the matter. Do we?’
She looked at him and realized it wasn’t just the young bank teller that the agency was ruthlessly using, but Liam too. The side effects weren’t apparent yet: the onset of cellular corruption, the onset of premature old age. But they’d begin to show at some point, wouldn’t they? The more trips Liam was sent on into the past, the more damage it was going to do to his body, until, like Foster, one day he was going to be an old man before his time: his muscles wasted; his bones brittle, weakened and fragile; his organs irretrievably corrupted by the effects of time travel and one by one beginning to fail him.
She so wanted to tell him. To warn him.
How many more trips, Liam? How many before I’m looking at you and seeing a dying old man?
But she couldn’t. Not yet. Foster had told her it would be unkind for him to know his fate too early.
‘ Let him enjoy the freedom of seeing history for a bit; seeing his future, his past… at least give him that for a while before you tell him he’s dying.’
Liam smiled his lopsided smile. On the face of a grown man, it might have been called rakish, charming even. On him it looked just a little mischievous. ‘You all right there, Maddy?’
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Yeah… I’m fine.’
He let go of her arm and checked his timepiece. ‘Return window any second now.’
Almost on cue, a gentle breeze whistled up the alley, sending the loose debris of rubbish skittering along the cobble-stones. A moment later, the air several yards from them shimmered like a heat haze: a ball of air twelve feet in diameter, hovering a foot off the ground. Through the portal she could just make out the twisting, undulating shapes of the archway beyond and Sal waiting impatiently for them.
You have to tell him, sometime, Maddy. Tell him time travel will slowly kill him.
She didn’t like the fact that Foster had left the decision to her. Having secrets like that, having something she couldn’t share with him or Sal.
And what about that note?
She could feel the lump of balled paper in her glove, something else she was being asked to keep from her friends. And why? And who was Pandora? She didn’t like that… it felt like she was being used.
What? Like you just used that young bank teller?
‘Come on, then,’ said Liam, stepping forward with the jewellery case in his hands.
‘Liam?’
He stopped. ‘What?’
She could tell him about the note. She could also tell him about the damage time travel was silently wreaking on him. That every time he went back in time subtle corruption was occurring to every cell in his body, ageing him long before his time. She decided she’d want to know, to know that every time she’d stepped through a portal she was knocking perhaps five or ten years off her natural life. She’d want to at least be able to choose for herself whether she was prepared to make that sacrifice for the rest of mankind.
‘What is it, Mads?’
Or maybe Foster was right — she should keep the truth from him for as long as possible…
She pulled her glasses out of her handbag and put them on, then took the silly bonnet off her head with its long, ridiculous ostrich feathers. All of a sudden, dressed in her tight corset and billowing lace skirts, she felt dishonest, a phoney, a fake and, her eyes meeting Liam’s, she felt like a liar.
A worn-thin smile spread across her face. ‘Nothing, Liam. Let’s go home, eh?’
CHAPTER 9
2001, New York
‘Are you sure?’ shouted Sal.
‘That’s what Bob says.’ Maddy’s voice echoed from the archway through the open door into the back room — ‘the hatchery’ as they called it now. ‘He says to attach the end of the protein-feed pipe to the growth candidate’s belly button.’
‘How do we do that?’ Liam replied. ‘It’s not like there’s a socket to screw the thing into.’ The small slimy foetus squirmed gently in his hand, stirring in its slumber. He grimaced as it did, feeling small fragile bones shift beneath its paper-thin skin.
It looked as vulnerable as a freshly hatched bird fallen from a nest, and yet he knew that this tiny, shifting, pale creature in the palm of his hand would soon be a seven-foot-tall leviathan, bulging with genetically enhanced muscles, with a deep, intimidating voice rumbling from a chest as broad as a beer barrel.
‘Bob says you need to push the feed pipe through the belly button,’ Maddy’s voice came back.
Sal’s lip curled. ‘You mean… like… as if we’re stabbing it?’ she called out.
‘Well, obviously don’t stab it with the pipe!’ Maddy’s voice echoed back. ‘Gently do it!’
Liam looked at Sal and shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. I’d be sick. Here…’ He passed the foetus to Sal.
‘Oh, right… thanks, Liam.’
Sal cradled the thing in her hand and then gingerly reached into the perspex growth tube beside them to retrieve the feed pipe dangling down inside. She grimaced as she fumbled in the slimy growth solution, finally pulling out the tip of the feed pipe. As the slime dripped like mucus from the end of it, she could see the pipe ended with a sharpened tip.
‘Bob says you shouldn’t have to push too hard. The belly button skin is very thin and should… Oh, that’s just gross…’ Maddy’s voice faded away.
‘What?’ called out Liam. Maddy didn’t answer immediately.
‘Maddy?’ chirped Sal. ‘What’s gross?’
‘He says the skin should pop just like a blister.’
Liam looked sheepishly at Sal. ‘Really, I can’t do it. I’d be… I’ll be sick over the poor little fella.’
‘Shadd-yah,’ Sal muttered, ‘you are hopeless sometimes.’
She took the end of the pipe between her fingers and gently drew it up until it hovered an inch above the foetus’s tiny belly: translucent skin criss-crossed with a faint spider’s web of blue veins and a small inward twist of rubbery skin.
She took a deep breath. ‘OK… here goes.’
She gently pressed the sharp end of the feed pipe into the small whirl of flesh. The foetus shuddered in her hand; finger-length arms and legs suddenly flailing, its walnut-sized head slapping against the palm of her hand.
‘Uh… Maddy! It doesn’t like it! It’s struggling!’
‘Bob says that’s perfectly normal… just push it in until the skin pops.’
She heard Liam mutter something about Jesus before his legs buckled beneath him and he sat down heavily on the floor, then slid over on to his side.
‘I think Liam’s just fainted!’ shouted Sal.
‘Never mind him,’ Maddy replied. ‘We need to get the foetus hooked up before it starts starving.’
‘OK, OK.’
She pushed the tip against the belly button again, th
is time pushing despite the foetus’s protests, until she felt the skin give way, as promised, with a soft pop. A small trickle of dark blood oozed out on to its belly.
‘It’s in!’
‘Right, now, put bonding tape round the pipe and its belly to hold it in place.’
Sal picked up a roll of tape and wound it round as the thing squirmed indignantly in her hand.
‘OK. What next?’
‘Just lower it into the growth tube.’
Sal stepped towards the plastic cylinder and lifted the foetus up over the open top. ‘OK, Bob Junior,’ she uttered. ‘See you again in a little while.’
Gently she lowered the foetus into the murky gunk and then let it sink. It settled down through the pink soup, like a descending globule of wax in a lava lamp, until the feed pipe drew taut and it came to a rest.
‘OK, he’s in!’
‘Now close the growth-tube lid and activate the system pump!’
Sal closed the tube’s metal lid and clamped it in place. She squatted down to inspect the panel at the bottom of the tube. There wasn’t much to see down there. A manufacturer’s name — WG Systems — and a small touch screen. She tapped the screen and it lit up.
[Filtration system active]
[Set system to GROWTH or STASIS?]
‘It’s asking me to set it to growth or stasis… shall I pick growth?’
Maddy’s answer echoed back from the archway a moment later. ‘Growth for this one.’
Sal tapped GROWTH and confirmed the instruction. Immediately she heard the soft hum of a motor whirring to life somewhere at the bottom of the tube. A light winked on inside, making the pink protein glow and lighting the foggy form of the foetus from below. She could see its struggling form settle, content now that it was getting its feed despite the earlier discomfort of having the tube pushed into its belly.
‘All done!’
‘Good. Now we’ve got to do the same thing for the others. Only we’ll be setting those to stasis.’
Sal looked down at the open case on the floor, and the other vials containing growth candidates. Then she looked at Liam, still out for the count, his face resting against the cold concrete floor amid a small pool of spittle and vomit.
‘Great. Thanks for the help, Liam.’
‘Blfff ifff wheeeelly gloob!’ said Liam, his mouth full to bulging.
Both girls looked at him. ‘What?’
Liam chewed vigorously for a moment, then finally swallowed. ‘I said this is really good! What is it?’
‘Lamb korma,’ replied Sal. ‘It’s nothing like how Mum used to make it back home. You have it much sweeter over here. I suppose Americans like their food really sweet?’
Maddy nodded. ‘Sweeter the better. I could live just on chocolate.’ She reached across their table and pulled a carton of mango chutney out of the brown paper takeaway bag.
Liam hungrily loaded another forkful of korma into his mouth.
Across the archway, music streamed from the computer. Maddy had an Internet radio station playing music she remembered her parents listening to: the Corrs, REM, Counting Crows.
‘It’s kind of weird just us three, though,’ said Sal. ‘I miss Foster.’
‘Me too,’ said Maddy.
‘We’re never going to see him again, are we?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably not. He had to go.’
‘Why?’ asked Liam.
She hesitated a moment. ‘He was sick.’
‘Yeah,’ said Sal thoughtfully. ‘He didn’t look well.’
‘What was wrong with him?’
Maddy played with the rice on her plate for a moment. ‘Cancer. He was dying of cancer. He told me that.’
‘Poor, poor fella,’ sighed Liam. ‘I really liked him. Reminded me a bit of my grandfather, so he did.’
They ate in silence for a moment.
‘It’s strange, though,’ said Sal. ‘We’re part of this… this agency, but it doesn’t feel like we’re part of anything, if you know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Liam. ‘Like it’s just the three of us in this little archway all on our own. No contact with anyone else.’ He looked up at Maddy. ‘Did he not say there were other groups like us? Other field offices?’
She nodded. ‘He did.’
‘But we never ever hear from them. There’s no information about them, or about this agency. No one has contacted us, right?’
‘No one.’
Sal put down the poppadom she’d been holding. ‘What if it really is just us, just us alone… here?’
The other two looked at her.
‘What if we are the agency?’ she added.
Liam’s eyebrows arched and his jaw dropped open. ‘God help us all if that’s the case.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘It’s not just us. Someone else stashed those foetuses back in 1906, right?’
‘Could that not have been Foster?’
‘Could be.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘But then you’ve got to ask who genetically engineered the foetuses? That’s gotta need other people, some facility somewhere.’ The other two had no answer for that. ‘Fact is,’ she continued, ‘there’s more to this agency than just us. There are others out there somewhere or some when.’
‘So how do we talk with them?’ asked Sal. ‘How can we meet them?’
‘I think that’s exactly the point. I think we’re not supposed to.’ Maddy slurped her Dr Pepper. ‘Maybe we’re a bit like some sort of terrorist organization; for all of our safety, no one group can know where another group is. We operate in isolation. It’s just us… until
…’ Her words tailed off and they sat in silence for a while contemplating where that sentence ended.
‘Not much chance of a big Christmas get-together, then?’ muttered Liam.
Maddy snorted drink on to the table, relieved that he’d found a way to break the sombre mood.
‘At least,’ said Sal, ‘we’ll have a brand-new Bob to protect us soon.’
‘Aye. I miss the big ape.’
Maddy pointed to the bank of computer monitors. ‘He’s just there!’
‘Naw,’ said Liam, wrinkling his nose, ‘it’s not quite the same him being in there.’
‘You can’t exactly hug a computer monitor,’ said Sal.
Liam chuckled. ‘Quite right. I miss his tufty round coconut head.’
‘And that dumb, total blip-head expression on his face,’ added Sal.
‘Aye.’
Maddy finished a mouthful of curry. ‘Well, we’ll have him around soon. Foster’s “how to” manual says the growth cycle should take about one hundred hours.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Lemmesee… that’s just over four days.’
‘We’ll need some new clothes for him,’ said Sal. ‘I’ll see what I can find for him downtown tomorrow.’
Maddy nodded. ‘Good idea.’
They finished the Indian takeaway and bagged up the rubbish. Liam volunteered to take it out as the girls changed for bed. He crossed the archway floor, criss-crossed with snaking power cables, and lifted the front shutter enough to duck under and step out into their backstreet.
A flickering blue light dimly lit the street. Above him, bright halogen floodlights illuminated the thick metal spars of the Williamsburg Bridge arcing across the flat docile water of the Hudson River. On the far side — a sight he was still yet to get used to — was Manhattan, a vibrant inverted crystal chandelier of winking city lights and nudging traffic.
He dropped the bag into the trash can, and sucked in the cool night air.
Tonight all was well with the world. Tomorrow was the day planes crashed into buildings and the sky was a dark smudge all of the day.
He hated the Tuesdays.
‘Good night, New York,’ he uttered under his breath.
The city replied with the rumble of a train along the bridge overhead and the echoing, distant wail of a police siren racing through a Brooklyn street several blocks away. As he prepared to duck back inside and
wind the shutter down once more, he found himself wondering if Sal was right. If they really were alone. If the agency was, in fact, just them.
As it happened, the answer to that specific question was to arrive the very next morning.
CHAPTER 10
2001, New York
Maddy was entirely engrossed in Big Brother USA when Bob interrupted. She’d been watching Nicole and Hardy quietly plotting together in the kitchen against the other two. It was a rerun of the previous week’s shows on FOX and she already knew who was facing imminent eviction. She’d seen this show at least four times already, but for some reason, despite knowing the outcome, it was still compulsive viewing.
So it was with mild irritation that she answered the dialogue box that had popped up on the monitor over the top of Big Brother.
› Maddy?
She sat forward and spoke into the desk mic rather than tap out an answer on the keyboard.
‘What is it, Bob? I’m watching Big Brother right now.’
› I am picking up incoming tachyon particles.
Her mouth dropped open and she dribbled milk and Rice Krispies on to her T-shirt.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
› Kidding?
‘Joking.’
› Not joking, Maddy. There is a directed communication beam coming in from down-time.
‘From down-time… You mean the future?’
› Affirmative.
Maddy dropped her spoon back in the breakfast bowl and sat back in her chair. She looked around. Liam was still fast asleep on his bunk and Sal was out clothes shopping for Bob.
Oh my God… a message from the future?
She realized then and there that it could only be from the agency — their first contact with the rest of the organization — and just when they were really beginning to wonder whether the three of them were all on their own.
‘What’s the message, Bob?’
› Just a moment… just a moment. Decoding…
Sal had decided not to bother going uptown, over the bridge into Manhattan. The clothes shops there were all modern chain stores and none of them were likely to have much that would fit a seven-foot mountain of muscle.