by Alex Scarrow
‘We have to leave. The army men will come because humansh were killed. We should leave tomorrow morning, head north and find a new home.’ He glanced at Sal and Lincoln. ‘Not all humansh hate our gutsh. These two sheem different to me. Maybe them Northy people think different too.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe not, but I know we can’t shtay here, not no more. We knew thish day gonna happen eventually, anyway.’
Ancient weather-worn timber creaked to fill the long silence.
‘Sam’s right … I think,’ panted Henry. ‘We have … to go.’
Jerry looked at him, sensing wiser minds than his had reached a consensus he couldn’t begin to argue against.
He sighed. ‘Maybe you right.’
‘Of courshe I am.’
‘Sorry, Sam,’ he said finally.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Sam reached out and patted one of his bulging knuckles. ‘You big ol’ mump, you gotta jusht trusht me. All right? We’d be real dumb to shtay put and fight them sholdiersh. Real dumb.’
Sam waddled towards the edge of the stage and looked out at the dark rows of seats. ‘And we ain’t no dummiesh, are we?’
CHAPTER 53
2001, Dead City
Sal stared up at the stars through the shutters of their coal cellar. Oddly calming, she thought. In a world turned upside-down, where everything was wrong, bizarre, you could at least look up at the sky and see normality. Stars that shone regardless of who won a civil war, or who should or should not be a president. Their light was billions of years old. They didn’t have a care that a girl from 2026, stuck in the year 2001, in a world that should never have been, was watching them.
Funny, that.
Across from her she could see Samuel on a nest of worn blankets, twitching in his sleep, his ragged lips rustling like tent flaps with every shallow breath. Around him other genics of all the standard types she’d seen were curled up and fast asleep, producing a chorus of breathing: different sounds, different rhythms.
Soft whimperings, half-spoken muttered words, feet and hands jerking and curling. She realized these manufactured creatures dreamed in their sleep just like humans. Twitched and flexed like babies in a womb.
Babies. Children. Yes, just like frightened children. Even the smart ones, like Sam and that strange thin one, Henry. Even that giant ape … Ferocious though he might look, he was like a little baby inside that miniature head. And wasn’t it so childlike, their futile efforts to look more human? The items of clothing they each tried their best to wear properly, the names they chose for themselves. They had every reason to despise humans for the way they’d been treated, yet they did all they could to be more like them.
After the gathering at the deserted theatre, the various packs had returned to their dens to settle in for the night. She and Lincoln had spoken with Sam for a while, softly, as the other creatures began to fall asleep. She’d asked him about his life, what it was like to be ‘made’. He’d told her about the growth farms in the English countryside — enormous factories of iron struts and grimy glass where near to full-grown genics were birthed from giant copper vats, then cleaned, clothed and numbered. And about living from day one in schoolhouses: long huts stacked with hard bunk beds and straw mattresses. Living there to be educated on the basics they needed for their life-long roles, taught by other genics designed specifically to teach. His description of the growth farms had reminded her of the enormous internment camps back in 2026 along India’s northern border with Pakistan; the lives of refugees lived entirely within chain-link compounds, one day like any other.
Then, with no warning at all, he’d been crated up like so much freight and shipped to a far corner of the British Empire.
Sam had told them that at first he’d worked in a very hot place where the humans were of Sal’s colour, mostly darker. There he’d worked on maintaining field harvesters, stripping them, cleaning the engines alongside human workers who lived only marginally better lives than the genics did. It had been one of them who had taught him how to read.
Then again, without warning, he’d been packaged like freight and shipped to another country, and another. Eventually learning from the scraps of books and pamphlets he picked up and squirrelled away the names of all these strange places: New Rhodesia, Great Albany, British Central District, Cape Georgia. Finally ending up in a place called America.
Sam said he could read most things. Only occasionally did he find language too difficult for him to understand. But his one big regret was that he couldn’t write more than a child’s untidy scrawl. His hands, designed to hold spanners and wrenches, lacked the dexterity to manage something as straightforward as a pencil.
If he could have written things, he’d said he would have liked to have written ‘singsong stories’. Sal had no idea what those were. Perhaps he meant poems.
On that note he’d said he needed his rest and was fast asleep within seconds. She wondered if that was a deliberately designed ability, to be able to flick a switch inside and be instantly unconscious. Or whether it was a lifetime’s habit, learning to get rest when it was available.
‘Abraham?’ she whispered in the dark.
There was no reply.
‘Lincoln?’ she tried again. Nothing.
She was going to ask him what he thought of an idea she had. To see if they could slip out of the cellar unheard, escape the city and try to intercept these soldiers the genics were certain were coming their way. Perhaps, seeing them free and unharmed, the soldiers might let the creatures go, be redeployed to do something more useful elsewhere. Or, if not, then perhaps she and Lincoln might be able to send them off in the wrong direction on a wild-goose chase. Give these things a chance to escape and find a new home somewhere else. But the deep voice of a genic grunted irritably out of the darkness.
‘Shut up … resting now.’
So much for that idea, then.
CHAPTER 54
2001, outside Dead City
Liam watched the night sky. He was looking at the very same stars as Sal. In front of them was the outline of the dark city suburbs.
McManus prodded the dying fire with a stick. ‘We shall wait till first light, Liam. Then we’ll send in the hounds.’
Another delay of hours. Liam did his best to contain the frustration behind gritted teeth.
‘They should find those runaways easily enough … and your sister and friend too.’
Liam glanced across the trampled field, lit by several campfires. The ‘hounds’ that McManus referred to were those large baboon-headed dogs. He could see them clustered around one of the fires, eating rations of food out of a trough. He could see flashes of long teeth as they periodically raised their heads and chewed hungrily on what appeared to be dry nuggets of protein biscuit.
‘They look pretty ferocious, so they do. Are you sure my sister’s going to be safe from them?’
‘Indeed. Those hunter-seekers won’t harm them. They’ve been instructed.’
‘How’ll they know who it is they’re not to hurt, though?’
‘White Bear has had them all get a taste of the tracks left by the genics. They know the smell of your sister and have orders to follow the scent, locate them and then report in.’
Liam looked at him sceptically. ‘Instructed, you said? You make them sound almost human.’
McManus grinned. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. One of the hunter-seekers looked up from his feeding trough. ‘Yes, that’s right, you over there! Pack-Alpha … come here!’
The creature obediently got up off its haunches and trotted across the camp towards them.
Liam shared a look with Bob. ‘I’ve never seen a dog so well trained.’
‘Well, firstly, remember these things aren’t dogs,’ said McManus.
The hunter-seeker came to a halt in front of them — waist high, almost as big as a Great Dane.
‘You may sit, Pack-Alpha.’
‘Thanks, guv,’ it grunted, slim hindquarters settling down on the dusty ground.
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‘This civilian is Mr Liam O’Connor. And the big chap is Mr Bob O’Connor. It’s their sister and friend who’ve been taken by the runaways. Now, for their peace of mind, would you please tell them what your orders are.’
It turned intelligent baboon-eyes on to Liam, a pink tongue protruded from its long furry muzzle and moistened its thin dark leathery lips. ‘Follow smell-trail. Find humans.’
‘And what will you do when you find them?’
It cocked its head and Liam could have sworn the thing rolled its eyes as if that was the most stupid question a person could ask. ‘Call home.’
McManus pointed to a leather strap round the creature’s neck. Beneath its jaw was a small brass box with a simple toggle switch on it. ‘They flip that switch and it turns on a short-range radio beacon, which we can then follow in. It also opens the microphone so they can tell us exactly what they’re seeing. They make excellent reconnaissance units.’
He turned back to the genic, squatted down to inspect an ident number on its collar. ‘Ahh, you’re Pack-Alpha-Two. Sorry, didn’t recognize you there … George, isn’t it?’
Liam choked a surprised laugh. ‘George?’
‘Ahh, yes. We let them pick their own informal names. They like to do it. Makes them feel a part of the regiment. Doesn’t it, ol’ chap?’
The creature nodded. ‘Good name, George. Just like King.’
‘That’s right, just like our King George.’ McManus patted the top of his small round head. ‘George is one of our best. Did some really rather excellent work rooting out the bad chaps from the mountains in Afghanistan, didn’t you?’
‘Bad men. I kill.’
‘You did jolly well, George. Very well indeed.’
George turned his baboon-head to look back at his pack and the trough, a worried frown rolling along the protruding brow above his eyes. ‘Go eat now, guv?’
‘Ah, yes … better get off before those greedy beggars in your squad finish all the chow. Dismissed.’
The hunter-seeker turned and trotted back across the makeshift camp.
Liam shook his head at the bizarre conversation he’d just witnessed.
‘Yes … they’re a very helpful eugenic product,’ said McManus. ‘Far more efficient at tracking than any human can be, better even than, dare I say, our Indian chap, White Bear.’
‘Why did you not use those hunter creatures earlier, then?’ asked Bob.
‘When we were following the trail from the farmhouse?’
Bob nodded.
‘Tracking’s not just following a scent or footprints. It’s thinking, assessing how you personally would attempt to hide your trail. It’s like playing chess … predicting an opponent’s move. George and his chums can’t do anything sophisticated like that. They’re jolly good, though, at following a scent. Tracking and following a scent … two very different things.’
‘The names …’ said Liam. ‘Why do they pick names like that? Human names?’
McManus shrugged. ‘Eugenics … that’s the odd thing — they all want in some way to be more human. After all, I suppose they must think of us as … as, I suppose, their parents, in a way. They are just children really, though. Simple-minded children.’
High up in the sky the regimental carrier slowly manoeuvred in a wide turning arc, a searchlight periodically lancing out into the darkness and combing the ground around the camp. McManus poked and prodded their campfire with a stick, stirring the glowing embers to life.
‘Even the wild ones, the runaways, they take human names. We’ve noticed them try to mimic us when they can, sometimes wearing items of clothing, bracelets … hats. That kind of thing.’
‘Like black slaves used to do?’
McManus stopped mid-stride. ‘Black slaves?’ He glared at Liam. ‘Good grief! You’re talking about human slavery?’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Barbaric!’ he spat. ‘An abhorrent, savage practice. I thank God we live in modern, more enlightened times.’
‘So … your side, the South — ’
‘Anglo-Confederacy,’ he corrected Liam. ‘North and South, those are old names from bygone times.’
‘The Anglo-Confederacy, then … it doesn’t keep black slaves any more, does it?’
‘Good God, Mr O’Connor! Are you actually trying to be offensive this evening?’
Liam winced. ‘No, I … I’m sorry. I just wondered …’
‘Do you honestly think His Majesty’s government, our armed forces, this prestigious regiment, would fight alongside any nation that actually kept humans as slaves? We put an end to that in this country nearly a century and a half ago!’
McManus shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Good Lord! Look around you, why don’t you, Mr O’Connor. We’re not ruddy barbarians in the British army!’ He got up and strode off, leaving Liam and Bob behind.
Liam looked at Bob. ‘What? I just asked the question … that’s all!’
‘I believe you may have angered McManus,’ said Bob.
Liam nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’ He looked around, just as McManus had suggested, at the men sitting beside campfires, in their woollen undershirts and braces, the junior officers around their brazier warming their hands. He’d been so distracted by their desperate mission to rescue Sal and Lincoln, distracted by the bizarre technology of this world and the curious talking creatures it had spawned, that he’d failed to note that at least a third of these men and officers in crimson tunics and pith helmets were dark-skinned. Professional soldiers recruited from every corner of the British Empire.
‘Oh … I see.’ He pressed his lips, realizing now why his clumsy question might have caused McManus to snap angrily at him.
‘I guess I probably need to go and apologize.’
CHAPTER 55
2001, New York
Devereau watched his Southern counterpart jump down off the prow of the launch and wade through the lapping tide up the shingle towards him.
Wainwright stood a yard short and offered him a crisp salute. ‘Colonel.’
‘Twice in one day.’ Devereau returned the salute. ‘We make poor enemies, don’t we?’
Wainwright nodded politely at Maddy and Becks standing a little further behind Devereau. ‘William, we must talk quickly.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘The British are preparing an offensive in this sector.’
‘Another?’
Every two or three years, it seemed, the Anglo-Confederacy probed somewhere along the front line with a half-hearted assault. Thousands of men usually dead or injured for a front line that might have shifted a quarter-mile in one direction or the other. It made headlines in newspapers. It gave the generals on either side a chance to earn campaign medals. But it achieved nothing useful.
‘No, William, this one’s for good. They want a significant victory this time.’
‘Oh?’
‘They want to take New York.’ Wainwright stepped a little closer and lowered his voice. ‘And they’re sending in experimentals.’
Eugenics. Devereau felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He fought to keep a rigid expression on his face. ‘James, are you certain of this?’
‘Certain?’ Wainwright laughed bitterly. ‘I have just committed an act of treason. Of course I’m certain! They’re coming your way, William, and they’re going to throw every little monster in their box of tricks right at you.’
‘God help us,’ whispered Devereau. He glanced over his shoulder at Maddy and Becks, then back at Wainwright. ‘James, perhaps you’ll reconsider your position on the discussion we had this morning.’
‘That’s why I’m here, old friend. These two young women, do you …?’
‘Do I believe their story?’ Devereau considered his answer for a moment. ‘You’ve seen their pictures, their small device … I’m no technician, but I swear that thing is beyond even the capability of the British.’
Wainwright nodded.
‘And there’s more to s
ee in their bunker if you want to come and — ’
Wainwright raised a hand. ‘There’s little time. I believe … I have little choice but to believe them. I have nothing left but hope that they can change all of this.’
Devereau turned and beckoned Maddy and Becks to join them.
Maddy smiled. ‘Colonel,’ she said politely.
‘Miss Carter. I have agreed to join my efforts with Colonel Devereau and help you fix your time machine.’
‘Really? Oh, that’s — ’
‘William, Miss Madelaine, Miss Becks …’ Wainwright drew a deep breath. ‘I have committed an act of treason and mutiny. As soon as they discover this, they will be swarming all over my sector. If there are parts you need to take from the British communications hub, then we will need to move quickly.’
‘If we can retrieve what you need from there,’ said Devereau, ‘how long will it take you to fix your time machine?’
Maddy turned to Becks. ‘Becks?’
‘I am unable to give a precise estimate. Connecting and configuring a radio communications dish may take — ’ her eyelids flickered for a moment — ‘thirteen hours.’
‘What?’ gasped Wainwright. ‘That is far too long!’
‘In addition, we need to establish a source of power. Our generator utilizes petroleum-derived diesel. Do you have this fuel type?’
The colonels looked at each other. Wainwright shook his head. ‘I have not heard of it. Southern engines run on a liquid-form fuel we call maizolene. I believe it is a mixture of corn-based alcohol and Texas oil.’
‘As I suspected,’ said Becks. ‘A variety of hybrid ethanol. Then we would need to adapt the generator to run on this fuel. This may not be possible. In which case we would need to acquire one of your engines and use that as the motorized device to turn the generator’s dynamo to produce electrical power.’
Maddy sucked her teeth. ‘That sounds like a lot of work.’
‘Correct.’ Becks’s eyes blinked again. ‘Approximately thirty hours of work.’ She turned to Maddy. ‘But I am making several significant assumptions in this calculation. It could take much longer.’