The Eternal War Page 5

  Liam was already nearly good to go in his brown jacket and waistcoat; Bob wore a striped linen shirt and scruffy cotton trousers. Becks was almost in the corset.

  ‘Becks, you can stay. Sal’s taking your place.’

  She stopped fussing with the ties at the front. ‘Is this advisable?’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s New Orleans. What’s to worry about? Anyway, she’s got Bob and Liam with her.’

  The support unit dutifully nodded and began to undress.

  Maddy pointed towards the small archway where their bunks stood. There was a drape that could be pulled across for a little privacy. ‘Best you do that over there, Becks.’

  Last thing she needed was Liam getting all hormonal.

  ‘Sal, you understand this is 1831?’

  ‘Yuh.’

  Maddy bit her lip. Crud, this is going to be awkward.

  ‘This is a time of slavery.’

  Sal’s eyes were drinking in the details of the dress and its corset, eager to get her hands on it, to try it on. ‘Yeah, I know,’ she replied absently.

  ‘Well … your, uh … you know … your skin is, like, dark …?’

  Sal looked up at Maddy. ‘What?’

  Maddy shuffled uncomfortably. ‘I’m just saying you may be treated … you may be called …’

  ‘I’m not black! If that’s what you’re saying!’

  ‘No but, what I’m trying to –’

  ‘Shadd-yah! Dark means I’m African, now? You can lump us all together simply because we’re not white?’ Her brow furrowed with irritation. ‘I’m Asian!’ She shook her head and rolled her eyes and turned to follow Becks over towards the bunks. The drape swished across the archway behind them.

  ‘I just meant … people back then might not make the same distinction,’ replied Maddy, her voice fading to nothing.

  Nice one, Maddy.

  ‘Uh … OK,’ she said, stepping back towards the computers. ‘Right, Liam, Bob, the candidate time-stamp is 5 April 1831, and I’m going to drop you in a few hours before the Abraham squashing incident. The paper said “evening”, so I guess that means about five or six. You’ll arrive at four in the afternoon and I’ve found a street map of New Orleans dockside area, circa 1834, which I guess is close enough. We’re opening a window in what looks like a storage warehouse of some kind.’

  She checked one of the screens. They had a density probe testing the location for obstructions.

  ‘Anything on the density probe, computer-Bob?’

  > Negative. Nothing has passed through the time-stamp location.

  She nodded, satisfied with that. It seemed a quiet enough spot.

  ‘Young Abe Lincoln gets flattened on Powder Street, which, according to the map we’ve got here, is just a minute or two from your drop location. It’s one of the main streets; I’m sure you’ll find it easy enough. Just follow the smell of horse poo.’

  Liam chuckled. Even in 1912 – his time – every busy thoroughfare in Cork was dotted with little molehills of manure waiting to be flattened by a cartwheel or eventually scooped up by a street-sweeper.

  ‘How do we know which fella to save?’ he asked. ‘I mean … I think I know what he looks like as an old man. A beard and big bushy eyebrows, an’ the like. But he’s young now, aye? We got a picture of him as a young fella?’

  ‘No, there’s none. Not at the age he is now.’

  ‘Information,’ said Bob, flexing inside his shirt. It should have been loose on him, but in fact he barely fitted inside it. ‘Celluloid-based portraits were not in common use at this time, even though photographic technology existed.’

  ‘Right,’ said Maddy. ‘And at this point in time, no one’s gonna think this guy is going to be someone important. He’s a total nothing. Not worth a picture.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, not yet, anyway.’

  She glanced at a page of data that computer-Bob had compiled. ‘What we do know is he was described as very tall and thin and scruffy.’ She pointed to a screen showing a JPEG image of Lincoln’s presidential portrait. ‘And check out those freakin’ brows … I mean it looks like he’s got a small mouse living above each eye. Even as a young man, that’s got to be a feature to look out for, right?’

  Bob nodded. ‘Information: cranial growth variation around the orbital sockets is limited after a human skull reaches maturity, whereas certain other features – nasal cavity and cartilage tissue, soft tissue around the ears, the lower jaw – continue to –’

  Maddy waved him silent. ‘Which means even as a kid he probably always looked miserable.’ She wiped a runny nose. ‘Anyway, just keep your eyes peeled for a large cart loaded with barrels of booze and Costen Brothers Distillery painted on the side. Any tall, miserable-looking idiot looks like he’s going to step out in front of it, you grab him. Simple.’

  Liam lifted his chin to adjust his collar button. ‘Sounds easy enough, eh, Bob?’

  Bob rumbled an acknowledgement.

  ‘How’re you doing, Sal?’ Maddy called out.

  ‘Almost!’ Her voice came back brightly through the drape, the unintended racial slur already completely forgotten by the sound of it. ‘It’s just a bit big on me.’

  ‘I am tightening the corset to its smallest setting to compensate,’ added Becks.

  ‘Hey!’ Maddy frowned. ‘Hey! No … don’t say it like that. Like I’m a butter-troll or something.’ She caught her reflection in the perspex displacement tube. ‘OK, so I’m not just some skin-’n’-bones clothes hanger,’ she muttered to herself.

  ‘Completed,’ said Becks, and pulled the drape to one side.

  Liam held back a gasp and Maddy found herself nodding approvingly. ‘Now that looks better on you than a hoody, right?’

  Sal ran her hands over the corset and skirts. ‘Feels so weird.’ She grinned. ‘I feel like a … ugh, jahulla! I know this sounds pathetic, but … I feel like a princess.’

  Maddy clapped her hands. ‘I know – it’s kinda cool, isn’t it?’ She cast a glance at Liam and Bob. ‘Good … you all look the part. Now undress and bag your clothes. It’s a wet departure.’

  Ten minutes later Liam, Sal and Bob were treading water in their underwear together in the displacement tube.

  ‘So, a nice and easy mission this time,’ said Maddy, huddled on the top step of the ladder. ‘Just find young Abe and grab his collar before he gets himself turned into Lincoln ketchup. You OK in there, Sal?’

  She nodded, her teeth chattering. ‘Guess I’m g-getting a bit nervous n-now.’

  ‘You’ll be just fine. Remember you’ve done this before. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘It’s the white s-stuff that s-scares m-me …’

  ‘Chaos space?’ Liam shook his head. ‘Ahh, you’ll be through it in a heartbeat, so you will. Nothing to it.’

  ‘Could you h-hold m-my hand?’

  Liam nodded. ‘I s’pose. Sure, if you like.’

  ‘Uhh … it’s probably best if you don’t,’ said Maddy. Her eyes quickly met Liam’s and after a few seconds he nodded. He knew what she was thinking. After all, he was the one who’d seen it up close: fused bodies, bodies turned completely inside out. Very messy. He’d told Maddy about it, but not Sal. It was a grisly detail she didn’t really need to hear and, anyway, it only happened rarely. Maddy had no idea what caused it, but when Foster had insisted Liam had to float on his own first time round … well, there was almost certainly a very good reason for that.

  ‘Works best if you’re all floating freely, Sal. But look,’ she said before Sal could ask why, ‘you’re going together. The other two will be right next to you. And as Liam said, it’s, like, a second, no more.’

  ‘I’ll sing you a ditty,’ said Liam, ‘so you’ll hear me in there … in the chaos soup.’

  ‘There you go.’ Maddy smiled. ‘That is, if you can bear to listen to his howling.’ She started to descend the ladder. ‘Right, we should get going, guys. We’ve been more than lucky with only small ripples so far. Let’s not push our luck.’

&nb
sp; At the bottom she checked to confirm the displacement machine was green right across the board, then called across to Becks. ‘Punch in a thirty-second countdown.’

  ‘Yes, Maddy. Thirty seconds … as of now.’

  ‘Return window at seven in the evening!’ she reminded them. ‘And, remember, the usual back-up windows after that if you miss it!’

  She could see Sal’s face through the scuffed plastic, wide-eyed with growing panic. Beside her, kicking water and still holding on to the top of the tube was Liam, saying something encouraging to her. And then Bob, keeping afloat with strong, powerful kicks. All three of them holding Ziploc plastic bags containing their clothes.

  ‘It’ll be fun, Sal!’ she called out over the increasing hum of the displacement machine. ‘Enjoy seeing 1831 with your own eyes!’

  Sal flashed her an uncertain smile and a wave.

  She stepped back into the middle of the floor as Becks’s countdown reached ten.

  ‘Right! Hands off, everyone!’ she shouted.

  Liam reluctantly let go and began thrashing furiously and ineffectually to keep his head above water. The other two let go and managed to tread water calmly. On five seconds, Maddy bellowed over the rising pitch of the machine for them all to grab some air and duck their heads under the water.

  And on one they were all completely submerged.

  A crescendo of channelled and suddenly released energy merged with the boom of flexing perspex, and in the blink of an eye the three of them were gone.

  CHAPTER 10

  1831, New Orleans

  They were standing on Powder Street nearly a whole hour before six watching the dock workers industriously unloading boats of all different sizes, watching horse-drawn carts clattering up the busy thoroughfare. Although that snippet of digitally archived news from a long-dead New Orleans newspaper had claimed the event had occurred ‘in the evening’, it would be foolish to assume that meant for certain it happened after 6 p.m. Liam told them that in his time people still generally didn’t carry clocks or watches. Time was less specific. You’d arrange to meet someone in the afternoon, not ‘at 2.35 p.m. precisely’ as he noticed most modern New Yorkers seemed to do.

  ‘Just keep looking,’ said Liam, craning his neck to look up and down the busy street. ‘Tall grumpy-looking fella.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Sal nodded. But then it was far too easy to be distracted by the sights and sounds going on around her.

  Nothing can prepare you for what it’s like, Sal … actually standing in the middle of a piece of history. That’s what Maddy had told her after her trip to San Francisco, 1906. And she was right.

  She and Dadda had once gone along to a technology expo, while they’d been in Shanghai on one of her Pikodu tournaments. One of the last as it happened; international relations between China and India were beginning to chill then. A sign of the troubled times ahead. At the expo she had tried out a prototype of a thing they were calling a Reality Hat. It looked like a shower cap with marbles stuck all over it. She’d put it on and almost instantly she found herself smelling things, hearing things that weren’t there, and then finally seeing herself in a Roman street. Of course nothing was quite right. The scene was computer graphics, very realistic, but still there were little jerks in the animation here and there that gave it away. The visuals, the smells, the sounds were being transmitted into her head, stimulating the senses. She had been stunned by how convincing an experience it had been.

  But standing here, now, in history, for real … the Reality Hat seemed like a shallow experience by comparison.

  ‘Hold your horses …’ muttered Liam, ‘look at that fella over there,’ he said, pointing along the street on the far side. Bob and Sal turned to look. Across the thoroughfare they could make out a tall thin man in a scruffy threadbare coat, a battered felt hat stuffed thoughtlessly askew on a mop of dark unruly hair. He had emerged from a tavern, quite clearly the worse for wear. He stood, or more accurately swayed, outside the door, surveying the busy street in front of him.

  ‘Jayzus … he’s had a few!’ Liam turned to Bob. ‘Do you think that’s our fella?’

  Bob’s eyes narrowed for a moment. ‘I have an approximate height match.’

  ‘And he does look a bit like the Lincoln in the painting,’ said Sal.

  He certainly had the thunderous scowl, the dark brooding eyes hooded by a frown that all but hid them in the fading light of the afternoon.

  ‘Right, good enough for me,’ said Liam. ‘Let’s go grab him before he does something foolish.’

  Liam hopped off the store-front porch they’d been standing on. He waited until there was a gap in the horse-drawn traffic before leading them cautiously across the muddy street.

  Lincoln hitched up his trousers, hanging loose round his waist. He should have spent his money on some decent food, not on drink. He shrugged at that. He could find something to steal to eat. The docksides were an easy place to forage for food; there was usually a dropped sack here or there. A man could always work for a cooked meal even if he couldn’t find paid work. A man might find himself sleeping rough, under the stars here in New Orleans, but he’d never find himself starving.

  Lincoln belched. A real howler that turned heads up and down the street and solicited tuts and muttered disgust from a portly gentleman and his sour-faced wife as they walked past him.

  He tipped his hat and grinned at them before congratulating himself on a world-class burp. He ambled drunkenly into the street, his long legs feeling as unstable beneath him as a pair of circus stilts.

  He was just about to take another stride forward when he felt something grasp the back of his coat collar and suddenly found himself lurching backwards, flying through the air and landing heavily on the ground.

  It took him several moments to comprehend the fact that he was lying on his back in the dirt and looking up at salmon-pink clouds lit by the setting sun and three silhouetted heads peering curiously down at him.

  ‘What in … tarnation! Who the …?’ he started to blurt.

  ‘Mr Lincoln?’ asked one of them. An Irishman by the sound of his accent.

  Lincoln groggily struggled to get himself up on to his elbows. ‘Now who … who ishhh the infernal f-fool of a halfwit that … that …’

  ‘Are you Abraham Lincoln?’

  Lincoln’s eyes struggled to focus on the face that had said that. ‘And … and who the d-devil … wishes … wishes to know?’

  A much deeper voice rumbled. ‘Please confirm your name.’

  Lincoln’s eyebrows arched as he took in the sight of Bob. ‘Good g-grief, ssshir … are you a man or a … some s-species of a grizzly bear?’

  ‘Shadd-yah! Liam, check out the mess that wagon’s making!’

  ‘Jay-zus! That’s a pretty pickle. C’mon, let’s get him up,’ Lincoln heard the Irish voice say. He felt a strong pair of hands grabbing him roughly.

  ‘I … AM … FERPECTLY … I mean … p … puh … PERFECTLY … capable of shhhtanding up by my … by myself. Yesh … indeedy. Now UNHAND me D-DIRECTLY!’

  He felt the hands release him. Slowly, with a lot more effort than he’d originally thought he’d require, he managed to pull himself back on to his wobbling-stilt legs. The twilight world of New Orleans was spinning round him like a cartwheel. And those three faces, none of which he could quite focus on, still seemed to be looking at him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ The Irish voice again.

  ‘I AM FINE!’ Lincoln bellowed hoarsely. ‘FINE AS A … a … a … FINE as a goat in a briar patch! Fine as an OIL PAINTING!’ He managed a grin. ‘Ah’m asssh FIT … asssh … a … a …’

  ‘As a …?’

  He opened his mouth. He was thinking of saying horse. But instead what came out was something that sounded a bit like bleurghhh.

  The last thing he heard before the world spun on to its side and he passed out was someone saying, ‘Oh … gross, all over my shoes – charming.’

  CHAPTER 11

/>   1831, New Orleans

  ‘… he’s a pitiful sight, so he is.’

  It was wholly dark now. Lincoln could hear the gentle lapping of the Mississippi against the hull of a boat nearby and somewhere deep inside his throbbing mind he figured out he was slumped along the docks somewhere. The sky above was clear and the moon high among the stars, casting a surprisingly strong silver light across the river and the city, now finally settled and still for the night.

  ‘You think he’ll be OK if we just leave him here like this?’

  ‘He’ll be fine, I’m sure. He’s a big boy.’

  The voices were speaking quietly, not quite a whisper, but almost.

  ‘Well now, since we missed both our return windows we’ve got all of tomorrow to wander around and explore New Orleans.’ A pause. ‘So, Sal … what do you make of 1831?’

  ‘Totally bindaas! It’s so real! But it feels unreal too. Do you know what I mean? Like, I can’t really be back here.’ That particular voice, the female voice, had an odd accent. Lincoln couldn’t quite place it. He’d once met a Welshman who’d had a similar, sing-song, way of talking.

  ‘Aye, I still have to pinch myself. Sometimes I wake up on me bunk still thinking I’m in 1912, the steward’s quarters … and all this time-travel nonsense has been a dream.’

  ‘Me too.’

  A pause.

  ‘So, do you want to see if we can find rooms somewhere to sleep?’

  ‘I’m too excited to sleep.’

  ‘We can walk around a bit. Or wait here until sun-up and explore. Bob, how long until the return window opens?’

  A deep voice. ‘The twenty-four-hour window will open at four. The time is now six minutes past one in the morning. You have fourteen hours and fifty-four minutes until the portal opens in the Jenkins and Proctor warehouse.’

  ‘Well … I could do with a walk. It’s a warm night. It’s nice to be out of the archway for once.’