City of Shadows

Chapter 41

26 September 2001, Green Acres Elementary School, Harcourt, Ohio

We’ve been so busy I haven’t really had time to think about things that much. Which is nice. It’s such a crazy pinchudda thing — last night I realized I was missing my parents and I nearly started crying when I reminded myself they never existed! Or, if they did, they were some other girl’s mamaji and papaji!

Then I reminded myself I’m not even Indian. Then I reminded myself I’m not even human. So, as you can imagine, this is really messing with my head.

That’s why I’m glad we’ve been so busy.

A few days ago we got a load of things from a big camping store: sleeping bags, a stove and gas, kettle, lights, torches, food. All the comforts! So it’s been nice. Like a camping trip. We even made a small fire in the middle of the floor and cooked toast and sausages and stuff. SpongeBubba and Rashim were like a pair of excitable little children! Never done campfire food before. But then have I? Even if I remembered doing that… it would be someone else’s memory, wouldn’t it? Or some made-up memories concocted by some techie somewhere.

Today we need to go back to that big retail park outside of Harcourt and get some more things. Some computers and cables and stuff. Me and Bob and Becks are getting those things.

Oh yeah, Maddy also spotted an Internet cafe last time we came. Said she wants to do some research on where we’re going to set up our permanent new home…

Maddy winced and stuck her tongue out.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Liam.

‘The coffee’s frikkin’ disgusting.’

‘Mine’s all right,’ Rashim shrugged.

‘Yeah, but you’re used to drinking some sort of soya-gunk substitute.’ Maddy put the cardboard cup down on the small table beside their Internet cubicle. The three of them were huddled together suspiciously between the cubicle partitions like three truant teenagers messing about on Facebook.

‘That cack’s all yours if you want any more of it, Rashim.’ She turned back to the computer monitor in front of them. She had Wikipedia up on the screen. ‘So… I guess we should go as far back in time from now as we can get,’ said Maddy. ‘Put down as much distance as we can between us and 2001.’

‘What about going forward in time?’ asked Liam.

She shook her head. ‘We go forward, and it gets increasingly difficult to remain off the radar.’

‘Off the…?’

‘To stay hidden. There’ll be more Internet, more connectivity, more information. Bound to be. I just think we’ve got a much better chance of remaining anonymous if we aim backwards.’

Liam sipped at his coffee. Her explanation made sense to him. It was hard enough getting his head around this time, without going further into an unfathomable future. ‘And I suppose we really have to pick another time? And not stay in this one?’

‘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.’