City of Shadows

Chapter 47

7 October 2001, Green Acres Elementary School, Harcourt, Ohio

‘Looks like you’re going to have to dig through some walls by the look of this.’ Maddy clicked on the screen and zoomed in on a portion of the blueprint.

Rashim nodded. ‘It appears as if they left space between these walls for cabling to run from the generator room up to the lights on the top. And over here.’ He pointed on the screen. ‘Cabling that leads out to an external distribution node.’

‘Uh-huh. I guess they planned to have the generator as a part of the viaduct from the very beginning. Fascinating.’

Rashim reached for the mouse. Fingers touched. And recoiled. An awkward half a second.

‘All yours,’ Maddy said a little too quickly.

He dragged the pixellated image of the blueprint across the screen. ‘Hmm, it would be a lot easier knocking through to the generator room itself. Only two walls between our archway and that big steam engine in there.’

‘But would you really want to do that? Bust right in there? There’s probably “steam engine” engineers or whatever you call them in there. Coal-shovellers and stuff. We’ve got to be ultra-discreet about this.’

‘Indeed. Yes… so maybe then, we’ll have to tap the cabling somewhere along this conduit. It’s a lot more work.’ He leaned forward. ‘And I imagine a bit of a squeeze, shuffling along inside that space between the walls.’ He squinted and muttered a curse in Farsi. ‘I wish this image was at a higher resolution.’

‘Best I could get.’ She shrugged. ‘In fact, it was the only blueprint image I could find.’ She’d spent a good part of yesterday back at the Internet cafe in the retail park. She’d found an architectural website with an archive of Victorian-era building projects. The Holborn Viaduct was hardly the grandest of London projects, but historically notable because of its incorporation of the city’s first electric generator.

‘It looks fiddly… but it is discreet, Rashim, and that’s the important thing. If we’re going to start leeching on their power, we’ve got to make it so that, if they work out the generator’s not delivering the power it’s designed to deliver, it’s got to be almost impossible for them to figure out where the power is leaking away to. The only way they’ll figure out what’s going on is if they decide to track the course of the cables. Thing is, if we tap the output cautiously — little and often — it’ll never be enough of a drain for them to consider stopping the engine and overhauling everything to figure it out.’

‘Hopefully.’

She made a face. ‘Hopefully.’

‘Hey! You all right there, Sal?’

She looked up. Liam was crossing the cracked and weed-speckled playground. He casually kicked his way through a pile of dead leaves, this year’s fall from the maple trees lined up beside what was once the school bus drop-off point. The leaves rustled and skittered across the tarmac, caught by a fresh breeze.

Early October, it was getting cold now. The clouds above were promising snow, not rain. Sal shivered inside her parka, puffing a cloud of vapour out in front of her. Liam joined her on the swing. Sat on the plastic strap-seat next to her. The rusting frame creaked as they both swung gently, idly.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Jay-zus!’ He rubbed his hands together vigorously. ‘It’s cold out here! You should come in.’

‘I’m in all the time. I came out to get some fresh air.’

‘Aye…’tis a bit smelly inside, so it is.’

Both Bob and Becks were eating the same convenience meals as them. However, their body chemistry preferred high-protein, low-fat foods. And preferably blended to a baby mush. But tins of refried beans in New Orleans sauce, Uncle YangYang Kettle Noodles and pop tarts had to suffice as their source of nutrition. It just meant they farted constantly. Particularly Bob. He was like some flea-bitten, wiry old mongrel dog letting them off one after the other without any sense of embarrassment. Seemingly without a care in the world.

‘Why do you do that?’ she asked presently.

‘Do what?’

‘Talk like you do. The whole Irish thing. You’re not even Irish.’

‘Hey! Jayz-… I just…’ His mouth flapped for a moment then shut with a coconut clop. He looked hurt. Sal winced. That had come out sounding all wrong and she felt guilty.

‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be rude, Liam. I just think it all sounds… I dunno, fake now.’

He swung in silence. The frame creaked.

‘I’ve stopped using those Indian words. I don’t think I even knew what they meant. I’m not even sure if they were real Hindi words.’ She still had the sing-song Indian accent, though. She’d even started consciously trying to lose that. If it wasn’t real, if it was some technician’s idea of how an Indian girl from 2026 ought to sound… then she was damned if she was going to follow his programming.

‘I talk this way, Sal… because it’s the only way I know how to talk.’

‘It’s just code, Liam. It’s code. Worse than that… the Irish thing? It’s a cheesy cliche.’

‘It’s who I am.’ He shrugged. ‘Even if that does make me a — whatcha-call-it? — a cliche.’

She looked at him. ‘How can you do that, though? Go on just like before, like nothing’s happened?’

He managed a wry smile. ‘Why not? Nothing about me has changed at all, so. I’m exactly the same person I was.’

‘But how can you be the same person now you know what you are? Everything — everything — planted in our minds before we woke up… none of it ever happened! It’s nothing! God… I mean, maybe we’ve got chips in our heads just like Bob and Becks. Have you considered that?’

‘Aye. But it doesn’t worry me any.’

‘How can it not?’

He shrugged. ‘Anyway, Maddy reckons we’re not the same as them. Our minds aren’t computers but proper human minds. That’s why we had to believe we were human. So we’d act like humans. Think like humans.’

‘But wouldn’t you want to have someone X-ray your head? Take a look inside to see if there’s a chip or something inside?’

‘Not really. Whatever’s in me head, machine or meat, it works just fine.’

She sniffed. ‘Except it’s fake.’

‘Ah well now… who’s to say anybody’s memories are for real? Hmm?’ He chuckled. A plume of breath erupted from his mouth. ‘You know, perhaps the whole world, the whole universe, is just a big pretend — someone’s idea of a funny joke. Huh?’

‘Difference is… we know our lives are a funny joke, Liam.’

‘You can never know anything for sure, Sal. In the end, it’s all a question of what you choose to believe.’ He watched a cloud of his breath drift away — turning, twisting, dissipating in the cold afternoon air.

‘Thing is… I choose to be Liam. I like him.’ He smiled at her. ‘I like being him. And maybe he was once a real lad who lived in Cork and I’m just borrowing his memories, or maybe he’s just a made-up person put together from bits and pieces. Who cares?’

‘But that’s no better than…’ She struggled to think of an example. ‘That’s no better than a child pretending to be Superman. No better than all those people who believe in God. Or Jehovah. Or Allah, or Vishnu, or — ’

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘But it works for me.’

She sighed. ‘I can’t do it, Liam,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think I can pretend I’m who I thought I was. All I’ve got that’s real is the time in the archway. You. Maddy.’

He pointed at what was clasped in her hands. ‘Is that why you’ve got that with you all the time?’

Sal looked down at the notebook — her diary — and nodded. ‘That’s me, Liam.’ A solitary tear dripped on to the scuffed black cover. She wiped it off irritably. ‘That’s all there is left of me. Ink and paper.’

A crow cawed from the bare branches beyond the chain-link fence surrounding the playground. The solitary, ominous noise of approaching winter.

‘Sal?’ He reached out and squeezed her gloved hand. ‘Don’t do this, Sal. Eh? Don’t drift off and away from me an’ Maddy. We need you, so we do. The three of us need to hold fast together. To stay a proper team.’

‘Need me? What do I do? Nothing.’

‘You will do. When we’re set up again in London, we’ll need you watching for them little changes. Up in the centre of the city, Piccadilly Circus maybe, watching for the time waves.’

She gave that a moment’s thought. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps there was a purpose for her still. She wiped her nose and sniffed noisily. Then sniggered.

Liam smiled. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, go on. What’s so funny?’

‘Something you said.’

‘I said something funny?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing.’ Her face brightened for him. ‘You’re right. We’ve still got a job to do, haven’t we?’

‘Aye. So come in, then, Sal. Before you freeze.’

‘I will. You go. I’ll be along in a minute.’

‘All right. I’m makin’ some hot chocolate. Care for some?’ He cocked a brow. ‘There’ll be a fair chance of some of them nice chocolate biscuits with the cream in the middle.’

‘Oreos.’

‘Aye, those are the fellas.’

‘Sure. Count me in.’

She watched him go, kicking those leaves again on the way back to the double doors of the school gymnasium, blue paint flaking off both and a rusting push-bar on one of them. The door clattered shut behind him.

Something you said, Liam… something funny. Really funny.

‘Perhaps the whole universe is just a big pretend?’ she muttered softly.

No, actually, not that funny after all.