City of Shadows

Chapter 63

15 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London

Liam looked down at himself. He was wearing a pair of grey flannel trousers and a white cotton shirt; it was as time-neutral a look as they could get from his Victorian clothes. Maddy as well: just a plain grey skirt and a vanilla-coloured blouse — no frills, lace or bonnet. At worst they’d look like a pair of rather dull nerds in 2001.

Or a rather unimaginative couple.

‘So, it’s Piccadilly Circus, then,’ said Liam. They were heading for London, 2001, instead of New York. Having crunched the numbers, Rashim had come to the conclusion that the charge they could muster was not going to be enough to project them that far into the future unless they compensated on the geo-displacement and aimed for somewhere closer to home.

‘We’ll do a one-hour visit,’ said Maddy. ‘One hour then open the return window at the same place. And a two-hour back-up window for just-in-case. OK?’

Rashim was sitting at the desk. ‘Understood.’

Liam centred himself in his square. ‘Nice not to be going back wet.’ He grinned. ‘That’s a blessed relief, so it is.’

Maddy nodded. She tucked a small digital camera into a clutch bag. There were dozens of digital images of Piccadilly Circus on it, pulled from their database. They had a fair idea how it should look and she could reference those images on the camera. If it turned out to be only a moderately different Piccadilly Circus, then perhaps they were now heading along a timeline that was preferable.

‘Density probe is showing us a consistent all-clear,’ said Rashim. ‘Countdown is now at thirty seconds. Are you two all ready?’

‘Yes, we’re good to go,’ Maddy replied. She’d wanted Bob to go along with Liam. For protection, of course. But his mass was adding too much to the energy cost of displacing them. However, Maddy realized that of all of them, her memories — her programmed memories — were closest in time to 2001. Intuitively she’d have the best idea if London was looking odd, or the way it ought to.

‘One hour,’ she said. ‘Time enough to buy a soda and some tacky I’ve-Been-To-London T-shirt and come home again.’

‘Aye.’

‘And ten… nine… eight…’

She winked at Sal. ‘Chin-chin and toodle-pip, old girl.’ She grinned. ‘That’s the sort of thing they say in England, isn’t it?’

‘Remain still, please, Maddy!’ called out Rashim. ‘… and four… three…’

‘And be careful, you two!’ Sal called out, but her voice was lost in the buzz of energy building up.

‘… two… one…’

2001, Piccadilly Circus, London

A yard, walled in on all four sides and overlooked by a tall, grey stone building lined with soot-encrusted windows and ledges of surly-looking pigeons. Above them, a pale sky of combed-out clouds. They could both hear the dull urban hiss and rumble of traffic, the melodic cooing of the pigeons watching them from the ledge.

Just then a door opened on to the yard and a middle-aged man wearing trousers, shirt, tie and a dull brown sleeveless jumper took out a packet of tobacco and cigarette papers, sat down on the step and began to roll himself a cigarette.

He noticed Maddy and Liam standing there. ‘All right?’

Liam nodded. ‘Aye. You?’

He shrugged. ‘Middle-bad. But you have to make do, don’t you?’ He tucked a modest row of stale strands of tobacco along the paper. ‘You two new? I haven’t seen you around before.’

‘Just joined,’ said Liam. Joined what exactly… he wondered.

‘Ahh… you must be with the Licence and Trade Monitoring? Or Weights, Standards and Measures Approvals?’

‘The, uh… that’s the one. Started this morning, so we did.’ Liam watched the man lick one side of the paper. ‘You know that’ll kill you eventually, so it will. Smoking.’

‘Eventually, huh?’ He laughed at that. ‘Least of me worries, wouldn’t you say?’

‘We’ll be heading in now,’ said Maddy, tugging Liam’s sleeve.

‘Hammer-an’-spades! You got a funny accent there!’ The man looked at her. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Boston. United States.’

‘ America? ’ He was taken aback.

Maddy sensed that might not have been a prudent thing to say. ‘Well… my folks were. You know, originally.’

‘Well.’ His eyes were wide. ‘And they gave you a job in the Ministry of Information? I’d keep all that family ancestry to yourself, young lady. Quite seriously.’

They stepped past him. ‘I… I will,’ she said quickly. ‘Thanks.’

‘Hang on! Did you lie about that?’ He looked up at them. ‘To get the job? You must have had to lie to the Job Commissariat?’

‘I, uh… I may have bent the truth a little,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I guess.’

Liam grabbed her hand. ‘Enjoy your smoke, sir.’ He pushed the door and they stepped into a dark hallway. It reeked of floor polish and disinfectant. At the end of the hallway the faint pearly glow of a pair of frosted-glass doors leading outside.

‘I guess it’s not good to be an American,’ whispered Maddy.

‘Aye, it seems it.’

They made their way towards the double doors, passing an opening on the right that led on to a large office: two long rows of dark wooden desks, with men and women typing away on machines that looked like a cross between typewriters and logic engines, all brass levers and glowing vacuum fuses. The room echoed with the clatter of keystrokes, and the long ring of a telephone.

‘It’s like one of them old black-and-white flicks,’ said Liam.

Maddy nodded. Yes, it was: those old films where every scene was veiled behind a pall of cigarette smoke and every desk lamp seemed to cast its own beam of light through it. Men with trilby hats and trench coats, and every street glistening from a torrential downpour. Noir

… she remembered. That’s what they called those old films.

They reached the double doors and pushed them open. At least it wasn’t raining. There was that.

The roar of traffic, the buzz of activity in Piccadilly Circus, took them by surprise. They were three wide steps up and back from a pavement thick with pedestrians. Maddy quickly located and identified the things she expected to see: the statue of Eros, the circular fountain and plinth on which it stood and the steps surrounding it. She noticed the signs pointing out the ‘Underground Tramlines’. The tall stone buildings with classic grand entrances and granite pillars. Signs for Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry Street, Regent Street. And as she’d expected, yes… it was busy. Hectic-busy.

But none of the garish colour she had in the images on her phone. No billboards, no electronic displays with SANYO or TDK or COCA-COLA dancing across them. No street vendors selling plastic double-decker buses, or Beefeater soft toys.

And no tourists.

Maddy had expected Piccadilly Circus to look a bit like Times Square: clusters of faces of all colours, people taking pictures of each other posing in front of Eros. But this was very different. It was certainly busy, though — busy with cars, bicycles and electric trams. A network of wires spun like a spider’s web above the hectic thoroughfare. The trams, running along rails in the roads, all had connector arms that reached up to wires, and here and there sparks flickered and fizzed.

The cars all appeared to be the same, albeit in a variety of unexciting colours: maroons, browns and greys. Small bubble-like cars with oval windscreens that puffed thick dark clouds of exhaust fumes. And as many people on bicycles as there were clogging the pavements on foot; they wove round the trams like a school of pilot fish around a whale.

On the side of one towering building overlooking Piccadilly Circus was a giant television screen. Huge. Bigger even than the one in Times Square. But the image was blocky and primitive. Two-tone ‘pixels’ of just black and white. Looking more closely, Maddy saw it wasn’t even a light-based display, but each ‘pixel’ was a disc about the size of a dinner plate, that flipped on a spindle. One side black, one side white.

‘Now this is different to how it’s meant to be.’ Liam looked at her. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Very.’

It felt like a London that belonged to a Britain stuck in 1945. Perhaps the early fifties. She wasn’t sure.

‘Well now,’ said Liam, ‘we know for sure the Jack-the-Ripper thing has caused a change.’

Maddy looked at her watch. ‘We’ve got fifty-six minutes left. Let’s split up. Get what you can, any newspapers, magazines, books you can lay your hands on. Back here in fifty minutes, OK?’