The Eternal War

CHAPTER 69

2001, New York

‘Oh my God!’ cried Maddy. She turned to Becks standing beside her in front of the computer desk. ‘It’s actually working!’

She could see the soft amber standby light of the four-gang plug socket and spike protector. ‘We’ve got enough amplitude coming in!’

‘Affirmative.’

Maddy ducked down and punched on the nearest of the networked PCs beneath the desk. One of the monitors winked on. She switched on the next one and the next, until all nine computers were busy whirring, at different stages of booting up.

Maddy wanted both of the colonels to see this. Although she knew they more than half believed her story, it would do no harm for them to see this machinery stir to life. She trotted across the floor, skidding on loose grit and skipping over the thick flex of power cable running out through the raised shutter door. It snaked round the low entrance to the ‘fort’, and turned left along a freshly dug trench for twenty yards before rising up over the rear trench wall and across several yards of rubble and weed wasteland towards the opened rear engine hatches of Wainwright’s Mark IV tank. The engine casing, bulky and pitted with rust, juddered unnervingly like a feral cat trapped in a hatbox. It was spewing a thick cloud of smoke from an exhaust pipe at the top of its box-shaped iron turret.

The tank’s labouring engine was spinning a flywheel. Around the wheel was a cam-belt — a loop of thick leather — taken off the vehicle’s drive shaft and leading instead to their battered and sorry-looking generator. They’d hauled it out earlier and set it up beside the tank. The belt was turning the generator’s own internal rotor and armature.

Down the slope towards the river she could see Wainwright and Devereau standing above the borderline. Devereau squatted down and talked to someone in the trench, Wainwright smoking his pipe and looking out across the river.

‘Hey! You two! Colonels!’ she shouted above the rumble of the tank’s bad-tempered engine.

They both looked her way and she waved them over. ‘It’s working! We got power!’

She waited for them to jog over, and then led them back down into the trench, following the cable past the fort and ducking inside the archway across the floor to where the row of computer monitors were all now showing the same desktop wallpaper she’d put on several days ago.

An image of Homer Simpson.

‘Good grief!’ gasped Devereau, unsure what to make of the wall of grinning faces.

Maddy pulled a seat out and sat down at the desk. ‘Computer-Bob? You there?’

‘This … this yellow face,’ said Wainwright, ‘… is the face of your computer?’

‘Uh?’ She looked at the monitors. ‘Oh no … He’s just a … a …’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Doesn’t really matter.’

A dialogue box appeared on the monitor in front of her.

› Hello, Madelaine. It appears a significant malfunction has occurred.

He was seeing the wreckage of the archway behind her. That, or he was registering internal problems with one or more of the networked computers.

› I also detect two unauthorized personnel in the archway.

‘That’s OK, Bob … that’s OK. They have my authorization to be here.’

› Affirmative.

Wainwright’s jaw hung open. ‘You have a machine that can talk to you?’

‘Oh yeah … Bob, he’s … well, computer-Bob. Not, of course, to be confused with Bob, who’s a … well, sort of a guy-shaped computer and a copy of computer-Bob … and some of Becks, actually, who by the way is also a copy of computer-Bob …’ She looked up at the colonels and realized she was losing them. ‘Just think of Becks here and this computer system as family … sort of.’

‘Family?’ said Wainwright, looking at Devereau, not really any the wiser.

‘Bob, we got hit by a time wave, a big one.’

› This is apparent.

‘The wave was caused by Lincoln being here in 2001 and not back where he should be.’

› That is the most likely conclusion. What is Lincoln’s location now?

‘We do not have that information,’ said Becks.

› Hello, Becks.

‘Hello, computer-Bob.’

Maddy wrapped her knuckles impatiently on the desk. ‘Save the love-in for later, you two. We need to send them a message right now!’

‘The last known location,’ said Becks, ‘was the window opened near the FBI training academy, Quantico, Virginia. That was five days ago.’

› Correct. I have those coordinates in my event log.

‘They’ll have been making their way to us,’ said Maddy. ‘How far is it?’

‘Information: two hundred and twenty-six miles.’

‘They should’ve made it back by now, then … surely?’ She pouched her lips. ‘Unless they’ve decided to stay put and wait for me to open a window right where we dropped them off?’

› This is an equally likely possibility.

Maddy balled her fist and cursed. Both colonels exchanged a bemused look at her colourful choice of words.

‘Hang on!’ She held a finger up. ‘I can give them all the time they need … say a whole month if that’s what they need to — ’

‘We cannot hold the British for a whole — !’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Relax … relax. This is time displacement. We can open the portal up as soon as the machine’s charged up enough. Say, in about twelve hours’ time. But I could set the time-stamp to open a space one month from now. Do you see … with time displacement, all time — past, present and future — is effectively now … as long as you’ve got enough energy to reach it. Easy as easy peas.’

A cursor flashed across the dialogue box.

› Negative.

‘What?’

› Diagnostic on the displacement machine indicates the tertiary downstream phase analysis module has failed. We cannot at this time open a window in the future.

She banged her fist on the desk. ‘Why is it always so freakin’…? Arghhh!’ She shook her head.

‘Does this mean your machine cannot operate?’ asked Devereau.

Maddy sighed. ‘No … no, it just means we have to wait this out in real-time.’ She shrugged. ‘Stupid me … I was hoping for the easy option.’

She settled back in her chair. ‘All right … all right, plan B, then. We pick a place roughly halfway between New York and Quantico, and give them, what? Two days … no, three days — time enough to make sure they can get there.’

‘From now?’ asked Devereau.

She nodded. Then noticed the look of concern on both men’s faces. ‘We can hold on here that long, can’t we?’ Her eyes went from one to the other. ‘Right? I mean … you know, if they attacked, say, right now? Your men could hold this ground for three days?’

The officers’ eyes met. It was Wainwright who broke the long silence. ‘It will depend what force they throw at us … and, of course, how quickly they have decided to respond to news of this mutiny.’

‘And how well our men will fight,’ added Devereau.

Wainwright nodded. ‘The officers in my regiment … I know will fight to the death. As men of rank we all now face firing squads if we were to surrender. The enlisted men? They would face a British military prison.’

Devereau nodded grimly. ‘A similar fate awaits our officers. But I think my men will fight well because there can be no retreat if the South attack. The Legionnaires will be lined up behind us ready to shoot anyone retreating.’

‘So?’ She was still waiting for an answer. ‘Three days, then?’

Wainwright stroked his chin. ‘To be certain … you can promise us this new history?’

‘If I can pick them up and drop them back in 1831, yes.’

And if Lincoln is still alive.

She suspected Bob and Liam were probably fine; so far together they seemed to have been able to weather anything. And Sal would probably be fine with them looking after her. But Lincoln … the guy was a loose cannon. A big-mouth. A hot-head. Anything could have happened to him over the last week.

‘Then our men will give you your three days,’ said Wainwright. ‘What do you say, William?’

Devereau nodded. ‘This is a good defensive position.’

Maddy turned back to face the webcam on the desk. ‘OK, computer-Bob. Three days rendezvous from now, we just need to pick some place halfway between here and Quantico. Somewhere relatively quiet and peaceful if possible.’

› Affirmative.

‘We got enough charge to send a broad-range signal?’

› Affirmative. Information: my diagnostic has also picked up calibration errors on the transmission array.

‘Affirmative,’ said Becks. ‘A replacement component — a conventional radio communication dish — has been connected. I can run the recalibration with you, Bob.’

‘Well, you two sort that out now.’ She turned to Wainwright and Devereau. ‘Either of you got any relatively up-to-date maps we can look at? We need to pick a place for our guys to get to.’