TimeRiders: The Eternal War

CHAPTER 45. 2001, New York

‘I’m not so sure this is such a good idea,’ said Maddy. The boat bobbed gently on the river’s tidal waves, its steam engine puffing smoke and coughing as it powered a churning paddle at the rear.

‘We’ll be just fine,’ said Devereau. ‘I know Colonel Wainwright; he’ll not order his men to shoot on us while we’re under a white flag.’

Maddy looked up at the rag fluttering from the small boat’s masthead. She wished the thing was a good deal bigger and somewhat cleaner — whiter and more noticeable. It looked more like a loose flapping sail than it did a flag of truce.

Two-thirds of the way across the East River, she could see the Southern front line in more detail now: trenches of reinforced concrete and bunkers with viewing slits from which protruded the long, thick barrels of fixed artillery. She could make out individual faces moving among the structures. A growing buzz of activity as they drew closer.

‘They’re going to blast us out of the water,’ she muttered.

Becks was beside her. ‘We have been within effective range for the last five minutes.’ She turned to Maddy. ‘And they have not fired.’

‘Well, I guess we take that as a good sign, then.’ Maddy grinned anxiously.

‘Affirmative.’

Presently, the boat finally approached a wooden jetty protruding past a graveyard of rusting and rotting hulls of long-ago bomb-damaged vessels lying beached on the silted banks of the river.

The pilot reversed the engine, churning water noisily behind them and slowing the boat down as a couple of soldiers up front waited at the prow to hop over the side on to the end of the jetty.

‘Just hope this isn’t mistaken as some sort of amphibious invasion,’ Maddy found herself muttering under her breath.

‘Negative,’ said Becks. ‘There are too few troops for this to be an effective assault.’

Maddy sighed. ‘Duh, really?’

The boat thudded gently against the jetty and the two soldiers dropped on to the creaking wooden planks, quickly securing a line to a mooring kleet.

Devereau was first on to the wooden planks. ‘Allow me,’ he said, offering a hand to Maddy as she prepared to jump down to join him.

‘Oh, what a gentleman!’ She grasped hold of his hand gratefully. ‘Thank you.’

Becks was next. Devereau offered her his hand.

‘I will not be needing assistance,’ she said, casually leaping down with a heavy thud of firmly planted trainers.

‘Obviously you don’t.’ Devereau shrugged. ‘Sergeant Freeman?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘You and half a dozen men along with us. The rest to stay on the launch.’

Maddy looked around.

She shivered. The morning was still fresh and cool, the clear September sky stained a beautiful salmon pink by the rising sun.

‘Don’t be nervous, Madelaine,’ said Becks. ‘I am with you.’

She grasped the support unit’s hand. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied, ‘just a bit cold, that’s all.’

Devereau joined them.

‘What happens now?’ asked Maddy.

Her question was answered with movement. At the far end of the jetty, a welcoming committee had assembled. She saw a dozen men in uniforms remarkably similar in design to Devereau and his men, only a dusty grey instead of a dark blue. Leading an escort of armed men was an officer in his late thirties, sporting a dark beard like Colonel Devereau, only clipped in a way that reminded Maddy of some jaunty, laughing cavalier.

A dozen yards short of them he stopped. With a theatrical flourish he whipped off his felt slouch cap to reveal long sandy hair, and bowed like an actor taking a curtain call.

‘Colonel Devereau! What a pleasant surprise!’ he smiled. ‘Unless I’ve completely lost track of the date … It’s quite a few weeks yet until Thanksgiving, is it not?’

‘Colonel Wainwright.’ Devereau stepped forward and extended his hand. ‘Indeed. I’m not over here to share our annual bottle of sherry.’

Wainwright shrugged. ‘More’s the pity.’

Devereau gestured towards Maddy and Becks. ‘I have with me a couple of … ladies, who are, shall I say … in need of some assistance.’

Wainwright cocked an eyebrow. ‘Assistance?’

‘Yes.’ Devereau took a step closer to the Southern colonel. ‘James —’ he lowered his voice for Wainwright alone to hear — ‘they have quite an intriguing tale to tell. Very … very intriguing.’

‘Something for my ears alone, is it, Bill?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Important, I assume?’

‘Very.’

Wainwright thoughtfully stroked the side of his face for a moment. ‘We shall have to be discreet, old friend … I’ve got visitors in this sector.’

‘British?’

He nodded. ‘Top brass … a routine inspection of our defence network going on in the sector next door to mine.’ He grinned. ‘I suspect they might take a dim view of my consorting with the enemy.’

‘Then perhaps we shouldn’t waste any time standing out here.’

‘Quite.’ He looked past Devereau. ‘Ladies! Pleasure to make your acquaintance! Bill … why don’t you come with me? As it happens I’ve just put some rather decent coffee on.’

Devereau allowed Maddy to take the lead in explaining her situation, with Becks clarifying the finer technical points every now and then — technical points as wasted on the Southern colonel as they’d been on the Northern colonel.

Wainwright sat poker-faced through half an hour, one expression on his face: a courteous tolerance. Like a friendly old man listening to a child’s tall story.

Maddy finished, and sipped cold coffee.

‘Well … that is a devil of a thing,’ Wainwright said eventually. He looked at Colonel Devereau. ‘William? What do you make of this?’

‘I would happily have locked her up and considered her to be one of your spies had she not shown me glimpses of her world.’

The Southern colonel’s tawny eyebrows rose with curiosity.

Devereau tapped a shoulder bag Maddy had cradled in her lap. ‘Show him the things you have brought along.’

Maddy nodded, dipped into the bag and pulled out a copy of Wired magazine. ‘I buy them occasionally. This is September’s issue.’ There was a stack of magazines by her bunk, September issues of gadget and games magazines. Every few days, since being recruited, she felt compelled to go out and buy some magazines to read in order to feel somehow still in touch with this world. God help her, she even had a few of those awful gossip magazines with nothing but pictures of drunken celebrities stumbling out of nightclubs and limos.

Wainwright flicked through the glossy pages of special-effects shots for forthcoming movies. Maddy pulled out another, a National Geographic. ‘This is better,’ she said, ‘more pictures of the real world and not just movies.’

‘Movies?’

‘Like the news-o-tropes, James,’ said Devereau. ‘Moving images with sound.’

‘Ahhh,’ grunted Wainwright as he reached for the magazine Maddy was holding out. He flicked through more pages, pausing on a photograph depicting the space shuttle Discovery launching from its pad in Cape Canaveral. And another showing the Earth from space.

Wainwright looked up at Maddy. ‘You are telling me this is true? That men … have stepped off this world?’

‘Oh yes! In fact, men have stepped on the moon.’ She smiled. ‘And that’s pretty old news in my time. Happened back in 1969.’

Wainwright shook his head suspiciously at pictures of the International Space Station being bolted together by a man wearing an impossibly bulky suit of what looked to him like white linen. Sceptical.

‘This is … quite a story.’ He stroked his bearded chin. ‘I certainly would like to believe a world like this exists.’ He offered Maddy a wistful smile. ‘I would want to believe that, but these pictures … they could be the work of the Union’s Propaganda Division, Bill.’

Devereau laughed. ‘You think my High Command could be this inventive? The fools can barely organize food parcels for my men.’

Wainwright shrugged. That much was true.

‘Well … I’ve got this too.’ Maddy pulled out her iPhone. She switched it on and turned the glowing screen to show the colonel.

He jerked in his seat, one boot inadvertently kicking the table and spilling slops of coffee. ‘Good Heavens! What in God’s name is that?’

‘Just a mobile telephone,’ she said. ‘Bit like a field radio, I guess.’

He gazed wide-eyed at the screen.

‘You’ve got radios, right?’ she asked. Wainwright looked at her. ‘Wireless communicators?’

Devereau had assured her they did, far better battlefield-communications equipment than his own regiment, who still relied on telephone-cable technology decades old and prone to frequently going down after Southern bombing raids.

‘Yes … yes of course.’ Wainwright reached a gloved hand out to touch her iPhone. ‘Such an incredibly small device.’

‘Oh, and it does a bunch of other stuff too. Plays music. Wanna hear some?’

His eyes glistened in the gloom of the bunker. He nodded.

She tapped the screen and a moment later its small speaker played a scratchy beat and a few garbled words of hip hop.

Both Wainwright and Devereau made remarkably similar faces: something halfway between a wince of disgust and a polite smile of pity.

‘This really is music, you say? Music from your time?’ asked Wainwright.

Maddy turned it off and offered them an apologetic shrug. ‘Well … not everything is an improvement, I guess.’ She handed the iPhone to him. Wainwright was quiet for a few moments as he stroked the glowing screen in silent wonder.

‘James …’ said Devereau, ‘you and I, our men, could be living our lives in that world, not this one.’ He leaned forward, his bayonet scabbard tapping a chair leg. ‘This girl’s country is America. But it’s a different America. It’s a whole nation, a united nation, not a shattered and broken one. Our men, our people, have their own flag, their own government!’

‘Bill.’ Wainwright raised a hand to politely hush his friend. He stared at the iPhone in silence, caressing its smooth screen. ‘This … this seems to me to be technology far in advance of even the British.’

‘It is,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s everywhere in my time. Every kid has one. Well, almost every kid.’

He looked at her. ‘This is a child’s thing?’

‘Oh yeah, well … not a toy, but, you know, kids can use them.’

He turned to Devereau. His expression a question. ‘Bill?’

‘I’ve seen other things, James. These ladies arrived out of nowhere, right in the middle of our abandoned old lines by the river. They have machines, devices. You really should inspect them.’

‘This … what this girl is saying, this is for real?’

‘I believe it to be.’ Devereau nodded. ‘There is no other explanation for these pictures, for that device you are holding in your hands.’

Wainwright once more gazed at the screen, the colourful icons of apps.

‘James, if she’s right, if there really is another America, it would no longer be a broken battlefield. There’d be no British and French fighting each other on our soil … spilling American blood.’ Devereau tapped a finger on a magazine page, on the image of the space shuttle launching. ‘Americans achieved that, James. Not British. Not French … Americans.’

Wainwright looked up at him. His eyes narrowed. ‘There was a dream once, old friend, wasn’t there?’

Devereau nodded. ‘A nation of the free. Yes … there was a dream.’

He passed the phone back over the table to Maddy. ‘And you say your time-travelling machine can change everything to how it appears in these pictures?’

‘Yes.’

Wainwright slowly nodded, thoughtfully weighing up all that she’d brought to show him. ‘Well, then … what is it you need from me?’

Becks leaned forward across the table. ‘An axial feed parabolic radio antenna.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘A satellite dish?’ said Maddy. Both colonels looked at her as if she was speaking Hebrew. ‘A radio dish?’

‘Ah …’ Devereau raised a finger. ‘I think they may mean a communications saucer?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Yup … that sounds like what we’re after.’