TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) (26 page)

‘See? We got some power! So,
we’ll go get a kettle, a heater, camping stove. We’ll be living like kings
before you know it.’

Sal nodded. ‘Just as good as the old
archway.’ Taking Maddy’s lead, she smiled. Slightly forced. ‘And at
least we don’t have to listen to the trains running overhead all the
time.’

Actually, Liam had found that regular faint
rumble comforting. Stepping outside into that dark, rubbish-strewn alleyway and
listening to the restless noises of Brooklyn had been a somewhat reassuring thing. A
sign that life was ceaselessly going on all around them.

Here in this abandoned school, they could
just as easily be the last people on Earth and not know for sure one way or the other
until they drove into town. And even then, given how lifeless Harcourt had looked on
their way in, they’d not be certain.

‘Come on, guys!’ said Maddy.
‘We’ve got a ton of work to do if the agency’s going to be up and
running again.’

‘Aye,’ Liam shrugged.
‘Under new management, so it is.’

Maddy grinned. This time not her forced
make-the-troops-happy smile. This time a genuine grin of excitement. ‘Yes! Exactly
what you just said, Liam. We’re
Under New Management
. Us! How
cool’s that?’

‘We’re really going to change the
world?’ asked Sal.

‘Yup …’ Maddy wiped dusty
hands on the front of her jeans. ‘Now doesn’t that sound like a better job
description? To make the world a better place, rather than just keeping it the same
ol’ same crud? Huh?’

Rashim squatted down beside SpongeBubba,
amid the plastic bags they’d carried in. ‘A better world?’ he muttered
to himself. He was already checking through the more delicate parts of the displacement
machine’s components. He held a circuit up in front of the lab robot. It dutifully
extended a sensitive graphene-tipped sensor and began to test the integrity of the
board.

Rashim looked up at the others.
‘Anything that
isn’t
the world I left behind works just fine for
me.’

Sal gave that a moment’s thought.
‘Making a better world does sound good.’

‘Aye,’ Liam grinned. ‘Aye,
it does, so.’

‘Then let’s make busy,’
said Maddy. ‘Highest-priority tasks first, ladies and gents. I need a
coffee.’

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.’

1 October 2001, Harcourt, Ohio

‘So that’s twenty-seven dollars
and –’

‘Ninety cents,’ Liam finished.
He smiled at her and she blushed. ‘I know that off by heart.’

‘And I know what you’re gonna
order by heart,’ said Kaydee-Lee. ‘Why do you always order the same
thing?’

Liam had been up to the diner virtually
every morning since they’d settled into the abandoned elementary school. It was
boredom, that’s why he volunteered to do the breakfast bagel run. Maddy, Rashim
and SpongeBubba seemed to be spending all their waking hours either poring over
pencil-sketched schematics or huddled over a make-do workbench, carefully soldering
electrical components together by the light of a desktop lamp. Sal seemed to be busy on
the computers most of the time. They had a similar set-up of twelve networked PCs as
they’d had back in Brooklyn, the old hard drives from the archway system
installed. Once the W.G. Systems operating code had been loaded up and had successfully
kicked Windows 2000 to the kerb, computer-Bob was able to talk Sal through installing
all the other bits and pieces.

‘I know what bagel filling everyone
likes … saves me having to, you know, disturb them from their work.’

Kaydee-Lee narrowed her eyes. ‘So,
what are you guys up to down there at the school?’