‘Information: the translation was offset by fourteen feet and three inches,’ said Bob.
Rashim nodded. ‘We should let Maddy know when we get back. She’ll need to recalibrate the spatial attributor.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Liam. ‘It was three doughnuts that are to blame.’
‘Ahh… now, yes, I did warn you, Liam,’ said Rashim.
Liam got up off the damp wood, most of the cloying mud shaken off. He grinned in the dark at him. ‘Lesson learned.’ He took in the freezing mist all around them. ‘So this is Victorian London, is it?’
‘Affirmative, Liam.’
‘Yes… Liam. Say yes, not affirmative.’ He picked out the dark mountain of Bob’s back and slapped it gently. ‘You’re never going to get your head around that, are you?’
‘That particular speech file appears to be resistant to replacement.’
‘Should we not proceed?’ Rashim interrupted.
‘Hmmm, you’re right,’ said Liam. ‘Let’s find some solid ground.’
They followed the jetty until it widened and finally terminated on firm shingle at the base of a slime-encrusted stone wall. A high-tide line marked the top of the slime halfway up, and it was mist-damp stonework the rest of the way. The pinhole image they’d gathered earlier had shown this jetty wall. The mist hadn’t been here then. And there were the steps they’d spotted in the image. A dozen slippery, narrow stone steps up the side of the jetty wall.
At the top Liam looked around. A carpet of mist covered the river below like a wispy layer of virgin snow, dusted silvery blue by a quarter-moon. He saw the humps of river barges emerge from the mist, topped with pilots’ cabins like isolated stubby lighthouses rising from a milky sea. The milky sea itself seemed to stir with life; he watched enormous dark phantoms loom through the river mist, like those ever-circling wraiths in chaos space — shadows cast by fleeting clouds chasing each other across the moonlit sky.
The other two joined him.
‘It’s so dark,’ said Rashim.
Liam nodded. Compared to New York, compared to whatever future cities Rashim must be used to, it must seem like some medieval netherworld.
Dark, yes, but punctuated by a thousand pinpricks of faint amber light: gas lamps behind dirty windows, candles behind tattered net curtains. They were standing in a cobblestone square. On one side there appeared to be a brick warehouse or small factory.
They heard something heavy rumbling, rattling across the river, and turned round to look across the carpet of mist. It was then Liam noticed the arches and support stanchions of a broad, low bridge.
‘According to my data that is Blackfriars Bridge,’ said Bob.
Not so far beyond it another bridge… and the toot of a steam whistle confirmed what Liam suspected. It was a train crossing the river to their side. He could just about make out the faintest row of amber lights on the move — lamps in each carriage.
‘My God!’ whispered Rashim. ‘Is that a… a steam train?’
‘Aye.’
‘We should proceed towards our target destination,’ said Bob.
He was right. Liam would rather be back here for Maddy’s scheduled window than have to flap his hands around like an idiot hoping for one. There was no knowing how good their temporary set-up back in 2001 was at picking up hand signals.
‘We must head north,’ said Bob, pointing towards a narrow street.
They made their way up the street, dark and quiet. It curved to the left and a hundred yards up at the end it joined a much broader street. They could hear it was busy even before they stepped out of their dark side street. The distinctive clop-clop-clop of shoed horses, the warning honk of a bulb horn, the rattle of iron-rimmed coach wheels. They emerged on to a broad street lit on either side with stout wrought-iron lamps, twelve feet tall, that spilled broad pools of amber illumination across a wide thoroughfare busy with horse-drawn carriages and carts.
‘My God!’ whispered Rashim. ‘I never imagined it would be quite so busy!’
‘It’s only ten,’ said Liam, pointing to a clock on a nearby building. ‘People stay up even later in my hometown, Cork.’
He stopped himself from correcting that. Not his hometown… of course. But it was a constant, unsettling inconvenience for him and the girls, continually self-correcting statements like that, that he’d finally stopped giving a damn about it. As Maddy had told him, It doesn’t matter if they’re second-hand memories, Liam — we ARE the sum of what we remember. And that’s how I’m dealing with this.
Denial. It was as good a way as any of dealing with the knowledge that your whole life was a lie.
‘This is really quite fantastic,’ Rashim uttered.
‘Glad you like it. Which way now, Bob?’
‘This is Farringdon Street.’ He pointed up the busy thoroughfare. At the far end a low bridge arched over the wide street. Along the top of it were glowing orbs of light of a different colour, more of a pale amber, almost a vanilla colour. And a steadier, more resilient glow than the occasionally flickering, shifting illumination coming from the gas lamps.
‘And that is the Holborn Viaduct.’
‘Those lights…?’ Liam nodded at them.
‘Affirmative,’ replied Bob. ‘They are electric lights.’
The three of them picked their way up the broad pavement on the left-hand side of Farringdon Street. It was busy with pedestrians, a mixture of smartly dressed gentlemen and ladies taking the air after a show, and costermongers and hucksters of various goods packing up and making their way home for the night.
‘Come on! Make way there, lads!’ barked a thick-shouldered man with a handcart laden with pigs’ heads and trotters as he pushed his way past them.
An elegantly dressed woman walking with a whippet-thin man in a top hat curled her lips in disapproval as the cart wheeled past her. ‘Oh really!’ she muttered.
Liam and Rashim shared a grin. The noises, the smells — the acrid smell of burning coke, horse manure, the sight of such churning, shoulder-to-shoulder life — seemed reassuring, life-affirming. After all that time alone in the abandoned school it felt good to be back among so many people.
Liam caught the faintest whiff of it first: the smell of coffee beans roasting in a skillet. Parked up in the dirt at the side of the road was a large four-wheeled cart. Wooden steps unfolded down on to the pavement invited them up to a wooden deck where several tables and stools were occupied by gentlemen and ladies taking coffee and a slice of cake. At one end of the cart a woman and a man in aprons were serving cups of freshly roasted coffee from large tin urns that steamed over small skillets. Candles lit the small tables. Mini oil lamps were strung across the top, like Christmas lights.
‘Just wait till Maddy sees that,’ Liam laughed. ‘A horse-drawn Starbucks!’
A few minutes later they were standing beneath the viaduct, looking up at the thick ribs of glossy green-painted iron arching across the broad street. Overhead, alongside the road that crossed over the viaduct, the orbs of electric light at the top of tall iron lampstands bloomed proudly.
‘London’s first public, electric-powered street lights.’ Liam nodded approvingly. ‘Not bad.’
‘We have used half an hour of our allotted time,’ said Bob.
Liam stopped gawking at the lights and turned his attention to life beneath the viaduct. The underbelly was a row of hexagonal stone columns on either side of the street from which the arches of iron branched out to meet each other. On both sides of Farringdon Street there were pedestrian walkways lit by yet more electric globes. The walkways were flanked by stone columns on one side and rows of brickwork archways on the other, each archway seemingly occupied by one sort of business or other.
As they watched, on the far side of the busy street the thick oak doors of one of the archways swung open and several men worked together, rolling casks of beer out, across the pavement and on to a flat-backed cart.
Liam craned his neck to get a better look through the open doors to the interior beyond. He could see archways and alcoves, all seemingly stuffed with barrels, crates and boxes of all different sizes.