Liam frowned for a moment. Then put down his burger — no, dropped his burger. Suddenly indignant, he exclaimed, ‘Jay-zus, Maddy! Are you asking me whether we give up?’
She said nothing. That was her answer.
‘No way!’ He turned to Sal. ‘Right? No bleedin’ way!’ He looked almost angry. As close to anger as she’d ever seen him. ‘Now listen here, Madelaine Carter! I’ve nearly died a dozen times, so I have. To keep that…’ He flung a hand towards the window and the glistening lights of Times Square. ‘To keep New York just like it is! I’m not giving up on that now!’
Maddy noted a proud smile steal across Foster’s lips.
‘Sal? I’m right, am I not?’ said Liam. ‘We want to go on, right?’
She chewed on the straw in her glass of Dr Pepper and blew bubbles for a moment before she finally spoke. ‘There’s things I want to know. I want to know what Pandora is. I want to know what Becks knows; what’s locked up inside her head. I want to know what that man was trying to tell us.’
That man. Maddy and Liam knew who she meant: the poor soul who’d arrived back in New Orleans, 1831, only to be fused into the bodies of two horses. He’d held on to life for perhaps five, ten minutes, a gruesome jigsaw puzzle, an inside-out parody of a centaur.
A horror-show freak for the few minutes he, it, lived.
‘I want to know what’s really going on, Maddy.’
‘I want to know more about this Waldstein fella. Aye, and more about this agency,’ said Liam. ‘And the only way I see it is… we have to keep on doing what we’re doing. Even if we have to move somewhere else and continue doing it there.’
Maddy tapped the table gently with her knuckles. Her attempt at calling their meeting to order. It took a few moments. She would’ve been quicker just telling the pair of them to shut up. But also a touch rude.
‘OK, it’s agreed, then. We relocate and we’ll set things up again.’ She looked at them all. ‘And we will continue keeping this timeline on track while we’re still able to. Because — look — whatever’s really going on, if we’re being played for fools, if we’re being manipulated by Waldstein somehow… or someone else inside his agency or someone outside, the truth is… I know what we’re doing is the right thing. And that’s the only, literally the only, certainty we can grab hold of.’
The other two nodded. They’d seen enough alternate timelines to know there could be far worse ways history could play out than the way it was now.
‘For better or worse, right, Foster?’
The old man nodded. ‘For better or worse, history needs to stay on track.’
‘OK… OK, this is what I’m thinking we do.’ Maddy pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. ‘We head north to Boston.’
‘Why? What’s so special about Boston?’ asked Foster.
‘It’s my home.’
Liam looked up from his burger. ‘You want to go to your home?’
‘It’s my home turf,’ she said. ‘I grew up there. I know the area. And look, maybe we can get some help. My folks — ’
‘You can’t go to your home, Maddy,’ said Foster.
‘Why not?’
Sal’s eyes widened. ‘Jahulla! You’ll be there already, won’t you? Another you?’
Liam stopped chewing. Dawning realization on his face too. ‘You’d be a little girl! There’d be a little Maddy there!’
‘Nine.’ Maddy nodded. ‘Yes, I’d be nine.’
‘Madelaine,’ said Foster. ‘You cannot visit your family, you cannot visit yourself. Do you understand me? That’s a very dangerous contamination!’
She stared at him silently for a long while before finally, reluctantly nodding. ‘All right. I get it. OK, I won’t visit home. It was just an idea. But listen! I know the area. There are places I know where we could set up. If we’re going to ground, it’s better we head somewhere that someone knows. Right?’
‘Somewhere we can easily tap power?’ said Rashim. ‘We’d need that if you want a viable new place to operate from.’
‘Sure. There’s loads of places we could settle in. There’s industrial parks. We could rent a unit, pretend to be some small business or something.’
Liam nodded, encouraged that she seemed to have already given the move some thought. ‘Seems like a plan, so.’
Sal smiled. ‘A new home. I’d like that.’
Foster seemed less than happy. ‘It’s a danger, Maddy. And a temptation. To be so close to your childhood home.’
‘I won’t go home! OK? I promise! I mean… what’s the alternative? We stick a random pin in a map of America and just hope for the best?’ Her burrito drooled gunk on to her plate with an unappealing splat. ‘Seriously, guys. If anyone else has got a better suggestion… I’m all ears.’
No one, of course, did.
‘Then that’s all I’ve got. Boston. It’s a start. What do you guys say?’
Liam and Sal nodded.
‘Uhh… so does that answer your earlier question?’ asked Rashim.
‘What’s that?’
‘Whether I’m coming along?’ Rashim looked sheepish. ‘Am I in your… what do you call it? Your team?’
‘Yuh… I guess,’ Maddy smiled. ‘Sure, if you want?’
He smiled. ‘You’re joking, right? A choice between staying in 2001 or going back to 2070?’ His face cracked with a wide grin. ‘It’s a head-slap. I’d very much like to stay.’
‘Then that’s the deal.’ She offered her hand across the table. ‘We need some kind of oath or something, but I guess a handshake’s good for now.’
They reached across and shook awkwardly. The sort of uneasy gesture of two geeks unsure whether to high-five, chest-bump or knuckle-kiss and in the end pulling off a fumbled combination and Maddy nearly knocking her drink over. Sal rolled her eyes.
‘So, we’ll set off tomorrow morning. Have a last night in the arch.’
Liam nodded. ‘A last night to say goodbye to the ol’ place.’
Maddy sighed. ‘It’s a freakin’ brick archway. That’s all.’
‘No, that’s not fair. I’d say it was a bit more than that.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Sal. ‘It was sort of home.’
Maybe they were both right. It had begun to feel a bit like that. ‘Let’s just look ahead, guys. OK? We’ve still got a job to do. And maybe now… we’re doing the job on our terms? We’re calling the shots.’
That felt like a leader-ish sort of thing to say. Like the right thing to say. Maddy looked sideways at Foster and he gave her a subtle wink.
Chapter 6
11 September 2001, New York
Liam lifted the last of the bags into the back of the SuperChief. Maddy took them from him. ‘That the last of the stuff piled in the middle?’
He looked back into the dark interior of the archway. ‘Aye.’
‘Good. Because there’s no room left anyway.’ She ducked back inside, looking down the middle of the vehicle, an assault course of plastic bags and cardboard boxes. And that was just their essentials. ‘I guess I’ll find somewhere to tuck these. What’s in these bags anyway?’
‘Some of me books.’
‘We can replace books, Liam.’
He shrugged. ‘And a few comics.’
Maddy sighed, leaned over and pulled open one of the bags. ‘Oh, come on… and the Nintendo too?’
‘Well…’ He looked sheepish. ‘I thought…’
‘Jesus, we can pick another one of those up at any computer game store.’ She shook her head. ‘Just the difficult things. Just things we can’t easily replace, I’m afraid.’
He sighed and swung the bag ruefully into the open rubbish bin beside the vehicle.
Maddy poked her nose into his other bag. ‘OK, I guess these books can come aboard.’ She took the bag off him and disappeared inside the RV.
Liam looked back under the shutter. It was dark and gloomy: a vacant space once more, strewn with the cables and rubbish, boxes of tools, cartons of nuts and bolts, spools of electrical wire. A desk with the gutted remains of a dozen Dell computers left beneath it.
A large wardrobe that had contained, until this morning at least, a bizarre collection of garments. A twelfth-century leather jerkin, two Wehrmacht army tunics. Several Roman togas. An Edwardian-era suit and lady’s gown, a steward’s tunic and more. The clothes were all squirrelled away aboard the RV now.