The Eternal War

free all the slaves,’ said Liam. ‘But, the way I see it, it was also very clever, like a chess move. To make sure the Confederates didn’t have Britain come into the war on their side.’

Sal shook her head. ‘I thought it was much simpler than that. Right versus wrong.’

Liam hunched his shoulders. ‘Wars are never about right and wrong. Always seems to be they end up being about power … money … something both sides want for themselves.’

‘Information: I am detecting the density probe.’

Liam got up from the sacks of cornmeal wearily. They’d been walking through the early hours of the morning and most of the day and his legs ached. He turned and offered Sal a hand. ‘Ma’am?’

She was struggling with the layers of linen and cotton petticoats and the tightly laced bodice to get to her feet.

‘Whuh?’ she said, looking at his hand, utterly bemused. ‘What do you want?’

He sighed, grasped one of her gloved hands and yanked her up on to her feet. ‘Jayyyz, don’t gentlemen offer ladies a polite hand any more in your time?’

She shook her head. ‘Uhhh, no, not really. I’d probably run if a stranger reached out for me like that.’

‘One minute left until extraction,’ said Bob.

Liam suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘We’re probably going to have to come back here again, once we’re sure history’s been corrected.’

Sal looked at him. ‘Really? Why?’

‘Liam is correct,’ said Bob. ‘The distillery wagon represents altered history — ’

‘And we’ll need to trace it back and find just who caused them horses to bolt.’ Liam looked at Bob. ‘We should’ve followed it up last night, straight after saving Lincoln.’ Liam cursed, frustrated with himself for having been so dense. ‘Why didn’t you suggest that, Bob?’

‘It was not a stated mission priority.’

Liam cursed again. ‘We’ll need to come back once more and trace back the way that wagon came. See where it came from, find out what spooked them horses.’ He fumed in silence for a moment. ‘Jay-zus, that was stupid of me.’

They waited for the window, listening to the bustling activity outside. Bob counted down the last ten seconds and then with a puff of air that sent Sal’s bonnet fluttering the shimmering orb of displaced time hovered darkly in front of them. Sal took a final look around the storage shed, savouring one last time the smells of woodsmoke, leather and horse manure.

‘I enjoyed my trip,’ she said, a little wistfully. ‘I wish …’ she started to say, but didn’t finish. She didn’t need to — Liam knew exactly what she was going to say.

I wish we could stay.

He nodded just to let her know he felt the same. ‘Best get going,’ he said finally.

‘Goodbye, 1831,’ she uttered, then reluctantly stepped through.

Liam looked up at Bob. ‘Well, better get back home, then.’

Bob nodded. ‘Correct.’

They stepped into the displacement window one after the other.

2001, New York

A moment later Liam emerged from the milky void into the archway to see the three girls standing beside the computer desk, awaiting his arrival.

‘Hey-ho!’ he chirped as he strode towards them. ‘World saved … yet again!’

Bob emerged from the portal behind him with a heavy grunt as his feet found the firm concrete.

‘Stand clear!’ said Maddy as she turned round to the desk to instruct computer-Bob to close the portal.

Liam stepped towards Maddy. ‘Me an’ Bob need to go back again, Maddy. We didn’t manage to …’ He stopped. Saw Sal’s eyes suddenly wide, a white-gloved hand raised to her mouth.

‘What’s up?’

Behind him the crackling burr of energy around the portal suddenly ceased as it snapped out of existence and the archway was its normal quiet hum of computers and the fizz of tube lights flickering a cool clinical glow down from above.

‘Good God! … What is this … devilry?’

Liam spun round on his heel to see a tall young man crouched and cowering in panic and confusion in the middle of the floor, eyes as wide, terrified and startled as a bull in an abattoir.

‘Oh great,’ sighed Liam.

CHAPTER 14

2001, New York

The man recoiled fearfully at the sight of Bob, taking several quick steps away from him. ‘WHAT IS THIS P- PLACE?’ he bellowed anxiously. His eyes darting from one of them to the next.

It was Maddy who reacted first. She took several steps forward. ‘Liam? Is that …? Oh crud, that’s not …?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, Mads. It’s Lincoln.’

Her jaw hung slack. ‘Oh my God!’ She advanced slowly. ‘Mr Lincoln? Abraham Lincoln?’

Lincoln’s manic eyes settled on her. His shaggy eyebrows scowled, covering his fear with suspicion. ‘You … you know me, ma’am?’

Maddy nodded. She even offered him something that looked like a polite curtsey. ‘Yes, Mr Lincoln. Yes we do.’

Lincoln’s voice softened from an outraged courthouse bellow to something quieter and altogether more agreeable. ‘Then … please, ma’am, tell me where in tarnation I have suddenly ended up.’ He looked around the brick archway. ‘Just a moment ago I was in the Jenkins storehouse.’ His eyes fell on Liam. ‘Listening to you, sir, and your two friends talking about things incomprehensible to me.’

Liam cursed his carelessness. ‘Jay-zus, he must have been following us!’

Lincoln carried on. ‘And then I saw that … that round … doorway appear out of — ’ Lincoln’s deep growl of a voice became a breathless whisper and his mouth snapped open and shut like a fish caught on a hook and landed on a riverbank. ‘It arrived out of nothing! Like smoke, like … like a vision of angels. Like …’

Sal chuckled at that.

‘Fool that I am, I dared to step through.’ He glanced at Liam. ‘To follow you through, sir, through the … that … that doorway, and find myself in a … an unearthly whiteness!’ He scratched anxiously at the thick bristles of his beard. ‘Then I find myself here … in this strange place!’

Maddy took another step forward, now only a yard from him. ‘You can relax, Mr Lincoln. Please … it’s all right, it’s OK. You’re perfectly safe here.’

Lincoln studied her in suspicious silence for a moment. ‘You, ma’am. You sound less foreign to me than the others.’ He nodded at Bob. ‘Particularly that ugly ox of a man there. Good God! If I had a dog as ugly, I’d shave its posterior and teach it to walk backwards!’

Lincoln chortled drunkenly at his own joke.

Maddy shook her head. He’s been drinking.

‘Now you, ma’am,’ he said, eyeing Maddy warily, ‘you have the sound of New England in your voice.’

‘Boston,’ she replied. ‘I’m from Boston.’

Lincoln nodded slowly. ‘And I trust you have a name?’

‘Maddy. Maddy Carter.’ She offered her hand to him. ‘We mean you no harm … In fact, we came back in time to save you.’

For several moments he regarded her hand as if it was a snarling dog ready to snap at his fingers. ‘Save me?’

She nodded. ‘You nearly stepped right in front of a speeding wagon.’