The Eternal War

That awful moment was done, her parents gone, dust, and she was here in New York instead of Mumbai. All done. Or, more accurately, yet to be done. Yet to happen twenty-five years from now.

Yet to happen … that at least stole some of the sting of losing her parents, of knowing that they died along with everyone else when that tower block collapsed in on itself. Because — and this is the bit that really messed her head up — they were alive right now. At this moment in time they were children, her age, and they were yet to even meet each other. That was going to happen in twelve years’ time, 2013. They were going to meet at a consumer electronics show in New Delhi. Both their families were going to thoroughly approve of the match, and within the very same year Sal was going to already be a bump growing in her mama’s tummy.

And now she was looking at a small blue teddy bear that had absolutely no logical reason to be sitting here in New York in 2001. A bear, unmistakably the same bear, that she’d seen her neighbours’ — Mr and Mrs Chaudhry — youngest boy, Rakesh, always clinging on to and slobbering over.

Unmistakably.

The same teddy bear.

It was the very last thing she’d seen from the final second of her old life of 2026 … that teddy bear, spinning head over heels into flames as the floor had suddenly collapsed beneath their feet and the building shuddered in on itself.

Then she’d awoken here in New York, 2001.

‘It’s the same … I’m sure,’ she whispered to herself, a confused frown stretching from one brow to the other. Her eyes had never let her down. She saw little things, the tiny details: the way the button eye drooped at an angle, the stitching through only three of the four holes; the bear’s pale blue material threadbare on the left arm but not the right, as if the right had been replaced at a later time.

The tiny details. Her eyes and her mind were compulsively drawn to those sorts of things. An obsessive habit. She tucked her drooping fringe back up behind one ear and leaned forward until her forehead thudded softly against the shop window. She’d always been able to spot the little things that others missed, seen patterns in a seemingly random mess. That’s why she’d been so good at playing Pikodu.

‘It’s the same,’ she whispered.

How the shadd-yah is that even possible?

Her mobile phone suddenly vibrated in the pocket of her jacket. She fished for it and pulled it out.

‘Yeah?’

‘Had you forgotten?’ Maddy sighed impatiently.

‘Forgotten? What?’

‘Today? This morning? Trip to the museum? Remember?’

Sal winced then bumped her head against the window again. Yes of course, they’d been discussing it last night before turning in. But with her dream … no, nightmare … that horrible memory … she’d completely forgotten. She cursed under her breath. ‘I’m on my way back.’

‘Meet us there if you like. On the front steps of the museum?’

‘Right.’

‘About an hour?’

‘OK.’

Sal snapped her cell closed, once again faintly amused at how old-fashioned it looked compared to the T-buds almost everyone back in Mumbai had looped over their ears.

She looked once again at the blue bear. The blue bear that shouldn’t be there.

It stared back at her with one button eye, almost challenging her to explain why not.

CHAPTER 2

2001, New York

Maddy led the five of them through the swing doors into the Museum of Natural History’s main entrance hall. Foster had brought them all here once before, not long after he’d recruited them: Maddy from a doomed passenger plane, moments before it was due to disintegrate mid-air, and Liam from the sinking Titanic. It had been a field trip, a reward for them, a change of scenery. A chance for them to see, to reach out and touch the history they were now responsible for preserving.

Both support units, Bob and Becks, eyed the enormous looming brachiosaurus skeleton stretching along the entrance hall with a detached cool, their silicon minds categorizing the sights, sounds and smells of the museum as either useful or irrelevant data.

Liam, by contrast, chuckled with delight at seeing the dinosaur once again. A class of elementary schoolkids was clustered around the long plastic-boulder-covered display plinth on which the skeleton stood, all carrying their activity clipboards, faces craned upwards to look at the towering dark bones, every mouth drooping to form a little ‘o’ for ‘orrrrr-some’.

Liam nodded a greeting at the old security guard standing beside the visitor’s book. ‘Hey, Sam, how’s it going?’

‘Whuh?’ The guard scowled at him, bemused. ‘Hang on. How do you know my — ?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Liam, grinning, ‘we met a long, long time ago, so.’

Maddy’s eyes rolled behind her glasses. ‘Oh, grow up, Liam,’ she whispered, jabbing him in the ribs and steering him away from the guard, who was still regarding them with an expression that was an even split between surly suspicion and genuine confusion.

‘Last I heard, we were meant to be a top-secret organization … you know?’

‘Aww, he won’t remember. I was dressed as one of ’em Nazi fellas then.’

‘And the timeline was erased,’ added Bob helpfully. ‘The guard will have no memory of the encounter because — ’

Maddy raised her hands to shush them. ‘All right, yes … you’re right, Bob.’ She shook her head. ‘Let’s just generally try to be secret, OK? And, while we’re at it, Liam, try to behave like adults here?’

Liam nodded. ‘Aye, you’re right. Sorry.’

‘OK,’ she sniffed, wiping her nose. She’d picked up a cold from somewhere, quite probably the dude who’d been hacking and wheezing over the counter at PizzaLand the other night — giving them a little extra unasked-for topping on their four seasons. She felt like total crud.

‘OK … today’s about learning a bit more history,’ she said snottily. ‘And we can all do with knowing a bit more, but it’s meant to be fun too, right? We could all do with some time out of the arch.’

‘S’right,’ said Sal.

‘And you guys,’ she said to Bob and Becks. ‘Split up … I don’t want you two support units Bluetoothing binary jibber-jabber to each other all morning. You should use this morning to do some more people-watching. Look and listen … watch how people talk and move and stuff.’ She glanced up at Bob. ‘Particularly you, Bob … you still come across as a bit stiff and unnatural. You need to learn how to chillax.’

Maddy watched Bob’s seven-foot frame hunch uncertainly. His thick brow arched and his mouth opened.

Beauty and the Beast. He was seven foot tall, three hundred pounds of muscle and bone: a panzer tank in human form. Becks by contrast was half a yard shorter, athletic and slight. Yet both had started out, once upon a time, as identical-looking foetuses growing in a tube of murky gunk.

Bob was cocking his head like a dog, puzzling over the term ‘chillax’.

‘Never mind.’ Maddy shook her head. ‘Just mingle a bit, OK?’

Both support units nodded sternly.

‘Right,’ said Maddy, honking into a hankie. ‘Right then, meet in the cafe up on the first floor in, say … like, two hours?’ She tried a weary flu-ridden smile. ‘And hey … you know, have fun everyone.’

Maddy watched them disperse: Liam drawn towards the entrance of the natural-history hall and the dinosaur dioramas; Sal hovering a moment, undecided, before choosing to go to the History of Native Americans exhibit on