‘there’s more to this agency than just us. There are others out there somewhere or some when.’
‘So how do we talk with them?’ asked Sal. ‘How can we meet them?’
‘I think that’s exactly the point. I think we’re not supposed to.’ Maddy slurped her Dr Pepper. ‘Maybe we’re a bit like some sort of terrorist organization; for all of our safety, no one group can know where another group is. We operate in isolation. It’s just us… until
…’ Her words tailed off and they sat in silence for a while contemplating where that sentence ended.
‘Not much chance of a big Christmas get-together, then?’ muttered Liam.
Maddy snorted drink on to the table, relieved that he’d found a way to break the sombre mood.
‘At least,’ said Sal, ‘we’ll have a brand-new Bob to protect us soon.’
‘Aye. I miss the big ape.’
Maddy pointed to the bank of computer monitors. ‘He’s just there!’
‘Naw,’ said Liam, wrinkling his nose, ‘it’s not quite the same him being in there.’
‘You can’t exactly hug a computer monitor,’ said Sal.
Liam chuckled. ‘Quite right. I miss his tufty round coconut head.’
‘And that dumb, total blip-head expression on his face,’ added Sal.
‘Aye.’
Maddy finished a mouthful of curry. ‘Well, we’ll have him around soon. Foster’s “how to” manual says the growth cycle should take about one hundred hours.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Lemmesee… that’s just over four days.’
‘We’ll need some new clothes for him,’ said Sal. ‘I’ll see what I can find for him downtown tomorrow.’
Maddy nodded. ‘Good idea.’
They finished the Indian takeaway and bagged up the rubbish. Liam volunteered to take it out as the girls changed for bed. He crossed the archway floor, criss-crossed with snaking power cables, and lifted the front shutter enough to duck under and step out into their backstreet.
A flickering blue light dimly lit the street. Above him, bright halogen floodlights illuminated the thick metal spars of the Williamsburg Bridge arcing across the flat docile water of the Hudson River. On the far side — a sight he was still yet to get used to — was Manhattan, a vibrant inverted crystal chandelier of winking city lights and nudging traffic.
He dropped the bag into the trash can, and sucked in the cool night air.
Tonight all was well with the world. Tomorrow was the day planes crashed into buildings and the sky was a dark smudge all of the day.
He hated the Tuesdays.
‘Good night, New York,’ he uttered under his breath.
The city replied with the rumble of a train along the bridge overhead and the echoing, distant wail of a police siren racing through a Brooklyn street several blocks away. As he prepared to duck back inside and wind the shutter down once more, he found himself wondering if Sal was right. If they really were alone. If the agency was, in fact, just them.
As it happened, the answer to that specific question was to arrive the very next morning.
CHAPTER 10
2001, New York
Maddy was entirely engrossed in Big Brother USA when Bob interrupted. She’d been watching Nicole and Hardy quietly plotting together in the kitchen against the other two. It was a rerun of the previous week’s shows on FOX and she already knew who was facing imminent eviction. She’d seen this show at least four times already, but for some reason, despite knowing the outcome, it was still compulsive viewing.
So it was with mild irritation that she answered the dialogue box that had popped up on the monitor over the top of Big Brother.
› Maddy?
She sat forward and spoke into the desk mic rather than tap out an answer on the keyboard.
‘What is it, Bob? I’m watching Big Brother right now.’
› I am picking up incoming tachyon particles.
Her mouth dropped open and she dribbled milk and Rice Krispies on to her T-shirt.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
› Kidding?
‘Joking.’
› Not joking, Maddy. There is a directed communication beam coming in from down-time.
‘From down-time… You mean the future?’
› Affirmative.
Maddy dropped her spoon back in the breakfast bowl and sat back in her chair. She looked around. Liam was still fast asleep on his bunk and Sal was out clothes shopping for Bob.
Oh my God… a message from the future?
She realized then and there that it could only be from the agency — their first contact with the rest of the organization — and just when they were really beginning to wonder whether the three of them were all on their own.
‘What’s the message, Bob?’
› Just a moment… just a moment. Decoding…
Sal had decided not to bother going uptown, over the bridge into Manhattan. The clothes shops there were all modern chain stores and none of them were likely to have much that would fit a seven-foot mountain of muscle.
Instead she headed into Brooklyn, an area she hadn’t explored at all thus far. Foster had been so very keen on her focusing her attentive eyes on Manhattan and Times Square — taking in every tiny detail until she knew everything that was meant to be there, every tiny event that was meant to happen — that she’d had no time to explore the city this side of the Hudson River.
Away from the bridge and South 6th Street, she found myriad quieter backstreets, and one in particular lined with odd little boutiques selling second-hand furniture and dusty old books. The chaos of goods piled outside the storefronts and cluttering the narrow street reminded her vaguely of the market-place near her home in Mumbai.
She found herself wiping a solitary tear from her cheek and chided herself for crying for her parents… because — stupid — they weren’t dead. The grim fate that awaited them wasn’t going to happen for another twenty-five years. At this moment in time, her mum and dad were just kids her age, enjoying their childhood and not due to meet for another decade yet. Strange, that. Stood side by side, she and her mum could probably pass as sisters.
Her attention was drawn to a shop with a curious mix of antique knick-knacks spilling out of its entrance and on to the pavement. Ancient-looking wooden furniture, a rocking-horse and clothes that looked like surplus theatrical costumes. But among them, bric-a-brac, a second-hand TV set, a toaster, a Dyson vacuum cleaner. A little bit of everything, it seemed.
She figured she had as much chance of finding something here that might fit Bob as she might anywhere else and, anyway, everything here appeared to be pretty cheap. She stepped inside the boutique and squeezed through the front of the store, cluttered with a set of chrome bar stools and several flaking display-window mannequins wearing dodgy-looking leather corsets and feather boas.
‘May I help you, young lady?’
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere and she jumped. Then she spotted a tiny old lady with jet-black hair who was even shorter than she was.
‘I, uh… You made me jump.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I do tend to blend into the store.’
Sal laughed. She could imagine a customer slapping ten dollars down on the counter for the ‘realistic old lady
