The Eternal War

consider to be a workman’s trousers — faded blue canvas. And her top was a smudged white shirt with no buttons, or loops, or any sign of feminine embellishments of lace or ribbon, just a printed word.

Intel.

‘Take a seat,’ he said.

She stepped forward and slumped in the wooden chair in front of his desk. Very unladylike in her posture.

‘So, are you going to give me your real name? Or am I going to get your spy name?’

‘Maddy,’ she uttered. ‘Madelaine Carter. It’s my real name.’

He shrugged. ‘OK. There’s a start, then … Maddy.’ He took his first tentative sip, testing the hot water with a top lip covered in drooping bristles.

Maddy looked up at him, her eyes narrowing as she studied him silently. ‘You and your men are dressed up … like civil-war soldiers. Like from the 1860s or something. Except — ’ she shook her head — ‘I don’t see any muskets. Your soldiers have weird-looking assault rifles.’

Devereau laughed. ‘Good God … civil war! That’s a very old-fashioned term you’re using, young lady. Civil war? This war hasn’t been called that in well over a century.’

She frowned, puzzled. ‘You’re telling me that this … this is the same war?’

Devereau’s turn to look perplexed. ‘You’re asking me that, young lady?’ he said, pulling on the handle of his moustache. ‘As if … you actually don’t know?’

‘Yes.’

He sipped his coffee, swilling the rich bitter taste around his mouth. ‘So, I presume this is how you were instructed to behave, then … if you got caught? Hmm? To act the fool? To appear quite mad?’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Maybe I am.’

‘Well — ’ he put down his mug, spread his hands — ‘why don’t you tell me the half of it, as you say?’

‘You’ll only think I’m completely mad, or lying.’ She shrugged. ‘Because I’m not from this world, see? I’m from another world. Another time really.’ She shook her head. ‘What’s the point? You’re not going to believe anything that comes out of my mouth, right?’

He stroked his beard in silent contemplation for a full minute. ‘Here’s the thing … if I were sending you to spy on the South, I’d dress you anonymously. I’d pick someone who looked and behaved quite normally. You on the other hand, young lady, are neither.’ He pointed a finger at her shirt. ‘And it seems quite foolish to me to be putting that badge on the front of you. It would be a bit like a thief wearing an I AM A BURGLAR sign round his neck.’

She looked down at her sweatshirt. ‘Intel?’ she smiled. ‘Oh, you’re thinking it’s short for intelligence, right?’

He returned her smile. ‘Indeed. Military intelligence. You might just as well have put the word SPY on your shirt.’

‘Intel, they’re a manufacturer of silicon chips,’ she said. ‘In my world.’

He frowned.

‘Silicon chips? You know, like in computers?’

‘Computers? What is one of those?’

‘You serious?’

They sat in silence for a while. Outside the colonel’s bunker, a muted clunking of metal on metal could be heard starting up, machinery somewhere in the subterranean nest of rooms and passageways.

‘Well now,’ said Devereau, sipping his cooling coffee. ‘I’m halfway to believing, Miss Carter, that you’re not a spy, or, at the very least, if you are one … not a very good one. And that might just spare you from going in front of a firing squad.’

Her jaw dropped a little. ‘Firing squad?’

‘Ahhh, I see that seems to have focused your mind a little. Yes, I have ordered men to be executed, an unpleasant and occasionally necessary part of being a front-line commander.’

‘I … uhh … look, I’m not a spy! God no! That’s … that’s not me … I — ’

‘Actually, you needn’t be alarmed. I suspect as much. You really are far too odd, young lady. However … I think it’d be a good idea if you start telling me — ’

‘Time traveller!’ she blurted out. ‘I’m a time traveller! I travel through time!’ Then winced at how ridiculous that must sound to him.

Devereau could have laughed at her ingeniously novel reply. But he rather fancied seeing how well thought out her outburst was. ‘Indeed? Now … is this the same notion as is used in that famous work … The Time Machine?’

‘The Time Machine?’ Maddy’s mind raced. Yes, that old book had been written in 1895 — the correct 1895, that is. Perhaps even in this corrupted timeline the same author, H. G. Wells, could have been inspired to write the very same, or a very similar book?

‘Yes!’ she replied. ‘Yes … the technology exists to move backwards and forwards through time. Well — ’ she shrugged — ‘it will do. In the year 2044 they’ll work out a way to do it.’

Devereau nodded patiently. ‘And, let me see, you’re expecting me to believe you are from the year 2044, I take it?’

‘From the future, yes. But, actually, I kinda work in 2001. But not this 2001, if you see what I mean. A very different one.’

She was confusing him.

‘See, this is wrong. It’s all wrong! This … this … room, that ruined New York outside, this war! It’s all wrong. It shouldn’t be like this!’

‘Oh? How should it be?’

Maddy leaned forward. ‘Your side won! It won … over a hundred and thirty years ago! The North beat the South! America became one big nation. It became the world’s most powerful nation! Do you know this nation even managed to send a man to the moon?’

‘Miss Carter — ’ he smiled wryly — ‘you’ll never know how much I’d love to believe a fanciful story as that, but — ’

‘It’s true! Honest to God, it’s — ’

‘This nation is a mongrel nation, and that’s all it’ll ever be. Too busy fighting itself, state against state, brother against brother. And now — ’ Devereau lowered his voice to a more cautious level — ‘and now we’re all but governed by France and Europe … and the Southern Confederacy is little more than a mere colony of Great Britain.’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No. You’re so wrong! This … is wrong! There’s a correct history, a way it should go. And in the correct history the North wins in 1865. And do you know why? Do you know how it wins?’

‘Go on.’

‘Because it made the issue of slavery — abolishing slaves — a war aim. It decided to make that the main reason for the war. And it worked!’

‘Slavery?’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no slavery. There hasn’t been since, well now … since 1871 when the South signed an alliance with Britain’s King Edward VII.’

‘The South, the Confederates, don’t have slaves?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then … then why are you guys fighting each other?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a question I ask myself every day.’ Devereau sighed. ‘Truth is, we’re underdogs of the British and the French. We’re fighting their war for them.’

‘My God … this is so wrong. This is all to do with Lincoln.’

‘Lincoln?’

‘A man called Abraham Lincoln. He was your president when the civil war started.’

Devereau shook his head. ‘There’s never been a President Lincoln — ’

‘Not in this timeline, no. But in mine — in correct history — it was his idea to make it about slavey! He’s the reason the North won the war!’