The Eternal War

with me? As it happens I’ve just put some rather decent coffee on.’

Devereau allowed Maddy to take the lead in explaining her situation, with Becks clarifying the finer technical points every now and then — technical points as wasted on the Southern colonel as they’d been on the Northern colonel.

Wainwright sat poker-faced through half an hour, one expression on his face: a courteous tolerance. Like a friendly old man listening to a child’s tall story.

Maddy finished, and sipped cold coffee.

‘Well … that is a devil of a thing,’ Wainwright said eventually. He looked at Colonel Devereau. ‘William? What do you make of this?’

‘I would happily have locked her up and considered her to be one of your spies had she not shown me glimpses of her world.’

The Southern colonel’s tawny eyebrows rose with curiosity.

Devereau tapped a shoulder bag Maddy had cradled in her lap. ‘Show him the things you have brought along.’

Maddy nodded, dipped into the bag and pulled out a copy of Wired magazine. ‘I buy them occasionally. This is September’s issue.’ There was a stack of magazines by her bunk, September issues of gadget and games magazines. Every few days, since being recruited, she felt compelled to go out and buy some magazines to read in order to feel somehow still in touch with this world. God help her, she even had a few of those awful gossip magazines with nothing but pictures of drunken celebrities stumbling out of nightclubs and limos.

Wainwright flicked through the glossy pages of special-effects shots for forthcoming movies. Maddy pulled out another, a National Geographic. ‘This is better,’ she said, ‘more pictures of the real world and not just movies.’

‘Movies?’

‘Like the news-o-tropes, James,’ said Devereau. ‘Moving images with sound.’

‘Ahhh,’ grunted Wainwright as he reached for the magazine Maddy was holding out. He flicked through more pages, pausing on a photograph depicting the space shuttle Discovery launching from its pad in Cape Canaveral. And another showing the Earth from space.

Wainwright looked up at Maddy. ‘You are telling me this is true? That men … have stepped off this world?’

‘Oh yes! In fact, men have stepped on the moon.’ She smiled. ‘And that’s pretty old news in my time. Happened back in 1969.’

Wainwright shook his head suspiciously at pictures of the International Space Station being bolted together by a man wearing an impossibly bulky suit of what looked to him like white linen. Sceptical.

‘This is … quite a story.’ He stroked his bearded chin. ‘I certainly would like to believe a world like this exists.’ He offered Maddy a wistful smile. ‘I would want to believe that, but these pictures … they could be the work of the Union’s Propaganda Division, Bill.’

Devereau laughed. ‘You think my High Command could be this inventive? The fools can barely organize food parcels for my men.’

Wainwright shrugged. That much was true.

‘Well … I’ve got this too.’ Maddy pulled out her iPhone. She switched it on and turned the glowing screen to show the colonel.

He jerked in his seat, one boot inadvertently kicking the table and spilling slops of coffee. ‘Good Heavens! What in God’s name is that?’

‘Just a mobile telephone,’ she said. ‘Bit like a field radio, I guess.’

He gazed wide-eyed at the screen.

‘You’ve got radios, right?’ she asked. Wainwright looked at her. ‘Wireless communicators?’

Devereau had assured her they did, far better battlefield-communications equipment than his own regiment, who still relied on telephone-cable technology decades old and prone to frequently going down after Southern bombing raids.

‘Yes … yes of course.’ Wainwright reached a gloved hand out to touch her iPhone. ‘Such an incredibly small device.’

‘Oh, and it does a bunch of other stuff too. Plays music. Wanna hear some?’

His eyes glistened in the gloom of the bunker. He nodded.

She tapped the screen and a moment later its small speaker played a scratchy beat and a few garbled words of hip hop.

Both Wainwright and Devereau made remarkably similar faces: something halfway between a wince of disgust and a polite smile of pity.

‘This really is music, you say? Music from your time?’ asked Wainwright.

Maddy turned it off and offered them an apologetic shrug. ‘Well … not everything is an improvement, I guess.’ She handed the iPhone to him. Wainwright was quiet for a few moments as he stroked the glowing screen in silent wonder.

‘James …’ said Devereau, ‘you and I, our men, could be living our lives in that world, not this one.’ He leaned forward, his bayonet scabbard tapping a chair leg. ‘This girl’s country is America. But it’s a different America. It’s a whole nation, a united nation, not a shattered and broken one. Our men, our people, have their own flag, their own government!’

‘Bill.’ Wainwright raised a hand to politely hush his friend. He stared at the iPhone in silence, caressing its smooth screen. ‘This … this seems to me to be technology far in advance of even the British.’

‘It is,’ said Maddy. ‘It’s everywhere in my time. Every kid has one. Well, almost every kid.’

He looked at her. ‘This is a child’s thing?’

‘Oh yeah, well … not a toy, but, you know, kids can use them.’

He turned to Devereau. His expression a question. ‘Bill?’

‘I’ve seen other things, James. These ladies arrived out of nowhere, right in the middle of our abandoned old lines by the river. They have machines, devices. You really should inspect them.’

‘This … what this girl is saying, this is for real?’

‘I believe it to be.’ Devereau nodded. ‘There is no other explanation for these pictures, for that device you are holding in your hands.’

Wainwright once more gazed at the screen, the colourful icons of apps.

‘James, if she’s right, if there really is another America, it would no longer be a broken battlefield. There’d be no British and French fighting each other on our soil … spilling American blood.’ Devereau tapped a finger on a magazine page, on the image of the space shuttle launching. ‘Americans achieved that, James. Not British. Not French … Americans.’

Wainwright looked up at him. His eyes narrowed. ‘There was a dream once, old friend, wasn’t there?’

Devereau nodded. ‘A nation of the free. Yes … there was a dream.’

He passed the phone back over the table to Maddy. ‘And you say your time-travelling machine can change everything to how it appears in these pictures?’

‘Yes.’

Wainwright slowly nodded, thoughtfully weighing up all that she’d brought to show him. ‘Well, then … what is it you need from me?’

Becks leaned forward across the table. ‘An axial feed parabolic radio antenna.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘A satellite dish?’ said Maddy. Both colonels looked at her as if she was speaking Hebrew. ‘A radio dish?’

‘Ah …’ Devereau raised a finger. ‘I think they may mean a communications saucer?’

Maddy nodded. ‘Yup … that sounds like what we’re after.’

CHAPTER 46