‘Uh?’ She shook her head, her mind once again back in the archway, her eyes once more on the screen watching Homer trashing Ned Flanders’s lawnmower.
‘Dirt,’ she mumbled. ‘Dirt in my eye.’ She rubbed them dry under her glasses. ‘Becks?’
‘Yes, Maddy?’
‘You recall our last conversation with Foster?’
‘When we went to Central Park?’
‘That’s right.’
That’s where she could find him same time, same day. For him, a moment that passed once; for her, looping back in their forty-eight-hour bubble, it could be a repeated encounter out there in the park, beside the duck pond.
‘I recall your conversation with Foster.’
‘You remember we asked you when you could unlock that data … the decoded message in the Grail.’
‘Yes, Maddy, I remember that.’
‘You replied —’
‘The data would be unlocked when it is the end.’
‘Yes … “the end”. What did you mean by that?’
Becks cocked her head on one side. ‘It is the only answer the protocol permits me to offer.’
‘But what do you think it means? What is it referring to? The end of what?’
Becks shrugged. ‘I have no data on that.’
‘The end of … me? You? The agency? The world?’
The support unit’s grey eyes locked on hers. ‘I repeat, I have no data to interpret that message.’
‘Is there no way we could dig that hard drive out of your head and access that locked part of the drive? Scan it somehow? Siphon the data?’
Becks studied her coolly.
‘No offence meant, Becks … but hacking open your skull and digging out your brain seems like the only way we’re going to find out what “the end” actually means.’
‘Tampering with my on-board computer would trigger the self-destruct mechanism. There is no viable way to bypass this protocol. The information will be revealed to you when certain conditions are met.’
‘But you don’t even know what those conditions are!’
‘I will know when it happens,’ she replied calmly. ‘Then you will know the contents of the message.’
Maddy shook her head with frustration. ‘Argghh … you’re so annoying!’
‘I apologize.’
She sighed. ‘Go and make yourself useful. Make some toast or something.’
‘Yes, Maddy.’ Becks turned obediently and headed towards their kitchen area. ‘And wash your hands first!’
Maddy settled back into her chair and watched the world outside through her bank of monitors — the subtly changed world that now no longer recognized the name Abraham Lincoln.
Secrets and freakin’ lies.
She resumed her little daydream of going home, seeing Mom, seeing herself and kissing all this insane nonsense goodbye.
CHAPTER 13. 1831, New Orleans
The Jenkins & Proctor warehouse was quiet. Around them casks of wine and canvas sacks of cornmeal were piled high. Outside through the wooden slat walls they could hear voices of several dozen men, the bray of a pony, the smack of heavy oatmeal bags being dropped on the docks, the far-off hoot of a steamboat. The life of the day indulging in one last surge of activity before the sky lost its sun.
Sal sat on a pile of sacks, exhausted from hours on her feet, but exhilarated by the world she’d witnessed.
‘Information: three minutes until the twenty-four-hour window is due to open.’
Liam got to his feet and checked over the top of a stack of cargo to make sure, once again, that they were alone in the storehouse. ‘I do hope our friend Mr Lincoln has sobered up.’
They’d checked back where they’d left him earlier this morning. He was gone. Not that that was surprising. The docks were a busy place from dawn and more than likely he’d crawled away holding a sore head for somewhere quieter to nurse his hangover.
‘Ah well,’ said Liam, ‘we’ll soon know if all’s better when we get back.’
‘Maybe he isn’t so important to history after all,’ said Sal. ‘I mean it was only a little change we saw, wasn’t it? Maybe that’s all that’s going to happen.’
Bob retrieved data. ‘Historical accounts from the unaltered historical database indicate his strong leadership and the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 were critical to the North winning the war.’
‘The whuh?’
Bob turned his gaze to Sal. ‘The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order by President Lincoln that all slaves were to be given their liberty. It was an order enacted in the third year of the war and applied only to some of the —’
‘Shadd-yah!’ said Sal. ‘Third year of the war?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘But are you saying for the first three years the North had slaves too?’
‘Affirmative. There were slaves in the Union States.’
‘But … I thought that war was all about slavery? Started because of slavery!’ said Sal. ‘The North — the blue soldiers — were fighting to end it, and the South — the grey ones — wanted to keep it.’
‘There are a number of listed reasons for the war. Slavery was considered a secondary or contributory issue at the beginning of the war, but became a primary issue towards the end.’
Liam sat down on a bag next to Sal. ‘I’ve been reading up on the civil war. I remember this … some historians said this Proclamation was a tactical decision to weaken the South. It was designed to cause unrest. But, more important than that, the British government was sort of thinking of coming to help the Confederate South …’
‘Why?’
‘Because they saw the North, the Union, as a growing threat. They were becoming too rich, too powerful. Becoming too big for their boots. Threatening British dominance. So the British government thought it might be better if America was divided, so they wanted to help the Southern states, the Confederates, split off and form their very own nation. That’s right, isn’t it, Bob?’
Bob shrugged. ‘I have some conflicting data files on this. Historians disagree.’
‘But here was the problem, Sal … the British people were against the idea of slavery. So it wasn’t going to be easy for the government to convince their people to go along with helping the South. And this fella, President Lincoln, was a smart chap. He realized if this war’s headlining issue was all about slavery, if the British people could see more clearly that one side, the North side, was totally against it … then there was no way they’d let their government support the slave-masters in the South.’
He shrugged. ‘It was the right thing … what’s the word … the moral thing to do, to 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?’