‘So tell me — I’m interested — are you happy with how today’s gone?’
Lincoln looked up from his feet at Agent Mead sitting opposite.
‘Is that what makes your day? Hmmm? Killing innocent American civilians?’
Lincoln’s jaw set. ‘I am an American, sir.’
‘Oh yeah? But what? You don’t like the way America is? Is that it? This is your way of changing it for the better, is it?’
‘I have no knowledge of your two towers or who it is that has decided to destroy them.’
‘Right,’ nodded the agent sarcastically. ‘You’re still going with the I’ve come from another time story.’
‘That is the fact of the matter, sir. Yes.’
The agent shrugged. ‘So … then, let’s run with the ball, shall we?’
‘Run with the ball?’
‘Why don’t you tell me your time-travel tale again.’
‘It is no fiction, sir! I live in the year 1831.’
‘1831, eh? I bet this is all pretty weird then, huh?’
Lincoln sensed the man was mocking him. ‘Of course.’ He answered drily. ‘As it would be to you if you had journeyed across one hundred and seventy years of time.’
‘So you must think it’s pretty far out, huh? Spacey? Futuristic?’
The other two men were quietly laughing along with their boss.
‘Well, since you ask, I think this world is decidedly rude. What I have seen of it.’
‘Rude?’ The agent shook his head. ‘That’s priceless.’ He grinned, amused by that. ‘Go on … you’re almost convincing.’
Lincoln was happy to. ‘Although what I have seen of its constructions and devices are quite beyond my comprehension, I do see clearly it is an amoral, selfish world.’
‘Really?’
‘Quite so, sir. And lazy. Why is it that everyone is so fat?’
The van leaned into a turning and then began to slow down.
‘Ah, looks like we’re nearly there,’ said the agent. He smiled coldly at Lincoln. ‘The next bunch of fellas who’ll be asking you questions aren’t going to be quite so indulgent, Abraham. You’re soon going to be thinking of us as the nice guys, trust me.’
Through the partition at the front they could hear the driver talking to someone, a crisp, professional exchange.
‘You’re going to vanish into a dark cell somewhere, Abraham. Every day of the rest of your life is going to be an extremely unpleasant one. And while all that’s going on I want you to think long and hard about what you and your terrorist buddies have done. All the innocent people you’ve wiped out today.’
There was the muffled sound of a voice raised as a challenge, a moment later the crack of a hand-gun.
‘What the —?’
They heard a loud thud against the van, making the whole vehicle rock and a side panel bulge inwards. All three agents began to fumble inside their jackets for their weapons.
The rear door of the van was suddenly wrenched open, blinding daylight spilling inside. Lincoln looked up, his eyes narrowed against the glare, and recognized the outline of the giant he’d seen in that archway yesterday.
The men in suits had their guns out, aimed, and were all shouting in unison at the giant man to raise his hands … when, as one, they simply stopped.
‘Jumping Jeezus … what in God’s name is THAT?’ gasped Agent Mead.
The giant man paused and turned to look round at what they were staring at.
Finally Lincoln did the same. Looking out of the back of the van, he saw it for himself … an impossible sky.
CHAPTER 25. 2001, Quantico, Virginia
Liam and Sal stood up together and emerged from beneath the low branches of the cedar tree to get a better look at the rapidly advancing wall of reality, chasing its way towards them across the Virginian countryside.
At first it looked like a whole continental shelf was filling the blue sky, as if the earth’s crust had split and broken and one half of North America was sliding across and engulfing the other. But it wasn’t solid. It churned and changed like a liquid reality as it raced towards them. Like brewing storm-cloud formations filmed and then played in fast forward.
In among the looming darkness faint watermarks of fleeting possibility appeared: fantastic buildings that had never been, twisted creatures that had no place on this earth and a sea of tormented faces — lives glimpsed momentarily, people that could have been, but never would be.
‘Oh boy,’ gulped Liam. ‘It’s going to be a big one, right?’
Sal nodded. ‘Yes … a big one.’
Then it was upon them. The slam of a tornado moment. A maelstrom of thrashing energy and darkness. Liam kept his eyes open, absolutely determined to witness it all, this his first time to see a time wave up close, to be outside the archway and see for himself what reality replacing reality actually looked like. In the few seconds of it he thought he glimpsed a Roman soldier morph into something half human half mechanical; the screaming tormented face of a newborn baby become a girl, a woman, an old woman, a decaying skull — a complete life lived in no more than a second.
Then it had passed over them.
Liam turned to watch it go. A twisting, undulating, serpent-like ribbon of black across the sky receding away from them like a freight train.
‘Jay-zus …’ Breath failed him. He sucked in a lungful and tried again. ‘Jay-zus-Mary-’n’-Joseph! Did you … did you ever see anything like that?’ he gasped. He looked beside him. Sal was on the ground, all of a sudden kneeling amid rows of shin-high stalks of something: a harvested crop of wheat or corn maybe.
Liam helped her up.
‘That … was … incredible!’ He grinned manically at her.
Sal looked around them. ‘This is very different, Liam.’
Liam hadn’t even bothered to take the new reality in yet — his mind was still on the infinite possibilities he’d glimpsed in the time wave. He turned round to look where Bob and the van and the guard hut had been only moments ago.
They were in a large rolling field. The woodland behind them was gone. Fifty yards away, he was relieved to see Bob standing perfectly still, nonchalantly studying the new world around them, and then, a moment later, the tousled brush hair of Lincoln’s head emerging from the stalks as he began to sit up.
‘Come on,’ said Liam. They wandered over towards Bob and Lincoln. Lincoln was on his feet now. He saw Liam approaching.
‘That … that storm? That hurricane we … we …’
‘Aye.’ Liam nodded. ‘That’s the sort of thing you get when you remove something from history that shouldn’t be removed.’
‘You … you are talking about me, are you not?’
‘Aye.’
Lincoln looked around at the field, goggle-eyed. ‘I … Are you telling me, sir, that I make this much difference to the world?’
‘So it seems.’
‘Good God!’
‘Liam,’ said Bob quietly.
‘I cannot conceive of … of …’ Lincoln continued to bluster, ‘of … of anything I might do in my life that could so alter a world as much as this!’ He looked down at his big hands. ‘What could these do that could change a world so?’
‘Liam,’ said Bob again, his eyes on the sky.
‘Yeah,’ said Sal. ‘Liam …’ Her eyes were on the same thing as Bob’s. She patted his arm insistently as a shadow fell across the field. Liam turned round and looked up.
‘Oh …’ was all that rolled out of his mouth.