CHAPTER 30

Wednesday, 2001, New York

A Wednesday. Maddy realized she hadn’t seen one of those in quite a while. Since she’d been on a plane trip back home to her folks in Boston, in fact. Since she’d become a TimeRider.

She looked down the agpole approach to the Statue of Liberty’s star-shaped podium and spot ed only half a dozen other people. She’d been here once before, on the same school trip that they’d visited the Museum of Natural History. It had been a tedious day ful of queuing. Queuing to get ferry tickets, queuing to get on a ferry over to Liberty Island, queuing to get inside the podium building beneath Liberty’s feet and look at the smal museum’s exhibits. Queuing once again to get a look up inside the statue itself. A pret y dul day of standing around, being shoved, bumped and barged into, waiting to look at things she actual y had precious lit le interest in. Today though there were no queues.

The island was al but deserted. Half a dozen ferries had arrived throughout the day, each o oading no more than a handful of muted whispering visitors. And, even then, their eyes had been more on the column of smoke coming from across the bay, coming from Manhat an, than they had across the bay, coming from Manhat an, than they had been on the giant copper-green statue in front of them. Maddy took another slurp of the cooling polystyrene cup of co ee in her hands. Horrible. She’d lost count of how many she’d bought from the stal opposite the embarkation pier. She was almost on rst-name terms with the bewildered-looking man behind the counter who’d served her every time. He certainly should know by now she took it white with three sugars.

Come on, Foster … where the hel are you?

Through the morning she’d been hopeful as each ferry had arrived. But not now; it was nearly four in the afternoon. Another hour or so and the Statue of Liberty’s lit le museum would be closing, the last ferry back across the harbour get ing ready to leave.

She was beginning to realize today had been wasted, loitering around like this. Cluelessly hovering around the podium’s entrance in hope that the old man would turn up. Never mind, she told herself, now at least she knew that Foster hadn’t spent the rst Wednesday of his

‘retirement’ out here. She’d head back to their archway. Today, Wednesday, it would be nothing more than an empty brick archway with a TO LET sign pasted on the rol er-shut er door, and outside that shut er door she’d wait until eight in the evening when a shimmering portal would appear, ready to take her back into Monday again. Then she’d do this al again, try Wednesday once more, but next time she’d loiter outside the Empire State Building.

Building.

Her eyes drifted o the tourists as they passed by her and into the podium, pausing as they did to look once again at the pal of smoke in the sky.

She remembered this day, remembered the day after. She’d been what? Eight? Nine? Mom and Dad at home al day, sit ing in front of the TV, watching as dust-smeared emergency workers scrabbled at the edge of the smouldering wreck, pul ing twisted spars of stil -warm metal away in the hope of nding someone alive. She’d been playing on the oor of the lounge with her TechMeccano set, trying to build her version of a Transformer, half her at ention on what she was doing, half on her parents: Mom sobbing and Dad cursing.

And here she was again. Di erent place, same day. An odd urge occurred to her. What if she found a way through the security cordon around the ruin of the Twin Towers and found a TV camera and reporter to be stopped and interviewed by. She could wave at her eight-year-old self, wave at her mom and dad watching the TV. She could reassure them that she wasn’t going to die along with 137

other people aboard Flight 95 in nine years’ time. Tel them she was going to be OK.

She shook her head. Nice idea. But she wasn’t going to do that.

She turned her thoughts towards more pressing mat ers. Liam and the support unit. Bob had assured her that the copy of his AI in the female unit would make the same recommendation to Liam as he would: to nd a discreet recommendation to Liam as he would: to nd a discreet way to make contact. Discreet … because a too-obvious message, a message that stood out above the background noise of history, could signi cantly a ect the timeline. But there was the problem. A subtle message careful y laid down in whatever historical period they were in, laid down for only her and Sal to nd …?

I mean, where the hel are we supposed to start looking for something like that?

If they’d only been bumped back less than 150 years, then perhaps there was a message waiting for them once more in the Museum of Natural History’s guest books. That was something Sal had decided to try and check out. But what if they’d been knocked further back in time?

Five hundred years ago? A thousand years ago? What was in the middle of Texas a thousand years ago? A lot of bu alo, she guessed, and some Indians. But certainly no visitor guest books for them to discreetly slip a message into. A ‘get us out of here’ scrawled across an ancient Navaho tribal history rug was almost certainly something the support unit would NOT recommend to Liam. Not unless they wanted every historian studying Native American history discussing the message at some symposium.

Subtle. It could only be subtle.

But, she sighed to herself, too subtle and how were they ever going to nd it?

Unless it’s a message that’s meant to nd us. She looked up from her co ee.

She looked up from her co ee.

… Find us …

‘My God,’ she whispered to herself. Maybe that’s what they’d try to do. A message addressed to its nder, whomever that might be. A message that perhaps might promise a reward of some kind to the nder provided it was delivered to a certain location on a certain date. A message that might promise untold wealth, access to an incredible time-travel technology? And think about it. Such a message would be too important, too powerful, to become public knowledge, wouldn’t it? A message like that would become a closely guarded secret, right? A secret handed down by the original nder to his o spring, like a dark family secret or a horrendous supernatural curse. Handed down from one to another, until nal y the message is passed to someone who is able to make their way to a certain backstreet in Brooklyn on 10 September 2001 and gently knock on their door, cal ing out to see if anyone’s inside.

Oh my God … it’s possible, isn’t it?

And what if that happened while she was standing out here like a complete lemon? Waiting for Foster to turn up, when quite probably he was never going to. Computer Bob was right. That’s what he’d said, wasn’t it? ‘Just wait.’

‘Oh, you freakin’ idiot, Maddy,’ she hissed to herself, tossing the polystyrene cup into the bin beside her and heading down the walkway towards the pier.