Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

‘It’s a real mess.’ Sal pulled a lace veil aside so Maddy could see her eyes more clearly. ‘Maybe we can go back now?’ Sal chose to wear a broad-brimmed ‘ladies’ touring hat’ with dark lace trim that dangled over the edge and hid most of her face. She felt a little better that way. It was the combination of having darker skin in a city where there appeared to be virtually no black or Asian people — that and wearing clothes that she felt looked like pantomime costumes. Walking the streets by gaslight was one thing, but by broad daylight she felt too many eyes lingering curiously on her.

‘Yeah, let’s go back.’ Maddy nodded. ‘We need to decide what we’re going to do next.’

Half an hour later they were back inside the dungeon, top hats, bowlers and bonnets dangling from their coat rack.

‘All right, here’s the thing, guys… it’s a change. And, by the looks of it, it’s clearly going to run and run and develop into a huge one.’

Sal cleared a space on the wooden crate they were using as a table and placed a pot of freshly brewed tea on it. She dealt out a mismatched collection of chipped teacups and enamel mugs.

‘So?’ Liam nudged her. ‘Your suggestion is?’

‘So — ’ the rocking-chair creaked as Maddy worked it gently backwards and forwards — ‘this is a test case for our new role, our new function. Time’s been changed, right? So we’re going to take a look forward and see what this contamination gives us. I suggest we go as far forward as we can ideally, get a look at the year 2070 and see if this Pandora thing is still going to happen to us.’

‘You know going forward is very energy-intensive, Maddy,’ said Rashim. ‘I’m not sure how much forward displacement-reach I can coax out of this current set-up.’

‘Well, let’s find out. I mean… look, we don’t exactly have to send Liam and Bob forward all the way to 2070. What if we just open a pinhole camera and take a look-see? Zero-mass, less energy, that’s how it works, isn’t it? Just get a pinhole image. I mean, a picture tells us a thousand words, or something like that.’

Rashim nodded. ‘Yes… yes, of course. Let me get some calculations together.’ He got up and went over to their networked computers, now all linked up, a chorus of CPU fans whirring and hard drives clicking contentedly. ‘SpongeBubba!’

‘Hey, skippa!’ the lab unit squawked, emerging from a dark corner.

‘Come over here, you and I have some work to do!’

‘Yes, skippa!’ it bleated, irritatingly happy to be of service.

‘Retrieve my energy-conversion templates from Exodus.’

‘Yes, skippa!’ It waddled over to join Rashim at the computer table and together they started a hushed discussion of numbers.

‘So then,’ started Liam, ‘we investigate whether this Jack the Ripper contamination needs to be corrected first before we do anything else?’

‘That’s right. That’s how we’re going to operate. From now on we watch and wait for contamination events and when one comes along, the procedure should be that we take a look at what future we get from it. If it’s a good one,’ Maddy said, shrugging, ‘we just let it happen. If it’s bad news then we do like we used to and go fix it.’

‘But… let’s say the future is good,’ said Liam, ‘no Pandora, no virus that wipes out all of humanity; you’re saying if we get that future… we should do absolutely nothing?’

‘Yup. That’s what I’m saying.’

‘I’m going to say it… because I’m sure I’m not the only one here thinking it,’ said Sal.

‘Thinking what?’

‘Well… doesn’t it strike you as unlikely that this Kelly woman could overpower a serial killer like the Ripper?’

Maddy tapped her chin thoughtfully. ‘Not really. She seems a fiery character from what the papers are saying. She’s got a real potty mouth on her too.’

‘No, that’s not what I’m getting at. This is wrong history now, Maddy. We’re in a contamination.’

‘I know that. Somehow Liam and Rashim changed something small that led on to something else, that led on to something else, like dominoes, that somehow resulted in a situation where Kelly had a chance to fight back. Who knows? Liam buying a chest of drawers from one trader instead of another might just have caused the same man to have to make a journey to pick up another chest of drawers that somehow impacted on the plans of the Ripper causing him to mess up somehow?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s impossible to determine for sure.’

‘Or maybe we aren’t alone back here.’

‘Becks!’ said Liam. ‘Maybe she made it back alive!’

‘Crud…’ Maddy stared at them both. ‘Maybe she did.’

‘And maybe it was Becks who killed this Cathcart,’ said Sal.

‘In which case we also have to go back to the night of that murder, then, and see if it is her.’

‘Becks wouldn’t kill someone like that,’ said Liam. ‘Not without having a good reason. It’s an unnecessary change to history. She knows not to do that.’

‘Unless she’s not right in the head, Liam. Maybe that upload wasn’t stable. Maybe there’s stuff going wrong in her head.’

‘Ah Jay-zus, that’s just great! The last thing we need — a wonky support unit going around killing bad guys.’

‘OK, look… it just means we have a bit more work to do here. Right.’ Maddy stopped rocking her chair and sat forward. ‘This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to take a look at the future. If there’s now no Pandora event thanks to this contamination, if mankind appears to be going merrily along and not wiping itself out with a killer gooey virus, then we’ve got a winning contamination. But… we still go back to the night that Mary Kelly should’ve been murdered. We know precisely when and where to go, since the papers have given us nothing but the details of that night for the last month. If it is Becks who did it, or is involved somehow, we grab her.’

‘But if it is Becks who, say, killed Cathcart… we need to let her do that first, right?’ said Sal.

‘Yes, of course. We let her do her thing, then we grab her. On the other hand, if the future is still Pandora, then I suggest we grab her before she can mess with the sequence of events.’

‘And Miss Kelly dies,’ said Liam.

‘Yes.’ Maddy shook her hands subconsciously — Lady Macbeth shaking blood from her fingers. ‘Yes… I’m afraid so.’

Liam pulled a face. ‘That feels a bit like we’re taking advantage of things, so it does.’

‘So?’ She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Sue me.’

Liam looked uncertain. ‘We’re meddling.’

‘Christ, Liam, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last six months for Waldstein — meddling. Worse than that, we were meddling without even really understanding why!’

‘But that last woman, that Mary Kelly lady,’ said Liam. ‘Surely there’s a way we could try and save her?’

‘We could do. We could try and save every one of the Ripper’s victims, Liam. Sheeeez, we could go wandering through time saving everyone who didn’t deserve to die. But we don’t have an infinite supply of energy, and we can’t survive an infinite amount of time travel. So we have to be tactical about this, we have to be smart… surgical.’

She reached over and poured some tea into her mug. ‘Here’s a change someone else has made. Let’s sort of audition it. We’re gonna see if it’s a good ’un. And if not, we’ll fix it like a decent, responsible little team of TimeRiders.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Other than that, we sit tight. We watch. That’s our job. And maybe we even enjoy Victorian London. Maybe even get out and live a little.’

‘Aye.’ Liam nodded slowly. ‘I suppose you’re right.’