drunkenly. A gentleman. A rich, successful businessman. Maybe even a politician one day. He grinned like a fool as he considered that prospect, stepping off the wooden-slat pavement on to the dirt of the busy street, lined with deep ruts carved by the cartwheels of an almost constant train of heavily laden wagons.
Perhaps even president, one day.
He belched: a long and loud croak that made heads up and down the thoroughfare turn. It was in fact so satisfyingly loud that he heard the lady in her lace bonnet cry out in disgust. So loud he didn’t hear the thundering of hooves bearing down on him, nor the clatter of beer barrels rolling off the back of the riderless cart, nor the scream from another woman as she realized what was moments away from happening.
Abraham’s whisky-addled mind had just about enough time to process one final thought as the enormous delivery cart careering down Powder Street behind a team of wild-eyed and terrified horses loomed up behind him … and sadly his last thought wasn’t anything noble or profound, nor farseeing. It was nothing more than this …
Well now, sir … That was a mighty fine belch.
CHAPTER 6
2001, New York
‘So, how does Foster look?’ Maddy rephrased Sal’s question.
‘Yes.’ Sal nodded. ‘I mean, is he really dying?’
‘Foster looks no different to the day he walked out on us.’ Maddy took a bite out of her bagel. Still chewing, she continued. ‘Not a single day older. Which, of course, he isn’t … because for him, every time I go see him in Central Park, it’s the same day he walked out.’ She finished chewing and swigged some coffee. ‘It’ll be us that look different to him, I guess. Not the other way round.’
‘Aye,’ nodded Liam. ‘We’ve been together a while now … seems like we’ve been together an eternity, though.’
‘Seventy-five cycles,’ said Bob. ‘One hundred and forty-nine days.’
‘Five months,’ added Sal. She looked up at Liam and Maddy. ‘Jahulla! That makes me fourteen now. My birthday, it was only four months away when I … I was meant to die.’ She didn’t need to elaborate on that. They all knew each other’s recruitment tales.
‘I missed my fourteenth birthday,’ she added quietly.
Becks cocked her head and the appropriate smile for the occasion flashed across her face, as sincere as a screensaver. ‘Many happy returns, Sal Vikram.’
Liam put down the chocolate muffin he’d been peeling out of its paper cup. ‘Hang on, I’ve missed my seventeenth birthday!’ He reached out and squeezed Sal’s hand. ‘So, a happy birthday to us both, so it is.’
‘Yeah,’ she mumbled, ‘yay for us.’
‘Uhh, so,’ Maddy sighed, ‘this was meant to be fun. Not a freakin’ funeral!’ She turned to Sal. ‘We’ll get a cake on the way home, get some candles on it and you can blow ’em out and … and we’ll play some party games or something when we get back. How does that sound?’
She nodded. The start of a smile back on her face. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Party games?’ said Bob. ‘Please explain how to sub-categorize “party games” in reference to “games”?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘They’re just stupid games. You don’t play to win. You just play because it’s a laugh. Like, I dunno … like Charades or Guess Who, or Twister. The more you mess things up the more fun it is.’
The support units looked at each other, silently discussing how to make sense of that. Maddy chuckled. ‘Twister, oh man! You two meatbots haven’t lived until you’ve played a game of Twister!’
She realized Sal and Liam were giving her the same bemused look. ‘Seriously? You guys never heard of it either?’
Liam pursed his lips. ‘Is it a bit like chess?’
‘What? No!’
‘Fidchell? Brandub?’
‘Whuh? Never heard of it. No, it’s kinda like –’
‘Tafl Macrae?’
‘No … no, nothing like that. It’s like –’
‘Pog Ma Gwilly?’
‘Will you shut up a sec?’ she said, exasperated. ‘I’m trying to explain it.’ Her eyes suddenly narrowed with suspicion. ‘Hang on, Pog Ma Gwilly? You … you just made that up, didn’t you?’
Liam’s good-natured smile widened to a confessional grin.
She was about to reach across the small round table and playfully cuff his ear when she noticed Sal staring far too intently at the cafe’s hot snacks menu card.
‘Sal? You OK?’
Her brows were locked firmly together.
Liam tapped her arm. ‘You that hungry?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘Thirty-seven items on the snack menu …’
‘Uhh … all right.’ Liam looked at Maddy. She shrugged. ‘Oka-a-y.’
‘That was a minute ago. Now,’ Sal continued, ‘there are only thirty-six.’ She