Felicia turned to the side to get a better view of herself. The dress was simple and unassuming, reminding her more of a stiff-backed governesses than a Southern lady. She wore a black corset over her clothing, which was not how she remembered women wearing them in pictures from the Civil War era. It was tight and made bending over nearly impossible, but combined with the basque waistline, it did create a nice hourglass shape to her figure. Her large domed skirt had a few ruffles and flounces, but not so many that she felt like a cake topper.
It had taken far too long to get into the outfit, and Mrs. Washington had muttered under her breath that Felicia had to be mentally incapable because she needed so much help. The corset laced in the front, and the older woman had shown Felicia how to get it on properly and how to layer the crinolines, white cotton pantaloons, stockings and other underthings that a woman needed. After that, Mrs. Washington had gotten to work on her hair, shaking her head occasionally and remarking that it was a wonder Felicia hadn’t been arrested in her wild state.
Now, with her hair pinned and her clothing arranged, she looked the proper lady. Perhaps she could see the appeal in doing historical recreation. Playing dress-up could be fun. But this wasn’t playing. This all felt real. The people felt as real as the people in her world. She had read the paper, seen the French Quarter, smelled the scent of the river, the food, and unfortunately, some of the people. Everything was vivid and complete.
There was a soft knock at the door.
“There was one other thing Henry had for you,” said Mrs. Washington.
She held a pair of gray shoes that matched the dress. Unfortunately, like the shoes she had seen on everyone else, they were too wide in the toe. Felicia took them and looked them over, sliding her hand inside, feeling if there was some kind of stuffing in the toe. There wasn’t.
“There’s nothing wrong with them.” Mrs. Washington put her hands on her hips.
“Oh, they’re lovely. But I don’t think they’ll fit me.”
Felicia lifted the hem of her dress and pushed her foot out. Mrs. Washington glanced down, but didn’t seem surprised.
“I saw that earlier. Did something happen to you? An accident?” she asked, all traces of annoyance gone. She had a look of genuine concern. “Did you have those shoes specially made?”
“I was born this way,” Felicia said, and then thought better of saying anything more. This was too late in history for witch burnings, but if her memory of history was correct, physical deformities were more frowned upon in this time than in her own.
“I have to go make up a lunch tray, as the Professor likes it at noon sharp. But first, may I ask you a question?” said Mrs. Washington.
“Sure.”
“Where is your family? I trust the Professor. I’m his employee and will do as he says. But this is too strange. He’s never brought home a feral girl before. Was your family unkind to you? Did they hurt you?” She glanced down at Felicia’s feet.
“Oh, no. No one hurt me. My family is in California and they are good people. But I’m going to be staying with the Professor until I can get back home.”
“It’s not proper, a single woman like yourself in a house with a man, even if it is the Professor. He’d never be unkind to any woman or put you in a bad situation, but people will talk.”
“If anyone asks, you can say we’re cousins.”
Mrs. Washington crooked an eyebrow and looked like she was going to laugh.
“Distant cousins. By marriage,” Felicia amended.
The housekeeper shook her head, chuckling as she closed the door behind her. Oh yes, a white man having a brown-skinned cousin wouldn’t be doing the Professor any social favors, Felicia thought. Well, if what he said was true, and he was the cause of the time hole or whatever it was, then he would have to live with the consequences.
She left her room, went in search of Seamus’s laboratory and found it at the end of the hall. The door was open and light poured in through the floor-length windows that looked out over the front of the house.
The room was a disaster.
A desk stood between the two windows, facing the center of the room. But the only way Felicia could identify it as a desk was because she could see the sides. The top was completely covered in papers of all sizes, from large butcher paper rolls to tiny slips that were in piles so high that many had fallen and scattered on the patterned rug like autumn leaves. Glass and silver paperweights teetered on stacks of documents. Piles of books, some open and stained, were stacked on the desk and on the surrounding work tables. Other books were jammed into bookshelves willy-nilly. A few ink pots, both open and closed, sat here and there.
Wiring and tubing, some on spools and some in cut pieces, were scattered over the tables, along with metal and wooden boxes and a variety of mechanical objects in varying states of either completion or disassembly, she couldn’t tell. Felicia drew in a breath at seeing what looked like a mechanical arm and a head on one table. Nearby was a clock face attached to something too large to be a clock mechanism and something covered with so much oil and grime that it was unidentifiable. A set of tiny drawers hung over one table, overflowing with gears, screws, bolts, nuts and knobs of various sizes.
A large tack board covered one wall, but only a tiny bit of brown corkwood peeked out around notes and sheets of paper, most of them pinned one on top of the other. Another wall held a blackboard filled with scribbles, equations, diagrams and swirled erasure marks. Beside the blackboard stood a stately grandfather clock, its pendulum swinging gently side to side. It was the only orderly thing in the place.
In front of the clock, Seamus knelt over a spherical machine on a stand. It would have come up to his thighs, had he been standing. The bottom portion of the sphere was intact, but the top cover sat to one side. He wrote something in a leather-bound book.
Felicia cleared her throat and Seamus stood.
“Ah, good to see you, er, all taken care of.” He looked over her outfit with approval and Felicia felt like she should do a little spin. Instead, she made a little curtsey, feeling silly, but it made Seamus smile all the wider. “You look lovely.”
A pile of crumpled papers surrounded his feet and he shoved them out of the way with the side of his foot.
“Sorry it’s a bit of a mess. I don’t entertain guests up here often. Well, not ever, to tell you the truth.”
“Poor Mrs. Washington must have a heart attack every time she comes in here.”
“Oh, she stopped coming up here years ago. We’ve both been much happier since.”
“I can imagine. What’s that you’re working on?”
She moved forward, conscious of the width of her skirts and careful not to knock anything over. Not that it would make any difference.
“This is the McCullen Peroxide Engine. Very efficient, very clean and very expensive.”
She moved forward and looked down into the contraption. To her eyes, it was a mass of gears, wires and cogs. It appeared to be off, as it was not moving or making any sound.
“See this bit here?” He pointed inside to a small metal box. “This is the fuel core. Inside that box is a piece that the McCullen Manufactory doesn’t want anyone to see. They have men they call concierges who come to your house to replace the fuel cores when they run out. The people who purchased the machines aren’t even allowed to be in the room when they replace it. The concierges come, they replace it, take the old one, and they leave. For a healthy fee, naturally.”
“And you’re trying to take it apart and see what’s inside?”
“Of course! How can I resist something like that? A locked box, a machine so efficient that it produces no smoke, no exhaust of any kind? And they’re fairly rare because they’re so expensive.”
“So how did you afford one?”
He shrugged one shoulder. �
�Saved my money up.” Felicia got the feeling that there was more to the story.
“So what are these engines for?” she asked.
“They can run sewing machines, vehicles similar to the ones you saw earlier on the street, you can even heat your house. Depends on what size you order. They’re all custom-made by the McCullen Manufactory on Canal Street.”
“This McCullen guy must be a rich man.”
“Yes.” Seamus’s single word was loaded with enough bitterness to make Felicia take a good long look at him.
“You know him then?” she asked.
“Yes. I know him.”
The grandfather clock chimed noon and there was a soft knock at the laboratory door, which stood ajar. Mrs. Washington stood at the threshold, and Seamus took a tray from her. There were two plates with beef sandwiches, two teacups and a steaming teapot. After sweeping papers and books aside on a work table, Seamus set the tray down. He scanned the room as if looking for something.
“I’ll find it later,” he said to Mrs. Washington, who sighed and left. “She wants yesterday’s tray. Now, where was I?” He spun around. “The machine. So as I was saying, I was making a sonic map of the interior using this.” He gestured to a machine with a metal sheet curling from one elongated roller onto another. Thin scratches zigzagged across its surface. “And what do you think happened?”
“I have no idea.”
“You came through! I heard the crash of the omnibus and ran to the window. I saw the shimmers, and then there you were.”
“And this machine caused it.”
“Well, the machine plus the signal amplification device that I was using along with my sonic mapping machine. My theory is that I created instability roughly one-eighth of a mile wide and you slipped through.”
“So recreate it. Do it again, and I’ll go back home.”
“I can’t. I’ve been trying to do it, but something about it isn’t working. I’m recreating the same circumstances, but no luck.”
Her stomach dropped and she wrapped her arms around her midsection. She was displaced, lost, and her entire life depended upon this disheveled man recreating an accident.
Seamus slid a pencil behind his ear, picked up his notebook and flipped through. She brought his plate to him and set it on top of a stack of books, perhaps a little harder than necessary. He grabbed the sandwich and took a bite. Felicia poured the tea and ate standing at a work table, but found that she had little appetite. Seamus was humming a little tune as he worked, and anger surged through her. He had brought her here, against her will. He had tried to help her, true, but only because he had little choice. And through it all, he had treated her as some kind of exciting oddity, a scientific anomaly to be questioned and studied. He was not even sure he could get her home at all.
“It’s urgent that I get back home,” she said. “And not just for my own sake. I have people depending on me.”
“Your patients?”
“My nephew. He’s in the hospital and his immune system is gravely compromised. He has a form of bone cancer, and there’s a doctor, a Brazilian doctor, who has a treatment that might help him. But I didn’t tell my sister about it. I was scared she’d get her hopes up, only to have them crushed. The doctor e-mailed me before I left and said that my nephew is a good candidate for treatment. If I don’t put them in contact with one another, he’ll continue to deteriorate and then he’ll die.”
She knew that Seamus wouldn’t know what e-mail was, and was about to explain when he asked, “How old is your nephew?”
She was taken aback by the question. It seemed the least important detail.
“He’s three.”
Seamus nodded, looking at his sandwich and then set it down.
“And the lad will die without this medicine from this doctor in Brazil?”
“Most likely.”
“I once had nephews. Nieces as well. I lost a nephew once.” For the first time, he was not fidgeting with restless energy. He wasn’t even looking at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s not something I would wish on anyone. No child ought to die. And none will, not if I can help it. I’ll get you home. I promise. For his sake, and your own.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Nothing really. Maybe find yesterday’s lunch tray for Mrs. Washington.”
She didn’t like the suggestion, but the inside of the machine was a mystery to her, and she knew that staying out of his way was most likely the most helpful thing she could do. She found the lunch tray, eventually, and took it downstairs. When she returned, she found a newspaper from a few days before. While Seamus took apart the device, Felicia read an editorial.
The author was scathing in his criticism of President Benjamin Pierce who was supposedly placating the East India Company. She thought that President Pierce had a different first name, but she must have been mistaken. The East India Company was squeezing out Southern trade ships as they tried to establish profitable trade routes with the Caribbean. Local trade magnates in New Orleans were starting to accuse the Company of hiring mercenary pirates to waylay their ships and steal their goods. The East India Company then sold them and profited. Allegedly.
Below that, another article accused the East India Company of providing aerial and sea-based warships and munitions to both the Indian and the British sides of the current uprising in India. The article made a brief mention that the East India Company had done the same with the Russians and British during the recently ended Crimean War.
“Seamus?” He seemed a little startled at the familiar address, and Felicia remembered that both Mrs. Washington and Henry had called him Professor. Seamus did not correct her, so she went on. “I thought the East India Company was just for trading spices and silk and things with Asia and India. I didn’t think they had warships.”
“Oh yes, they are quite a military power. Loyal to the British Crown and operating at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but some people have a question or two about that. The East India Company invented airships. So though the Company doesn’t own the American airship manufacturers, as owners of almost all of the patents, they make a profit from them.”
“They never had airships in the history I learned.”
“Well, north of the Mason Dixon, there are a number of airship companies. The South has riverboats and large sailing ships as their preferred method of getting goods or people from here to there.”
“Let me guess, there’s lots of rivalry and tension between the North and South.”
“Oh yes. Even before I came to this country a few years ago, tensions ran high. And they’re only getting worse.”
“I know I mentioned it before, but there is a Civil War coming in 1861. You might want to go back to Ireland. The South is going to lose.”
He looked at her, a mix of apprehension and concern on his face. She watched him take a deep breath.
“I cannot go back. My fortunes are therefore yoked with those of my adopted homeland. But wait! I’m missing the most important point. There were no Company warships or airships of any sort in your world, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Hmm.” He ran his hand through his hair. “That complicates things.”
“How so?”
He just grunted and kept working at the inside of the machine. Felicia flipped through the newspaper. Social pages showed the latest styles and who was marrying whom. There were a few advertisements in the back, and she blanched when she saw that there would be a slave auction in a month’s time. Accompanying the notice was an ink drawing of a black woman with a patterned rag wrapped around her head. Her skin was inked solid black and the whites of her eyes and her full lips were exaggerated ridiculously.
Felicia closed the paper and sat silently for a minute. She looked down and
realized that she was crushing the paper in her fist. She smoothed it and set it aside. The Civil War would end the evil practice of slavery, she reminded herself. Only a little longer. But in those intervening years, how many more people would suffer?
“Almost got it,” muttered Seamus. She moved beside him and looked into the machine. He had managed to open the small box. From it, he pulled a small glass tube, filled with a glowing pale blue liquid. It was partially embedded in a mechanism with three wires leading into the tube. The entire thing was no larger than a matchbox.
“It’s not the peroxide, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. She wasn’t, but she didn’t say so.
“The peroxide is in here,” he said. A large glass tube of translucent whitish blue liquid sat on the work table. “The engine is a marvel. If I didn’t hate McCullen so much, I might just shake his hand. See, it uses silver, just a small amount, as a catalyst with the peroxide. The silver adds to the cost of the thing, of course. The reaction between the peroxide and the silver frees an extra oxygen atom and produces water and heat. That means it can be used to generate steam to power a machine. It also generates a small amount of electricity which is used for auxiliary systems.”
“But if the peroxide is there, what’s that little glass tube with the wires?”
“I have no idea. But I ran all the calculations, and there is no possible way that these engines produce the power they do solely using the peroxide and the silver. They have to have another power source. See, I think the peroxide system is a dummy, a thing to cover up what is really supplying the power.”
“And your dislike for this McCullen person has nothing to do with it.”
“How could you say such a thing? My observations are purely professional. And I’m the one who invented the peroxide engine, so I ought to know how it works.”
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 5