Changing Yesterday

by Sean McMullen

  The bow of the Andromeda crashed down as the ship rode over the crest of the wave, then the vessel began to slide down the other side, into a maelstrom of choppy, turbulent water. Now the deck was tilting in the other direction, and the bow plunged deep into the bottom of the trough. Steel plates and girders shrieked as they were strained and bent, and rivets popped like gunshots.

  Daniel and Madeline gazed out through the porthole in terror, for there was only dim, green gloom beyond the thick glass.

  ‘We’ve sunk!’ shrieked Madeline as she and Daniel clung together. ‘We’re already dead.’

  ‘I can still hear the engines,’ said Daniel. ‘They don’t work under water.’

  ‘Well how do you explain that?’ demanded Madeline, pointing at the porthole.

  Even as she was speaking the gloom beyond the porthole changed to a scene of seething, turbulent waves as the lower part of the ship rose above the surface again. In every sense of the word, the Andromeda had sunk, yet it had not completely filled with water. As a result, the air that was enclosed within its structure slowly bore the ship upwards.

  ‘Maybe we’re going to be all right,’ said Daniel.

  ‘So now what do we do?’ asked Madeline.

  ‘We’ve finished saving the world, so we’d better help save the ship. Barry, are you coming?’

  Barry was crouched on one of the beds with a pillow held firmly over his head, and could not be persuaded to leave. Daniel and Madeline emerged back on deck to find the Andromeda wallowing deep in the churning water, but definitely above the surface. The engines were still turning because not all the furnaces had been quenched. Water had poured in through smashed portholes, stairways, air vents, hatches and ruptured plates, but the ship was mostly intact. There was not a single deck-chair, table or person on the promenade deck, which Daniel found very unsettling.

  ‘We’re still afloat!’ he shouted.

  ‘But we sank,’ panted Madeline.

  ‘We weren’t under long enough for the ship to fill with water.’

  ‘So do we jump overboard or what?’

  ‘I think we should stay with the ship.’

  A bizarre salty rain was falling out of the clear blue sky, while on the horizon the mushroom cloud that marked the Millennium’s doom continued to roil upwards and expand.

  Suddenly Madeline took Daniel’s head between her hands and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘That’s for deciding to help me and Liore stop the Century War,’ she said.

  An officer of the watch now waded through the dispersing water onto the promenade deck.

  ‘Is anyone hurt?’ he called. ‘Does anyone need help?’

  ‘My friend Liore, she’s gone!’ cried Madeline.

  ‘We’ll look for her,’ he said, even though they all knew that anyone who had been swept overboard would never be seen again.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘You’re the boy who’s been helping in the engine hall, aren’t you?’ said the officer.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Then get down there, we have to keep the pumps and generators running.’

  The engine hall was lit by only a few lanterns, but in contrast to the promenade deck, it was full of shadowy activity. The furnaces powering the pumps were still burning, even though the stokers feeding them were up to their knees in water. Daniel joined a group of men who were passing coal along a human chain with their bare hands. For what seemed like hours Daniel passed coal along to the furnace. Slowly the water rose to their thighs.

  ‘We’re sinkin’, we gotta abandon ship!’ shouted someone in the line.

  ‘It’s only water pouring down from the upper decks!’ shouted Daniel. ‘The ship’s sound.’

  ‘What the frig do you know?’

  ‘I know specific gravity, I know the principles of displacement, and I’m an imperial officer, you bloody peon!’ Daniel shouted back. ‘Now get back in line and keep working!’

  While some of what Daniel had said was vaguely true, the rest of it was absolutely false. Nevertheless, he had shouted with enough authority to reassure the stokers. Suddenly he was a leader, and the men looked to him for reassurance. If Daniel stood firm and stayed in the line, they would stay. Presently the water level ceased to rise, but did not go down.

  Unknown to Daniel, two of the ship’s ten watertight bulkheads were flooded, and two more contained a near-critical volume of water. The ship was riding so low that the waterline was up to the lowest row of portholes. Now passengers of all classes descended the stairs, and began bailing the water up and out with buckets passed from hand to hand. The water level did not drop appreciably, but the gesture did wonders for the morale of the engineers, stokers, slaggers and greasers.

  An hour after the explosion the chief engineer waded through the water in the dark engine hall, congratulated the crewmen for their courage, and told them that the pumps were being used to drain the two most severely flooded bulkheads. They would see no lowering of the water around them for some time to come, but the ship was definitely not lost.

  The hours wore on, but there was no measuring them. Every pocket watch on the ship had been saturated. Still, the situation seemed to get no worse. By sunset the pumps were switched to the engine room, and the main engines were engaged. Word was passed down the chain of command that the Andromeda was proceeding to Marseilles at seven knots. They were definitely not going to sink. Someone called ‘Three cheers for the captain!’ but they had reached eleven cheers before Daniel lost count. They wanted everything to be all right, and cheering seemed to somehow chase away any doubts that the good news was indeed true.

  There is no place for heroes in peacetime. The following morning Baroness Featherington had Daniel arrested for shooting at her, a fact that was confirmed by the steward. Madeline pretended that she had only been trying to take pictures with a special camera, but she too was arrested for acting suspiciously. Barry was merely rearrested.

  The ship resembled a laundry on the last day of August as everyone aboard tried to dry out their clothes and bedding. The meals were primitive, but nobody went hungry or complained. After enduring such an enormous strain, the ship’s plates had lost a lot of integrity, and the pumps had to be worked constantly to keep ahead of the water that was leaking in. Finally, on the morning of the first of September, the Andromeda tied up at a pier in the Marseilles harbour.

  ‘So, ya reckon yer old man will have a bit of a turn when he gets to hear about all this?’ asked Barry as he and Daniel sat facing each other in their makeshift brig.

  ‘I suspect that the groom will be scraping him off the ceiling,’ replied Daniel.

  ‘Where the frig are we? England?’

  ‘It’s France.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘No. They’ll just put us onto another ship and send us on to London. There we shall be put on trial for all sorts of things and locked away as convicts for a very long time.’

  ‘Do they still send convicts to Australia?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Ya reckon we should escape?’

  ‘How? There’s an armed steward outside the door.’

  Presently there was the rattle of a key in the door’s lock. The door was pushed open, but instead of the steward, Elizabeth entered. In one hand she was holding her parasol, but upon catching sight of Daniel she flung it aside, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. Barry stared in disbelief, then looked at the parasol. It had been weighted by a length of iron pipe. He checked the corridor, and saw a body lying on the floor.

  ‘Bleedin’ hell, she’s clobbered the guard!’ he exclaimed.

  Daniel checked that the steward had a pulse while Elizabeth retrieved her parasol. She discarded the pipe.

  ‘Daniel, darling, this is as much as I can do for you,’ she said, pressing a small roll of banknotes into his hand. ‘Now go.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Because you’re – I – because I can’t stand to t
hink of you in a cage, because you shot the hat off that horrid Baroness Featherington, because you’re wicked, and – and because I probably love you!’

  ‘I shall never forget you,’ said Daniel sincerely.

  ‘And no other boy will ever measure up to you,’ said Elizabeth, who then kissed him again before hurrying away.

  ‘About Elizabeth,’ said Daniel as he and Barry dragged the steward into the brig cabin.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, don’t tell Muriel.’

  After taking the steward’s gun, keys and money, they locked the door then released Madeline from the next cabin.

  ‘How did you get out?’ she asked as they hurried away.

  ‘Another one of his bleedin’ wimmen!’ snapped Barry before Daniel could answer.

  Two shots through the lock and a well-placed kick by Daniel opened his cabin’s door. He retrieved Barry’s bag from the cupboard.

  ‘Why do you want that tatty thing?’ exclaimed Madeline. ‘It’s empty.’

  ‘I knew we would be arrested if the ship survived the wave, so I hid our papers and money in the false bottom.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Because otherwise they would be confiscated and locked up in the purser’s office.’

  ‘How did you know we’d escape?’

  ‘I didn’t, but just in case we did I thought it best to keep our papers handy.’

  ‘You’re starting to think like Barry.’

  ‘I know, and it worries me.’

  ‘Now just a bleedin’ minute,’ began Barry.

  ‘Shut up and take your stupid bag,’ said Madeline, thrusting it into his hands.

  They made their way to the seaward side of the ship. Everyone else was to starboard, facing the pier, as Daniel had hoped. He looped a rope around the rail twice.

  ‘Now Barry, over the side and hold on to the rope,’ said Daniel.

  ‘But I can’t swim.’

  ‘Your bag floated you across the Suez Canal, so it will get you over to the pier.’

  ‘I don’t want to!’

  ‘Then stay here. I think you know where the brig is.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t wanna, but I’m bleedin’ well gonna have to, aren’t I?’

  Barry climbed over the rail with his bag strapped across his shoulder, and then Daniel lowered him to the water. Drawing the rope back up, he handed the end to Madeline.

  ‘Daniel, I can’t swim either,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I thought as much, which is why you will strap on one of those life jackets from that rack.’

  Wearing a life jacket, Madeline was lowered into the water. Daniel drew the rope back up, coiled it neatly, then climbed over the rail, grasped his nose and jumped. If anyone heard the splash, nobody came to investigate. Slowly and cautiously, Daniel led Madeline and Barry around the stern of the ship and under the shelter of the pier. On the other side of the pier was a landing for small boats, and it was from here that they crept ashore. Amid all the fuss being made over the other bedraggled passengers and crew who had just come off the Andromeda, the trio was not paid any particular attention.

  The escapees were soon far from the ship, and they stopped to rest in a small park. It was a secluded place, full of statues, bushes and bowers. Although popular with lovers after sunset, by day it was a place for picnickers to relax. Madeline walked ahead of Daniel and Barry, scanning the layout and those disporting themselves on the grass.

  ‘We can hide here for a while, until our clothes dry out,’ said Daniel. ‘At least we have some money, so we can buy train tickets to Paris.’

  ‘Australian money,’ said Madeline. ‘That marks us as foreigners. Better to get some French money and look less suspicious.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a family that looks about right.’

  Madeline pointed to a couple and their young son having a picnic on a sheltered patch of lawn between the base of a statue and some bushes. Glancing about to make sure that nobody else was watching, she held out her hand to Daniel. Slowly and reluctantly, he drew out the steward’s gun and gave it to her. Madeline strode across to the picnickers and pointed the barrel between the eyes of the man.

  ‘Vos vêtements, donnez-les-nous!’ she said sternly.

  By lunchtime, Daniel, Madeline and Barry were on a train going north. Daniel was wearing a tweed cycling jacket and sports trousers, Madeline was in quite a fashionable dress, and Barry was in shorts, a frilly shirt with a bow, a blue sailor’s jacket and a straw hat. A stick with a wooden horse’s head on one end was propped up beside him.

  ‘I still feel bad about robbing that French family,’ said Daniel.

  ‘We left them our wet clothes,’ replied Madeline.

  ‘Still don’t see why I gotta dress like some bleedin’ frog fairy,’ Barry muttered sullenly.

  ‘Being a mother at seventeen is bad enough, but being the mother of Barry the Bag is really too much,’ said Madeline.

  ‘Well, I’m not exactly thrilled about being his father,’ said Daniel.

  ‘We goin’ some place where they speak English?’ asked Barry.

  ‘Yes. Our papers for Britain will probably be valid until the Andromeda’s people arrive on another ship and raise the alarm.’

  ‘We ought to split up after we reach Paris,’ said Madeline. ‘I’ll go straight on to Calais and take the ferry to Dover. You follow a day or two later.’

  ‘Wot about me?’ asked Barry. ‘I don’t speak frog.’

  ‘You can stay with me,’ said Daniel reluctantly. ‘We’ll spend two days in Paris, but you don’t speak French so you can’t get us into too much trouble.’

  ‘Two days? Why so long?’

  ‘I must go to Muriel’s rooming house and explain what happened to Fox. It’s my duty to tell her what we did, and why.’

  ‘Ya gonna tell her about Julia an’ Lizzy an’ this baggage?’ asked Barry with a knowing leer.

  ‘Don’t be rude to your father,’ said Madeline as she smacked him across the ear.

  ‘What are you going to do, Madeline?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Why, open a detective agency in London, of course. What better job for a wanted, hardened criminal like me?’

  It was not often that a family conference was called to read a telegram in the Lang household, so Emily feared the worst when the maid summoned her. As they walked down the hallway together, Martha whispered that the telegram was from the captain of the Andromeda, and that it contained bad news. They entered the living room. Mr Lang’s face was grim, while Mrs Lang was wide-eyed with shock and strangely subdued. Martha turned to go, but Mr Lang told her to stay because she was Emily’s chaperone. He unfolded the telegram.

  ‘IT IS MY MELANCHOLY DUTY TO REPORT UPON YOUR SON DANIEL STOP,’ he read.

  ‘Did the ship sink?’ gasped Emily. ‘Is Daniel dead?’

  ‘No,’ said her mother listlessly.

  ‘SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE VOYAGE DANIEL LANG HAS ASSOCIATED WITH MUSICIANS AND THIEVES STOP BEEN INVOLVED IN SEVERAL FIGHTS STOP FALLEN IN WITH LOOSE COMPANY STOP ESCAPED LEGAL CUSTODY WITH TWO MISCREANTS STOP SHOT AT A BARONESS STOP HAD LEWD AND DECADENT LIAISONS WITH WOMEN OF QUESTIONABLE MORAL STANDARDS STOP.’

  Mr Lang let the telegram fall to the floor, then sat there for a time with his hand over his eyes.

  ‘There is more. Daniel fled from the ship at Marseilles with a young woman and a notorious thief, and is currently being sought by the French police for armed robbery,’ Mr Lang concluded.

  ‘No child of mine will ever again set foot outside this house without a chaperone,’ said Mrs Lang firmly.

  ‘Need I remind you whose idea it was to send Daniel to Britain?’ asked Mr Lang.

  ‘Well at least he seems to have forgotten about that horrid Muriel Baker,’ said Emily.

  ‘Emily, that was insensitive in the extreme!’ exclaimed Mr Lang. ‘Go up to your room immediately.’

  Emily obeyed, but having climbed the stairs she went to Daniel’s old room instead and collected
a selection of his clothes. Once in her own room with the door safely locked, she began tailoring her brother’s clothes to fit her.

  Make me a prisoner in this house, Mother dear? she thought as she worked. Not likely! Anything that Danny can do, I can do better.

  EPILOGUE

  Having been released from their cell in a Paris watchhouse, Daniel and Barry collected their possessions and prepared to leave. To Daniel’s dismay, the gendarme at the desk spoke English. This meant that Barry could talk to him, and Barry talking to anyone could easily be the cause of yet another disaster.

  ‘I must apologise again for your treatment, but we were not to know that Mademoiselle Baker was fabricating stories,’ said the gendarme.

  Barry was unused to any sort of policeman apologising to him, and was enjoying the experience. Daniel, however, was agitated and anxious to leave.

  ‘No harm done, my man,’ said Barry. ‘How was you lot to know that baggage Muriel Baker was a looney?’

  ‘Well as soon as she told the magistrate that her lover was from a century in the future, we got a little suspicious. Then, when she said that young Monsieur Lang had murdered him by changing yesterday so that he no longer existed, well, we knew you had to be innocent.’

  ‘Thank you, monsieur,’ said Daniel. ‘Now come along Barold, we have to catch the next train to Calais.’

  ‘Oi, wait up, I gotta do an inventery of me bag,’ said Barry, opening his bag on the desk.

  ‘I’m sure the nice gendarmes are much too honest to have taken anything from your bag,’ said Daniel.

  ‘No they weren’t,’ said Barry, rummaging in his bag. ‘Me picklocks are gone!’

  ‘Monsieur Chalmer, if you can tell me how picklocks can be put to honest use, you may have them back,’ said the gendarme sternly.

  ‘I’m a locksmith’s apprentice, aren’t I?’

  ‘You have papers to prove it?’

  ‘Er, I reckon they was stolen along with me artistic postcards.’