Asher's Dilemma

by Coleen Kwan

  “Mother, when I thought you’d died, I lit a candle for you every night,” she said. “For an entire year. I missed you so much.”

  “How touching.”

  “It’s still not too late. If you release us, I’m sure we can—”

  “Lands sakes, be quiet, girl.” The gun barrel bit harder into her neck. “Your chittering is enough to make any mother run away.”

  Minerva fell silent. Quigley had completed the re-wiring. Mrs. Nemo examined the cables, testing each join. Appearing satisfied, she waved the pistol at both of them, ushering them towards the wooden post where Asher still stood, glowering at his impotence.

  She produced another set of manacles and tossed them at Minerva. “Tie up your lover and use the other ring.”

  Heart thudding, Minerva did as she was told. The two Ashers stood on either side of the post, hands shackled behind their backs. They both looked at her with a mixture of angry helplessness and mounting anxiety. Her heart pounded with frustration at her uselessness. Their predicament appeared dire. The Viper Ray sat on a far bench, impossibly out of her reach. There was Cheeves and the other servants in the house. Mrs. Nemo had no doubt already dealt with them when she’d entered the house, but there was still a slim possibility of help arriving if only Minerva could stall her mother.

  “Well, Isolde?” she spoke up, deliberately using her mother’s chosen name to flatter her. “Aren’t you going to enlighten us on your grand scheme? None of us can work out why you need to travel through time. You have us all thoroughly bamboozled.”

  A cold smile flitted over Mrs. Nemo’s lips. “Blandishments now?” The smile disappeared. “Sit down in that armchair.”

  Minerva sat, placing her arms along the armrests. The moment she did so Mrs. Nemo produced a length of rope and proceeded to bind her arms fast to the chair. Minerva opened her mouth to protest, but the brute determination on her mother’s face silenced her. No use appealing to her better side, for she had none. Perhaps attack would be a better form of defense.

  “Mother, you really shouldn’t frown so much. That’s a terrible furrow on your forehead.”

  Mrs. Nemo gasped. “Oh, insolent brat.” With a vicious tug she tightened the bonds on Minerva’s wrist. “I have the complexion of a woman half my age.”

  “Is that why you joined the Perenelle Society?” Quigley spoke up. “To learn alchemy in order to preserve your looks?”

  Mrs. Nemo whipped round, her frown deepening. “Who told you that?”

  “I’ve been making enquiries,” Quigley replied with cool aplomb. “So you don’t deny you dabble in alchemy?”

  Alchemy. Minerva recalled the musty old books in the house Mrs. Nemo shared with Herr Schick. Books not just on alchemy but medicine, astrology, science, chemistry. And then there were the specimen jars, the slides and microscopes. All her mother’s. The product of years of study.

  Mrs. Nemo tilted her head up. “I do not dabble. I am an expert in everything I do.”

  “Does that include providing abortions?” Quigley shot back.

  “What are you saying?” Minerva gasped. “What abortions?”

  “I’m sorry, Minerva,” Quigley said. “I didn’t want you to find out, but your mother concocts herbal brews to abort pregnancies.”

  “Spare me your outrage, for pity’s sake.” Bending down, Mrs. Nemo began to bind Minerva’s ankles together. “I only administered abortions to those who were willing, and believe me these women were very grateful for my services. They came to me begging for help.”

  “Don’t pretend to any altruistic notions, “Asher retorted. “You trawled through human misery for your own benefit. What ghoulish reason could you have for collecting the fetuses you helped abort?”

  “Mother?” Minerva was grateful to be seated as her giddiness thickened to a nauseous haze. She could scarce believe all the revelations of the past minute, but everything began to follow an awful logic. “All this alchemy, secret societies, aborted fetuses—is it all to do with preserving your beauty?”

  “And what if it is? Why should I not benefit from my studies?”

  “But it sounds more like witchcraft.”

  Mrs. Nemo leaped to her feet. Ill temper marred her beauty as she retrieved the carpet bag she’d left on the ground near the doors. “I’ll have you know I’m not just some rusticated crone. I have consulted all the latest scientific discoveries. Yes, scientific!” She slung the carpet bag onto a bench nearest the two men. “You would hardly call Charles Darwin’s theories witchcraft, now would you?”

  “Darwin? What does he have to do with your quest for eternal youth?”

  “Everything. Oh, I may as well tell you now. It makes no difference if you know. Yes, I’ve been seeking the elixir for many years, which is why I joined the Perenelle Society. But their fetus solution had only marginal benefits, until Darwin’s pangenesis theory finally gave me the clue as to why it wasn’t performing better.” Mrs. Nemo paused as she opened the carpet bag and with both hands lifted out a spherical brass object approximately the size of a large melon. A glass porthole in the orb showed it to be filled with a colorless, oily liquid. “The elixir did not work because it did not contain my gemmules.”

  Her cold blue gaze fell upon Minerva, and Minerva felt her own blood freezing. “I don’t understand, M-Mother. What exactly are gemmules?”

  Ignoring the question, Mrs. Nemo tapped the glass porthole, then set the orb on the table. “Gemmules are particles of inheritance,” Quigley explained to Minerva. “They’re the means by which parents pass on their characteristics to their offspring, according to Darwin’s theory.”

  Minerva tried in vain to moisten her parched mouth as she addressed her mother. “So that’s what you want from me? My gemmules?”

  “Oh, no. Your gemmules are as old and useless to me as my own.” Her mother approached her and twirled her fingers around a curl of Minerva’s hair. Her voice dropped to a purr. “No, my dear Mimi, I require fresh blood. Unborn blood. Unfortunately, my child-bearing days are behind me.”

  Unborn blood. Minerva cringed from her mother’s touch. Her mother, the abortionist, travelling back in time to collect her gemmules from an unborn baby. It all made sense now. Bizarre, macabre sense. “You’re going to persuade your former self to abort her baby—me. You want the fetus for your wretched potion. But it won’t work. She’ll never believe your wild tales.”

  “She doesn’t have to believe me. All she’ll see is a way to get rid of her unwanted brat and a chance for a better life.”

  Minerva bit her tongue to stop herself from crying out. What use was denial? Ever since childhood she’d sensed her mother had never wanted her.

  “Go, then. Do your worst,” she blurted out. “But let these two men free. They’ve done you no harm. Once you’ve used the chronometrical conveyance you’ll be out of their reach.”

  “Perhaps, but I’m not willing to take any chances.” She stroked Minerva’s cheek with cool fingers. “Oh, Mimi. I wish there was another way. I wish I could be more maternal. But I can’t change the way I am. This is my one chance to live forever, and I have to take it. So farewell, daughter. At least for once you’re being of some use to me.”

  She brushed her lips against Minerva’s brow. Minerva pulled away. Judas kiss. The pungent odor of her perfume clung to her like a rotten stench.

  Mrs. Nemo flitted to the workbench and twisted a knob protruding from the brass orb. “If you don’t struggle this will be over fairly quickly.” Picking up her carpet bag, she hurried over to the chronometrical conveyance and slid into the sedan chair. She worked the dials and levers of the console, consulting the numbers on the ribbon of paper she’d received from the analytical machine. The generator began to hum as electricity started to flow into the device, drowning out the sound of the gale blowing outside.

  “We have to do something.” Asher flailed against his manacles. “We have to stop her.”

  On the other side of the post Quigley struggled, also to no avail.
“Minerva, try to free yourself.”

  Minerva wrenched and pulled, but the ropes held fast. A curl of white smoke rose from the brass orb sitting on the workbench. “What—what is that thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Asher replied. “But I’m assuming the smoke is some kind of poison. She wants us all dead.”

  The humming of the generator had reached an almost unbearable pitch. Sparks of electricity arced across the copper shell of the chronometrical conveyance. The promethium magnets glowed and pulsed with an oily luster. One by one, rings of shimmering white light formed, encircling the entire machine. The air crackled and roared as a hot wind gusted through the workshop. The circles of light burned white-hot like the sun.

  In the center of this mayhem, Mrs. Nemo sat, entranced and excited. In the mini cyclone her hair had come loose to flutter about her like burnished flags. With the blinding whiteness pulsing around her, she resembled a goddess riding into the heavens on her chariot.

  The circles of light joined to form a blazing corona. Minerva wanted to stare at her mother for as long as she could, but the searing light forced her eyes shut. A thunderous clap shook the air, the shock waves resounding against her chest. And then the light dimmed, the wind dropped, the whine of the generator ceased. She ventured to open her eyes. The lamps had blown out, leaving the workshop in fitful gloom. In the center the chronometrical conveyance still remained, stray sparks of electricity flitting across the copper surface, the glow of the magnets slowly fading. But the sedan chair was empty, and Mrs. Nemo had disappeared, leaving behind no trace except an acrid smell.

  Chapter Eight

  Minerva’s eyes stung, and her nose and throat began to itch and burn. The winds generated by the chronometrical conveyance had knocked out all the oil lamps, but the brass orb on the workbench continued to belch out noxious white fumes, quickly filling the workshop with thick, foul clouds.

  She strained helplessly against her bonds, cursing the fatigue that continued to sap her strength. Across from her, the two men fought to free themselves, coughing and wheezing, but their iron manacles held firm, and their exertions only made them inhale the poisonous fumes faster.

  The desperation of their situation struck deep at Minerva. With Mrs. Nemo successfully dispatched to the past, there was no hope for her. She would perish, would cease to exist, perhaps in a few days, or perhaps in a few minutes. The prospect terrified her. But the thought of two innocent men dying because of her lent her resolve. Mustering all her waning strength, she shuffled forward towards the two men, clomping and dragging the chair to which she was tied along with her. Halfway there, she had to pause for rest, panting and spluttering. Through her streaming tears she saw the man closest to her was Asher.

  “Asher,” she croaked. “I’m sorry…”

  He halted in the midst of his struggles, sweat trickling down his temples. “Whatever for?”

  “It’s all my fault. You’re both going to perish because of my mother.”

  “That’s not true.” From the other side of the wooden post Quigley spoke up, his voice gruff from the smoke. “You’re not to blame for this, Minerva. I am. I see that now. I tried to destroy the chronometrical conveyance and burned all the calculations. That caused Asher to suspect someone was after the invention, and he had to act quickly. So he turned to Schick’s analytical machine, and hence met Mrs. Nemo.” He broke off to take in a shuddering breath, his composure cracking. “Oh God, what have I done…?”

  “You couldn’t have foreseen what would happen,” Asher said. “No one could.”

  “Asher.” Minerva leaned forward as far as her ties would let her. “Before it’s too late, I have to tell you how much I—I regret turning down your marriage proposal. I was wrong…” She broke off, the words to explain herself cut off as a paroxysm of coughing shook her.

  “No, I was wrong. Minerva, I have to tell you something.” Asher jerked his head to flick the dripping hair from his eyes. His voice lowered with urgency. “That evening in Manchester when I walked out on you, I vowed never to return to you. But when I reached my dirigible, my pride lost out. I returned to your house, intent on salvaging our relationship, but…but…as I approached your house I saw a stranger taking his leave and you…you were farewelling him most fondly.”

  On the other side of the post Quigley rattled his iron manacles violently. “You fool, that was me.”

  “Yes, yes, I realize that now, but at the time I was sorely affected.” He turned back to Minerva. “But I want you to know that I did return, that I wanted desperately to be a part of your life. I want you to know that I have never stopped loving you, Minerva. Not for one moment.”

  Her heart brimmed over. With imminent death upon them, the sweet kernel of joy germinating within her transcended the direness of their situation. “And I have always loved you, Asher. Quigley too.” Both of them. She shook her head. Did she love one man or two? It was all so confusing. “Whatever happens to us, at least we know this.”

  She could barely see now for the pain in her eyes. Her head spun with nausea, and every breath was agony on her lungs. With every passing minute her muscles weakened; she could barely twitch her fingers now. It couldn’t be much longer, she thought hazily. Either the poison would kill her, or the pliability of time would wipe her from this earth. Her head lolled forward, too much for her neck to support. She heard the men crying out at her, their voices sharp with distress, but the sound was fading, and she realized her senses were shutting down one by one. Already she could no longer taste the acridity of the smoke. Soon, very soon, Death would come for her and draw the final curtain.

  But she wasn’t ready to die. No matter how futile, she couldn’t accept her fate without one final struggle.

  Wrenching her hands, she was startled to sense some freedom in her movements. She forced open her drooping eyelids and stared down at where her wrists were tied to the armrests of the chair. A misty fog seemed to be rolling over her, muting her colors, rendering parts of her flesh transparent. So this was what Quigley had seen earlier. This was how the universe would deal with her, an anomaly of time which had to be erased.

  But she still had some movement, she noted, and what was more, the ropes which bound her were loosening. Could it be they were useless against her insubstantiality? With that startling thought she pushed away from the chair and gasped as the ropes slackened against the armrests, empty. Amazed, she examined herself. The fog swirled up and down over her body, dense here, thin there. She was turning into an apparition, a ghost. But she was free to move.

  She turned to find the two men staring at her, equal parts astonishment and horror etched in their faces. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Another sense gone. Soon she would disappear like dust in the cracks of the floor. There was only one thing she could accomplish.

  The distance between her and the poisonous orb seemed to stretch for miles. She knew she would never make it across. But there was something else closer at hand. She stumbled across to the workbench where Quigley had last placed his ray gun. In the smoky gloom, with her gritty streaming eyes, she fumbled through the clutter until her fingers touched the smooth cool metal of the Viper Ray. The fog threatening her existence had moved away from her hands, allowing her to pick up the weapon. Cradling it to her bosom, she teetered back towards the two men. Halfway across, her legs gave way, and she collapsed to the ground. As her body hit the floor, she knew she didn’t have the strength to get up again. But from here she was too far away to fire the ray gun with any accuracy. Not if she wanted to hit the iron shackles and not the two men.

  Squinting through the murkiness, she spied Quigley yelling urgently at her. He had no idea she couldn’t hear him, but in a flash of intuition she knew what he was trying to tell her. With her last remaining strength she tossed the ray gun towards him and held her breath as the weapon skittered across the rough floor. It came to rest just a few feet away from him. Using his foot, he hooked the ray gun towards him, and then with rema
rkable dexterity flipped it up in the air and caught it behind his back with one of his shackled hands. He shouted something at Asher on the other side of the post, and then fired the ray gun at the other man.

  Minerva’s heart stopped in horror as Asher jerked and fell to the ground, his iron manacles a smoking ruin. A second later she realized what had happened. Quigley had taken advantage of the temporal paradox to aim the ray gun blindly at Asher’s manacles, knowing he would survive the shot. Sure enough, Asher was already stirring. He dragged himself off the ground and stumbled over to the smoking brass orb. Using a large pair of tongs, he picked it up and dunked it in a bucket of water. Hissing and bubbling, the fumes ceased. Next he staggered to the doors and flung them wide open. Freezing air howled in, blasting away the odorous smoke and filling the workshop with a blessed freshness.

  The wind rasped against Minerva’s cheeks as she lay on the ground. At least her sense of touch had not yet failed. She could still feel the rough brick beneath her, the faint ache in her chest. But her sight was fading. She could tell by the darkness creeping up around the edges of her vision. Soon the black veil would draw over her completely. Her heart raced with all the thoughts she couldn’t express, all the wishes and regrets she still harbored. The only comfort was the knowledge that the men she loved were safe. The only comfort, but it was something, and she held on to that as the darkness closed in.

  * * *

  Using chisel and hammer, Asher smashed through the manacles binding his doppelganger. Quigley staggered forward, rubbing wrists which had been chafed raw. As one, they both ran to Minerva and dropped to their knees beside her fallen form. The strange film continued to swirl across her figure, causing one part of her body to fade before moving on to another, a restless nebula eager to devour her.