An Alternate Perspective

by Wynne Mabry

  But more time went by, and still no portal appeared. When Mr. Hurst started leafing through his papers, Elizabeth realized that even his confidence was fading.

  “I think we must go out in the morning and collect the parts I need,” he said to Mr. Darcy a short time later. “Perhaps at an early hour. There are quite a few places where we will need to go. I found a few things in Meryton, and some in Hertford, but I also went to Hatfield and St. Albans.”

  “You never mentioned that earlier,” Elizabeth said.

  “I did not want to worry you about that part, but it is lucky that Mr. Darcy has offered to drive me.”

  “Very lucky indeed” she said. “I hope you do not mind such a busy day, Mr. Darcy.”

  “Not at all,” he replied. “I had nothing planned, and I look forward to the company. I shall leave you the key to the library. You may want to spend some time here again just in case.”

  “Do not forget that if there is an opportunity for you to get back to our reality, you must go ahead without me as we discussed earlier,” Mr. Hurst said. “I do not want you and the other Elizabeth to be waiting on me. If you do go, you could tell Mr. Darcy that I will be waiting here at eight o’clock tomorrow night. That should be a good time.”

  Although she certainly intended to look into the library on the next day, Elizabeth did not think it likely that anything would be accomplished by sitting in wait. Her spirits had been raised to the greatest height by the appearance of a portal and then dashed by its failure. Something had gone dreadfully wrong, and she doubted that it could be corrected.

  Even worse, she could not help fearing that more would go wrong. Mr. Hurst had yet to acquire his materials. There was no certainty that he would be able to build another machine.

  A Dire Situation

  In yet another reality, Mr. Darcy sat up with a feeling that he was not going to like what he saw. He was right. Just in front of him were the empty shelves which he had been seeing at the end of the vortex just a moment ago.

  He looked about. There was nobody else in the room. No Elizabeth. No Mr. Hurst. The room was cold, there was no fire in the grate, and now he saw dust covers which had not been visible through the portal. It appeared that the place was unoccupied.

  But then he heard voices in the hall. He stood up and walked quietly toward the door, which was ajar.

  “I think you will agree that the rooms at Netherfield are very well proportioned,” a gentleman was saying.

  “Yes indeed.” That was Mr. Bingley’s voice. Apparently, he had not yet taken Netherfield in this reality.

  “Our next room is the library,” said the gentleman who was presumably the agent.

  Mr. Darcy looked about for somewhere to hide. It would not do for Mr. Bingley to see him. That would involve a great deal of explanation. The only possible place was under the dust covers. He darted over and squeezed in behind a chair.

  “I think you will appreciate the fine oak shelves,” he heard the agent say in another moment.

  “They are very nice,” Mr. Bingley agreed.

  “I shall remove the covers for you to have a look at the furniture.”

  “Please do not trouble yourself. I am sure it will all be satisfactory. I find that one library looks very much like another. Perhaps we could look at the bed chambers now.”

  Mr. Darcy breathed a sigh of relief. He listened to the sound of footsteps moving away and waited a moment before emerging from his hiding place. Presumably he could count on not being disturbed again, but that was the least of his problems. Like Mr. Hurst, his own Elizabeth, and the other one, he was stranded on another plane of existence. His friends had obviously been right to worry about his safety. He had stepped too close to the portal in his desperation to have his fiancée back. That recklessness had placed him in a dire situation.

  In a short time, he heard the two gentlemen come back downstairs again.

  “I am delighted with everything,” Mr. Bingley said. “I shall take the place.”

  “You do not require any time to think about it?” The surprise in the agent’s voice was unmistakable.

  “No,” Mr. Bingley replied in quite a casual tone for such an important decision. “I have already decided that Netherfield will suit me very well.”

  Mr. Darcy smiled. His own friend had made an equally hasty decision. He had been horrified by such impulsiveness, but then it had turned out to be the best thing for both of them.

  “Then we may as well return to my place of business, and you can look over the lease,” the agent suggested.

  This suited Mr. Bingley, and the pair departed. Mr. Darcy was left in silence and solitude to wonder about his chances of being rescued.

  Presumably, through some fault of his own, the portal had jumped to another reality even while still set to the first one. Nobody would have any way of knowing where he was.

  His best hope was that Elizabeth and Mr. Bingley had observed enough to manage to operate the machine successfully and then retrieve Mr. Hurst, who was the most capable person to analyze what error he had made, which might or might not be useful information.

  But could they succeed when they had even less knowledge of the science than he did?

  PART THREE

  Try and Try Again

  Elizabeth scrambled up from the floor and rushed to the machine. “Do not touch anything,” she shouted at Miss Bingley. “If we are to rescue Mr. Darcy, those knobs must not be moved.”

  Miss Bingley stepped back and held her hands up. “I was not going to touch anything,” she said. “I know better than to do that.”

  “Can we rescue him?” Mr. Bingley asked dubiously. “Do you think that we can operate this machine? Darcy was the one who understood Mr. Hurst’s notes. I could not make much of them.”

  “I only understood the basic idea,” Elizabeth admitted, “but we know enough to make an attempt. The main difficulty is that we can only guess what to do with these knobs. Perhaps if we keep turning them different ways, we might eventually hit upon something which works.”

  “But you said that they should not be moved,” Miss Bingley pointed out.

  “Not the larger grouping,” Elizabeth clarified. “If anybody changes those settings, it will be disastrous, but these three are different. Mr. Darcy used them when he was operating the machine. That is how he formed the portal.”

  “But you do not know how to use them. It is hopeless,” Miss Bingley said in quite a distraught voice.

  “Guessing is still better than doing nothing. We have to try. And keep on trying, no matter how long it takes.”

  “I quite agree,” Mr. Bingley said. “Well, at least we know how to start.” He went to ring the bell and requested more water.

  “I am uncertain as to whom we will be rescuing if we do succeed,” Elizabeth said while they were waiting. “It is puzzling that the portal changed from one place to another. I cannot understand that at all.”

  “Perhaps one of the knobs was turned,” Mr. Bingley suggested. “One of us might have accidently brushed against it.”

  “I suppose it is possible, although we were very careful. If that is what happened, then presumably the current settings will access the reality to which Mr. Darcy just went. But if the portal shifted due to some other reason, and the knobs have not moved, then they are still set to access the first reality.”

  “Well in that case we shall have Mr. Hurst back, and he will be able to find Darcy,” Mr. Bingley said cheerfully.

  Elizabeth was less confident. If the portal had randomly switched, how was even Mr. Hurst to determine where Mr. Darcy was? Still, he was the expert on alternate realities and the creator of this machine. There was always the possibility that he had ways of working out what had happened, and he would certainly be able to do more than she and Mr. Bingley could. She just hoped that the knobs were not prone to being shifted by the motion of the cogs or the spiralling light. If that was the case, then Miss Bingley’s pronouncement of hopelessness was probably correct.
Just working the machine was going to be difficult enough. Elizabeth was dubious about their ability to conduct a search of many realities.

  She would have liked to know how firm or loose those knobs were, but touching them was certainly out of the question. They could only wait to get a better idea of the situation if they did manage to create a portal. And if they did not, then the question of how the portal had shifted would be irrelevant.

  The boiler was filled, and the fire replenished, and then they waited some more.

  “You are taking much too long to get on with finding Mr. Darcy,” Miss Bingley snapped.

  “There is nothing we can do to make this go any faster,” Mr. Bingley said.

  “Well it is very tedious.”

  “Then I recommend that you go elsewhere,” her brother said sharply. “This is probably going to become a great deal more boring before we achieve anything, if we are lucky enough to do so.”

  “I am going to stay,” she insisted. “I am watching to make certain that neither of you gets too close to those knobs. I do not want Mr. Darcy to be lost because of your incompetence.”

  As they had both been supremely careful, this was unnecessarily offensive, but neither of them bothered to make any reply.

  “Did you see anything that Mr. Darcy did?” Mr. Bingley asked Elizabeth, as the first wisps of steam began to appear. “I am not at all certain how to go about this. I was mostly occupied in being fascinated by what was happening.”

  “I noticed that he turned each of the knobs several times,” Elizabeth said. “In small increments, I think. And he was watching the light while he did it, as though he was trying to gauge the result.”

  “That is more than I noticed. I think that you should be the one to undertake that task. I will take care of the levers if you like. That is something I feel quite capable of managing.”

  Although the idea of taking on so much responsibility was rather nerve-wracking, she agreed to this suggestion. He put on the gloves, which he had also used to fill the boiler.

  “I think that speed is an important factor,” Elizabeth said, studying the knobs with some apprehension. “I believe that the light was spinning faster in the cylinder when Mr. Darcy succeeded in opening a portal. That may be why it worked that time. Of course, I have no idea what makes it faster, but hopefully I shall learn something with each attempt.”

  Mr. Bingley operated the levers, and the cogs began to turn. A light appeared, and Elizabeth turned each of the knobs slightly. The light wavered, and she quickly turned them all again, but it disappeared.

  “That was inept,” Miss Bingley said waspishly. “You are never going to find Mr. Darcy.”

  “It was just a first attempt,” Mr. Bingley said. “Why do you not just go away, Caroline? You have nothing to contribute.”

  But Miss Bingley still stayed.

  The next few attempts produced similar results, but Elizabeth was learning. After a few more, she managed to create a swirling light, although it did not pick up enough speed to extend beyond the cylinder and slowly dwindled out.

  “You are getting closer,” Mr. Bingley said encouragingly, as he pulled down the lever and cut off the supply of steam to the machine. “There is definite progress here.”

  “You seem to be very far from accomplishing anything,” Miss Bingley said disparagingly.

  Elizabeth ignored her. “I do have a better idea of what I am doing,” she said to Mr. Bingley. “Our method is working.” That was said rather defiantly, and with a quick glance at Miss Bingley.

  Mr. Bingley topped up the water and the coal, and they were soon ready for another attempt. Since each of these had been brief, the fire and water had not been depleted. They only had to be topped up each time, instead of starting from nothing, so only a little more than an hour had gone by.

  Elizabeth persevered longer, and eventually she managed to create a vortex which extended a little distance from the cylinder before failing.

  “Well done,” cried Mr. Bingley.

  Even Miss Bingley looked slightly impressed, although she did not say so.

  Another attempt produced similar results, but Mr. Bingley said he was certain that the vortex had lasted slightly longer. As he was refilling the water from a supply which he had instructed the servants to keep bringing, Mrs. Hurst came to the door.

  “Will anybody come to have luncheon with me?” she asked. This question was quickly followed by, “Where is Mr. Darcy?”

  “He went to get something,” Elizabeth hastily said, hoping that Miss Bingley would not reveal the truth.

  Mr. Bingley had the same idea. “Say nothing,” he hissed at one sister before turning to answer the other. “We would rather have some food brought here, and we can eat while we work, but I am sure that Caroline will take luncheon with you.”

  “I will not,” Miss Bingley said. “I am going to stay right here until you get Mr. Darcy back.”

  “Get him back?” Mrs. Hurst queried. “Where has he gone?”

  “To fetch some supplies,” Mr. Bingley said, still endeavouring to keep the truth from her.

  It was no use though. “Something has happened to him,” Mrs. Hurst said. “I am sure that is what Caroline meant. Please do not try to keep the truth from me.”

  Elizabeth went forward and took her hands. “Something did happen,” she confessed. “Mr. Darcy was drawn into the portal.”

  “I knew this was too dangerous,” Mrs. Hurst cried. “He should not have taken such risk.”

  “He wanted to,” Mr. Bingley said. “Hurst is his friend too. We could not have stopped him from doing his best to help.”

  “He was quite determined,” Elizabeth said, thinking of his other reason for making every possible effort.

  She exchanged a meaningful look with Mrs. Hurst, who asked, “Did he go to the same reality as Mr. Hurst?”

  “Probably not. We think that he went to a different one.”

  “Another reality? How could that have happened?”

  “We have no idea.”

  “Can you get him back?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Bingley said before Elizabeth could admit that she was uncertain. “You must not worry about Darcy. I am sure that we will have him back very soon. Elizabeth has almost learned how to use the machine. She is brilliant.”

  Mrs. Hurst looked at Elizabeth, who said, “I cannot lay any claim to brilliance, but I have been slowly learning how to operate it. There is a good chance that we will be able to retrieve him. Perhaps you and your sister should go and take luncheon while we keep working.”

  Miss Bingley adamantly shook her head to this suggestion, and Mrs. Hurst said, “I will stay too. It will be impossible to eat anything while I am worried about him.”

  “Quite understandable,” her brother said. “I do not feel like eating either, and almost nothing puts me off my appetite. Stay and watch Elizabeth. Her skill will soon cheer you up.”

  Elizabeth hoped that it would, but she feared that her efforts might disappoint. Feeling the need to achieve results promptly, she began again with great nervousness, but her next result showed a little more improvement. At least it did in terms of size and strength of the vortex. For some unknown reason it was now angled toward the floor.

  So was the next, and a third one, which nevertheless almost looked as though it was going to succeed.

  “If it could grow a bit bigger, somebody could just fit into it,” Elizabeth said.

  But the circle was already shrinking, and it soon vanished.

  “Never mind,” Mr. Bingley said. “You keep getting better.”

  As that was true, Elizabeth was feeling reasonably confident.

  These attempts were using a little more power than her earlier ones, so replenishing their power supply was taking longer, but Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst still stayed. One of them was constantly scowling, while the other kept giving Elizabeth encouraging smiles.

  The next attempt was also on a downward slope.

  “I cannot seem to corr
ect this,” she said to Mr. Bingley.

  “You will work it out.” he said encouragingly, reaching toward the lever to cut the power.

  “Wait,” Elizabeth cried. “It is still getting bigger.”

  There was nothing more to do with the controls, so she went to the opening, which was so low that it was just hovering above the floor. It was not the size of a door either, but they had established a sizeable window.

  Elizabeth had to kneel down to look into it. “I can see something,” she said to Mr. Bingley, who was already holding on to her in order to prevent another accident. “It looks like a wall though. I cannot see anything more, but it is a narrow view. Still, there is enough room for him to fit if he crawls in.”

  “Oh, Darcy will find that most undignified,” Mr. Bingley said jovially. “But I am sure he will be ecstatic about a rescue in any form.”

  “If he is there,” Elizabeth said, still worried that they had only managed to create a portal into a world where none of the people they were seeking could be found. “Mr. Darcy?” she shouted. There was no response. “Mr. Hurst?” she tried as an alternative. Still no answer. “Is anybody there?”

  Overtures of Friendship

  Having spent so much time in the library, and now being certain that there was no point to being there any longer, Elizabeth decided that she should go up to Jane now.

  “You will come and get me straight away if there is another portal?” she asked Mr. Darcy.

  “Yes, certainly.”

  “And could you see to it that Mr. Hurst gets some food and anything else he needs.”

  “Of course,” he said. “It will be no trouble.”

  He walked to the door with her and was about to open the door, when he paused and looked at her instead. “This must have been a great disappointment to you,” he said. “I imagine that you are feeling quite dispirited at the moment. If it would help to talk to somebody, I am very willing to listen.”