“Skatos!” Gallo gawped.
“I don’t think we’re home yet.” Sangfroid gently inserted herself between Millicent and the Edna machine, though it gave no indication of being dangerous. With a soft whir, Edna turned and left the room, slipping past the man who now stood in the doorway.
“She is quite harmless,” he said. “A mere service device; nothing more.”
“Hubert!” Millicent made to run to him, then hesitated, for although it looked like her dear brother, there were subtle changes that disconcerted her. He looked leaner, and his hair was very awry; no longer oiled down and respectable, it shot violently into the air as if voltage ran through it. His gilt eyeglasses were of smoked glass and strangely styled, and his clothes had a severe, dapper cut that was totally unlike his usual wardrobe. Gone were the bulky tweeds with overstuffed pockets and saggy elbows, these were now replaced with well-tailored worsted wool.
“Hubert?” she repeated, uncertainly.
“Oh Millicent, dearest, you look as if you’ve been through the wars.” He reached out for her with brotherly affection, and she accepted his embrace, conscious of her filthy Roman tunic pressed against his new, unsettling elegance.
“It’s true; I do feel as if I’ve met my Waterloo and barely scraped through.” She sniffed away her tears. This was not the time for self-pity, no matter how inviting the concept. There were too many questions rampaging through her mind, and she began with the foremost.
“What have you done with Edna?” It opened a floodgate. “I thought you were dead. I thought Weena had eaten you. Did she not eat you? And where is Weena? And why do you look so different? Did you bring us back here in the time machine? Where is Sophia? Is she here? Please let her be here. And why did you order the good whiskey for these two?” She indicated Sangfroid and Gallo. “You know they will only guzzle it.”
Hubert laughed. His easy confidence a new thing, too.
“All is well, Millicent. Let us sit by the fire, and I will tell you everything. Here, let me pour you all a…” His words trailed off as it became evident at least two of his guests had already helped themselves to the whiskey and were now sitting by the fire in comfort with their glasses brimful. “Um, let us join Sangfroid and Gallo.” He guided Millicent to the chaise and presented her with a glass holding a thimbleful of spirits. “Purely medicinal,” he murmured.
“Yeah, medicinal.” Gallo raised her glass in salute.
“Feeling better already.” Sangfroid raised her glass, too.
“What happened, Hubert?” Millicent persisted. “The last time we saw you, Weena had devoured you. And then Sophia inadvertently started the time machine and took us all off to a dreadful alternative Rome. Though Lord knows where she is now. She was not with us. She was slightly ahead of us, which I assume means she arrived even farther back in history.” She spluttered over her first sip of whiskey, then found its harsh warmth secure and soothing.
“Firstly, we need to locate Sophia and very soon. Secondly, Weena did not devour me. As a young female, she has a soft pouch in her mouth where she can keep her young. Not unlike a pelican,” Hubert explained.
“Pelicans keep food in their pouches.” Millicent pointed out, unwilling to be so easily placated. She had seen her brother swallowed by a huge space squid, something one did not shrug off lightly.
“Um. Yes. Perhaps that was the wrong analogy,” Hubert conceded. “Anyway, Weena has this pouch thingy to hold her young when she travels. Remember, she’s from the Cat’s Paw nebula in Scorpius Major, an enormous gaseous galaxy where space squid swim about in shoals and keep their infants close until they can cope on their own.”
“Like whales in a pod.” Millicent was intrigued. She imagined the Cat’s Paw nebula as a huge space ocean marbled with lazy curls of current. A wonderland where magnificent space beasts ploughed the deeps; much as she dreamed of cryptids navigating the inky fathoms of her own planet.
“Yes, except whales don’t keep their young in their mouths,” Hubert said.
“Neither do pelicans,” Millicent countered.
“Forget all that. If she didn’t eat you, where did she take you?” Sangfroid interrupted. “You said they put their young in their mouths to go travelling. So, where did you go?”
“Ah. Yes.” Hubert shifted uncomfortably. Now that she was used to this fine-feathered version of her brother, Millicent could relax, for she sensed the older version, with all his awkward mannerisms and wonderful kindness, was not far beneath this new, shiny surface. His travels had not changed him that much. “Well, um…” he stuttered to a halt, unsure of himself and what to say next.
“That bad, ’eh?” Gallo said, gently. Millicent was impressed with this uncharacteristic sensitivity. Gallo’s rough edges had certainly begun to soften. “We had it rough, too,” Gallo continued with her newfound empathy. “We were thrown into the gladiator arena. With Amazons! And steam-powered lions. And tigers and bears, too. They had steam powered everything!” Her excitement grew. “And Millicent had to work in a brothel.”
“What?” Hubert jerked in his seat. Millicent closed her eyes.
“And I was chained to an elephant,” Sangfroid butted in.
“A brothel?” Hubert said.
“And accused of trying to assassinate the Emperor.” Sangfroid warmed to her theme. “Like I’d come at him with a steam elephant.” She snorted with disgust into her glass.
“A brothel?” Hubert blinked hard for several seconds, focusing on Millicent who sat slumped in her chair.
“A spear and a good view is all I’d need if I wanted to stiff an Emperor,” Sangfroid said.
“I fought alongside the Amazons.” Gallo began to compete with Sangfroid. “I took down three steam wolves single-handed. And two lions.”
“A brothel?” Hubert stared harder.
“Believe me, it was a flying and very unwelcome visit,” she assured him. “The place was called the High Tea Temple of Rome. It is a cross between a tax office and a bordello, and we owe it all to Sophia. I have no idea how she instigated such a twisted, self-serving religion, but she somehow managed it.”
“She’s a gem,” Gallo murmured into her glass.
“Can we be sure it was Sophia and not some far-flung look alike?” Hubert asked.
“There were several crossovers with our own culture that could not be explained in any other way.” Millicent listed on her fingers, scones, teacup statues, bustles, and the unmistakable similarity of the Goddess Looselea to Hubert’s fiancée. “Though I found the prayer to her unfathomable. It was very goat centric.”
“Sophia does not like goats. She detests animals of any kind,” Hubert said. “She can barely cope with humans.”
Millicent suppressed a snort. “I am certain she had a hand in the advancement of the Roman Empire’s technology in that other timeline. I’m sure of it. She has done something. It’s too coincidental to be otherwise.”
“Your evidence is circumstantial, but I can’t ignore it. Weena and the squid have their own suspicions, too.”
“Suspicions?” Millicent asked, very alert.
“The space squid feel there is something fundamentally wrong with the Roman Empire.”
“Only because we’re winning the war,” Sangfroid said.
Hubert ignored her. “They suspect a time continuum has been breached,” he said. “They can feel a temporal ripple spreading across the universe, but it seems to travel only as far as the Roman frontline. There it stops.”
“More evidence of chronological mischief making.” Millicent frowned. “The anomaly is somehow attached to the Roman Empire.” She blinked rapidly as if to clear her mind. There were other issues at stake, and so much to talk about. “But you must tell us more about your adventures with Weena. And what on earth has happened to Edna?” she asked. “Is she steam-powered too?” The thought was unsettling.
�
��It is not Edna as you know her, but an automaton made more or less in her likeness.”
“How on earth did you find the time for that?”
“First, let me explain what this place is, for it is not what you think,” Hubert said and sat back in his seat nursing his glass. Dark thoughts flitted across his face. “You remember I left the dinner table and went upstairs.” He began his story. “Once I understood Weena’s intentions were to take me travelling, there was little time to warn you. We had to be opportune. She had sensed a small fracture in time that would release her from here and was intent on taking me with her. I tried to let you know I was safe, but I see now I failed to convey my acquiescence, leaving you to fear the worst.”
“Your shoes on the landing did indicate a premeditated act, and after the shock subsided, I suppose it did prompt me to go over your notes,” Millicent said. “Unfortunately, before I could properly peruse them, Sophia started up the time machine. The very thing we didn’t want to happen had occurred. She was whisked away to Lord knows where; certainly farther back in time than where we ended up. Presumably she started her cult in some primordial soup kitchen, and we inherited the whole dreadful mess.”
“Millicent, have you ever thought that if we were to fix Sophia’s mess, this world might no longer exist?” Hubert said. “In fact, might never have existed.”
Millicent was surprised. “Of course it would exist. Why would we not exist?”
Hubert stared at her intently for a moment. “You’re assuming this is your world,” he said. He stood, went over to the window, and set his hand upon the drape cord.
“Whatever do you mean?” Millicent stood, all alarm. She did not like the ominous tone in Hubert’s voice.
He pulled the cord and the drapes swung open on the most garish sunset Millicent had ever seen. The sky glowed a vulgar, haemoglobin red.
“Good gracious, what a jarring sunset.” Millicent went over to the window to take a better look. “Oh, it’s not a sunset. What on earth has happened to the London skyline?” As far as the eye could see, chimneystack upon chimneystack crowded in, all rising to hundreds of feet. Some billowed thick black smoke, while others blazed, spitting out spikes of fire so hot the flames burned white in the centre.
“Industry. Fierce and uncontrollable industry,” Hubert answered. “This is the new beast. Factories instead of arenas, production engines instead of steam lions, and as always, the poor and the unfortunate are fodder for the machines.”
“What is this place?” Horror coloured her words. “It can’t be home.”
“This is the London I returned to after my travels with Weena,” Hubert said. “I have been here for several months trying to locate you using your temporal footprint. The time machine thankfully held a horological residue. I finally succeeded in pinpointing you and hauling you all back. I have managed to find Sophia, too. And as you suspected, she is more pre-historic than yourselves. Considerably so.”
“London? But it’s horrid.” Millicent was too astounded at the sight before her to grasp all that Hubert implied. “This has to contravene every by-law of the Public Health act. I shall write to the Board of Health immediately.”
“There is no Public Health act, Millicent. In this London, there are no philanthropists to push for sanitation or the provision of clean water,” Hubert said. “All of that occurred in another London, our London. A place that no longer exists.”
“This looks more like something from a period in my world’s history.” Sangfroid peered over their shoulders with little enthusiasm. “Massilia, Palma, Antioch. Boring old ancient cities poisoned into extinction by industry.” She looked out at the mess. “And now here’s Londinium, another cesspit.” She squinted at the hunched figures out on the pavement. The once refined, beech-lined Christie Mews was now a shuffling crush of pedestrian traffic. Everyday workfolk trudged along the smog-filled streets in head hanging misery. Their feet swilling through a mire of mud and refuse that clogged the gutters and flooded out over the pavements. Steam trams rumbled past, loaded with crates of raw materials heading for the maze of mills and factories. The air was rank, claustrophobic, and thick with despair.
“Look at the smog. It’s green! How the hell do folk walk around in that,” Sangfroid said. “My lungs would fall out my backside.”
“Life expectancy is not an issue here. Those are not folk,” Hubert said. “At least not as we know them.” Sure enough, a dull gleam from under a headscarf or cap gave away the true nature of the workers.
“They’re all automatons.” Millicent gasped. “Like Edna.”
“Not quite,” Hubert said. “These are steam people. Part flesh, part machinery. The poor, the criminal, the dispossessed, all crudely engineered into mechanical slavery. An entire populous of them. Ground down through ill repair and overwork.”
“Surely this can’t be London’s future?” Millicent said in horror.
“This isn’t the future. This is 1862,” Hubert answered quietly. “This is the same year that Weena swallowed me, and you followed Sophia to an ancient alternative Rome, and this is what we have returned to. Something has gone disastrously wrong.”
“Are you sure this is your own timeline?” Sangfroid asked. “It looks more like the industrial cities from my past. Brutal places. Technological expansion was at its peak then, and the automatons bore the brunt of it.”
“Yes. I suspect this is another element of your timeline’s history, a London, or Londinium if you like, with an equivalent date to that of our own and obviously with its own set of social issues.” He looked at Millicent for confirmation, as if the habits of the other Hubert were ingrained in this version of him, too.
“Yeah, but these are hybrids.” Gallo pointed to the rag-tags trudging along outside. “Where we come from, they are banned.”
“Why is that?” Hubert asked.
“Steamheads were outlawed eons ago. Bio-engineering humans is essentially unethical,” Gallo said. “Plus they tend to kill you.” This was added with a shrug. “There was a great steam slave uprising once, led by a semi-automate called Sparkitous. Lesson learned, don’t build a super race, then try to enslave it.”
“Bio-engineering?” Hubert sounded intrigued. “How would one go about that?”
“Please focus, Hubert,” Millicent scolded. “This is no time for tangential thinking.”
“Looks like history is repeating itself here,” Sangfroid said. “In Londinium 1862.”
“Yeah,” Gallo agreed. “If this city depends on steamheads, then it’s written its own death sentence. Steam slaves always end up venting, and, boom!” She threw her arms in the air with great gusto. “The mother of Vesuvius!”
“So you agree, this is a part of your timeline’s past?” Hubert asked.
“Not this technology.” Sangfroid glared moodily out the window. “I agree with Hubert, something’s gone wrong, and I think I know why we’ve landed here.”
“And why would that be?” A familiar voice asked from the doorway. They turned in unison as Millicent entered the room. At least it looked like Millicent, except that, like her brother, this was a coolly confident, better dressed, and much more sophisticated version.
“Ah, there you are.” Hubert moved towards the newcomer. “Millicent, please meet Millicent. This is you,” he told his sister, “only a little sideways.”
CHAPTER 26
“This is impossible. You are counterfeit. You cannot be me,” Millicent blustered. Her cheeks blazed at the stupidity of her statement. This woman was the spitting image of her. Of course it could be her. Had she not witnessed her own duplication in time during their escape from the Amoebas? Then, there had been two of her racing through the same timeline. She had accepted that possibility, but standing face-to-face with another version of herself was something else altogether. Nevermind it was a swished up, highly polished version of herself.
She was
at once acutely aware of her grubby face and blood-speckled tunic compared to this other, pristine, and annoyingly self-satisfied Millicent. The warm smile that greeted her was as cloyingly superior as it was infuriating. The newcomer had a relaxed, almost feline charm that Millicent could not in any way equate with herself. It was beyond all imagination and so had to be false.
“Now that’s just creepy,” Gallo muttered. “Two frocks. Soon we’ll be a friggin’ boutique.”
“Granted, it must be difficult for you to contemplate,” the new Millicent said and waved a languid hand at her elegant ensemble. “But please rest assured that, as doubtful as it may seem, I actually am you. Imagine me as an advanced version.” She sauntered over to join her brother. Millicent frowned at the sway of her hips. It seemed not only uncalled for, but totally unnecessary for ladylike propulsion. Her frown deepened as she noticed Sangfroid’s gaze fixed upon it, too.
“Hubert, I demand an explanation.” Millicent had to stop herself from stamping her foot. First, he dismantled her favourite parasol, then he tinkered with the servants, and now this. It was too much. The cynical, cool assurance of this new Millicent utterly dismayed her. She was like the new Hubert; the same, yet different, and somehow...better?
“Have you been making automatons of me?” she demanded.
“No, dearest. This really is you, only from a different time dimension.” Hubert tried to soothe her. “I can see where the confusion lies.”
“It’s weird.” Sangfroid was squinting back and forth between the two. “But I can sort of tell the difference.”
Millicent’s face flamed. The difference was obvious. This new Millicent was a trollop. Over curved and over confident, and dressed in a sophisticated way that somehow displayed it all to full advantage. Her hair was gloriously styled and shone like spun copper. Millicent self-consciously patted her own bedraggled locks and dislodged a smattering of sand onto the carpet. She was acutely aware of the grimy Roman tunic that barely covered her scraped knees. She was as tattered as one of Mr. Dickens’s urchins and not nearly as effervescent.
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