The Forever Engine

by Frank Chadwick

  We all stood for perhaps a minute, watching the ruin Tesla’s weapon had made of the pride of the Aerial Squadron of the Royal Navy. Tesla stepped out of his command bunker to watch as well. The beam had also passed over the north end of the platform and the metal breastwork there and on the east side glowed and had twisted slightly, the plates thicker, puffed out like cookies baked in an oven. For a while the only sound on the roof was the ticking noise of cooling metal.

  “That was from your world, Fargo,” Tesla said after a moment. “A small sample of what is to come. I was certain the projector would serve as a satisfactory weapon, but it is nevertheless gratifying to see it perform in action, as opposed to a laboratory test.”

  “Two hundred men dead, and you find that gratifying?” I said.

  “What of the men you so casually killed fighting your way to this roof?” Tesla asked.

  “There was nothing casual about what I did, and you’ll never see me gloat about it.”

  Tesla shrugged and stepped back inside the bunker. He picked up the telephone, then turned back to me.

  “The projector will now destroy—or rather displace—the men who captured the two gun positions. Which one shall it eradicate first? Would you care to decide?”

  He waited for a moment, as if he thought I might actually answer, and then spoke into the receiver.

  No.

  Tesla wasn’t going to just zap them like a bunch of ants under a magnifying glass, not after all those men had gone through. I couldn’t let that happen.

  My guard’s attention remained on the burning wreck of Intrepid. My leg still wasn’t working right, my left arm had stiffened at the shoulder, and I was dizzy from the blow on the head. I doubted I could disarm him in a fair fight, but this wasn’t going to be fair.

  Gabrielle’s eyes were on me, but for some reason she did not call out to the guard until it was too late. He turned to face me just as my left shoulder slammed into him and drove him backwards. He backpedaled to regain his balance and suddenly found himself backpedaling in the air. He’d have fallen straight down the opening into the attic except his momentum carried him back and he hit the edge of the opening in the platform, tumbled down flailing the air, bounced off the railing of the spiral staircase, and slammed into the slate roof with the wet crunch of breaking bones.

  My left shoulder bled more than before, aggravated by the impact, but for now I just ignored it. I lifted the metal trapdoor with my right hand, let it drop shut over the opening, and bolted it, just in case the gunner came back.

  I turned to Gabrielle.

  “I’m going to stop him,” I said.

  “I will not let you harm him,” she answered and cocked back the hammer on her revolver.

  “You going to kill me?”

  She raised the revolver, aimed, and fired. I collapsed to the iron platform, my left foot a fiery white-hot nova of pain.

  “Non,” she answered. “I will not kill you.”

  I expected the first flash of pain to subside, but it didn’t, not right away. The pain came in waves, almost paralyzing me, shutting down my brain. I caught my breath and then concentrated on the pain, willed it down, forced it into a corner of my mind. It still left me gasping, but after a few seconds I could at least think.

  I crawled to the east side of the platform, pulled myself up to my knees using the iron breastwork, although the metal had become brittle and powdery, like old plaster, and part of it crumbled under my weight. I looked over the edge. The zeppelin had come to rest right on the shore of the lake. Its gasbag settled and lost shape even as I watched, the hydrogen escaping out and carried over the lake by a faint westerly breeze. Tesla’s technicians were turning the projector toward the gun position held by Gordon and his men. That made sense; they were closer to the house, more of an immediate threat. Once they were gone, the gun would “displace” Durson and his men, and then it would work over the woods up the west valley, scouring out Cevik Bey’s Bosnian riflemen.

  We had all come so far together. It couldn’t end this way.

  I reached into the back of my pants and pulled out the flare pistol. Gabrielle raised her revolver and cocked it again.

  “I will not let you harm him. Please, Jack, do not make me shoot you again.”

  Behind her Tesla looked out of the bunker with detached interest at the vignette playing itself out here.

  I looked at Gabrielle, saw the tears in her eyes, but saw the determination as well. I think part of my mind had known for some time I probably wasn’t going to make it home, but right then was when it hit me with absolute certainty. I’d reached the end of the road, and it wasn’t the end I’d planned for. I was never going to see Sarah again, never see her grow to womanhood, never bounce those grandkids on my knee, but in a sense that was okay. It was okay because Tesla wasn’t going to hurt her or the world she lived in. I was about to make sure of that.

  I’d already done everything important for her I could. I’d raised a fine, strong, resourceful woman. Time to let go.

  I raised the flare pistol, and Gabrielle cried out in alarm, but I pointed it away from Tesla and she relaxed. I pointed it toward the eastern sky and fired. The pistol made a loud pop, like a firecracker, and the red flare sizzled up and out to the east.

  “A pointless gesture,” Tesla said, having come out of the command bunker to watch the denouement.

  The flare reached the top of its trajectory and started down toward the surface of the lake.

  “Tesla,” I said, “you’re a real wiz when it comes to electromagnetism, but you’ve got a lot to learn about some other things. Here’s a new word for you: thermobaric.”

  The descending flare sparkled when it hit the first of the dispersed hydrogen over the lake, then—

  I felt the explosion rather than heard it. I felt it inside my head, in the roots of my teeth, in the pressure levels in my eyeballs. The detonation first pulled at me, trying to suck the air out of my lungs, and then slammed me a couple meters back across the roof, leaving me gasping and stunned.

  I’d used the dispersing hydrogen of Tesla’s crippled zeppelin to make my own fuel-air explosion, an aerosol-enhanced detonation so powerful the first “Daisy Cutter” bombs had been used to turn triple-canopy jungle in Vietnam into instant landing zones. I’d never been this close to a really big thermobaric explosion before. I was a little surprised to still be alive.

  I couldn’t hear, my vision was badly blurred, and my lungs felt on fire, but I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, dragged myself back to the breastwork, and then pulled myself up to look over it.

  People began to stir in the southern gun redoubt; they were stunned but not dead. That was good—I’d managed to not kill Gordon and his people, so Durson’s crew, farther away across the lake, would be okay as well..

  All three of the machinery buildings were reduced to burning rubble. Tesla’s workshop building had been torn open like a kid’s present, its contents scattered and burning, and small pieces of debris slowly fluttered upward—liftwood from the Forever Engines, a king’s ransom of the stuff, floating away like ashes on the wind. I wondered how long it would float around up there before it lost its mojo and settled someplace, like tired old helium balloons.

  The key to my world’s location, the biological roadmap to my home, had been down there, too. That was one less thing to worry about, not that I thought I’d be around to worry about anything much longer.

  The most remarkable sight was the lake itself. It churned and boiled as electricity arced across its surface, discharging into the shoreline, lacing through the three ruined buildings. As I watched, my hearing returned and I heard the sizzling, cracking thunder, like a dozen lightning storms all at once. Then I heard Tesla as well.

  “GONE! Ten years of work, all gone! Do you know what you’ve done? DO YOU?”

  He stood by the east breastwork. He ran his trembling hands up into his hair and tore a handful out, held it out as if to show me, opened his hand and let the breeze
carry the hair away. His eyes rolled, were wild, incredulous, insane.

  For once, I had nothing to say. There was nothing left to say, nothing left to do.

  Tesla groped at his waist, pulled open the holster on his belt, drew his pistol, cocked it, pointed it at me—

  A shot rang out, but I felt nothing. Tesla spun around, blood spraying from his right shoulder. He looked unbelievingly at Gabrielle and the smoking revolver in her hand. Her face twisted in an agony of grief as tears flowed down her cheeks.

  “We will not hurt him anymore,” she said, her voice shaking.

  Tesla leaned back to gain his balance, but when his hands came to rest on the warped iron breastwork, it buckled and crumbled under his weight. Arms flailing, he pitched backwards over the edge and fell, his shout cut off by the crash of breaking slate as he hit the sloped roof.

  Gabrielle cried out in alarm and ran to the breastwork, arrived just as Tesla’s ragdoll-limp body slid over the edge of the roof and fell from sight. She gasped, eyes wide with the realization of the enormity of what she had done. She stood motionless for a long while, looking at the spot where Tesla had disappeared. Then she looked down at her still-smoking revolver.

  She reversed it in her hand so her thumb was through the trigger guard, cocked it, raised it in both hands so the barrel rested under her chin.

  She pulled the trigger with her thumb.

  The hammer fell forward . . .

  . . . and slammed into the web of skin between my right thumb and forefinger.

  She had stood four or five meters from me. I had a concussion, a bullet in my right thigh, a shattered left foot, and I was on my knees. Somehow I had gotten to my feet, crossed those four or five meters, and gotten my hand in the way of the revolver’s firing pin. I had no recollection of doing it, and no idea of how I managed, but I did.

  When she realized she was still alive, when she realized what I had done, she sank to the platform and collapsed against the iron breastwork. Her face dissolved in tears, her mouth an open downturned wound, like the thespian mask of tragedy, and she sobbed uncontrollably.

  “You should have let me die,” she said, and she repeated it over and over. I sat on the platform beside her and put my arms around her.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “My only chance . . . my only hope . . . gone forever. I destroyed it. I destroyed it! There is nothing left for me.”

  I held her for a while, let her cry. Even as we sat there, I knew she was going to get better. She had made a choice, the right choice, without even knowing why it was right, had made it on instinct. In time she would figure out why—family is not about shared blood; it’s about shared life, and what we give up for each other.

  “You were looking for a heart, Tinman,” I told her. “You had one all along.”

  Smoke rose from the opening in the roof, and I realized more smoke billowed from the west side of the house. The single incendiary rocket fired by Intrepid which hit the house must have driven through the wall and started a blaze. It would spread quickly, particularly up the carpeted wooden stairwell. How we were going to get down through that, especially when I couldn’t even walk, was a pretty good question.

  A shadow fell over us, and I became aware of an irregular droning which had grown louder in the last few minutes. I looked up, and a much-patched sausage-shaped black balloon passed overhead, no more than ten meters above us. A single engine mounted behind the wicker passenger basket smoked and misfired, but kept running, driving the propeller. A dozen cables ran back to the improvised-looking rudder, now cranked to the side to keep the balloon in a wide turn over the house. These must be the salvaged remains of Tesla’s zeppelin which had crashed near Jovo’s village.

  Thomson looked over the edge of the basket, eyes hidden by aviator goggles but his unmistakable white beard flying in the wind.

  “Jack!” he called out over the drone of the engine. “Do you and the young lady require a ride?”

  FORTY-FOUR

  May 21, 1889, London, England

  Seven months later, Gabrielle and I stood in Buckingham Palace, which is really nice, by the way. Liveried servants escorted us, along with a dozen or so others, up a curving marble double staircase, down a long corridor, and into a holding tank—they called it the Cross Gallery. I had mostly healed by then, but I still used a cane to take a little weight off my left foot.

  A score of people already there fidgeted in formal attire and made nervous small talk. We watched them but didn’t mix. I didn’t know anyone there, I wasn’t particularly good at small talk, and I wasn’t nervous. I’d been through too much for a Royal Investiture to frighten me, or even excite me all that much. Besides, Gabi and I had grown comfortable with our own company.

  I kept expecting to feel a sense of loss, the return of that black shroud of depression I’d fought so desperately ten years ago, but so far I remained free of it. I didn’t feel that I’d lost Sarah. She still lived, that world still lived, and I had not had to destroy this one—and my soul—to save it.

  My faraway thoughts must have showed in my eyes. Gabi’s hand found its way into mine and brought me back. I smiled.

  After a few minutes a familiar face appeared at the door—Sir Edward Bonseller, secretary to the prime minister, now completely recovered from the wound he had received at Dorset House eight months earlier. He scanned the small crowd, saw us, and walked briskly over. He thrust out his hand.

  “I did not shake your hand before. I hope you will accept the offer now, Dr. Fargo, along with my congratulations.”

  “Thanks. May I present Mademoiselle Courbiere of the DCRG?”

  Bonseller hesitated for a moment, then smiled and kissed her hand.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Mademoiselle. We have all heard of, and admire, your remarkable contribution to the expedition’s success.”

  No one but Gabi and I knew what really took place in Tesla’s stronghold. What we’d told everyone else was a better story, better for all concerned.

  “I hope you are enjoying your trip to England,” Bonseller continued. “Is this your first visit here?”

  “Non, although it is the first time I come without the disguise.”

  Bonseller froze, unsure what to say next, until Gabrielle put her hand on his arm.

  “I made the joke,” she said.

  He smiled uncertainly, and his face colored.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked. I figured he’d welcome a change of subject.

  “Splendid, now that this business with Tesla has been concluded.”

  The cremated bodies we’d found in the burnt-out ruins of his house were unidentifiable, but I was satisfied it was over. We hadn’t cracked his network of assassins and spies yet, but with his passionate energy gone as a motivating force, the organization would probably unravel quickly.

  “I don’t know if anyone has told you the order of precedence,” Bonseller said, “but the queen is meeting with the three new barons now. After that she will confer the six knighthoods. We have one new recipient of the Garter, a Thistle, two Baths, and then the two CMGs, including you.”

  “Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George,” I said and shook my head. “Who’d a’ thunk it? I’d have settled for just the help getting a U.S. passport—and thanks for that, by the way—but the star will look good here.” I tapped the breast of my jacket next to my brand new Légion d’Honneur.

  “Oui,” Gabrielle said and squeezed my arm. “I think the two will make a handsome couple.”

  Bonseller shook his head with a sigh of resignation. “The invitation did specify the display of all orders, didn’t it? The Prince of Wales was quite insistent you receive the CMG. He will be present for your investiture, by the way. He was also insistent Gordon not receive the Distinguished Service Cross. All we could manage was the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal and a promotion to brevet major. It’s a damned shame, if you ask me, but the prince wouldn’t hear of it. Pity Gordon has to suffer for the prince’s ani
mosity toward Gordon’s superior, Lord Chillingham, but I suppose there’s nothing for it. Royalty can be remarkably petty sometimes.”

  “That seems unlike Renfrew,” Gabrielle said with a slight frown, and Bonseller colored again in embarrassment at the hint of intimacy.

  I didn’t say anything. If the prince went to these lengths to keep Gordon’s cover secure, I wasn’t about to screw things up. Besides, Gordon had what he really wanted—an answer about himself, and a medal to confirm it.

  The sliding panel doors which led to the ballroom opened. Thomson walked into the gallery and beamed as soon as he saw us. He made to kiss Gabrielle’s hand, but she embraced him and kissed him on the cheek, and he returned the gesture with sincere pleasure. I offered him my hand.

  “May I be the first commoner to greet you as your lordship?” I asked.

  He shook my hand and then Bonseller’s, who excused himself to round up the other candidates for knighthood.

  “First Baron Kelvin,” Thomson said with a broad smile. “It has a ring, doesn’t it? They named the barony for the River Kelvin in Glasgow. It flows right by the university.”

  “Yeah, and there’s something you should know. You’ve worried about your legacy, how history would remember you, and I haven’t been able to offer much comfort on that subject. I’d never heard of William Thomson, but then I’ve hardly heard of any scientists from this time.”

  “It’s all right, laddie,” he said. “I’m satisfied with what I’ve accomplished, and that’s more important than fame, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. But I just want you to know that there’s a reason I never heard of you. I can think of only three scientists from this era who left such a lasting impression that any kid who ever took a science course learned their names: Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Lord Kelvin.”

  He looked away and flushed, then he sniffed and cleared his throat, smoothed his beard.

  “Well, that is . . . quite gratifying.”

  I imagined it was. I hadn’t heard from Gordon since I’d returned to England the previous week, except for a brief note and an attached document hand-delivered three days earlier. The note simply read, “You may find this interesting. Best regards, G.” The enclosed letter from the Turkish general staff thanked Gordon for his detailed report on the action at Kokin Brod, and in particular for his description of the part played by Lieutenant-designate Ibrahim Durson.