Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “And precious few blacks,” Patrick responded, retrieving the second crossbolt and checking its blast strings. “Would it be cheeky to remind them to set their clocks forwards? It is the twentieth century now, and Emancipation’s a full forty years on.”

  “I’ll wager the Baron and his allies are trying to dial the clock back a bit further than that,” Jeremiah said, sighting down the hall. “Liberation is a hundred years on—though I’m guessing he’d be satisfied with merely rolling back the current leadership—”

  “Still not convinced,” Patrick said, “he’s actually trying to overthrow the Queen.”

  “Bet you a sovereign,” she said, “he’s backed by Restorationists that are.”

  “You’re on,” he said. “Speaking of cheeky, look—again with the morning dress!”

  “And in the dead of night!” Jeremiah said, noting the footman’s striped trousers, which no self-respecting modern would be caught dead wearing after seven o’clock. “Surely someone needs to remind them to reset their watches, for they’re not on a society clock.”

  “Of course, you’re one to talk, wearing jodhpurs and riding boots to all occasions.”

  “A modern gentlewoman never knows when she’ll need to saddle up,” Jeremiah said, flipping down the crossbolt’s stirrup, stretching out the strings with her black boot, then flipping the stirrup back to firing position with one quick motion. “Let’s go.”

  They slipped down the dark corridor, boots falling with care on the plank floorboards: if Jeremiah had read the Conservatory’s floorplan right, they were now practically atop the famed glass hangar’s airship workshops, where the blackguards were no doubt refitting the weapon they’d stolen from the Providence Museum of the Insane to work with the ZR-101’s new thermionic engines.

  But when she emerged into a long, gloomy attic storage room, Jeremiah didn’t find the alternate entrance to the workshops that she had expected, but instead a strange barrier, no doubt the handiwork of Lord Christopherson—who, of course, would never make sneaking in too easy.

  A glass pyramid the size of a Sioux tipi dominated the attic, reaching to the roof and lit from beneath by the emptied shaft of the stairwell Jeremiah had come here to skulk down. The pyramid shielded a central column, some latticework around a tent pole, rising from peculiar equipment on the lower level. Grimacing, Jeremiah carefully picked her way over debris scattered over the plank floor—bits of bannister, smashed spiral stairs, and, curiously, what looked like church pews—hoping to peer through the strange glass barrier into the room below.

  But as she stepped forwards, her interest was drawn to the thick plate window at the far wall. Plate glass, church pews, and spiral stairs? This was no storage attic: before Lord Christopherson had wrecked it, this must have been an observation gallery overlooking the star of this historical site: the celebrated Crystal Hangar of the Newfoundland Airship Conservatory.

  “I remember seeing pictures of this, as a child,” she said. “Made me want to be a Falconer.”

  The gleaming crystal reality far outshone her faded daguerreotype recollections. For a brief moment, Jeremiah was arrested by the epic scale of the long glass tunnel, the brasslite spars of its arches lit to a warm glow by row after row of flickering gaslights, their globes reflected off endless shimmering panes—think of the cost of all that glass and brass, erected in the 1850s to outshine Britain’s Crystal Palace—and then Jeremiah realized what really struck her.

  She could see the whole beautiful length of the Crystal Hangar because it was empty.

  “Congratulations, Commander,” Patrick said, looking down through the pyramid into the airship control room, clearly not having connected the dots. “You successfully avoided a frontal assault on an armored glass hangar and still got us within striking distance of the blackguard—”

  “Have I?” Jeremiah asked. Even through the thick, slightly rippled carbonate glass of the observation window, she could see the hangar held no airship: only a house-sized, kettle-shaped contraption of brass blocking the far end. “I think the blackguard might have eluded us!”

  Jeremiah peered at the strange device—mammoth, barely able to fit into the hangar, a vast sphere wrapped in clockwork rings, with knobbly prongs and thermionic engines poking out of it, making it look like a bad cross between a child’s jack and the innards of a pocket watch.

  “Is . . . that the weapon?” Jeremiah whispered. “Certainly wasn’t in that crate I saw—”

  “What? Has he cloaked the ZR-101 while it’s docked?” Patrick asked, also peering through the glass. “Blast, that distortion is in the window. Damn it all! Newfoundland isn’t flush with hangars—where else could Lord Christopherson have hidden an airship of that size?”

  But where Patrick looked forwards, Jeremiah glanced back—and blanched.

  “Oh, Patrick, forget his getaway cart,” she said, tugging on his sleeve. “I’m sure Admiral Zeppelin-Rogers will start on a 102 tomorrow if we fail to recover his purloined airship . . . but I think we’ve seen enough Foreign Incursions to be far more concerned with that tipi.”

  “What—oh my word,” Patrick said, turning around.

  They turned back to the tented glass pyramid in the center of the room. No longer dazzled by the lights of the Crystal Hangar, they could now see the pyramid was glowing like a miniature greenhouse, illuminated from below by an eerie golden glow far too steady to be gaslight.

  And rising up through the axis of the pyramid was a cylindrical, cage-like column, guarding a glittering, glowing, turning shaft within that stretched up out the skylight into a strange array of wires reaching into the night sky—like an antenna, but unlike any that Jeremiah knew.

  “If that’s not Foreign technology,” Jeremiah said, “I’ll eat your blunderblast.”

  “How forward, Commander,” Patrick whispered, mesmerized by the strange, shimmering shaft spinning within its cage, “but I’ll wager that will never happen.” He raised his crossbolt to fire on the shaft. “Let’s shut this down before Foreign technology calls down a Foreign Incursion—”

  “Let’s not shoot it before we know what it is,” Jeremiah said. Shapes moved beneath the pyramid, and Jeremiah leaned back to avoid discovery. “For all we know this shaft is hooked into that supposed weapon the Baron stole from the Providence Museum of the Insane—”

  “Can you think of a better reason to destroy it?”

  “No, except there had to be a reason that crate was hidden in the Arsenal of Madness,” Jeremiah said. “This thing is just as likely to go up in our faces—besides, the metal lattice around that shaft would act as a Faraday cage. Our shots would be wasted.”

  Carefully, Jeremiah leaned to peer through the heavy, wavy carbonate glass, angling to draw a bead on whatever malfeasance was afoot in the control room below. The spinning shaft within the pyramid projected downwards through the gap in the floor into a strange ring-shaped contraption just beneath the pyramid, holding twelve hot cauldrons inscribed with the signs of the Zodiac and filled with golden liquid—the source of the eerie glow. Beneath the circular device, a copper vessel waited, the size of a barrel of wine, but finely filigreed, like a great egg made from etched brass.

  Jeremiah’s mouth opened. “At last. That’s what was in that crate.”

  “If you’re wrong,” Patrick whispered back, “I’ll eat my blunderblast.”

  “That I’d pay to see,” Jeremiah muttered, eyes rapt on the egg. Carefully positioned just below the center of the ring, the egg looked ready to receive both the glowing liquid within the cauldrons—and whatever skyfire was to come down the shaft at the completion of the ritual.

  Jeremiah scowled: that was it, wasn’t it? A ritual. Was that what was needed to activate the device? The Owl and the Falcon had foreseen the Baron would ally with “the Order of the Burning Scarab,” but what if what they were foreseeing was an act put
on by the man himself?

  More morning-liveried footmen scurried about the level below, putting finishing touches to the infernal contraption; lording over them all was a massive pillar of a man in top hat, white tie, and a glass cane, a man she knew well: the fifth Baron in the line of Abinger.

  “Lord Christopherson,” she breathed. “What are you up to?”

  “You’d know better than anyone,” Patrick cracked. “He’s your uncle—”

  “No enemy of the Crown is an uncle of mine,” Jeremiah snapped, with far more heat than she meant to. Bad enough to have a mother best known for her failure, but living in the shadow of a traitor? “The man’s a disgrace to the House of Wollstonecraft—”

  But at that name Lord Christopherson looked up, dark beard crinkling in a scowl. Jeremiah and Patrick leaned back from the window, but it was too late; Lord Christopherson sighted them through the glass and signaled his men. Footmen bustled, a lever was thrown, and the Zodiac disc began to turn, a crackling energy rippling out through its mechanism, both down onto the copper egg—and up through the crackling, spinning shaft, up towards the night.

  “Oh, all that effort to avoid the alarm—” Jeremiah groaned.

  “My fault, Commander,” Patrick said. “Knew it was a sore spot—”

  “I shouldn’t be so touchy it throws a mission—but hang the blame, Lord Christopherson’s calling down an Incursion,” Jeremiah said, as energy rippled up the shaft, sparking off the antenna visible through the skylight—then the antenna itself began twanging, an innocent sound whose chilling implications she’d learned all too well from Einstein. The antenna was a supraluminal transmitter—and in a world with monsters falling from the skies, there was only one reason to use such a dangerous device. “I hate, hate, hate being right! Desperate men turn to desperate measures, but this is too much—he’s actually summoning a Foreigner! Why, why would he do that?”

  “Who knows? Personally, I’d rather he didn’t. Remember that thing with two heads?”

  “Do I,” Jeremiah said, shuddering. She’d seen far more than that, of course: clockwork-infested rats, men made into monsters, and some things too horrid to warrant a name. “Or that octopus sniper. Rather not see its like again—”

  “Me neither. Let’s bolt this door before it opens and more monsters come pouring in,” Patrick said, aiming his six-string down through the glass of the pyramid, and this time Jeremiah had no argument. “Shoot the egg, not the shaft. Full discharge, on three; one-two-three!”

  They both sighted on the copper vessel and fired. Twelve glowing energy bolts dissipated harmlessly against the glass, their aetheric fire shimmering out over the transparent barrier in a checkerboard pattern. Jeremiah raised her goggles and saw a mesh of fine silver wire that had escaped her through their dark lenses—a Faraday mesh, just like their vests.

  “Well, hang it all,” Jeremiah said. Patrick raised his knee and tried to kick the glass in, cursing as his heel rebounded. Lord Christopherson looked up at them, blue eyes glinting beneath the brim of his hat; then he returned his gaze to his operation. She said, “And now he’s ignoring us!”

  “Damn the cheeky bastard,” Patrick said, running round the pyramid, rummaging through the scattered debris. He found a stool in the corner and swung it down with violence but barely managed to crack the glass, much less dent the grille. “There has to be a way down there!”

  “We fought our way through fifty footmen and smugglers to get this close,” Jeremiah said, feeling her face flush with anger as the disc began spinning faster and faster, and Christopherson just stood there, immovable as a Colossus beside the operation of his machine.

  But then she spied a round window behind him. “There’s an observation window overlooking the hangar on both levels,” she said, pulling out her grappling hook and pointing at the wide plate glass window. “Smash out the window here, and we’ll swing down on him!”

  Patrick threw the stool, and it bounced off the glass—which cracked and slowly began to sag in its frame. He caught the stool on rebound and hurled it again with a savage roar, and this time the stool sailed straight through the glass, drawing with it whatever reinforcing threads ran through it so the whole window slumped out of its frame like a ragged glass quilt.

  Jeremiah and Patrick hooked their grapples into the frame, ran towards the window, and leapt out into space, swinging down on their lines, straight into the huge round window behind Lord Christopherson, kicking in unison as their feet met the glass.

  The glass shattered. The metal grille behind it did not. Like the stool, they rebounded, falling to the ground on their backs with enough impact to evacuate their lungs. After a dazed moment, they regained enough air and wit to glance at each other as footmen ran up on either side.

  “Oh, this just keeps on being,” Jeremiah said, “not our best day.”

  ———

  Then the footmen fired.

  5.

  I See My Reputation Has Preceded Me

  JEREMIAH WOKE, seated but slumped, something tight about her chest and throat. She kicked her feet and heard Patrick choking behind her; then she felt him jerk his feet and choked herself as something tightened about her throat. Quickly she realized they were tied in back-to-back chairs, a rope about her crossed ankles looped to a noose around his neck, and vice versa. She looked down: her arms were tied at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, the knots hidden away where she could not see or touch them.

  “I see my reputation has preceded me,” Jeremiah said, wriggling her fingers helplessly.

  “Just common sense,” said Ryder, the Baron’s hawk-nosed deputy. Unlike the footmen, he stood out in a gentleman’s theater coat and rippling black hair that touched his shoulders as he raised his head. “One doesn’t leave a prisoner free, much less one known for escape artistry—”

  “The girl has a reputation?” asked a young, severe woman in a sharp black jacket, elegant white bodice—and bustled grey dress new as Christmas, but styled half a century out of date. She raised an arch eyebrow. “Typical—for getting caught, not for actual accomplishments—”

  “I stand on my record,” Jeremiah said, eyes slyly inspecting the woman’s bespoke gown: expensive fabrics, hand stitching—and subtle vine patterns woven into the brocade. “Down to my prediction that the Baron was bankrolled by . . . Emigrationists.” Now, she’d said no such, in fact quite the opposite, and even Patrick opened his mouth, but she jerked her feet to silence him, throwing more fuel on the fire. “New money? Marks you as . . . a Kent, am I right, dear?”

  “Whaaat?” The woman’s eyes flashed—just as Jeremiah had intended. “New money—a Kent! How dare you sully my name with those traitors to everything that my family stands for! I am a Bannerman, and we don’t run from our problems, we stand for responsible government—”

  “And we all know what that means,” Patrick said. “I owe you a sovereign.”

  “Told you,” Jeremiah said over her shoulder to Patrick. “Restorationist.”

  “Well, of course we’re Restor—well I mean—now you listen to me,” the woman spluttered, waggling her umbrella at a laughing Jeremiah while Ryder gently intervened. “You . . . you think you know me just because you . . . you looked up a social registry before you came—”

  “Prepwork,” Jeremiah said. “The hallmark of a professional—”

  “Why you . . . you ridiculous tomboy—”

  “Don’t engage her, Lady Bannerman,” a strong voice said, as a heavy step grew closer. Lord Christopherson loomed over Ryder and Lady Bannerman, a head taller than either. “She can ask a thousand questions, poke a thousand holes—and have you spill out your soul before you know it.”

  “Hello, Uncle,” Jeremiah said, slowly raising her eyes to him. Lord Christopherson was as towering as she remembered from her youth: past two meters ten, pushing two meters twenty. “If you’re that a
fraid of what I might say, why not stuff me in a broom closet?”

  “So you can wriggle free unobserved?” Christopherson asked. “We might as well leave you in the machine shop—” And then he stopped, put his hand to his brow, and kneaded it. “See what I mean? She’ll talk us into leaving her in the machine shop, and she hasn’t even gotten started—”

  “My next thought was,” Jeremiah said, “if my mouth is so dangerous, why not gag me—”

  “Careful,” Patrick intoned. “Two might pay for the taunts of one—”

  “—but then I realized: you must want more than an audience; you want a review,” Jeremiah finished, still fixing her uncle in her gaze. She let her vision shift up to the Zodiac ring turning above his head. “So what’s on the playbill, Uncle? What performance will we witness?”

  Lord Christopherson stared down at her as the ring above him spun faster and faster.

  “Lady Bannerman,” he said, withdrawing a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. “I understand you want to see the results of your investment, but with soldiers of the Liberated Territories penetrating to the very next room, I really must insist you take to your carriage—”

  “Yes, yes of course,” Lady Bannerman said, seeming to deflate.

  “As for my niece,” Lord Christopherson said, tying the handkerchief in a knot, “Things are clearly already out of hand. If you would do the honors, sir,” he said, handing the handkerchief to Ryder, “I have a few final details to attend to—”

  “What? No,” Lady Bannerman said. “That’s no way for a gentleman to treat a woman!” She snatched the handkerchief from him—and without so much as a by-your-leave, shoved it into Jeremiah’s mouth. “I should be the one to shut up that lippy bitch—”

  “Oi—ffmmff!” Jeremiah cried, eyes shooting daggers.

  “And if you’d used that mouth properly,” Lady Bannerman whispered, meeting Jeremiah glare for glare, before cocking her head at Patrick, “that one would be doing your fighting for you, rather than you dragging yourself through it—and a calling me a Kent? The nerve!”