Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  An ersatz tiara, made entirely of magnifying glasses and spectracles, popped up from behind the phonographs, followed by the dark mess of hair, thick goggled lenses, and scowling grimace of the Younger Moffat—the shop’s most junior artisan, but still an expert weaponer.

  “Don’t you know anything, Commander? Completely different principles of operation,” Katarina Moffat said, pulling off her goggles and nesting them in her tiara, in the process revealing a face scarcely older than the urchin’s outside, yet all made up in a butterfly design in the latest chromatics. “Spectroscope’s Analogue, aerograph’s Boolean. Can’t plug a spectroscope into a Mechanical, and can’t plug an aerograph into a human computer—”

  Katarina squeaked and jumped as an alarm went off. Jeremiah whirled to see a timed latch disengage and a springloaded brass arm strike a spark, making a puff of flame roil up beneath the round kettle of a quickboiler. Ah: an antique, lacquered teasmade, dialed to brew tea for three.

  “Thanks for the primer,” Jeremiah said, sniffing at the gorgeous automated brewpot’s tea leaf canister: Lady Grey, maybe with a hint of lavender. Scrumptious. “After all, the only difference us poor mechanical engineers are likely to note is that spectroscopes simply look better—”

  “You tweak,” the Younger Moffat said, stomping out from behind the phonographs in combat boots over coveralls, with so many wrenches, hammers, and tools bouncing off her belt it was like she wore a skirt made of knives. “Boolean will win, mark my words. Analogue cylinders degrade on copy. They can’t be edited. You’ll never get this versatility out of an Analogue—”

  —and she gave the tall Mechanical a whap in passing. The “obsolete” copper man—which had been the latest model back in Jeremiah’s Academy days—reared back, shuddering; then deep in its bulbous chest gears clicked, cylinders spun, and sparks crackled as it restarted its greeting, croaking laboriously in a distorted, deeper, but still recognizable variant of Katarina’s voice:

  “Wel-come to the Mof-fat-ess . . . how may you help us to-day?”

  Jeremiah laughed, and Katarina waggled her finger. “Mark my words—oh my, are those new denims? Let me see! It’s like they’re sewn onto your legs—”

  “They are,” Jeremiah said, running her fingers down the brass buttons sewn into the leather stripe of the seam. When the Younger Moffat’s face screwed up in confusion, Jeremiah popped a button, showing a row of inner lacing within. “You can lace them down to your size—”

  “That I doubt, Commander,” Katarina said, leaning back and folding her arms. “My hands may be strong from working in this shop, but I’ll never get these thighs into pants that will fit you.” She smirked, swinging her bottom. “Not that I wouldn’t mind trying—trade you my coveralls?”

  “Your thighs would pose no barrier to my tailor—I can introduce you,” Jeremiah said, with a broad grin: the style would probably go quite well on Katarina. “And thanks for the offer, but think I’d be hard pressed to land a gentleman in those coveralls.”

  “I have no trouble,” Katarina said, grinning back, “but I don’t like them gentle. Nor do I require them to be men. You, for instance—”

  “Don’t scare off our regulars, Katie dear,” the Elder Moffat said, sweeping out of the back room in clicking heels and a rustle of purple satin, all gathered in a corset that made her gait as stately as her waist slender. Catherine, Katarina’s mother, was a head taller, her face was wider, her hair greying—but the twinkle in her eye made her look young enough to be her sister. She eyed the creaking Mechanical man, still stuck repeating its welcome, and said, “You’ve rewired it again—and missed a gearstop, I’ll wager. Shame on you, Katie. And how should it greet our customers?”

  Katarina stuck her lip out sullenly. “Good day, Commander,” she said with a reluctant bow, as her mother popped open the chest of the Mechanical and began rewiring it expertly. “Welcome to the Moffat’s. How may we help you today?”

  “My Kathodenstrahl,” Jeremiah said apologetically.

  Catherine Moffat clucked disapprovingly, closed the chest of the machine, and extended a beige-gloved hand towards Jeremiah. “What has gone wrong with the bloody thing this time? Another tube cracked on a rough and tumble?”

  “I—” Jeremiah began, but the teasmade went off. Katarina ran over to stop its squealing, and Jeremiah sighed. “Yes, of course,” Jeremiah said, pulling the stunner from her satchel. “A rough and tumble down some stairs.”

  “My, my,” Catherine said, plucking a pair of spectracles from Katarina’s hair with the expected splutter of squawks. “Katarina, fetch an extra setting for our guest. Had I known you were coming, Jeremiah, I’d have set it to pour four.”

  “No need,” Jeremiah said. “I’m on an adventurer’s clock today.”

  “Which is?”

  “Less hot tea and biscuits at four,” Jeremiah said, “and more flat pop and stale biscuits when you catch a breath.”

  Catherine again clucked. “Peerage running you ragged again?”

  “When do they not?”

  “Ah, the life of a commoner—hold the tea, Katie, Jeremiah is in a rush,” Catherine said, deftly opening the Kathodenstrahl with her gloved hands. “And check that shipment of thermionics from Newfoundland for spare glass for this Austrian toy—”

  “Oi,” Jeremiah said, as Katie stomped off into the back. “Not you too. Their like have served me well for a decade, and are lighter than anything else in my arsenal.”

  Catherine pushed the spectracles up into her hair. “I know, dear, but you have to face facts. This is the third time they’ve failed you in my recent memory. You need better equipment—and speaking of which, what is that I see over your shoulder?”

  Jeremiah glanced back with a smile, then unslung the weapon. “Harbinger’s blunderblast,” she said, proffering it to Catherine. “I borrowed it from him when the Kathodenstrahl failed me, and he says it’s no longer firing true.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” the Elder Moffat said, hefting it, then examining its long flared bell of a barrel. Her eyes narrowed, then narrowed further as she sighted down the brass sights. “Still . . . I haven’t seen one like this—”

  “Ah!” Katarina said, stopping short and nearly losing the huge mass of thermionic glasses she’d heaped up on her arms and ample chest. “Is that what I think it is? It is! A genuine Maxwell Electric Repeater!”

  “Katie dear, trade you one new-fangled monstrosity for another.”

  The Elder Moffat held the Repeater out to the Younger, who released all the thermionic glasses she was carrying onto the table with such abandon that Jeremiah had to dart forwards to keep them from tumbling to the floor.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Katie said, turning the Repeater in her hands. “What’s the bad lady done to you?”

  “Nothing!” Jeremiah said, raising her hands, then dropping them to catch a glass that threatened to roll away. “Well, perhaps clocked a bad man or two with its butt—”

  “Without its banding?” she asked, turning the gun over and over. “This isn’t a Ranger Special, dear. It may make it heavier, but it needs its bell-cage and buttstock when used hand to hand—and that harness of yours could use some padding, for your back and the gun.”

  “It is as I was given it,” she said, rising at last as the Elder Moffat returned with baskets to gather and sort the glasses.

  “Your boy Patrick—”

  “He’s not my boy,” Jeremiah said hotly.

  “—must like to travel light,” the Younger said, expertly but carefully opening the gun’s chamber. “But this without its banding is like carrying your thermionics without a frame. The only thing that’s kept it still firing this long,” she said, pulling out a long cylinder that gleamed like solid red wine, “is the fact that the guts are crystal.”

  “Is that . . . ruby?” Jeremiah asked.

 
; “It is indeed,” the Younger said, “and it is intact.” She slid it back into the housing. “Firing cage is still all right. I think I have a spec cylinder for this model. Let me find the right groove, and I’ll whittle you up a new bell-cage and buttstock.”

  “Thanks, Katie,” Jeremiah said.

  The Younger Moffat bowed and stepped to the back of the shop, and Jeremiah turned to help the Elder sort the tubes. “If you can spare some spares, I’ll take them, and whatever carrying case you can find. I also have a list of minor miscellanies for the Lady Westenhoq—”

  “Certainly,” Catherine said, taking the punchcard.

  “Thank you, Cathy,” Jeremiah said, raising a tube to her eye, reading the rating etched into the glass. Katarina hummed in the background, picking a wax cylinder from a huge slotted wall; then she turned back to the whittler’s desk, where the blunderblast’s crystals lay half disassembled before the length of its frame, still long and strong and brass. “Solid ruby guts.”

  “Which he could have easily had fixed at his own weaponer’s on Newbury Street,” Catherine said. “That boy is giving that gun to you, you know.”

  “I know,” Jeremiah said.

  “He’s set his cap on you, I think,” Catherine said.

  “What? No!” Jeremiah said. “The boy’s in a Boston marriage—”

  “He rooms with a man,” Catherine corrected. “Inference beyond that is loose talk—”

  “He’s dated a man,” Jeremiah shot back. “And he’s . . . well, quite fetching in a dress—”

  “And what gender do you most frequently see on his arm in that dress?” Catherine asked. “You’ve lived with Georgiana long enough for people to call it a Boston marriage, but there’s no doubt where your inclinations lie—with men. And no doubt about Patrick’s—with you.”

  “I know,” Jeremiah admitted, not wanting to admit that. “But I’m not just an Expeditionary. I’m a matahari. I need to be able to dine, wine, and . . . ah . . . intertwine . . . with a new target at any time without worrying I’ll be stepping on a heart back home.”

  Catherine scowled, clearly not wanting to hear that. “You need to give up that disposable life, find someone more permanent, more . . . proper,” she said. “You need to get yourself in a proper corset and get a proper man in you.”

  “Liberation is a century old now,” Jeremiah said, tilting her head: she’d just heard the sentiment from Lady Bannerman—and didn’t like hearing it from her friend. Still, she tried to answer lightly. “Women can take new roles. We can even change our dress.”

  Catherine glared at her. “It’s bad enough you’re in denim slacks,” she said. “Next you’ll be telling me you’ll paint yourself up like . . . like my daughter.”

  “Maybe I will,” Jeremiah said, though there was no chance of that. “I think I’d look quite nice painted up. Perhaps a dragonfly?”

  “Don’t you start. Do you know what these painted youngsters call themselves?” Catherine said. “They call themselves buggers! Do you know what that means?”

  “I know what that means,” Jeremiah said. “I even know how to do it.”

  “Commander Willstone!” Catherine said.

  “Leave her be,” cried a creaky old voice. Jeremiah and Catherine looked up to see the Eldest Moffat standing atop stairs steep enough to be a ladder, all ancient and wizened beneath a great crown of red-dyed hair, looking ever more like a wizard in his long brocaded coat. Jeremiah’s heart lifted: re-equipping was essential, but with the unprecedented uncertainty of her coming mission, a sitting with the Eldest Moffat was her most pressing need. He said, “Mya, come on up, bring me my tea, let me look after you while my girls finish working over your guns.”

  Jeremiah bowed to Catherine, took the cup, then turned to climb the stairs, jerking her hand back just as the gloved and goggled Katarina hooked a frayed power cable up to the whittler with a prodigious spark. After touching the whittled brass rail with the back of her hand to make sure it wasn’t live—always a danger, with the Younger Moffat whirling about the shop wiring everything to everything else—Jeremiah ascended, watching the spray of curled brass shavings erupt from the mechanical whittler as its arms danced to the song writ in the wax cylinder.

  She was deeply glad that the Elder and Younger Moffats were able to fix her weapons; they were the best armorers in town. But she was even more glad that their Eldest still worked his shop. Because as useful as their skills were, it was his clairvoyance that could help her.

  ———

  If her uncle had traveled through time, she’d need more than new guns.

  11.

  The Mechanisms of Mystery

  ATOP THOSE CREAKING stairs was another world. Gone was the industrial, the brass, the tubes, and the wires: here was velvet and wood, incense and statues. This dark warren was a shrine to the practices of cultures far away and superstitions of times long ago: East Indian idols and West Indian fetishes, Celtic runes and Castilian grimoires, Tarot cards and tea leaves—a cunning maze of curtains and cushions that evoked a nostalgia for a mystic tradition the Colonies had never truly had.

  And at the center of it all, in a long coat Jeremiah couldn’t decide was a cassock or a Chinaman’s, stood a slender man beneath a mane of red hair like faded fire: Charleston Moffat, the Eldest Moffat, grandfather of Catherine, great-grandfather of Katarina . . . and Jeremiah’s mentor.

  “Let me see you,” he said, reaching for her free hand with his worn, arthritic one, peering through his spectacles at the lines in her palm as the cup rattled in her other hand. “Been through quite a lot recently, haven’t you, my dear little Mya?”

  Jeremiah winced. She’d recommended the shop to Harbinger, even though he had his own artisans to fashion his equipment and mend his weapons; if he heard her nickname here, she’d never be rid of it. After trying and failing to gather the gumption to upbraid the old man, she finally said, “Learn all that from the lay of my lines, or the abrasions on my skin?”

  The Eldest Moffat smiled at her. “The abrasions,” he said, “though I’d never let the obvious signs of one of your many escapes distract me from the subtler signs that you’ve been through events of great portent. You’re worried, dear.”

  Jeremiah smiled, a little wan now. “I am. I’d like a reading.”

  “Of course you would,” the Eldest Moffat said. He noticed his cup of tea in her hand and took it graciously, fetching a second cup from a creaking glass cabinet. “I’ll split this with you, my dear. Step into my parlor.”

  Jeremiah took a seat in the curved, creaky little balcony. Bostonians of all kinds—aristocracy and urchins, businessmen and businesswomen, priests and workers—milled below, weaving their way around lumbering carts drawn by Mechanical horses; real policemen on real horses stood out at the corners, surveying the crowd. Even through the thick panes, she could see her autocycle being polished at a cylindershiner’s cart far up the street, and smiled. She’d owe the urchin another shilling . . . though she felt that pang of fear again; if she failed at her mission, would the urchin live to spend that coin? Then china clinked, and Jeremiah’s eyes turned back to Moffat, sitting down opposite her . . . and to the great crystal globe, sitting between them.

  “As always, your discretion is appreciated—” Jeremiah began.

  “Official Expeditionary business? Of course, I’ll leave it under my hat, as always but . . . why do you need the advice of an old man, Mya?” the Eldest Moffat asked, eyes twinkling. “I thought you’d given up consultants. Doesn’t the Eyrie have a pair of precocious precognitives now?”

  “We do, but . . . they can’t see what lies ahead,” Jeremiah said. “And that scares me.”

  “As it should: the Twins have an excellent reputation,” the Eldest Moffat said, the glint in his eye growing serious with professional concern. “I’d like to do a warm read, if I may,” he said
, rubbing his ancient hands over the globe to charge it up. “What worries you, Mya?”

  “Well,” Jeremiah said, and, leaning forwards, told him in confidence about the ZR-101’s theft, her failure retrieving it, her uncle’s escape—and the very real possibility that they’d interrupted him calling down an Incursion. “So now, we’re going to follow him, wherever that leads.”

  “Baron Abinger calling monsters down to Earth,” Moffat said, leaning back in his chair. “It boggles the imagination. The man made his name holding Foreigners back in Sumatra. He helped cordon off Iceland. He knows what we’re dealing with. Why would he switch sides?”

  “I don’t know,” Jeremiah said, uncomfortable that Moffat seemed to give her uncle more credit than she did. “In nine years fighting them, I’ve never understood the fools and madmen who take the side of the monsters. Perhaps he simply hopes to use their technology against them—”

  “That will end badly,” Moffat said.

  “He was ejected from the Defense League for attempting just such a tactic,” Jeremiah said. “Perhaps he’s bitter, perhaps misguided—perhaps insane. Regardless, we have to follow him—and, if Lady Westenhoq is right, follow him into the past. That’s why I came to you—”

  “Into the past,” Moffat said blankly.

  “Remember that magic clockwork I mentioned Lord Christopherson used to make his getaway?” Jeremiah said. “Georgiana thinks it’s a vehicle for traveling in time.”

  Moffat scowled. “Jeremiah . . . such a thing isn’t possible. The past is gone, the future hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Then how does your trade work?” Jeremiah asked with a laugh.

  “Badly, at best,” the Eldest Moffat replied. He extended his hand to the crystal globe, where murky phantoms gathered. “The best we can do is catch a glimpse of what may have passed, or what might become. You can’t travel to the past any more than you can set foot in a dream.”

  “Nonetheless, that’s where we’re going,” Jeremiah said. She held her hand to her lips. “If anything stays under your hat . . . this should: Georgiana thinks we can fit the navigation mechanism to an airship’s polarizing hull. That’s how Lord Christopherson made off with the ZR-101. We’ve got one of his mechanisms, we’ve got an airship—and that’s how we’ll follow.”