Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “From . . . my artisans?” Jeremiah said, perplexed.

  “My Artisans? Where’s that, in Lenox—oh you mean, like, handmade?” The girl squealed again. “For a costume! Totally hardcore! Can I take a picture?”

  “You . . . can?” Jeremiah said slowly.

  “Great,” the girl said, stepping back a pace. She pulled out a glossy black lozenge, about the size of a snuff box or perhaps a mint tin, and held it up with a hand covered with a thousand bangles. “Everyone say cheese!”

  “Cheese?” Georgiana asked.

  “Well, I’ve never—” Patrick began.

  And then the lozenge went shh-clikk and the girl beamed. “Oh, that’s great!” she said, staring into the odd little black mint tin. Then she pocketed it with a grin and walked off in her big fuzzy boots. “Thanks!”

  “I could not be more baffled if you’d pulled all my tubes,” Georgiana said.

  “Miss!” Jeremiah said, going after her. “If I could ask—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, turning back towards them. “That was rude. Of course you’d want to see yourselves. Here you go!”

  The girl pulled the little black lacquered box out, tapped it, and turned it around, showing a tiny picture of Jeremiah, Georgiana, and Patrick, standing right before the wall as they were only a few moments ago. Jeremiah gaped—and then blinked in astonishment when the picture changed, showing the edge of the girl’s hand obscuring her grinning face, all in live moving color.

  “That image is . . . astounding,” Jeremiah said.

  “Yeah, you look great,” the girl said, oblivious to the change of picture. Then the lacquered box suddenly chimed and displayed the word “Mom” in bold letters. “Hey, I’ve got to take this,” the girl said, staring at the picture, then putting the lozenge to her ear. “Have fun at your party, or whatever! Hey, Ma, be right there. You’ll never believe these costumes I saw—”

  And the girl ran down to the corner and hopped into a silvery bubble that slid up without a sound—a peculiar four-wheeled cart with vaguely Oriental branding upon it. The door slammed, the sleek vehicle curled around the corner with the slightest of whines, and only then, as it climbed the slight incline past them, did its hidden engine start up with a quiet little purr.

  Jeremiah looked back at her companions, mouth hanging open.

  Patrick was suddenly having trouble with the straps of his aerograph. “Why am I lugging this pack?” he asked, acting as if he were going to take it off. “I should just polish up a sliver of obsidian and pack it full of magic—”

  “Settle down,” Jeremiah said, laughing. “Whatever that was, it wasn’t magic. Georgiana, did that little gadget show give you any clue to our location?”

  But Georgiana was staring over Jeremiah’s head, eyes fixed on something. “I have indeed learned where we are,” she said. “But I learned it from something that’s less of a clue and more of a new conundrum.”

  Jeremiah whirled and followed Georgiana’s eyes, and immediately she saw it. Over the road, not fifteen meters away, stood a sign, like a horizontal archway. The broad banner was old, weathered . . . and said Atlanta 1996: Home of the Centennial Olympic Games.

  ———

  “Lady Westenhoq,” Jeremiah said. “I think we’ve found the meaning of your missing term.”

  15.

  Jumping the Tracks

  “AN OLYMPICS? IN Atlanta?” Birmingham’s tiny image asked out of the back of Patrick’s aerograph. “I can imagine the Greeks trying to restart the Olympics, but the Confederacy? Why? Damn foolishness—and why in that burnt-out hellhole!”

  “Apparently not so burnt,” Jeremiah said, glancing around the grimy alley they had ducked into to send their message. The narrow passage they’d found between two of the smaller buildings wasn’t burnt out at all, but was merely dirty from use, littered with refuse from what looked like a food service operation and endless fag ends of discarded cigarettes. In fact, the hulking, outbuilding-sized metal dustbin that shielded their call actually looked quite new, down to a fresh coat of green paint, recently scraped in places by the arms of some vast Mechanical Jeremiah desperately hoped not to meet. “The buildings in this city are as new as I’ve seen, but in only a few minutes we found two historical markers that showed this Atlanta was standing in our time—”

  “And I saw it, in our time, in college,” Harbinger said. “Atlanta was still a crater.”

  “So I was right,” Lord Birmingham said. “The blackguard did manage to save Atlanta—”

  “Then we couldn’t exist,” Georgiana said. “At least, I don’t think we could—but I am certain Lord Christopherson couldn’t have set a destination forwards in time that depended on having him having made changes backwards in time—unless he could navigate between the timelines.”

  Birmingham’s mouth fell open. “Between the timelines?”

  “It’s Georgiana’s missing term, sir,” Jeremiah said. “That imaginary coordinate: it wasn’t just an error or a cross-current. It’s a direction, chosen as part of a deliberate act of navigation. We haven’t just jumped forwards. We’ve slid sideways in time.”

  “Sideways in time?” Birmingham asked. “Speak sense—”

  “We’ve jumped the tracks, sir,” Patrick said, leaning back over his shoulder. “There was some point in time where we turned right, and these people turned left. Over a century, our tracks diverged. Plugging in Christopherson’s daft machine has bumped us over onto their track.”

  Birmingham scowled. “Break this down for me, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “You said changes to the past. Other than this Olympics—”

  “It wasn’t just one Olympics,” Georgiana said. “The one held here thirteen years ago was the hundredth, or at least the hundredth anniversary. For that to happen in 1996, they would have to have been going on in our time—twelve years before our time, actually—”

  “And we maintain civil relations with the Greeks and the Confederacy,” Lord Birmingham said. “If a renewed series of Olympic games have been going on for over a decade, we’d have heard of it—so, I repeat, the blackguard succeeded. He’s changed history.”

  “Perhaps not,” Georgiana said. “Sir, had you ever had to make a choice? For example, sir, had you refused this mission, I’d wager you’d be having tea at your eldest daughter’s right now. So you can imagine two worlds, one that you’re in, and one where you’re . . . different—”

  “But one is the real world we face,” Birmingham said, “and the other is an artifice, a mental phantom we use to help us decide. You can’t depart from the solid ground, fly across the seas of possibilities, and then disembark in a figment! That’s a category error, Lady Westenhoq—”

  “We discussed this very thoroughly before we called you, sir,” Jeremiah said. “Not to flatter you, sir, but suppose, for a moment, that your participation in this mission was the deciding factor between its success and failure. So think it through. In our world, we catch Lord Christopherson, and he ends his days caged for treason. In the world where you unwisely chose to have tea with your granddaughters, Christopherson wins and overthrows Victoriana. Your choice to have tea today could change the flag that flies over half the world a century from now.”

  “Well . . . well of course, certainly,” Birmingham said. “Two completely different histories—but can’t only one of them be real? Is this imaginary term quite literal? Has Christopherson charted a course out of the realm of reality and into a world of . . . of fiction?”

  “I doubt it,” Georgiana said. “I suspect this world is every bit as real as our own, just . . . some distance sideways in the Continuum. Einstein considered such a possibility, when first reconciling his work with quanta with Riemann’s theories of the curved ether.”

  At the name of Georgiana’s former lover, Birmingham frowned. “Lady Westenhoq,” he said gent
ly, “I don’t doubt your technical expertise, but the more outlandish a hypothesis sounds, the more skeptical I am about its soundness. Isn’t there a simpler explanation than something out of an aerograph romance? Time travel was hard enough to swallow, but jumping tracks?”

  “On the time travel, we’re quite certain,” Georgiana said. “We met a young lady with a transponding aerograph that fit in the palm of her hand. She took our pictures with it, both moving and still, and with the same device received and responded to a call from her mother. There’s no one, anywhere, that has the first idea of how to achieve miniaturization on that scale, much less its dynamic range of function. Not even the Austrians have that technology. Not even close.”

  Jeremiah opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. “She’s right.”

  “So we’re definitely forwards,” Georgiana said. “We’ve traveled in time. And, unless every street sign and historical marker and scrap of paper in eyeshot are made up for our benefit, we’re definitely in a place whose history differs from ours. We’ve jumped tracks. That’s . . . well, not the only possible explanation, but the first one that seems to fit the facts—much less the settings on Lord Christopherson’s device.”

  “Which means,” Jeremiah said slowly, “that our assumptions were wrong. That the past was not his aim. That this was not a mistake. Lord Christopherson came here, forwards in time and across the tracks of choices, deliberately. Why would he do that?”

  “Lady Westenhoq said there were two reasons a man might travel through time,” Birmingham said. “The first was to change the past. The second was to find a weapon in the future. The same would hold for an alternate future.”

  “And these people are more advanced, or at least differently advanced, than anyone ever expected,” Jeremiah said. “So . . . our first guess is that there’s something here that Lord Christopherson desperately wants.”

  “How can he want a specific thing from a future he’s never been to?” Birmingham asked.

  “Perhaps he’s been here before,” Jeremiah muttered. “Of course. Of course he has. He’s been conducting reconnaissance on alternate realities—bugger me, we’re conducting reconnaissance on an alternate reality right now! Question is, what can be found in this one?”

  “Flying machines, for starters,” Georgiana said.

  “Or magic photographic lozenges,” Patrick replied.

  “Harbinger! Whatever it is, I suggest you find it, Commander Willstone,” Birmingham said. “Scout out the region and find the most damaging technology you can. And Lady Westenhoq—find a library. Find a history. See if you see something that Lord Christopherson, our alleged misogynist reactionary, might have liked. I accept your reasons about why a man might visit the past or future, but I can easily think of a reason a grundyguard like him might jump tracks.”

  “Which is?”

  ———

  “To get a template,” Birmingham said. “If the man doesn’t like our history, perhaps he’s come here to get a blueprint of a history he does.”

  16.

  A World Without Liberation

  THE FIRST THING that Jeremiah noticed about this alternate future Atlanta—indeed, the first thing her eyes had set on in this reality—was they had a method to make cheap, plentiful plate glass. And not the heavy, slightly warped carbonate sheets that graced the Moffat’s; no, every building, storefront, and even home seemed faced with vast, clear panes as smooth and color free as the expensive mechanical-drawn borosilicate that adorned the bridge of the Prince Edward.

  Here, the Newfoundland Airship Conservatory would be just another building.

  The second thing that she noticed was that this alternate South had found a solution to the slavery question, just as Victoriana and the Confederacy had. Many of the men and women of the streets of Atlanta were Negroes, and not just jet-black members of the servant class: there were light and dark, businessmen and tourists, shopkeeps and patrons, the rich and the poor.

  But here, there were many, many poor; clearly this future hadn’t solved the problem of beggary. Some of the people in the streets were brutally poor, worn and dazed as the opium addicts of India or the lost souls of the Spanish Mediterranean.

  It hurt just to look at some of them. Jeremiah was brought back to her days in India, and not the pleasant times in the harem of the oh-so-willingly-deceived Prince of Bangalore, but to the crowded streets and pressing hands of Bombay, on the run as a beggar.

  But the worst part was that this world had never experienced Liberation.

  Jeremiah knew she was overly sensitive to the family project, and at first tried to pass it off: there were clearly women engaged in trade, in all sorts of dress. But when she looked deeper, seeing past the flashy tourists, the desperately impoverished, and the shopkeeps in uniform—when she looked with her matahari eyes, trying to suss out the structure of class relationships and the practices of the men and women of power and trade—the differences were obvious.

  Only the men dressed serious and sober, as in a sense she did. They wore dark suits over comfortable pants with gleaming shoes, moving from meeting to meeting with envious punctuality. She wagered every one of them carried a pocket watch as she did, or whatever the twenty-first century equivalent of a timepiece was—perhaps the omnipresent bands on people’s wrists.

  But where the men were stalwart pillars, the women were peacocks. They dressed in bright colors, short skirts, midriff tops and tied-off shorts, and a thousand stylish boots Jeremiah just could die for. But, at least at a first glance, the bulk of the women appeared to be shopping or socializing, rather than on business errands. Even the few businesswomen wore short dresses that mimed the male suit while showing a harlot’s leg. Not that a harlot’s leg was a bad thing, of course, but not a one of them had the visible substance of . . . of . . . Georgiana.

  Jeremiah grimaced at the thought, which was certainly unfair of her. Clearly, she’d inherited her family’s prejudices against the dresses women had been forced into prior to Liberation—hard not to, with a great-aunt tarred and feathered for wearing a man’s slacks, and with reactionaries like the Lady Bannerman who might want to bring the practice back—but many women, like Georgiana, loved bustles just fine, and Jeremiah’s grandmother would have dressed her down for blaming these women for following the rules enforced by their culture.

  “A woman in a burkha,” she had said, “has to fight harder for her own Liberation than you.” So, assuming hearts were the same across universes, these women were no doubt fighting as hard or harder for Liberation than Jeremiah ever had—but, still, this world was visibly different, starting with segregated dress, and she wondered whether it had other features her uncle wanted.

  Growing up in her family had left a stick up her arse about issues of Liberation that most of her contemporaries considered long settled, so Jeremiah kept silent, observing the world and its differences, but moments later, her compatriots voiced aloud what she’d been thinking.

  “Blacks in all trades,” Patrick said, “but where are the gentlewomen of commerce?”

  “Scarcely a woman in a suit,” Georgiana said.

  “And not a man in a dress,” Patrick said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Georgiana said. “It’s almost as if—”

  “Liberation never happened,” Jeremiah said grimly.

  “Here we go again,” Patrick said.

  “Oi!” Jeremiah said. “You lot brought it up—”

  “Well, never’s a strong statement,” Georgiana said.

  “Quite right,” Patrick said. “Clearly these women aren’t limited to bustles—”

  “Not all women,” Georgiana said, “have the figure or inclination to wear a tailcoat—”

  “Clearly these people have made progress on the question of women, but I doubt our version of Liberation transpired,” Jeremiah said. She star
ed darkly at the two of them. “Maybe Birmingham hit the mark when he suggested Christopherson was here to seek a template.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Patrick said sharply. “What’s his move—go raid a library, then head back in time to assassinate his own great-grandmother? No. His operation’s far larger than that. He’s here for something else. Something to do with that copper egg, I wager.”

  Jeremiah’s jaw dropped. Her uncle had indeed loaded that great copper egg, the outcome of his controlled Incursion, onto his Machine and come here. And likely brought as well the Zeppelin-Rogers One Naught One. They’d become so caught up in the wonders of time travel—and the harm one might be able wreak with it—that they’d forgotten they were chasing a blackguard here who had not come on a pleasure jaunt with nothing in his suitcase but sandshoes and shirtsleeves.

  “You’re right, I can’t let my personal history with the man blind us to alternatives,” she said. “We’ve got to find a source of information—Georgiana, a bookstore or library or antiquarian who can help ground us, and Patrick, a map or almanac or newsman who can lay out the territory.”

  “And you?” Patrick asked.

  “My natural inclination is to scout out a safe point, then try a few recces to get the lay of the land. But, if this is indeed a world without Liberation, or at least not as Liberated . . .” Jeremiah grimaced. “I might have better luck trying to extract some . . . human intelligence.”

  Patrick stiffened. “Not Austria again—”

  “No,” Jeremiah said, “I’m in no rush to spread my legs for the first creepy old codfish aristocrat we run across. But I am a matahari . . . and I find the less Liberated a culture is, the more men of influence are likely to unwisely spill secrets to some ‘pretty young thing.’ ”

  Suddenly she spun, her coattails whipping around her. “Oh, sir!” she cried, miming one of the flightier characters she played. “Those secrets make you sound so . . . powerful. You have such a privy view of all the hidden things. Oh, do tell me more—”