Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  Jeremiah halted abruptly. Where had he gone? Hang that, where were her compatriots? She pulled back out of the steam and waved to them, letting Georgiana and Patrick catch up before leading them into the vapors. “Keep moving, keep moving. At least get round this corner.”

  “Please, please,” Georgiana said, heaving. “I am not a soldier.”

  “‘A woman must train twice as hard as a man,’” Jeremiah quoted, hefting her blunderblast and reaching to give Georgiana an arm to help her round the corner into the gloomy, shadowed canyons of concrete and steel behind the back of the structure. She shook her head, trying to remember how her mother had phrased it. “‘And that for half the result.’”

  “Then clearly you must train at least five times as hard as a man, because you’ve bested me,” Patrick said, himself winded as he joined them. “We, we need a break—oh my. If you girls don’t want him or me, I’ll take him.”

  Jeremiah turned to see the dark young man standing in the corridor in a shaft of light, posture as proud as a soldier’s, perfectly balanced and still even atop his rolling board. He was a notch shorter than Patrick, and his skin was a shade or two lighter—perhaps grandparents from Spain rather than Africa—but he was equally ripped. Muscles bunched in his arms when he reached up to pull down his dark glasses, and when he did so, he revealed eyes that were black and warm.

  “Love the goggles, chiquita,” he said.

  Jeremiah adjusted them. “Thanks, niño bonito,” she said, resisting the urge to lick her lips. “Tell me, boy, what’s that wonderful transport device?”

  “This?” he said. “A . . . skateboard? Haven’t you seen one?”

  “Never,” she said, stepping forwards. “What powers it?”

  “Gravity,” he said, “and my two strong legs.”

  He was flirting with her. Excellent. Perhaps she did need a warmup.

  “Watching you on it,” she said, “is quite invigorating.”

  Even with his dark skin, she could see him flush. “Ah, well, chiquita—”

  “You followed us,” she said. “From the arcade.”

  “The arcade?” he said, baffled.

  “The . . . ‘mall,’” Jeremiah said. “And don’t play the fool—I saw you.”

  “All right, chiquita,” the young man said, a little more confidently. “I saw you too—and yes, I followed to get your number, but after the pigs swarmed you, it looked like you needed a hand.”

  “My . . . number,” Jeremiah said. She wondered what that was a euphemism for. “So you followed three miscreants who tangled with the police?”

  “What are they gonna do with me?” the young man said, with a bit of a smirk. “I’m just a skater boy checking out the action. Ask me anything, I’ll Miranda. And I don’t know anything, anyway, other than you are hot and I wanted your number.”

  She smirked back at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, flushing deeper. “It’s true.”

  Running feet sounded round the corner, and Jeremiah tensed, flattening herself against the edge. “Crap,” she cursed, drawing her Kathodenstrahl.

  “Whoa, chiquita, go easy!” the young man hissed under his breath.

  “Quiet!” Jeremiah hissed back, listening carefully; the feet were receding. Apparently they’d missed this narrow blind turn, as she and her fellow Expeditionaries almost had. Slowly she relaxed.

  “You’re safe from the pigs here,” the man said. “No need to kill anybody—”

  “Kill anybody?” Jeremiah said. “What did you say?”

  “What kinds of barbarians to you take us for?” Georgiana said.

  “She drew a gun,” the young man said, eyes wide, hands in the air.

  “An electric,” Jeremiah said, holding up the Kathodenstrahl. “It’d do a number on your hair, but not likely to kill you unless you have a weak heart.”

  “An electric gun?” the young man asked, staring at it. “Like . . . a Taser?”

  “Don’t know that make, but sounds like,” Jeremiah said, holstering the Kathodenstrahl and rebuttoning her tailcoat. “Thanks for your help, ‘skater boy,’ but they have enough gentlemen and gentlewomen for a deep sweep of the area. We’d better move on. Are you still willing to help us?”

  “Sure enough,” he said, and then his lip quirked up. “For your number.”

  “Capital,” she said, “but I’m new in town and don’t have a number yet.”

  “Not even a cell phone?”

  “Not even a cell phone,” she said, smiling at that little extra bit of intelligence. So that’s what the “number” was for: access to one of those wedges of magic. “Will a name do for now?”

  “For now,” he said. “Marcus Vallejo.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Marcus,” Jeremiah said, bowing and giving her tailcoat a flourish. “Jeremiah Willstone.” He raised an eyebrow, but she pressed on. “My companions, Patrick Harbinger and the Lady Georgiana Westenhoq, second Viscountess Greylock.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mister Vallejo,” Georgiana said.

  “Behave,” Jeremiah said under her breath, as Patrick and the man shook firmly.

  “Only if you’re quick,” Georgiana whispered back.

  Jeremiah pouted, pursed her lips. “All right, Mister Vallejo—”

  “Marcus was fine,” he said quickly. “Or just Mark—”

  “All right, Mark,” she said, smirking a touch at the thought of a man named after her great-grandmother—though her smirk faded as she realized that kind of gendered naming nonsense was precisely why her great-grandmother had taken a man’s name in the first place. “You’re a native to Atlanta, I presume? What would you recommend for someone wanting to lay low?”

  “Someone wanting to lay low near a library,” Georgiana said.

  “You—you guys can’t crash at my place,” Marcus said nervously. He held up his hands quickly when Jeremiah scowled and pulled out a tiny pack he’d had over his shoulder, showing her its front. “Not that I’m ditching you, Jeri, it’s just that it’s a dorm—”

  “It’s Jer-eh-MI-yah,” Jeremiah said distinctly, noting the Georgia State University logo writ across the front of the battered bag. “So you’re a student—”

  “My dorm room’s a bit small—three guys in the space of two,” he said. “And it’s, ah, it’s not coed.” At her blank look, he amplified, “We’re, ah, not supposed to have girls.”

  Georgiana leaned into her ear. “Definitely Liberation hasn’t happened.”

  “Neither has the loss of virginity,” Jeremiah murmured back. “The boy’s red as a beet at the thought of taking a girl back to his cell, and that with company to keep it innocent!”

  “Careful with the innocent-seeming ones,” Georgiana whispered back.

  “Trying to slow me down?” Jeremiah returned.

  “Oh, most definitely,” Georgiana responded.

  Jeremiah smirked and stepped forwards, gauging the young man’s mettle. He’d first appeared suave, yet scratch the surface, and you found an innocent—but didn’t every man start as a boy? Regardless, he’d exposed a younger facet to her, and she decided to play against it.

  “All right . . . ‘skater boy,’ we’re a bit too hot for you to take back to your mother,” she said, though, from his proud soldier’s stance, the dark young man was probably far past that point. “What would you suggest to a friend looking to hide out with some hot companions?”

  “Get . . . a hotel room?” Marcus said, reddening further as she stepped right up to him. He smelled nice and was prettier up close—but did not retreat as she approached, not one centimeter. “But you gotta be careful about that. Pay with cash, so they can’t track your credit card.”

  ———

  “Cash,” Patrick said, “will not be a problem.”

/>   22.

  Taking Things A Step Further

  APPARENTLY THE Americans were quite proud their country had survived, because they’d slapped its name over everything in sight. So far, Jeremiah and her companions had seen AmericasBank, AmericasMart, and now . . . America’s Best Motel.

  At first Jeremiah doubted this dingy two-story warren was best at anything, but once you got past the slightly weird smell, the old rusty railings, and the looming overhang of a large office building the next lot over, it wasn’t so bad.

  America’s Best Motel distinguished itself with large suites, better appointed than any you were likely to find in Victoriana short of hotels frequented by the Peerage: Furnished rooms. Running water. An attached bath. A private transponding aerograph, albeit voice circuit only.

  And then there were the appointments you could not find in Victoriana save an inventor’s lab: Conditioned air. Electric lights. A self-chilled icebox. Something mysterious called “Wi-Fi” that made Marcus coo . . . and a receiving aerograph of such amazing brilliance and color that you were not likely to find it in Victoriana at all.

  The dark young man casually tapped the aerograph on. “Oh, look, the Padres! Wait, it’s a replay,” he said, sitting down on the bed, but before Jeremiah began to understand the game Marcus picked up a black stick and began clicking it, causing the aerograph to move through a sequence of programs with dizzying rapidity. “Hell, same old story, five hundred channels but nothing on.”

  Marcus turned the aerograph off with a casual flick of his wrist and asked, “Well . . . what’dja think? Digs meet with your approval, chiqi—ah, Jeremiah?”

  “They . . . do,” Jeremiah responded, sitting down beside him, looking around the place curiously, then back at their dark-eyed savior. “They do indeed.”

  “So . . . before I leave you,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t do that just yet,” Jeremiah said.

  “At least not before directing me to a library,” Georgiana said, stepping through the connecting door to the other room. They’d rented a “suite,” really, two linked rooms, for seventy-five seventy-nine a night; by Patrick’s calculations, that meant, if they husbanded their money carefully, eating daily no more than one meal such as they had today, they had to find Lord Christopherson sometime before 2017. “Some place I can look into a little history—”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Marcus said dubiously, leaning back onto the bed on his elbows. “Your looks are really distinctive. The police probably put an APB out for your description, assuming that they didn’t burn you with a security camera. I’d lay low until the heat clears.”

  Georgiana frowned. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” she said.

  “Agreed,” Jeremiah said, calculating risks and rewards in her head. “Perhaps we can find a secondhander or quicktailor that can outfit us with dispatch—”

  “Whoa,” Marcus said, sitting up and raising his hands. “I’m serious: you will get burnt if you go out. I don’t know why you have a bug up your ass about your history paper, but you can borrow my netbook and use Wikipedia while I go out and pick you up some stuff at the five and dime.”

  “Thanks,” Jeremiah said, watching him get up, walk over to his pack, and squat down, resting on the balls of his feet, ferreting in it. Even given the young man’s baggy pants, she could see that his muscles didn’t stop at his tattooed arms. “Much obliged—”

  “You’re drooling,” Georgiana said into her ear.

  “Oh, hush,” Jeremiah whispered. “And you’re blocking my view.”

  Patrick now joined them, a glass of water in his hand. “Netbook?”

  Marcus was already pulling a glossy black wedge out of his tiny pack. “They’re a new breed of computer,” he said, flipping it open and exposing a tiny keyboard set beneath a black glass rectangle that lit up after a moment and revealed itself to be a tiny aerograph. The screen almost immediately dimmed. “Ah, battery’s a little low . . . let me plug it in while the Wi-Fi syncs.”

  He handed the featherlight device to Jeremiah, who held it, stunned, as he pulled out a cord, plugged it into the wall, and ran it to the slim wedge of magic, which immediately got brighter and made a small happy noise, and despite herself, Jeremiah laughed.

  “All right, and we’re online,” Marcus said, taking the netbook back and fiddling with it for a bit. “There: the Internet. An entire planet of information at your fingertips.” He handed it to Georgiana. “Start with Wikipedia, it’s the best.”

  “I . . . shall,” she said, smiling at him.

  “You’re drooling,” Jeremiah said.

  “Oh, hush,” Georgiana responded. “I must confess, I’m not familiar with this breed of computer,” she said, sitting down on the bed with the wedge of magic resting primly on her lap. “But I’m a quick study. Show me the punches?”

  “Certainly,” he said, sitting beside her.

  “Excuse us a moment,” Jeremiah said, rising as he leaned in and began showing things to Georgiana. She collared Patrick and brought him into the next room. “Well? Thoughts?”

  “His advice is sound,” Patrick said. “He comes off as a boy but has the mind of a gentleman rogue. We are quite out of place and need to ‘lay low’ until the immediate search is off. If he’s willing to purchase us presentable clothes, so much the better.”

  “What do you think he wants out of it?”

  Patrick leaned back and folded his arms with a bit of a smirk. Then he took her by the shoulders and stood her in front of the mirror behind the dresser.

  “Ah,” Jeremiah sighed. “The things I do for my country.”

  “Lie back and think of Empire,” Patrick said. His expression became pained, then he shook his head. “On second thought, don’t, and not just because I’d like a go. Don’t sell yourself short. You’re right about that boy. He’s a babe, a student, a student computer, looks like. If he’s anything like our computers, you can get his whole purse for a kiss, not that we need it.”

  “I’d give him more than that freely,” Jeremiah admitted, “but . . . it would be good to have a straight up adventure where I could rely on my fists and guns rather than my accidental attributes.”

  “Again, don’t sell yourself short; you’re more than just a beauty,” Patrick said, considering; then he took off his helmet. “Look, I’ll shed to my slacks, borrow the jumper I saw in the boy’s pack, and hunt down clothes. I can size you, and the two of you can ply him for data.”

  “No,” Jeremiah said. “We need to contact Birmingham, and I need you to operate the aerograph. I’m awful with the things.”

  Patrick nodded. “Unlike a ‘cell phone,’ an aerograph does work better if one man or woman runs it and another does the talking.”

  Jeremiah stood and went to the door. The dark young man was tapping and tweaking the machine, speaking animatedly to Georgiana, who was watching and fanning herself and clearly having a wonderful time. Jeremiah hated to interrupt, but—

  “Would you mind if we closed this?” she said.

  “Need to make a private call?” Marcus said.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

  He lowered his head. “Look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do . . . but you need a good lawyer. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you guys are the ones that broke the bank machine. They may not have that much money in them, but it’s enough to attract attention.”

  Jeremiah’s mouth quirked. Clearly her picture of this world’s economics wasn’t spot on. And using guys to refer to a mixed group of men and women? Perhaps this world hadn’t taken their path towards Liberation, but had arrived by a different route. “Thanks, Marcus. We’ll consider it.”

  “All right,” he said, slapping his thighs, an act which very nearly made Jeremiah pass out as his muscles bunched and jumped. “Georgie, are
you good?”

  “Yes, I think so,” she said, half hiding her face with her fan. “It is a general purpose computer, and I’ll manage, especially with those pointers.”

  “All right then,” he said, standing. “I hate to leave you, but I have got to get to my study group. French lit—I desperately need the help or I’ll flunk out. And, besides, it will give me an alibi. Just give me your sizes, and I’ll come back this evening with some more presentable clothes.”

  Georgiana and Jeremiah looked at each other; there was no guarantee that the sizes would translate. “Well, let’s see,” Jeremiah said, “my bodice runs ninety, seventy, ninety-five, but I go loose around the neck, say thirty-six—”

  “Thirty-six around the neck? And your bust is ninety? Nuh uh,” the young man said, glancing between her and Georgiana, prompting embarrassed looks all around. “Not even hers is . . . wait, you don’t mean in centimeters?”

  “You don’t use metric?” Patrick asked.

  “Uh, like, no,” Marcus said. “What do you think this is, France?”

  “Perhaps I should go with you,” Patrick said. “If you could just hang a moment, I’ll get Jeremiah set up for her, ah, call, and—”

  “First, no,” Marcus said, raising his hands. “I like you guys, I really do, but I took a huge risk helping you, and I really need to show up where people expect me to show up, or people will start to get suspicious.”

  “Fair enough,” Jeremiah said. “I understand the need for a good alibi.”

  “And second, no,” Marcus said. “You need to sit tight for at least a few hours, better, a few days.” He paused, letting that sink in. “You guys are extraordinarily distinctive. Right now, the only thing keeping you safe is that no one knows where you are.”

  And then there was a sudden harsh pounding on the door.

  ———

  “Jeremiah Willstone!” cried a voice. “Come out, I know you’re there!”

  23.

  Special Delivery

  “OH, FUCK,” MARCUS said, going pale as a sheet. Even in the clinch, Jeremiah’s mouth quirked: clearly the Comstock Act had been repealed here too, as Marcus continued the stream of profanity with abandon. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, they’ve got us—”