“Be calm,” Jeremiah said. One asset the room lacked was a decent back exit, something which had itched at her but clearly should have itched harder. But it was a suite, which gave them options. She unslung her blunderblast. “Harbinger.”
Patrick took the gun, stepped back into the suite, and closed the door. Georgiana drew her own electric ray and stepped back to the restroom.
“Willstone!” the voice screeched, and the pounding was harder. “I hear you moving around in there! You can’t hide from me!”
Jeremiah pulled in the lapels of her coat to hide her Kathodenstrahls, motioned Marcus back, and stepped to the door—opening it with one swift motion, right fist planted on her waist as if she was irritated.
“You called?” she asked pleasantly.
“I want Willstone!” barked the squat, ugly, clown-haired man who glowered at her outside the door. “Jeremiah Willstone! Where is he?”
“Oh, I’m Jeremiah Willstone,” Jeremiah said, putting on a mask a little brighter, more coquettish. Who could be offended at such a pretty little thing?
The man was taken aback. “Oh. Oh, I see, well, I’m sorry, miss,” he said, immediately becoming as embarrassed as Marcus had. Yet another sign this world was not Liberated: women were treated with kid gloves. Or perhaps that was unfair: she had caught him in an error, and he did seem apologetic—but deep in her breast, she felt a pang of annoyance whenever she played the coquette card and it actually worked. He said, “But you can’t go around doing this. It isn’t right.”
Her brow furrowed. “Doing what?”
“Sending a courier. Asking for special delivery, with signature! Making me come all the way up to the second floor on my lunch break!” His embarrassment evaporated, and he waved a big, stiff white envelope in her face. “You want a package, come pick it up at the desk!”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m . . . sorry. I can sign for it—”
“You do!” he said, his outrage slowly returning as she scribbled her name on the clipboard he held. “Just so you know, FedEx don’t deliver to hotel rooms. You come to the front desk, or get you a box like everybody else!”
“Of course, of course,” Jeremiah said. “So sorry.”
The man stood there, glaring at her, and Jeremiah realized he wanted a gratuity. She slipped him the first bill she found in her pocket, leaving him stunned. She took the envelope and let the door close, equally stunned.
“You’re getting messages from a Lord?” Marcus said suddenly, eyes bugging at the envelope. “And you’re a Commander? I knew you were British—”
Jeremiah’s eyes bugged as well, and she looked to see the name on the label:
FROM: LORD CHRISTOPHERSON, 5TH BRN/ABN
STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR CENTER
2575 SAND HILL ROAD
MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA, 94025-7015
TO: COMMANDER JEREMIAH WILLSTONE, VDL
c/o ROOM 202 AMERICA’S BEST MOTEL #217
149 PINE STREET
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, 30308
hand deliver 2:27 p.m.—signature required
“Oh, that cheeky bastard,” Patrick said, rejoining them.
“Wait, what? How did he get this address?” Marcus said, his voice unexpectedly suspicious and sharp. “Nobody’s called anybody, and we picked this place at random—hang on. That’s . . . that’s shipped two-day. The time is for now. How is that even possible? We just got here!”
“You have no idea,” Jeremiah said.
“He didn’t even know we were coming,” Patrick said.
“That we know of,” Georgiana said darkly. “We used his machine—”
“No, no, no!” Marcus said. “We picked the place, the room, everything, at random; it was just here—damn it, this is some kind of fucking prank!” Abruptly he ripped the package from her hands, sat on the bed, and took up the tiny computer. “Tracking number,” he muttered, holding the envelope up; then he tapped on the keyboard, struck it with a flourish, then leaned back, waiting.
“May I?” Jeremiah said politely, extending her hand.
“What? Oh, rude, sorry,” he said, handing the envelope back to her. “It’s taking a bit to come up; that probably means this is just a faked—oh, shit.”
“The package has definitely been tampered with,” she said, opening the hard outer envelope to reveal a floppy inner envelope. The address was written in her uncle’s handwriting, but this envelope had been ripped open and resealed with clear tape. Something repurposed? But when she flipped the interior envelope she found it sealed with Lord Christopherson’s wax seal—not once, but twice; the first seal cracked open and retaped, and then a second seal pressed down hard upon it, with his initials scratched into the wax. “Oh, shit,” she said, forgetting her manners: good thing the Comstock Act had been repealed here too. “This is really from him.”
“Oh shit is right,” Marcus said. “This was shipped Monday the thirteenth, two days ago. From Stanford, California. It has intermediate tracking and everything. It’s either totally legit, or we are being screwed with by a hacker extraordinaire.”
“We are being screwed with one way or the other,” Georgiana said. “Why from Stanford, California, for example? How does that figure into his plans?”
“Forget his plans for a moment—what I don’t understand is how he did it at all,” Marcus said. A conundrum, yes, but it seemed to hit him harder than it hit Jeremiah’s compatriots, sending him off into conflicted thought. He mused, “The man would have to have a time machine—”
“Well,” Patrick said loudly. “Aren’t you going to open it, Commander?”
“What? Oh yeah, see what he sent you,” Marcus said, sitting up like an eager puppy. “I want to see why this guy went to all this trouble. Who is this Lord Christopher anyway?”
“Christopherson,” Jeremiah said, staring at Marcus, “and he’s my uncle.”
“The person we’re all here to see, in point of fact,” Patrick said.
“Wow,” Marcus said. “So he’s . . . what? Your patron or something?”
Jeremiah glared at him, then cracked the envelope open. “God forbid.”
To Cmdr. Jeremiah Willstone, VDL
Dear Mya,
So good to see you today. Thank you for coming. I understand your concerns. My actions may seem confusing, but I think you’ll soon find things are not what they seem. The success of your mission and the fate of your compatriots depends on us working together. If you agree, come to the park. Central gazebo, Thursday midnight.
Best, “Unca Bernie”
Ld. B. Christopherson, 5th B.A.
“That . . . cheeky . . . bastard,” Jeremiah said, hands shaking with rage.
“The man is a walking menace, is what he is,” Patrick said.
“So your uncle,” Marcus said cautiously, “is your . . . mortal enemy?”
“No,” Jeremiah responded curtly. “Well, he might think of me as his mortal enemy, but that’s his business. An Expeditionary is not in the business of making mortal enemies. The worst he can expect from me is a broken jaw when I catch up to him and life in a cage after I hand him over.”
“You’re talking about taking away his life,” Marcus said sharply, “regardless of whether you mean to end it. That sounds like a mortal enemy to me—”
“Hang on a moment,” Jeremiah said. “He said, ‘see me today’—”
“Didn’t you see him today?” Marcus said.
She stared at Marcus for a moment. Something tickled her memory.
The Prince Edward slowed to a stop, the prow touched the pane, and a spiderweb of cracks rippled out, obscuring his face . . . but not the face of the larger man, looming at the edge of the room.
Jeremiah stood up abruptly. “Oh, God, we had him! He was in that building in town—”
“Hey, chiquita,
” Marcus said, concerned, stretching out his hand.
“Sorry, skater boy, this is business,” she said, pulling the letter back. “That’s when he saw me. I was right on the prow, looking right at him! Ah, blast it!”
“Jeremiah,” Georgiana said, looking at her queerly.
“If we’d not been so quick to pull off,” Jeremiah snarled, whirling around, “I could have led an assault then and there! We had him, we almost had him—”
“Commander,” Patrick said quietly, extending his hand to her, and that bit of formality stopped her. “There’s . . . there’s something on the back of the letter.”
Jeremiah froze. All three of them were looking at the letter curiously, with just a touch of horror. That curdled her blood. She flipped the letter over . . . and saw a second letter in her own handwriting . . . with something more.
Hey Dragonfly, it’s me PLEASE you have to believe me DON’T go LET to the park it’s a trap THEM they’ll KILL ME. Don’t DONT listen to her, she’s going to KILL you ME no let me PLEASE finish BELIEVE no ME. I LOVE YOU. I’M SORRY. DON’T KILL ME. PLEASE. PLEASE.
Scratch what I said, Dragonfly. Go to the park.
—J
Jeremiah stood there, the letter trembling in her hand. A slight smudge marred the ink, like the page had been flipped without leaving it time to dry, but it was readable, clear as day. The ragged block letters stood out like boulders amidst her precise draftsman’s cursive, but were everywhere written with the same pen; this most clearly at the first transition, where the e of the me smoothly swept up into the P of the PLEASE without a single break in the line.
“What . . . what the hell,” Jeremiah said.
“That’s your handwriting,” Georgiana said.
“It is indeed,” Jeremiah said, still staring at it.
“Who’s ‘Dragonfly’?” Patrick said. “This mystery lover—”
“I am,” Jeremiah said. “It’s the name I use in my diary.”
“You wrote this,” Marcus said. “You did, two days ago—”
“To all appearances,” Jeremiah said, “though I have no recollection of writing it, and was . . . out of pocket when it was written.”
“Hang on. To all appearances, you, Jeremiah, wrote this on the back of a letter Lord Christopherson was writing, and you wrote it to yourself,” Patrick said. “That simply makes no sense, even counting the blackguard’s time machine—”
Marcus looked up sharply. “Wait, what? I was joking.”
“Well,” Patrick said, thrown off his game.
“Harbinger!” Jeremiah said.
“I’m sorry,” Patrick said, though he didn’t sound it. “What does it matter? The boy’d guessed it already—”
“Oh, shit, you’re serious? Your uncle has a time machine?” Marcus said. His eyes narrowed, and he looked at her, then Patrick, then Georgiana, then back at her. He raised his hand placatingly, leaned forwards, and sniffed Jeremiah’s hair. Then he leaned back and folded his tattooed arms.
———
“And you have one too,” he said quietly.
24.
An Unexpected Deepening of Confidence
“WHAT, DID YOU deduce that from her perfume?” Georgiana said. Her voice had grown slightly high-pitched. “As you suggested, boy, the letter is a fake—”
“Artisan soaps,” Marcus said, flushing slightly, but keeping his arms folded—and keeping that thread of seriousness that hit him when the letter arrived. “Handmade clothes. Odd manners and an archaic dialect. Yes, electric rayguns, but not a clue about the Internet. You’re time travelers.”
Jeremiah sighed. Then she turned about and sat down next to him.
“I’m sorry, Marcus,” she said. “I hadn’t intended to take you this deep into our confidence this quickly. It always creates complications—”
“So I was right,” he said, letting his breath out. “When are you from? The Victorian era?”
“We are from what we call Victoriana,” Jeremiah said, “but if I take your meaning correctly, we’re Columbian. The ruler of the Liberated Territories of Victoriana is Queen Columbia II—Victoria herself was deposed in the aftermath of the American Civil War.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Marcus said—and then he got it, just like that. “In our world, Queen Victoria lasted till the turn of the century—and there were no Native American aristocrats, or black ‘great white hunters.’ In your world, things turned out differently. What year are you from?”
“Nineteen aught eight,” Jeremiah said.
“Prince Edward,” he said. “I’m sure of it. You’d be Edwardians—”
“Martyred—the uncle of the Queen. But I still echo Georgiana,” Patrick said. “That’s a lot to get from soap and clothes, even if Georgiana and I look more than just anachronistic. You almost sound . . . primed to believe it. You get a lot of time travelers here?”
“Not that I know of, but time travel and alternate realities are all over movies and TV,” Marcus said. “Trek, Lost, Who, It’s a Wonderful Life, going all the way back to the Time Machine, I guess. That one was based on a novel by H. G. Wells. You have Wells? The author?”
“One of our favorite chaps,” Jeremiah said, winking at Georgiana. “But in our world he’s more known for aerograph romances.” At Marcus’s puzzled look, Jeremiah pointed at the oblong box that was their version of an aerograph. “Like that magic box, but nowhere near as . . . vivid.”
“I thought,” Georgiana said, scowling at Jeremiah, “the latest cylinder of Herbert’s War in the Air was quite vivid—”
“Awesome,” Marcus said, grinning like a patron of a pleasure garden. “An Edwardian TV show produced by H. G. Wells. What I wouldn’t give to see that! But to answer your question, I suspected you were playing time travelers, like for a costume party or something—”
“See?” Jeremiah said. “It wasn’t that bad a plan—”
“Apparently not,” Patrick said.
“—but it was the electric rayguns that got me thinking it wasn’t our reality. We don’t have those. Not at all.”
“You have the gun,” Jeremiah said, “and no trace of Liberation.”
“I’d hardly say no trace,” Patrick objected.
“Precious little then,” Jeremiah retorted.
“What?” Marcus said, baffled. “What are you talking about?”
“Never you mind,” she said. “So . . . time travel. It’s not a new concept to you?”
“No,” he said. “Not hardly.”
“So . . . explain this, future boy,” Jeremiah said, handing the letter to him. “How did Lord Christopherson get this to us? More importantly, why did he send this to me, if I’m writing on its back? Seems like that means he has me in pocket.”
Marcus took it. “Look . . . I just watch a lot of TV.” He flipped the letter over, that serious thread in him flooding back as he said quietly, “TV shows are just . . . fairy stories played out on a small screen. There’s no guarantee that their rules for time travel make any sense—”
“Oh, give it a go,” Jeremiah said. “I’ll bet your guesses beat mine.”
Marcus frowned, then actively scowled. “The first part is easy. He went back in time with his machine, two days at least, and sent it to you. That means . . . he knows, or soon will know, from one of us or some other source, that we were here.”
“So he could have captured one or all of us,” Jeremiah said.
“Or interrogated the hotel manager,” Patrick said.
“How would he find the hotel manager? Why would he find the hotel manager?” Marcus said. “No. Looks like he gets some of you, and this front side, the compatriots bit, is a thinly disguised ransom note, designed to make Jeremiah show at a place of his choosing.”
“And the back side?” Jeremiah pressed.
> “You find out where he is,” Marcus said, still frowning. “You break into his lair, or out of his dungeon, and sneak a message to yourself warning yourself that it’s a trap.”
Jeremiah shook her head. After she traced through all the pronouns, it made sense. Sort of, well not really, but close enough she had the rough idea.
“And the other writing?” Georgiana said quietly.
Marcus swallowed, flipped the paper over. “Man, I dunno. That’s creepy shit. Less time travel . . . more horror flick.” He stared at the page, ran his fingers over one PLEASE, then pulled them away. “It’s like,” he said, staring at Jeremiah, “it’s like you were possessed, or something.”
“Possessed,” Jeremiah said. “Like . . . by a demon?”
“Or an alien,” he said.
“Possessed by an immigrant?” she said. Then it hit her. “You mean, possessed by a Foreigner?”
“No, an alien,” he said. “Like, a creature from another world?”
“Same thing,” Jeremiah said. “Different world, different words.”
Marcus shook his head. Then there was a beeping sound, and he pulled out a black glassy lozenge. “Hip check—oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. Guys, I’m late. I mean, really late. I was supposed to be at this study session at three, and it’s already three now. I’ll be fifteen minutes late if I book it.”
Jeremiah scowled. Every instinct in her told her not to let this man out of her sight, but what was she to do, short of holding him hostage in the room? Then her mouth quirked up. She knew how to get him right back here.
“All right, Marcus,” she said, standing. “Can I have a word?”
Jeremiah led him into the other suite. “Thank you,” she said, with all the sincerity she’d been trained to muster—all the easier in that she really was grateful for his help. “I know we’ve upended your life in less than an hour, and I know you have to get back to it. But we really need you to come back to us tonight, and not just so we can give you back your, ah, computer.”
Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine Page 19