Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  Marcus twitched. As she’d predicted, he hadn’t remembered his offhand offer to loan them the machine, but she’d got him on the hook for it now.

  “All right,” he said. “But, really, how can I help you—”

  “As you said, we need to lie low till the ‘heat clears,’ so you can help us by picking us up some presentables. But it’s more than that. You’ve seen us. We’re out of our depth, and it’s not just a century of time. It’s the changed history—even the things we think we know, we can’t count on.”

  She stepped closer, and he shrugged, once again the nervous innocent, as he said, “I can, ah, see how that would be extremely disturbing—”

  “So,” Jeremiah said, “when you come back to get your computer, we’d like you to give us a primer on your world. The things we won’t find in your magic book. If you would stay, at least tonight”—and now she reached out, touched his arm gently—“I would be . . . most grateful.”

  Now Jeremiah was just centimeters from his face, so she could feel his breath, hot and heavy, see his eyes, wide as saucers; then she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for all your help, Marcus. See you tonight?”

  “Oh! Ah, yes,” he stammered. “See you . . . see you tonight. Six? I’ll be done by six. Travel time . . . ah . . . say, six thirty?”

  “Capital,” she said. “Simply capital.”

  Marcus gathered his things and left, glancing at his laptop, then Jeremiah with longing before making a quick embarrassed goodbye. As the door closed, she turned and leaned her back against the wall. A slow smirk crawled up the side of her face. He’d be back.

  “Yes, indeed,” Patrick said, face pained. “You have indeed still got it.”

  “Thank you, Harbinger,” she said, giving him a wan smile. “I’m sorry about—”

  “Think nothing of it,” Patrick said, though it was clear that he was giving it a great deal of thought. “You’re a matahari. When we’re all buttoned up back in Boston I forget what you have to do in the field.” His smile grew wry. “Though you’d be hard pressed to find a choicer target.”

  “Oh, what I do for my country,” Jeremiah said, putting a hand to her forehead.

  “Not in a Boston marriage, my arse,” Georgiana said, nudging Patrick.

  “I am indeed not,” Patrick responded, “but I never said I wasn’t interested in what’s on the Boston market—and you’re just trying to slow me down.”

  “Oh, most definitely—but, business now. Do you believe what he said?” Georgiana said. “About one of us getting captured—about you being possessed by a Foreigner?”

  “The former? I hope not,” Jeremiah said. “As for the latter . . . no.”

  “And how do you know for certain it won’t happen?” Georgiana asked.

  ———

  “I’d never let it,” she said with conviction, “because I would rather die.”

  25.

  Capsule History

  “THEIR TWENTIETH century,” Georgiana said, “was a chamber of horrors.”

  When he appeared on the aerograph screen, Lord Birmingham’s first question, before anything else, had been whether they had found the weapon that Lord Christopherson was looking for. After Jeremiah confirmed that the Prince Edward was indeed safe, hidden behind a great rock knob of a mountain a few kilometers away, and given Birmingham a quick précis of their current status, she stepped back and let Georgiana control the briefing.

  “These people never invented the electric gun,” Georgiana said. “But they’ve shown great genius at finding ways to kill each other—tens of millions in the twentieth century alone. Their most horrific weapons are, as we feared, atomics. But they don’t have just one. They have tens of thousands of them.”

  “Well, that would explain the millions of deaths,” Birmingham said.

  “No,” Georgiana said. “Atomic weapons were only used twice, and since then, rather than banning them, they were stockpiled as a deterrent—”

  “Two cities. God,” Birmingham said heavily. “If not Atlanta, where? Did we ally ourselves with the Confederacy and attack Boston? Or was it Paris—”

  “Actually,” Georgiana said, “it was the Americans that developed them, and they were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

  “They’re in Japan,” Jeremiah clarified. “The Japanese were allies with Germany in a great war that spanned the world—a war in which America fought on the side of the British, of all things. The closest thing to the Liberated Territories of Victoriana now is a loose alliance called NATO.”

  Birmingham stared at them through the screen. “America and Britain?”

  “Stalwart allies,” Georgiana said.

  “So, after the war, America and Germany—”

  “Stalwart allies,” Georgiana repeated. “And with Japan too. The stockpiles were built up in some kind of ‘cold war’ America engaged with the ‘Soviets’—a massive empire, like our own Victoriana, but based in Russia.”

  “So America and Russia are—”

  “Trading partners,” Georgiana said.

  “Blast it, woman, who’s fighting whom in this world?”

  “Everyone and no one,” Georgiana said. “There are a number of faux wars—on drugs, on terror, on poverty. But the closest to what we’d call enemies are allegedly China and the United States, though as one is this world’s largest producer, the other its largest consumer, and the two haven’t crossed swords in half a century, it sounds more like squabbling marrieds.”

  “Quite perplexing,” Birmingham said. “You said a chamber of horrors—”

  “Which they have since repudiated. Hence why they want to get rid of their atomic weapons,” Georgiana said. “Our first theory, though by no means one we’re married to, is that he could be here to take their atomics off their hands.”

  “All right,” Birmingham said. “We know he can get weapons. What about the idea of a template? How does this history differ from ours?”

  “Far bloodier, far back,” Georgiana said. She grimaced. “Sir, I must confess that, in a bout of vanity, I searched for myself—thinking, as a woman of prominence . . . but not only did I find that I never existed, my people, the Mahicans, appear to have been virtually exterminated.”

  “God,” Birmingham said. “Is there a root cause?”

  “Of course,” Jeremiah said bitterly. “Liberation never happened.”

  “I’m not sure it’s that simple,” Georgiana said. “Divergences go back as far as I look, but that just might be different historians writing. The earliest material differences seem to start around 1750, compounding into changes which first loom large in the early eighteen hundreds—”

  “Don’t dance around the issue, Lady Westenhoq. Is the Commander right?” Birmingham asked bluntly. “In this world, was Liberation thwarted?”

  “Our version didn’t happen, but the process of liberation never stopped; it was merely . . . delayed,” Georgiana said. “Suffrage came nearly a century late, but it definitely came, and the bulwarks of the male-dominated world have been falling one by one—”

  “But why was it late in the first place?”

  “A change of the form we suspected,” Jeremiah said. “My great-great-grandmother died in childbirth. Mary Wollstonecraft never wrote The Equality of Man, her daughter never changed her name to Mark Willstone, and the two of them never inspired generations of women—”

  “And Mary Wollstonecraft’s death wasn’t a random or isolated event,” Georgiana said. “Liberation appears to be merely one victim of a far greater problem, one that set this entire reality back across the board: this world never developed medical spices to ward off infections.”

  “What?” Birmingham said. “God. Whyever not?”

  “Lavoisier,” Georgiana said. “France became inflamed with revolution, and h
e was executed. He and his wife never had a chance to reveal their discovery of medical mold, which had to wait a hundred and twenty years on until someone named Fleming rediscovered it. And so—”

  “My great-great-grandmother died in childbirth,” Jeremiah repeated. “She never wrote her book, and either because they were never inspired to greatness, or they themselves died of disease, most women scientists and leaders of the eighteen hundreds have been erased from the history books. This world is the world we feared Lord Christopherson would create.”

  “I would argue it’s considerably worse,” Georgiana said. “We didn’t just lose Liberation. The execution of Lavoisier, the erasure of a century of women scientists, and the premature deaths of countless other men and women to disease—all of these had cascading effects, and not just on weapons: influenza and cancer killed as many people in the twentieth century as war.”

  “So we’re ahead of them,” Birmingham said.

  “In a few areas, of course, but overall? Not really,” Georgiana said. “I hate to admit a difference between male and female scientists, but there does seem to be a difference . . . insight versus penetration, perhaps?”

  “Balderdash,” Jeremiah said.

  “No practical nonlethal weapons, but computer-guided rockets that could fly up your arse from a thousand kilometers,” Georgiana said. “No medical salts or nerve-actuated prosthetics, but heart transplants and induced immune responses. Nothing near as strong or as light as brasslite, but fantastic materials meeting every other need—alloys, ceramics, and ‘plastic.’”

  “Even at half-speed, they have a century up on us,” Jeremiah admitted. “Without thermionic engines or brasslite, they nevertheless solved the weight-to-power problem and developed lightweight airframes—and perfected heavier than air flight.”

  “Exactly,” Georgiana said. “They’re missing key insights, but everywhere they have looked they’ve looked with penetrating detail and found incredible answers. They know the shapes of the inside of the atoms and the maps of the galaxy between the stars—”

  “Yes, yes, yes, very impressive,” Birmingham said impatiently. “So does he have his template for his new world order, or doesn’t he?”

  Georgiana and Jeremiah looked at each other, then Patrick.

  “We’ve discussed that,” Jeremiah said. “This world isn’t an easy trade for ours, and as much as I hate to admit it, progress did continue on Liberation without the influence of my family. This isn’t likely to be his first choice for a replacement history, if that’s even his goal; my personal history with the man may have colored my judgment. We’re starting to think he isn’t here for a template, or a weapon, but something else entirely, something he could only get in this reality. Something to do with that Incursion, some substance or technology he could use to deal with the Foreigner his ‘Order of the Burning Scarab’ tricked into incarnating in a cage.”

  “Perhaps a source of nuclear material,” Georgiana said, “of which they clearly have an overabundance. Or a chemical; their materials science has advanced far beyond our own. Or, possibly, one of their computers.”

  “Their computers are better than ours?” Birmingham said. “Lady Westenhoq, you sell yourself short—”

  “Here, computers are Mechanicals,” Georgiana said, “and not the clanky contraptions we’re used to, no matter how clever they are. Here, the computers are stupid but capacious, literal but methodical, very small, and very, very fast. The tiny little wedge the boy loaned us offhand does a thousand million calculations a second—more than the very best human computer could do in a decade, even if he or she worked every second of every hour of every day.”

  She lifted the wedge to show Birmingham, and he peered at it, baffled.

  “But . . . what could Lord Christopherson do with that?” Birmingham asked.

  “I don’t know, sir, but . . . there’s something else. He’s got one up on us.”

  “How so?”

  “He knows we’re here,” Jeremiah said, “and he’s got a time machine.”

  And she explained how Lord Christopherson had been right at the point of impact of the Prince Edward, had seen her, and had used his time machine to send her a message, mysteriously to her precise location . . . and even more mysteriously, from clear across the continent.

  “So we don’t know what his game is,” Jeremiah said. “But he’s definitely playing rings around us at this moment.”

  “Blood of the Queen,” Birmingham said. “The tactical advantage such a device incurs is . . . incalculable.”

  “Well, he has some limits,” Georgiana said. “He can’t change the present—”

  “Can’t he? For the love of God, woman, think!” Birmingham roared. “Half of military advantage comes from knowledge! I don’t need to cause a contradiction to profit from the knowledge of where a battle will be fought!”

  “I . . . I don’t quite follow,” Georgiana said.

  “Send a machine to tomorrow, observe your enemy in a pitched battle,” Jeremiah said. “Come back to today, give the orders for all your forces to converge there at the appointed time to rout the buggers. Where’s the contradiction?”

  “Precisely,” Birmingham said. “Knowing the field can help me prepare an ambush. Learning of victory will tell me to withhold reinforcements. Even learning of defeat profits me, by warning me to withdraw assets before they’re lost!”

  Jeremiah felt her eyebrows go up as possibilities rattled through her brain.

  “I . . . am glad we have your experience as a general on this Expedition,” Jeremiah said. “We were all worried about changing the past, but if the device can observe the future, it gives Lord Christopherson a decisive tactical advantage in affecting the present.”

  “I’m almost certain,” Georgiana said, “he’s not limited to observing. If Lord Christopherson can change the past, he can change the future. And as much as it offends my sensibilities, nothing in the maths bars a contradiction. Even if he managed to create one, I think the changes would . . . simply continue to evolve until the system was stable.”

  “Blood of the Queen.” Birmingham pressed his fingers to his forehead. “I’m . . . I must admit, gentlemen and gentlewomen of the Expedition, that I’m out of my depth here. The man’s more than a general. He’s a minister, orchestrating some great game of state, of which this little military adventure is just a part.”

  “Agreed,” Jeremiah said. “He has to have some bigger plan. We haven’t seen enough pieces to fully understand it yet.”

  “Commander, what is your status?” Birmingham asked.

  “We’ve recruited the help of a local, who secured us rooms at an inn,” Jeremiah said. “But we’re pinned down and a bit vulnerable. Sir, I must admit a misjudgment. We liberated some money from a Mechanical teller and came away with more than we bargained for—”

  Lord Birmingham laughed. “I think Dame Alice will forgive you,” he said, “a little larceny in service of the Queen—”

  “Sir, the amount,” Jeremiah said.

  “How much could you have possibly taken from one Mechanical?”

  “Ten years room and board for the three of us,” Patrick said.

  Lord Birmingham’s lower lip dropped slightly. “I see. Well . . . we cannot come to your rescue, not just yet,” he said. “We must repair the demagnetizer—something got cocked up when we swapped it in so quickly, and it’s drawing more and more power, probably because an element is overheating. But we daren’t disengage until night falls, and probably not even then.”

  “I’d wait until at least the hour of the wolf,” Jeremiah said. “These people have practical electric lights and so will be up at all hours.”

  “And yourself?”

  “We will need to ‘lay low’ for a while,” Jeremiah said, “at least until our contact returns with less conspicuous clothing
for us.”

  “Are you sure he will return?”

  “He’s a boy,” Jeremiah said, and, speak of the devil, there was a knock at the door. “And you know what they want.”

  ———

  “Ah,” Birmingham said. “Your service for the Queen is always appreciated.”

  26.

  Going Native

  JEREMIAH OPENED the door onto Marcus, two big bags piled up in his muscular arms. “I brought presents,” he said. “Figured some jeans, T-shirts and hoodies would get you started, and we could grab a bite and get a primer from there.”

  “Are you sure you want us going out this early?” Jeremiah asked, peering into the bag. She pulled out a shapeless grey mass with black lines through it and shook it out: some kind of pullover with an integrated hood.

  “Yes,” Marcus said. “First thing, someone knows you’re here—and second thing, this neighborhood is crawling with fuzz. Let’s be somewhere else.”

  “Should we literally move?” Patrick said, peering into the bag also.

  “Certainly,” Jeremiah said, pulling a scandalously short skirt out of the bag. She glanced slyly at Marcus, who looked sheepish. “But . . . we still don’t know what means Lord Christopherson used to find us and so have no knowledge of how to defeat it—”

  “Conference?” Patrick said.

  “Give us a moment, Marcus?” Jeremiah asked.

  Patrick, Georgiana, and Jeremiah stepped into the other suite.

  “What?” Jeremiah said. “The boy’s logic is sound. The police will likely canvass nearby hotels for check-ins in the time frame following the robbery—I would. But if we’re gone, we won’t have to answer the door, and even if they break it down, what will it profit them?”

  “We should bring all of our equipment, though,” Georgiana said. “Leave the police nothing to find, though I must confess I’m more worried about how Lord Christopherson found us—”

  “I’m less worried about how he found us than about how we’ll find him,” Patrick said, unaccountably agitated. “We need to find out what he’s up to, why he’s here, do more research—”