Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “No shit? You step up, save her bacon?”

  “No,” Marcus said. “Her friends, they got into shit or whatever, and that little chiquita was the one who stepped up. It was over like that.” He snapped his fingers. “The guard was down with one punch. Never knew what hit her.”

  “So it was a chica guard,” the shaggy man clucked. “Figures—”

  “But two of the others were guys,” Marcus said. “One had to be six-six—”

  “Neither one was close to two meters,” Jeremiah said, stepping around them with the drinks and bumping Marcus with her hip as she headed to the table. She grinned over her shoulder. “And it was the young girl in the beret that was the most dangerous—she knew to dive for the pistol.”

  “Oh, hi, Jeri,” Marcus said, reddening.

  “Jer-eh-MI-yah,” Jeremiah said, sitting herself and the drinks down carefully. A server swooped up the SINATRA placard, replacing it with a mammoth, steaming pie covered with every meat and vegetable known to man or woman. “Your town does know how to cook.”

  “How long have you been listening?” the shaggy one said.

  “Long enough,” Jeremiah said. “‘Chica guard?’ Definitely not Liberated—”

  “What’s women’s lib got to do with it?” Shaggy asked, joining them at the table with nary an invitation—in what would have been Marcus’s seat. Awkwardly, Marcus went to get a sixth chair as Shaggy helped himself to a slice. “Chicks can’t fight like guys, s’all I’m sayin’.”

  Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. With three generations of female soldiers under the Empire’s belt, that chauvinism seemed to be dying out in Victoriana, but perhaps it was still live here—which might make this an attractive template for her uncle. She decided to probe a bit.

  “Care to step to the street and test that theory?” Jeremiah said, taking a sip.

  Shaggy laughed—then, seeing her face, did a double take. “Shit, you’re serious.”

  “Never less,” she said, raising her drink, “when womanhood’s concerned.”

  “Look,” Shaggy said, “chica, be realistic—”

  “Ha,” Jeremiah said.

  “Oh, I would pay money,” Marcus said, edging his new chair in, “to see you kick his ass.”

  “Would you?” Shaggy leaned back and folded his arms. “Think you can, chica?”

  Jeremiah sized him; he was muscular, but this was bravado. She stood. “Shall we?”

  “Whoa, ease down,” Shaggy said, raising his hands. “Tell me you’re not serious—”

  “About defending the capabilities of women? Quite serious,” Jeremiah said, keeping the man nailed with her eyes until his eyes flickered away. “Sorry, sir, I’m not trying to pick a street fight, just establishing some parameters—I do fight for a living, and a little friendly sparring would prove it.”

  As Shaggy sank in his chair, Marcus smirked at him, while Colin looked skeptical of her. Very well; a small sample, but the attitude held for two of three, a notch more than Victoriana. Then she noticed Shaggy’s eyes flickering over at Georgiana, before coming back to Patrick and her.

  “Pass. I know better than to tangle with a bodyguard,” Shaggy said—so Marcus had hit the nail when he’d said she and Patrick looked like Georgiana’s guards. Then Shaggy whapped Marcus on the shoulder so hard he spat up some of his beer. “Off the chain is right. She’s all yours.”

  “Not yet,” she said, raising her mug to Marcus. “But the night is young.”

  “Yes it is,” Colin said, raising his iced tea towards Georgiana. “Cheers!”

  Soon the conversation was really rolling. Colin, Shaggy (actually, Jeremiah learned, Simeon), Patrick, and Georgiana launched into an animated discussion of the “world without nuclear weapons” magazine cover that Georgiana had found earlier. Apparently the “tree” on its cover was the text of a policy speech, arranged in the distinctive “mushroom cloud” of a nuclear blast, and as for getting rid of them, Colin was against, Simeon was pro, and Georgiana and Patrick (and Jeremiah by association) were playing interested parties “from the small island of Saint Victoria, a former British colony.”

  Jeremiah listened to them; it stunned her that the dread secrets of the Peerage were topics for beer and pizza in this world. Finally, she turned to Marcus and asked privately, “Tell me . . . are you scared of nuclear weapons?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Some. I’m too young to really remember all that shit, though. My parents took me to the Smithsonian—that’s like the British Museum, by the way—”

  “We have a Smithsonian too,” Jeremiah said, finishing a last delicious bite of soft, chewy crust. “We didn’t tear it down just because America fell.”

  Marcus stared at her. “Anyway, they showed me two of the rockets, one Soviet, one American, standing there in the hall as tall as miniature skyscrapers. It didn’t mean anything to me, but both of my parents held my hands so tight, I had to ask them why they were scared. They told me, and I’d like to say it stuck, but . . . I wasn’t there for it, you know?”

  “Would you get rid of them?” Jeremiah asked. “If you could?”

  “I know they’re trying,” Marcus said, “but . . . I can’t help feeling it’s a bad idea. I keep on thinking they—I mean, every country that’s got one—should keep one or two around.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, first, they’re a deterrent,” Marcus said. “Nobody wants to pick a fight with somebody that’s got nukes. It cuts down on wars. And second . . . this is going to sound crazy, but . . . I feel like we should keep some around in case of aliens.”

  “Of course,” Jeremiah said, leaning back in her chair. “Of course. A sound policy. Makes me wish . . . I mean, no, of course, they should be a last resort. But I’d love to have them in my arsenal for that purpose.”

  “Not that aliens are going to invade, or anything,” Marcus said.

  She glanced at him in shock. “You’ve never been invaded?” she said, her voice raising a little more than she’d expected. “Not once?”

  “America’s never been invaded,” Simeon said.

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” Marcus said, “but she meant alien invasions.”

  “Sure is true for the continental United States,” Simeon said, “and that’s doubly true for aliens. There ain’t nothing out there.”

  “Really?” Georgiana said, shocked. “How did I miss that when I was—”

  “Oh, you lucky sons of—” Patrick said bitterly, swigging his beer.

  “Wait, what?” Colin said.

  But Jeremiah was watching Marcus, who’d winced when Simeon had interjected himself into the conversation. “Have you heard,” Jeremiah said carefully, “of a man called Einstein?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Simeon said. “Most famous egghead in history.”

  “Hey!” Colin said. “Don’t you talk smack about my man.”

  “Colin is a physics student,” Marcus said.

  “Can you explain to me why he’s famous?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Stare at a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute,” Colin said, staring straight at Georgiana. “Sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. That’s relativity theory.”

  “That . . . does sound like Albert,” Jeremiah said.

  “Relativity theory,” Georgiana said. “Not force unification?”

  “No, that’s the big tragedy,” Colin said. “He worked on unified field theory for like, thirty years, and never cracked it.”

  “Thirty . . .” Georgiana said, putting her hand to her breast. All the eyes of all the boys followed the elegant movement of that ruddy hand, then lingered on the shimmering square of fabric beneath it, or more properly, what was beneath that. “That would be a tragedy.”

  “But that failure,” Jeremiah said, “would probabl
y do the trick.”

  “We can put a man on the moon,” Colin said, “but we still haven’t solved the mysteries of nature.”

  “I think that sums this world up nicely,” Jeremiah said.

  “Yeah—wait, what?” Colin said.

  After the conversation moved on, Marcus leaned over and whispered, “What was that all about?”

  “We’re still trying to find why my uncle was here,” she said. “That’s a big clue. Aliens were attracted to our world by electric weapons—more properly, aetheric weapons, to use Einstein’s terms. Here, no aetheric weapons, no unified field theory experiments—hence, no Foreign Incursions.”

  “I know what you mean by it, but I still don’t get what Foreign Incursions means,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “Another time, another world, remember”—and he leaned close—“airship girl.” And then he got all red and embarrassed.

  “Foreign, from a world not our own; Incursions—because we intend their stays to be brief.” Jeremiah sniffed in dreamily. “You put on cologne,” she said: it had a lovely tang of spice. “And here I was thinking you came back out of the goodness of your heart.”

  “I like to think I have goodness in my heart,” Marcus said.

  “I’m sure you do,” Jeremiah said, letting her eyelids droop slightly. “Oh, Marcus, all this talk of atomic weapons and alien invasions and time travel is so . . . romantic.”

  Then she batted her eyes at him. He leaned back, stared at her, took a swig of his beer.

  “You,” he said, “are a man-eater.”

  “Not yet,” she said. “But the night is young.”

  Later, Marcus found them a new hotel, far from their first one, but otherwise eerily similar: a two-story warren, down to the looming nearby office block, though the one there had been old and dingy, and the one here was still under construction. While Georgiana and Patrick rescued their bags of gear and aerograph from the trunk of Colin’s cart and went to their adjoined room to privately call Birmingham, Jeremiah took the dark young man . . . to her room.

  “Thank you for the clothes, Marcus,” Jeremiah said, making a little spin and curtsy in the hoodie before removing the Kathodenstrahl she’d had in its front pocket and placing it on the dresser. Her hand caught on something else, and she pulled out her goggles. After a moment’s thought, she slipped the goggles back on. “And for the compliment.”

  “What . . . compliment?” he asked.

  “The outfit you would have had me wear,” she said, pulling off the hoodie to reveal her blouse and vest. “Quite flattering.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, evidently embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to be . . . forward, I guess.”

  “Did you hear me complaining?” She pulled off the “sweatpants,” folded them up, and deposited them on the dresser next to the hoodie—and her weapon. “To be frank, I’d’ve worn it, if it had a place I could have hidden a gun.”

  Marcus swallowed.

  “Oh, don’t be so scared,” Jeremiah said. “I am off the chain, as you said, but I don’t bite.” Then she stepped up close to him, breathing in his scent. “Much.”

  Marcus stared back at her, breathing hard. Then abruptly, surprisingly, he stepped forwards, put a hand round her waist, sending a tingle down her whole body, and before she had a chance to fully process her delight, he drew her close and kissed her.

  “Mmm,” Jeremiah said, as they parted. What a kiss! And not just his body was perfumed; he’d even done something to his breath, and there was some different scent on his clothes. Perhaps these men did peacock after all. “Now . . . wasn’t that forwards?”

  “Sorry, airship girl,” he said, embarrassed. “I, I’ve never pushed this hard on a random encounter before—”

  ———

  “Sometimes,” she said, hands cupping his face, “they’re the best kind.”

  29.

  Off on an Adventure

  HE POUNCED ON her, kissing, groping, passionate and awkward. He was a boy, strong and insistent but inexperienced. Jeremiah, on the other hand, knew what she wanted and what to do. She kissed him back, tugged at that tight white shirt covering those tantalizing muscles, pressed against him, pulling this way and that, until she’d liberated a shirttail.

  He reacted to that, to her hands touching his flesh, by stepping back and whipping his shirt off. The tattoos spread from his muscled arms across his even more muscled chest, delicious, but he hung back, staring at her, expectant, as if she was going to undress herself. Well, she wanted to, but if his eagerness was any indication he would need a little more warmup time.

  “Give a girl a hand with these buttons,” she said, turning roundabout so he could see them running down the sides of her Faraday vest. As his hands began fumbling at them, peeling it off, she turned about, wrapping her arms around his neck again. “As you can see . . . I’ve a lot of buttons.”

  He began unbuttoning her shirt, leaned down, kissed the inside of her breasts, his hot breath ruffling down her shirt. She tousled his dark hair while he worked her shirt off, then began working the buttons of her pants, but his hands kept fumbling, and she reached down and lifted him up, kissing him, then kneeling herself, taking the buttons of his jeans in her mouth.

  As her tongue worked the clasp, she nearly swooned at the delicious spice rippling off him, a mix of sweat and sharp cinnamon. He gasped as she unbuttoned him, then readied him with a kiss, then more than a kiss. While she had him occupied, she finished unbuttoning, undressing, fumbling a bit herself when his hands ran through her hair, tugged at her goggles, then left them on.

  Oh my. He understood.

  She found the prophylactic and stood, slipping herself out of her wrappings as she wrapped him, watching him smile, surprised and laughing. She buried her fingers in his dark curly hair, felt his chest press against her breasts, then whispered:

  “Let’s go on an adventure.”

  Marcus seized her passionately, throwing her onto the bed without even tossing the covers off, penetrating her with a rough cry she mirrored. He was strong and forceful, but naïve, and fast, the muscles of his abdomen and the sharp bones of his hips pressing into her deliciously even as his eagerness threatened to overwhelm him. But she wrapped her legs round him and worked her thighs with his movements, cutting down on the friction, making it last longer.

  Frustrated, he lifted her up, shoved them both forwards, threw them down again, making her cry out despite herself. Capital. Before she knew it, he’d gathered both her hands up with those muscled arms and pinned her as forcefully to the bed as if she’d been chained there. She stopped moving with him and started working against him, feeling the grind of his muscles against her. Jeremiah cried out, his pounding started in earnest, and then she screamed.

  “Ah,” Jeremiah said, as he wore himself out. “That’s what I was in need of.”

  “Oh, oh my God,” Marcus said. “Jeri, oh, Jeri, that was . . .”

  Then all his weight fell upon her, and his head flumphhed against the pillow. At first she thought he’d fallen asleep, but he still had her pinned, with easily twice her strength; most entertaining, but the time for that was over now.

  “I do believe my hands are a bit numb,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, letting her hands go one at a time, “oh, I’m sorry, oh.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, felt his broad shoulders from behind. “No worries,” she said, really coiling about him now. “No worries at all.”

  ———

  LATER, SHE AWOKE to the sound of water running in the bath. She stretched luxuriously. A warm-up indeed; that had been precisely what she’d needed, especially if she would later have to part her legs for some dreadful wrinkled old misogynist in exchange for his influence or secrets.

  In fact . . . as she thought of it . . . she found herself willing to trade con
siderable extra peril in exchange for arms like this, rather than the shortcut of selling her body for her country.

  And not even just for a young buck like this; she found herself pining equally for the arms of Einstein, who was certainly a less muscular and vigorous lover but had other advantages, like the mental staying power to remain with her after the act and engage in conversation till dawn.

  Jeremiah knew that would never happen again and didn’t begrudge Georgiana her prize; Einstein was a far better fit for the computer than for the adventurer. But, if she ever got back to Victoriana . . . she had to find her own Marcus.

  Or maybe drag this dark young man back there with her . . . if he’d go.

  The water was still running, and she thought of joining him, then decided against it, rising, stretching. She put on his shirt, always a delicious feeling after bedding a man, and flitted around the room. Now was the time she’d normally be ferreting through his things, carefully of course; unless it was a quick toss-and-grab, she’d normally avoid making her inquiries too obvious too early.

  His keys and “cell phone” were on the counter, though, and he had to have noticed their little band’s astonishment at modern conveniences. She felt a bit of guilt at snooping, as he wasn’t really a mark—but she could take a look at both without raising any suspicions.

  The keys were almost entirely typical even a century later: Yale Junior locks, one of them even with the Yale name on them. Only a small fob with a button perplexed her. The cell phone, on the other hand, was a wonder: small, glossy, and impossibly light, with a tiny twelve button keypad and glowing aerograph screen barely larger than a man’s ear. The picture of a smiling older woman was on the screen; from the resemblance Jeremiah guessed she was Marcus’s mother.

  Then the phone buzzed in her hand. She nearly dropped it but retained her wits when she realized it was no kind of alarm, but simply the phone receiving an aerotype message. Jeremiah’s brow furrowed as words appeared on the screen: