Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  But these lots were more than the small moats of stone she’d seen hugging the shores of the smaller buildings dotted across what Marcus called the surface streets. These lots were vast, threaded through a warren of tree-lined streets that, to Jeremiah, seemed to be a mere distraction from a more sinister purpose. As if these vast lots were indeed moats, serving to separate the buildings—as if whatever horrors contained in one were too dangerous to be placed close to any other.

  “What is this awful place?” Jeremiah asked, as rain pattered against the cart.

  “The Centers for Disease Control,” Marcus said darkly.

  “You use disease in warfare?” Jeremiah asked in horror.

  “No!” Marcus said. “Their full name is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They stop outbreaks, not start them! You met Rosalind. She doesn’t speak for the whole CDC—it’s a behemoth—but she’s a lot more antsy about warfare and killing than you are—”

  “So why did my uncle want to come here?” Jeremiah asked, peering through the water-streaked windscreen of the cart at the hulking buildings that lurked in the rain. “We have excellent medical technology. What could Lord Christopherson hope to find in this place?”

  “BSL-4,” Marcus said, staring off into the wet darkness.

  Jeremiah poked him. “From another time, another world, skater boy—”

  “Your uncle asked,” Marcus said, “for a Biosafety Level Four Facility. This is one of the few places in the country—in the world—equipped to deal with the very deadliest of diseases. Don’t ask me why—that’s what we’re here to find out.”

  “We know what he’s brought here: the Egg of the Burning Scarab.”

  “From another time, another world, airship girl—”

  “The Order of the Burning Scarab is the cult my uncle joined, or co-opted,” Jeremiah said. “The Scarab itself was a great copper egg they filled with a burning gold liquid; when the ritual was done, it produced some kind of larva. But none of that explains why he’d need to bring it here.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid it’s got a disease, or afraid it will get one.” A few heavy droplets from the trees thumped against the roof of the cart. “Our environment could be as deadly to it as it is to us. If it really was a Level Four Biohazard, you’d know—because he and his crew would be dead.”

  Jeremiah grew cold. “A . . . ‘Level Four’ disease . . . kills that quickly?”

  “No, I’m exaggerating,” he said. “Even Ebola takes a few days to kick in.”

  “Marcus,” Jeremiah said. “That thing . . . splashed its blood on me.”

  “When?” he said, turning to look at her.

  “Two days ago.” She half-laughed. “As much as ‘ago’ has any meaning.”

  Marcus frowned. “Any symptoms—no. It’s too soon.” He reached out and took her hand. “Hey, anything you’ve got”—and, impulsively, he leaned in and kissed her, before she had time to react—“I’ve got too. We’re in this together, right, airship girl?”

  Jeremiah stared at him, briefly gobsmacked: after that jibe about betraying her trust (albeit in favor of his country, but never you mind) Marcus seemed to have completely switched sides. She knew that she shouldn’t trust him; he was a hell of a matahari . . . but that kiss had felt real.

  “All right, skater boy,” she said at last, miming his earlier diction.

  He waved his hand in the air. “Almost convincing. OK . . . let’s do this.”

  “Wait,” Jeremiah said, reaching out for Marcus’s hand now. She unbuckled her seat belt, slid over in the seat, then rolled on top of him, pressed into him. She stared into his eyes deeply, then gave him a long, throaty kiss, as real as she could make it, that left him gasping.

  “What was that about?” Marcus said, breathless.

  “If we’re about to die, I wanted one last taste of life,” she said, sitting back as best she could with the steering wheel behind her. “And if you are too good to be true, and this is a trap . . . I wanted one last taste of candy before I end up in a cage.”

  “You are a man-eater,” he said, staring up at her.

  “A useful skill, from time to time,” she said.

  He took her hands. “Whatever happens, Jeremiah . . . you have to believe this. No one told me to go to bed with you. I don’t care how liberated women are in your world, we have one up on you. Here, no one ever really asks you to have sex for your country—”

  “Yet you have all the tools and training to use sex as a weapon—perhaps not as an explicit command, but no one tells Expeditionaries to kill either,” she said, smirking a little: she was still straddling him, and she could tell it was having an effect. “Yet we both know things can happen. I’m, ah, hard pressed to believe you’d go into battle with one less weapon—”

  “You go to battle without lethal weapons,” Marcus said, shifting beneath her. Was he actually embarrassed, even after their tryst at the hotel? Perhaps the innocence was an attitude, not merely an act. He said, “Would you use a gun? I mean, a real gun, shooting bullets that could kill—”

  “Not even to stop Lord Chrisopherson,” Jeremiah said, staring off into the murky distance. “I feel I’d rather die—no, that isn’t the truth. I would use a lethal weapon, and have done, but the thought makes me sick, and no one would give such an order—”

  “So you’d rather die than kill,” Marcus said. He let his hands fall gently upon her waist, not precisely lasciviously, but something a bit more tender. “Here, people would rather die than sell their bodies—and no one would give that order, at least not directly.”

  She considered that. He was completely convincing. Which meant . . .

  “I want one more of these,” she said and kissed him.

  He kissed back, then at last pushed her off him, gasping a bit for air. “Man-eater,” he repeated, as she slid back to her side of the seat. “As much as I wish we had time for a quickie . . . I gotta ask: what’s the plan? We just can’t wait for them indefinitely—”

  “Actually, I expected they’d be already here,” Jeremiah said. “Once the Prince Edward appeared, I thought Lord Christopherson would have stepped up his plan—”

  “Perhaps they did,” Marcus said. “Snuck the egg in and left it—”

  “He won’t leave the egg unguarded, and he can’t sneak it. The egg is large and heavy, carried by two men or an indoor autocart. He’ll likely have other equipment and staff—hence, vehicles. He’s operating under official Aegis; they won’t be hiding the equipment he’s brought it in.”

  “You don’t know NSA Operations,” Marcus said. “The NSA itself operates anonymously, but Operations doesn’t officially exist. American intelligence services can’t legally operate on our own soil, so we fill the gap, in secret—”

  “Then how did you stop the police earlier?”

  “It’s an open secret, especially after 9/11,” he said. At her baffled look, he shrugged. “You’d be surprised how far you can get never confirming anything officially. Besides, Atlanta’s our regional headquarters. The cops know us.”

  “Capital. You’ve reinforcements, free rein to operate—but keep things quiet. Have you any invisible autocarts?” Jeremiah asked. “No. So there will be one of those large-headed carts with the train-style boxcars behind it and some number of autocarts around that. The buildings are separate, so they’ll be at the building in question itself—undermanned, no doubt, because of secrecy.”

  Marcus looked at her. “Are you sure—”

  “Secret, secure, stealthy,” Jeremiah said. “Pick two—speak of the devil.”

  A long, low black cart slid out of the darkness towards the next building down, and Marcus and Jeremiah sank lower in their cart’s bench seat. There were just enough carts in the lot that their cart wasn’t conspicuous—which was good, because three more bulky carts pulled up, s
hepherding among them a large, boxy white vehicle Marcus called a van.

  “I don’t understand,” Marcus said. “Where are all the cop cars from earlier?”

  “The autocarts with the yowlers and the blue flashing lights?” Jeremiah said. “Those warn citizens to keep away from a public disturbance, but they still attract attention. Skullduggery, they’ll do cloaked and quiet—aha.”

  Dark-suited agents began hopping out into the rain and running towards the buildings. When the first set established guard positions around the door, a second set hopped out and unloaded a large heavy crate, which they quickly hurried inside.

  Jeremiah considered. Could she do this? Was the opposing force too large? Could a castaway from another world and a skater boy with a borrowed autocart really take on two platoons of professionals? Then she thought of Dame Alice’s words: she had to stick to her guns.

  “All right,” Jeremiah said. “This is it.” She pulled out her cylinder flare and flipped it open, twisting each dial of letters and numbers one by one.

  “What are you doing?” Marcus asked, leaning over.

  “Leaving a message for the Prince Edward,” Jeremiah said. She’d gotten the rest of her team captured, so she had to take Natasha’s advice, had to think about how the mission would continue if she personally failed in this attempt. “I want Birmingham to know what I’m up to.”

  Marcus squinted at it, then leaned away. “Codewords,” he said. “Bah.”

  “They beat a cipher any day,” Jeremiah said, finishing the message. It should be enough of a clue for Birmingham to follow up on, and unless they were straight on the Prince Edward’s long axis, triangulation between the fore and aft receivers should pin their location.

  She closed the cylinder—then her finger froze over the button. Marcus had convinced her that a rescue of Georgiana and Patrick was impractical, if not impossible—and this cylinder was her only means of signaling for help. After she discharged it, she would be on her own.

  Jeremiah glanced over at Marcus.

  “Well, I can think of worse people to be stuck with,” she said and pressed her thumb into the trigger. The cylinder played a musical tone, over and over again, and she carefully set it down on the dash. After a moment, it let out a quiet crackle of foxfire, making the sound system inside the cart squeal and its interior lights flicker; then the cylinder went silent. “You have me now, sir.”

  “This is your mission,” Marcus said.

  Jeremiah looked at the building. Despite what they’d fielded here, she’d expect any one of these agents could signal with one of their portable aerographs and bring a dozen police autocarts down upon them in moments—and no doubt they had their own arsenal of this world’s disturbingly lethal weapons. So they had to hit them hard and fast, or with supreme stealth.

  Perhaps there was a way to do both.

  “This isn’t a military facility,” she said, staring at it, then its neighbor. She pulled on her goggles and flipped down their spectracle lenses. “No fences, no barbed wire—”

  “It is an important asset, though,” Marcus hissed. “It will have locks, guards, security cameras, burglar alarms—”

  “But,” she said, looking carefully at the windows for thermal or actinic signatures that might show up on her spectracles, “no roving Mechanicals, I take it.”

  “What? Robots?” Marcus said. “You have robots in 1908?”

  “Don’t know the word,” she said, “but if I take your meaning, yes we do. And you?”

  “No,” Marcus said. “Well, not practical ones, anyway.”

  “Unfortunate,” Jeremiah said. “That gives my uncle one more thing to trade.”

  Lightning struck, then moments later a deep rolling thunder rippled across the land, strong enough to churn their guts. A heavier rain began to fall, thick drops that splattered against the cart so hard Jeremiah thought they would crack the glass.

  “The weather is working for us,” Marcus said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Jeremiah said. “The bottom dropped out when Lord Christopherson first incarnated this thing. It may have weather effects.” It still surprised her that these people had practical electricity; she thought of all those wires. Then about electricity back home and why it wasn’t used more extensively—in a world where practical electric weapons seriously predated practical electric lights. “Does this building have a generator or remote power?”

  “Both, for critical systems,” Marcus said. “But there’s no way they can power everything. It’s just not possible to keep up all the lights and computers—”

  “Electric lights, electric computers, electric cameras, electric alarms,” Jeremiah said, drawing one of her Kathodenstrahls and checking the chamber, “all vulnerable to an electrical storm . . . or an electricity disrupting gun.”

  She smiled at him. “I do believe I now have a plan.”

  “So . . . how do we get in there?” Marcus asked.

  ———

  “We don’t,” Jeremiah said. “I’m going in by myself.”

  36.

  Level Four Biohazard

  FAST ON THE HEELS of the foxfire with which she’d blasted the room, Jeremiah crashed in through the window on the end of her grapple and rolled to her feet. Outside, barely audible over the rain, blasts of her left Kathodenstrahl interlaced with shouts and crashes; then squealing tires told her Marcus had completed his task—disabling the driver of one of the waiting carts.

  Her blast had bested the alarms, and the commotion would hopefully draw agents outside. Assuming she could find a way to transport the egg—maybe on one of the peculiar rolling chairs common to the building—if she came out swiftly enough she’d, perhaps, be able to take the outside agents by surprise and, hopefully, still find their driver out of commission, a key in his waiting cart ready for her getaway; if not, well, it was more likely Marcus would be caught than it was that he’d fulfill his second task: looping around to provide a second distraction.

  She checked her right Kathodenstrahl: thirty-seven shots, with another two canisters in her pocket. No excuse to be stingy; she aimed for the black domes in the ceiling Marcus had assured her were cameras, the electrical sockets he told her plugged into the building’s “grid,” and the emergency lights revealed by the sudden loss of power—leaving the room lit only by crackling foxfire.

  Flipping down the spectracle lenses of her goggles, she darted out into the hall, firing left at the junction box to kill the lights, then right at the guard running up the stairs in the sudden glare of the emergency lights, then again at the emergencies to plunge the hallway back into semi-darkness.

  She flicked out her pocket watch and flipped it open, letting the radium glow illuminate the “you are here” wall map that Marcus had told her to expect. As he’d predicted, she found a complete layout of the building, from the emergency exits down to the very bathroom stalls themselves—and, at the heart of it, a huge rectangle, covering two floors, labeled BSL-4.

  Jeremiah slipped into the adjoining UPPER OBSERVATION ROOM and found herself not in the gallery of an old-style operating theater with its balconies and pit, or in a modern Austrian-style theater with the table behind the slightly rippled carbonic glass of its sterile barrier, but instead in a prosaic conference room, with a long rectangular table standing before a long, raised slot of thick, double-paned, yet crystal-clear glass. Observers would have to stand and peer to see within; clearly these people took containment seriously.

  Jeremiah slid up her goggles and stepped forwards towards the windows, which glowed with the sterile white lights she’d come to expect here. Then, unexpectedly: a shout, a flash, several staccato blasts—and the white lights went out, replaced by a flickering foxfire glow.

  Startled, Jeremiah leapt up onto the table, staring down into the long gallery that was the Biosafety Level Four Laboratory. To h
er surprise, it didn’t look anything like Lord Christopherson’s lair. This looked like . . . like a kitchen, a military or hotel kitchen: long tables, metal kettles, rising hoods, sealed meat lockers, all made of silvery metal cleaned to a polish that would have made a martinet proud. Only the sparking of disrupted electronics, the cold mist falling from one of the larger kettles, and the omnipresent warning signs written in clear print with bold colors betrayed the fact that this was a twenty-first century lab.

  Three men, wearing white suits that covered their whole bodies and helmets trailing tubes as if they were diving gear, stood with drawn six-string crossbolts over three fallen men, wearing the same gear. Lightning flared beyond the door on the far wall; after a moment, the lightning stopped, foxfire crackled on its frame, and while one man maintained his guard, the other two men stepped forwards, dragging the fallen men out of the room through a peculiar door that belched white gas.

  So. Christopherson had made his move against his hosts.

  Things would happen quickly now.

  In a burst of white smoke, the two white-suited men returned through the peculiar door, carrying between them the iron cage that held the copper egg. Jeremiah felt an eerie frisson: within the black metal bands of its cage, the egg looked prosaic, its rounded shape reminding her of an oversized copper kettle being carried into this kitchen to cook soup for twenty—but look closer at that engraving on its surface, that too-intricate filigree, not really engraving, clearly not even human, and the truth was clear: once again she was face-to-face with a Foreigner.

  While the men set up the egg in an alley made by two long tables, the peculiar door opened and closed again in a hiss of white gas, and another two white-suited men came through leading between them some kind of metallic creature . . . a cow, an entire live cow, wrapped in metal foil.

  And then, just as Jeremiah was getting a bead on what was happening, the door burst open a third time, and Lord Christopherson walked in . . . wearing not protective gear, but a surgeon’s apron over a well-tailored black tie suit . . . and a close-fitting white surgical mask.