Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  39.

  The Black Tea, Incarnate

  “MARCUS, NO!” JEREMIAH screamed, as he slowly sank to his knees beneath a stream of black ichor. “What are you doing—”

  “Bloody hell,” Birmingham roared. “That was our whole supply—”

  Marcus lowered the kettle slowly, steam coming off his face, from his eyes, out of his mouth. The liquid had been boiling; he had to be scalded blind, near dying. But he didn’t scream; he just knelt there, steaming.

  “It’s not lost. We can still collect it,” Barrowman said urgently, darting forwards. “The hull beneath here is watertight—”

  But then he froze. The black liquid was seeping away, not through the deckplates, but back to Marcus, pooling around him, seeping into his jeans, creeping up his legs in streamers like watching a flipped spectroscope cylinder.

  Then he lifted one leg and planted his foot on the deck. The kettle fell from his hands. He rose to his feet, standing there, still steaming, then slowly turned his head back towards Barrowman and Birmingham, his face just beyond view.

  “No need,” Marcus said. “I can synthesize more as needed.”

  “It’s a trick, sir,” Barrowman said. “He’s . . . that sounded right.”

  “That indeed did sound right,” Birmingham said. He smiled. “Young man, have you joined the Black Tea Society?”

  “Have I?” Marcus said, turning about. His hair smoked. His mouth steamed. And Jeremiah’s mouth fell open in horror when she saw that where once sat Marcus’s beautiful angel eyes now shone two glistening pools of black oil. “Dude, seriously. I am the Black Tea now.”

  “Well, sir,” Birmingham said, straightening. “Incarnate at last, and in such a vessel. I’d never have expected—”

  “Dude, I’m not some stoner wasteoid,” Marcus said, lip uncharacteristically curling. “That was an act. I’m a physicist, and what you’d call a computer, a trained secret agent with a century of learning beyond yours. Of course the Black Tea would want me as its host—”

  “God, what has it done to you?” Jeremiah said.

  Marcus froze. Then he turned, walked straight up to her, and lowered himself to a rough squat before her. His face was blank, unreadable, doubly so with those featureless oily eyes. Then, slowly, his face became angry, and then, chillingly . . . it smiled.

  “Well, well, well,” Marcus said, staring straight into her eyes with his two black pools. “One of our most hated enemies, in a complete FAIL moment. You’ve completely fucked this one up, haven’t you? Ha-hah!”

  “Marcus—” Jeremiah said. Her left hand twitched, against her will.

  “I know you can hear me in there, you metal bastard,” Marcus said, tapping her forehead with one finger that burned in its brief moment of touch. He was still staring into her, no, through her, at the Foreigner. “Might not be getting all of this, but you’ll get the gist. Picked the wrong target, didn’t you? Can’t eat anything other than your host, can you—and you’ll suck this one dry before you can mature. There won’t be anything left of her but a husk—and your crippled brain, starved to the point of insanity. All ready for us.”

  Jeremiah’s left hand opened and closed, scratching the inside of the ball. She had to get out of here. She didn’t know what the Scarab planned, but it couldn’t be worse than the Black Tea, taking her lover’s soul and leaving his face.

  “Such a waste,” Marcus said, touching her cheek. “You can’t live without destroying, can you? Such a waste! We wanted her. He wanted her. She deserves to live, and here you are, sucking her dry like the parasite you are. She’s a person, not food, you ass. You’ll core her from within before you ever realize what she is, won’t you? You bastard.”

  “Marcus,” Jeremiah said desperately.

  His eyes seemed to refocus on her, no longer staring through her, but at her; even through the black mirrors she could see slight movements, as if his focus was flickering back and forth between her eyes, the way a person’s would when they looked at another person.

  “Oh, Jeremiah,” he said, hand cradling her cheek without touching it, hovering over her, as close as he dared get. “I’m so sorry.”

  He hesitated, then leaned to kiss her—and a bright spark flared.

  “Aaargh!” Marcus said, flinching back, falling to the deck. He covered his mouth with his hand, then brought his fingers away. There was blood, and his lips were burned. “God damn you, you metal bastard,” he said, standing up. “You’ve ruined her for us—”

  “I wouldn’t say ruined,” Barrowman said, helping him up—but strangely, his voice and bearing sounded a notch like Birmingham’s. “Taking it personal, aren’t you?”

  “It’s all right to take it personal,” Marcus barked in response. “It is personal—because we aren’t like them! We coexist, not consume!”

  “Quite right, of course,” Lord Birmingham said—though now his intonation seemed to pick up a bit of Barrowman.

  For a moment, Jeremiah was confused—then a creepy finger ran up her spine, above and beyond the monster already in residence there, as she realized she was watching a performance, a play put on by some dark hidden thing not quite yet sure of its lines, or who to give them to.

  Perhaps the Black Tea was lying—or deluded—when it said it did not consume.

  “I swear,” Marcus said, pointing a finger at Jeremiah, “I will make you pay, personally. When she’s gone, and you’re still alive only because you’re plugged into our machines, I’ll make you suffer through every single instant it takes to crack our way into your technology! You may not have a concept of hell, but I’ll teach hell to you to make you pay for what you’re doing to her!”

  Jeremiah’s left fist was now clenching the pole that ran through the center of the ball, holding on tight despite her attempts to release it—and her right hand, the one she still controlled, was now the one doing the scrabbling.

  “I only knew Marcus for a day,” Jeremiah said thickly, “but I learned enough about him to know he didn’t care for revenge.”

  Marcus stared at her. Then he scowled.

  “I’m more than just Marcus now,” he said, turning away, his shoulders briefly hunched before straightening. “And I have to think broader. Set two guards on her, Falconers, in an hourly rotation. Natasha’s crew didn’t like the Commander at all; they’re less likely to turn.”

  Jeremiah grimaced. Charming circumstances to learn that some of her crew despised her, but how could Marcus know—unless he was assimilating the knowledge not just of the Tea, but of the other hosts? And then his next words and actions seemed to confirm it.

  “Prepare the Owl and have him contact Dame Alice with a status report,” Marcus said. “And chart a course for the West Coast.”

  “Yes, sir,” Barrowman and Birmingham said together.

  “And dudes—no, gentlemen—no, gentlemen and gentlewomen: find me a proper waistcoat,” Marcus said, his voice slowly shifting into more Victorianan diction. “Newly converted humans still rely on their visual cortexes; I’ll need to look the part.”

  He strode out of the room, and Birmingham and Barrowman followed. After a moment, most of the rest of the crew filed out as well, except for two guards, one on her left and one on her right, just beyond her peripheral vision, so they could fully see her, but she could not see them.

  ———

  “Well and truly fucked now,” Jeremiah whispered . . . and the thing eating her let out a low, buzzing keen of despair.

  40.

  Fifty-Nine Minutes to Escape

  HER LEFT HAND WAS dead now. No, not dead—but with almost no feeling—it slowly scrabbled at the inside of the metal ball like a cat pawing a bed, or gripped the metal pole like a bird gripping a branch. Not dead . . . but no longer hers.

  Even that wasn’t quite right; if she concentrated, she could grip o
r release and even feel what was happening. But it felt quite alien. And she knew why: the thing inside her kept digging, digging, eating more of her brain—no, invading it, Birmingham had said.

  Every once in a while, there was a pop or a crunch, and she saw a flash of light, or heard a rasp of static, or worst of all, whispers; ghostly parodies of near-articulate speech: but the noises were clearly not outside her, for the Falconers guarding her never reacted to anything.

  She asked the guards once whether they heard the whispers, and at first they ignored her. Then she started crying. The horror of her situation setting in and all. Then she began laughing. Because the situation was ridiculous. Then she began to gag.

  “God, won’t she stop?” one of the Falconers said.

  “This is creeping me out,” the other Falconer said. “You’ve been in the cause longer, ma’am; is this . . . is this typical?”

  “I don’t know,” the first one responded. After a moment, she said, “You don’t know all the Tea knows, really, just flashes when you drink, but I think the Scarab don’t normally take . . . I don’t know the word . . . smart . . . hosts.”

  “You mean . . . what? They normally go for . . . morons?”

  “No,” the woman said. “I mean, not people. Cows. Elephants. Any uncivilized animal, preferably large, so that they can”—and she swallowed—“feed for a long time.”

  There was a sudden pop behind Jeremiah and a bright flash.

  “God,” Jeremiah said, as her mind cleared once again. “Please, gentlemen and gentlewomen, tell me this: did you see that flash of light, or no? That’s all I ask. A pop and bright as a flashbulb, it was. Was it real . . . or was it inside me?”

  There was a silence.

  “There was no flash,” the woman said. “It was inside you, Commander.”

  “God,” Jeremiah said, sinking forwards against the frame. “Thank you, ma’am. Could you just . . . just brain me? Break loose that fire axe and—”

  “I am so very sorry, Commander,” she said, sincerely apologetic.

  “Course not,” Jeremiah said, really slumping now. “I can see that would be right out. Won’t trouble you further.”

  As she lay there, limp, she realized there was a lot of slack in the straps. Unconsciously she’d been resisting the whole time, whether resisting the bondage or the monster she couldn’t say, but when she relaxed, the oversized frame was just a little bit loose on her. She didn’t do anything to call attention to it, not with the two Falconers standing over her shoulders; she was expert at laying frozen under the eyes of the enemy. An expert at freeing herself, in fact: a regular Harry Houdini, more than one foe had called her. But in her state, even if she could rid herself of the Falconers, just for a minute . . . she could do . . . what?

  Soon she was no longer just lying limp; she was actually relaxing, drifting off into sleep. She wondered if it was real sleep or the thing eating her, but the crunching sounds had faded in favor of that creepy . . . whispering.

  Slowly, the whispers began to resolve into something meaningful. At first they sounded like a soothing lullaby. Then they sounded like words. Sometimes they were gibberish; sometimes she thought she caught their sense. Sometimes the whispers almost sounded like . . . an apology.

  This had to be a dream. Jeremiah wondered if she would ever wake up.

  Then an intense pain spiked through her as the thing began heating up. Jeremiah tried to scream, but nothing came; she gagged a little, her mouth fell open, but only a low hiss came out, as a sensation of a million pins and needles spread through her spine, her throat, her chest, all while the monster on her back was growing hotter and hotter and hotter with every second.

  Jeremiah felt like the thing was killing her, right that very minute. Something slid into her, spiking into her chest, her lungs or heart or stomach or some damn thing, with such intense pain she’d have screamed if it weren’t already tearing her to pieces.

  Left mute by agony or the meddling of the monster, all Jeremiah could do was writhe and watch the ship’s clock, still spattered with Natasha’s blood, the secondhand inexorably sweeping by as she suffered every moment. Almost precisely on the hour, her original guards left, and two new Falconers took their posts, oblivious, even as the hot spiking pain was tearing her apart. Slowly, slowly, the secondhand swept around the clock until it reached the one minute mark.

  Then light flared out around her, and the two Falconers fell to the deck.

  The pressure on her released, and Jeremiah’s eyes widened. The monster had stunned the guards. Somehow, she sussed that the blast of energy had been carefully timed to give the two original guards time to walk out of earshot; now they had fifty-nine minutes until guards returned.

  Fifty-nine minutes to escape.

  Jeremiah heard a rhythmic clanking. She looked down and saw her left arm jerking against the straps, pulling on the hand trapped within the steel ball. She stared at it, fascinated, completely disconnected from it. No; not disconnected. She could still feel it, faintly; yes. Yes. She had to escape. She had to escape!

  All of a sudden her clarity returned. She twisted and struggled, feeling the straps pinioning her, her and the thing that was eating into her back. Then she remembered the feeling when she relaxed and let herself sink against the unyielding steel of the bars.

  She had slack, but what good would that do her, with her hands encased in steel? Even if she could dislocate a thumb, she didn’t have the clearance to pull her hands backwards out of the balls, not with her body strapped into place, pinning her elbows against the armrests of the chair.

  Frustrated, Jeremiah stretched out the fingers of her right hand, feeling the metal against her fingernails, then closed her hand again, feeling the bar within the ball . . . so much like a handle.

  Yes. Yes! That was it! Her fingers were trapped inside the steel balls—but the bars within them, the bars that prevented her hands from turning, gave her leverage on the structure!

  Jeremiah overrode the flailing of her hand, gripped both bars tightly as she could, and pulled herself forwards and down, shifting her arse back so she had room to slide her upper torso vertically downwards against the bars. The thing on her back screamed within her, and her own neck felt like it was breaking; then her head slipped out of the upper strap.

  Free to turn her head, she twisted, leaning back against the monster despite the pain and its screaming. As she thought, the strap around her neck was also around its neck, giving her, with her head twisted aside and pressed painfully against the thing, just enough slack to work her chin under the strap, then slowly jaw and twist the strap up over her face and head. Funny that; she’d done near the same trick a night or two before in Christopherson’s lab, and with the extra slack it was easier.

  Now she was free to raise her body, just a couple centimeters, giving her a few degrees of angle on her forearm, letting her lift her elbow over whatever had been pinioning it from behind. Now pulling her hand out of the ball would work. She began pulling, pulling, jerking at her arm, jamming her left hand against the inside of the cuffs. Then, the flailing her hand had been doing on its own resumed in earnest. Jeremiah stared in fascination: it was like watching a snake on a live wire.

  Jeremiah’s hand slid a couple centimeters out of the ball, but it was still pinioned inside the cold welded circle by the ridge of her thumb. “Bloody hell,” she said, feeling the pressure and knowing squirming alone would not do it. “I always hate having to do this.”

  She focused all of her attention on her hand, folded her thumb in, and then jerked her whole body back, breaking the thumb inward and popping her bloody left hand free. She screamed despite herself but bit the cry off quickly and began scrabbling at the straps on her chest.

  With her thumb dangling loose, she had no traction, and instead attacked the straps on her knees. The right one came off easily, and she rai
sed her right knee, wriggling her foot up through and out of the looser calf strap; then she kicked that leg up against the arm of the chair.

  The metal of the chair whined but didn’t budge, so she freed her other leg, wrapped both ankles around the right arm of the chair, and pulled down. The metal squealed. She kicked up. It squonked. She pulled down; it screeched, and the armrest came free.

  Of course, merely breaking the chair arm left her right hand still encased in the ball, which didn’t help her any with undoing the straps, but now she had four free limbs, and wild, frantic flailing now did what dexterous manipulation could not.

  One, two, three straps came away, giving her at last enough room to get both feet under her. Jeremiah pushed hard against the front of the chair, feeling the leather stretch until all the rest of the straps fell away, and she and the Scarab fell heavily to the deck.

  Jeremiah lay there, panting. She gave herself till the count of ten. Then, slowly, she put both feet on the ball and pushed, twisting her hand back and forth as best she could; now, with the added leverage and sweat, her right hand popped free, scraped and bruised, but whole.

  “Let’s see . . . broken or dislocated,” she said, sitting up, looking at her left arm. It flopped uselessly, its fingers waving numbly and independently like a sea anemone’s tentacles, yet the thumb was still a bright flare of pain. She reached out and clamped her other hand on it. “Well, if broken you’re useless to me anyway,” she said and wrenched her thumb back into position.

  She screamed and fell forwards, and the thing on her back screamed also, falling limp. It was like having another whole person on her back, one that increasingly set her teeth on edge, as its leg-parts were now dug into her back, and the keening seemed to come from inside her skull.

  “God damn dead weight,” she said, propping herself up only with her right hand. She could still feel her left, barely, but could no longer move it. Birmingham had said the thing had “invaded half her brain” by now; if that was true, the least the thing could do was pull its weight! She levered herself up, got to her feet, swaying, and cursed as the thing’s spindly metal arms flopped about, nearly pulling her back down again as its mass swung drunkenly. “Pull yourself together!”