Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine
Page 34
“Because of the Tea, which wanted the Scarab!” Jeremiah said. “I’ll never believe that Lord Birmingham, steering under his own helm, without any Foreign influence, shared with you any kind of vision which included you taking over the world!”
“I don’t want to rule the world,” Christopherson said. “I want to save it. Einstein is out of the bottle. Earth is on the map now. The battle is joined. Any day now, one of the monsters that I—that we both—have devoted our lives to fighting could win. We can’t bet the continued existence of humanity on the chance that we’ll keep getting lucky. We need their power on our side—”
“A hatter, I said,” Jeremiah retorted. “This is why the VDL gave you the boot—”
Lord Christopherson spread his huge hands. “God graced me with a large frame,” her uncle said. “Large enough, perhaps, to support a Scarab, the oldest and most powerful of Earth’s foes. The process will be . . . painful. As you know. And I might have to accept certain . . . losses. But if I succeed, if I can merge with the Scarab, perhaps even don the armor of a Scarab—”
His eyes again gleamed. “Then I will be able to protect the Earth,” he said. “I will be able to stand against the Foreigners. With the Scarab’s power yoked to my will, and the armies of the Earth at my back, nothing will be able to threaten the existence of humanity ever again.”
Jeremiah’s mouth hung open. Then her natural suspicion returned.
“Assume I believed that,” she said. “Why all your schemes, your secrecy?”
“First off, the Tea’s after the Scarab too,” Christopherson said. “Besides that, no one’s going to just let me become a god. Enormous power is an enormous threat. That’s the whole point. And not just alien power. If I brought this to the Crown, it would be snapped up like that—”
“And you’re not on the line of succession,” she said, her mouth quirking up. Her uncle’s opposition to the current order was becoming clearer. “No wonder you joined the Restorationists—the Peerage wouldn’t let you have this for yourself.”
“Not likely, my dear.” Christopherson smiled, more grimly. “Have they rewarded your loyalty with a knighthood? No, you’re a commoner. So I’m not going to see the world destroyed while the Peerage dickers over which princeling or princess should wield the powers I’ve discovered.”
Jeremiah grimaced; she’d already seen that Peerage thinking in action, on this very mission. But if her new intelligence was correct, at least some of that was Dame Alice and Lord Birmingham possessed by the Tea. But even though her uncle’s words rang true . . . she still didn’t trust him.
“So . . . you’re going to seize absolute power for yourself?” Jeremiah asked.
“Of course,” Christopherson said. “We already know what a spoiled monarch would do with a power like the Scarab’s, and the last thing we need is another Dark Queen like Victoria—”
“So we’ll have a Dark Lord Christopherson instead?” she asked.
“I know my own motivations,” he said, “and if the Peerage does not approve, well, it’s easier to blast into oblivion than to ask for forgiveness.”
Her breath caught. “You understand, we have to stop you.”
Lord Christopherson looked at her, slumped on the floor in a smear of blood and ichor, her left hand picking fitfully at her shift. “I understand you have to try,” he said sadly. He motioned to the footmen. “Put her in the frame.”
———
THEY CLAMPED HER spread-eagled in an uncomfortable grillework that looked like it had been sized for Lord Christopherson. Unlike the Black Tea, which put together a well-machined apparatus designed to contain only Lord Christopherson, the Baron himself had apparently anticipated that someone else might end up being the host and had designed his restraint device with enough adjustments to hold even someone with her birdlike frame snugly.
“Seems odd that you’d have such a thing conveniently prepared,” Jeremiah said, watching the footmen buckle her left hand against the grille. She could feel nothing, even though the hand twisted and bucked against the straps, and she glanced away, eyes tracing the vast shaft of a building the size of a mountain, visible far in the distance. “Are you sure that you were the intended host?”
“Are you sure,” her uncle said quietly, checking the straps on her other hand, “that the process of merger is as painful as it looks?”
Jeremiah grimaced. “Quite.”
Lord Christopherson nodded. “I expected this process to grant me immense power,” he said. “Not that it would be gained without struggle.”
Jeremiah stewed over that. The story he spun was . . . consistent. But if she let herself believe it, then on some level, she’d be trusting him—and given their history, the last thing she wanted to do was trust him. She’d trusted him before and had almost gotten drummed out of Academy for it.
She racked her brain, thinking of what else she could pick at—and found something. She’d suspected from the start that he was meddling in time for a dark reason. Everything seemed to point against it, but she had to know whether her suspicions were true: that he was after a template.
“As horrified as I am,” Jeremiah said at last, “I want to believe you. I want to believe this is the latest of your mad schemes to turn the Foreigner’s technology against themselves: that is your modus operandi, after all. But the elephant in the room remains: time travel.”
Her uncle’s eyes widened, just fractionally. Yes. She had him.
“Rumor has it you poured a spectacular amount of money into some secret project—and I’m guessing the Machine was it,” Jeremiah said. “But nothing I’ve yet seen in any of these alternate worlds was necessary for your plans for the Scarab. It will implant in anything—”
“But the process,” her uncle said, licking his lips, “it’s a game of percentages. We—”
“Oh, come off it!” Jeremiah cried. “Uncle, I know you. You really expect me to believe your plan is to travel to an alternate world just so an alien can eat you? The very idea is preposterous! The most valuable thing you have isn’t the Scarab. It’s that Machine.”
“Why, thank you,” Jackson said, with a smile.
“Don’t look so self-satisfied,” Jeremiah said, glaring at Jackson, then her uncle. “You don’t know him like I do. You haven’t seen the depths he’ll stoop to recover his losses. And you clearly don’t realize that given that Machine he’ll want to undo history, up to and including Liberation!”
Lord Christopherson’s jaw clenched, and he stepped away from the frame.
“Undo Liberation?” Jackson asked, confusion, then outrage spreading over her face. “Why the very idea is . . . is ridiculous. He may be a Restorationist, as am I, but there are many reasons to oppose the Crown, few of which have to do with Liberation. Clearly, you don’t know him—”
“He’s my uncle,” Jeremiah barked, “and I heard it from his own lips!”
“Oh, hell,” Lord Christopherson said, putting his hand to his forehead.
“What are you talking about?” Jackson said crisply, coldly, her eyes moving icily between Jeremiah and Lord Chrisopherson. “What did you overhear?”
“I didn’t overhear anything,” Jeremiah said. “He said it to my face, right after I caught him trying to get me expelled from Academy by forging evidence I’d cheated on my exams! When confronted, he said, and I quote, ‘I’d rather see all of Liberation undone than see you become an Expeditionary!’”
The words hung there in the air. Lord Christopherson made no effort to deny them, and after a moment Jackson said, “Berenice, is this true?”
“Yes, of course it is,” Lord Christopherson said, coming over to kneel by Jeremiah. “Mya, you’re my niece. I’d lost a daughter, my wife, my sister—and we both lost mothers! You, of everyone, should understand what it’s like to lose a loved one to Foreigners. And she—”
Lord Christopherson raised his hands. “You’ll never let me forget that, will you,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to grow up hearing rash words from a distraught man—but you were all I had, Mya! Of course I didn’t want you to become an Expeditionary. We’d both seen what could happen. I think my words were, ‘the VDL eats you children up.’” His throat surged in distaste as he looked over the monster that was embedded in her back. “I never thought it would be so literal.”
“Berenice,” Jackson began. “Forgery, betrayal . . . all a prelude to meddling in time—”
“Doctor Truthsayer, please,” Lord Christopherson said. “We can discuss this later—”
“We certainly can and almost certainly will, but we shall begin by discussing it right now,” Doctor Jackson Truthsayer said frostily. “So, Lord Berenice Christopherson, Fifth Baron Abinger, when you came to me, generously offering to fund my work in time travel—”
“Of course it crossed my mind,” Lord Christopherson said. “But I thought I could simply dissuade her. I never planned anything as grand as undoing our entire history.” He seemed to notice Jackson was still glaring at him and turned to face her. “Jackson. You know why we can’t do that. We discussed this. At the very start, you cautioned me that trying to change your own past is a fool’s errand, that the real reason to travel to the past is to better our present—”
“You expect me to believe,” Jeremiah repeated, “you gave up your plan just because she said it was dangerous? Just like that?”
“Yes,” Lord Christopherson said. “Just like that.” At her shocked look, her uncle said, “You can’t always get what you want, Mya. I didn’t want to lose my mother, wife, daughter, and sister to the VDL, but I did. I didn’t want you to follow their footsteps and become an Expeditionary, but you did. I wanted to undo the harm that’s come to our world, but I couldn’t. Even with Jackson’s wonderful machine, there’s only so much you can change. You have to accept some things as they are—like a world in which my family is decimated, a world in which beloved niece sees me as her a hated enemy, a world which our women defend by throwing their bodies upon monsters.”
“You and I are going to have words, sir,” Jackson said.
“You can’t doubt my commitment to—” Lord Christopherson said, then waved himself off. “No, you’re right. I was not wholly forthcoming when we first met, but in our partnership you have earned the right of full disclosure. Disclosure that should have happened without me being caught.”
“Yes, it should have,” Jackson said frostily.
“So, Uncle,” Jeremiah said. “The truth. Why did you build the Machine?”
“I built the Clockwork Time Machine,” Jackson said, even more frostily.
“But he funded it!” Jeremiah said. “Reportedly, with half his fortune. Why?”
“Mya!” Lord Christopherson said. “A time machine? A vehicle which puts all of time and space at our disposal? Why would we not build it?”
“On that we concur,” Jackson said. “I certainly had no other motive—”
“Really?” Jeremiah said.
“Good God, Commander,” Quincy said. “Have you become so embedded in the war against the Foreigners that you have lost the ability to appreciate the world we stand in—which, I point out, is not even our own world?”
Jeremiah looked over sharply at him. The hulking bruiser Quincy was a functionary; a blunt instrument. Lord Christopherson and Jackson “Truthsayer” were minds and might be playing an elaborate game; the “Walrus” would speak from his heart.
“Since I’ve joined the Baron, we’ve been to at least a dozen different realities, if our lovely Chartographer is correct,” Quincy said, and with his slight nod and Jackson’s slight flush Jeremiah gained an immense amount of information about the internal relationships of the Baron’s crew. “This world, our world, worlds where the sky has fallen, worlds with cities in the clouds.”
“Quincy,” Lord Christopherson warned.
“Uncle, hush,” Jeremiah said. “He’s making your case.”
Quincy stared back at Lord Christopherson, who, while scowling, nonetheless nodded. Quincy turned back to Jeremiah, expanding his hands, but she could see the man was speaking as much to Jackson as to her.
“I’ve seen flying machines, glass fortresses, superluminal trains,” Quincy said. “A thousand wonders and delights . . . and in every single one of them, Man fights for his life. Man, and woman too of course. The two go together.”
“You have the soul of a poet, sir,” Jeremiah said and then nodded at Jackson. “A fine catch, ma’am. I wish the best for you both.”
Jackson flushed even further, eyes flickering at Quincy, then looking away. Even Lord Christopherson smiled. Then his face slowly fell.
“Jackson took the first jaunts,” Lord Christopherson said. “She says it was for the science of it, but I think it was for the delight. She came back with stories of wonders and horrors—”
“I already knew, better than anyone, how dangerous time travel could be,” Jackson retorted. “I had to prove the Machine’s safety first—and on the note of horror, I no longer travel alone—”
“Fair enough,” her uncle said. “At first we followed Jackson’s example and simply explored time. I did harbor personal designs, I admit it freely, but I abandoned those as I came to understand the wisdom of Jackson’s warnings. Time travel really is dangerous—and wondrous, all the same. But we never forgot our real mission and soon put the joys of travel aside to begin the real work. First we surveyed the past; then, we turned our eyes to the future. Our future.”
Jeremiah stared at him. Then she jerked against the straps.
“Our future? Victoriana’s future?” she said. “What happens?”
Lord Christopherson looked at Jackson, then back at Jeremiah.
“Think, Jeremiah,” he said quietly. “Godlike power is quite the draw . . . but what would really make me desperate enough to consider getting eaten by a monster on the chance that I might gain its power?” His face grew grim. “Victoriana . . . does not prevail.”
“No,” she said. “We—”
———
“We lose,” he said simply. “To the Foreigners.”
46.
Everyone Loses
JEREMIAH SAGGED in the straps. Perhaps she’d hung on so tightly to the idea her uncle was up to no good because the alternative was far worse. At first, even she had believed her uncle had gone rogue as part of some plot to save the world . . . which meant the world needed saving.
“I’ve charted the future of Victoriana as far forward as 2170,” Jackson said crisply. “In ten separate trips, carefully calibrated. There are minor variations, but the timeline is stable. Victoriana falls, first to the Black Tea, then to the Scarab.”
“The rest of the world fares no better. Austria, of course, is the last to fall, though resistance persists in the Orient for some years,” Lord Christopherson said. “Mankind is inevitably going to lose this battle. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Well . . .” Jeremiah said. “Well, can’t you use that damned Machine—”
“No,” Jackson said firmly.
“Go back and change—” Jeremiah said. “But . . . it’s our future.”
“Quite right. The seeds of our defeat are already laid,” Lord Christopherson said. “A fall is in our future, but its roots are sunk deep in our history—”
“Meaning simple changes to the past won’t help,” Jackson said, “because we’d literally have to destroy ourselves to succeed.”
“Lea
rning about the future helps a little bit,” Christopherson said, “which is how we subverted the plans of the Order of the Burning Scarab to our own ends—and saved Newfoundland from falling to the Foreigners to boot.”
“That’s how the fall of Earth started the first time,” Jackson said. “We stopped it, but changes are risky. By the time you’ve learned about the future, it’s a part of your past. Making changes to the future undercuts your own motivation to make the change.”
“What helps the most is changing the game,” Christopherson said. “You can’t change your history from within history, but you can change it from another reality—because whatever happens there, stays there, unless events there prompt someone to send another Machine here—”
“How . . . how did you discover that?” Jeremiah asked.
“By . . . by losing someone,” Jackson said wistfully, looking at Quincy. “When we found out about the end of the world, we tried to prevent it, but . . . temporal change is incredibly difficult and hazardous. It came back and bit us—”
“Another bloody causal loop,” Quincy said, looking back at Jackson. “I led the mission to learn what we needed to save Sumatra . . . but the feedback of our changes erased the loop . . . and me. I had been completely erased from our history.”
Jeremiah drew a breath. Her uncle had already changed history, had traveled looking for templates—not to undo Liberation, but to save the planet. She glanced at him sadly: how she’d misjudged him—and then the contradiction in Quincy’s words clicked home.
“Erased,” Jeremiah said. “And yet you stand here.”
“We had already begun our cross-time travels, trying to learn what changes were safe,” Quincy said. “I and a team were left here, manning this base, but for a long time Lord Christopherson and Doctor Truthsayer never showed up. And when they did . . .”
“We’d . . . forgotten him,” Jackson said, her fist tightening.
“Forgotten?” Jeremiah asked. “And still he stands here. How is that possible?”