Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  Jeremiah flapped all four wings hard and darted up through the torn hole in the grille. She climbed rapidly through the accelerator chamber, curling over the great donut, still staggeringly vast even now that she had the power of flight, and made a beeline for the hole the Prince Edward had punched through the roof. She put on one more burst of speed . . . then darted through.

  Three bolts of lightning slammed into the roof as she shot out, not through the hole itself but around it, scattering a huge spray of masonry and tile upon her. She dodged it as best she could, taking a chunk to her forehead, but did not fall.

  Instinctively, she swerved as three more bolts rained down upon her. The Prince Edward, still visible even to human eyes, was firing three shots at a time in broadsides, trying to fill the air with beams of energy, trying to hit her even though she was moving too fast to draw a bead.

  Jeremiah arced under the great airshark, curled aft, beyond the range of its guns, arcing up into the sky over it. Nausea assaulted her as fluid surged through open channels in her inner ear and her prosthetic otoliths rattled about . . . and then she thought: Oh, right . . . I should properly fix those.

  With joy she rebuilt her ears midflight, closing the congenital holes in her ear canals, tightening the Eustachian tubes, and shaving her synthetic otoliths down to a healthy size. In mere moments the Scarab did a better job of repair than three prior sets of human surgeries, leaving Jeremiah with better balance than she had ever had in her whole life. Exhilarated, she did a barrel roll and whooped with joy.

  As she congratulated herself, the Prince Edward rolled and fired.

  Three bolts of lightning hit her at once, and Jeremiah screamed. Every nerve was afire; all the sky was filled with light. Crackling foxfire tore through her, tearing nerves and bones and golden wire as fast as the Scarab could fix them.

  As she fell, arcing into the Prince Edward, Jeremiah—the human part of Jeremiah, in a brief and final moment of independence before the Scarab reknitted their consciousness together, now and forever—thought:

  Blood of the Queen, the Scarab is a tough bastard.

  Still rippling with foxfire, Jeremiah crashed through the skin of the Prince Edward, puncturing the airframe hull, the high-pressure sheath, and finally the inner membrane of one of the liftbags, igniting it in a great belching ultraviolet flame despite the streams of helium and carbonated foam squealing out of the sheath around her. The nearly-invisible hydrogen fireball pinched up the heat-sensitive drawstrings, knotting up the hole in a twisted knot, but the whole airframe shuddered under the loss of lift, lurching beneath Jeremiah as she tumbled down the inside of the liftbag.

  Jeremiah slammed into a membrane wall, gasping for breath and taking in only hydrogen. In surprise and pain she tore at the inner bladder, her hands ripping the tough membrane to shreds, ice-cold pressurized helium spraying in her face. Abruptly she fell through the membrane, hands still windmilling, tearing and shredding at the material of the safety bladder even as it tried to close up around her. At last, lungs ready to explode, she fell out of the bladder, striking again the skin of the outer hull, from the inside this time, rolling down onto the port maintenance deck.

  Jeremiah gasped, convulsing when cool air hit membranes burned by fire and lightning. But she heard footsteps and rose to her feet, all burnt flesh, twitching muscles, broken wings, and cindered hair. Jeremiah limped, then stomped towards the two aeronauts running down on her. At first her voice was a croak from seared lungs, but with her very next breath, it became a growl:

  “You gentlemen and gentlewomen best stand aside . . . now.”

  They fired upon her, with unmodified thermionic blasters that Jeremiah just shrugged off. She batted the woman aside with a recovering fist, the man with an already-healed wing. If three direct hits from the Prince Edward couldn’t take out the Scarab, what could?

  But at the bridge the going was harder: she was brought to her knees by a fusillade from her own men and women wielding Tea-modified dark-matter guns. Too late, Jeremiah realized that the Scarab’s regenerative powers were not infinite. She had overextended herself.

  Jeremiah quickly dispatched the remaining Rangers and dove upon Lord Birmingham, who swung at her. She struck back with a flurry of quick punches, but he shrugged them off and smashed her to the deck with his metal arm.

  Jeremiah kicked out to knock his feet from under him, but the bear of a man recovered with grace, shifting his weight like a boxer, then stamping at her. As his boots rattled the grille, she rolled left, then right—then struck with her wing.

  His metal gauntlet caught the wing and clamped, and Jeremiah squealed. She jerked back, but the iron claw ground coppery metal bone into golden flesh, so she gritted her teeth, stood despite the pain, and clocked him on the jaw.

  Birmingham’s iron jaw was only metaphorical; after meeting Jeremiah’s literally metal-boned fist, he toppled back—but with his metal claw still clamped on, twisting a chunk of Jeremiah’s wing as he fell. Jeremiah cried out, falling with him, but after Lord Birmingham impacted the deck, his monocle rolled away, and he lay still.

  Jeremiah gasped a moment, then pried his hand off her mangled wing. Nothing the Scarab couldn’t fix, but this was wearing her out. She checked Birmingham: jaw dislocated, breathing heavy . . . but his artificial heart still ticked true.

  Jeremiah stood up.

  Resplendent in Victorianan finery, Marcus stood at the end of the Chartographer’s table, holding a shotgun under the chin of the Owl. Jeremiah smiled grimly and strode forwards, and Marcus pushed the gun in, tilting the Owl’s head back and making him cry out.

  “I don’t want you to hurt him,” she said, “but don’t think it will stop me.”

  Marcus hissed. “So it’s true,” he said. “You are merged with the Scarab.”

  “The Scarab is quite inclined to let the boy live,” Jeremiah said, still striding forwards despite the terror in the Owl’s eyes, “but the Expeditionary in me would kill you, him, me, and everyone on this ship to keep it out of the hands of the Tea.”

  “Good to know, Commander,” Marcus said, tossing the boy away, raising his free hand—and blasting Jeremiah with a dark miasma.

  Again she fell to her knees. She knew she had very little power left; in a toe-to-toe battle with a Carrier of the Tea, she would lose. But she wasn’t just the Scarab; she was Jeremiah Willstone. And she was good at more than fighting.

  She was a matahari. She could try to reach Marcus. She was convinced there was more to him than the Tea. But he was a matahari too. And the question remained: had he been playing her all along? Time to find out.

  Marcus stepped over her, shotgun pointed out at her, as much an offensive weapon as a tool to maintain distance while he gathered dark power in his free hand. Jeremiah made a soft cry, then raised her hand placatingly.

  “Marcus . . . are you even still human?” she asked—and then reached up and pulled the drawstring of her tattered shift. It fell open in the breeze. She spread her hands, spread her flesh before him, stepped up, lowered her head. “Because I still am.”

  Marcus’s breath caught—and she leapt on him.

  The shotgun discharged—but it was too late, and she was too close. Her pincers batted the gun aside, her hands reached out and clamped on his head, and her wings spread as she discharged all her remaining energy into his brain.

  “Be free,” she cried, his eyes rolled back, and they both fell to the deck.

  The clank of her wings against the grille surprised her, and she just lay there a moment, a tangle of white flesh, metal limbs, and delicate fire. Then she tried to get up, raised a hand, and found it dripping in red blood. The shotgun had gone off in her belly, and she was bleeding. Bleeding fast.

  At first she was content to lie there and die . . . but then she thought of the words of Simeon: never give up. Six hours ago she’d been a parapleg
ic in a cage, and now she could fly and fight. She wasn’t giving up now.

  She dragged herself over to Marcus and found his cell phone. At first she looked at it blankly, again perplexed by its keypad, but then some part of the Scarab within her traced the circuits, the logic, the buttons.

  She squeezed a button that felt right, and the phone turned on.

  Understanding its interface was trickier than just turning it on, but soon she found the history of messages she had seen earlier, as Jeremiah. She rolled backwards through time until she saw the alias check, then clicked on it.

  The phone now said Agent Zenta along with a string of numbers. She didn’t know what the numbers meant, but it was a phone, a miniature transponding aerograph, and after a moment, she picked out the word CALL over one of the buttons. Hands shaking, she hit SEND.

  Her antennae trilled as the device emitted radio waves. She had antennae?

  “This is Zenta,” a tinny voice said. “Where have you been, Vallejo—”

  Jeremiah lifted the thing to her cheek. “Marcus is . . . indisposed.”

  The voice spoke, now gruff and real in her ear, “Who is this?”

  “Jeremiah Willstone,” she said.

  “Who?” the voice responded, crackling with suspicion.

  “I’m . . .” Jeremiah began, but, thinking quickly, she decided she was playing to a patriarchal white male, and could grease the wheels on that basis. See how easy it is to start playing matahari again? “I’m the young woman you’ve been chasing, sir. The airship girl, with the goggles.”

  “Miss . . . Willstone, is it?” the voice said, tone softening—but just for a moment; then suspicion crackled back again as he asked, “What have you done with Marcus?”

  Jeremiah felt gratified: at last, someone who wouldn’t be snowed by a bit of flirting. There was hope for this world yet.

  “Your agent was compromised by a corrupting fluid, sir. Not my doing.”

  “A corrupting fluid? Some kind of psychoactive substance?”

  “I don’t know your words, sir,” Jeremiah said, wincing. “It got your man and my men and women too. I stopped them, sir, but I’ve been shot—”

  “Oh, Jesus,” the voice said, switching from gruff anger to tender concern in an instant. Well, perhaps patriarchal white males weren’t all bad. “Miss Willstone, I want you to relax. Stay on the phone, stay with me, we’ll come get you—”

  “Sir, I don’t know how to work this. I can’t tell you where we are—”

  “Just leave it on,” Zenta said. “We’ll find you.”

  “We’re in the air,” Jeremiah said. “In one of those airships—”

  “Fantastic,” Zenta said. “But don’t worry. We will still find you.”

  “Splendid,” Jeremiah repeated, letting the device fall away from her ear. She could still hear Zenta’s voice, once again tinny, slowly growing further away, but she just stared out over the phone at Marcus, who breathed peacefully beside her on the deck. “Absolutely splendid.”

  Jeremiah smiled. The Scarab had been tamed, the Black Tea Society had been stopped—and a life she cared about had been saved, and in the end, wasn’t that the point of fighting these battles? But as her own vision faded to white, she still saw darkness steaming off him.

  No matter. The Scarab had been tamed; surely the Black Tea could be too. And with that thought, Jeremiah closed her eyes. She lay there, continuing to bleed out, until at last the Scarab learned enough of her anatomy to put a stop to it.

  ———

  By the time rescue came, Jeremiah had almost completely healed.

  58.

  The Turncoat Maneuver

  JEREMIAH AWOKE in a hospital bed—actually, two hospital beds.

  Her eyes opened and saw her right antenna curled up against a pillow and her right hand resting on a sheet of white. A printed paper cuff wrapped her wrist; a thin tube stretched up from her forearm. Beyond was pane glass overlooking a valley, rolling brown hills framing a city.

  More of her awareness returned. She was lying on her side, in a hospital gown that covered even less than the shift she’d been wearing. Had she been out long? Her insect legs were wrapped around her like a belt, but her wings were stretched out behind her on a second bed.

  She sat up—at first painfully and slowly, then with pleasure as she felt her human legs shift beneath her as she moved. She was not bound. She was not drugged. Her right antenna was asleep, though, and as she raised her hand to straighten it, she saw her name on the cuff on her wrist:

  WILLSTONE, JEREMIAH—CMDR

  Jeremiah realized, as her wings creaked up naturally as once she would have stretched out her arms, that these people were treating a Foreigner, an “alien,” as if it was a person, with nary a second thought. Which meant . . . either they were enormously magnanimous and broadminded, or there was something very wrong with Marcus’s claim that they had never encountered aliens.

  Paper rustled, and Jeremiah glanced over in shock to see a black-suited man staring at her, folding his newspaper as he rose from a comfortable chair by the door. He wore dark glasses, and with fear she adjusted her eyes to see through them. But his eyes were human.

  “Ah, you’re awake at last,” he said. No, his eyes were . . . kind? “I’ll tell Zenta.”

  Jeremiah sat stunned for a moment, then sat up and cried, “Wait!” But the crisply-dressed man was already stepping out the door, and she herself was arrested by the feeling of her legs moving under her. She gripped the sheet with her toes, luxuriating.

  A few minutes later the man with the black suit and dark glasses returned with two male nurses in pale blue frocks. Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed; their nametags identified them as “orderlies,” and one pushed a wheelchair with leather straps that were clearly restraints.

  “Zenta will see you now,” the man said.

  “I don’t think that chair is going to work,” Jeremiah said, flexing her wings.

  “Ah,” one of the orderlies said, embarrassed. “What do you think?”

  “A gurney?” the second one said, eyeing her uncertainly.

  “I’m fairly confident I can walk,” Jeremiah said, turning so her feet dangled off the bed, then wriggling her toes. Oh, what a feeling, after that horrible, horrible moment when she’d bitten into her back. “In fact I find I am quite anxious to, so soon after regaining the use of my spine.”

  “Ah, well,” the suited man said uncomfortably. “Well, yes, of course. I hope you understand, miss, that you’re a formidable, ah, unknown individual and—”

  “And you’re scared,” Jeremiah said, “after all I’ve done for you.”

  “Ah, well, yes, miss,” the man said, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. “I’m sure, however, you understand, given the, ah, unusual circumstances.”

  “Actually,” Jeremiah said, glancing back at her wings, “I do understand—and you’ve treated me quite well, given the circumstances. I’ll cooperate.” She extended her wrists—then pulled them back sharply as she saw the orderlies carried something else. “But what are those?”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to use these, miss,” the man said, motioning to the orderlies, who stepped forwards with leather belts. “On your, ah, wings.”

  Jeremiah glared. “I’ll cooperate, as I said, but no one touches my wings. I just got them.”

  The two orderlies looked at each other, but the sharply dressed man was firm. “You are leaving here under restraints, miss. You will cooperate, or we will make things . . . difficult.”

  “I’ll cooperate with you, of course,” Jeremiah said, extending her wrists, “but no one touches my wings or any of my new limbs. No one.”

  And with that she spread her wings and spindly legs. The man and orderlies stepped back and back and back, until they were pinned to the walls of the room by the sprea
d of the great coppery metal blades and delicate, sharp pincers.

  “Miss,” the agent said.

  “I note my hands are still outstretched,” Jeremiah said pointedly.

  The man reached out gingerly for the wing closest to him, then flinched as Jeremiah glared—without ever precisely looking directly at him, though no doubt the glow of her antennae was a clue—and jabbed the wingtip at his throat. Slowly, he inched out around it, along the wall, stepped in front of her, and extended the handcuffs.

  “I am deadly serious,” Jeremiah said. “I will cooperate—”

  “But no one touches her wings,” the man said to the orderlies, not looking her directly in her glowing eyes as he slipped the handcuffs on her.

  “I see we have an understanding,” Jeremiah said.

  ———

  When “Zenta” came to see her in the interrogation tank, Jeremiah sat, hands on the table, cuffed to an iron ring on its surface, leaning to the side so she could watch her great brass wings slowly flexing in and out as light pulsed through their burning gold veins.

  Zenta was a huge man, not as big as her uncle, but easily two meters, with a bald head and a prodigious, menacing beard that offset the twinkle he tried and failed to keep out of his eyes. He stood there, first looking at her wings in wonder, then watching her watch her wings for a moment; then he stepped forwards and slipped a manila folder on the table.

  “Miss Willstone?” Zenta said, and Jeremiah sat up as she parsed the subtle expressions crossing his face: wonder, yes, but worry, fear—and hope? “I’m Special Agent Zentagothi of the National Security Agency’s Operations Division. That’s a mouthful; you may call me Zenta.”

  “Thank you, but it’s Commander Willstone, actually, sir,” Jeremiah said, remembering she’d decided to butter up this patriarch. “Senior Expeditionary Commander Jeremiah Willstone of the Victoriana Defense League. You may call me Jeremiah, or Commander Willstone, as you please, sir.”

  “Literally Jeremiah,” Zenta said, making a note on the folder. “I thought I’d heard wrong—”