Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Madam Ambassador,” Jeremiah said.

  “The pleasure is mine,” the Ambassador said. “As I understand the story, you saved this world from invasion from a rogue Carrier. The Black Oil is forever in your debt—”

  “Is it now?” Jeremiah said skeptically. “The Carrier I encountered called itself the Black Tea and had designs on the whole world. Why would you thank me for stopping them?”

  “Precisely because humans and the Black Oil have difficulty coexisting while retaining full independence,” the Ambassador said. “Our presence on Earth is already limited enough. We had to found our primary colony on Ganymede after the Tranquility Accords—”

  “Then why did they let you stay here?” Jeremiah said darkly.

  The Ambassador stared at her a moment, then raised her chin proudly.

  “I have the right to be here because I have agreed to defend this world,” the Ambassador said. “That’s the basic principle of the Tranquility Accords: anyone is welcome on a world if they are willing to defend it—and refrain from displacing those who already live there.”

  “So you can be a Carrier, if you do not convert?” Jeremiah asked skeptically.

  “And you may be a Scarab, if you do not implant eggs in the unwilling.”

  “We don’t do that,” Jeremiah responded, a bit guiltily. She glanced sideways at her wings. “These are a product of . . . unusual circumstances. Normally, implanting in sentient beings is not allowed. Or even all that prudent—”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” the Ambassador said.

  “I wasn’t aware you had tabled one,” Jeremiah said.

  “The Ambassador and I are asking the same question,” Zenta said. “Are you willing to defend this world? That’s the condition for protection under the Accords; that’s the price of your freedom. Anyone can be a citizen of the planet if they’re willing to defend it.”

  “I—” Jeremiah began, then stopped. She and Zenta had been discussing defending America from Victoriana, and then perhaps retaking her home—but what if this Earth, too, came under assault from Foreigners? Which should she defend? “I’m not . . . sure I can commit to that.”

  The Ambassador raised her eyebrows. “Well,” she said, gesturing at Zenta. “I had been prepared to sponsor you, to even grant you full asylum if the Americans were unwilling, but if you won’t agree to defend this world, then I shall leave you to the Agency’s tender graces—”

  “Quite tender, in point of fact,” Jeremiah said, glancing at Zenta. “Don’t misunderstand me, Ambassador. Special Agent Zentagothi and I were reaching towards an arrangement when you arrived. But . . . I’m not sure I can commit to defending a world that isn’t my own.”

  “The Ambassador hasn’t been briefed about your larger situation,” Zenta said.

  “What larger situation?” the Ambassador asked. Her brow wrinkled as she listened, and then her mouth fell open in shock as Zenta and Jeremiah tried to explain that she’d jumped tracks. But the Ambassador stayed with them. “So that explains why we detected a rogue Carrier—”

  “Exactly,” Zenta said. “But the Oil didn’t have a rogue. The Tea did.”

  The Ambassador looked quite worried. “I . . . we are not proud of our history. It would be a disaster if a pre-Tranquility Carrier was loosed on Earth. And if I understand your story, there’s at least one more Carrier back in what you call Victoriana—and thousands could be infected.”

  “And they have the perfect delivery vehicle,” Zenta said. “With one of those airships, they can arrive anywhere, remain undetected, and drop off the Carrier. This world is likely to be soon under attack. And except for a tiny window of opportunity, we can’t even see our enemies—”

  “I can see them,” Jeremiah said darkly.

  “You can’t monitor the whole world,” the Ambassador said.

  “We can, and do,” Zenta said. “Those airships are invisible while traveling normally, but they make quite a show, traveling through time. I put out a worldwide satellite alert out for flash storms like the ones that appeared around your ship . . . and I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  “No,” Jeremiah said, already intuiting what he was going to say.

  ———

  “Yes. We checked the satellite records,” Zenta said. “An airship arrived a week ago.”

  60.

  Intercept in Time

  “GOD,” JEREMIAH said. “There’s always a chance it’s my uncle—has he contacted you? No? No, of course not. I’m the weapon he left here—so this is likely an assault from Victoriana, from the Black Tea. And a week ago! Who knows how many they could have converted in that time?”

  “Dozens . . . if there’s only one Carrier,” the Ambassador said, and Jeremiah’s gut clenched: taking on one put her in the hospital, but what if there were more? The Ambassador said, “If they brought more, or enough dark matter suspension, they could have converted hundreds—”

  “They will convert none,” Zenta said, “if we intercept them in time.”

  “Not if they’ve already arrived,” Jeremiah said. Then suddenly she leaned back from her chair, her wings clanking as they scraped the wall. “Unless . . . we intercept them in time . . .”

  “Now you’re getting it,” Zenta said, eyes twinkling at her.

  “What are you two talking about?” the Ambassador said.

  “I want that invisible, time traveling airship of yours,” Zenta said.

  “No wonder you seemed nervous as a mother hen from the moment you walked in here,” Jeremiah said. “You need to field the Prince Edward against a temporal attack already in process! But even with time travel, isn’t it already too late? If they’re here, they’re here—my word, my head—”

  “Oh, they’re here already,” Zenta said darkly. “Sending out ripples—and there’s the urgency. The longer we let things go, the larger the ripples spread—and the more our world is a product of their intervention. Time travel is a disturbance in probabilities; if we strike back, it must be soon—”

  “How do you know that?” Jeremiah asked. “I thought you lot didn’t have time travel—”

  “We don’t have time travel technology,” Zenta said. “But ever since Einstein showed that space and time were fluid, we’ve been studying how they interact. Our physicists understand time travel quite well—and assure us we need to act as soon as possible. Commander—will you help us?”

  “Why do you keep asking me?” Jeremiah said. “You have the ship—”

  “Physically, yes. And we have Agent Vallejo, who learned a lot about it during his time as a Carrier, enough to help oversee repairs,” Zenta said. “But I need a crew trained to fly it. I need your crew, as many of them as are able—especially you, the girl with the Scarab eyes—”

  “You’ve captured the crew too,” Jeremiah said pointedly. “So why ask, rather than order—”

  “Zenta, they’re visitors from another world,” the Ambassador said. “No matter how urgent our need, pressing them into service would be a direct violation of the Tranquility Accords—”

  “So that’s it,” Jeremiah said, glancing between Zenta and the Ambassador. “You’re not asking me because you want to, but because you have to, with the Oil watching over you—”

  “Not just the Oil, but that’s not the point,” Zenta said. “Believe me, Commander, if we had wanted to keep all this hush-hush, we could have done it. Even with the YouTubes of your airship over downtown Atlanta, we could still have buttoned this up—we’re the NSA. No, the Ambassador is here because I called her, proactively, requesting Tranquility Accord oversight of your situation.”

  “Then . . .” Jeremiah said, taken aback. “Then you’ve given up a hell of an advantage, sir.”

  “Because it was the right thing to do,” Zenta said. “Commande
r, your permission, the free exercise of will, really matters to us. I’m given to understand you’d rather die than use a lethal weapon. Why can’t you grant that we have our own principles we’d die to uphold?”

  “Well, I, yes, I can grant . . .” Jeremiah said; then her mouth fell open. “Oh . . . bugger me.”

  Even before Jeremiah set foot on this world, she’d thought of it as her uncle’s template for undoing Liberation, and ever since she’d arrived, she’d seen it through that suspicious lens. But if the wings on her back were any proof, undoing Liberation was never his plan.

  But what if he’d come here for a template anyway? One that she knew was consistent with his values, one that she knew was burned deeply into his brain, just like it had been burned into her brain since the day she first saw that fateful disk, in which her mother picked up a white flag of truce and said, “Stand firm, gentlemen and gentlewomen! I’ll broker a peace, and bring an end to this fighting!”

  “Oh, bloody hell, that’s it,” Jeremiah said, sitting straight up, feeling her wings creak—and realizing in a bizarre way that in her body she’d achieved what he always wanted. “He didn’t come here to undo Liberation or to get your weapons or to use that accelerator or even for that transgenic cow. He first came here for a blueprint—of successful peace between humans and Foreigners!”

  “The Tranquility Accords,” Zentagothi said thoughtfully, “were of great interest to him.”

  “No wonder he’s always trying to use the Foreigners’ technology against themselves,” she said. “Not just to defeat one group of them in an engagement, but to be able to stand against their potentially endless opposing forces long enough to broker a peace!”

  “That is indeed what happened here,” the Ambassador said, “but . . . it’s a hidden peace, not always successful. We must maintain constant vigilance, and we have much work ahead—”

  “A hidden peace is better than an open war,” Jeremiah said, flexing her wings. “In secret, when no one was watching, you, a representative of the Black Oil, successfully defended a Scarab, your hated enemy—defended my rights, my freedom—under the Tranquility Accords.”

  “Tranquility is just a word,” Zenta cautioned. “It refers to a base on the moon—”

  “How long have these Accords lasted? Decades, I’m guessing?” Jeremiah said, glancing between the two of them. “Let me guess, you got those dreadful weapons first, and since using them would be as much a disaster for you as the Foreigners, everyone was forced to see reason.”

  “That’s . . . quick,” Zenta said. “And just about right.”

  “This, sir, is my bailiwick,” Jeremiah said. Perhaps it was her experience with the great metal bug on her back, but she now found that the idea of peace with the Foreigners was far better than wiping the lot of them out. “And I find myself inclined to—”

  Then she hesitated. “I am inclined to accept, sir, but . . . I’m not in charge of the mission,” she said at last. “Ask Lord Birmingham—” and then she winced. “Of course, sir, I must point out that Lord Birmingham was infested with the Tea—”

  “Emphasis on was,” Zenta said. “When we found him, your Lord Birmingham was heavily infested with the Tea . . . and has a long recovery ahead of him. Your Lady Westenhoq is what you call a computer and tells me she is not in the chain of command. Which leaves . . .”

  “Which leaves . . . me the ranking officer,” Jeremiah said.

  “Precisely,” Zenta said.

  “So when you were asking me,” Jeremiah said, “You were literally asking me.”

  “Yes, Commander,” Zenta said. “Will you help us?”

  “Please,” the Ambassador pleaded. “If you have access to the memories of the Scarab . . . you know how bad the Oil can be. If a rogue Carrier got loose on this world it would destroy our alliance with the humans. Please, Commander. You must help us.”

  Jeremiah’s mouth quirked up. The Scarab in her relished the irony of her hated enemy asking her for help against their own kind; the human in her marveled at this definitive proof that this version of the Tea was on her side.

  But she hadn’t expected the whole decision to land on her shoulders. And she was still in an interrogation room, with her ship and its crew in this man’s hands. No matter how good the two of them made the situation sound, how could she trust them, really?

  Jeremiah decided and stood abruptly, and Zenta and the Ambassador leaned back. Quickly Jeremiah raised her palms placatingly and sat back down, watching carefully Zenta’s hands. There was a buzzer wired beneath the table to call for aid . . . but he didn’t look ready to use it.

  “Forgive me,” Jeremiah said. “I’m a woman of action, and when I decide, I like to move. I am inclined to accept—but you lot have me over a barrel. If you really want my help, it’s time to prove yourself, Special Agent Zentagothi. Take me to my compatriots.”

  ———

  AT FIRST, LORD Birmingham did not see Jeremiah, standing as she was behind Zenta and the Ambassador, both far taller than herself. But he smiled anyway from his hospital bed, if a bit weakly, and raised his human arm, covered in tubes.

  “Ambassador. Agent Zenta—Zentagothi,” he said, a bit slowly. He looked to have aged a dozen years since Jeremiah saw him last. “Good to see you. Forgive an old man. These bloody, these bloody machines have got me a bit addled.”

  His hand indicated a machine the size of a stove, into which tubes both drew and fed blood. Three cylinders stood above it, one reddish, one amber—and the third black. Jeremiah didn’t need Scarab eyes to know it was filled with Tea . . . but she could not resist looking with her Scarab eyes. Tea was flowing out of him, through filters, but not back in. The machine was scrubbing his blood. Zenta and the Ambassador had not lied. They were trying to free him of the Tea.

  “Forgive me as well if I do not get up,” Georgiana said, seated next to the blood-processing machine. She wore an elaborate but contemporary dress, one of the netbooks on her lap—and a dozen cables running out of her black curls into the netbook and the wall. “I’m charging.”

  “Of course,” Zenta said. “Any progress on programming the time gears?”

  “Considerable,” Georgiana said. “I’ll crack destination targeting soon.”

  “Splendid,” Zenta said. “Lady, Lord: we have a visitor for you.”

  And he and the Ambassador stepped aside to admit Jeremiah.

  Lord Birmingham smiled at her, then his eyes grew troubled as they traced the outline of her wings. Georgiana gasped, tried to stand, then nearly lost her netbook, catching it and cords as they tried to tumble off her lap.

  “Hello, my friends,” Jeremiah said, stepping forwards, drawing her wings in slightly so she could step between Zenta and the Ambassador. “Splendid to see you again.” She tilted her head, tracing Georgiana’s cables. “You’ve been modified.”

  “As . . . as have you,” Georgiana said, at last collecting her cables, if not her composure. She closed the netbook, slipped it and the cables into a satchel over her shoulder, then stood. “What . . . forgive me, Jeremiah, but what happened?”

  “I merged with the Scarab,” she said, stretching her wings. “This is the mature stage in the life cycle of that great copper egg. My uncle meant this for himself, but when he saw how far the implantation had progressed . . . he helped us achieve completion, rather than separate us.”

  “Leaving you access to the Scarab’s technology,” Lord Birmingham said, “not to mention making you more radiant than ever.” His weak but beaming smile was genuine, and he patted the bed at his side. “Come sit here, my dear.”

  Jeremiah sat down on the bed, making it creak. As she settled, her hospital gown flopped around her, and she pulled it as chastely tight as she could. “We need to have words about these shifts, gentlemen and gentlewomen,” she said, glancing at Zenta and the Ambassador.


  “We don’t like them either,” Zenta said. “Talk to the doctors.”

  “Commander,” Lord Birmingham said, weak but lucid. “I hope Zenta filled you in: the ship is damaged, half the crew is compromised—and the Lady Georgiana has detected another Temporal Incursion a week in our past, likely an airship infested with Tea. The situation looks grim—”

  “With respect, Special Agent, that is how you do a briefing,” Jeremiah said, leaning over her shoulder to Zenta. “Lord Birmingham, Zenta said you’d been infested by the Tea and could not take command. But to my eyes—and I now have very good eyes—you seem to be well on the mend.”

  “I’ve been infested for some time,” he said, suddenly grave. “Dame Alice even longer. We’d both have been selected as Carriers if our bodies were whole. You won’t be able to quickly purge me the way that you did Marcus. It’s more than just matter. It’s knowledge, ideas, habits of mind—”

  “Can you at least tell me,” Jeremiah said, “what their goal is?”

  “The literal Blood of the Queen,” Birmingham said, and Jeremiah’s heart clenched. “They want Queen Columbia II, and with a large enough sample of her blood, Key or no, they get control of Victoria’s Flying Castle. And with that flying porcupine of death at their command—”

  “The world is theirs,” Jeremiah said. “Sir . . . what should I do?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Birmingham said firmly. “My decisions could be . . . compromised.”

  “Sir,” Jeremiah said, putting her hand on his—feeling the slightest tingle. She grimaced: she easily could imagine how a man with his strategic insight might make subtle mistakes under the influence of the Tea. “Sir . . . you understand what Zenta is asking of us, do you not?”

  “Commander,” Birmingham interrupted. “We both know this mission should have been yours in the first place. If Dame Alice had not been corrupted, you’d’ve become a Knight ages ago and would have been in command. Here . . . that doesn’t matter. So be in command.”