Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy)

by Appleton, Robert

  “No one who still lives.” Her turn to shudder.

  “You cut your hands and feet on the glass, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It’s nothing. They have samples of your blood, that’s all. From the carpet as you were leaving, the walls of the stairwell, and from the magnetic sled. They know someone fled the fight that way. For all they know, it was a bunch of raiders. But they’re now extremely paranoid about any documents that may have been stolen. One item in particular—”

  “Denton’s device, the miniature document reader. You can have it if you like. Cathy only gave it me to keep safe, and I haven’t even looked at it. I promise.”

  “Don’t be so jumpy. We’re on the same side, remember? I’ll escort you to your apartment later—you can give it to me then.”

  “You’re welcome. But just so you know, you’d be jumpy, too, Billy boy, if you’d been through what I went through.”

  “I dare say.”

  She stepped in front of him. “I dare say, I dare say? Who are you trying to be now? One minute you’re from Manchester, the next it’s Norway, now you’re a full-blown toff. Make up your mind!”

  “Sshh!”

  “Don’t you sshh me.”

  Taking her by the arm, he grunted and said, “Come with me,” before finding them a place in the busy thoroughfare. “The pterosaurs up there are called Hatzegopteryx.”

  “Huh? Oh yes, I almost forgot, you were there to see firsthand—”

  William’s elbow in her side made her wince. She snarled, “Do that once more and I’ll bite a chunk out of you myself.”

  “Say, that doesn’t sound entirely disagreeable,” said a tall young man over her shoulder. He wore a lopsided beret and a tartan cloak, and had very long blond hair. He winked at her when she peered back. “I’ve been watching you,” he said. “A hundred pounds is yours if you’ll leave this sour half-pint and spend the night with me instead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That is one enticing ensemble—enough to make any man pocket his wedding ring for the night. Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll triple it, or one hundred pounds.”

  “Are you smogged? What do you think I am?”

  “Delectable, miss.”

  “Well, I’d rather get cosy with Hat-shop-chops-chips up there. Now go away before I set Half-Pint on you. You’ve been warned.”

  “Two hundred.”

  “Go away.”

  “Three?”

  “William,” she raised her voice and the man stopped to let several people pass him. A smart move, too, as William, for his age, was built like a brick outhouse and had already proved he didn’t shy away from a fight.

  “What is it?”

  “I was just wondering...what these are called...the little bipeds with bright feathers?”

  “Dromaeosaurus,” William replied. “They’re scavengers, pack hunters, and they have a bloody strong bite. Very nasty.”

  “Then they’re a species of Southsea Pub Crawler.”

  He sprouted a cute grin. “You’ve clearly never been to Manchester, then.”

  “Do I want to?”

  “Not dressed like that you don’t.”

  Meredith mock-punched his arm. “Not you as well. For a prehistoric adventuress I think I’m dressed rather appropriately.”

  “So does every slobbering male animal here tonight.”

  “Yourself included, Dino Boy?”

  He cleared his throat, adjusted his collar as they approached the entrance to the baryonyx exhibit, which, even from a distance, had punters playfully clinging to one another, chuckling in giddy terror. Imitation lightning flashes, thunder rolls, ground-quaking thumps meant to signify monstrous steps, the dinosaur’s gruelling, ear-piercing roars simulated all too convincingly through loudspeakers: it was a show worth the ticket price, whatever William had paid.

  Meredith jumped out of her skin as they brushed through a artificial grass thicket and the colossal jaws of a full-sized baryonyx thrust out over their heads, about fifteen feet from the ground. It gave off an almighty roar. Though William snatched a laugh, he began to sweat. She watched him closely. She saw defiance, desperation, a sharp edge. In his eyes blazed the nightmares ripped forth from his adolescence, a flash of unshielded terror with which no one else on Earth had ever had to contend. He’d been a boy of eleven when he’d faced the two baryonyx in the Cretaceous Period. The only child. Now he pretended amusement the way a survivor of a traumatic sea disaster might, years later, tremulously smile at his children playing tug-of-war with a life-belt on a ferry across the Channel.

  The exquisite mechanical monster, moulded into an exact replica of its living counterpart, reared and swivelled its enormous crocodilian head, and scrabbled at the air with its claws. It slid forward and back on some sort of track hidden by the undergrowth. An impressive steam-powered creation. Even the steam itself was utilised in the staging of the prehistoric environment, venting from craters in the volcanic terrain.

  Next was the actual baryonyx skeleton, protected by a reinforced pane of glass. It stood on its own, without need for props or effects. One look at its dimensions, and its frightening hunting posture—those long, clawed hands, those titanic jaws—was enough to make her thankful elephants were the largest land animals in the twentieth century.

  The tour continued in the aquarium section, where something called Liopleurodon awaited. But William had clearly unearthed enough painful memories for one night, and suggested they leave the crowd and sneak upstairs instead, to take in the African exhibition as a tribute to her father’s adventure. Oh yes? And it had nothing to do with the fact that William had fancied her for years and this was an excuse to spend some time alone with her?

  Or maybe her new apparel had gone to her head.

  “Take a seat,” he said upstairs, motioning at a bench opposite the miniature hot air balloon display. It was a detailed tableau housed in a large glass case, depicting the famous Kennedy-Ferguson East African expedition of 1863, complete with a working hydrogen balloon visitors could control by means of brass knobs for the direction of air currents and a cord for the height of the balloon.

  Dim light on this floor, the third, told her it was off-limits, but William wasn’t fazed, so nor would she be. “I’ve been wondering, how exactly do you figure in the Coalition, William? You can’t be more than seventeen, eighteen.”

  “Seventeen. I’m still learning the ropes, not much more than a courier for the time being. Professor Sorensen doesn’t want me getting mixed up in the fighting until I’ve graduated university.”

  “Which university is that?”

  “Oxford. I start next year—European History.”

  “Congratulations. History, though? I would have thought, with Sorensen for a mentor—”

  “I know.” For some reason the observation tickled him. “Ironic, ain’t it? Two science professors to take after, and I’m still an absolute duffer at math. But history’s a more useful subject than people realise. The past is where we learn the most about ourselves. If you think about it, every mistake has already been made. A study of history is a study of how to conduct ourselves, and how not to conduct ourselves. Politicians would do well to learn from it.”

  “Nicely put. But since when did you become eloquent, William Elgin? If I recall, you could barely untie your tongue in Niflheim.”

  He gazed at her now with steady admiration, as an equal. The answer was in his composure, his newfound confidence, and he didn’t feel the need to verbalise it. It satisfied her. More than that, the tacit silence made her feel mature too, engaged beyond words, fluent in the nuance of an attraction without explanation.

  Yes, she liked William, had for a while now, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. He didn’t have striking good looks, but he was passably handsome. He had no conception whatsoever of how to charm a lady, but that in itself held its own sort of charm—the naive, guileless kind. A year ago she wouldn’t have considered him; yet some
thing in her had changed lately, something she knew in her gut would never change back.

  “If you could be anything you wanted, what would it be?” He checked his watch, then nudged her with his knee to elicit a reply.

  “Can I think about that one?”

  “No.”

  “Oh? Well in that case, I would have to say a moon-voyager,” she said.

  “Good one.”

  “And you?”

  “A mountaineer,” he replied. “Maybe even on the moon.” His wink surprised her, and by the time she reciprocated he’d looked away.

  “All right, my turn, fellow lunatic.” Meredith tugged at his jacket. “What’s your favourite drink?”

  Despite his propensity for looking at his watch at regular intervals—a rude habit in most people, but somehow an amusing eccentricity in William, perhaps because he lavished her with attention the rest of the time—they chatted eagerly until it was dark outside. Their conversation veered from his prehistoric reminiscences to her ordeal in the Atlas tunnels to her father’s expedition to the tidal wave in Niflheim and the decisive victory over the Sorensen cousins, who had, it seemed, quickly bounced back from their public embarrassment. Suitors had flocked to their doorstep after the worst of the tidal wave disaster had passed. The eldest two, Brigitte and Freya, were courting men of good standing, while the youngest, Helga, had taken to sulking ever since William had rebuffed her advances.

  “Poor little troll!” Meredith stretched her arms, then clasped her gloved hands on the back of her neck. “She drew the short straw, didn’t she. Sonja will be cock-a-hoop when I tell her.”

  Once more he glanced at his timepiece.

  She playfully shook her head. “Damn that confounded thing. It’s got you wound up on a timer, Billy boy. You’re its cuckoo.”

  “Hold that thought. And watch me carefully.” He stared at her, didn’t blink.

  “Is this the one where you turn your eyelids inside out and go cross-eyed? I’ve seen it. Boys at school were fond of—”

  She leapt up and froze. The depression in the cushion where he’d sat...slowly reshaped itself...in his absence.

  He was not there. Not anywhere. He’d been there a moment ago, but now he was gone. She hugged herself through a sudden chill, back-stepped away, snatching glances from the deepest, darkest nooks of the corridor as well as the few feet in front of her, behind her, either side, again and again, over and over. Somehow, yes, somehow he had to have tricked her, but...but nothing short of magic could make a person disappear without trace...right in front of her eyes!

  The weakest, fakest impression of a lion’s roar she’d ever heard sounded partway up the corridor. It stilled her panic a little, allowed her to let out more than a wisp of breath. “William?” Again the pitiful roar, now followed by an even more pitiful whine. “Is that you?”

  Beyond the hot air balloon display she found a stuffed Oryx in mid-flight from a chasing lion on a dry savannah. The tableau was labelled Hunter and Prey. As an addendum to the scene, a group of wildlife photographers were huddled over a tripod-mounted camera on the other side of a bracken thicket, filming the chase. Without warning one of the men stood up, doffed his hat to her. Before she could untangle her feet she was on the floor, scrabbling away in terror, her boot heels squealing on the polished surface.

  “Wow, Meredith, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was only meant to be a joke.” William made his way out of the tableau and helped her up, took her back to the bench. “It’s nothing sinister, I can assure you.”

  “Nothing sin...you’re the devil!”

  “Ouch. All right, all right, you sit there and recover, and I’ll try to explain.”

  “Please do, before I say a prayer and send you back to the hell you escaped from. What on earth are you?”

  “A time traveller, remember? This was my way of demonstrating...my other secret.”

  “A what? Time? Black magic, more like!”

  “What rot! No, it’s simply a side-effect of our time jump—a bizarre one, I grant you, but it happens twice a day without fail, and every survivor experiences it. You see, we left 1908 for the Cretaceous at five past eight. Big Ben’s face froze to commemorate it. And that time must have imprinted on our beings somehow, because ever since we returned, time stops for us at five past eight every day, twice a day, for precisely forty-one seconds. I’m used to it now, but for those first few weeks I thought I really had gone cuckoo.

  “It’s like a glitch in time that only we experience. The world around us slows down to such an extent it appears to be static. We can move around freely, make physical changes to our surroundings, while ordinary people don’t realise anything has happened. To you I simply disappeared from here and reappeared all the way over there in an instant, yes? But in that instant I ran twenty feet, climbed into the exhibit, and managed to blend in with the tableau. An instant to you was forty-one seconds to me. Do you follow?”

  “I-I think so. But I’m afraid you’ll have to give me chance to think about this one. I’m all inside out.” She fanned her face, gathered herself. “So Tangeni has this ability too? And all the others?”

  “Yes. Everyone who survived the return time jump.” Meredith gripped his wrist when he fetched his pocket watch once more. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I can’t do that again tonight.”

  “Then why the clockwatching?”

  “There’s something I want you to see. It’s the reason I frequent London so often, and I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  She swallowed. “Not another trick, I hope.”

  “No, no more tricks. But for this we’ll have to go to the roof. Are you game?”

  “In the non-hunter-and-prey sense, I suppose so.”

  He laughed and helped her to her feet, then gently took her by the hand up two more flights of steps until they reached a white cordon chain with a sign that read, Private—Staff Only Beyond This Point. William lifted her over it, and after clambering up another, much narrower flight in total darkness but for a few successive matches he lit, they soon trod the dove-grey stone of the museum roof on a windless night. She looked out over the waning embers of industry, onto a city-wide glut of gaslit smog and shadow.

  A half mile away stood the Leviacrum tower. It pierced not only the smog but the moonlit clouds high above as well. She couldn’t see its pinnacle. Lights inside porthole windows dotted the giant edifice from top to bottom. They flickered different colours through the polluted atmosphere as though the tower itself were alive somehow, perspiring, doomed to forever burn the midnight oil. Few airship lights were visible across London, and none in the immediate vicinity save those of a small dirigible hovering directly above them, at a height of about a thousand feet. She only noticed it because William was pointing.

  “Friends of yours?” she asked.

  “Some of them. I know Tangeni’s up there.”

  “How strange, to just be hovering there. For what purpose?”

  “They’re signalling to a special friend.” The lad’s smile as he gazed up smacked of pride, of a thrill of certain knowledge the rest of London was ignorant of. She cast her mind back to his tales of prehistory, of the special friends he’d made there: Tangeni, up in the dirigible above them; Verity Champlain and Lord Garrett Embrey, trapped in the Cretaceous; and Professor Reardon, the inventor of time travel, reclusive inhabitant of...the tower!

  “You’re signalling Cecil Reardon?”

  “Exactly. Look, Meredith!” He dashed over to her, produced a pair of spectrometer goggles—

  “That’s fine. I have my own. Where are we looking?”

  “You have a Cavendish lens on yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. About two thirds of the way up the tower—the floor with only one light, a pulsing Cavendish lamp a few windows right of centre. Do you see it?”

  “Very clearly. My God, is that Reardon?”

  “Certainly is. We communicate back and forth once a week.”

  “How exciti
ng. Smuggling secrets, you mean?”

  “We exchange snippets of news, yes, but more importantly we play a game, the professor and I. One move each per week.”

  “What sort of game?”

  “Snakes and Ladders.”

  Meredith lowered her goggles. “You mean to tell me you go to all this trouble, criss-crossing coded messages through thin air, using a dirigible...just so you can play a dumb board game?”

  “It means a lot to the professor and me. We used to play it during our adventure. It helps keep his spirits up. He’s a prisoner in there, you know, and we’re doing our best to think of a way to break him out. We’ve tried all sorts. Nothing’s worked...yet.”

  “How long have you been doing this—signalling like this?”

  “Six years.”

  “Six years?”

  “Uh-huh. And I’ll never stop, not until he’s out of there. Not until he’s—oh, there it is, his farewell for the night. Have a good one, Cecil. See you next week, my friend.” And to Meredith, “Now you know why I’ve always been so secretive, why I had to change my surname from Ransdell to Elgin. If Agnes Polperro and her cronies found out where I was, they’d send half the empire after me, and I’d be a prisoner up there, too.”

  “But why?”

  “Because they never found the crucial missing piece of the professor’s time machine, so they’ve never been able to reproduce his experiment. And he’s never cooperated in building a new one.”

  “You have the missing piece?” She watched him with even greater fascination. And to think, this time last year she’d treated him with almost criminal disdain. How wrong could a girl be?

  “Tangeni and I smuggled it to Professor Sorensen in Norway. That was Cecil’s final instruction to us before he was taken—to safeguard it, to never let it fall into Leviacrum hands.”

  “I see. And if you ever do manage to free Cecil from the tower, he’ll be able to reproduce his experiment for the Coalition? Maybe turn the tide of the conflict somehow?”