Once the apparatus was completely assembled, Kevin leaned as far over the wall as safety would allow and pulled an automatic long-distance measuring stick from his pocket. As he had explained to Ettie when planning their mission, the light beam from the instrument would strike the window opposite sending back an accurate trajectory from one point to another. In this case, from the top of the Lacy Group Building to the large open window of Sir Knightly Davis’s penthouse.
Ettie watched Kevin as he punched the numbers from the measuring stick into the control panel of the assembled machine.
“Okay,” he pronounced, “we’re ready.”
“We?” Clem whispered into Ettie’s ear, not so quietly that Kevin and Hound Dog couldn’t hear, “It’s not like they’re doing this.”
“Oh, we’ve done this plenty ’o times,” Hound Dog assured her. “Even took my missus on a ride.”
“Yes, well…” Clem countered, “…but the hastened timetable has not allowed us any practice.”
“No worries,” Kevin replied. “This machine can autopilot better than a human can fly it.”
Ettie looked down hundreds of feet to the street below and sincerely hoped her trust wasn’t misplaced. She almost hadn’t agreed to do it upon learning that Clem was the only person approximately her size and weight to add ballast to the contraption. But now with her uncle and aunt kidnapped and likely held captive, Clem wasn’t about to be left on the rooftop.
The two men picked up the machine, and Ettie and Clem wiggled into the tandem harness. When the men let go to help buckle the straps, it was surprisingly light and pulled only slightly on their shoulders.
“Once you’re in the air,” Kevin instructed, adding a couple of small bags of sand to Clem’s harness to even the load, “it will be quick, just a matter of seconds. Don’t make any jerky moves or try to steer with your weight. It will land you about two feet inside the window.”
“Good thing that window there is huge and don’t have any glass,” Hound Dog commented. “Else, you’d be landing on the ledge. Which I gotta admit, is kinda tricky.”
Ettie swallowed hard. “Well, that’s a relief, I guess.”
“Here’s your mark.” Kevin pointed to the chalk mark he had made at the exact spot where he’d taken the measurement. “We’ll help you up.”
Kevin grabbed under Ettie’s arm, and Hound Dog took Clem’s. Together they lifted them onto the brick wall. Kevin leaned over to look up at the two women.
“Press the silver button in the middle there.”
Ettie pressed the button, and short, tapered wings popped out of the cylinders on each side and the tail fan widened and extended out from the other end. The whir of a small motor sounded.
“The motor will automatically shut off once you’ve landed.” Kevin smiled up at their nervous faces. “When you step off the building, there’s going to be something of a drop…”
Ettie closed her eyes and felt her stomach lurch in anticipation. They were supposed to have had a day to practice on the thing, get used to it in a more controlled setting. Well, best laid plans and all that… she thought, panic bubbling up in her throat.
“…but it will right itself very quickly.” He added. “I’ll signal Lord Westchester once you’re in.”
Ettie opened her eyes and saw him smiling up at her. “Courage, my dear, this is the easy part.”
She nodded and looked over at Clem who mirrored her set, grim expression.
“Okay, on the count of three,” Kevin began, “One… two… three… go!”
They stepped off into the abyss, and only the fear of waking the entire city kept them from screaming.
*
Odell couldn’t remember being more frustrated. He was very close to throttling the Founding Fathers.
Seated around the table, Washington and Jefferson used their southern gentility to deflect from their intransigence. They wanted to abolish slavery; they wished they could; it was evil; it was a blight on the goals of their revolution; if only the southern colonies were less dependent on slave labor; if only they could be sure that arming the blacks would not result in slave rebellion; if only…
John Adams was hardly any better. His fallback was practicality. We can’t win without all the colonies; our native alliances are new, untested; abolition is still too polarizing; he wished it were different; slavery was morally wrong; his wife was strongly opposed to it, as was he…
Benjamin Franklin was no help. In fact, it seemed as if his vaunted diplomacy had completely deserted him. He interjected at all the wrong times, making comments that were almost designed to exacerbate the men’s most infuriating qualities, to bring into full relief their excuses.
He didn’t know how Gabriel kept his cool. His was the only voice that drew them back again and again to the plan they had laid out, the diverse alliances of both native communities and freed slaves that would compensate for the loss of the southern colonies. He pointed out that much of the southern economy would suffer once slaves were offered their freedom. His argument against slavery was not only practical, but legal, moral, and philosophical. They had all read his treatise. And yes, they agreed; it was brilliant, well-reasoned, but too uncertain; no, it couldn’t be done…
“Enough.”
The word was not spoken loudly. She had not evinced any anger or aggravation in its pronunciation. It was not spoken with force, but with resolution. It was but one word, yet all eyes turned toward her.
“I have heard enough.”
Odell had not seen her rise, absorbed as he had been in the eloquent evasions that had dominated the discussion for over an hour. In fact, he had not even looked in her direction the entire time, and, for an instant, he saw her as those around him did. Her blackness, her very otherness, knocked the breath from his body.
Ava wore a simple dress of navy blue wool, the white shawl collar stood out in sharp relief against her black skin. She had walked to stand with her back to the parlor door, facing the men at the table.
“Just say it,” she demanded. Her voice was the even, patient voice of a teacher. “Just say what you really mean.”
They looked at her, and no one stirred. The candlelight flickered and drew shadows on the walls. Finally, Jefferson opened his mouth to speak, but she threw up an imperious hand to stop him.
“Actually, don’t speak. I’ll say it for you. You talk of the evils of slavery, but you don’t really believe it.” They stirred in protest, but she forestalled them again. “Intellectually you know it, but you don’t believe it, not in your hearts, not in your souls.”
She paced to the window, her hands balled into fists. She turned abruptly and walked back to stand before them again.
“Because if you did, you wouldn’t speak of practicalities or of economic dependence or colonial cohesion.”
Odell saw her swallow convulsively and knew what it cost her to remain calm. She brought her hands up to overlap and cross at the base of her throat.
“You would feel it here, as I do. Words and curses clawing to get out every time you see one of your own lower her eyes in fear, or bend his knees in submission. Your throat would become raw with the effort of forcing them down.”
She reached her arms toward them, palms up. Odell could see them, little half-moon crescents across her palms where her fingernails had dug into the skin. The candlelight lit them up like tiny hot, glowing brands. Odell cut his eyes over to see the effect this had on the men at the table. All were transfixed, except Benjamin Franklin. He sat back with arms crossed and a self-satisfied smile upon his lips.
The hell! Odell thought, the old man had planned this! His uncharacteristically clumsy diplomacy obviously a complete sham! It was all to reveal their biases and goad Ava into action. And boy had it worked, because she was speaking again, her voice gaining strength, her indignation beginning to surface.
“Your hands would bleed, as have mine,” she declared, “from gripping them tight as you watch the slave market on the docks. You would b
all them into bloodless fists, only to stand helpless as they separate husband from wife, mother from child. Their protests and screams would haunt your every waking moment; they would be the stuff of your nightmares.”
Ava walked forward until her skirts touched the edge of the table. She looked hard at Washington and Jefferson, who drew back a little in their chairs.
“I know what happens on your plantations. And so do you. My people are worked from sunup to sundown, sometimes longer. They live in squalor, fed and clothed as cheaply as possible, to extract the highest profit from your lands. They live and die by the whip, to be buried in a nameless grave.”
She stepped back and swept them all with a contemptuous look. “You don’t fool me, none of you do. And you aren’t fooling God either.”
Odell looked at her sharply. He had never heard her speak of God. But Ava knew what she was about. These men held strongly to the principal of divorcing their religion from politics, but they were still men of faith. On a personal level, they firmly believed they would one day be judged before the heavenly throne.
“You think your words more than your actions will absolve you?” Her eyes glistened with Old Testament wrath. “They won’t,” she declared with the finality of truth.
Ava stood, her shoulders pulled back like the ballerina she once was. Her eyes seemed to absorb all the light in the room, and for these men, her next words had the ring of prophecy.
“You can pass up this opportunity to rid your new republic of the abomination of slavery. You can let it take root so strongly in this land, only blood will dislodge it. Not drops of blood, but rivers. You will not pay the price for your lack of resolve, but your great-grandchildren will, and their children, and those beyond. The war that tears this country apart will see the sacrifice of American life like none before or after. That will be the result of your cowardice today, at this crossroads.”
She shook her head in seeming bemusement. “But it won’t end there. It will be a wound that never heals. It will fester in the hearts of men and women, where it will spread like poison. It will keep us from becoming one nation, one people, indivisible and united.
“Because what you do now, what you do next, matters. Will future generations look back and see a pantheon of greatness so expansive that it included even the enslaved and downtrodden? Or will they find in the founders of this country an excuse for their own bigotry and hatred?”
Ava looked over at Gabriel, who had stood silently and stared at her with unshed tears in his eyes and quoted from his treatise: “When we treat people like cattle to be bought and sold, we cheapen humanity to the point of self-destruction.
“Nothing, gentlemen, is truer. It may not happen in one hundred years or two hundred. It may not be as overt as slavery. But the commodifying of human life will change and morph until it chokes out everything else: our voices, our communities, our natural world, our political will, and even our freedoms. And it will destroy us and everything we hold dear.”
Ava fell silent, but it was as if her words still hung in the air, writ in fire across the shadowed walls. Odell looked again at Benjamin Franklin, the smug smile now wiped from his face. He had gotten more than he’d bargained for. Unlike the other three, Franklin knew that she had not prophesied. The civil war she had spoken of was historical fact, the bleak future a certainty. He met Odell’s eyes with steadfast determination.
Benjamin Franklin rose slowly to his feet. Odell felt as if the cosmos held its breath, as if this next moment, his next words, held within them the fate of humanity.
The sound of breaking glass shattered the silence, and all eyes turned to a small metal tube that rolled to a stop on the hearth rug. It took Odell a split second to identify the grenade before it exploded in a flash of light and sound that left them all blind and deaf.
*
“Tits of a bloody street tart!” Clem exclaimed in a forceful whisper. “I am not doing that again! Ever!”
They had landed as Kevin had predicted about two feet within the open window. With shaking hands, they began to unbuckle the harness. Ettie drew in deep droughts of night air, the terror of the last thirty seconds clinging to the ragged edges of her nerves. She had been certain they were going to die, dropping at least twenty feet until the motor kicked in strong enough to propel them up and over to the adjacent building.
“Me either,” she replied more calmly than she felt.
They shrugged the flying machine from their shoulders. Ettie turned and looked back at the Lacy Group Building. She could just see Kevin and Hound Dog leaning over the wall. Kevin’s white teeth and broad smile flashed in the night as he gave them two thumbs up.
“Asshole,” she whispered irritably under her breath.
The dials of the altered Temporatus glowed in the darkness, as Clem clicked on an electric torch. She flicked it around the beautiful room, the light landing on intricately carved pillars and an expertly wrought mahogany staircase leading up to the loft above. Assured that no one else was in the room, they walked over to the machine.
Ettie thought she was prepared for what met their eyes. The Feralon had explained the manner in which their fellows were being used. Still, she took a moment to steady her lurching stomach before addressing the task at hand.
It was a good thing for Clem, whose experience at the hospital made her better equipped to handle the unsettling scene before them. She bent over each one, taking its pulse and brushing a hand across its forehead.
“Okay, we can’t destroy the machine until they are disconnected or we could kill them,” Ettie repeated out loud information they both knew.
Clem straightened and examined the tubes. “I think taking them off at the machine is the riskier course of action. If we can unscrew these metal halo things from their heads, we might be able to remove them safely.” She looked up at Ettie with worried eyes. “But I’m really just guessing, Ettie. We could kill them either way, and they are already so weak.”
Unscrewing the metal circlets would be time consuming, but it would allow for a more gradual disconnect from the machine. Then they could destroy it, closing the wormhole for good and shutting down the fluctuating frequency waves preventing the Feralon from leaving or entering the building.
Ettie nodded determinedly. “Let’s get to it.”
They both worked on one at a time. The task of removing the halo was gruesome as the screws came out with a sucking sound, gore dripping from the ends. When the first was completely free, the Feralon stirred in its sleep. The two women looked at each other from over its body and sighed with relief. The little creature was still alive.
Clem bound its wounds with bandages from her nurse’s kit, while Ettie moved on to the next one, Clem joining her when she was done. They had almost removed the second halo when they heard an alarm go off in the distant recesses of the vast building.
They looked up at each other, and Ettie nodded calmly trying to still her racing heart as they continued with their mission. This was part of the plan. Or, at least, something they knew could happen. Of course, it would have been better if no alarm had sounded, but she knew that was the unlikeliest of scenarios. They were just lucky that Sir Knightly’s arrogance was such that he had not felt the need to rig an alarm on the machine.
“Well, they’ve tripped an alarm. We don’t have much time now,” Ettie commented stoically as they lifted the halo from the Feralon’s head. Like the first, it stirred in its sleep, but did not wake.
At the very least, the alarm told Ettie that Charlie and Inspector Hamilton were in the building. Faith had been jumpy and uncertain, frightened that the omniscient Knightly Davis was on to her, but apparently her access had not been impeded. Ettie was only praying that they would find Clem’s aunt and uncle, as well as the trapped Feralon before Davis could call in reinforcements.
This whole rescue was a gigantic calculated risk, a matter of “ifs” and “hopefullys.” It would all work if they could get in undetected, if Sir Knightly only had his usual
small contingent of guards, if Faith could open the doors, if the Feralon’s map were accurate. Then hopefully they could get the Feralon out and in between before they were discovered; hopefully, they could free Clem’s family and household servants; hopefully, they would destroy the machine, and, equally important, hopefully escape to the rooftops before they were captured.
Already Ettie knew that one of their “hopefullys” was not going to pan out. The Feralon were too weak and debilitated to even wake up, much less escape in between. It was up to the other Feralon to help their fellows, but only if she and Clem could gain access for them to the room. They only had one more to release, and worked frantically with steady hands.
“Ettie?” Her palmavox popped and crackled.
She nodded to Clem to continue and grabbed it from her inner pocket. “What is it, Charlie?”
“Kill the machine! The Feralon can’t get in while it’s still on,” his voice was tense and breathless. She had the impression that he was talking on the run.
“I know. We’re almost there.” She propped the communicator on the cot and held the metal halo still while Clem worked on the last bolt. “Did you get them?”
“Yes,” he replied curtly, saving his breath. Ettie imagined them running through twisting hallways, looking for access to the upper floor while avoiding armed guards. “Adelaide and Faith took Sir Matthew and Lady Abigail and the rest out over the rooftops from Faith’s room. Hamilton and I are headed your way.”
Ettie nodded, not bothering to sign off. The last of the Feralon was finally free. She walked to the metal canisters of the flying machine and detached the heavy rod-like handlebar. She turned with purpose to the machine that seemed to glow menacingly in the darkness.
“Now for you,” she hissed under her breath and raised the bar over her head.
A razor sharp ray of light shot out from the opposite end of the room, and Ettie felt the stinging pain of her arm slicing open. The laser cut through muscle and tendon, and her arm dropped to her side useless. Ettie fell to her knees grasping at the wound and trying to staunch the blood slipping through her fingers. Clem ran to her. She dropped down beside her and pulled a tourniquet and bandages from her bag, tying them around Ettie’s arm.
Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II Page 37
