by J M Bannon
“Professor, I imagine many see me that way, and it is nothing more than drive to see a project to its end as quickly as possible,” replied Alfie.
“It’s good, no? I thought you would understand,” said Giuliani, as he made his way towards the door, “Ah, one more thing, the Countess has told me that her assistant, a young man named Gerrard will be visiting soon to check on the progress of all of our projects. This will be a day of demonstrations and keeping him happy will go a long way to keeping our mistress’s pocketbook open.”
21
Sunday the 21st of July, 1861
2:30 P.M. Palazzo Corsini, Rome, Italy
The suit was a bit awkward but not uncomfortable. Gerrard expected it to be restrictive instead just a bit stiff. He would get used to that, or it may loosen up with wear. What was interesting to him was that the Russian had put the clock faces upside down on the chest plate to make them readable for the wearer.
“While the suit will protect your physical form from the ravages of traveling the aether, it provides no protection for your mind. That is what our training has been about,” forewarned the Countess leaning against the desk casually.
“I’m confident in my training. I’ve had an excellent tutor, a keen interest in what you have taught, and I feel that I’m coming into my own with my powers,” replied young Gerrard.
“I don’t doubt your assessment but only caution you on your overconfidence. It has not been lost on me that for the last few months you have been able to block out my thoughts,” the Countess smiled when she saw the reaction on Gerrard's face. “I bring this up not to admonish you, but to speak of my experience as to how my overconfidence was my undoing.”
The Countess walked to the table and picked up the helmet for the suit and looked at it. Turning it different angles in her hands.
“As an explorer I was certain the best thing for my kind was to search and probe. My kind did not agree. I was confident that if I continued to introduce them to new worlds and ways they would agree, instead they saw me and the other explorers as threats to our culture and sent us away. I paid a hefty price for thinking I knew best.”
“I understand,” said Gerrard.
“I hope so, then you are wiser than me when I was your age. How much do you remember about your mother?”
Gerrard thought this a strange question; seeing that Caiaphas talked little of her in the past.
“I remember living together with her in a village growing up, then being attacked and having to run away.”
“Yes, and I came to your mother and helped her to build back a life. I was able to get Mr. Strathmore to help.”
Gerrard thought back to that time in America. He didn’t have many memories of Uncle Randal as he traveled so much, but the staff at the house was so good to him.
“Your grandmother was a slave in Haiti. Your grandfather a wealthy plantation owner. He owned your grandmother. Your mother was born out of wedlock and raised on that plantation, not as a slave but as the daughter of the plantation owner. “
“Now your mother had two half-brothers who saw a negro sister that their father loved as a threat. After your grandfather died they committed a terrible act to hide your grandmother and mother’s existence.”
“I promised your mother that I would help her to get you your birthright. I did so, and in the process, your mother exacted revenge on her brothers. Mr. Strathmore and I did some deceitful things to assure that you would get the title and inheritance you deserve. Your mother was an Adept, a powerful practitioner of metaphysics, through Voodoo ritual. She commanded the forces of life and death and used them to exact her revenge. Revenge was very important to your mother, so much so that she was murdered in the process. I don’t know the specifics beyond she was in London and the Necronists led by a Guild Master named Saint-Yves and Caldwell, the British metaphysicist were present with the police. All there to see her die. Your mother paid a price for her overconfidence.”
Caiaphas continued, “when you were unable to fight for your birthright, I helped to do so. Now I need you to help me fight for mine. You know I am not of this world, all I want is to return to mine. Soon in that suit, you will be the first of your kind to travel to where I come from. As I told you before I was banished here. While I have power and dominion here, I am actually a prisoner. Please don’t be offended but what I do to influence events here is just a way to keep me from going insane. I am like a prisoner in solitary confinement talking to rats and cockroaches to keep my mind from unwinding. What I think is keeping me sane is what will finally drive me over the edge.”
“So, I am a roach?” asked Gerrard.
The Countess chuckled picking up a cloth and polishing the opal glass lens that was the viewport of the helmet, “I said don’t be offended. You know there is a scientific theory forming that humans evolved from an organism like a bug. I see you as an extraordinary creature that wants to help me, and in turn, I will help you. You will understand more when you make this trip. Frankly, I may have overestimated your abilities, and if so you won’t survive. You will be as mindless as a roach when done, and the powers you have will be lost. You could just leave now and not take that risk, and you will become one of the most powerful men on this planet. You will have control of the metaphysical, and a fortune to wield, but you will never understand the true nature of existence.”
“I am prepared to go through the gate, and I am strong enough to see what you have seen,” assured Gerrard.
“I believe you are. What I need you to do once you are there, is the real favor. You see I want you to go to my kind and plead for my release. While I can see events in this reality, I am blind to where your fate goes when you step through the gate. I can’t see if you will be successful,” said the Countess.
“And my mother?”
“If you ever are to see your mother again, it will be not in this world.”
Gerrard knew little of why his mother felt having an inheritance and living apart was more important than them being together. If she were this great practitioner, he would rather have learned from her than from some other; even one as talented as Caiaphas, “I’m ready. I’ll return for more instruction.”
She handed him the helmet. He put it on his head and locked it into place. The Countess gestured to the door. Gerrard clumped forward, his metal boots clacking on the stone. He proceeded down the hall into the room that had been converted into the new travel Nexus. He made his way down a short set of four steps.
Gerrard had not seen the previous Nexus, other than when he probed Dimetri’s memories. He knew Dimetri was proud of his work and that he was able to make the improvements needed by incorporating ideas he took from Babbage’s number loom. From what he gleaned from Dimetri the newer mechanism was far more accurate than just his time-based system.
< I was wondering if you two were coming. Quickly, we need to synchronize our connection with the London’s gate aperture,> thought Dimetri.
Dimetri had explained that the first Nexus was like trying to hit a target blind, but you knew exactly what time it would pass by and that it was exactly one hundred yards away. Now he would need to make contact with a target on mars from the moon. Dimetri needed to calculate all the movements of the earth and mars around the sun while including the movements of the moon around the earth. Gerrard would need to connect to all of those with blinders on. While the number loom had solved the problem of the complex calculations they needed reliable reference points to help find the target. What they would do is have Gerrard go through the gates blind to a location and leave what Dimetri had named beacons. These clockwork creations would be used to help orient his navigation system; lighthouses to help him pilot the unseen.
Gerrard suddenly felt a bit sick. He had traveled through the gates before, but they always deposited him somewhere here on earth. Now he could be stepping through into a world totally inhospitable to his physical and mental state.
< Let me set the chest piece. This is your lifeline with it I can bring you
back. Remember to keep it wound,> projected Dimetri as he checked his work one more time.
< I’ll initiate the sequence. Our compatriot in London has already powered the tower gate, so we must begin now,> thought Dimetri.
He went to the panel and started adjusting switches. Behind him the tall column registers of his navigation calculator engaged. Stored values were processed and calculated using the readings from his clock works. In the center of the room was a glass column that reached from floor to ceiling. It was filled with a mix of aetheric gases. The material inside began to move and swirl. Soon it took a rushing quality as if it were flowing from top to bottom, picking up speed as the registers clattered and the clock ticked. The copper metal plate and frame that made the portal door started to actuate. Water flowed from top to bottom forming a sheet then the sparks of aetheric energy started. Suddenly with a strange pop, the peculiar scene materialized.
The mute nodded to him
* * *
The Aether
Gerrard stepped up to the edge of the portal then through it. This was different than when he had gated through a portal before. In the past there was a weird tingle as you stepped from the room you were in right into the destination. This time rather than the tingle and pop there was a whooshing. As he stepped he entered a tunnel, walking brought him no closer to the exit but when he looked back he had advanced hundreds of feet from where he entered.
He looked to the side of the tunnel and the walls were distorted and distended images of Dimetri’s laboratory, mixed with images he assumed were the interior of the workings of the London Nexus. It was as if he was walking through that gas filled tube in the laboratory and wrapped around it was other locations. Looking at the tunnel wall was beginning to get disorienting and making him motion sick. He focused forward and took on a determined pace to move through the tunnel. Gerrard was surprised when his step took him through and his foot hit a different surface, or rather lack of surface.
He fell as his foot sink into a dusty surface. He quickly fell and was covered in a powdery purple substance. He felt the sub straight below and stood allowing himself to get his head and shoulders above the surface. He began to move, each step he took swirled up a purple dust that looked like pollen. He looked about surveying the horizon. The sky was clear with a red orange light, but he could see movement on the surface of this purple dust, waves of motion form something moving below the surface. His heart sank. He turned to look behind and could see the portal and hall above him almost too high to reach.
Enough of this.
He didn’t want to linger so he began to do the work he was instructed to do. He detached the beacon he had on the waist of his armor. Holding it in his left hand he tried to compare the time on the beacon to that on his check clock; it was difficult with the purple dust floating everywhere. He finally confirmed they were exact to the second sweep. He toggled the small lever that would send out its chime at an appointed time then placed the clock on the ground below the surface of the dust by his foot. It was a simple task but an important one. He would be doing this over and over, placing these beacons where Dimetri randomly punched through the fabric of reality to other realms. He would venture through and then he would leave a clock.
Dimetri would open up portals again and synchronize the beacons to his Nexus and begin to build his map. The map that would guide Gerrard to the home of Caiaphas. As he tried to set the clock by feel, a massive force from beneath the surface slammed into him. He tumbled losing his orientation until the tumbling stopped and he felt the hard surface below, knowing that, he arose to his feet.
When his head broke the surface, he was shocked to see that he was now at least ten yards from the portal. He began slogging through the dust towards the gate, that is when something broke the surface into the air before diving back into the purple dust.
It was huge, forty feet across like a giant manta with several tails off the tips of the wings. It was a pale flesh color with a huge maw. He assumed it was the creature’s mouth as it was lined with thousands of tendrils and it seemed to be scooping up this dust then billowing out from slits in its back.
Gerrard used all his effort to push through the dust. He had no intention of being eaten on some nameless world. At the gate, he jumped to get his elbows up over the edge. That way he could leverage the rest of his body up. It took everything he had to muscle up with the armor on. While it didn’t seem too heavy when walking, the movement limitations and weight were evident, especially when fearing for your life and trying to escape from an alien manta. This one was circling around him. After pulling his legs up he rolled over and looked back out through the portal. Below him he watched as the manta floated just beneath him. As it passed it blew clouds of dust out its gills.
It was time to return. Rather than look at the walls he focused on the return portal and started a slow jog back to see if the extra effort shortened the time to traverse the tunnel. He concluded that his effort had little to do with the time it took to the distance. Then unexpectedly with one step there was the whoosh and pop and he ran out into the laboratory in palazzo Corsini.
Dimetri jumped up from behind the control panel to check the clock reading on the armor against what the timepiece on the Nexus read. He stopped his hands when he saw the strange purple dust on the surface
“That place you sent me was covered in it and there was a huge beast that swam through it and attacked me.”
Dimetri grabbed a cloth and cleaned the dust off the face of the clock on Gerrard’s chest. Then he peered at it confirming the readings against the Nexus clock.
“Is that relevant?” Gerrard said as he removed his helmet.
“Good work, sir. I have to say it was a strange experience. From the moment I entered the portal as well as the reality I experienced when I exited. This is far more bizarre and dangerous that I thought it would be.”
“Did you make contact with anyone?” asked Caiaphas.
“Nothing but the beast that tried to eat me,” replied Gerrard.
“There is more of that inhabiting these realms. You are sure you were on a world, not aetherial space, like when you have astrally projected?”
“I know the difference, it was a world, like earth but different.”
“Dimetri, you will need to reduce the power. It looks like you punched right through the aether to another reality. We will need to first project into and map out the in-between realm then use our orientation to that to determine what direction for Gerrard to explore,” instructed the Countess.
“And I need protection. Who knows what else I’ll encounter?” said Gerrard.
22
Friday the 26th of July, 1861
11:20 A.M. Haddon Hall, Bakewell, England
“It is sublime,” observed Azul.
In the center of the room stood the Mechanist Man, mark three. It was of a similar build as a man-sized human. Where Azul’s initial design had leather to provide flexibility this had articulating plates and flexible chainmail. The aesthetics were opposite ends of a spectrum with Azul’s appearance as though he rose from a junk pile in a tinkerer’s workshop and at the other end Fletcher’s new design, purposefully manufactured with a focus on form and function.
“How were you able to reduce the girth so?” asked Azul, in awe.
“Having the resources provided by Professor Giuliani has made all the difference. His aetheric alloys can make smaller more durable parts. I have also been consulting with a Russian mechanist here who is an expert in the intricacies of clock workings. He has opened my mind to design on a small scale. I have even taken some time to upgrade my old claw,” said Fletcher holding up his right arm to show off a newly constructed mec
hanical hand. He rolled back the shirt sleeve to show how the brass and steel mimicked the shape of a well-muscled arm.
“Very nice,” admired Azul, as he walked around the next version of his mechanical form, “I suggest that I debut this new swish version at Preston’s wedding.”
“What and show up the Bride, Mr. Hassan?” said Luca Giuliani.
“Ooh, right, good point. Have you met Dr. von Traube? She is not the woman who I want to get on the wrong side of,” answered Azul.
“I would love for us to switch you over now, so we can make any alterations we need before you travel to the wedding, said Fletcher as he reached to Azul’s chest plate.
Azul took a step back, “what are you doing?”
“Getting at your battery and gemulet to switch them over,”
“Oh no!” said Azul one hand going to his chest.
“What’s this about?” asked Giuliani.
“You see the automaton is powered by chemical cells created by Dr. von Traube and the vessel where Mr. Hassan resides is behind them. It is what Miss Caldwell calls a gemulet. It is an arcane construct of her making.” Alfie explained.
“So, you didn’t put him into the automaton?” asked Giuliani.
“Like I said the workings of the machine are my design, but Miss Caldwell figured out the methods for the metaphysical connections to work, but the new model will work we just need to pop in the gemulet and the power pack,” said Fletcher reaching again for Azul’s chest with his left hand.
Azul grabbed Fletcher’s left wrist just before his fingers touched him.
“Come on old man, I built you,” said Fletcher grabbing Azul’s hand with his mechanical hand.
Azul, in turn, grabbed Fletcher's mechanical arm and twisted it away. The whirs and grinding could be heard from both men as their mechanical appendages wrestled. It was the twist of Fletcher's flesh arm that got him to concede.
