“Sure, I’ll join you,” she said happily.
Millicent’s smile remained as she led the way upstairs. She was happy for the robustness of their growing friendship and how quickly they had resolved their differences. They gathered together in Hubert’s dressing room—three humans and a young Colossal squid. Weena was probably adolescent in size, Millicent surmised, if her previous state were to be classified as juvenile. Also her pinkness had faded. There was a greyish hue underneath her iridescent sheen that reminded Millicent of the patina of the adult squid. It was interesting to witness these initial stages of development. She could understand Hubert’s fascination.
Communication with Weena had improved and was a much more fluid affair. Now it was clear to Millicent when Weena was conjoined with her mind and when she was having an independent thought of her own. It was a sophisticated process, and Millicent felt she had attained the level where Hubert had been on his first meeting with the little squid. His greater intellect had allowed an intimacy of understanding from the very start, whereas Millicent was still adapting to it. Though she suspected this was not due to any advance in her own skills but rather the maturing of Weena’s. There were no changes in Sangfroid’s ability to communicate that she could see. She stood on the threshold looking ill at ease, completely unaware of the thaumaturgic interaction Millicent, Hubert, and Weena were engaged in.
“So,” Sangfroid asked, “what’s the plan? Are we just going stand around looking at each other intently?”
“Weena is reminding me of the time I went back and almost got caught by one of your techie chappies in the lab,” Hubert said, his face wreathed in smiles. He and Weena were inordinately fond of touching one and other, Millicent noted. They exchanged little pats and taps of fingertips and tentacle, and once he even gently touched her mantle. He was much more demonstrative with her than he had ever been with Sophia. And that’s the difference between a squid and a cold fish. She immediately chastened herself for being mean minded and focused on what Hubert was saying.
“You mean you calibrated your arrival to a time before the ship was attacked?” Millicent suddenly realized the significance. “Before Sangfroid and the space corps centurions arrived?” She turned to Sangfroid. “Can you remember where you were before the attack?” If it were somewhere safe, maybe she could go there and somehow prevent Sangfroid even beginning her fateful journey to the doomed ship? How simple. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? All those attempts to save Sangfroid in the heat of battle when all she had to do was stop her getting anywhere near the fray.
Sangfroid shrugged. “Funnily enough, my last true memory is of being in the casino with Gallo before we were deployed. Then we go to the Amoebas to shoot up squid and poof, you’re there and my memory gets wiped.” She tapped her temple. “It goes all hazy for me the minute you turn up. Like uncorking the tequila.”
“So we can move to either side of Sangfroid’s arrival on the ship.” Hubert and Millicent both spoke at the same time.
“That was spooky.” Sangfroid looked at them warily. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“That is because it was really Weena’s thought transmitted to all of us,” Millicent told her. “I think she’s finally found your wavelength. You must have a very low frequency.”
Sangfroid stared uneasily at Weena. “I’m not sure I want a squid inside my head,” she said, then turned to Hubert. “Okay, so you can arrive on the Amoebas anytime you want, so what? All you do is steal stuff.”
“More importantly, we can arrive before the squid attack,” Hubert said, ignoring the jibe.
“I still don’t get it. Why does that matter?”
“The squid attacked for a reason,” Millicent told her.
“Yeah. The Amoebas was a Roman ship and the squid are our enemy.” Sangfroid was impatient. “They attacked a peaceful scientific research ship.”
“You can hardly call the work carried out in those laboratories peaceful,” Hubert said. “They’re more like floating torture chambers. Also, the Amoebas had a special cargo onboard.” He reached out and stroked Weena’s coral arm. “Your scientists had stolen a juvenile queen from the squid spawn. Weena is royalty,” he said proudly.
“She’s what?” Sangfroid blinked in confusion. A large, singular, blue eye blinked back at her.
Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed out eleven, and the rattle of china on a tea tray could be heard downstairs. Growing squid apparently needed a lot of rest, so Hubert shooed them out of his dressing room and down to his laboratory for elevenses. Millicent poured tea while Sangfroid gave the time machine a lingering examination with Hubert as her guide.
“So how did Weena get here?” she asked, eyeing the dimensions of the machine sceptically.
Millicent handed her a delicate china cup and saucer and winced as she clumsily handled the wafer-thin material. “We think it’s by being in close proximity to the traveller. By touching, in fact.”
“But that machine could barely hold me, never mind Weena. She’s gotten big.” She juggled the cup before she gave up on the teeny little handle. Ignoring Millicent’s consternation, she wrapped her hand completely around the porcelain cup.
“Don’t worry,” she told Millicent. “I’ll be careful. I remember how upset you got when you broke the other one in the hangar.”
“Yes,” Millicent said, drily. “A pinnacle moment. All else pales.”
“It doesn’t matter what size you were.” Hubert got them back on track. “You didn’t materialize in the machine with Millicent. You popped up on the settee in the evening parlour, remember?”
“Rather inconveniently, too,” Millicent murmured.
“But it gave me the idea that maybe I could transport Weena the same way.” Hubert sipped his tea. “All I had to do was assure she materialized when the house was quiet. I chose an evening when Millicent was at her Chartist meeting and that Edna had off. Cook always goes to bed early.”
“You brought Weena here the day before yesterday?” Millicent was surprised.
“But she was on the ship yesterday when we were fighting in the lab?” Sangfroid said.
“No, I brought her here last week. It’s time travel. Remember? Different rules.”
“I can’t keep track of all this.” Sangfroid stared moodily into her cup. She hadn’t met Hubert before yesterday, yet he felt like a good, long-standing friend. Her feelings for Millicent were more complicated. They went deeper, to places she had never known existed inside of her, constricting her with panicked palpitations until her breathing grew shallow and her skin slick with sweat.
“It’s harder for you,” Hubert said. “Millicent and I are firmly rooted in this timeline along with the time machine. Try and see this room as a sort of terminus. We can get on and off the time machine as we would an omnibus, but we’re always circling our home route and ending up back here.”
“Whereas you have hopped on the wrong bus entirely,” Millicent added. “And Hubert and I have to deduce where you got on and how to make sure you get off again at exactly the same stop. Understand?”
Sangfroid thought about this for a moment and said, “No.” She bit into her third scone and wiped her sticky fingers on her pant leg, ignoring the disapproving look Millicent gave. “So, can we send Weena back on the bus the way she came, especially now she’s bigger? She’ll break the lab bench if we don’t do it soon.”
“I don’t really want to send her back to the lab as—” Hubert said.
“Hey,” Sangfroid interrupted. “Maybe I can go back with her?”
Hubert and Millicent exchanged glances.
“What?” Sangfroid demanded. “You said we could go back at any time which means we can go back to before I died.”
“Sangfroid, I have often gone back, and believe me,” Millicent said. “It just doesn’t work. In fact, the only reason you are here now is because you pulled
me into the escape pod with you. Despite my best efforts, I sincerely doubt you would have been saved at all.” She sighed. “I have become quite despondent at your lack of longevity.”
“You mean…” As usual Sangfroid grappled with a bottleneck of ideas until Millicent gently uncorked her.
“I mean I have never once managed to save you,” she said. “I thought you were going to explain all this at the club?” She accused her brother.
He went red. “I tried,” he said. “But events took over.”
“You mean you got drunk,” Millicent gave them both a hard look. “And imbecility took over. I shall never forgive you for that dance.”
“I thought it looked very virile and Cossack like,” Hubert defended Sangfroid, though rather lamely.
“It’s all in the thighs.” Sangfroid slapped her own. “You should see how high I can bounce when my knee’s not ban-jaxed.”
“Can we please get back to the subject in hand,” Millicent said sternly.
“But you saved me; that’s why I’m here,” Sangfroid said. This was met with silence. “Well, isn’t it?”
“When Millicent and I went back, that initial time, it didn’t exactly go as expected,” said Hubert.
“Not that we had any defined expectations,” Millicent added. “We didn’t know what would happen.”
“We hadn’t much of a plan at all,” Hubert agreed.
“In fact, it was all very laissez faire,” Millicent said.
“What happened?” Sangfroid sighed and settled back in her chair with a defeatist slump.
“Well,” Hubert began, “as I told you last night, we arrived on the Amoebas and went straight to the laboratory where I met Weena for the first time. Then suddenly, the doors of the main laboratory burst open with lots of smoke and noise and the like.”
“That was us coming in, right?” Sangfroid looked to Millicent for confirmation.
“Yes. I warned Hubert that we had to detour you away from Weena’s annex. You couldn’t find us there. And then I had a wonderful idea—”
Weena managed to sit still while Hubert awkwardly detached the clips from the ends of her tentacles to free her from the oppressive machinery surrounding her.
“Quickly, Hubert.” Millicent waited by the wiring panel, her hand poised on the red switch. “Once I pull this, the lab outside becomes a death trap, and we have to leave immediately. Do you understand me?” she hissed.
“Yes. Death trap, I think I can remember that,” he hissed back and unclipped the last of the tentacle attachments. “What about Weena? Will she be safe?”
“I assume so, seeing as the harbinger of death and destruction is most probably a piece of her big brother.” From the corner of her eye she watched as Sangfroid, and her other self, entered the lab. The other Millicent began to linger over the apparatus on the benches while Sangfroid grew more and more abrupt. She hadn’t realized before how nervous Sangfroid had been, hovering over her anxiously while bossing her about. It saddened her to see how exhausted and beaten down they already were, for she knew there was much worse to come. It also disturbed her that her chignon was in a terrible mess, and as for the state of her day dress!
“All done. Pull the switch,” Hubert said. She did so, and as before, the main lab lighting and all its machinery came to demonic life.
“Good Lord!” Hubert exclaimed, agog at the transformation going on before him. The huge tentacle twitched as electrical current began to run through it. Millicent grabbed his sleeve and pulled him under the nearest bench as they watched Sangfroid bundle the other Millicent towards an exit on the other side of the lab and away from the annex. She breathed a sigh of relief. It had worked; Sangfroid was out of danger and moving away from the dismembered tentacle. She had saved her!
“Quickly, we must leave before the tentacle comes after us.” She pushed Hubert towards the annex door.
“What tentacle?” The glass tank exploded, and the severed appendage began its rampage across the lab, jerking, twitching, and destroying everything in its path. Hubert went sheet white. “Look at the size of that thing,” he squeaked.
“Yes. And though it is severed from the brain it still has some sort of faculty. Soon it will sense we are here and come after us.”
“How fascinating,” Hubert said. “Do you suppose it’s a sort of reverse innervate syndrome?”
“Out. Now.” Even as she shoved him towards the door, she sensed his reluctance to leave Weena despite the avenging severed tentacle destroying all before it.
“She’ll be all right,” she assured him. “They are of a kind. I truly believe that in some way it is trying to protect her.” Much as you wish to. The thought surprised her, but she knew it to be true. Hubert was inordinately attached to the little creature, but there was no time to dwell on the thought. She dragged him out into the corridor where they had originally materialized.
“Surely it must be time for the machine to bring us back?” she said. She was anxious about this part of the proceedings, much more so than Hubert who apparently had every faith in his calculations. For the first time, he looked calm and in control. He fished his pocket watch from his waistcoat and announced, “We have seven minutes. Plenty of time. It’s a straight run from here.”
“Seven minutes could be a tad too generous.” She was anxious. They could hardly run around the ship for the next several minutes and remain safe. She looked around for a place to wait it out, except the corridor had changed in their absence. It was no longer empty and abandoned; now it was filled with smoke and the noise of the battle echoed louder as if it was no longer contained by the walls of the hangar. The thud of booted feet came thundering towards them.
“In here.” She pushed Hubert into a shallow recess and squeezed into the space beside him. Several men and women in white overalls ran past escorted by a lone soldier.
“Come on you lot. Run. The escape pods are straight ahead.” The soldier bellowed at his charges. Acrid smoke shrouded the corridor farther on up. They ran on into it, and no sooner had they disappeared into the gloom, than horrible screaming began. There came an ugly shuddering, and the metal walls shrieked in protest as the whole ship lurched.
“I don’t think we should go that way. Do you know another route?” Hubert asked, looking anxiously after the soldier and his doomed charges. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief. Millicent dithered, thinking hard, before taking off again with Hubert at her heels. “I suspect the corridors are built to a grid system,” she said. “If we go down here and keep taking the right hand side we should re-emerge at—Oh.” She broke off. On the floor at their feet lay a pile of abandoned weaponry. “Gallo was checking through these when I first arrived.” She stooped and picked up a hand weapon.
“Who’s Gallo?” Hubert asked.
“Oh, look. A laser pistol! I’ve always wanted to see one up close.” Millicent picked up the weapon and hefted it in her hand. “It’s lighter than I expected. Look, Hubert, isn’t it fascinating that—”
Sangfroid barrelled around the corner, heading straight for her with her own pistol raised and at the ready. She staggered to a standstill, pop-eyed with shock at seeing Millicent standing before her playing with pistols and not tucked away safely behind her where she ought to be. Millicent also gave a start, equally as shocked at Sangfroid’s sudden appearance—and the gun in her hand went off. A blaze of burning blue hit Sangfroid square in the chest at point blank range—
The silence hung heavy. Millicent and Hubert watched Sangfroid in anticipation, their expressions guarded.
“You shot me?” she said, then stood and began pacing. “You shot me. I can’t believe you shot me.” She paused and glared at the time machine and then at Millicent. “Actually, I can.”
“I am truly sorry. It was an accident.” Millicent felt terrible. “You startled me, barging about like that.”
“Yes. I ca
n see how barging about in a war zone would be inconsiderate.”
“Now you’re being silly,” she said. “I thought Gallo had taken all the working guns with her. I had no intention of shooting you.”
“Who is Gallo?” Hubert asked but was ignored.
“I’m beginning to see a pattern here,” Sangfroid said. “Whenever you’re around, I die. It’s as simple as that. How do I know it won’t happen here, ’eh? How do I know you won’t massacre me in this timeline, and then I’ll be dead everywhere! In fact, why don’t I just go outside and hurl myself under a hansom cab and save you the bother.”
“Who is Gallo?”
“Really, you are such a theatre piece. Listening to you is like a bad night at the opera. I have apologized for shooting you; what more can I do?” Millicent said.
“Who is Gallo?” Hubert shouted. They both turned to look at him.
“My best buddy,” Sangfroid said. “And a damn fine soldier.”
“You saw her in the lab, Hubert,” Millicent said. “She came in with myself and Sangfroid.”
“No I didn’t.”
Millicent frowned. “Actually, now I think of it…” She turned to Sangfroid. “On that second occasion, I don’t think Gallo came into the laboratory with us. At first I assumed she was off to the side looking at something or other. But I can’t recall seeing her even once. Was she with us?”
Sangfroid shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. You’ve messed with my timeline so often my memories are about as concrete as baby food. In this version, the weapon you so carelessly aimed at me was working, as if Gallo never picked through them?”
“As if Gallo was never there.” Millicent was worried. A principle player had just walked off stage. Could that happen?
CHAPTER 13
“Millicent,” Sophia said later that afternoon. “I am feeling frightfully left out. I called this morning with more eggs for Cook only to find all three of you ensconced in Hubert’s laboratory, and that silly creature Edna simply refused to disturb you. She turned into a quivering wreck when I mentioned rousing you. What can you all possibly have to talk about that I can’t contribute to?” She glared at the assembled company until both Millicent and Sangfroid shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Hubert had so far managed to avoid this visit by loitering all afternoon at the university. Millicent seethed at his deliberate absence; she was always being tricked into entertaining Sophia.
The Tea Machine Page 12
