The Tea Machine

by Gill McKnight

  Across the table, Gallo smiled in approval. This seemed to be Gallo’s entire repertoire for the evening since she’d discovered the wine. Millicent was not amused.

  Hubert paid no attention to anything, content to furtively scribble in a small notebook by his elbow. Millicent recognized this behaviour as a sign he was on the verge of some breakthrough or other, and this meant he was beyond any conversational capability save the odd grunt. Therefore the brunt of the evening’s entertainment fell squarely on her unhappy shoulders. She glanced around the table. Gallo and Sangfroid were rapidly becoming red-nosed. After deliberating on the quality of the wine for several moments, they proceeded to drink a bottle each in no time at all and were well into the third. It seemed all beverages were substandard in their world, except for tea, which was highly lauded and apparently more expensive than gold, crassium-magnate, or the Tyrian dyes the Emperors used. Millicent kept only the best Ceylon tea in her house and was amazed that they were unimpressed with it. Timeline tea was obviously something to behold.

  “Sophia, dear. It was most fortunate that you retrieved, Gallo, our houseguest, from the coal cellar. She was really quite lost,” Millicent said. “It is a rather roomy house after all.” She had to start her inquiry somewhere, and it was best to explain Gallo’s presence at the table before pressing Sophia on possible forays to Mount Olympus and inadvertent deification.

  “Mr. Gallo is more than welcome.” Sophia simpered. Millicent frowned. Along with all the other women in the house, Sophia seemed to blank out Gallo’s gender. She had seen a similar response towards Sangfroid. Gallo was nearly as tall as Sangfroid, though leaner and just as well muscled. She wore her dark hair mannishly and was certainly very handsome, but there was no doubt in Millicent’s mind that she was a woman. So why were Sophia, Edna, and Cook so blind to it? Was it a sort of social conditioning? Perhaps social conventions eroded common sense, ergo if it didn’t wear a bustle, it must be male? What a delicious experiment. If only she had the time to explore it farther. This put her into a deeper grump. There had been no time to pursue any of her own interests since becoming a full-time assistant to Hubert’s time travel debacle.

  She kicked his shin under the table, and he lurched into some semblance of awareness. He looked up, blinking like a night owl, noting with confusion he was sitting at his own dining table and hosting a dinner party. She glared at him.

  “Ah, Gallo. Yes. Gallo…” Hubert spluttered into action and then ran out of ideas. Millicent delivered a second, more brutal kick. He yelped and finally focused.

  “So, Gallo. You served with Sangfroid in the Prussian Dragoons, ’eh?” he said, sticking to the tall story they had agreed upon.

  Gallo sat up straighter and cleared her throat. She was a terrible actor. “I certainly do, Professor Aberly,” she said. “And I am enjoying my visit to Londiniu—I mean, London, very much,” she said. Sangfroid grinned in red-nosed approval.

  “Call me Hubert, please. We’re all friends here.”

  “Thank you, Hubert. My name is Captain Gallo of the First Prussian Dragoons, and I was born in the U…Urals?” She checked this detail with a furtive look at Sangfroid.

  “I thought we’d agreed you were a 2nd Lieutenant?” Sangfroid murmured, though not quietly enough.

  “If a nob like you can be a major, then I can damn well be a captain,” she hissed back, also not quietly enough.

  Millicent narrowed her eyes at this new N word. She was uncertain of its provenance, but suspected it was one for her list. She glanced across at Sophia to see how she had received this version of Gallo’s appearance. The way their house was filling up with Prussian Dragoons, they’d soon be a military outpost.

  She need not have worried. Sophia was looking considerably flushed. Millicent realized Gallo had been refilling her glass with alarming frequency, and they had only just started on the soup course.

  “Captain Gallo. How thrilling.” Sophia sipped her wine. This worried Millicent as Sophia rarely drank. It would not do for her to return to the Trenchant-Myre household merrier than she had left it. One did not reside at the Trenchant-Myre household in a state of merriment. It was forbidden. All merriment, along with tradesmen and wet umbrellas, had to be left at the door.

  “I suspected you of great things the moment I set eyes on you.” Sophia stared at Gallo over the rim of her glass.

  Like being the new footman? Millicent suspected her pet budgerigar had more wit than her future sister-in-law.

  Edna arrived with a fish course of brown trout in a caper and chervil sauce. Millicent had been pleased when the fishmonger filled her last minute order, though now the pleasure was beyond her. The dinner party was doomed. Hubert was again lost in his notes, and his food sat untouched. Sangfroid scraped the sauce off her fillet and poked at the fish underneath suspiciously. Millicent glared at her and got a cheerful grin in reply.

  “Are you a religious man, Captain Gallo?” Sophia asked. It seemed her party prattle was going to be the only conversation this evening. So much for finding out why Gallo had mistaken Sophia for a goddess, Millicent thought mournfully. No one seemed to care a fig about that once the wine was decanted.

  “Yes. Mars, Bacchus, and, of course, the divine Looselea are my private pantheon.” Gallo answered with a dazzler of a smile, the full force of which obviously caused Sophia’s ears to seize as she seemed not to hear not a word of the bizarre answer.

  “You must join us for the flower service this Sunday.” Sophia cooed like the dove she would be consuming in the next course. “I think I may even have some spare hymnals in the hallstand. I keep several there for Hubert as he is always losing his.”

  Millicent was fuming. Everyone was inebriated, bar herself and Hubert, who might as well be, as he was lost to reality anyway. And he did not lose his hymnbooks. Rather he scribbled formulas in them all through the church service, and they inevitably ended up in his lab desk doing anything but uplifting the soul with song.

  A thump from upstairs caused the chandelier to rattle. The crystal on the table vibrated into a pleasing tinkle. Millicent blinked in surprise. Then another more ominous thump followed the first. Fine particles of plaster floated from the ceiling and dusted the table like an April snowfall. There came a distant rumbling, and then silence. Gallo blew plaster off the fish on her fork and took a healthy bite. “What was that?” she asked with a full mouth.

  “Dunno.” Sangfroid looked uncomfortable. She glanced across at Hubert who had barely registered the disturbance. “Should I go check?”

  “Hubert, your rooms are directly above the dining room,” Millicent said, nudging his elbow. “Perhaps you should ensure that everything is as it should be?” Her gaze caught Sangfroid’s in shared concern.

  “Yes. Of course.” Hubert got to his feet and hurried away, a look of distraction etched on his face. He was clearly on to something, and Millicent ached for the times when their evenings consisted of a simple meal and a discussion of their latest hypothesis. She turned her attention to the reason for this miserable social occasion.

  “Sophia,” she said. “As you know, we have been talking recently about travel. I find the whole idea captivating. Captain Gallo has come a long way to join us in Londini—London, and so has Major Sangfroid, who kindly shared stories of the Urals with the ladies of the paleobotany society.” She gave Sangfroid a smile of sugared cyanide.

  “I am considering a new society, Millicent.” Sophia tore her gaze away from Gallo for a second. “A Latin society,” she announced proudly, “for ladies who wish to learn this wonderful tongue.”

  Millicent coughed into her napkin and tried to gather her rapidly fraying thoughts. She decided she could only deal with one crisis at a time. “What an engaging idea, and I’m sure we will discuss it later. In greatest detail,” she said. “To refer to my earlier question, have you re-considered travel now that we have such good friends in the Urals? Perhaps
we should consider a journey to Italy? It is, after all, the home of the Latin language.”

  “I do not like travel. I do not like Italy,” Sophia said firmly. “Although I am warming to the Urals.”

  Millicent sighed. The Looselea conundrum would never be solved in this way. Sophia was most probably not the timeline deity. She bore a slight resemblance to a crude rendering of some slattern dressed goddess, and that was all. This evening was a waste of time.

  “I want to get a hymnbook from the hallstand for Captain Gallo. So he can accompany me to church on the morrow,” Sophia said.

  Millicent held back a snort of derision. She looked at Gallo’s drunken, happy-go-lucky face. “What a wonderful idea. I’m sure the captain will adore the flower festival.”

  Sophia rose to her feet slowly and took small but deliberate steps out of the room. Millicent noted how she trailed her fingertips along the dining room dado rail to help her negotiate her way to the door. Sophia couldn’t have taken more than two steps into the hall when her scream brought them all to their feet.

  Sangfroid and Gallo made it into the hall in seconds, with Millicent hard on their heels. They were brought up short by the spectacle before them. A large tentacle was draped over the stairwell. It stretched down to the last stair and spilled out onto the tiled hall floor. If its source was Hubert’s dressing room—and Millicent suspected it was—it had to be at least thirty feet long. It was heavy and well-muscled, a pearly grey with pink undertones and thankfully without barbs.

  “Jupiter’s dick! Squid!” Gallo yelled.

  “I told you.” Sangfroid turned to Millicent raising her arms into the bragging fisherman pose. “Big as a house, I said, and did you listen? Centaur balls, you listened.”

  “What is it?” Sophia backed up to the hallstand in terror.

  “Um. Hubert has been experimenting with molluscs,” Millicent said, though knew she could never explain this away. She was in shock herself. Could this really be Weena? How much did a Colossal squid grow in a day? As she spoke, a second smaller tentacle looped over the upstairs gallery. The last several feet of the tip coiled into a perfect spiral on the floor just outside the breakfast room.

  “It’s a monster, not a mollusc.” Sophia wailed. “Where is Hubert?”

  Where was Hubert? Sangfroid and Gallo whipped long daggers from their boot tops and ran at the stairs, pushing past the pearly flesh and its clammy suckers. The tentacle lay inert; unconcerned with the commotion it had caused, though the suckers flexed open and closed as if examining the environment. Millicent could only wonder at what Weena had become. This humongous squid limb seemed so removed from the tiny pink shrimp-like creature she had first encountered. And Hubert was in the lair of this gigantic beast! She grabbed the nearest weapon to hand—a parasol of the finest Battenberg lace—and followed Sangfroid and Gallo into the fray.

  “I’m going with you,” she called.

  “Stay there. That’s an order.” Sangfroid pointed her back down the stairs.

  “Now you’re being silly.” She elbowed past her and proceeded after Gallo. “Hubert’s up there; I must go.”

  With a hiss of frustration, Sangfroid grabbed her by the waist and bodily deposited her firmly on the stair tread beneath her.

  “I said stay there.” She shook her gently. “If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged and flung into the nearest lake to cool down,” she said, her voice thick.

  “You must be lovely to work for,” Millicent muttered. Sangfroid’s gaze was fierce, and Millicent tried to hold it, only to feel her face flood with colour. She was too aware of the smell of soap and wine mixing with Sangfroid’s natural smell. Of the smoky heat in her eyes. The span of her hands around Millicent’s waist was steely. There was no doubt she had the strength to toss Millicent out in the street if she wished. Millicent desperately wanted to find Hubert, so she held her tongue and slipped from Sangfroid’s grasp to take up her place a pace behind.

  “Don’t leave me,” Sophia cried from the hallway.

  Millicent was unable to comfort Sophia, distracted as she was by the enormous tentacle crushing her staircase. She and Sophia would have to address some serious issues later. It was time Sophia was told the truth about their recent travels, and that Quantumphysex was not an African destination, but a complex, and ultimately dangerous, scientific principle. Resolute, Millicent pressed forward and ignored Sophia’s cries, content that at least she was out of harm’s way in the vestibule.

  “You can’t leave me.” Sophia wailed again, and then her lamentation was interrupted by the arrival of Edna with the bird course. The maid concentrated fully on her salver of dove and quail. She walked the entire length of the hall, swerving around a quivering tentacle tip and sailing unperturbed under the arm draping from the gallery railings. She observed nothing, wholly intent on her tray. Triumphantly, she entered the empty dining room un-phased by the calamity in the hallway behind her.

  Millicent regarded Edna’s stoic rejection of reality with jealousy, while Sophia took advantage of her distraction to slip gingerly around a flaccid tentacle and attach herself to Millicent’s back. Her hymnal readied to slap the word of the Lord onto anything that so much as twitched in her direction.

  “I do not like it, Millicent, but neither will I be abandoned,” she said, her voice full of quivering resolve. “If you are determined to press forward, then I shall go with you.”

  “I don’t like it either, Sophia. I am worried for Hubert.”

  “And the Axminster is ruined.” Sophia eyed the stair carpet with a malevolent eye.

  All four moved slowly past the languid, serpentine limbs to find they did indeed originate from Hubert’s bedroom door. Or rather, where the door had once been before monstrous tentacles had burst through the wall sheering the door and its framework away. Outside the gaping hole, Hubert’s shoes sat neatly side by side, as if awaiting a boot boy to remove them for cleaning.

  “What does that mean?” asked Gallo, her suspicious pagan mind making her spook at anything odd or new. “Dead man’s shoes?” she suggested.

  “It doesn’t mean any such thing.” Millicent objected to any reference of her brother’s demise. “He’s just tidy.”

  They clambered over splintered wood and plaster into Hubert’s bedchamber. Here the writhing limbs were much more animated. They bunched and seethed across the floor. The solid bedroom furniture was smashed to pieces under the heaving weight. The source of the outlaying appendages was the dressing room. There, the entire wall had disintegrated against the sheer size of Weena. The knotted contortion of her limbs was even greater near her bulbous, frantically pulsating mantle. Occasionally, her eye, now dimmed from its baby blue to a dull slate colour, appeared through the gyrations to blink at them. Her rippling convulsions shook the remaining walls and under their feet the floorboards thrummed with her agitation.

  “It’s a big bugger.” Gallo crouched, knife at the ready. The weapon seemed too puny to be in any way effective.

  “What are you going to do when her tentacles hit the street, huh?” Sangfroid asked Millicent. “Tell the neighbours it’s a mollusc experiment?”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Millicent said to them. “We need to find Hubert. Until then we have no idea if Weena is friend or foe.”

  “I thought you could talk to her,” Sangfroid said.

  “At the moment my brain is all confusion. I’m seeing flashes of places I know I have never been. I’m not sure if she’s conversing with me or if I am eavesdropping on her and Hubert. Oh, where is he. He’ll get hurt in all this crush.” She scanned the coiled mass for any sign Hubert might be among the melee.

  “Hubert!” Sophia screeched, and for a moment, he crested from the seething swell as if thrown up by sea surf. He raised his arm and waved, rising and falling on the curl of a grey tentacle. Once, twice, three times he waved. Until finally, with a quick smile, he d
isappeared under as if pulled down by an unseen current. He arose again, in one final majestic surge, and was rolled slowly, gently, but determinedly towards the moist, black maw of Weena’s beak and was swallowed whole.

  There was a stunned silence until Sophia’s scream started them from their horrified immobility. Gallo leaped on the nearest tentacle, while Sophia swatted the grey limb with her hymnal. Sangfroid barked out an order to retreat. Gallo followed his command immediately, grabbing Sophia as they backed off. With swift, compact movements Sangfroid removed them from the room and redeployed them to the top of the stairs.

  “Get her out of here,” she ordered Gallo, pointing at Sophia who was already sinking to her knees in a faint. Gallo lifted Sophia in her arms as if she weighed nothing at all and carried her down to the drawing room. Millicent followed, her hands numb, her mind stalled with shock. She trailed behind Gallo to the drawing room. Sangfroid came after her and slammed the doors shut.

  “Hubert’s gone.” She could barely utter the words. They came out in a hoarse, breathless whisper. Then Sangfroid’s arms were around her, and she leaned into her and wept.

  “Millicent,” she whispered into her hair. “My Millicent. I am so, so sorry.” Sangfroid’s cool fingers found the nape of Millicent’s neck and caressed her gently.

  Gallo laid the unconscious Sophia on the couch and then knelt beside her. She looked over to Millicent with battle-hardened eyes that had seen many cruel things. “I hardly knew him,” she said, “but I could see the prof was a good man. I’m sorry, Millicent.”

  Millicent pulled away from the comfort of Sangfroid’s arms. She took out her handkerchief and wiped at her tears, trying to recover her composure. Holding onto Sangfroid was not helping her think. And she had to think.