The Time Mechanic

by Victoria Bastedo

  “We need to wash them off!” the mother was gasping to the father of the babies. “What if there really is poison on our children?”

  “Washing won’t help!” Jeremy said. “We need to get you into Tonturin instead. It’ll take a little while- which is worrisome. It’s best if you get the antidote as soon as possible!”

  “Here, Jeremy!” Kannikey said. She reached into a large bag she’d brought slung over her shoulder. “Look what I stole from the warehouse!”

  Jeremy couldn’t help but grin once she showed him what she’d taken. Her slippery fingers knew just what had the most value. Inside her bag once she opened it he heard a few clinking sounds. She’d stolen at least ten bottles of Surebelow from the warehouse while the constables guarding it weren’t looking.

  “You,” he said to her with fervency in his voice, “are the greatest thief I’ve ever met!”

  She blushed as she beamed at him, proud that she’d risen beyond his expectations. He nodded to the groggy constable and waved him over once the man had gotten to his feet. He handed one of the bottles of Surebelow to Mars, and watched him drink it. He began clipping out orders before anyone else could take over. He left Kannikey and Nemeth in charge of getting everyone near to the table dosed with the antidote. The constable stayed to help and to question the manager, since the man had told his bouncer to punch him and let the criminal run off.

  “Hurry, Mars!” Jeremy said at last. “We can’t let QuRellon get away!”

  Jeremy and Mars ran out of the restaurant, with Jeremy’s boots slipping a bit on the polished marble floor of the Inn lobby, until he worked off the excess frosting from the soles. QuRellon was nowhere in sight.

  “Outside!” Jeremy cried, racing for the huge double doors.

  They got outside, clattered down the wide staircase, and at last reached the side yard of the Inn. QuRellon wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Jeremy clenched his hands, willing whatever ability he’d been given to show him another vision.

  “Look!” Mars shouted, pointing up into the sky.

  Jeremy looked up, feeling alarm at first and then relaxing as he made out the two figures in the air, flying a sleek Steam Eagle towards the Inn as requested.

  He nodded and waved.

  Ffip and Halbernon had come with her contraption to help them. The Steam Eagle, flying up in the air without any obstacles of road or curves could outdistance any horse; now if he could just figure out where QuRellon had gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine (In Which Jeremy Breaks All the Steam Eagles)

  “Of course I know where he went!” Jeremy shouted to himself before Ffip even had the opportunity to completely land her Steam Eagle. She was releasing the steam valves and lowering it near to them. He waved her to a stop once she was ten feet high. “Keep it up there!” he commanded her. He and Mars, with a leap, were able to grab hold of the side of one of the compartments. It was warm to the touch- the steam mechanism must be housed underneath. “Climb in,” he grunted at Mars, and then, “Take flight again as soon as possible!” he yelled to Ffip. “Rise back up!”

  Halbernon was busy hauling Mars inside the head of the Eagle a few seconds later. The old man reached for his arm next.

  “Wait!” Jeremy barked, causing Ffip to release a lever wrong and dip the Eagle. Jeremy nearly lost his hold. “Don’t touch my coat!” he added. “QuRellon threw poison on it!” He saw with satisfaction that Halbernon backed off from contact and he swung a leg inside. “In fact,” he said, once he got inside the compartment, “I’ll get rid of it!”

  He removed his coat and saw the long slash of purple poison splatter across the back of it. He felt a deep regret to lean over the Steam Eagle’s compartment door and drop it off. The coat landed in a heap behind some bushes in the Inn’s back garden. Now all he had left was what was in his pants’ pockets, and the friends who were all staring at him. He sighed and shook off the loss. He was the Time Mechanic, whether or not he had a coat to symbolize it, and he had a job to do.

  “I know where to go,” he told Ffip. “QuRellon ran and got away from us. He threw poison at some people in the restaurant, and escaped while we were trying to help them.”

  “I hope they’ll be all right!” cried Halbernon.

  “Hopefully none of the poison touched them,” Jeremy said. “Kannikey was marvelous! She’d taken a lot of Surebelow from the warehouse. They’ve all been dosed with the antidote, just in case. Mars has, too.”

  “And you, Jeremy?” demanded Ffip, from where she stood flying her Steam Eagle. It had lifted high into the sky now. “Did you take the antidote?”

  He swallowed and shook his head.

  “I forgot,” he admitted.

  “You blasted, whining dolt of an idiot!” Mars cried. “It’s like I told you, you think you deserve to be sacrificed! Well, I’ve got half a mind to go ahead and finish you off! I’ll toss you out right now!”

  “Shut up, Mars! Listen, I’m sorry, all right! I stole a bottle of Surebelow too, earlier while I was juggling! It’s here in my pocket. I just forgot about it, you massive, prim-prickling, stupid excuse of a…”

  “Why don’t you just take it now, then?” Mars bellowed over the top of him.

  “I’m feeling no effects like last time. I think I escaped being dosed. Besides, we’ve got to fly fast! QuRellon’s getting away! I’ll take it later, if I need it! Hurry, Ffip. QuRellon’s Steam Eagle is relatively close by, a few miles away on Serrin’s property. That’s where I think he escaped to!”

  Jeremy looked at the horizon. Amazingly, although it had seemed like forever, the day hadn’t fully passed yet. The sun was sinking but he knew that the market was still in operation and the shops hadn’t quite closed.

  “QuRellon could still fly the other Steam Eagle over Tonturin,” he said to the others. The words grunted out of him, coarse and rough with the emotion in his voice. “There are enough people out in the streets to be dosed. The man could still kill some of our citizens on his way out, to punish us for foiling his plans!”

  Three faces stared back at him in shock for a moment.

  “Hurry, Ffefferpip,” Halbernon urged. She complied and faced forward, her hands on the levers of her invention.

  “Which way, Jeremy?” she insisted.

  He pointed. His vision had revealed the answer to him earlier.

  “That way,” he said.

  They flew towards Serrin’s property, the miles silent as they were all tense. They got almost all the way there before what they feared could be spotted in the sky like a big, black blot, rising so it could fly towards Tonturin. The other Steam Eagle that Serrin had built was bigger than theirs.

  “But mine is more maneuverable!” Ffip said. She pulled some levers and arced in the right direction.

  “We’ve got time!” Halbernon exclaimed in excitement. “We’re going to cut QuRellon off before he even begins his flight towards Tonturin!”

  It was true. Jeremy’s heart raced as Ffip’s Steam Eagle rose to the same elevation and then moved into position in front of the other Steam Eagle. In moments, since QuRellon had to fly in more or less of a straight line, they met in the sky, just a few feet away from each other.

  Both contraptions came to a stop, the land below them far away. The balloons kept them in place in the sky, even when the Steam Eagle’s wings were held back from soaring.

  The two head compartments floated to face-to-face. Jeremy could see into the other compartment. QuRellon was its only occupant. The man could see them as well and he was glaring. But a moment later they saw him set a lever or two, and then turn and fiddle with a suitcase on the seat behind him. He removed something and stood up, moving over until he had his head out of the compartment. The wind ruffled the edges of his jacket.

  “I want to show you something!” QuRellon shouted. They were close enough that the wind couldn’t snatch away his voice. He lifted up the object he held in his hand. It was a long stick with a slim bucket in the back and a sort of sharp, barbed tip in the front.
Steam drifted from a few vents. The man lifted the stick to his chest and pointed it at them. “This is another engineering feat that my professor friend found me in Tetoross!” he shouted. “It’s called a Steam Ejector. Do you want to see what it does?”

  The results of the man’s stick contraption were immediate and devastating. He released a small lever in the center of the steam stick, and a crack of sound was heard. The heavy porcelain harpoon that’d been lodged at the front of the stick was released. It shot out with a bang and a few sparks. It landed with speed and heat and struck Ffip’s Steam Eagle. They were all bumped as the ejected barb made contact, right into the inflated steam balloon that was holding them up.

  “Oh, no!” Ffip gasped. A loud sighing was heard as the hole made by the projectile tore into the balloon, and then the torn seam of one side ripped down and the balloon’s buoyancy began to disintegrate.

  Across the way, QuRellon lifted his stick again, and removed another barb harpoon that was attached to the side. He loaded it into the weapon.

  Jeremy seized Ffip by the shoulders.

  “Fillipi!” he yelled. “You can still land your Steam Eagle, right? Once the balloon is gone?”

  “Y-yes,” she stuttered. “It’ll slowly lose elevation. But I can steer it carefully as it sinks!”

  He met her eyes for an instant, accompanied by the sound of steam escaping and the thick material of the balloon ripping. Then he kissed her with searing speed.

  “Then do it!” he bellowed, leaving her and hurrying to the side. “Get all of you down in one piece!”

  He heard two things as he climbed right on top of the head of her Steam Eagle.

  One was Ffip calling out, “But, I’m clumsy!”

  And the other was completely expected. Using whatever skills he might’ve been given as a Time Mechanic he leaped across the intervening space. Her Steam Eagle was already beginning to sink. He barely caught hold of the legs of QuRellon’s larger bird. The awful man cracked off another shot and her balloon was further assaulted. It dropped faster now. For a second Mars’ enraged eyes were on a level with Jeremy’s as their Steam Eagle lost height and passed him.

  “Blast it, Jeremy!” he yelled so loud that the sound echoed in the sky.

  Then Ffip’s Steam Eagle glided away from him, coursing and arcing on crooked wingtips, adjusting to the warbling loss of its balloon. Jeremy jerked his gaze away. His arms were getting tired from holding onto to the bottom of QuRellon’s Eagle.

  “Unhh!” he groaned, wrestling his way up to a better handhold with all of his strength. He clamped onto a pole along the bottom of a compartment, and then gripped a hold higher, one of the side handles. Another yank upward and he was hugging the warm side of the contraption. Once his feet gripped, too, it was easier. He lurched and hitched, trying to hurry before QuRellon found some way to dislodge him. He felt vulnerable with the wind whipping the back of his shirt and the ground so far beneath and nothing but air around him. He curled onto the top of the compartment and wasting no time, reached the entrance to the head. He threw in his legs and slithered through the hole. Once he got inside the head he stood still, panting.

  QuRellon was waiting for him, his face scrunched in hatred and his normally cultured eyes wild. The man was pointing his Steam Ejector weapon right at him. Jeremy’s eyes widened, but he leapt to the side. The harpoon was released with a bang. The projectile struck and splintered into the back of the compartment. It did some damage. There was a hiss and under the splintered hole that was made from the shot steam rose straight up into the air. Jeremy thought that they too, might soon lose power, but that wasn’t the contraption that QuRellon had struck.

  “The Steam Diffuser!” QuRellon roared. “You made me break it!”

  Jeremy glanced behind him to see what QuRellon was talking about. His heart pounded in a momentary victory, for indeed he could tell that all the steam inside the diffuser was quickly roiling out into the atmosphere.

  But QuRellon was truly mad now. He leaped towards Jeremy in a rage and there was no room to avoid his clawing arms.

  “You’ve ruined it!” he cried, as if he were a toddler. “I planned this for so long, and you took it from me! It was supposed to be a marvel! My plans were going to bring down one of the ten cities! My berries were supposed to win me all I wanted! I was supposed to go down in history!”

  Jeremy was given skills as a Time Mechanic. He could fight. But QuRellon in his passionate fury was deathly strong. He was sturdier, too. His middle-aged chest was filled out with stubborn life experience. Jeremy tried to shove him off in the small space. And then he grabbed the man’s barrel of a midsection and started punching him over his lungs and alongside his abdomen.

  QuRellon was so frenzied he didn’t even notice. He stumbled over with the weight of Jeremy on his back. Bending down he grabbed up his Steam Ejector and manipulated it with fattened fingers while Jeremy punched him again. He managed to get another harpoon loaded into the mechanism on the Ejector, but Jeremy didn’t let him shoot it. He slapped at QuRellon’s wrist and the man dropped it; flailing his arms backwards and kicking his legs in agitation to strike against all the levers. The mechanisms were bumped and then released. One of the steering levers broke. The brake was knocked free. The Steam Eagle began soaring across the sky in a line towards Tonturin. They’d be there in moments.

  QuRellon’s head popped up to see. “I can still do it!” he gasped to himself. “I can release the poison and it’ll splash down! It won’t be as efficient as steam but it’ll work!”

  Jeremy broke apart. QuRellon was staring at him now, his eyes gleaming as if Jeremy were a friend and compatriot rather than an enemy determined to stop him.

  “No,” Jeremy stated. “You won’t touch Tonturin.”

  QuRellon’s eyes blinked at Jeremy’s threat. With a snarl QuRellon leapt forward again, but Jeremy had his footing now.

  Bam! His fist shot out.

  It was the most beautiful punch he’d ever delivered. The way his arm flew back at just the right angle to pound with the most power, the way his knuckles squared like a board and the feeling of connection when his blow crunched into the center of his opponent’s face. QuRellon flew back and struck all the levers again.

  With a horrible feeling of the loss of weight one of the compartment doors under the Steam Eagle opened and its contents were released. They’d reached the outskirts of Tonturin now and Jeremy saw with shock and dismay that a sheath of liquid belched out of the Eagle right onto the Manse he used to live in below. He flew to the side and looked down.

  It was all right. He hadn’t released the poisoned side of the compartment. He’d released all the water the Eagle held to make steam. He felt a flash of relief.

  Of course QuRellon was soon back. The man flipped a rope around Jeremy’s neck. It was rough and the weight of the fellow’s body accompanied it.

  “I’ll kill you,” the beast slobbered in his ear. “And then I’ll kill Tonturin.”

  Jeremy wriggled his fingers under the rope. He wrestled with the bigger, but not stronger, man. He was young and determined, after all. He was the Time Mechanic and he had a mission to complete.

  “No,” he grunted. “You won’t.” Jeremy remembered the rules. He knew he wasn’t supposed to. But when he flipped the man down and over his back; and when he shoved QuRellon off and away from him with all his might it happened anyway. He was supposed to try not to kill his enemy.

  QuRellon slammed into the short wall and bent over backwards with the impact at the edge of the hole leading out of the Steam Eagle head.

  Jeremy raised his hands for the last time. He didn’t tell his opponent who he was. He kept the secret as he let fly his fist. Bam! Another perfect punch flew from his knuckles— but this was an uppercut. QuRellon was thrown out of the hole but he’d been just bending to grab something when he was struck. When he landed on the outer hull of the Steam Eagle he scrabbled confused for an ineffectual handhold with his empty hand. Jeremy saw what he’d
grabbed a hold of from the floor as he was punched. It was the Steam Ejector weapon. QuRellon made the mistake of trying to target his enemy even though he was sliding a bit. He must’ve been too dizzy to focus.

  Bang! The shot out of the Steam Ejector knocked the man to the edge. The projectile itself soared high and ripped through the balloon, making a hole and hiss and tear like what’d happened to Ffip’s. QuRellon laughed with glee. And then he slipped too far to the side and found nothing to hold onto. He fell off the Steam Eagle with a screech, hurtling down to land somewhere on the streets of Tonturin below.

  Chapter Forty (In Which Jeremy Does His Best Figuring By Far)

  Jeremy figured he had four problems as he glided along; the Steam Eagle incrementally losing altitude over the startled citizens of Tonturin. The first was that the balloon was slowly losing its air like a leaky bellows. The second was that there was no water left to maintain the steam lift beneath the Eagle’s wings. The third was this Steam Eagle had a half-belly full of liquid-poison death he couldn’t allow to fall anywhere near the city. Finally his last problem; he had no idea how to fly a Steam Eagle.

  Staring down at the levers terrified him. One was broken, several were bent and all were unmarked. What if he pulled the wrong lever and released the poison? He decided he couldn’t touch any of the levers to try and save himself. Looking up he realized that a person had a fine view if he were staring out of the head of a Steam Eagle. One could study the vastness of the horizon as their demise raced towards them.

  He was breathing hard. The truth was he was traveling on the long path through Tonturin. He had the miles of farmland to get through before he could let the Steam Eagle drop from the sky. He had to try and make it glide as long as possible and maintain its height.

  His eyes feverishly studied the levers again. He’d seen Ffip flying her Steam Eagle briefly, and this was a simplified version. He’d also seen which lever released the steam water when QuRellon kicked it. He calmed down a bit as the levers began to make sense to him. The releasing levers to the underbelly doors were shorter and close into the panel. The flying levers that controlled the wings were long, attached to the floor.