Prehistoric Clock

by Robert Appleton

  “But they were drunk at the time, drowning their sorrows. It is not fair to…after all, they were only riled by the truth.” And so was Miss Polperro, her voice now sharp and strict. “I cannot excuse their behaviour, but nor do I have to.”

  “Then kindly refrain from casting aspersions on Miss Champlain’s conduct,” Embrey replied, to everyone’s delight—everyone who didn’t resemble a put-upon schoolmarm at parents’ evening, that was.

  “Answer me this one thing.” Verity stared down her Whitehall counterpart. “What would you have us do with Billy?”

  “Leave him behind with some of the aeronauts. Let us first make the time jump without his caprice, and then let Professor Reardon return for him later, when fewer lives are at stake. The Leviacrum Council would spare no resource in finding a solution to these phenomena with Professor Reardon. I will pledge my career to helping you return for Billy, but first let us save as many lives as we can…with as low a risk as possible. In my view, that is the only responsible way to proceed.”

  “And what if I am never able to pinpoint this exact date? It might take a thousand time jumps to find him.” Cecil’s lip began to tremble.

  Tangeni tapped his palm on the tabletop. “Also, the time jump might not happen the same way without Billy. Surely we should have things as they were the first time, or as close as we can possibly get them.”

  “All relevant arguments.” Adjusting her shawl over her shoulders, Miss Polperro rose daintily. “But I believe I have stated my case well enough. My objection stands. However you choose to proceed, I pray it is for the good of the camp, and not mere sentiment alone. We await your informed decision. Good night, gentlemen, Lieutenant Champlain.”

  A single oil lamp burned for her on the embankment. They waited a few minutes until it disappeared with her up Bridge Street, then they continued their discussion.

  Embrey piped up first. “I say, does anyone else have that smarting sensation, like they’ve just served detention? My knuckles feel thoroughly rapped.”

  “Oh, she’s a piece of work alright,” Verity said. “And dangerous. I wouldn’t want her within ten eons of my children, if I ever have any. But at least we know what’s been bubbling in her cauldron all this while.”

  “I’ve never heard anything so cold and calculating.” Tangeni belched and, after a silent rebuke from his captain, quickly apologized.

  “To state the obvious, then, we’re not considering Whitehall’s proposal, even for a second?” The thought of Billy being snatched in the middle of the night by cowardly politicians made Cecil’s chest flame. What lethal action wouldn’t he take if that ever happened? None. He’d murder anyone by any means necessary to prevent them from abducting Edmond…Billy from him. I swear to God, I will.

  “That goes without saying, Professor. And I’d like to apologize for being short with you earlier. It was for her sake,” Verity said. “I wanted her to think I was open to any reasonable solution. It was the only way to get her to speak honestly. If we’d all shot her proposal down before she’d proposed it, I fear we’d now be hypothesizing rather than lamenting. She has shown her true colours—they all have. We are now fully primed.”

  “Bravo, Verity!” Embrey raised his glass and flicked her a mischievous grin.

  “And with that, I will bid you good night, gentlemen.” She yawned and left for her cabin before the men had a chance to stand up.

  When she’d closed her door behind her, Embrey leaned over the table and whispered, “Let’s we three make a pact, then. Tangeni? Reardon? Let us promise to never leave Billy unguarded until all this is over. Verity has enough on her plate overseeing the camp. So whatever happens, at least one of us must stay with him at all times. Agreed?”

  “I’m with you, Embrey.” Tangeni shook his hand. “Whatever happens, you have my word.”

  The mellifluous amber light intensified both men’s gazes. Where a minute ago Cecil’s protective urge had been private, contained, it now blazed out into the night air with shared fierceness. Two of the best men he’d ever known were watching over Billy with him. A relieved tear slid down his trembling cheek.

  Rather than wipe it away, he extended both hands to his friends across the table. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you both. Whatever happens, I will never forget it.”

  Chapter 15

  Following Quatermain

  At noon on the day before their scheduled departure through time, Verity and Embrey headed a hunting party to the western forest. A plague of black, weevil-like organisms infested much of the Empress’s food reserves, and Polperro’s posse had all but run out of their meagre rations. While in her own time it was common enough for sailors and aeronauts to eat weevil-ridden meals, here in prehistory the grubs were an unknown entity. They might be poisonous, perhaps lethal. She therefore had little choice but to buttress these final days’ supplies—and maybe several others besides, if Reardon’s machine couldn’t find 1908—with as much dinosaur meat as Kibo’s car could carry.

  Her engine man stopped the tri-wheel vehicle and ice cream trailer at the tree-line ahead of them and waited. The long grass fell away to a damp, spongy moss for the last hundred yards to the forest. Embrey’s over-the-ankle boots with white, spat-style uppers appeared ridiculous for any kind of wild terrain, but he was just as sure-footed as Verity. He also looked strikingly handsome in his winged-collared shirt and decorative waistcoat. Behind him, Carswell and his two cronies kept to themselves, while Reba, Philomena and three more of her crew continuously scanned the trees on all sides.

  “What’s the biggest thing you’ve hunted, Embrey?” Let him brag. A little macho hubris might go a long way to making her feel she was in familiar company. During her years spent with African hunters-turned-aeronauts, she had grown fond of that peculiar male tendency to extol one’s own life-or-death conquests as a measure of one’s masculinity. It was dumb, yes, but also, on occasion, reassuring.

  “Why?” he replied.

  “You don’t think it pertinent, considering our goal?”

  He shrugged and loosened his collar. “Not especially. I’m by far the best shot here. Is that good enough for you?”

  It was.

  “What’s eating you, Verity…so to speak? You’ve faced leviathans of the deep and not flinched. A little hunting wouldn’t bring this on. What’s the matter?”

  Was her anxiety so clear on her face? How well he knew her and yet how little. To think she hadn’t been stricken with absolute fear when they’d faced the liopleurodon gave her more credit than she deserved. But on this he was right; an unspoken fear had nagged at her ever since their tryst in the bough nest. Its insidious, gnawing quality was affecting both her appetite and her sleep. With all the incredible goings-on around her, that one personal question should preoccupy her mind like this was not something a captain should admit.

  And yet, if she didn’t ask now, time was running out…

  “Embrey?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re wanted for treason. What are you going to do when we return to London?”

  He halted, shrugged again and then carried on walking. “Whatever it is, it’ll be on my own. I might be a wanted man, but I have means of…I know what to do.”

  Her insides turned queasy. What didn’t he want her to know? Did he already have an escape plan? If so, would that be the last time she’d ever see him?

  “Everyone check your weapons!” he shouted to the party. “Let’s avoid any slip-ups before they happen. And no one goes anywhere alone.” Then he said quietly to Verity, “I think we should pair Kibo with one of the Whitehall cronies, so he can spy on them.”

  “Agreed.”

  He looked away and briefly mimed a whistle. “And you and I…let’s not separate.”

  Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

  They trekked a good half hour past the trees they’d felled, into the heart of the forest, without spotting a single dinosaur of any notable size. Several skittish bipeds no bigger than house
cats darted across their path, while Reba found a nest of large, broken eggs. Embrey said he’d tracked game through the Amazon jungle before, and the route they were following—already somewhat hewn and trampled—had been forged by an animal of stupendous size. He pointed out huge prints in the mud and pine needles, and whole branches plucked bare high up.

  “Some kind of sauropod?” Verity recalled the general name for the largest long-necked dinosaurs described in Billy’s book.

  “A herd of them.” Kibo pointed his rifle higher each time they stopped.

  Distant roars kept everyone alert, and the constant threat of meeting a baryonyx ensured the group remained silent and tight-knit. Occasionally a quick-moving shadow passed over the forest and Verity squeezed the slippery stock and barrel of her weapon.

  She remembered Mr. Briory when they happened upon an area populated by beautiful yellow flowers. One or two bees quested through them, and she affectionately named the flowers “Briories.”

  Shortly after, Embrey shot a lumbering, armour-plated quadruped through its upturned mouth, killing it. Philomena chased its even bigger cousin—about the size of a cow—into a glade and spent several bullets bringing it down.

  No sooner had everyone rushed to congratulate her when she started back toward them, a look of terror frozen on her face. She began to shake uncontrollably.

  “What is it?” Kibo caught her as she flopped in his arms, her eyes bulging like boiled eggs.

  She mumbled something unintelligible over and over again before her partner, Reba, slapped her hard. “This no way for aeronaut to behave! Tell what you see.”

  “I…I see…” Everyone leaned in. “Look out. Look out through the trees.” The poor woman squirmed loose in a panic and then started to dance in the middle of the glade—a violent tribal dance reminiscent of one Verity had seen performed in Kenya when the first British airships had arrived to recruit African crews. It was as though she was warding off evil spirits.

  “What’s got her so spooked?” Despite being limp with trepidation—Philomena had never displayed fear like this before—Verity cocked her rifle and ventured out toward the fallen dinosaur. Embrey followed close by.

  Look through the trees?

  She stood on the spot Philomena had reached and gazed northward. A brilliant glare, like the sun reflecting off the ribs of a rain-minted airship, blinded her. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. The glare spread lower, and she made out the infinite glimmers of sunlight on the ocean. They’d almost reached the coast.

  A cloud passed over, removing the glare and revealing…

  What?

  She rubbed the daydream out of her eyes and gazed once more. The impossible only came into greater focus. Waves broke upon it. Pterosaurs perched on its broken tip. And wait…there…much farther away, like a chalk shape in the blue ether, another. How was this possible?

  She whispered, “Pinch me, Embrey. This can’t be real.”

  He didn’t respond. He, too, was lost between worlds. For no other sight could have struck with such awe or such portentousness.

  The farthest reached the clouds. The nearest was rusted and decrepit; it had crumbled and broken in two, its collapsed section lying half out of the water, touching the shore. In her own time, wars had been fought over them.

  They were Leviacrum towers, and they had been put here long ago.

  Chapter 16

  Orphans of the Storm

  By the time they’d dragged the carcasses to Kibo’s vehicle and were making back for camp, the temperature plummeted. Heavy grey clouds blanketed the sky. Embrey had suffered enough British winters to recognise the clouds were laden with snow. Sure enough, before the party reached London, a blizzard swept over the field.

  Every remaining man and woman helped hoist the carcasses onto the Empress, while news of the shocking discovery on the lake spread quicker than snow covering the dry deck. Embrey was only vaguely responsive to questions and events around him. A periodic lucidity jabbed at him, reminded him to put on a warm jacket, now see to Billy, now get up, now obey Verity’s summons to her cabin.

  He didn’t appear to be the only one afflicted by this fractured state of mind either, as both Kibo and Reardon succumbed to long bouts of silence while the women talked. Verity’s cabin seemed as alien to him as everything else in this limbo between past and present. At least Billy was safe on B-deck with Tangeni watching over him.

  “And it was how old, if you had to guess?” Miss Polperro leaned forward on her elbow, enthused by the discovery.

  Verity stopped biting her nails long enough to swig another mouthful of her brandy. “Ancient—the metalwork had mostly rusted away. I’d guess at hundreds, maybe thousands of years old. And the height of the thing, if it was still erect, would be far taller than the London Leviacrum we know. Maybe twice as tall.” She paused, glancing at each of her guests in turn. “What do you suppose it all means, gentlemen? When are we?”

  “Professor Reardon? Do you have a theory, sir?” Agnes Polperro hadn’t addressed anyone so politely since Embrey had met her. She rested her chin on her fist, and gave the professor her full attention. What about this revelation had perked her spirits so?

  Reardon sat up as if from a daze, cleared his throat and then swabbed the spittle from his chin with a handkerchief. “I’m sorry. Did you address me?”

  “She was wondering if you’d solved the riddle, old boy,” Embrey now spoke for the first time, himself wanting, needing some thread of logic with which to untangle the knot in his brain. “If not the Cretaceous, when the deuce are we?”

  “Of course we’re in the Cretaceous, always have been.” The professor, suddenly animated, gesticulated with his hands as though he’d supped a full pot of coffee. “Briory’s observations of the plant life proved that, as well as the geology. If you are all suspecting this is the distant future, and that dinosaurs have been reintroduced at some point—perhaps as some kind of time travelling zoo—think again. There is no evidence here of a former civilisation, apart from the old Leviacrum towers.”

  “Actually,” Verity interrupted, “Embrey and I discovered a metal panel on the lake bed, miles away from the collapsed towers.”

  “A current could have moved it that distance, or a storm,” Embrey replied.

  “True enough.” She resumed her nail-biting.

  Elbows on his chair arms, Reardon formed a pensive V-shape with his forearms and touching fingertips under his chin. “No, my theory has the more straightforward logic, but its ramifications may be very disturbing indeed. It is obvious that sometime in the future—our future from a twentieth century perspective—the Leviacrum Council will harness time travel on a massive scale. Entire towers will be sent back through time. For what purpose I don’t know. Perhaps giant mineral deposits were found in the past, almighty quantities of gold, or even diamond geodes begging to be mined. Maybe we have happened upon the ruins of this cross-temporal industry.

  “But for whatever reason, it did not endure. They may have exhausted the resources, or this epoch red in tooth and claw got the better of them. The point is that they scarred prehistory in a major way, and in doing so changed it irrevocably.” He shook his head, a grim smile of disbelief quivering his rectangular chin. “Think on it—by leaping back to precede all mankind had achieved, they altered it. Civilisation as we know it in the twentieth century, everything from ice cream cones to advanced steam technology, might not have come to pass but for that meddling millions of years before. Perhaps the influences were subtle, like the thriving of a species of crustacean on the Leviacrum’s warm exterior around the boilers. Before the tower appeared in prehistory, that species was doomed to extinction. But now it becomes hardier and spreads, supplanting other species and changing the ecological system forever. The knock-on effect of that influence over millions of years might become the difference between sperm whales existing and not existing. Ponder the import of that result for man and marine life. The world is not the same place.

  �
�My friends, we are living proof of history revised. All that we are may not be all we were meant to be.”

  “Or perhaps this was all meant to be,” Miss Polperro argued. “What if the Maker resews fate around those frays, and ensures things return to His initial plan for us? We make these changes by travelling through time, but the Lord unmakes them in equally subtle ways. Nature’s forces are all about balance. Maybe time has an underlying, reshaping force as well—the way a mountain rises and falls by the same subterranean forces. Over time, what is done is also undone. What we do here may ultimately have no more effect on 1908 than a fistful of salt thrown into the sea. Time and the sea will have dissolved the change, the addition. It only seems far-reaching to us because we perceive ourselves as the centre of the universe, when in fact we’re inconsequential in the grand scheme. Nature is patient and resourceful, like the meandering river. She will resume her intended course because God’s design is not so fickle as ours.”

  “Yes, but over millions of years, we’re not a fistful of salt, we’re a bloody great landslide!” Reardon wagged his finger at her, and Embrey felt himself ebbing and flowing on the convictions of these two learned scientists. “Nature isn’t going to simply erase the legacy of those Leviacrum towers merely because they erode and eventually disappear. I tell you they have changed the face of the planet, and we are their progeny. Orphans, that’s what we are—orphans of a temporal storm that’s been raging for millions of years. And we knew nothing about it…until now.”

  Embrey’s mind clicked into gear. “What about the other anomalies—the perfect web and Billy’s influence on time travel? Could they have been caused by all this meddling with time? Has all this tampering with history damaged the very underlying forces Miss Polperro predicts? And time is simply springing leaks?”

  They all pondered that for a while, until Kibo, who hadn’t yet said a word, cleared his throat. “Professors, that is all fascinating, but can you please answer me this? If we return to 1908, will it be the same as when we left?”