The man crumpled beside Embrey. His colleague had seen enough. He scrambled to his feet in the mud and made a beeline for the factory. Giant, swinging rows of daggers caught him mid-stride and plucked him screaming into the air. The baryonyx tossed him and chewed him for a few moments before its mighty tail whipped round against the tri-wheel, knocking it onto its side. The vehicle crushed the unconscious Whitehall man and narrowly missed Embrey.
Verity crouched behind the overturned car at his side, heart a’gallop. Any kind of movement now—even though Embrey was running out of time—would be suicide. The dinosaur didn’t appear to notice her. She covered Embrey’s mouth with her palm to quell his groans.
The air heated, thickened all of a sudden, as though a tropical summer heatwave had bled through the wintry chill. She found it hard to breathe. Blue sparks leapt from Embrey’s skin to her fingertips.
As she looked up, the baryonyx lumbered away up the side of the factory, skirting a pale, lilac glow.
“Oh my God. Not yet!”
A crackle from behind drew her gaze. Purple light snaked up from the ground onto the lines of the Empress, and shot around her envelopes and cables like St. Elmo’s Fire run amok. Christ, here we go. Verity was sure the time bubble had spread too far once again. It would envelop the entire area, not just the factory. Any moment now, London would reform around the ruins, the airship would find herself afloat on the Thames, and everything would be fine.
The end of her world came swiftly, in the flicker of a gaslight. She turned and heard a waspish buzz and saw the mirage of a great city through obsidian glass where the factory should be. A web-like bubble of white-purple light swelled, intensified from its base to its crown, then wavered like a giant candle flame in a heavenly draught. In an instant it was gone. The bubble. The factory. The light.
No farewell. Nothing.
Oh God.
A cold vice, colder and more crushing than the deepest suit dive, froze her heart. Slivers of lilac light floated and spiralled down through the empty space as fizzing leaves and spinning jennies. None of them reached the ground, instead evaporated with gentle crackles. All around the site, wisps of steam gathered on the faint outline of a sphere and then faded away.
She gazed up at Big Ben. Its clock face read five past eight. She dabbed a sleeve on her brow, trying to wipe a little reality into her shocking new world but it was too sudden, too impossible. The clock had read five past eight over a week ago, when they’d first arrived. From now on, it would always read that time.
The baryonyx paced around the far side of the vanished light-show, questing through the empty, adjacent buildings. Verity shook the bitter fog from her brain and turned her attentions back to saving Embrey—a battle she at least knew how to fight. Hell, she’d helped pluck bullets out of wounded men and women before…in a past life…
The baryonyx stalked through the empty ruins all through the evening, perhaps fascinated by the extraordinary smell left in the wake of the time jump. Acrid and sooty, it reminded her of bonfire night. When it left, a pack of curious dromaeosaurs pottered about the site. She watched them from Embrey’s bedside in her cabin, a rifle stood against the window sill for protection.
Though she’d retrieved the bullet and a tiny fragment of his shirt, he’d contracted a vicious fever. His pale skin dripped with perspiration, and every now and then she dabbed his brow with a damp cloth. The more he muttered insensibly, the clearer she glimpsed her end—the loneliest end imaginable, millions of years from another soul. She’d been a fool to let anyone—even her own men—near Billy or Reardon. If she’d managed it more prudently, where would they be right now? Was the city she’d glimpsed really London? If Reardon was still alive, would he ever come back for them?
There was always a chance.
“If you ever make it to Piccadilly, Tangeni…” she lay Billy’s dinosaur book next to her glass of brandy on the desk, “be sure to buy the boy an ice cream.”
She stared out into prehistory as one confined to its savage isolation forever. If only things had turned out differently. If only.
“Enda nawa, my friend. Enda nawa.”
One week later…
An eager easterly breeze prodded the balloons overhead while she paced about A-deck, tracing cables and rails with her fingertips as though it might reawaken precious memories of her adventures in the corps. But the Empress was a ghost ship. Her spirit had departed with Tangeni and the last of the aeronauts. Verity would fly her as far and as long as she was able, and when her gas was spent, the Gannet would slowly rust and crumble with the rest of man’s anachronisms. Bleak, yes, but she had served her purpose. She had kept enough of her crew alive to enable the return trip through time. Whatever else happened, she had at least done that.
“You finished yet?” she called to Embrey, who’d been writing in his blasted journal for hours. Verity had prepared the boiler and secured the water barrels and salted the meat and made enough hydrogen to buoy the balloons for days, and still she waited for him. “You’d better not have writer’s cramp. You’ve a boiler to stoke, Dickens.”
“Has the wind changed, then?” he hollered.
“Changed and sick of waiting for you.”
A clatter and a growl emerged from her cabin, and he appeared from beneath the steps looking trim and handsome in his waistcoat. He rolled up his shirtsleeves. “A hundred million years and still I get no peace. That’s women for you.”
Fists on hips, she glared playfully at him. “If it’s peace you’re after, I can arrange a lasting one. Now haul your backside to the engine room, Marquess.”
“Yes, ma’am. And may I have permission to see you in your cabin later?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what kind of stoking you have in mind.” She blew him a kiss. He caught it and held it against his heart.
When they were airborne, Embrey returned to the quarterdeck wheel and, hand in hand, they both steered the ship ahead of the wind, away from London-that-was, perhaps for the last time. Geyser clouds shrouded the way east, but without the weight of a diving bell and a crew, the Empress quickly rose higher than she’d ever climbed before.
“Quatermain would be proud.” Embrey treated her to a slow, tender kiss that lifted her heavenward. “Although…he never liked to fly.”
“And you?”
His grin eased to a gentle smile, and he gazed reflectively at the horizon. “Didn’t you know? I was high-born to start with.”
She snuggled up to him while they watched the clouds sail by.
Chapter 20
A Posthumous Pardon
“He’s the key to it all, Agnes. I think he always was—the loss of his wife and son turned him against everything and everyone. We’ve seen it time and again, greatness lying dormant until a person is visited by profound adversity. Nothing rouses creativity like a personal challenge. In his case, a challenge from Fate unlocked some deep, miraculous vault in his brain. He may have done it for love or for hate, or for the thing that drives all men to trample his fellow men.”
“What’s that?”
“Power. The power mankind has sought ever since it first began to question its limitations. The power we are destined, ultimately, to achieve, if we survive that long without destroying ourselves. At the moment, God alone possesses it, and we are but the dazzled viewers glimpsing it through His heavenly nickelodeon.”
“Blasphemy!”
“No, Agnes. I don’t believe that. No, I see it as blasphemy to deny man his rightful ascendancy. If the Leviacra stand for anything, it is for the limitlessness of our potential. God himself made us this way, with the gift of evolution. He wants us to rise above our antecedents until we are subject to no law or force beyond our control. We may have only glimpsed the vastness of that potential so far, but I firmly believe we are close to filling that glimpse with an entirely new perception of how the universe works, the way the slenderest beam of light might shine through a crack into
an untouched sanctum, illuming little but hinting at immeasurable opportunity. Reardon has lit the torch, Agnes. He must join our ranks, but he must never—”
On the far side of his grogginess, the sound of a key fiddling in its lock suddenly confirmed what Cecil had been wrestling with. He had not died. He was not dead. The notion peeled away several layers of mental skin he’d grown during a forever sleep. How long had he been out? He was too weak to open his eyes. But the voices he’d been listening to in his dream were not from a dream after all. Agnes? Agnes Polperro? Was that harpy standing over him right now, with someone, a high-up in the Council?
“Is he—” Another familiar, male voice began.
“You know, I think he just might be!” The garrulous man kept his reply to a vociferous whisper, but Cecil’s hearing was uncommonly acute, a phenomenon often experienced by those who wake after sleeping for long periods. “Stay with him, Wallingford. As soon as he’s lucid, reassure him. Confide in him. You and Agnes have my full confidence.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man who’d just entered.
“Thank you, sir,” said Miss Polperro.
Quiet footsteps across what sounded like linoleum. The key in the lock. More whispering, this time impossible to discern. Lorne Wallingford, government minister, member of the Whig cabinet? Agnes Polperro, Leviacrum representative, bitch responsible for banishing Embrey and Verity to prehistory? The man who’d just left had spoken like one of those uppity university bods, part scientist, part philosopher, all windbag. But anyone in a position to delegate to Wallingford had serious clout. This had to be somewhere away from public scrutiny, most likely inside the Leviacrum tower itself. Perhaps the infirmary floor.
“Professor Reardon?”
He rolled his head on the pillow, swallowed repeatedly until the saliva gave his dry, flaky throat some semblance of lubrication. The unpleasant metallic taste almost made him retch. He moved his fingers, then the toes in his left foot. His right foot…didn’t respond. He yawned, mashed his eyes closed before opening them with tender, jittery blinks. It took minutes for them to become accustomed to the medium light in the infirmary ward. An empty ward—his was the only bed, and but for handsome landscape paintings adorning the pale blue walls it was a bare, depressing room, far too big for its current one-patient function. He felt marooned somehow, left behind by all that was good in the world. Then a prick of self-importance tickled him, and he recalled the almost reverential manner in which the mysterious overseer had spoken of him to Agnes Polperro.
Yes, he had something they wanted. Wanted badly. The secret to large-scale time travel—a bargaining chip he might use to procure all sorts of things. And then there were his friends…
What happened to Billy? Tangeni? The others? Did they make it to Tromso?
“We’re very glad you’ve recovered, Professor Reardon.” Wallingford’s crooked back and hawkish stare reminded Cecil of a rhamphorhynchus, a small, prehistoric lizard-like bird with a hideous countenance.
“I’m—” he swallowed the dryness once more, “—I’m not.”
“Oh, come now, sir. You are the most talked-about man in all the empire—nay, the world. To us here in the Leviacrum, your achievement has outstripped that of any scientist who ever lived. Surely that is worth waking up to.”
Cecil didn’t respond. This feeble buttering-up preamble wasn’t worthy of such a noted diplomat as Wallingford—it reeked of desperation.
“We’ll get straight to the point, then.” Miss Polperro pressed the bridge of her thick-rimmed spectacles higher up her nose and strode forward. Her chin still bore the dark print of his uppercut, but the bruise had healed somewhat. He guessed a week had passed. “I make no apologies for my actions in the prelude to the time jump, Professor, as I still maintain, no matter how it turned out, that having the boy accompany us was too great a risk. In my opinion we were lucky.”
She nursed the bruise on her chin with a handkerchief.
“That being said, I never meant you personally any ill-will during our time spent in prehistory, as any witness will attest. No, my sole preoccupation was to return as many British residents as possible to our own time, and that we achieved together, Professor. While you reassembled your machine, I ensured the men in my charge remained alive and motivated. We may have clashed on a technicality, but I want you to know that I hold you in the highest esteem as both a scientist and a gentleman. Whatever transpired during those weeks adrift in time after the initial cataclysm, you have little to reproach yourself over. In fact you have earned the utmost respect of the Council.”
Careful words designed to divorce his culpability from his achievement. Cecil sensed they were about to focus on the latter, while the former would be glossed over. Good news and bad news apportioned with guile, packaged for surreptitious ends—politics at work if ever he’d heard it.
He lifted his head a fraction, enough to see to the foot of his bed. Again, only his left toes responded. Recalling the awful weight pinning his right leg in the factory and Tangeni’s words—” Whatever happens, you have lost that leg, Professor. Nothing can be done”—he reached down under the blanket. The smooth, metallic surface shocked him for a moment. It began part way down his thigh and clearly represented a full, artificial limb—under cover, the foot appeared equal in size to his natural left one.
“How long was I unconscious?” he asked, to distract from the shocking new revelation.
“In a coma for two days, sedated for a further four. But you’ll want to see what Professor Sorensen has invented for you.” Before Cecil could protest, Miss Polperro peeled back the blanket to reveal his newfangled perambulatory gift. He tried shutting his eyes but it was no use. He had to know.
A shiny brass leg shaped in every way like a human one, with a complex knee joint governed by gears and levers, it was both a monstrosity and thing of unparalleled beauty. Extraordinary care and craftsmanship had wrought it, not to mention an ingenuity far surpassing any artificial appendages he’d ever seen or read about. Sorensen had always been brilliant but this almost defied belief.
“When you are well again our technicians will instruct you on how to walk on it.” She tapped the metal shin with her knuckles. A slight vibration tickled his upper thigh.
Wallingford stepped forward, thumbing his lapels. “We would also like to invite you to join our most elite committee, the Atlas Club, wherein you will immediately be appointed to the Leviacrum Council itself. Such is our regard for your splendid accomplishments, Professor Reardon. What say you, sir?”
Fear the Greeks bringing gifts.
“Not unconditional, I presume.” Cecil knew.
Wallingford pouted, rocked on his heels as he cleared his throat. “I’m afraid not. As pardonable as the destruction of Westminster may be to us in the Council in light of the scope of its ramifications for science, the British people are demanding that you face trial for the most serious capital offences. If we were to hand you over to the judicial system, if you were to set foot outside this tower, you would hang, Professor. Of that there is no doubt.”
“No, I don’t doubt it either.” And he’d already been hung once. Not his jolliest memory. “So your offer is to spare my life in exchange for the secret I possess. That right?”
“You put it succinctly, sir, but yes, that is what we propose. You would continue your work in the laboratories and hopefully not only emulate your great achievement but refine it as well, with the full resources of the Leviacrum and all its eminent scientists at your disposal. You would be the spearhead of humanity’s conquest of time itself. For that, we guarantee your inclusion in every decision governing the use of time travel, and also complete autonomy in any future endeavours you wish to pursue.
“But you can never again leave this tower, and no civilian may be permitted to visit you. Only those who already work in the tower will have that privilege. Would that that were flexible, Professor, but I’m afraid the Council has insisted upon its strict im—”
Wal
lingford froze, his contorted lips set to wrap around the next syllable, still as a clay figurine. His eyes didn’t blink. Not even the subtle rocking of the posture one can always discern if he scrutinizes a still-life actor closely enough. No, the crookbacked politician had quite literally, insensibly, been petrified!
What the hell?
The hands on the clock on the far wall were not moving. Very odd. Nor were the shadows of passing clouds dimming the room even slightly. He craned his neck to peer out through the large porthole windows. There were clouds but no movement, birds but no progress through the sky, distant airships as still as dead, swatted flies stuck to a great blue mural.
He massaged his aching frown with his forefinger and thumb. Either he was still dreaming after all, or something profoundly wrong had just occurred.
“At five past eight, twice a day, Professor.” Miss Polperro waved her hand in front of Wallingford’s face, eliciting no reaction. So why wasn’t she affected?
“I think we’d be wise to keep it to ourselves,” she said, “until we can fathom the cause. It is a most peculiar thing—it began the day we arrived back, and the survivors of the time jump appear to be the only ones free to move about inside this…glitch in time. We are the only ones immune. Now, say nothing of it, for it lasts for only forty-one seconds each time. That is no great hardship.” She checked her pocketwatch, then shuffled back to her original position. “Remember, twice a day at five past eight. Be ready for it.”
“I’ll…I will.” Cecil gazed at the Madame Tussaud’s politician, waiting for a sudden reanimation. When it came, there was that stutter again, time’s needle stuck on its gramophone disc, that he’d experienced as 1908 had manifested after the latest time jump.
“—plementation. There can be no exception to that.” Wallingford resumed as though nothing had happened. Indeed, from his point of view, nothing had happened.
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