Moffat leaned over the glass, waving gnarled fingers as bent as the claws of a bird of prey; then, coaxed forth by his spiritual grasp, a shimmering image of clockworks and gunfire appeared. “Lady Westenhoq,” he said darkly, “has been known to be wrong.”
Jeremiah grinned. “Oh, give her Einstein, he was a devilish rogue—”
“I meant Shanghai,” Moffat said.
Jeremiah leaned back. “Oh yes,” she said, gingerly touching her right hand with her left. “She did misjudge that.”
“You’re lucky they could reattach that finger,” Moffat said. He suddenly reached out for her hands, gathered them up, and squeezed them with his wrinkled, gnarled fingers. “What I’m saying is, be cautious. Even if she’s right . . . especially if she’s right . . . be cautious.”
Jeremiah sensed something, leaned back. “Why?”
“If she is right,” the Eldest Moffat said, waving a hand over the globe, bringing yesterday’s firefight into sharp relief, “then history isn’t fixed. It’s fluid, ever-changing. If you travel through time, you won’t just leave the footsteps you would on solid ground. You’ll leave ripples.”
“So you’ve told me,” Jeremiah said. She leaned back, pulled from her breast pocket one of Lord Christopherson’s lapel pins, a tiny, gleaming, finely worked disc of brass. “Torn from the man’s very chest. Perhaps you can read his ripples?”
“Mya, you haven’t listened,” the Eldest Moffat said sternly. “Only actions leave ripples. Objects merely contain echoes. Through them, you can only see the past.”
But he extended his hand anyway and took the pin, rubbing it with one thumb in his palm. “Splendid craftsmanship,” he said: the brass pin was a parody of an Expeditionary’s, with a watch gear in place of the steering wheel, a crescent moon in place of the sail, and an arrow in place of the sword. “Let’s see what we can see, shall we?”
And he extended his hand over the globe. Murky images appeared: a mine, an artisan, a tailor’s shop; then Lord Christopherson, extending his hand. After that, the images grew mysterious: copper kettles and long tunnels and vast sheets of glass. Moffat’s brow furrowed, his grip on the pin tightened; then the image resolved again, showing Jeremiah’s snarling face lunging forwards.
“And that would be when you got them,” Moffat said. “That’s it—”
“Can’t you follow him?” Jeremiah said. “Now that you’ve forged the link—”
“I’ll . . . try,” Moffat said, releasing the pin, his fingers reaching out curiously into the air—then seizing something with a fierce grip. Lord Christopherson appeared again, striding purposefully . . . but the vision was nowhere near as clear as before: shimmering, indistinct, the image repeatedly jerking away. Moffat quickly began sweating, strain showing in his voice; he was no longer a young man. “But I can already see the problem. He’s boarded that damn Machine you spoke of.”
“But you have him. Can’t you follow him?” Jeremiah said. Now the globe showed a muddied image of the Machine, powering up for flight, their view strangely churned by those peculiar ripples of temporal distortion. “Find out where he went, at least warn me where to step?”
“Perhaps,” Moffat said, grimacing—then, jerking back as if stung, his hand released its hold on the invisible thread—and the image of the Machine began to disappear, just as the real thing had. “No. Forgive my skepticism sixty seconds ago, Mya: when the Machine departed, I could feel it move in time. Apparently when you step out of time, you step out of the flow—and out of my sight.”
“But if he traveled to the past, surely you could find him.”
“How? The thread’s cut, and the past is a limitless country. Where should I look? When? Has he arrived yet? Have the ripples reached us? Does any of that have meaning? If you follow him, I can’t guide you,” the Eldest Moffat said—and as the last ripple of the Machine’s passage faded, the whole globe suddenly went dark. “You’ll be flying blind into the seas of time.”
Jeremiah and Moffat stared pensively at the darkened glass. Then a light began to shimmer within it. Intrigued, Jeremiah leaned forwards—and saw the face of Lord Birmingham loom in the globe. “Commander Willstone!” Birmingham roared. Then his face became troubled. “You’re sure she can hear me?” he asked and cleared his throat. “COMMANDER—”
“It’s a psychic link, my Lord,” the unearthly voice of the Owl said, a bit pained. “There’s no need to shout. She’ll hear you as clearly as I, or not at all—”
“I hear you clearly,” Jeremiah laughed. “What do you want?”
“You, Commander!” Birmingham blustered. “Where have you got off to?”
“At my artisan’s, equipping and rearming,” Jeremiah said; as not just an Expeditionary, but a matahari, Jeremiah was expected to provision herself with what she thought she needed in the field, rather than rely on the quartermaster. “I left a quite specific itinerary—”
“So you did,” Birmingham said. “But our schedule’s advanced. We’re ready to depart!”
“Already?” Jeremiah said, taken aback: she’d taken this jaunt in part to ensure their departure wasn’t rushed. “Sir, this is your mission, of course, but with respect, I’d prefer we not hurry the refit of the Prince Edward, much less the wiring of Lord Christopherson’s device into its circuits—”
“Fully agreed, but both are well in hand,” Birmingham said. “The refit was a hell of a job, but the Lady Westenhoq cracked the codes of that little brass orb—she has confirmed, and the Chartographer concurs, that it is a ready drop in to a standard demagnetizer housing.”
“That’s . . . excellent,” Jeremiah said. “Then we should depart directly.”
“We’ve already undocked and are coming down Beacon Hill towards you.” Birmingham grinned suddenly. “Shall I request a berth down by the docks . . . or lower you a rope ladder?”
“You know the answer,” Jeremiah said. “On my way.”
“Well,” the Eldest Moffat said. “You don’t need to be a futurist to know you’re off to adventuring again.”
“Always,” Jeremiah said. “Put the reading on my tab—”
“For you, it’s free,” the Eldest Moffat said. “Just settle up with my girls, and the ramblings of an old man are on the house.”
“Never,” she replied and kissed him on the cheek. “You always get your regular fee and a little bit extra. All the best, old man.”
Jeremiah slid down the rails, her heels striking the floor with a thump, the impact rattling the veritable bed of brass shavings that had poured out of the whittler. “All ready to go,” the Youngest Moffat said, proffering the restored blunderblast, a newly-whittled cage protecting the bell of its discharge chamber, added banding on its butt—and new fittings holding a bayonet switchbladed to its length. Jeremiah seized it, spun it around, reveling in the added weight: it was a splendid weapon, and now it could clock a blackguard clear into next Thursday and still fire true.
“And here as well,” the Elder Moffat said, holding up her left-handed Kathodenstrahl, good as new. Jeremiah took it, drew her other, raised them both, and charged them to their lowest settings to confirm they still worked—there’d be no quick runs back to this shop from where she was going. She grinned as the electric fire crackled through the chambers; then she dry-discharged them and slipped them into her side-holsters as the Elder Moffat brought forwards a leather case with four replacement tubes inside. “Can’t guarantee this will last you outside the week—”
“But much obliged anyway,” Jeremiah said, taking the case, along with a package of spare parts for Georgiana. “Put it all on my tab and something extra for the old man too.”
“And how do we know we’ll collect it,” Catherine said, hand on her hip, “with you gallivanting off to parts unknown again?”
“Call the Expeditionary Force, they’ll take care of you,” Jeremiah said.
“But don’t worry, Katie. Whenever have I not come back?”
And as she popped open the door, bell ringing, the Mechanical leaned forwards to say:
“Be-gone from the Mof-fat-ess . . . un-less you bought to-day.”
“Oh, Katie,” Catherine said, stomping forwards to rewire the machine.
Jeremiah stepped out into the street, taking in the smells and sounds of Boston: cold November air, wafting soup, crackling leather, fragrant horses, whirring gears, walking feet. She would never give up adventuring, but God, she loved this town.
“Here you are, Commander,” a young girl said, walking Jeremiah’s cycle up, nearly a gender-flipped, time-reversed picture of the boy walking it off—except her cycle now shone like it was new.
“Thank you, young ma’am,” Jeremiah said, pulling the boy’s two shillings out and adding a third for the girl. “Apportion it fairly among you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said—then gasped. “Oh my goodness!”
And Jeremiah followed her gaze to see the Prince Edward shimmering into visibility above them, a shark of the air with a ship’s prow, its rope ladder tumbling down towards her. “Capital!” Jeremiah said, leaping up onto a horse-tie, then into the air to catch the ladder.
Her weight brought the ladder down slightly, and as she swung back she reached down towards the girl. “Heave it here!”
“Are you all right, ma’am?” she cried, even as she raised the cycle.
“Never better!” she said, seizing the autocycle with her free hand. Predictably the Edward didn’t wait, and in moments she was rising above the street, holding on to the ladder with one hand and the lightweight brasslite-framed bike with the other, trusting the nacelle boomsman to keep her clear of the buildings as she soared into the sky.
The Eldest Moffat waved as she rose past him, and she winked in response; then quickly she began climbing the precarious rope ladder, quite the twisty trick with the bike occupying one of her hands. Five rungs up, she crooked her elbow through a rung and the rope, freed her legs from the ladder, and used her left boot to grab the bottom rung and flip it up to her hand.
With a little difficulty she slipped the cycle into the rough loop she’d made in the ladder, stabilized it with her legs, and began pulling carabiners from her belt. A bit of dizziness assaulted her, but she was more than used to coping with it: with three deft clasps, the bike was secure, and she was free to gaze at Boston from where she loved it best—from the air.
She would never fly. She could not be a Falconer, even though she’d’ve polished Natasha’s boots for the privilege; Jeremiah’s inner ears had seen to that. But there were moments like this, carried aloft on a rope of hemp and brass, above stone and steel spires ten stories high and below a thermionic airship about to challenge the walls of time itself, that she needed nothing more.
Abruptly, Jeremiah removed her left lapel pin, fished out Lord Christopherson’s clockwork pin, and affixed it into the now-vacant slot. She was not just an aeronaut anymore; she was going to be a chrononaut now: off on one of those singular adventures that defined her life.
———
“Very well, Uncle,” Jeremiah said, “ready yourself—here I come!”
12.
Flying Blind into the Seas of Time
“ONE HUNDRED YEARS, six months, and four days,” Georgiana said at last, extending her hand towards a vast sheet of chicken scratches she’d laid across the Chartographer’s table, which itself ran the length of the navigation trench of the Prince Edward’s spacious bridge. “Give or take a few hours, that’s how far—or should I say how long?—Lord Christopherson has traveled in time.”
She leaned back from her figures, and in fascination, the crew stared at the Lady Georgiana Westenhoq, fully revealed as a computer: her dark curls completely undone, exposing the tubes and wires woven into her skull, all hooked into cables and wires trailing up overhead into the rat’s nest that was the Prince Edward’s navigational array. Periodically, Georgiana tapped at a keyboard bracer on her wrist, and when she did so the gears and wires of the difference engine overhead churned and sparked as the human computer instructed her Mechanical counterpart.
As Georgiana and the Chartographer worked, Patrick’s Rangers busied around in the v-shaped navigational trench or leaned against the enameled Art Nouveau panels that stood between the glass. Natasha’s Falconers leaned down over the brass and wood rails above, watching Chief Engineer Barrowman as he fitted Lord Christopherson’s spherical brass navigation device into the demagnetizer’s socket, and lording over them all, Lord Birmingham scowled, standing by the helm and the Owl’s throne and the wall map of Victoriana behind them.
Only Jeremiah refused to face the computer; half out of respect for her friend, who never liked people staring at her tubes, and half out of her own love of the air, as she could never resist standing as close as she could to the tip of the wedge prow of the Prince Edward, staring through the expensive airglass of the forwards observation window, watching the world crawl towards her through the fine silvery mesh of Faraday filaments woven through the glass.
But mere watching would not do. Lord Birmingham was in charge because Dame Alice needed a member of the Peerage in command, but the mission was also Jeremiah’s responsibility. She had to ensure its success, and not just to get her knighthood: she needed to clear the family name. Ever since her mother’s ignominious death, the name Willstone had the stink of failure; she would not allow her uncle to permanently tar Wollstonecraft with a traitor’s brush.
“1808,” Patrick said. “Let’s see . . . February . . .”
“Sixth,” Georgiana said, without missing a beat. “Or thereabouts.”
“Or thereabouts?” Patrick smiled. “Are you counting the leaps, Georgiana—”
“A good question, Lieutenant,” Jeremiah said, looking over her shoulder and hitting him with a quick wink. It was good to have Patrick back on board—like Austria, all over again—but on the bridge of the ship, they needed to respect Georgiana’s station. “You’re certain your figures are right, Lady Westenhoq?” Jeremiah said, turning to face Georgiana, then sliding down the rails of the brass steps to land in the navigation trench before her. “You kept mentioning a missing term.”
“There is an imaginary component to the equation,” Georgiana said.
“Damn it, woman, we don’t want to chase figments here,” Birmingham said.
“She means,” the Chartographer said sharply, “mathematically imaginary, as in the square root of minus one.”
“Well . . . well there’s nothing that’s the square root of minus one,” Birmingham said. “Any minus times a minus is a plus, so to invert that you’d end up, well—”
“Exactly,” the Chartographer said. “Off the charts. That’s why they called it imaginary—but we think we’ve nailed it. We think it’s a crosswind. The main terms mark the actual distance plotted by the course—but the imaginary terms track the expected drift. We’ll have to tack against it.”
“Of course,” Lord Birmingham said. “Of course. I see now.”
“Do you?” the Chartographer said.
“I’m not a mathematician,” Lord Birmingham said, “but I’m not thick.”
“A crosswind in the seas of time?” Jeremiah said, deftly slipping past a Ranger so she could examine the sheets of chicken scratch. She was no lightweight—she’d been a good engineer once, and had dated her share of physicists—but could only understand a few bits. Still, the notation looked a bit like what Einstein used, and the familiarity made her feel better. “Are you sure?”
“We’ve nailed the time and the place,” Georgiana said. “The calculations are quite definite, and we’ve cross-checked them against not just the wiring of this device, but also a log we found in Christopherson’s lab, which we now think records other trips they’ve taken.”
“
But any airship captain knows,” Sonia said, “you can’t navigate by time and place alone; you need to know the crosswinds—the movement of the air you have to navigate against.”
“We often chart them as ratios,” Lord Birmingham said, good eye twinkling at Sonia and her implied challenge. “Is your imaginary the same kind of thing—numbers multiplied by numbers?”
“We think so, yes,” Sonia said. “But returning a negative sign. Since distance in time is the negative of distance in space—at least, in the kind of bookkeeping that Professor Einstein favors—these numbers may mark, perhaps, crosswinds in time.”
“Perhaps is not as strong as I’d like,” Patrick muttered.
“Agreed, Lieutenant,” Jeremiah said. “With respect, Chartographer, Lady Westenhoq: are you certain? We are betting a lot on this. A Zeppelin, our lives—and any chance we have of thwarting Lord Christopherson. I’d hate to disembark ten kilometers underground—”
“We’re quite certain,” Georgiana said. “At least about altitude. That I thoroughly checked—”
“How precisely will this work?” Lord Birmingham asked impatiently.
“The basic mechanism isn’t that different from a normal demagnetizer,” Georgiana said, pointing at the named device on its chain above the deck. “We’ll charge up the Edward’s thermionics and run a charge through the device, and the device’s emanations will spread along the Faraday cage and cover the whole ship. But the difference is, instead of making the ship invisible . . . Lord Christopherson’s device will exert a push against the ether.”
“So we’ll fly through the ether rather than the air?” Jeremiah asked, slipping past her to climb the steps to the dais. “Splendid! I always love a new way to fly.”
Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine Page 11
