“Not to a warrior in tailcoat and leggings, I’ll wager,” Georgiana said.
Jeremiah snorted. “You’re right—we’ll need to find a shopping arcade, find me some more . . . mission-appropriate dress. Patrick, I was wrong, this is like Austria all over again. And Georgiana, you have to promise not to steal my mark if I do manage to find one this time—”
But Georgiana looked stricken—and Jeremiah looked aside to see Patrick looking away—looking like he’d been struck. “Harbinger? What’s up?”
“Nothing,” he said, jaw clenched. “I know what you do for the Queen.”
Dear Lord, Catherine Moffat was right. “True, but . . . there’s no need to throw you under the carriage doing it,” Jeremiah said. They did not need to air this in public; they needed to stay on mission. Still, she muttered, “I actually thought you were in a Boston marriage—”
“Am not,” Patrick said sharply. Then his face softened. “Of course, in this day and age—in our home day and age, that is—a man likes to keep his options open, but Chadwick is a good friend, and that’s as far as it goes. We were roommates back at Shaw U, Jeremiah!”
“I . . . am sincerely sorry,” Jeremiah said.
“Never you mind,” Patrick said curtly. “My fault, really: we fight together, and you should never mix business and pleasure; it always ends in tears.” He pointed and started forwards. “We need to stay on mission. Let’s backtrack those fellows; they look like they’re carrying packages.”
But while they’d been talking, they hadn’t watched where they were going, slowly climbing the streets at the feet of one of the vast towers, a white affair whose buttresses stretched out like the base of a giant tree. So far they had avoided the madly rushing autocarts by not entering the black paved streets, but now Patrick, in his rush to move on, stepped straight out into the road.
“God!” Jeremiah said, seizing Patrick’s collar and jerking him back just as a mammoth vehicle the size of a barn whizzed by at what had to be a hundred kilometers an hour. “Talk of throwing you under the carriage! That would have left a smear—”
“—in my shorts,” Patrick said, stumbling back, clutching at his chest. “My God indeed: that thing was a locomotive on wheels—”
“All locomotives are on wheels,” Georgiana reminded him.
“Caution, friends,” Jeremiah said. “Let’s not throw anyone else under the carriage.”
The oncoming traffic stopped, and human traffic surged across the street. But they were barely a lane out when a cart abruptly squawked and veered towards them. Jeremiah stared at it curiously: dark navy curves, tinted glass windows, red and blue lights flashing atop. They’d seen one on that massive roadway, following that sleek red cart. Jeremiah moved to let the cart pass, but it jerked forwards a little, then squawked again, like it was trying to corral them.
Then she squinted and saw within it a grim uniformed man pointing at her.
“Busted trying to jump the light,” a passerby said. “Gotta watch jaywalking—”
“Move,” Jeremiah shouted, giving Georgiana and Patrick a shove. In a split second they were in the crowd, where the squawking cart could no longer follow. As the officer cursed and kicked open his door, Jeremiah shouted, “In there, quick now!” They ran towards the next of the mammoth towers, a huge organic shape with a broad darkened eave under which porters were loading and unloading autocarts.
“Have you lost your faculties?” Patrick said. “It’s a hotel! In dress like this—”
“—why, we simply must be going to a costume party,” Jeremiah said.
“Genius,” Georgiana said, hiking her skirts.
They dodged a long, glossy autocart and slipped through a rotating door. Immediately, they were assaulted by a blast of wintry air. Not just coolness; not just the shade. This temperature was manufactured, like the inside of an icehouse.
“They’ve conditioned their environment,” Patrick said. “At scale—”
“Can I help you?” a uniformed bellhop said.
“Late for the party,” Jeremiah said. “Ballroom?”
“Which one?” he said. “Upper or lower—”
“Upper,” Jeremiah said, following his finger to a staircase set angled from the door. “Thank you. Quick now, friends.”
They bolted forwards, but when they turned its corner and looked up the stairwell, they found that all the steps were moving, sliding up away from them, lit up from below by a row of foot-level lights. “Oh my,” Jeremiah said.
“The stairs are . . . moving?” Patrick said.
“That’s . . . that’s quite a trick,” Georgiana said.
Jeremiah realized she was frozen, then bolted forwards. “The Imperial Fair,” she said, running up the steps even though they were moving. “We’re back at the Imperial Fair, seeing the latest gadget from Lady Noether. Nothing surprises us.”
But she stopped at the top of the stair, so Patrick bumped into her.
“I thought nothing surprises us,” he said, following her gaze. “Oh my.”
“We are on the run,” Georgiana said, pushing at them. Then she saw it too and gaped. “My goodness. We are at the Imperial Fair.”
The entire interior of the hotel was hollow. Not a small shaft, but a huge, open, cavernous space, smooth and organic, lined with myriad catwalks curved like an architect’s ribcage seen from the inside, not bone-white but pastel-tan, a warm, subtle palette that was inviting and artistic. And at its center, rising from an interior pool complete with fountains, was a giant inverted chandelier: a stand of columns serving as vertical rails for moving, glowing cages made of glass.
———
“Less Lady Noether,” Jeremiah said, “and more Nikolai Tesla.”
17.
A City Hidden From the Sun
“YOU COULD FIT the entire Queen Columbia 2 within this,” Jeremiah said, craning her neck to look up and up and up into the vast hollowed, artful space. “Open the roof, and the whole of Victoria’s Dark Tower could land within this thing—and the cages! The glowing cages!”
“They’re just elevators,” Patrick said. “Elevators and electric lights.”
“Practical elevators,” Jeremiah said. “And practical electric lights—”
She watched a family enter one of the cages, touch a button, which lit, and then the whole cage rose into the hollowed interior of the hotel. “We’ll not take them,” she said. “If they can move with the touch of a switch, they can be locked with the touch of a switch.”
“Other options?”
“There,” she said, pointing at a curved stair. “Follow me. Quick now.”
They ran up one, then the other, rising at last to the final floor beneath the mammoth unobstructed space overhead. It was literally dizzying, the smooth arcs of the “ribcage” proving to be floors of the hotel, rising in fluid harmony to a gleaming skylight sparkling far, far above.
“It’s like one of Edison’s aerograph romances,” Georgiana said.
“Edison never imagined this,” Jeremiah responded.
But below, they heard shouts and running.
“Damn it,” Jeremiah said.
“Through there,” Georgiana said suddenly, pointing.
They ran across the mammoth hall, which had another entire building inside it, a tavern in the shape of a giant glowing leaf. But Georgiana didn’t stop and led them out the far corner. As they left the vast organic space behind, Jeremiah craned her head back for one last look.
“Glad I didn’t see that as a child,” she muttered. “I might have become an architect.”
Jeremiah darted after her companions into a warren of glass hallways over marble tile. Shops and cafés passed behind them as they ducked down right-angled turns and wove their way through milling crowds; then, they were free, walking across a long, narrow br
idge covered over in glass—a nearly empty bridge, with no pursuit in sight.
“At last,” Jeremiah said, glancing behind her. No one was following; here, not even the few travelers on the bridge gave them odd looks. Nevertheless, she kept moving at a brisk pace. “I thought we were sunk for certain. Where are you taking us?”
“‘The Mall at Peachtree Center,’” Georgiana said, indicating a sign with her parasol. “If it’s anything like Tremont Mall by Boston Common, it will be easy to hide. I could use a walk in the shade and privacy of trees, couldn’t you?”
But apparently a century on, or at least on a different track, the word mall had taken on a completely different meaning. Instead of the expected tree-lined outdoor promenade, they soon found themselves faced with a broad underground market, done up in the same glass and tile that the shops in the cavernous hotel had been, but with even more raucous colors.
“Nary a peach tree in sight,” Patrick said.
“In what possible sense,” Georgiana asked, “is this a mall?”
“We’re a century on,” Jeremiah said. Saying that, she still got a little dizzy; even as each new wonder of this strange world was thrust in their faces, it was hard to remember that the reason it was strange was that they were a hundred years forwards in time and an unaccountable distance sideways in possibilities. “The language may have evolved.”
“If language may have evolved,” Patrick said, “so may have currency. How are we going to provision ourselves? It’s a bit crowded for thieving.”
“Oh, you poor naïve boy,” Jeremiah grinned. “It’s never too crowded for thieving; quite the opposite. But a little lift is not what we need right now—”
“No, we need ‘your money, when you need it,’” Georgiana said. When Patrick and Jeremiah looked at her peculiar, she extended her hand. “There. As it says.”
A small line of people stood before an odd little kiosk, interacting with it like a postal tube box. Then the machine spit out, one by one, a series of green papers that a woman folded and put in her purse. Only after realizing this was currency did Jeremiah look up and see the sign:
AmericasBank: Your Money When You Need It
“Oh, my,” Jeremiah said. “So they don’t use punched coins.”
“How would Mechanicals read paper?” Patrick asked.
“Perhaps they’re punched cards,” Georgiana said.
“Rather floppy for punched cards,” Jeremiah said.
“Punched cards don’t need to be rigid,” Georgiana said. “More often than not, they’re not.”
“How does that help us?” Patrick asked, as another person stepped up and got money from the machine. “I don’t fancy becoming an alley pad.”
“Well,” Georgiana said with a smile, “if it’s dispensing currency . . . it must contain currency. To know what currency to dispense, it must have a currency reader within it. And if it has a currency reader, then by definition, it’s a Mechanical.” Her smile grew grim. “And I can best a Mechanical.”
“Are you sure?” Jeremiah said. “A century on, and all that.”
“I’m an excellent computer,” Georgiana said fiercely, withdrawing her fan and adjusting her typewriter bracer, “and I can best a Mechanical.”
And with that she stepped to the end of the line, fanning herself. Reluctantly, Jeremiah and Patrick joined her, even though it made them, and their conspicuous costumes, stand out more now than when they stood in the lanes of traffic.
As they moved forwards, Jeremiah gave Patrick the eye and hung back slightly, scoping out the shopping arcade in case the plan went sour. There were at least five, maybe six exits, counting the stairs; signs over the corridors indicated that they led to hotels and train stations and the streets. But there was more flow back and forth than she expected, even for those exits, and she suspected there were more passages she couldn’t see yet from her vantage point. Good.
She rejoined Patrick and Georgiana, who was still oddly fanning herself, as they stepped only one person away from the machine, keeping that discreet distance from each other that its patrons had seemed to give themselves. Georgiana leaned forwards, curious, and the short Oriental woman now tapping at the kiosk looked back at her and glared.
Jeremiah tensed without showing it, glancing around. Beside them there was a line at a cafeteria that claimed to serve sushi, of all things; she’d never seen that outside Japan. From the traffic in and out of it, and the light she could see through, Jeremiah guessed that the cafeteria cut through completely to a different part of the space; the crowds would hide a quick exit.
Now the Oriental was leaving, they were at the head of the line, and no one had yet stepped up behind them. Jeremiah mimed a stretch, looking around, ready to spring into action if anyone challenged them. Then Georgiana stepped up, leaned down, and stared at the machine.
Jeremiah watched her run her hands over its tiny, crisp spectroscope, over the slots that spat money, now closed, over a slot that spat receipts, three of which dangled lazily in a little chain held together by their corners. Surreptitiously, Georgiana opened and tapped at her typewriter bracelet. Again, she waved her fan, this time more at the little Mechanical than herself. Then, discreetly, she pulled a wire with a tab on it from her head and slid the tab through a slot on the machine.
A new group was now coming down the corridor, and Jeremiah walked up beside Georgiana cheerfully, miming a chatty posture she’d seen in a couple of women earlier, leaning on the machine to help hide Georgiana’s work.
“I walk up and start talking to you as if I’m interested in talking to you,” Jeremiah said, grinning, “because of course, I am, and am not simply trying to provide additional cover for what you’re doing.”
“Please,” Georgiana said, sweeping the bladed end of the wire through the slot again. “This is more difficult than it looks.”
“How is it even possible,” Jeremiah said, “that you’re attempting this?”
“I wondered the same thing,” Patrick said, adopting Jeremiah’s chatty pose, stepping up on the other side of Georgiana as a few people started to appear behind them in line. “This little Mechanical has to have locks, some kind of passcode.”
“It does,” Georgiana said tensely, running her wire through the slot again, then tapping her bracer. “A challenge and response with a remote site, conducted via a wireless exchange of Hertzian waves. I eavesdropped with my fan.”
And she leaned the fan towards Patrick, then Jeremiah, showing a webwork of fine wires that would have done a Faraday vest proud, connected to another wire she’d discreetly run from the stacks of her elaborate coiffure.
“Splendid,” Jeremiah said. “But how does that—”
But Georgiana wasn’t listening. She held the fan out rigidly, sweeping her wire end through the slot again; only now, she was whistling. First a high pitched whine; then higher, then higher; then she let her breath out in a sharp, but modulated hiss, the fan trembling in her hand.
“Georgiana?” Jeremiah asked—and then the little Mechanical teller’s spectrograph screen began flashing, simply going crazy, numbers and lines running all over it. The machine beeped, Georgiana made a responding squeal, and then the machine began whirring and grinding and making awful chunking noises.
Jeremiah risked a furtive glance and saw the man behind them in line looking on curiously. “Georgiana,” Jeremiah whispered harshly, reaching for her friend’s arm—and finding it tense and trembling. Then the acrid smell of burning wire assaulted Jeremiah’s nostrils—coming from Georgiana’s beehive coiffure.
“Lady Westenhoq,” Patrick whispered urgently. “You must withdraw!”
But Georgiana didn’t hear; she just kept whistling, her trembling growing worse, her eyes rolling back into her head. A sharp crack sounded, and a wisp of smoke escaped her upswept curls—but as she slumped back into Jeremiah’
s arms, the little machine’s maw opened, and it began spitting out bills, one by one.
“Oh hell,” Patrick muttered under his breath, collecting the money, which never seemed to stop coming as the machine’s lights began flashing, quicker and quicker, brighter and brighter. “Century notes? And the thing’s unloading its whole stock—”
Jeremiah gave the curious man behind them a fake smile, waving Georgiana with the fan. “Sorry,” she said. “My friend’s been traveling, and in this dress in all this heat she’s become quite flustered—”
“Quite all right,” the man said, smiling. He actually made eyes at her, his grin growing wry. Jeremiah smirked back—the man was flirting with her. He knew they’d just cracked the machine, she was sure of it, but he was willing to give them a pass in exchange for a go at her. Perhaps matahari skills would come in handy in this world. The rogue said, “I could show you around.”
Jeremiah’s smirk grew. “I’ll bet you could,” she said, gratuitously giving him an appreciative top-to-bottom look, “show me all the sights. But my companions might disapprove of me ditching them—and if you were to follow us, why, who knows what kind of trouble you’d get into?”
“You look like the kind of trouble I’d like to get into.”
Jeremiah cocked her head, smile growing broader—but less friendly.
“Fair enough,” the man said, raising his hands. “Don’t like to press—”
“What you tell all the girls, no doubt,” Jeremiah said, leading Georgiana off with care, “till you start to press. Coming, Harbinger?”
“I’ve, just, ah, one more moment,” Patrick said, kneeling, trying to scoop up the last of the bills, though out of the slot now seemed to be starting a second volley of money, which he caught awkwardly. “Just one more—and—oh, hang it.”
He stood up, folding the money smartly, and joined them. “Move.”
“Oh hey,” the man behind them said, mock shocked. “Christmas!”
———
“For him,” Jeremiah said. “Not so much for us.”
Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine Page 15
