Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  18.

  A Quiet Little Haven

  “KEEP MOVING, KEEP moving,” Jeremiah repeated, trying to keep Georgiana on her feet. “Help me. She’s about to collapse.”

  Patrick took Georgiana’s arm, and they rounded the corner. Jeremiah, who was no stranger to stealing something and walking away nonchalantly, became acutely aware how much their dress stood out. Even in this huge, milling crowd of highly diverse people, the figures she, Patrick, and Georgiana cut were more tailored, more elaborate, and, well, there was no kinder way to put it than more buttoned than anyone else. They had to get out of eyeshot of any place where something unusual had happened—particularly automated bank robbery.

  They rounded the corner, darting round the long line before an open air “café” that was little more than a caffelier counter, then passed into a larger room lined with food vendors around a large swath of square tables at its center. There was no cover anywhere for persons as striking as themselves; they weren’t credible shoppers, and all the eating areas were in plain view.

  “She’s about to collapse,” Patrick said.

  “We’ve got to keep moving,” Jeremiah muttered.

  They pressed on, hearing commotion behind them, and Jeremiah was just starting to despair when the white tile ended, the floor dropped six steps, and to their left she spied a dark little cave of a restaurant with an interior seating area, the whole of which she couldn’t see from the corridor.

  “In there,” Jeremiah said, leading them around the line of people at the counter into the body of the restaurant itself. Behind the pillar that had obscured her vision, there were three small painted wooden booths, one of which was just opening up. They took it gratefully, Patrick guiding Georgiana down while Jeremiah sat opposite and began fishing through Georgiana’s satchel, one eye ever watchful to see if that commotion might be following them.

  “You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself,” Patrick said, squeezing Georgiana’s hand, then carefully inspecting her upraised hair. Gingerly he brought out a cracked tube, blackened from the inside, and set it down. “Thank God you had presence of mind to bring spares, Jeremiah.”

  “She’s been without them often enough. Keep an eye on the exit, will you?” Jeremiah asked, taking the burnt tube and digging through the small satchel for a match. “No more, and no more for the gentlemen and gentlewomen under my command. Ah, this is the one.”

  But just as she withdrew a gleaming, unburnt cylinder, the gold-uniformed server clearing another table scowled and stalked over to them, and Jeremiah tensed, preparing to run.

  “Hey!” she said. “You can’t sit there unless you order.”

  “Oh! We’ll, ah, order,” Jeremiah said, glancing around; there were no menu boards, and the woman had no change purse, so she took it that the line they’d passed was for ordering. “I’m sorry, our friend isn’t feeling well, and just she needed to sit—”

  “I’ll be all right,” Georgiana said with a wince, waving her hand. “Just . . . just give me my tube, and I can fix, ah, fix my own hair.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the server said, with sudden compassion at Georgiana’s surprisingly weak voice. “You just sit right there, ma’am, that’s perfectly fine. Young lady, why don’t you order for her and let your friend rest up a bit?”

  “Thank you,” Jeremiah said, standing. “The line—yes? Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you order for all three of us,” Patrick said, standing as well. “I want to run back to that little shop we passed and pick up a few things.”

  “Yes, get her some Advil or something,” the server said.

  “Yes, I’ll be sure to do that,” Patrick said, stepping past Jeremiah and walking out of the dark little cave. It shocked her so much it took her a moment to go run after him.

  “Where are you going?” Jeremiah whispered, grabbing his arm. “If there are guards—”

  “They’d be looking for Georgiana, but she’s in here—and will be fine,” Patrick said, cocking his head; the server was bringing her a glass of water with what appeared to be, Blood of the Queen, fresh ice in it. “We need intelligence, and my field dress is the least conspicuous of all our garb.”

  “Yes,” Jeremiah said. “Yes, you’re right, a calculated risk, worth the gamble.”

  “Thank you,” Patrick said. He split out a little bit of the paper money and handed it to her. “Get us food, and for God’s sake, try to look natural. You’re completely rattled, and I thought you were supposed to be the expert, the master infiltrator of all societies of the world—”

  “That I know of.” Jeremiah stared off: from where she stood, she could see row upon row of electric lights, automated sliding doors made of plate glass, and a pair of moving staircases—not a whit of it practical in Victoriana! “I always do prepwork. Extensive prep—”

  “Ah,” Patrick said—then his fingers touched her chin. “Buck up, Jeremiah.”

  Jeremiah blinked and stared at him, but Patrick just smiled.

  “Fear not. My summers rambling across Europe without a clue may be of more use to us here than your time in Asia,” Patrick said, tossing his safari helmet on the table and smoothing his hair back with his hand. “We’re in a new town, new language, new culture, and you need to learn to look at the natives and do as they do. Get us some food, and I’ll find our bearings.”

  And with that, Patrick sharply walked off, adopting the smart brisk step and unconcerned air common to so many of the businessmen that they’d seen. Jeremiah touched her chin, then sighed. She didn’t need this . . . this complication—but Patrick was right; he was absolutely right. She was always used to knowing the terrain, language, and customs before her boots ever hit earth.

  Here, she’d have to wing it.

  She turned back to the restaurant: Willy’s Mexicana Grill. A small leaderboard described the food offerings, though the style of ordering was confusing. Nothing seemed complete; it was some kind of mix and match, assembled behind a long serving counter filled end to end with a bewildering variety of colorful, delicious-smelling ingredients doled out of embedded rectangular pans.

  Well. Nothing ventured . . .

  She stepped into the line, which moved forwards with impressive dispatch. Before she was ready, Jeremiah found herself standing before a raised barrier of glass, staring at a brown-skinned employee who looked like she’d come straight from the Spanish end of the Confederacy itself.

  “What’ll you have?” the server asked.

  “Oh, ah, burritos,” Jeremiah said. “Three . . . burritos?”

  “What meat?” the server asked, pulling out a floppy piece of bread and tossing it into a small machine with a handle, which she pressed down firmly, producing whiffs of steam. When Jeremiah didn’t immediately respond, the server pulled the now-browned bread out, tossed it down on her counter, and said, politely but impatiently, “We got chicken, sinola chicken, beef, tofu—”

  “Chicken,” Jeremiah said: the first ingredient mentioned.

  “What you want on it? Black or pinto? Same on all of them?”

  “Yes,” Jeremiah said, and the woman piled steaming meat and beans onto the wide, thin bread, passed the heap down to the next server, then reached for another raw piece of bread to make the next one. Jeremiah said, “Just make them like you would make them.”

  “Darle los ingredientes habituales,” the woman said, smiling, and soon Jeremiah found herself following her “burritos” down the line, server to server, each adding more and more condiments to the rapidly assembling piles on the bread, which were then rolled into horse-choking logs covered in foil that looked like it was made of pure aluminum—though clearly that was impossible.

  “For here or to go?” the cashier said, already loading the foil logs into a brown paper bag of unusual, capacious design.

  “Aquí, por favor,” Jeremiah sa
id. “Y bebidas.”

  The cashier pulled out three large paper cups. “Twenty-six fifty-seven.”

  “Si, ah, okay,” Jeremiah said, not sure what the rules were for switching from English to Spanish. She looked at the wad of cash Patrick had given her, still gripped tightly in her hand, then unfolded one of the bills:

  ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  A century note. Oh my. Of all the things she’d imagined, an intact United States was the last on the list. What would she find in Europe, the Old British empire toe to toe with the Romans? And the bill! Over twenty-six hundred. What currency inflation!

  “How much again?” Jeremiah said, starting to count out the bills.

  “Twenty-six dollars, fifty-seven cents,” the server repeated, pointing at a small glowing sign that said $26.57.

  Jeremiah stared at it, fascinated, then passed over one bill.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, pulling out a thick pen, striking it over the bill, and holding it up to the light. While she looked, Jeremiah inspected the pen; it said Fake Finder, no doubt an anti-counterfeiting tool. Amazing; but the bill passed. “Seventy-three forty-three is your change.”

  Jeremiah took back the “change”: three twenty-dollar notes, a ten-dollar note, three one-dollar notes, and a handful of coins; then she folded that into her much, much larger wad of hundred-dollar notes—itself a small fraction of what Patrick had collected—and put it carefully in her pocket. She smiled briefly, took the heavy bag, then walked off, a little lightheaded.

  They had stolen an absolutely prodigious amount of money.

  This was going to be a problem.

  She seated herself across from Georgiana and began pulling out food—the hot logs of beans and meat they’d called burritos and small bags of cooked chips. Georgiana smiled wanly, then gingerly poked at the log. “Well, in Rome—”

  “Apparently we purloined a staggering amount of money,” Patrick said darkly, sitting down across them with a bag made of a thin, crackling material. “I just purchased a set of treasures which aren’t to be found in the whole of Victoriana, for less than two of those notes. Without trying to, I think we’ve created a situation that will draw an immense amount of attention.”

  “Agreed,” Jeremiah said, peeling open her burrito and taking a cautious bite. Not bad, though a bit meaty and spicy. “You could feed twelve men here on one of those notes, and this is hearty fare, with quality ingredients.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” Georgiana said, wincing as she took a bite. “I’m so sorry, I had no idea this would—”

  “No matter,” Patrick said, patting her hand. “It bought us reading material and conversation pieces. But first, for you, my Lady,” he said, ferreting in his bag and withdrawing a small blue box, “some ‘Advil.’ Take two, with food.”

  He rattled it and set it down, but Georgiana just stared at it. Then Jeremiah reached out, opened the box, and dropped into her hand an even smaller bottle with an odd ivory texture, which she opened with difficulty. After discovering the trick, she poured out small pills into her hand.

  “For pains in the head,” Patrick said, raising the box to his eyes and reading the tiny writing upon it. “Don’t take more than eight in twenty-four hours.”

  Georgiana extended her hand, took two pills from Jeremiah, swallowed them uncertainly, then washed them down with her glass of water. She swallowed again, feeling her throat, then cocked her head, waiting.

  “I don’t think even twenty-first century medicine will kick in that fast,” Patrick said, smiling. Jeremiah grinned back at him; he was in his element. “But, while we wait for our computer’s wits to return, I have some reading material.”

  He spread a set of magazines out on the table. These periodicals were far more colorful and finely printed than any book or newspaper Jeremiah had ever seen. She began poking at them curiously—then her hand lunged out to seize one in particular.

  “Foreign Affairs,” Patrick said, picking up his own burrito and slowly peeling back the foil as Jeremiah and Georgiana had. “Immediately interesting, of course, but entirely misleading. Should be called Global Diplomacy. Apparently ‘foreign’ has retained its traditional meaning in this world.”

  “Perhaps they’re not suffering Incursions,” Jeremiah said. Patrick nodded, his mouth full, and Jeremiah began flipping through the magazine. It seemed thorough enough to give her a rough picture of this world, and she resolved to peruse it at the first opportunity.

  “Perhaps not,” Patrick said. “Next: Mobile Computer. Also misleading; apparently this refers not to the athletic activities of professional calculators like our Georgiana, but instead to portable electronic calculating machines. Like this one.”

  And he drew out a tiny lozenge, not unlike the one the girl they had first met had carried. “Oh my word,” Georgiana said, taking the magazine and the device.

  “I doubt it has all of your functions,” Patrick said, “and it does not allow you to speak as the girl did. This is a ‘PDA,’ apparently a lozenge with the functions of an aerograph is a more powerful device called a ‘phone.’”

  “A ‘cell phone,’” Jeremiah said, eyeing a dark young man using one of the devices while carrying a wheeled plank under his muscled arm. Mmm. Perhaps she needed a warmup before she tackled some dry old fogey. “I’ve seen placards for them as large as broadsheets.”

  “They had those ‘cell phones’ in a corner shop, on a display stand, in all the colors of the rainbow with hundreds of minutes of talking time,” Patrick said. “So I plan to hang up my aerograph. But another time. This last periodical caught my attention.”

  He extended a dark black magazine with a light grey tree on its cover.

  “The Economist?” Jeremiah said, confused. “Harbinger, I know we stole a prodigious amount of money, but now’s not the time to set up investments.”

  “Ha,” Patrick said, but quickly sobered. “Read the red text.”

  “A world without nuclear weapons,” Jeremiah said. It meant nothing to her. “What’s nuclear mean? It does sound so damn familiar—”

  And the memory it brought back was that picnic with Einstein.

  “Oh, God,” Georgiana said. “Meaning the atomic nucleus—”

  “Atomic weapons?” Jeremiah said, perplexed. “But Einstein said—he swore to me—that atomic weapons were . . . impossible . . .” But the moment she’d said swore to, Georgiana had looked away, covering her face in shame and horror—and Jeremiah’s spine grew cold.

  ———

  “I think we’ve found,” Patrick said quietly, “what your uncle came here for.”

  19.

  The Dark Secrets of the Peerage

  THE SODA FOUNTAIN with its ice dispenser was itself a wonder, but at Georgiana’s request, Jeremiah ran through the line again to fetch something stiffer, as the “iced tea” was nonalcoholic and the faux “cola” entirely devoid of cocaine or opiates. Jeremiah returned, on the cashier’s recommendation, with pale yellow drinks branded Coronas.

  After they all had a swallow, Georgiana spoke.

  “You’ll never see this title on the cover of a broadsheet in Victoriana,” Georgiana said, “because we know the nucleus as the mathematical centroid of the atom, and what use is a special word for the center of an indivisible sphere?”

  “You’re just going to have to count me as baffled here,” Jeremiah said.

  “The physics we teach our schoolchildren is a lie,” Georgiana said. “The nucleus isn’t a mathematical convenience. It’s very real, a tiny spot where all the mass of the atom is held together with terrific force. Strike it just right, and it can blow apart, releasing all the energy held within—”

  “But . . .” Jeremiah said. “But Einstein said—”

  “Yes, Einstein told you that liberating the power of the atom wasn’t p
ossible,” Georgiana said. “He lied—because I asked him to. It was a secret of the Peerage, and when I explained the situation to him . . . he agreed.”

  “Well . . . what’s so bad about the power of the atom?” Jeremiah asked.

  Patrick glanced at Georgiana, who nodded; then he lowered his voice and asked, like a teacher gently reminding a pupil, “What should be here, Jeremiah? In our world?”

  “Well,” Jeremiah began—then blanched. “Oh God. The Atlanta Caldera.”

  “Not the result of a protracted six-week siege using now-banned ‘poison artillery,’ as we were taught in our history books,” Georgiana said. Again she and Patrick exchanged odd looks, then she said quietly, “The crater left instantly by a single city-leveling nuclear weapon.”

  “God. One bomb destroyed all of this?” Jeremiah said, waving her hand; history was horror enough, but she could scarcely imagine this larger, denser future metropolis being wiped out in an eyeblink. “Hang on. A nuclear weapon . . . in 1864? Einstein wasn’t born yet—”

  “Her Dark Majesty commissioned it from one of Somerville’s students,” Georgiana said. “Lorentz, if I recall correctly, though I doubt he knew what Victoria planned. All the theory had been worked out by Riemann decades earlier; all it took was the right practical mind—”

  “And the right dark heart to deploy it,” Jeremiah said. “That grasping bitch. Never could let an atom of empire go.” History taught the horrifying siege of Atlanta was the final stroke that turned the Empire against its dark Queen, but . . . “But I have to admit, that’s excessive, even for her. Did Victoria really know what the weapon would do?”

  “Unlikely,” Georgiana said, shaking her head. “As best as we are able to reconstruct the account, whatever they made was far more violent than expected. Think of it: one bomb decimated the Northern forces, annihilated Sherman and his airships, and created a radioactive demilitarized zone that halted the war for six weeks—”

  “What we now know as Sherman’s Stumble and its horrible aftermath,” Jeremiah said, and Georgiana nodded. “I did a report on that in Academy.” She shook her head, wondering how many of the records she read were real. “The ‘official’ history is that Victoria ordered that radioactive barrage to stop the Confederates from overwhelming our Northern allies—”