Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  Standing over the fallen man, pinning him to the ground with the mop’s butt pressed into his Adam’s apple, Jeremiah was surprised when the man started to choke. Her eyes widened when she saw her left hand shove the mop forward.

  But it wasn’t her hand anymore: it was the monster’s hand. She pulled back, but her left still tried to drive home the killing blow, whispering: defend us! She swallowed. She was more of a danger to these people than they were to her.

  So Jeremiah kept to the fringes, worming her way between the alleys and the culverts, ever moving towards a destination she could not precisely define. Measured by the towering buildings, her progress was painfully slow.

  She found another shopping center and, starving, stole food from grocers’ displays, from café tables, even from garbage cans. This eventually attracted too much attention, and she found a narrow ditch to crawl through.

  Slipping under roads and bridges, sticking to the brush between lots and at the edge of parks, she crawled away from the village district and into yet another collection of dwellings so similar in outline they looked mass produced. They were empty now, but it couldn’t last.

  Maybe the simplest thing to do was just to die. Her hand was gone to her, her legs were growing weak, and her vision was growing dark; she thought the sun was setting until she realized how high it was in the sky.

  But she couldn’t stop; the thing kept eating at her, urging her on, making her want to run, terrified, and when it wasn’t chewing, digging its way deeper into her back, it was scarier—because it kept whispering to her, whispering, whispering, becoming more coherent all the time.

  She had a ghastly thought: the thing was half-metal, half-fire, some kind of mechanical/biological hybrid—like a human computer. Like Georgiana. Was this what her friend had endured to get those wires put into her skull? What would this thing do to Jeremiah when it wired up?

  Then she found what she sought: the park. She exited the culvert at the top of a wooded cliff, viewing a vast expanse of ponds and grass and stonework. At first she didn’t know why it relieved and terrified her so, then she remembered where she’d first heard of it.

  Lord Christopherson’s note.

  She hesitated; entering the park might lead her right into his hands. But the park was huge and filled with nooks and crannies and thickets she could use to hide herself. She had to get out of view of other people, just find some place to rest. She descended the rough hill into the park, just as the sun was setting. Skulking through the bushes, she avoided the people, the barking dogs, the eyes of the occasional policeman, and found a wooded area that was not very well trafficked.

  ———

  With a practiced eye, hampered by her fading light, she found a notch in the woods that was not likely to be taken by a squatter nor patrolled by a night guard, drew leaves up upon herself, and fell asleep.

  43.

  Enlightening

  JEREMIAH HAD NO idea how long she slept, only that true dark fell while she lay there and suffered, slipping in and out of consciousness, never quite able to fall asleep for long, never quite able to gather the strength to go on.

  As she drifted, curled in a fetal position with the whispering monster on her back, she imagined that it was not so horrible. That if you stripped off the metal carapace, that the thing was entirely made of light, golden threads, moving into her body, through her nerves and veins and muscles, touching her, blessing her with the gift of golden light. Then pain flickered through her, and she realized the threads were real . . . and it was burning her.

  Eating her eyes from the inside out.

  Jeremiah stood bolt upright and screamed, her whole body rigid, all but oblivious to the people she had startled when she stood. It was eating her eyes now. It was eating her eyes! As she watched, all the light was going out, leaving her in the dark. Then it got worse, burning her out, a flame rippling out over her vision, consuming it. The thing was blinding her!

  Or . . . was it? In the flame’s wake, it left a thing of wonder. A single murky image of a streetlamp had remained in her vision; after the flame passed, the streetlamp burned a thousand times brighter, gleaming like a sun caught in a cage of burnished gold, its details as vivid as if it stood close enough to touch—and not where it really was, halfway across the park.

  It was like . . . like she’d had a piece of dark tissue paper over her eyes her whole life, and the Scarab had just set fire to it, burning it away so she could see clearly for the first time. And then, just when the whole image of the park before her became clear as day, the lamp itself became clearer, its bright core of light splitting and spreading into a six-pointed star made of rainbows.

  But not just a blurry rainbow: this had well-defined lines. It was a spectrum—no, six spectra, in different power ranges. She was seeing the symphony of light from that one source at the center of her vision, and as her eyes danced across the field, from light to light, the spectra changed.

  It didn’t block her vision like a glare; it augmented it with new information, a better view than you could get from the very best spectracles. Even the bodies of people began to glow, and then the grates and hoods of distant passing carts. She saw redder-than-red heat flare out on one spoke of her spectral wheel, then she saw violeter-than-violet light from some electronic equipment ripple out on another. Soon she was seeing the whole Hertzian spectrum, unfolded into snowflakes made of rainbows, yet somehow clear as crystal.

  It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen—and then she realized what it meant. The thing was coring her from within, starting at the back of her brain moving forward—and had now replaced her eyes with its own.

  She screamed helplessly, swinging her mop at the thing on her back, desperately trying to dislodge it. But it already had her left arm, and it knocked the mop away and seized her right hand. She squeezed her eyes shut and ran through the park, twisting, screaming, reaching up with her right and jerking down on the same hand with her left. Her right hand landed on a branch, snapped it off, and she spun, trying to whack at the monster on her back as best she could with left hand fighting every move of her right one off.

  And as she spun, her eyes opened, and the whole expanse of the park appeared before her new eyes for the very first time. She could see every spectrum of every distinct kind of light, could see there were nine of them: two kinds of streetlights, three headlights, three kinds of lights inside windows, and a man with a flashlight approaching her. She could see all the kinds of grass, compare their beautiful textures, see the warm spots and the cold spots, where people sat and irrigation pipes went, where the culverts merged with the roots of the trees.

  And then her spin stopped, and she stared up into the city. Stared at the buildings and their myriad materials and forms, patterns of light, heat, and color. There was a shimmering, her eyes refocused, and she saw the Prince Edward, hovering there over the buildings, seeking her.

  She saw the Prince Edward through its Hertzian cloak; then she just saw through it entirely, seeing its duralumin hull and brasslite pipes, seeing its engines and fuel stores, its people and equipment, as clear in the sky as a living blueprint.

  Then she saw through the buildings beyond, through their marble facades, through their rising and falling elevators and the moving skeletons within them, through their metal pipes and steel girders, through them all into the clouds.

  Jeremiah fell to her knees as her vision penetrated the clouds themselves. She saw aircraft and spacecraft, the fine ridged texture of the surface of the moon and the crisp jewels of the stars at night. She saw the nearby stars and the faraway stars and the rushing clouds of the Milky Way. And for every speck she saw in the sky, she knew its name. Not a human name, not for most of them . . . but she knew the name of every star in the sky.

  Tears began pouring down her cheeks. Jeremiah had never seen such a vista. She had never seen the
Earth in its place in the stars. It was so beautiful. It felt like she thought flying should feel. She felt that if she died, right then, right at that moment, her life would be complete.

  Then her eyes refocused. There was commotion in the Prince Edward, and nearer, there was a curdling in the air. Before it even resolved, she’d recognized the curdling as images of the nearby past and future: the wake of Lord Christopherson’s clockwork time machine.

  Jeremiah tilted her head. It was all very simple now. If she stayed still, the machine would arrive, Lord Christopherson’s men would disembark, and they would take her. If she ran, Natasha’s converted Falconers would run her to ground, and she would fall into the hands of the Black Tea.

  Jeremiah remembered the note. She remembered its back.

  She stayed where she was.

  Out of curdled space, the enormous diving bell appeared and solidified, though she could strangely still see clear through it at the same time. The machine settled to the surface of the park on its great springs, groaning as the sphere leveled its inner decks; then the gangplank flipped open.

  A trio of skeletons strode out of the machine, brandishing stockless six-string crossbolts. As they grew closer to her, she could see ghostly hatbands and shimmering flesh and realized her eyes were invading the flesh of the men who now stood before her. She let her eyes refocus, and without precisely knowing how, she could see their faces: Christopherson’s footmen, led by the walrus-faced man she’d bested on the stair—still, she noted, in morning dress.

  The walrus-mustached man glared at her, jaw tightening, and then winced, and again, without precisely knowing how, her eyes refocused again, picking out the hairline crack on his jaw where she’d clocked him with Patrick’s blunderblast.

  “Where is the Scarab?” he barked. “We scanned. We know it’s here—”

  “Hello again, sir,” she said. “I do believe I broke your jaw. Sorry.”

  “What did you say?” he said, lowering the six-string slightly.

  “I can see the break,” she clarified. “Healing nicely. That’s . . . quick.”

  “No doubt longer for me than you,” he said, “but how can you see—”

  “What’s . . .” one of them said. “What’s that on her neck?”

  Walrus-moustache shifted his head—and then his mouth dropped in horror.

  “Oh dear God,” he said. “It’s implanted.”

  “It’s given me new eyes,” she said, waving her good arm at the park. “And now everything’s so beautiful.”

  Walrus-moustache grimaced, swallowed, then firmed up.

  “Commander,” he said firmly, raising the six-string. “You will come with us. On your feet.”

  “Need some help with that,” she said. “Legs aren’t working quite right.”

  The two footmen looked at each other with visible signs of disgust. “I’m not touching her,” one of them said. “Not while she’s being eaten by that thing. What if it rears up and takes a chunk out of me?”

  “Not with its mouthparts buried up to my nose,” she said, waving her hand aimlessly. “Quick now, help me up, and let’s get inside that outlandish diving bell. The Prince Edward is probably seconds away from launching a whole flock of possessed Falconers down on us.”

  “The . . . Prince Edward?” Walrus-moustache said, whirling, eyes scanning the sky. “Where—”

  “Right there, sir,” Jeremiah laughed, pointing. “Silent and invisible. You can’t see it, sir, any more than you can see the bone in your jaw when you look in the mirror. But I can. And I can see the whole lot of Falconers loading up in its aviary bay are possessed by the Black Tea.”

  The Walrus glared back at her, but it was the reluctant footman who spoke first.

  “She’s right,” he said. “I . . . I can hear its engines. There, sir—”

  The Walrus stepped forward, seized under Jeremiah’s arm, and lifted. “Well then, don’t just stand there,” he said. “Help her up! To the Clockwork Time Machine, quickly now!”

  The two footmen stepped up to either side of her, caught under her arms, and carefully, delicately, with revulsion, lifted her to her feet.

  “Oh, God, it’s moving,” one of them said. “I touched it and it moved—”

  A bolt of lightning glanced off his chest, and he sagged. A flock of Falconers swooped overhead on wings of balsa and brasslite, and Jeremiah clamped her right hand down on the footman’s collar and heaved him up, nearly bringing the three of them down.

  “Help me,” she said. “Quick now!”

  The Walrus got his arm under the footman’s and lifted. The four of them ran towards the machine as bolts rained down from above, Jeremiah’s legs barely working, but her right arm gave the stunned footman the brace he needed while the Walrus struggled to pull him up the gangplank. Jeremiah looked up, and she saw the machine loom over them, like all the engines of the Prince Edward rammed into the gears of an orrery, packed into a diving helmet as big as a house. The Falconers gave out their battle cry, her eyes widened, lightning began raining down, the hatchway yawned for her, just as it crackled with foxfire—and they were through, and safe, the Walrus slamming the mammoth, improbably thick hatch behind them.

  “Start the Machine!” the Walrus roared, releasing her arm. Without his support, the three of them sank to the metal grille of the deck, the stuporous footman flopping face down on the grating with a thunk and a bounce that left him flattened to the deck with a drunkard’s stillness.

  “Oh,” Jeremiah said. “Sorry. That’ll smart in the morning—”

  “Jackson!” the Walrus roared. “Start the Machine! We’re under fire!”

  “I can hear you, dear,” a woman’s voice said. “She’ll be ready in under a minute.”

  Jeremiah glanced about, trying to get her bearings. Everywhere she looked there were clockwork mechanisms and crackling vacuum tubes. The grille upon which they lay was less of a deck than a catwalk around a layer of machinery below; beyond the gears and wires and sparks, arches of brass and iron curved around it all, like she was in the diving helmet of a god. The four engines projecting inward made the space seem vast and cramped all at once.

  “Swap in the navigear for Nippon, would you, dear?” the woman called.

  “Yes, ah, Doctor,” the Walrus said, turning towards a complex set of controls. The still-conscious footman chuckled, and the Walrus flushed, glaring at him. “Oh, mind your charge.”

  “Yes, sir,” the footman said, turning back to Jeremiah. “A little help here, sirs!”

  Another footman joined them, stopping short when he saw Jeremiah. “God—”

  “Fear not,” Jeremiah said, “it’s not much worse than it looks.”

  “Damn it, girl,” the first footman said, trying to pin her left hand as it flopped about. “We’ve caught you, quit fighting it—”

  “I’m not doing that,” she said, and the man blanched. “And caught me? You invited me. Why would I have come here if I didn’t mean to go with you?”

  “What?” the Walrus said, adjusting a crank. “What are you talking about?”

  “You called me,” Jeremiah said, eyes narrowing. The crank led inward, to the center of the Machine, its shaft touching a vast, churning nest of gears that was surrounded, Saturn-like, by a ring-shaped clockwork escapement—and plugged into that was one of Lord Christopherson’s navigation circuits. But the circuit wasn’t alone; there were five of them, in a circular frame that would let them be swapped in a rush, and even as she realized that, the Walrus turned a larger crank, plugging in a different circuit. “You used this very Machine to send me a note.”

  “We haven’t sent a note,” the Walrus said. “Jackson! It’s ready!”

  “Thank you, dear,” the woman—Jackson, apparently—called. A tripole switch closed with a spark, a huge gong echoed through the Machin
e, and that great intricate Saturn nest of gears at its heart began moving. “Everyone, prepare yourselves! I’m about to trigger the escapement!”

  “I assure you, Lord Christopherson did,” Jeremiah said, listening with detached interest as the hum of the Machine’s engines shifted in tone as it gathered power. “Prince Edward infested with Black Tea, he said, though not in as many words. Meet you fellows in the park if I believed him, he said, in as many words. He was right. So I did.”

  The Walrus stared at her in horror—and then the Machine lurched.

  ———

  “Oh, damn this Machine,” he said. “Our history has become tangled.”

  44.

  The Citadel of Glass

  THE ENGINES OF THE Machine spun up with a terrific rising whine and discharged all at once, lightning in a bottle, illuminating the entire diving bell interior with a crackling foxfire glow. Even the handcuff that pinned her left hand to a support arch shimmered as the transelectric field rippled through it, but as she was grounded to the same pole, it left her with little more than a shudder.

  As the Clockwork Time Machine rattled and clacked, ticked and swayed through the tunnels of possibility, Jeremiah hunched in a little ball by the pillar in her bloodied shift, the monster a hump on her back, her left hand high over her head, twisting uselessly in the cuff as two footmen stood over her, watching, their six-strings at the ready. The ignominious position made her feel small and helpless, even though they’d made the mistake of cuffing her bad hand, but she hadn’t the heart to do her usual scheming for escape.

  She had to see this through. Her uncle had wanted to do this to himself. She had to know why . . . and to learn what fate he had planned for her now that she had taken his place; or, the less pleasant possibility . . . that she’d taken the cow’s place.

  The whole Machine shifted suddenly, its engines phasing with the sound of a thousand hands running through the innards of a piano; then it shifted again, both this way and that way at once, tossing footmen and equipment backwards and forwards past each other in an impossible maneuver. The Walrus cursed and adjusted a wheel, the ship’s slewing grew worse—then a woman’s hand reached out and adjusted the wheel a half turn back, and everything stabilized.