Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “I’d like to see you try it, glass-jaw,” Simeon said.

  “You cheeky little—”

  “Watch out, gentlemen and gentlewomen,” Jeremiah called out. “Agent Simeon isn’t just a formidable fighter; that’s a lethal weapon—and he won’t be afraid to use it.”

  “Oh, thanks for throwing me under the bus,” Simeon said, tilting his head back at her but not losing sight of Quincy. “I’m not just here for the Machine; I’m trying to rescue you—”

  “I’m trying to prevent bloodshed,” Jeremiah said. “It matters—”

  “We worked with you, man!” Quincy said, lowering his six-strings and stepping forwards. “I can’t believe you’re the kind of man that—”

  “That would double-cross a double-crosser?” Simeon said, with a rough laugh. Quincy shifted, and Simeon snapped the gun forwards and pointed it straight at Quincy’s head. “Jesus! That would cap you if you take one more step forward? I most certainly am—now back off!”

  “Don’t, Simeon,” Jeremiah said, watching Jackson twist in his grip. “We’ve no way home. You can’t win this, and losing it needn’t involve taking a life—”

  “Shut up or make sense!” Simeon said. “There’s always a way out—”

  “That there is,” Jackson said, turning something in her hands.

  Suddenly Jackson Truthsayer was gone, just gone. The hand Simeon had been holding her with was jerked aside, but he didn’t lose his footing, keeping the gun snapped on first one footman, then another.

  “Stay back,” he said, refocusing on Quincy. “Or I’ll—”

  And then he shimmered and vanished. An instant later, the whole world went red, Quincy and his men went as stone as statues, and Simeon reappeared before Jeremiah, both dazed and dumbfounded. Jackson stood beside him, one hand on his shoulder—and the other holding aloft a ticking brass disc, much like an oversized pocket watch.

  ———

  “Don’t just stand there, sir,” she said. “Help me undo her straps.”

  50.

  Between the Seconds

  QUINCY AND HIS footmen remained almost frozen in the red pulsing light while Simeon and Jackson freed Jeremiah. Actually it was mostly Simeon who freed Jeremiah, while Jackson mostly kept her attention on the brass disc.

  “Hurry!” she said, winding it with difficulty. “We’ve two, maybe three minutes.”

  Jeremiah slumped into Simeon’s arms, her arm falling over his shoulder. Her head lolled back, pulled by the swinging weight of the Scarab, and she could now see that the red light came from the ceiling, where an array of tubes slowly pulsed.

  Power cycling, mused the Scarab. Time dilation.

  It took Jeremiah a moment to get it. “You’ve stopped time.”

  “Slowed it,” Jackson said, winding the brass disc again, grimacing. “Not by much and not for long. Hurry—we have to get her aboard the Machine.”

  Simeon didn’t argue, but he asked, “Why are you helping us?”

  “I’m not helping you,” Jackson said grimly, one hand on the watch and the other on his wrist, dragging him and Jeremiah towards the huge brass kettle that was the Machine. “I’m keeping you from murdering our men.”

  “And your lover,” Jeremiah said, echoing a thought within her.

  “I’m not that Liberated,” Jackson said sharply. Then she softened. “Well, perhaps I am. But it’s not your affair.”

  “My apologies,” Jeremiah said. “The Scarab can be . . . blunt.”

  Oddly, Jeremiah caught a whiff of biscuits, prompting waves of both hunger and nausea, and she looked up to see the cart that held the tea service. On it she saw Lord Christopherson’s letter—the one she hadn’t received yet. Perhaps she should ensure that she never did. Surreptitiously, she snatched it as they passed . . . but Jackson was too sharp for that.

  “Girl, what are you doing?” she screamed, reaching for the letter.

  “Ensuring this monster never gets implanted in my back,” Jeremiah said, jerking away—and inside her, the Scarab screamed in fear Jeremiah hadn’t been prepared to expect. “And who are you calling ‘girl’—”

  “Settle down,” Simeon said, reaching for Jeremiah.

  “Enough!” Jackson said, seizing Simeon’s hand, pulling hard so he stumbled away, out of the field, one more frozen statue. Jackson reached out for the letter, but Jeremiah pulled her hand away. Jackson said, “I’ll resume calling you Commander when you resume acting like a soldier.”

  They stood in the field. Jeremiah swayed, staring at Jackson.

  “Make your case,” Jeremiah said.

  “You received the letter,” Jackson said, stealing a nervous glance at the ticking disc she’d used to stop time. Once again she tried winding it, then muttered a curse. “Commander, we do not have time for this. The note is part of your personal past—”

  “In a different time, a different reality,” Jeremiah said. “You said we were insulated against that, that the timestreams were separate—”

  “And we are,” Jackson said, staring at her disc. “Which means nothing you do, nothing you change in history will undo what you’ve experienced in your personal past—no matter how much damage you do to the timestream.”

  “But,” Jeremiah said, tilting her head—which sent a wave of pain and hunger through her as it kinked the monster’s bite. She winced, swayed, nearly fell as the Scarab shifted—then jerked the letter back from Jackson. “But if I never receive it—”

  “You received it,” Jackson said. “But if this letter is never delivered, another Jeremiah will be created, in another universe, separate from you. That’s bad enough, but we’re in a causal loop. The trip of the Machine that brought you here will change—”

  “So?” Jeremiah said. “Let it change—”

  “Commander! We could end up with two copies of the Machine here—or none,” Jackson said, again reaching for the letter. “Breaking a causal loop releases a firehose of temporal change. If we don’t reinforce it, we may survive, or we may be undone—”

  “But,” Jeremiah said, wavering. She shrugged her shoulder, and the monster shifted, leaving her in shuddering pain. The worst part, though, was the fear that she felt from the thing embedded in her. “Look what your loop has done to me—”

  “Please, Commander. The man we lost . . . I think he was my husband. And he . . . he wasn’t the first person I’ve lost.” Jackson stared out of the field at Quincy, standing frozen before the stumbling Simeon. “I’ve just gotten to know this one. Don’t take him from me. Please.”

  Jeremiah’s lip trembled. She looked away from Jackson’s haunted gaze.

  “Very well,” she said quietly. “Have you a fountain pen?”

  “What?” Jackson said, reaching into her lead-lined corset.

  “As delivered to me . . . the note had my handwriting on it,” Jeremiah said, taking the proffered pen. “My failsafe was . . . not to write it.” She reached for Jackson’s shoulder. “Help me to the tea service. I need something to write on.”

  Jackson helped her to the cart. Jeremiah glared at the boffin until she backed off to wind her device. Then Jeremiah ripped open the note. Jeremiah had no intention of helping Jackson; the possibility of loss was nothing compared to the pain of this thing.

  Don’t do this, the Scarab whispered, and Jeremiah paused. You know what they plan for me. This will kill me. Maybe not my body, but me. It will kill me—

  “You’re killing me,” Jeremiah muttered.

  Not on purpose, the Scarab whispered, agitated. You have to know, not on purpose—

  “I’ll be consumed,” Jeremiah said, raising the pen. “Nothing but a husk—”

  I’m not killing you on purpose! You’re my host, the Scarab cried. Jeremiah put pen to paper. No. Please! You can’t do this to me, not on purpose! This is li
ke being stabbed by my own soul! You don’t understand. You’re my host! I love you—

  Jeremiah shook her head and scrawled, Hey Dragonfly, it’s me—

  The monster inside her screamed. Please don’t let them kill me, it cried, the words spilling into what she wrote, but Jeremiah kept writing. Don’t listen to her, she tried, but it screamed Don’t kill me. “Let me finish,” she growled, but the monster would not stop.

  Please believe me. I love you. You are my host. I’m sorry, I am so sorry this is killing you, but please, don’t kill me. Please. Please. Not you. Not my host. Please don’t you kill me, not my host, not my love, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it—

  Jeremiah’s hand trembled over the page, at the all-too-familiar jumble of its words mixed with hers. It was a monster. It was killing her. It was eating her from within. But it was a person, as scared as she was. It said it loved her. And she believed it.

  “OK,” she said, throat dry as paper, and the thing in her relaxed. “OK.”

  Then Jeremiah wrote, Scratch what I said, Dragonfly. Go to the park.

  She straightened, as best she could with the monster on her back.

  “All right,” she said, extending the pen to Jackson. “I’m ready.”

  Jackson peered over her shoulder. “But what did you—”

  “That exact note brought me here,” Jeremiah said, flipping it over. Now she knew the source of the smudge. “That’s all you need know.” To distract Jackson, Jeremiah pointed at Simeon, still frozen in his stumble. “And what of him?”

  Jackson’s head snapped around. “Damn it, he’s got a lethal weapon, not three meters from Quincy.” And then she softened. “And he doesn’t belong here. We bring him. Bring him home and avert the possibility of bloodshed.”

  “Two birds,” Jeremiah said, throwing her arm over Jackson, “one stone.”

  Moments—literally—later, Jackson had pulled Simeon inside the field. Shocked beyond words, he followed them to the Machine’s ramp, then took over Jeremiah’s weight while Jackson wound her strange device one last time.

  “I don’t understand,” Simeon said, watching her wrench at the device. “You had me out of the field. Why not just brain me or disarm me while slowed—”

  “I can only slow time. I cannot stop it,” Jackson said, scowling. “Blast this, we’ve wound down the mainspring, and this auxiliary is proving useless. Regardless, sir, I also know—from experience—that I cannot stop a bullet either. Not even in slow time.”

  “Well then,” Simeon said, waving his gun at the ramp. “Lead the way—”

  “No,” Jackson said—and in the moment he’d waved his gun, she’d drawn a deranger of her own and leveled it at him. “You must leave your lethal weapon and take my civilized one, or I will not help you further.”

  “Look—” Simeon said, pointing his pistol straight at her face.

  “You have seconds,” Jackson said, raising the device so he could see its face. “Now choose: take my deranger and toss your pistol aside, or I let the stopclock run down and take my chances!”

  Simeon hesitated, then took the deranger and tossed his weapon away. When the glinting black weapon had passed not two meters from the three of them, it suddenly slowed down and turned red, hanging there in the air.

  “The Scarab,” Jeremiah said slowly, eyes on the reddened—redshifted, the Scarab whispered—gun, “would like to know more about your stopclock.”

  “I shall explain later,” Jackson said, stomping up the ramp. “Move!”

  Fast at her heels, Simeon helped Jeremiah limp up the ramp into the bowels of the Machine. There Jackson paused, hand on a large switch near a gearbox while Simeon got Jeremiah’s feet over a raised inner sill. When the two of them were fully inside, Jackson let the stopclock spin down, the lights brightened back up, and she pulled the switch with gusto. A chain rattled, a counterweight fell, the ramp folded up behind them, and a huge hatch slammed shut behind it. Jackson threw the switch the rest of the way over, and six bolts shot out, sealing the hatch.

  “That will stay them a minute,” she said, turning and walking briskly down the catwalk of the Machine. An electric blast rang out, sparking off a bulkhead near her cheek, and as crackling green foxfire rippled out over it Jackson stopped and raised her hands.

  “Not so fast, Doctor,” Simeon said. “Stay where I can see you—”

  “Then keep up with me,” Jackson said, hands still raised. “I’ve got to start the Machine promptly if you wish to get home. Or did you want to stay here until Lord Christopherson’s men crack open the Machine, take you prisoner, and take Jeremiah to her fate?”

  Simeon hissed, then he shifted.

  “Commander Willstone,” he said gently. “I’m going to set you down and go with the Doctor here to make sure she does what she says. Truthsayer or no, I don’t trust her; she helped us too readily. She’s got a trick up her sleeve, I know it.”

  “Of course,” Jeremiah said wearily, letting him lower her to the deck, in almost the same place as when she first rode in the Machine—but not as comfortable because the Scarab was now larger and more deeply embedded. “Of course she does.”

  Once again, Jackson began stalking around the catwalk, throwing switches and turning gears, Simeon watching her as Quincy the Walrus once had. The Machine’s great gong sounded, its four mammoth engines crackled to life, and its infinity of interlocked gears began ticking.

  Jeremiah watched the Machine spin up: from the twirling governor below, the central spinning shaft, the massive flickering escapement ring at eye level—and within that, the elaborate nest of churning gears that made up the Machine’s heart, like an orrery flickering with foxfire.

  The Clockwork Time Machine lurched, rattling and spinning into the seas of possibility. Then Jeremiah’s head began spinning as well, and she let it fall back, at first wincing as the Scarab pushed against her skull, then finally relaxing as she leaned aside, and both of them found peace against the cool, rhythmic vibrations of the hull.

  ———

  “Once more unto the breach, my friend,” she whispered.

  51.

  Hubris, Atë

  “EVERYONE, HANG ON,” Jackson said, releasing the lever and seizing a leather strap dangling from the pipeworks above her. A half second later, Simeon did the same, never losing his grip on the deranger he kept at ready.

  But Jeremiah, slumped on the grille of the control promenade beside them, had no such convenient handhold. So she braced her feet against the inner ring and pushed herself against the bulkhead, grimacing in pain as the Scarab shifted.

  The Machine rattled and shook, the mammoth central gear seeming to skip a beat. The groaning of a thousand harps squealed through the air, rattling Jeremiah to her bones. While they wailed, the Machine slewed around them impossibly, jerking Simeon and Jackson against their straps and making Jeremiah slide. For one terrifying moment up turned down and then jerked sharply sideways, near pitching Jeremiah upwards into the spinning ring of the escapement.

  Then the relentless beat of the massive ratchet rattling inside the arc of the control promenade finally slowed, the spinning astrolabe at the Machine’s heart flickered—and then all at once, the ratchet gear stopped, the astrolabe locked, the chattering clockwork around them subsided, and the force of gravity shifted as the whine of the central shaft faded.

  With a massive gong the Clockwork Time Machine settled against some external surface, tilted at some strange angle, but as the central shaft finally spun down, the Machine groaned around them, rolling on some hidden bearings until the floor leveled.

  Jackson leaned forwards and tapped a gauge, and with the Scarab’s eyes Jeremiah could see Jackson peering at a set of glass tubes filled with bubbles. Each slowly slid into place between lines etched in their tubes until all were perfectly aligned.

  “Wit
hin a degree on all axes,” Jackson said, smiling. “Thank you, dear.”

  There was a CRACK and a groan, and the whole Machine shifted again. Jeremiah winced and braced her feet, but Jackson nearly toppled, her hand reaching out to seize a strap. Simeon was thrown against the deckplates, never losing his grip on the deranger.

  “‘Within a degree on all axes?’” Simeon quoted. “Ever heard of hubris?”

  “The pride that angers the gods,” Jackson muttered. “Often leads to atë—some act of blind folly. Hopefully I haven’t landed us on some obstruction.” The Machine lurched again, with a low grinding sound, and Jackson tilted her head, listening. “Or . . . the edge of a cliff.”

  “Apt,” Jeremiah said distantly. “After atë comes nemesis. Downfall.”

  Simeon stared at her, then propelled himself up with a sudden jerk.

  “Help me with her—”

  “I’ll not leave my Machine—”

  “Do you want to die, woman?”

  Arguing, the two of them seized Jeremiah under the arms, lifted her despite her cries, and carried her out of the inner catwalk towards the outer ring. Halfway up, the Machine lurched again with a horrible squeal, tossing them all sideways.

  Simeon reached out and seized a handrail, but Jeremiah slipped out of his arm and fell onto Jackson. Jeremiah cried out in pain as the Scarab swung back, but Jackson caught and steadied her, hand seizing a valve for support.

  “Go!” she said to Simeon, as the deck grating tilted beneath them and steam spurted from a copper pipe above their heads, separating him from them. “Spin the chain backwards until the mainspring’s wound tight, then throw the lever!”

  Simeon grimaced, then darted up the shaft, half-climbing, half-crawling until he reached the outer ring. Jackson watched him until he’d turned the corner, and the rattling of a chain echoed through the Machine; then she turned her head to Jeremiah.