Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “I can show you what it means,” Marcus said, then bit his lip. “Jeremiah. I do still hear the voice of the Tea, and it still does hate the Scarab. But . . . what the Scarab has done for you is . . . wonderful. It may take some time for the new me to accept that, but I can see it—”

  “As I can see what’s in you,” Jeremiah said. “What has the Tea done for you?”

  Marcus lifted his head, staring over her, over the battered metal canyons of the lockers, up at the shark hull of the Prince Edward and the wall of Hangar One beyond. But the black pools of his eyes focused on nothing, seeming to stare off into infinite distance.

  “Given me knowledge,” he said, “given me a spine. Given me a sense of cause. And left me a muddle. I was infested with the Tea, purged of the Tea, infused with Oil, and now am a mess. I’m no longer a proper Carrier. My knowledge is flashes, and I can’t synthesize the Tea—”

  “You’re wrong, you know, or deceitful. There is one more source of the Black Tea: your body.” His face widened in shock, and she said, “I know how it works. Its imprint still lives within you. Your body still manufactures the Black Tea. Anyone who drinks of it will become infected—”

  “I don’t want people drinking my blood,” Marcus said. “Ew—”

  “Your blood,” Jeremiah said, “is not the bodily fluid I’m after.”

  Marcus’s jaw dropped.

  “Only my body can process the Black Tea and not become infected,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck, feeling a tingle that wasn’t just Scarab vs Tea, “so you’re mine, skater boy. You and all of your bodily fluids; I’ll start with your saliva. A little safety test; a kiss.”

  Marcus stared at her. “You are a man-eater,” he said, eyes wide.

  “Not yet,” she said, pressing against him, “but I can show you what that means.”

  Marcus laughed, a bit nervously, but not pushing her away. “You-you’re fucking with me.”

  “Yes,” Jeremiah said pleasantly. Marcus might have a “reputation with the ladies,” but his hesitance was durable. She was starting to think that the shy little boy she’d seen in him wasn’t the mask of a matahari . . . but actually part of the core of Marcus. Most excellent. “Is it working?”

  “Yes,” he said, hesitating. “Might be tricky, being lovers and mortal enemies.”

  Now Jeremiah hesitated. “I’m . . . willing to give it a go,” Jeremiah said. “Are you?”

  “Yes,” he said, reaching up to cradle her cheek. Then he stopped, glanced around the locker room, and reached for his goggles, starting to pull them off his forehead. “I wore these to hide, but we don’t need that between us. Let me get rid of these damn things.”

  “No,” Jeremiah said, pulling him close, wrapping her hands around his neck, slipping the goggles down over his eyes. “Much better,” she said, then pulling her own down as well, so the two of them stood together, looking at each other, goggled under the shadow of the airship hull.

  “Do we really have time for this?” Marcus whispered. “The clock is ticking—”

  “Oh,” she said, as she tiptoed up to kiss him, “it’s always a good time for goggles—”

  “There you are, Commander,” Zenta said, striding purposely into the changing room. “I think you got the wrong side. We’re a bit more gender segregated than—”

  Jeremiah lowered her wings, revealing Marcus. “No, I’m right where I want to be.”

  “I . . . see.” Zenta’s eyes twinkled. “Your Lady Georgiana just cracked the code of those time gears and has the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA Ames running navigation calculations now. They should be ready within the hour. How soon can the Prince Edward launch?”

  “She’ll launch when—” Marcus began, then looked at Jeremiah. “Sir, she is ready for launch. I’ll clear the Prince Edward for departure as soon as the last pressure test is complete—and it’s already underway. I’ll bet we’ll beat Georgiana to the punch.”

  “All right, then,” Zenta said, smiling. “Saddle up.”

  Jeremiah smiled too, and her wings spread in anticipation.

  ———

  “Assemble the crew,” she commanded. “Time to stop an Incursion.”

  63.

  The Victory of the Burning Scarab

  JEREMIAH WAS humming by the time she stepped out of the shower. It had been a new and surprising experience, running ice-cold water over her warm metal wings, letting the chill running over them fight the fire inside them. It made her feel electric, alive.

  Gearing up was almost the same: leggings laced for tightness, boots with buttons, a Faraday vest under her brown tailcoat, now cut to let her wings slip through. She buttoned its back up with her spindly metal legs, then loaded her guns.

  Then she seized her blunderblast and darted out to join the others.

  Marcus and Simeon led a team of dark-garbed NSA men and women in ballistic weave; Jeremiah and Natasha led a company of Falconers, Dragoons, and Rangers in upgraded gear. All of them bore nonlethal weapons; all now wore Kevlar underneath their Faraday vests.

  The teams met in the middle, Marcus meeting Jeremiah, and she drew in her breath and blew him a kiss before striding up the gangplank to the Prince Edward, which was just now firing up its thermionic engines for departure.

  Georgiana and Harbinger now shared the bridge, consulting with Sonia and her charts and the Owl as he sat on his prescient throne. When Marcus and Natasha’s forces were aboard, Jeremiah ordered the launch, then strode to the forwards observation window, tapping the toe of her boot with anticipation as the Prince Edward slid out of Hangar One, becoming invisible as it exited.

  Jeremiah would always be Victorianan, but she loved her new home: no aristocracy hung up on arcane rules, no family project to carry, no personal history to overcome—and as Foreign expert woven with Foreign technology, she had the best of both worlds: she’d lead, then fight.

  The ship flew invisibly into the upper atmosphere over the Pacific, far from prying eyes; then they swapped in Jackson’s time gear and prepared to intercept their enemy. They’d pieced together when in their past the enemy had appeared; now the challenge was to intercept it and neutralize it without disrupting the timeline—a task Jeremiah was sure they had well in hand.

  The gear engaged. Clouds swirled. The Prince Edward dove into them, but it only lasted a moment. Traveling little more than twenty-five hours into the past took only seconds—and then they were over Nevada, closing on their target.

  Grey metal darts with the agility of swallows and the size of schooners were swarming about a mammoth hurricane of clouds and electricity, scarcely noticing the brief blip their own ship had made on the radar before it too disappeared.

  The heavier-than-air winged gunships had been outfitted with electrical weapons—another element Marcus had been unaware of at his low level on the NSA’s totem pole—but despite them the hurricane unfolded like a flower, disgorging an airship.

  “They have my sister,” the Owl said, “and it is the Columbia.”

  “Fear not,” Jeremiah cried. “We’ll bring her safely home. Prepare to decloak!”

  The Queen Columbia was newer, more slender, more specialized than the Prince Edward, a sleek skyfish darting out of the torrent of air and scattering the buzzing metal hornets with blasts from its aetheric cannons. In theory it could turn invisible in a moment, as soon as the navigear was swapped out. In theory it could outrun the Prince Edward, as soon as the hurricane dissipated. But in practice none of that mattered—because it wasn’t fitted with the battering prow and reinforced hull hoops that had been so important to the older, slower generation of airships. So when the Prince Edward decloaked above it, diving down, all the Queen Columbia could do was desperately roll away.

  Before the Queen Columbia could tilt up enough to bring her weapons to bear, the Prince Edward had a
lready fired a broadside, lighting up the Columbia’s port nacelle with a crackling roar of aetheric fire. Sparks flew, tearing into the membrane, but ignited nothing: the Columbia was filled with superheated helium. But the airship was still hulled, and even as the bags pinched, the Queen Columbia slowly began to fall.

  “Damn it!” Jeremiah said, bolting from the window, adjusting the strap on her blunderblast as she ran. “We can’t let the ship land or crash—the Carrier will likely get away and infect who knows how many. Falconers, launch! Launch!”

  She darted up the spiral stair to the prow, popped the hatch, and ran full tilt towards the tip of the Prince Edward’s battering ram. Already now Natasha’s Falconers would be launching from the nacelles beneath her, swirling down on their enemy.

  Jeremiah leapt straight out into space.

  She fell like a stone. Her wings stretched out, unfurled, expanded, catching the air just as she fell through a swarm of Falconers, and powering her through a barrel roll that looped around Natasha before diving on the Columbia.

  Rangers were swarming out onto the Columbia’s surface, blasting away at the Falconers swooping in from the Prince Edward. Jeremiah stared at the ship with her new eyes, seeking a strategy, a weak point—or a Carrier. Then a splitting headache hit her.

  My sister, please! the Owl said in her mind. You have to save her! Hurry!

  “Let me be, boy,” Jeremiah snapped. “You’ll make me hit something!”

  They’ll kill her if the ship is captured, the Owl pleaded. She’s near the prow!

  Jeremiah glared at the prow, where half a dozen Rangers were making a stand, using the structure of the forwards crow’s nest to shield themselves. To rescue the Falcon, she’d have to go through those possessed men and women—then take the bridge of the ship.

  “Oh, well,” she said. “Who wants to live forever?”

  Jeremiah dove, heels striking the prow, coaxing a groan out of a girder, not three meters away from the knot of shocked Rangers. She unslung her blunderblast, flying over the rail in a spinning leap, knocking Rangers aside with the blunderblast and her wings with equal ease.

  As the closest Rangers fell, others pulled back and fired. She shielded herself with her wings, but it was barely necessary. As the volley faded, Jeremiah straightened, raising her blunderblast—and then, realizing she didn’t need to stop there, drew both her Kathodenstrahls with spindly metal claws.

  As she fired the Kathodenstrahls, she saw fear in the possessed Rangers’ eyes, sensed joy in the Owl’s heart, heard the jetpacks of Marcus’s crew joining the fray, and felt the crunch as the Prince Edward’s grapples seized the Queen Columbia’s side.

  Jeremiah rejoiced. The Americans had proved their word and mettle, and she had a force to command. The Tea had overreached, clearly unaware of what had transpired here, giving her the advantage. Win this fight—and she could press the battle back home.

  As Natasha’s and Marcus’s men and women swarmed over the tilted side of the Queen Columbia, Jeremiah cornered the last Rangers between her and the bridge. As her foes raised their weapons, Jeremiah clicked her blunderblast to discharge all at once—and fired.

  The Rangers toppled to the Columbia’s hull. Scarab eyes augmented by human knowledge charted a path through polarizing skin and supporting struts; human muscles augmented by Scarab lever-bones tore through duralumin and brasslite—and moments later, she breached the bridge.

  Amidst groaning metal, tilting decks and growing gunfire, Jeremiah dropped unnoticed from a service hatch not five meters from the Falcon. A near twin of her brother, the young Chinese psychic twisted in the grip of a tall, mustached officer … who was a Carrier of the Tea.

  “Quickly, girl!” said the officer, shaking her. “We must know. Did the Scarab—”

  “Unhand the girl!” Jeremiah cried, stepping forward with her blunderblast raised.

  “—mature,” the Carrier finished, voice trailing off as he saw her. For just a moment, his hand tightened on the Falcon’s arm; then he released her, and she ran to Jeremiah’s side. “Good God. It’s implanted, matured—and stabilized. How is that possible—”

  “Time travel,” Jeremiah said, sheltering the Falcon under her free arm. “Glad you’re safe, girl—but, quite right, sir, it isn’t possible for a Scarab to mature this quickly, under normal circumstances. A trick of the Baron’s, sir: we’ve a few weeks up on you.”

  “Of course,” the Carrier said, touching his head. His face grew concerned, his eyes flickering over her. “A trick of the Baron’s, you say? But, Commander—Willstone, am I right?—aren’t you on our side? From your demeanor, I’m taking it that the lobotomy was successful.”

  “No, I am not on your side,” Jeremiah said. “And … no, it was not.”

  “Oh, Commander,” the Carrier said, manufactured pity spreading over the human face it wore. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how much of you is still in there—”

  “I might ask the same of you,” Jeremiah said, eyes narrowing. Was it manufactured pity? “From what I’ve seen, the Tea rides roughshod over the personalities of its prey—”

  “I like to think I’m the same,” the Carrier said resolutely—then straightened in resignation. “But I’m sure the Scarab in you will not agree … and will want to destroy me.”

  “You got that right,” Jeremiah said, raising a glowing hand. The Scarab in her screamed to destroy the thing … but the human recognized a human behind that face. This was a Carrier—like Marcus, like the Ambassador. If she purged it, without even giving it a chance—

  Then Scarab eyes saw, through panel and girder, that Marcus’s team had nearly breached the bridge. Jeremiah flashed on how the Ambassador had treated her, and realized she had just seconds … to show the Carrier what kind of person she was when no-one was watching.

  “It’s a new world, sir,” Jeremiah said, withdrawing her hand. “We do things differently here. We’ve people capable of assessing your case. Have no doubt: if you’re riding that man like a horse, I’ll purge you myself. But if you’ve truly merged, sir, why, I might as well kill myself.”

  The Carrier’s mouth fell open—just as Marcus’s team breached the bridge’s port hatch.

  “Jeremiah,” Marcus said, touching his throat mike. “The Commander’s taken the bridge—”

  “The Carrier’s secure,” Jeremiah said, nodding at the man. “See that he’s treated well.”

  Marcus glanced at the Carrier sharply, then nodded, motioning for his men to surround him. The Carrier looked at Marcus in shock, a rapid-fire torrent of emotions crossing his face: despair, fear, then wonder … and finally, as they took his arms, he relaxed in apparent relief.

  “An unexpected mercy from a Scarab,” the Carrier said, studying her with a mixture of admiration and revulsion. “Clearly you’ve made the best of what could have been a messy clash of human and Foreigner, Commander. Your mother would be quite proud.”

  “I like to think so,” Jeremiah said, as Marcus stepped to her left side.

  “Commander,” Patrick said, tipping his hat as his team breached the starboard hatch. “The engine room’s secure—I do believe we’ve taken the ship.” He gave a nod to Marcus as he stepped up on Jeremiah’s right. “Didn’t we … start this mission trying to seize an airship?”

  “We did indeed,” Jeremiah said, giving the Falcon a brief squeeze. “But we aimed to retrieve one of the Queen’s airships from the Baron, and ended up seizing one for him. Regardless, our purpose remains the same: defend the Earth, in all its forms. Prevail, Victoriana!”

  The End

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  Acknowledgements

  Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine is the product of intersections. I never really understood steampunk until Dragon Con 2009, when an extraordinary stream of cosplayers arrayed in wings and rayguns made me fall in love with the genre, but more importantly, made me ask: how could all their contraptions work, why do their wielders need goggles … and what could result in a Victorian female soldier with a raygun appearing in Willy’s Mexicana Grill?

  My apprenticeship as a writer was in hard science fiction and researching period pieces, so, seeking answers, I dug into both the history of science (to explain rayguns appearing before laser theory) and the history of women’s liberation (to explain a female soldier appearing before women got the vote). I soon discovered the history of Mary Wollstonecraft, who struggled to advance the rights of women more than a century before it became the crusade that changed our world.

  Twice as many brains working on hard problems explained both the rayguns and the female soldier, but what really made her into Jeremiah was a conversation with my friend, cognitive scientist Jim Davies, who pointed out that humans have divided brains, joined by a corpus callosum … and who then speculated that consciousness itself might change if something could connect to the brain that deeply. From that idea, the Scarab, the former monster of the piece, changed into something far more.

  But it was my writing community that helped me execute that idea. Chris Baty and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month created and directed the events during which much of Clockwork was written; Keiko O’Leary and the Write to the End group created the community and physical space where much of Clockwork was written. And I can’t count the number of writing instructors who’ve told me not to hold back my inspiration, but to put it all in, on every project. Thank you.