Prehistoric Clock (9 page)

It felt strange after all these years of practising clandestine science to be giving an open tutorial on the inner workings of his Harrison clock, but even his friends had started to doubt his ability to return them to their own time. Today he would inspect every millimetre of the device and determine what, if anything, he needed to adjust in order to instigate a second time jump. Embrey’s and Verity’s objections were simply foolish. For castaways to remain stranded when they had a chance of returning home—whatever the risk—made absolutely no sense. They’d prefer to scratch a living among the deadliest predators the world had ever seen? Devolve into human scavengers? He’d give them a matter of weeks, at best.

No, the
Empress Matilda
had served her purpose in letting him identify the current geological era. Billy’s book had also helped. Pinpointing 1908 A.D. after a 110-120 million year misfire might appear a far-fetched proposition but he believed utterly in the mechanics of his machine. Somethin
g
external had affected the refraction process—some contaminant he’d overlooked, perhaps an atmospheric anomaly endemic to a storm environment. Had the charged air that night exacerbated the psammeticum reaction somehow, catalysed some kind of exponential energy shift?

It sure as hell wasn’t
random,
as the others had conjectured. Science did not subscribe to randomness, and this machine was his masterpiece. The only way to determine the cause of the disparity was to repeat the experiment until it worked according to plan. And if it didn’t…well, maybe it was God intervening after all. Maybe the Almighty could not allow him to unpick fate’s cruel tapestry. Maybe his Lisa and Edmond could never…
maybe, maybe, maybe…

He gritted his teeth and shook all doubt from his mind. A sickly whiff of burnt rubber and petrol made him gag as he led his entourage around the side of his factory to the front entrance. Embrey and Verity, both armed and alert, followed close behind. Six other aeronauts carried rifles.

When he reached the loading bay doors, a short man wearing a fancy waistcoat stepped out. “Ah, there you are, Professor. We’ve been waiting for you.” Cecil recognized him from Agnes Polperro’s retinue. He’d visited the factory for the inspection shortly before the time jump.

“Excuse me?” Thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, Cecil approached. “What the devil do you mean, skulking about inside my workplace? For God’s
sake
, man, this place has to be off limits. Tell him, Verity.”

She stepped forward with three of her men and stood akimbo. “He’s right. I told you not to interfere in any way with Professor Reardon’s machine. Now who’s with—”

“Lieutenant Champlain,” a woman’s curt voice shot out from the shadowy interior, “nice of you to visit.” Agnes Polperro marched past her doorman, drawing her retinue of twelve well-dressed men with her onto the concrete outside. Verity faced her while looking askance at the men’s vexed expressions. What on earth were they doing here? Why the unanimous frowns?

Embrey and the remaining aeronauts strode forward to even the odds.

“Miss Polperro, can we help you with something?” Verity adjusted her pith helmet. “I thought I made it quite clear this factory is under my jurisdiction.”

“I daresay things have changed somewhat in your absence.” The unpleasant schoolmarm nodded and whispered to Carswell, one of the drunken politicians who’d tried to hang Cecil that first night.

Cecil’s lungs tightened. He gasped for air. Reliving those awful moments he’d endured at the end of a rope—throat warped shut, toes tingling, head swelling like a balloon—he began to shake. But the idea of his worst enemies invading his private sanctuary, the place he’d invested so much of himself these past six years, his dear and bittersweet perihelion, sparked his fury. “You bastards can all rot in hell!” He lunged for Verity’s pistol and would have murdered Agnes Polperro and Carswell and anyone else whose face he recognised, had Verity not snatched the weapon away from him.

Embrey restrained him from behind. “Easy, Reardon. Take it easy, old boy. Now’s not the time.”

“
Right.
You’d better explain yourself in a hurry.” Verity stepped toward Miss Polperro, their sharp gazes clashing like rapiers.

“Gladly. But I’d suggest you keep that crazed lunatic on a leash. He’s a liability to himself and everyone around him.”

“On the contrary, it’s
you
who put those murderous thoughts in his head. All of you.” Verity pointed angrily at the Whitehall gang. “You’re bloody lucky I don’t put the lot of you on trial for what you did to him. You snivelling pukes. Either step aside right now or give me good reason not to slake the professor’s vengeance for him. Starting with you, Carswell, you pompous scum. I’ve a mind to put one between your rat eyes just for the hell of it.”

Carswell’s bushy eyebrows dropped and formed a V in the middle. He bared his teeth. Cecil felt oddly relieved that it wasn’t quite himself against the world. With strong allies like Verity and Embrey at his side, maybe he could afford to calm down and rethink things a little.

“You’d better come with me.” Miss Polperro crooked her finger.

“What for?”

“It changes everything. You’ll see. But tread carefully—there is something extraordinary taking place here.”

What could she mean? Something
more
extraordinary than his machine? The Whitehall gang parted while Miss Polperro led Cecil, Verity and Embrey into the heart of Cecil’s creation—the giant, dormant cogs and the five cylinder steam engine, the Hillary magno-abacus resembling a miniature silver pipe organ, and the differentiator’s U-shaped brass casing one could only reach from underneath whilst the machine was in motion. At least no one had found his Harrison clock yet.

The insufferable woman guided them into the work shed, through a maintenance door and into a corridor running eastward, adjacent to the machine. Wire mesh fencing provided no protection from hot vapour, and as the machine had been operating almost continuously for four years, Cecil hadn’t ventured into this particular corridor during that time.

They walked another thirty feet past the final steam exhaust before Miss Polperro halted them at a secluded, bare-brick alcove he was certain he’d
never
seen before. “Well, here it is,” she said. “Can any of you explain it?”

Cecil squeezed past her to gain an unobstructed view of…

“A spider’s web?” Lord Embrey groaned. “You’ve found a glow-in-the-dark spider’s web? Well, I think I speak for everyone here when I say, sod the tuffett and bugger the curds and whey.”

Miss Polperro adjusted her thick-rimmed spectacles, then ran her fingers impatiently along the brick wall, over and over the same spot, clearly waiting for someone to cotton on to…whatever she’d seen in the web.

Verity shrugged and admitted she was at a loss. “I remember a lilac glow emitted in the run-up to the time jump… This web has the same colour. Unless that has some scientific significance…”

Confused, Cecil inspected the web at close range. Yes, the lilac coating was abnormal; no, it didn’t worry him unduly. Residual energy traces lined various nooks and crannies higher up in the factory as well. So what on earth had Miss Polperro seen that he—

Wait. That can’t be. No spider could…

“How closely have you inspected it?” he asked her.

She cracked a smug grin. “With magnifying glasses, spectrometer goggles, and the highest-powered microscope from your workshop. Their conclusion is beyond doubt.”

He let the concept swim in his brain for a moment. There had to be some mistake—bureaucratic Leviacrum amateurs jumping to conclusions. Before he could swallow something this unlikely, he would have to perform his own rigorous tests. “You mean to tell me you didn’t find a single—”

“Give us
some
credit, Professor,” she said. “And if you don’t believe me, scrutinize it at your leisure. It is unprecedented, and some of my colleagues believe it changes everything—your experiment, our so-called accidental destination, the prudence of us even attempting time travel again. They believe we must reassess our entire venture.”

“And you?”

“I think we must take every precaution to ensure our next time jump is our last, at least until we can get to the bottom of this miraculous—and troubling—side-effect.”

The more Cecil tried to compartmentalize her concerns, the more they threatened to flood his reasoning altogether. If the theory held up, it was potentially more startling than
time travel itself.
He clasped his hands on the back of his skull and tried to squeeze his elbows together.

“Oi, riddlers—stop speaking in code.” Verity prodded Cecil out of his funk. “Spectro-whatsists? Magnifying micro-spiffy-ometers? What’s got you both in such a muck-sweat?”

“Not my curds and whey comment, I pray?” Embrey shrugged.

As Cecil stepped back, the sound of his shoe tapping on the concrete echoed around the factory. He glanced round at his machine and then gazed up to the rickety platform on which he’d spent so much time watching, waiting for salvation, for the elusive combination to God’s temporal lock. And now that he’d opened it, what
else
had he uncovered?

“Do either of you believe in God?” Miss Polperro asked his companions.

They both nodded.

“But have you ever seen Him, heard His voice?”

“Not sober,” replied Embrey.

“Never,” said Verity.

His hands trembling for the first time in a long time, Cecil pulled out his pipe, then sheepishly put it back in his pocket.

Miss Polperro faced the three of them, her cruel features quivering. “It is our contention that science has surpassed its limit here.” Her lip and chin trembled. “And that we may have just found evidence…of the divine.”

Embrey and Verity shared a puzzled look.

No, that superstitious angle probably wasn’t the most fecund way to introduce a discovery like this. “Or let us put it a different way,” Cecil said. “Somewhere in this factory is the most extraordinary spider ever born—”

“Or
created,
” countered Agnes Polperro.

“My friends, this web appears to be flawless. Not just to the naked eye but, insofar as they have ascertained, irreducibly flawless. And as it must have been created
since
the time jump—the flood would have washed it away otherwise—it appears time travel has affected this spider in a most profound way.” He roved his fingers over the lilac thread, careful not to touch. “It has inspired him to spin an infinitesimally perfect web.”

“Nothing anyone says will change your mind, I take it?” Verity didn’t need an answer from Reardon, and none came. She’d thought him a little eccentric before, even self-absorbed, but there was a lot more to it than that. No one else seemed to realise how damaged he really was—whenever he mentioned his wife and son it was with a flippant matter-of-factness, as though he spoke with them daily. The others seemed to mistake it for an odd quirk, a side of his dotty professorial charm. Perhaps it took another wounded, driven soul to recognise his torment. But she’d honoured Bernie by becoming the best aeronaut she could possibly be, a reasonable enough pursuit. And perhaps she might one day come to terms with a world without her. Perhaps. Reardon, though, could
never
say goodbye to his loved ones, heal, and move on in the natural way. Without knowing how he would achieve it, he was bound on this relentless, messianic quest the way a clock hand spins in pursuit of its elusive destination.

The sun beat down on his unkempt silver hair, and he had to shade his eyes with a fixed salute. She knelt at his side in the middle of the street and handed him her pith helmet.

“Thank you.” He pointed to his toolbox. “Would you hand me a five-eighths spanner from the rack?”

She did so. But the labyrinthine design of his Harrison clock didn’t make a lick of sense to her. Every tiny cog and shaft from its brass innards was spread on the blanket before them. Nothing individually, these were nonetheless the components of a bona fide miracle.

A miracle.
But what had Reardon really tapped into with time travel? The mysterious spider’s web was beyond science, Miss Polperro had said, beyond even the professor’s understanding. Was there actually a divine force at work here, or was Briory’s godless theory correct and the temporal explosion had simply misfired somehow, copying that web pattern in its most efficient geometric form—perfection?

Either explanation opened a can of worms. If it was divine, why hadn’t God intervened further and saved dozens of lives? Why leave only a cryptic clue of His presence? And why had He guided them to the Cretaceous? More questions than answers.

If this was all a trick of science, what undiscovered forces had conspired to
deliberately
reshape the web that way? Nothing infinitesimally perfect could be an accident. Even she knew that. So why couldn’t she subscribe to Miss Polperro’s doom-mongering? The machine was dangerous, not just to the camp but to space and time itself. Should she ban Reardon from using it again, or, as someone else had suggested, destroy the infernal thing once and for all?

While kneeling beside him, watching him reassemble complex mirror arrays and energy conductors as though he were piecing together a jigsaw already complete in his mind, she began to see the conundrum from Reardon’s point of view.

If one can travel through time, fate needn’t be absolute.

An illicit spark blazed through the fog of her memory and, for one breathless moment, Bernie was alive and well somewhere in the world…in 1908. By dint of Verity’s temporal intervention, Bernie could avoid the fire in Benguela and live on to a ripe old age. Fate be damned! The idea left her shivery, excited and craving more…

I could bring
Amyn
back, as well! My beautiful fiancé…have our wedding after all. And then Captain Naismith. I could bring them all to England, keep them out of harm’s way. By God, Reardon’s right! To not try would be the real folly.

“Professor, I think I’ve made my decision.” She sat up straight.

He grunted in reply, without looking up.

Verity went on excitedly, “If you can get a handle on navigating through time, sir. If you manage to solve this great puzzle of when-and-why, I am with you. These iniquities in fate’s design
deserve
to be undone. To hell with the consequences! Our first duty is to those we love, to safeguard their lives against all malign forces, even death. The way I see it, God has allowed you to invent this great unraveller. Ergo, the laws of fate are not sacrosanct. I’d say using it for love is more than justifiable.”

“Indeed.” He snatched a glimpse of her while wiping his brow, then resumed his work. “Everything within our power. We’ll never be complete if we don’t try. Let God stop it if He must.” Reardon sounded like he was reciting a mantra.
 
“I’m glad you’re seeing it my way, Verity. If only the others had your vision.”

Not likely.
The crescent line of chairs in the middle of the road, where Parliament Street intersected Bridge Street, was almost empty. Polperro’s posse was not enjoying the sunshine this afternoon. A group of six or seven men in shirtsleeves was busy extracting useable furniture and perishables from the northernmost damaged houses before the structures collapsed altogether. Miss Polperro had summoned her top minions—as Embrey called them—including Carswell, Delaney and four of her Leviacrum retinue for an animated powwow in the shade of the gentlemen’s club. The discussion could very well be harmless and confined to the day-to-day running of the camp, but Verity didn’t like the constant glances in her direction or the schoolmarm’s angry finger-wagging at her colleagues.

Thank God Djimon and the others are here.

Her aeronauts were playing cards on the sun-baked kerb. In the centre of them, Embrey appeared out of place in his white vest and expensive trousers. His blond hair seemed to bleach more with each afternoon. Soon he would look almost albino. A dashing, infuriating, prehistoric albino…who blew at gin rummy.

“Why don’t you take a walk with him? It would serve our cause immensely if you two could cease hostilities.” Reardon’s impertinence poured out so matter-of-factly, she almost called to Embrey there and then. “Come now,” he said, “you cannot play counterparts forever. Sooner or later, clockwork requires each piece to accept its nature or break. Hearts are no different.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Pass me that glass polisher?” The professor winked and then whistled a tune to himself.

The downright cheek.
If only to escape his weirdness, Verity snatched her helmet from him and left. But rather than head back to the
Empress,
she veered toward the card game and, after fanning her hot flush, looked away and blurted out, “Care to take a walk, Embrey?”

She cringed and vowed to undo those words with all the other wrongs she’d get to right with the machine—

“Absolutely.” Ignoring boos and taunts from the mirthful aeronauts, Embrey leapt to his feet and offered her the way. “Ladies first.”

This is a mistake already.
“We need to get a few things straight—” she waited until they were out of earshot of her men, “—and I’ve something crucial to ask you.”

“Likewise. It’s time we cleared the air, Miss Champlain.”

A cold, distant remark. “Yes it is…Lord Embrey.”
Ugh.
Despite what she wanted to ask him about his father, a sore part of her couldn’t swallow that barbed surname. Not now. Not ever.

They headed northwest, by the steam car wreckage and the crumbling terrace Miss Polperro’s men had just finished looting. Sections of the quagmire beyond, where the Thames water had drained into the soil, were now brick dry, a kind of murky green-grey colour. The top of the tree-line fidgeted, and she thought she heard crowing noises coming from the forest.

“So what would you like to ask?” Embrey’s well-defined upper body muscles were glazed with perspiration, while a tuft of blond chest hair teased her from beneath the low neck of his vest. A scar ran across his right pectoral muscle and down toward his ribs. Painful. And if she wasn’t mistaken, an animal’s claw had inflicted that injury. A number of her comrades had succumbed to wildlife attacks in Africa over the years.

“A polo souvenir?” She immediately regretted the jibe.

He eyed her quizzically, but seemed more amused than insulted. “Colca Canyon, Peru.”

“Peru? That’s the other side of the world. What on earth were you doing there?”

“Exploring with my uncle and a few of my old Oxford chums. We found an ancient trail to a derelict settlement—not one of our more prodigious finds, if I’m perfectly honest.” He snorted a laugh. “You look at me as though I’d be lost outside the drawing room without a compass.”

Verity smiled. “The thought had occurred to me. So how exactly were you wounded?”

“I had a slight culinary disagreement with a giant condor.”

“Disagreement?”

“Yes. He tried to steal my supper. His manners needed mending.”

“And what happened?”

“He mended mine instead.” Embrey ran his finger down his scar, all the way from collar to hip. “So you can see why I don’t much care for anything that flies. Present company accepted, of course.”

Interesting. He’s more adventurous than I thought.

“My sister visited South America once—Brazil, I think—with the bluecoats. The Amazon scared the life out of her. Insects as big as kites. Apparently some parts of the river are so wide it’s more like crossing a sea.”

“Very true. This place seems like Kew Gardens and its duck pond in comparison.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Miss Champlain, I’d just like to say, I’m very sorry for your loss. The Benguela attack was despicable, and I can assure you, despite what you might have heard, that neither my family nor myself had anything to do with it.”

“Oh.” So he wanted to exonerate himself once and for all while she was in a pliable mood, did he? Well, in that case he had some fancy talking to do. He’d answered her question, but it would take a lot more than that—the evidence against his father and uncle had been damning. “Tangeni said you’d try to convince me sooner or later.” Embrey’s brow stitched, as if her tone had been too harsh and she’d wounded him. “He also said I should listen,” she added.

“Aye, a rare fellow, that Tangeni.” But to her disappointment, he didn’t follow up. Instead, he narrowed his glazed eyes and then looked away to hide his grief. He seemed so lonely, so sad, she hadn’t the heart to press him further just yet. But that time would come.

“Hey, speaking of adventures, I met Quatermain once.” She tugged his vest.

“Really?” He blinked rapidly. “Pray tell.”

“Two summers ago he was leading an expedition into Kukuanaland. We flew over on our way to supply a team of mineral surveyors when he lit a distress lamp. One of his trail guides was crippled with fever, so we had to land and take him back to hospital.”

“Wasn’t contagious, I hope.”

“No. And the best part is…the guide had performed heroics along the way…saved a friend of Quatermain’s. And so Quatermain gave him a parting gift. In case the guide didn’t survive, we were to pass the gift on to his family. You’ll never guess what it was.”

“Not a diamond the size of a cricket ball, by chance?”

Verity halted him. “How in God’s name did you know that?”

“I’m good.” Rubbing his stubble, he teased her with a smug-but-really-rather-cute pout. “And it made all the papers in London.”

“No joking?”

“No.” Embrey thumbed his braces, seemed more boy than man. Verity’s heart warmed. “To English ears, any tale involving Quatermain or Horace Holly is like rumours of Heracles’s exploits to the ancient Greeks. Storytelling ambrosia. And when King Solomon’s
diamonds
are involved—”

“I know.” She tipped her helmet back and suddenly felt more exposed than she was comfortable with.
To hell with comfort. This concerns Quatermain.
“It was all we could talk about for weeks after. Tangeni even traded with him—gave Quatermain a spare canteen in exchange for one of his rifle bullets. I don’t know how the deuce he plucked the courage to do that.”

“Did you speak to him?”

Verity leaned in and whispered in his ear, “Don’t tell anyone, but I went as weak as a schoolgirl with a crush.” The heady excitement of being this close to him, close enough to taste his natural, intoxicating scent, dizzied her for a moment.

He whispered back, “What did you say?”

“That I…that I…”

“That you what?”

“That I loved—”

A crash of thunder ripped them apart, spun them toward the last building on Parliament Street. Thick dust jets shot out of the windows and open crevices while the structure collapsed. First the rear, then the upper north wall caved in with a rumble. Finally, the entire front of the building buckled and spilled forward onto the road, its mammoth roar making Verity cover her ears. She flinched and stumbled back.

They watched as the dust and debris fizzed out and settled on the asphalt and the guts of the building were laid bare. Men came running. One or two rummaged through the rubble to reach three or four crushed bodies. Embrey ran to help them. The other men pointed away toward the northwest tree-line, where the upper branches swayed violently. One gent ran back to camp, waving his arms in distress.

Verity’s vision blurred. Her mouth went dry.
Metal?
Why did her saliva taste of…metal? A red fingertip after brushing her lips suggested she’d bit her tongue. Then why did—?

She traced a line of blood up to her nose, then up her nose to her brow. Finally she located an aching gash, where the brim of her helmet should have been if she hadn’t tipped it back. The wound bled slowly but constantly. She didn’t have the strength or the wherewithal to cry for help. Only a memory of strolling about the quarterdeck seemed to keep her from falling.

Suddenly her eyes filled with diamonds, and she lost consciousness.

Too many surprises all at once caught up with Embrey as he sat on the kerb near Reardon’s clock parts and rubbed his tired eyes. Four aeronauts kept vigil around the professor, while one rushed to the
Empress
for bandages and antiseptic ointment. Djimon stayed with Verity in the shade outside the factory. Luckily, she’d come round almost right away after fainting, and Embrey had nursed her in his arms until her men had arrived. How
intimate
they’d become in so short a time. That talk of Quatermain had cut through their animosity nicely. But how? Why was she so well disposed to him all of a sudden? Because he’d saved her life and she his? Or perhaps Reardon and Tangeni had talked some sense into her after all, made her realise that the British legal system had more holes than a sinking sloop, that his family
hadn’t
had a hand in her sister’s death.