Prehistoric Clock sc-1 Read online

  He turned and cupped a hand over his ear, pretending he hadn’t heard. How dare these jackals yell at him in his own factory.

  She approached, wiping the moisture from her thick-rimmed spectacles. The hem of her grey walking suit snagged on a jutting end of steel and ripped. Cecil bit his lip to hide his amusement.

  “Everything seems in order.” Miss Polperro freed her skirt and then tapped her pencil on her clipboard. “We are most impressed with your psammeticum transfer process-very novel. But my colleagues and I are unable to discern the precise mechanism calculating the angles and indices of refraction. All we can find is a Hillary magno-abacus, hardly an advancement. Is that the hub of your machine?” Disdain poured from her snooty remarks, as though she regarded him as a pesky insect to be stepped on, and she’d wasted her time even coming here.

  Exactly the reaction he’d hoped for.

  “Yes, the abacus is calculating those measurements,” he lied.

  “Modified of course?”

  Uh-oh. Best not make it too obvious. “Yes, greatly modified. But Hillary’s design was always the best template.”

  The corner of her thin lips curled cruelly, precipitating an unpleasant levity across her schoolmarm face. “Indeed. Thank you for your time, Professor. I will make my report to the Council first thing tomorrow. The next inspection is scheduled for six months from now. Oh yes, have you any questions for us?”

  Only a trillion that you’ll never answer. “No. I believe this concludes our business for now. Good evening, Miss Polperro.” He waved to the throng of shadowy cronies huddled together near the spiral stairwell.

  “Good evening.” She handed him a copy of the full disclosure document he’d signed earlier. It stated that he was still bound by the Official Leviacrum Secrecies Act, and that if he withheld any new scientific discoveries based upon his work in said institution, he faced prosecution and a potential charge of treason against the Crown.

  Familiar threats were bandied about indiscriminately in England these days. As soon as the jackals had left, he screwed the document into a cricket ball and bowled it over-arm into the molten iron furnace a hundred feet below-that section of his factory he leased as a miniature steelworks to a new Irish company. “ How’s that? ” he mimicked the fielding team’s reaction to a wicket keeper’s catch. He’d loved cricket once upon a time, and Lisa had loved to watch him play…

  His tightening fists squeaked on the moist brass railing.

  How one skidding automobile, barely out of arm’s reach, could destroy a man’s life so completely. The sting of ice pellets thrown up by the crash, the way Lisa had contorted her slender frame in an attempt to shield Edmond, the unimaginable helplessness he’d felt as he’d watched on, frozen, impotent. No, he daren’t dissect the memory any more, not when he was so close to erasing it forever. He hissed and shook his head, trying to loosen the memory but it was lodged. Cecil Reardon, husband and father? Tail coat and top hat in the morning, pyjamas and dinner jacket in the afternoon and for interminable months afterward…

  His lips receded from his teeth. The molten metal in the vat below ran through his veins tonight. He’d just lied to the Leviacrum Council, staked his fortune and his life on a roll of the dice that might never come to pass.

  But the device at the heart of his difference engine held more than just promise. It was destined, a family affair. He’d fashioned it after his famous ancestor’s blueprints for a celestial chronometer. John Harrison had invented the first accurate seafaring chronometers used by the British Navy in the late eighteenth century. Yet, unbeknownst to the public, he had also drawn up plans for a timepiece so accurate, so versatile, it could be adapted into a difference engine of mind-boggling application.

  Cecil had achieved that and more besides. And the world’s first steam-powered temporal differentiator ticked away beneath him, the numbers on its brass dials hidden from official science like the invisible countdown of life was hidden from all living things. For now, God alone was privy to the correct sequence that would turn back history to before the crash. But finding those numbers, he knew, was only a matter of time.

  He sat once more on his chair on the gangway and crossed his legs. How many days and nights had he waited here, watched over the instrument of his salvation? The hissing, whirring, clanking brain below seemed to speak to him. It said, “Everything within our power. Let God stop us if He must.”

  Minutes passed like hours. He’d begun to nod off when a noxious fizz in the air made him cough. He eased to his feet and scowled at a strange lilac light seeping up through the steam like luminous grains in an upside-down hourglass. His pulse outpaced the machine’s rhythm for the first time in weeks. The light appeared to have emerged from… the Harrison clock? The only thing he could think of was to get to his differentiator and record the numbers. Something truly extraordinary had happened inside his machine, and he needed to know when and why.

  In moments, the entire factory glowed with lilac webbing on the walls and rain that fizzed, burned on his skin. He pulled his dinner jacket over his head and rushed for the stairwell, never more frightened or excited in his life.

  Before he left the gangway, a blinding purple flash blazed throughout the factory…

  Chapter 4

  Homecoming

  The propellers’ waspish drone comforted her like a familiar voice through the tumult outside. Kibo had suggested she rest awhile in his quarters at the rear of B-deck, as hers had flooded during the sea landing and the captain’s cabin had not yet been cleared. His bed was as neat and clean as his reputation suggested. Funny really, through the night’s chaos and the shocking loss of life on and below the raging Atlantic, how anything could remain so dry, so hospitable. She folded her arms under her head on the pillow and tried to make sense of the maelstrom of events. Bursts of apocalyptic imagery blazed in her mind’s eye: the exploding hydrogen envelopes of nearby airships, the decks capsizing in a sea-ring of orange flames, those underwater crimson flashes detonating in clusters like popping frog spawn. How many bombs had been set off, how many divers killed, how many crews lost in that concerted suicide mission?

  It would take more time and distance to properly digest her part in the worst calamity ever suffered by the Gannet fleet. At least, according to initial reports, the pipeline had not been breached. And at least they had made it safely to the Dover amphibian hangar, along with Tangeni and his dirigible section. She heaved a sigh of relief for that. Her first officer had proven himself a formidable airship navigator. Their two halves of the Empress Matilda now reattached-the Dover crane crews were amazingly proficient compared with their colonial counterparts in Africa-Verity was making for the Gannet hangar on the bank of the Thames. The poor Dover boys had enough damaged craft to contend with. Relatively unscathed, the Matilda was ready for redeployment as soon as another crew could be found.

  “Feeling any warmer, Eembu?” Tangeni stood dripping wet at the door.

  “A little. I need to soak in a hot bath for a week, though.”

  “This might help in the meantime.” He handed her a hot water bottle, then draped a second blanket over her. “Lieutenant Champlain, now Captain Champlain. You did amazing things tonight.”

  “Thank you, and so did you. But it doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment, not when all those other crews-God, there were so many — ”

  “Yes, but Eembu is not responsible for other crews. Empress Matilda performed her service with great aplomb-” she loved his ever-expanding vocabulary, “-and we are all still here because English women crazier than English men. In war, crazy always wins.”

  “You think I’m crazy, Tangeni?” The notion rang eerily true, for she’d already confronted it during her underwater ordeal.

  He shrugged and cast her a wide-eyed, questing gaze. “Sometimes crazy means not blinking. English are famous for not blinking in the face of enemies. So are Ovambo,” he said proudly. Then he rolled his eyes. “And who would fly on a balloon boat who wasn’t…
how do you say…pots-for-rags?” Another English colloquialism he’d picked up, probably from her. She laughed out loud, exciting her tickly cough.

  A junior crewman ran up to him. “Lieutenant Tangeni, come quick. Leviacrum tower is hailing us.”

  Tangeni nodded and turned to leave. “Let me know if it’s anything urgent,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Through her porthole window, sheets of rain wavered over the gloomy city. Of the large, silhouetted buildings lining the riverfront, she first recognised the Westminster Observatory’s copper dome. Verity hadn’t seen London for over four years, but drifting toward Westminster, the heart of British regency, filled her with quiet awe. A patriotic swell she hadn’t experienced since Bernie’s funeral ached in her temples and behind her eyes.

  The Houses of Parliament were deserted and only streetlamps illuminating rain-minted patches of road suggested life continued in the capital. She sighed, flipped onto her side to savour the view, and clutched the hot water bottle between her thighs. A flash of lightning lit Big Ben’s clock face. Only five past eight? The day had been dark for an eternity. She wondered if Aunt Jemima would still be awake when Verity reached her house on Challenger Row. Uncle Stephen probably would be-he usually smoked himself into a daze until the early hours. She snuggled into the glad memories. Safe eccentricities in a household where nothing ever seemed to change-that was the tonic she needed after a night like tonight.

  The Empress lost a little altitude, drifted toward the embankment. It must be a strong wind veering her off course. Tangeni would compensate.

  What on earth…?

  After rubbing her eyes, she sat up and gazed at the factory next to the station house across the road from Big Ben. A peculiar lilac glow emanated from its roof and appeared to column-no, to mushroom-out into the night. Her heavy chest began to drum when the rain outside her window snaked, fizzed like streams of acid confetti. She could no longer see the shape of the lilac mushroom, which meant…

  …the Empress must be inside it?

  She leapt out of bed in the spare midshipman’s uniform Kibo had lent her, and sprinted across B-deck. The awestruck crewmen and women gathered at the windows, mesmerised. One or two ran after her, conversing worriedly in their native tongues. By the time she reached A-deck, the airship flew so low it was heading straight for Westminster Bridge! Tangeni yelled for Reba and Philomena to empty the port and starboard ballast tanks, but the ship was too low-it would not lift clear in time.

  “Forget that,” Verity yelled. “Turn her completely around. Full starboard engines.”

  Tangeni relayed the command, adding something terse in Ovambo. He removed his slicker and threw it around Verity’s shoulders. She shrugged it off-the ship wasn’t going to turn in time either. “Emergency separation now, ” she cried. “It’s our only-”

  The night and London vanished in a brilliant purple flash. She blinked and rubbed her eyes furiously. The Empress plummeted as though her balloons had cut loose. Verity’s stomach leapt into her throat. But the separation couldn’t have caused this-she was on A-deck.

  The hull splashed down with a thump that threw her onto her back. Her head smacked the deck. After a few seconds, the Empress’s taut rigging and bullet-shaped, dark blue envelopes scrawled back into vision and she frowned. For instead of storm clouds, a bright turquoise light filled the sky. Yet thunder growled all about. She had to squint to adjust to what appeared a cloudless summer’s day, but it was no use. Her crown throbbed, sending her further and further into a daze. The Empress groaned and listed badly to starboard. The last thing she saw before blacking out was the skewed edifice of Big Ben.

  It appeared to have been sliced in half, vertically.

  Chapter 5

  Last Chimes of Big Ben

  A ten-foot surge of Thames water swept the getaway car onto its side, crashing it through the factory’s wire-mesh fence. Freezing water gushed over Embrey from the driver’s shattered window and kept piling in. Trapped between his buckled door and the twisted brass dash, he struggled to crouch upright until his forearms and hip bled. No use. The water level rose to his chin but he could not budge. Red drops peppered his face…

  Above him, a tiny limb stirred from beneath the driver’s shredded white coat. The crash had hurled the man part-way through the windscreen, cutting him to ribbons. Trembling fingers pushed their way between his thigh and the broken seat. The driver’s body flopped loose, now hanging only by glass edges skewering his chest and neck.

  “Boy, I need your help,” Embrey said. “I know you don’t want to, but listen… Look at me. I’m drowning. I have moments left.”

  The youngster gibbered half syllables and gazed at Embrey with eyes the size of saucers. He shook his head.

  “It’s all right, son. I’m frightened too. But if you help me out this once, I promise I’ll put everything right.” God forgive me. “Those steam-pistols I showed you-one of them is lodged right here under my leg. I can’t reach it. It’s loaded and I need you to fetch it and shoot out the window. Can you do that for me?” The lad clung to his dead father’s trouser legs, quivering, not crying. “What’s your name, chief?”

  No response. Still the Thames water trickled in, and Embrey raised his mouth another inch, barely above it. “You sell ice creams with your father? Well, my daughter loves ice creams. If you don’t fetch my gun right now, she’s never going to see me again. Son, I’m going to die. I’ve got one breath left. If you don’t help me by the time it runs out, I’ll be dead. And you’ll have-” No, he couldn’t lay that on the boy. “Look at me, son. Look-”

  His elbow slipped and he went under before he’d saved a breath. Oh, Christ, please don’t let this be the end. I’m not ready A deep rumble, dark slipstreams and the rush of bubbles up his nostrils answered his prayer. The boy rummaged frantically underwater. His boots whacked Embrey’s chin again and again, making him grimace. Embrey knew his lungs held reserves of oxygen beyond his brain’s estimation, but not much. On the verge of panic, he shut his eyes and focused on the reflection he’d seen in the painting earlier that evening. He was the son of a proud and noble family. He had his mother’s looks and his father’s stubborn resolve. The might of the empire wanted him dead but…the young son of an ice-cream seller would get to make that call. A broiling anti-breath choked him from inside. It thickened like soot clogging a chimney. The bitter temptation to breathe water for the first time since the womb subsumed him and spread wide. He gave a silent scream.

  A muffled thud answered.

  The water emptied from the car in moments as if it had been sucked out. Embrey gasped for life and found that he could move freely. The shattered window had released the twisted dash from his hip. He coughed until his heart burned, then he slowly crawled free from the wreckage.

  It was a brilliant summer’s day…in a world he no longer recognised.

  The boy scampered out after him, thrusting the steam-pistol hither and thither as ungodly sounds haunted the derelict remains of Whitehall and Westminster. Embrey pried the gun from the lad’s hands, scooped him up and held him tight. “I’ve got you, chief. Don’t worry, I’ve got you. It’s all over now. We’re safe, you and I. Safe as can be.” The boy clung to his neck, sobbing.

  They were standing at the epicentre of a cataclysmic event. For roughly two hundred yards ahead and to his left, London appeared more or less as it should be, geographically. Westminster station house, the gentleman’s club behind that, the row of factories lining Victoria Embankment-all had partially collapsed but were at least recognisable. Behind him to the south, across Bridge Street, filthy Thames water swamped Speaker’s Green at the foot of Big Ben, while the rear section of the clock tower itself appeared to be missing! Its roof and spire had crumbled away and it was a miracle the edifice stood at all. Worse still, Westminster Palace had vanished completely. In its place, a fifty-foot-wide gorge swallowed the last of the Thames-that-was.

  To his right, Westminster Pier and a f
raction of Westminster Bridge were raised against a shallow rocky escarpment. A crashed airship lay listed to one side against Victoria Embankment, its two giant blue, bullet-shaped balloons trying to tug it upright. Beyond the bounds of this city slice, grassland and a peculiar forest formed a kind of circumjacent barrier, about three miles in diameter, from the rest of the world. The only gap in the tree line occurred beyond the airship to the northeast, where the escarpment fell away to a sloping valley. As his nostrils cleared, Embrey reckoned he could smell a strange sea air.

  He put the boy down while he took off his tail coat and threw it over the poor driver’s lacerated body. The lad shouldn’t have to see that. He hooked his arm around the youngster as they walked back toward Bridge Street, where a half dozen policeman and horses-his pursuers-lay crushed under rubble from the collapsed station house wall. Distant shouts and screams seemed to be coming from the ruins beyond. Though his brow and hip were cut and his clothes sopping, there might be others in far worse shape, trapped, in need of rescue. He would do all he could.

  “W-where are we?” the boy murmured.

  “I don’t know, chief. I just…don’t know. But wherever it is, it ain’t quite London.”

  While he traversed Bridge Street, wandering through a mist no doubt caused by the sudden meeting of cold and warm air from different times, theories explaining this startling phenomenon jostled in his mind. Rumblings of advanced science, no, meta- science being enacted in the Leviacrum tower had been rife since he was a boy. Scaremongering, he’d always thought. The tabloids and penny dreadfuls had so exhaustively exploited those rumours for ghoulish readers that the ideas themselves-reanimating corpses, the hybridization of man and animal species, eternal youth, invisibility-had long become jaded urban myths. No one took them for real any more than they did the gods of Mount Olympus.