Prehistoric Clock sc-1 Read online

  Tangeni appeared to glimpse her emotion as he said, “ Eembu, I think Billy has something to show us.” He took the youngster’s hand and then motioned for her to do likewise. “Lead the way, young master.”

  Like rummaging through an old drawer, being led by a child through the detritus of London drew long-forgotten memories. The way she’d once seen the world-not aggregated and mastered but magical. A child’s mind could not grasp Whitehall and Westminster. They were too imperious, too cold. They were permanent things the world could not do without, like soil and sunshine. So what could a child possibly make of those things in ruins?

  Bernie had loved the empire, and Verity had grown to love it. She sighed. When Bernie had died, that empire she’d revered, put her life on the line for, had collapsed for Verity the way London had just collapsed for Billy. She now saw it clearly for the first time, without the corps’ camaraderie to buoy her patriotism. She was living in the shadow of that day, and all this-flying Gannets, fighting wars, cropping her hair-was in Bernie’s name. Strangely, it all seemed to fit but why hadn’t she admitted it before now? Had no part of Verity wanted to join the Air Corps? If not, why was she such a talented aeronaut? Why had she loved her time in Africa? Loved her time in the air, on the waves, under the waves…?

  “This was your father’s wagon?” Tangeni asked Billy as they reached the uncoupled rear section of the tri-wheel vehicle. It was square, white, and was mounted on two wheels. Two painted red bands bisected all sides.

  “What have you got in here, Billy?” Verity asked.

  The lad unbolted a well-concealed door in the rear panel, opened it and climbed inside. He quickly returned with a metal container the size of a shoebox and two spoons. Without making eye contact with her or Tangeni, he prised the lid off with a spoon handle and passed the open container to Verity. “You said there were no ice cream,” he said in his thick Lancashire accent. “’Ere you go. That there’s me favourite-raspberry an’ vanilla. It’ll be soft by now but taste’ll still be there.”

  Tangeni looked at her, grinned with astonishment, and then dipped his finger in the ice cream. “ Omashini…ojuice. It is wonderful.” He thanked Billy for the spoon and delved into the half-full trough. Verity joined in.

  “Mm, that’s divine,” she said. “And you’re full of surprises, my young friend.” She kissed Billy’s forehead. He looked up at her for the first time, a beatific smile lighting his pale face. Tangeni wiped the lines of tears from the lad’s cheeks with his handkerchief. As soon as the youngster saw the warmth in Tangeni’s eyes, he climbed back into the vehicle. Moments later, he returned with a spoon for himself.

  “Reba, is that stay line doubled in?”

  “Yes, Eembu. ” The rigger wiped her brow while the sun blazed relentlessly.

  Verity took a swig from the captain’s hipflask she’d filled with the lemonade Billy had given her. The lad had doled out the best of his father’s refrigerated supplies to herself, Tangeni, Reardon, and that son of a bitch, Embrey, whom Billy followed everywhere. Apart from a few bottles of sarsaparilla and flavoured water, the remainder of the ice cream wagon’s supplies were either wafer cornets or melted desserts. She’d given those to the Whitehall group, whose meagre rations, for the time being, would have to be shared from the contents of four residential kitchens, the larder and wine cellar in the gentleman’s club, a few freight crates containing foodstuff salvaged from the collapsed station house, and one cold dinner for twelve impeccably laid out moments before the disaster had hit. Not much to feed over two dozen mouths over an indeterminate period of time. No, as soon as the Empress returned, they would have to organise hunting and perhaps fishing parties to procure a sufficient diet.

  “Tangeni-peacock-are those ballonets filled and secured?” Her second in command had been strutting about the quarterdeck admiring his new first lieutenant’s insignia ever since he’d finished the steam-methane reforming operation, his specialty, over an hour ago.

  “Aye, Captain. Endothermic reaction successful, the pumps and pipes held, the ballonets have new life.”

  She whispered, “What do you make of that bastard Embrey roaming about the ship, free as you like? Seditious scum like that, he’s campaigned against the admiralty ever since his father and uncle were hanged. I wouldn’t bet against him being in cahoots with the enemy all along. Damned traitor-he should be clapped in irons.”

  “Sorry, Eembu, what was the question?”

  She rolled her sleeves up irritably. “No question. Just miffed at the thought of him having free access like this. Look at him, hand behind his back, hobnobbing with the crew like some condescending VIP. Damn him.”

  “Would you rather he be left to the politicians? They’ve already shown their idea of diplomacy, no? I wouldn’t bet against his neck being stretched by Miss Polperro and those old sharks with sideburns.”

  “Don’t be impertinent. The boy wants him here, so he stays. But I’ve got my eye on him. Mark my words, if he so much as belches a seditious-”

  “All repairs to the cables and envelopes completed, Captain.” Tangeni clearly wanted to change the subject. She let it slide this time. No one else had heard, and from his combative demeanour she inferred Tangeni still held Embrey in higher regard than she did. Maybe she was treating the young marquess unfairly. Maybe he was made of truer stuff than his antecedents. But her family honour and her allegiance to the crown demanded she keep him at arm’s length. His very name forfeited his right to be presumed innocent. By dint of association, he was a traitor.

  “Very well, unhook anchor stays and clear away,” she said. “Three-quarter engines, four points to port. Then steady on my mark.”

  “Aye.”

  As Tangeni relayed her commands, she ignored a solicitous stare from one of the gentlemen passengers, a young buck with a bandage over his brow who had politely offered his expertise in geology and botany to the expedition. Mr. Briory hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her. He was dark-haired and a little overweight-the opposite of Embrey and therefore a safe choice-and she didn’t find him particularly attractive. He was guileless and sweet, though. She might have liked him before she’d joined the corps.

  The Empress Matilda rose smoothly away from the derelict site, her ballonets taut and well-balanced. The propellers hummed at the stern, and white steam clouds billowed out of the port and starboard exhaust vents. Verity’s breath caught. The gorge behind Big Ben widened considerably a half mile westward-they had escaped a deadly abyss by an infinitesimal fraction in the vastness of time and space. In that regard, they had been fortunate. In many others, however “Captain! Water!” Reba hollered down from the bough nest-her basket affixed to the centre of the two lower cables joining the balloons. “Water off the port bow!” She mimed the breaststroke, indicating it looked deep and big enough to be either a sea or a large lake.

  A hopeful glow lit Verity’s heart. She ran to the port bulwark and looked through her telescope. The gap in the forest stretched on past the escarpment for about a mile, forming a grassy bottleneck before it met a sudden decline, possibly a short cliff. The beach beyond appeared to be full of rocks and kelp. An impenetrable sea mist masked her view of the west past the tree line. To the east, a procession of large, lumbering creatures dominated the beach as the coastline curved northeast toward a region of flat, low-lying sediment. Three or four geysers spewed their hot vapour over the flatland, giving the region a torrid, inhospitable appearance.

  “Reardon, where are you? Reardon?” She waited for him to bluster aft with little Billy in tow. “Oblige me with your observations. This is as much your reconnaissance as ours.”

  “On my way, Ver-Captain.”

  “And you too, Mr. Briory.” He was standing at her shoulder in an instant, a mite too close for comfort. She stepped away. “Can you pinpoint this prehistoric age, sir?”

  “I would say somewhere in the mid-Cretaceous.” He beat Reardon to the punch. The professor had already opened his mouth ready to speak but now
closed it with chagrin. His curt nod to the younger man amused Verity. The idea of two scholars duking it out over the science of their prehistoric prison-where else would she get to hear this conversation?

  “Do you concur, Professor Reardon?” she egged him on.

  “Hmm, perhaps a trifle earlier, I’d say.” Stroking the stubble on his chin, he gazed eastward toward the geysers. “That alluvial plain is in its infancy, and this whole region-likely covering northern France and southern England-appears to still be in its submerged state. The land has yet to tilt, and the great Wealdon Lake has barely begun to empty.”

  Briory shook his head and gave a smirk. “I beg to differ, sir. You’re right about the alluvial plain but we have seen so little of the region, how can we possibly say how much is flooded and how deep the water is?” He lifted his head superciliously, then leaned out over the bulwark and roved his index finger over the forest below. “The plants give a clearer indication. Look at the trees. We have oak and maple, and in the south and east I noticed only a few Jurassic ferns. The angiosperms have taken hold, and the more primitive gymnosperms are struggling. Note the emergence of colour on the edges of the forest-those are early flowering plants, pollinated by the first bees, but they are widespread enough to indicate the evolution has been in action for some time. I believe we are in the mid-Cretaceous, about ninety million years ago. There are-”

  “Bury oryx…onyx.”

  “Don’t interrupt,” Briory scolded young Billy.

  “Oh, pipe down, you unctuous little organ grinder.” Reardon glared at Briory. Then with a defiant glint in his eye, he lifted the boy onto his shoulders. “What was that about an oryx?” he asked gently.

  “Yes, it’s the second time you’ve mentioned that,” Verity said.

  Billy lifted his pullover and retrieved a thin, cloth-bound book he’d tucked into his trousers. “It’s in ’ere. I don’t know ’ow to say it proper.” He opened it at the sketch of a large dinosaur, exactly like the one they’d encountered on the first night. “That bloody big ’un nearly got you, Cecil,” he went on. “I ain’t much good at readin’ but I knew it from t’ picture. That’s it there. Bury… Barry…”

  Verity leaned over to help him. “Baryonyx! That’s it. Well done, Billy.” Touching his shoulder, she read on, “A piscivorous predator from the early Cretaceous.” The three of them glanced over at Briory, who pouted and walked off with an hmmpf. She’d have loved to hear Reardon’s mumbled words of victory, but Billy tapped the page, eager for her to continue. She scanned the text for facts they didn’t already know about the monster, while promising herself she’d study the whole book later. “Piscivorous means ‘fish-eater’…the baryonyx swipes at fish with its powerful claw…like a grizzly bear. It lays four to six eggs. Scientists think it might-”

  “Forget the homework.” Reardon leaned over the side, thrust his arm out. “There they are! On the shore-big as life.”

  A wasps’ nest stirred in Embrey’s stomach. These extraordinary animals were bigger than anything above the waves in the twentieth century, and they were also deadlier. If they attacked London again, or this airship whilst it was in dock, the loss of life could be catastrophic. The beach lay a little over a mile from the camp. If dinosaurs were at all territorial-he’d encountered firsthand the violent reactions of South American predators against interlopers in their marked territory-these monsters would return to London sooner or later.

  They lumbered back and forth across the black and grey beach, taking turns to eat from a rhinoceros-sized carcass while the other guarded the meal. Neither paid any mind to the Empress. At five hundred feet up, the airship would be like just another cloud.

  Tangeni approached from the bow. “Lord Embrey, have you heard? The professor, he says this is all fresh water. A giant etale from ancient times. That is good news, no?”

  “Tremendous news! I daresay a big piece of our survival puzzle is solved.” He gazed aft along the deck to where Reardon and Billy were busy reading a book with Verity Champlain. The wasps roused again. Being persona non grata under her command, the tainted strawberry tart, stung his heart. He despised feeling helpless as much as he hated her magnanimity. If his name offended her so much, she needn’t have allowed him on board the Empress at all. The fact that she had, and that he’d accepted, slighted him more and more as he thought on it. Trapped was not the word-he was in purgatory. No one wanted him here. He was the prehistoric pariah. And Captain Champlain had become the icy figurehead for the empire’s unforgiving rule-a rule that had cost him everything.

  “God Almighty! Why does she make me so angry?” He clasped his hands behind his head and pressed the palms into his scalp.

  “ Eembu has that way with her.” Tangeni’s probing stare seemed to pick apart Embrey’s agony like clockwork. “She almost make married two years ago, to the young vizier governing Zanzibar-a man of great intelligence-but the Sultan’s rebels attacked him days before the wedding. When she learned of the plot, Eembu swam to his island home to warn him but she was too late. He died in her arms, poisoned, and the assassins, they were caught by the British Navy. That night, Eembu sneaked aboard the ship and slit their throats one by one, then threw their bodies to the sharks. For this she receive three-month suspension from the admiralty.” Tangeni swallowed a lump in his throat. “Of all the men and women I’ve served with, no one faces oshipongo — danger-like she. Lieutenant Champlain has no compromise. That is why she makes you angry.”

  “I see.” Embrey glanced again at the ginger-haired captain, who was now laughing with Reardon and young Billy. For a few warm moments, all ill-will evaporated from the airship, and he felt like walking over to her and straightening this whole thing out. Any animus between them had been created by proxy, by pride. They could easily cast it aside if they wished.

  A chill gust raked the deck, snapped him back to his senses. He watched the two dinosaurs squabble needlessly over their prize on the beach.

  “I’m afraid my wound runs even deeper.” He patted Tangeni’s shoulder. “My own country has turned against me, brother-it won’t rest until it has extinguished my family name altogether.”

  “I have heard. A terrible thing, to be hated by one’s own tribe. But Professor Reardon believes in you, and so does young Billy. As for Eembu, she wears her sister’s memory like war paint-it reminds her that she lives for two, and also fights for two. You are the closest she has come to finding, what is the word? Avenging?”

  “Vengeance?”

  “Yes. She will treat you as an enemy until you can convince her to believe in you.”

  Embrey scrubbed his face with his hands. “I may need some help there, brother. But I tell you what, you can let Lieutenant Champlain know that I’m willing to forgive the unprovoked blow she struck, on one condition-”

  “And that is?”

  He swung round and almost swiped her with his elbow.

  Luckily, she ducked. “Of all the clumsy, skull-faced…”

  Maybe not so lucky.

  “My apologies,” he stuttered.

  The woman’s pursed lips held venom. “Well?” she snapped. “You were saying? You would deign to forgive my wholly warranted affront on one condition?”

  “Yes, one condition. That you shuffle up and down the deck on your arse whilst singing ‘Burlington Bertie From Bow.’” He stood tall, glared back with interest. “What’s wrong? Feel like hitting me again?” Offering his chin felt a tad much, but Jesus, she was infuriating.

  “How about throwing you over the side, fop?” Several crewmen and the two statuesque women now stood behind her, meaning she couldn’t possibly back down.

  Neither would he.

  “You talk a good game, Red. How does the rest of it go? ‘I flap my lips and you drown in spit’? Pathetic. You’re a pantomime king in petticoats-the least you can do is wear them.”

  “One more word and you’ll dangle from the keel. Follow in your father’s footsteps…or should I say his last dance.”

&nb
sp; “ Whore!”

  “Bastard.”

  He drew both his pistols and thrust them at her heart. “Say that again.”

  She reached nonchalantly over her shoulder and kept her hand there until a crewman passed her a revolver. Without even breaking her stare, she cocked the hammer with her thumb and pointed the gun at his forehead. “This is getting tiresome. Djimon, Tangeni, lock this traitor in the brig.”

  “ Eembu?”

  “Don’t argue with me. He’s not about to shoot. He doesn’t have it in him. His sort whispers treason from the shadows, sends others to do his dirty work. The rich only stay rich because they don’t get involved in the fighting they start. Look, you can see it in his yellow eyes. Like father, like-”

  “Enough!” Embrey sidestepped quickly. In one fluid motion he dropped one of his own pistols, dragged her flush against him and disarmed the bitch. Back to the bulwark, he held a pistol barrel to her temple and yelled, “Back off! All of you.”

  “Do it. But he’s bluffing,” she advised her crew-correctly. Unbearably. Did nothing faze her?

  His situation was impossible and he had nowhere to go. Better to live and fight another day than force the crew’s hand. Okay, Garrett, you lose this round. His pulse hacked at his right shoulder, leaving him breathless. He lowered his sidearm and the bitch eased herself free.

  An overhead cable snapped and the airship lurched to port, hurling Verity into him again. Her momentum threw them both over the rail. Embrey tossed his weapon onto the deck and snatched for the bulwark. Too late! His fingers slipped and he plummeted.

  Verity’s arms wrenched tight around his solar plexus, mashed up against his rib cage. The jolt of her catch punched the breath from his lungs. A million flecks of diamond dust from the waves below blinded him. Somewhere inside the shock, distant bird caws competed with a close, intermittent hiss.