Eric Flint's Blog, page 323

The Forever Engine – Snippet 09

The Forever Engine – Snippet 09

 

I looked up as the room filled with excited servants, men who looked like clerks, and two who looked more like police detectives or bodyguards from their grim composure. Meredith, supported by two men, rose weakly from behind the overturned desk. Most of the others clustered around us, but a few checked Tyndall and Colonel Rossbank for signs of life. Gordon drifted over to stand by the silent form of his older friend, his empty revolver dangling limply in his hand.

“A couple of you find something to use for a stretcher,” I ordered, “and get rid of these damned spiders. Somebody else get a carriage, or whatever you use to get people to the hospital. And grab the bad guy I pushed out the window; it’s only two stories down, so he’s probably still alive, and maybe mobile. Hurry!”

The closest ones looked uncertainly from Thomson to Bonseller.

“Yes, yes,” Bonseller said. “Get to it.”

Two of them dashed for the door, and a couple others started looking for lightweight furniture — good luck with that.

“You got a favorite hospital, Sir Eddy?” I asked.

“St. George’s on Grosvenor Place, and damn you for a cheeky bastard. ‘Sir Eddy’ indeed. What of the others? How is Tyndall?”

I was sure Tyndall was dead; the thrown knife had severed his carotid artery. I glanced over to the doorway where Rossbank lay. One of the detective-looking men stood and spread an overcoat over his motionless form. Past them, through the open panel doors, I saw the still form of one of the Bobbies.

“Tyndall and the colonel are both dead, probably both constables as well. Everyone else seems okay.” I sniffed and looked around.

“Someone shit their britches. Was that you, Gordon?”

Publicly humiliating him might cause problems later, but I didn’t care. Survivor’s high does that. Gordon’s already-red face turned a brighter shade, and he shot me a look of hatred and shame all mixed up together.

The truth was all of us who’d been in the room — Bonseller, Thomson, Gordon, and probably me as well — had bright red faces by then. It’s the normal response of the circulatory system to danger; first it chokes off blood to the extremities to concentrate it in the core organs, so the face goes white. Then, when the all-clear sounds, the blood comes pounding back into the skin — instant tomato face. Bonseller’s complexion was the first to start to lose its color again.

“I’m feeling a bit lightheaded.”

“Yeah. You’re probably going to faint,” I told him.

“I dare say. Billy, you are in charge here until I’m back from the hospital. Try to sort all this out, will you? And don’t let Gordon shoot anyone.”

***

People with purpose bustled in and out of the room, giving reports to Thomson and getting orders. I sat on the leather sofa that had a bullet hole through its back, looked at the small pile of broken mechanical spiders, one of their legs still twitching and clawing the air, and I collected my thoughts.

Thomson came over and sat down heavily on the sofa next to me. He exhaled shakily.

“I’m still a bit overwhelmed by all this,” he said. “But you’re a very cold-blooded fellow, aren’t you?”

In response I held out my hand. It trembled uncontrollably.

“I think I might throw up,” I added.

“If so, do it now, while Gordon is off changing his trousers. You wouldn’t want to give him that satisfaction, would you?”

“For an old, fat Scotsman you’re pretty observant.”

He chuckled.

“You have a knack for making insults palatable, Fargo, damn me if I understand how.

“We’ve asked you a great many questions today. I’d say you’ve earned some answers of your own. I imagine you have more questions than I can address all at once, so for now, which one is most important to you?”

One question?

Why did the bad guys want Tyndall dead? Why did Tyndall think I was part of that? Why did the bad guys want the coin? Why did they want me? What were those spiders? Why does London have elevated trains instead of a subway? What’s wrong with the air? How did the South win? What the hell holds those flying ironclads up?

“How do I get back to my daughter?” I said.

He leaned back on the sofa and examined me. I could tell he had no answer, but the question interested him.

One of the clerks walked through the door and hurried over to us.

“Professor Thomson, the villain who fell from the window is conscious and his injuries do not seem life-threatening. We have him in a room off the front parlor for now. To where should we have him taken?”

“I think we’ll talk to him there. Find Captain Gordon and have him join us, would you?”

He turned to me as the clerk left.

“Come along, Fargo. I will tell you honestly that I cannot imagine how it is possible to return you to your time, but I know of one man who might help us. First, however, we must attend to this business.”

When we got downstairs, Gordon was already questioning the thug, had already finished in a sense.

“This blackguard won’t tell us anything,” he announced in disgust as soon as we arrived. I glanced over at the fellow — thin in the face, wiry-looking, but a thick torso under his coveralls. His face was skinned up, nose broken, with blood caked around his mouth and chin. He sat on a sofa with his left leg propped up on it.

I walked over and had a look at his leg, touched it below the knee, and he winced in pain. The trouser leg was bloodstained, and the irregular bulge suggested a bone sticking out of the skin.

“Nasty compound fracture you got there. If a doctor doesn’t take care of it, you could end up with gangrene, lose the leg.”

He licked his lips, and sweat trickled down the side of his face.

“So what? Dead’s as dead, either way.”

At least that’s what I thought he said. He dropped almost all the consonants, leaving a series of vowel-like grunts, so it was hard to tell for sure, but I was starting to get the hang of some of the accents and the meter of the speech. I could read and speak Latin, ancient and modern Greek, Aramaic, German, Spanish, French, and a half-dozen Middle-Eastern and Central-Asian languages and dialects. You’d think I could decipher Cockney English.

“He won’t tell us anything,” Gordon repeated.

I ignored him and leaned forward, rapped the fellow lightly on his chest. Under the fabric it was hard, rigid, and made a muffled thunk.

“Thought so. That first shot of yours didn’t miss the other one, Gordon. These guys are wearing some sort of body armor.”

“Body armor?” He came over and leaned forward to rap it himself. “Well, damn me if he ain’t.”

“You tell him you were going to see him swing for this, no matter what?” I asked.

“Of course I did.”

“Yeah, and now he won’t talk. What a shocker.”

“If you think you can do any better, be my guest.”

I couldn’t imagine doing much worse. I pulled over an armchair to face the sofa and noticed Thomson take a chair near the door. Gordon remained standing, pacing back and forth, scowling ferociously. Good. I didn’t know if these guys had come up with Good Cop, Bad Cop yet, but if not, it was about time.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 08

The Forever Engine – Snippet 08

 

FIVE

September 23, 1888, London, England

The dagger wasn’t meant for me. I heard Bonseller cry out in pain and fear, and that shocked me into action. I staggered away from the door, my feet clumsy, balance screwed up. Nothing around me made sense, because my heart rate had gone through the roof and a lot of frontal brain functions were shutting down, but I remembered enough to start tactical breathing. Inhale for a five count, hold it for a five count, exhale for a five count, wait for a five count, start again.

Someone grabbed me by the right arm, one of the men from the door. He wore some sort of black coverall and a black cap. His mouth twisted open in a grimace showing me yellow and black jack-o’-lantern teeth, and his breath came as a physical shock almost as potent as the thrown knife. A blade flashed toward my face, and I tried to twist away, but his grip was strong. The knife stopped millimeters from my throat.

“Come wi’ us or you’re a dead ‘un,” he growled.

I nodded mutely.

Exhale for five, hold for five . . .

Three serving-platter-sized metallic spiders scrabbled past my feet, making whirring, clicking noises.

What the hell?

The other man in black yanked down the big drapes from the window, pulling the curtain rod and mounts away from the ceiling in a small shower of plaster dust. Light exploded in through the large window, and I saw a smoky rectangle of the London skyline. He kicked at the window, and glass shattered.

“Where’s the bleedin’ coin?” the man holding me shouted as he pulled me toward the window.

“I . . . I don’t –” I stammered.

“Here!” someone yelled. I recognized Meredith’s voice. His plump hand appeared from behind the overturned writing desk, holding a melted slug of clear plastic.

Inhale for five, hold for five. Vision came into sharper focus, legs grew steadier. Around the periphery of my vision the old blackness crept, the blackness I thought gone forever.

Where was Gordon and his revolver? Tyndall’s pistol was in his coat pocket on the floor. No time to get it. The man at the window had his back to me as he used his fist to knock out the remaining broken shards of glass. The thug holding me shoved me toward the window and let go to reach out to grab the coin.

Action without thought. Two long steps to launch myself into the air, catch the man at the window with both of my feet squarely in his back. Kick hard to transfer momentum to him, come down in a crouch as he plunged screaming out the window. Anticipation, experience, memory — indistinguishable.

With neither thought nor emotion I rose and turned to the other thug and I knew my face was as empty as the abyss. Did I know it then or know it later? There was no then or later. He hesitated, his knife held wrong for a throw.

“Halt in the name of the crown! Hands up!”

Gordon!

Face white, pistol raised and shaking, Gordon stood at the double paneled door through which Bonseller had entered. The thug didn’t even glance back at him. Instead, his eyes flickered to the open window behind me. He licked his lips, calculated, then lunged toward me.

I sidestepped, Gordon’s pistol fired, the sound exploding like thunder in the confined space of the room. The man staggered forward and fell against the window sill, then straightened, put his foot on the sill, and jumped.

Through the window, I saw the thug swinging from a rope ladder a dozen feet from the building, and as I watched, he rose up and away, and the blackness behind my eyes fled with him.

I stuck my head out farther and looked up — some sort of elongated powered balloon. The chugging engine rose in volume as the balloon gained speed and disappeared up and into the mists. Thoughts returned.

What the hell was going on?

The pistol barked again, and a slug slammed into the windowsill above my head, throwing splinters of wood and glass into my scalp. I flinched to the side and then dove for cover behind a heavy leather sofa. Thomson was already there, kicking one of the metal spiders away.

“Nicely done, laddie,” he said.

“Tell that to Gordon.”

The pistol fired again, and a slug blew through the back of the couch, showering us with horse-hair furniture entrails.

“Captain Gordon!” Thomson shouted. “Cease fire, ya great bloody idiot! I’m back here, and Fargo is on our side, not theirs.”

“Yes, for God’s sake stop shooting.” That was Bonseller’s voice. He sounded weak, but he wasn’t dead. I helped Thomson to his feet and then hurried over to Bonseller’s prone form. Gordon stood in the doorway uncertainly, pistol drooping. A mechanical spider scrambled toward him, he fired his revolver, knocked wood from the floor six inches to the side, fired again, and then again, finally hitting it.

“Damn,” he muttered. Several men in suits pushed past him from behind.

I knelt beside Bonseller. He was trying to sit up but having a hard time. Blood soaked his left sleeve around the hilt of a throwing knife that was buried in his arm above the elbow. I grabbed his upper bicep in my left hand, my thumb on the pressure point to cut off the blood flow.

“Take it easy, Bonseller. You’re bleeding a lot. The knife must have nicked an artery. I’m going to put a pressure bandage on it.”

I started to pull open his coat, when a mechanical spider scrabbling across the floor bumped Bonseller’s leg. It stopped and locked steel mandibles on his calf, then made a loud whirring sound, started vibrating, and Bonseller cried out in pain. I felt an electric shock through my thumb and jumped back.

“Son of a bitch!”

I kicked the spider away from Bonseller and grabbed his arm again. He trembled from the shock and groaned but didn’t seem much worse otherwise. He still needed a compression bandage, so I unbuckled his belt and pulled it out as gently as I could.

“Stand away from Sir Edward, Fargo,” Gordon ordered. I hadn’t even noticed him walk up. He raised the shaking revolver, pointed it at my forehead, and cocked the hammer back.

“You’re dry, Gordon,” I told him, “unless that’s a seven-shooter.”

Gordon looked at his revolver in confusion.

“Oh, put the bloody gun down, man,” Thomson ordered. “And where did you get off to, anyway?”

“I went for help,” he explained.

“This may hurt a bit, but I need to get this knife out of the way,” I said. I took the handle in my fist, made sure I was lined up squarely, and slid it up and out of the wound, trying not to make things any worse. Bonseller gasped but made no other signs of pain. More blood oozed out of the slit in the coat, but not much. I wrapped the belt three times around Bonseller’s upper arm over the wound and pulled it tight. He drew in air sharply as I did, but he took it pretty well, all things considered.

“That should hold you until a surgeon can stitch you up. Just make sure you keep the pressure on the wound.”

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 07

The Forever Engine – Snippet 07

“I’m afraid I am unfamiliar with that passage, or even the language.”

“‘Marduk the great lord rejoiced in my pious deeds, and gratefully blessed me,’” I translated in turn. “It’s ancient Persian, a passage from the Babylonian Cylinder of Cyrus the Great, which, as I recall, currently resides in the British Museum.”

He studied me seriously for several seconds, arms folded across his chest and eyes narrow, before giving a slight nod.

“Very well, I accept your academic credentials, Professor Fargo. I am Sir Edward Bonseller, personal secretary to the prime minister. You will understand, given the circumstances, if I do not offer my hand. Have you met the others?

“Well, you know Captain Gordon, of course. Colonel Rossbank is director of the military intelligence department at Horse Guards. Professor Tyndall is retired from the Royal Institution, but circumstances have conspired to interrupt his well-deserved rest. I hope you are well, sir.”

The older man who earlier had greeted Gordon with affection was frail and birdlike, with a high forehead and a fringe of white hair around his chin and skull like the ruff of an owl. He now patted his side coat pocket, much the same way Gordon had.

“I am armed, Sir Edward, which is more to the point.” His accent had a trace of Irish, and his voice, reedy with age, nearly cracked as he spoke. “They killed poor Huxley last evening. Had you heard?”

“Yes. You have my sympathy, Tyndall. Damned shame. That makes six, doesn’t it?”

“Aye, six with Huxley. Of the entire membership of the X Club there remains only Hooker, Frankland, and myself, and this scoundrel came within an ace of getting me.” He pointed at me. “Louisa and I were visiting relatives in Somerton when this fellow blew half of it to pieces.”

That could put you on edge, I supposed. I was probably going to have a hard time convincing him it was all just a coincidence, scientists being generally skeptical of the notion that something “just happened.”

“Tyndall is one of our most respected physicists, and Professor Thomson is another,” Bonseller continued, gesturing to a man of similar age but stout and full-bearded, bearlike in physique. “Thomson’s come down from Glasgow University, where he holds the chair in physics, to help us sort your story out. He’s helped the government on a number of thorny matters. Good to see you again, Billy.”

“A wonder I can see at all, dragged down from my clean Sco’ish air into this sewage dump,” he answered in a soft brogue. “What’s keeping you from doing something about the blasted air, Eddie? Waiting till Tyndall here makes his second million off patented respirators?”

“Damn your eyes,” Tyndall hissed back, and the heavy-set Scotsman turned toward him, the malice between the two men suddenly as obvious as a bloodstain.

Bonseller held his hand up to cut off the argument

“Oh, and Meredith is the cabinet’s science advisor,” he added, finishing the introductions.

The last one was younger, probably in his late thirties or early forties, pear-shaped and balding, with only a sparse moustache for facial hair. His eyes darted from Bonseller to me, to the window, the door, the floor. He bobbed his head nervously in acknowledgment.

“Now, let’s get to it, shall we?”

***

They grilled me for over an hour. Bonseller asked most of the questions, with Tyndall chiming in on technical matters at first, but then becoming more involved as the questions turned from my “story” to a detailed description of the future from which I came. All of them reacted with surprise when I told them the outline of our space program, having put men on the moon and an unmanned rover on Mars. That interrupted the session while they had a huddled and heated consultation in the far corner of the room. When they started again, they asked more about powered flight, and when I told them the broad outline of some of the newest aircraft, they were impressed but confused. I could see why.

Colonel Rossbank had a few questions about the armed forces of my time, but the capabilities I described were so unbelievable he quickly lost interest and lit a cigar. Gordon followed his lead with a cheroot of his own. Meredith sat at a writing desk and took notes, and Thomson, the heavy-set Scottish physicist, remained quiet and paced the room, chewing on the stem of an unlit pipe, his face always in silent motion, alternating between concentration, surprise, disbelief, and then understanding.

The birdlike Tyndall finally shook his head in exasperation.

“The story is remarkable for its detail and consistency. Genuinely remarkable. But it is simply beyond belief.”

“Nonsense,” Thomson said, his first spoken word since my interrogation began. “There is not a thing in the world he describes which is not explainable by direct extrapolation from our own existing scientific principles.”

Right then I decided the big Scot was my guy. I could have kissed him.

“Oh, rubbish!” Tyndall snapped back. “This inter-web thing is extrapolation? Of what?”

“His high capacity computing machines are simply an improvement on our analytic engines, but with mechanical calculation and memory replaced with electric functions. That accounts for both the miniaturization and the higher calculation speed. Electric storage of data is clearly possible, something like that American laddie Smith argued for, recording sounds with permanent magnetic impressions on wire.”

“Smith? Smith who? What are you talking about?” Tyndall demanded.

“Oberon Smith, I think he’s called. It was in Electrical World last year, Tyndall. You really should keep up on your professional reading. As to electrical as opposed to mechanical functioning, it’s nothing more than development of a Crookes tube into something more than a curiosity. The American mathematician Charles Pierce has already proposed a means by which logic operations can be carried out by electric switching circuits.”

Tyndall sniffed and turned away, looking all the more like an offended owl.

“I’d call that a mighty leap,” he said

“Aye,” Thomson agreed. “But thus do we advance, by mighty leaps.”

“And the ability to access these machines from anywhere, without wires?” Bonseller asked, but Tyndall instead of Thomson answered.

“Obviously some sort of electromagnetic communicator propagated through the aether. I suppose it could utilize Hertz’s waves.” He turned to Thomson. “As was reported in Annalen der Physik, last year.”

Thomson smiled and bowed slightly to him.

“That’s right,” I put in, because it was time to insinuate myself into the group. “Hertz was one of the early pioneers in wireless research.”

Things were going better than I’d expected, a lot better. They obviously had some sort of advanced science to work with. I figured if they could manage to make great big ironclads fly like balloons, they knew something we didn’t. Now if I could get Tyndall and Thomson to kiss and make nice, I had three potential allies: the Irish owl, the Scottish bear, and, most importantly, the English lion Bonseller. I’d known men like him before — men who could open doors. Men who thought the world could be fixed and they were just the guys to do it. Dangerous men, but useful ones, too, up to a point.

I heard a thud out in the hallway, where the Bobbies were waiting, and then what sounded like a scuffle.

“What the devil’s going on out there, Gordon?” Colonel Rossbank demanded.

“I’ll find out, sir.”

Rossbank shook his head and dropped his cigar in a brass spittoon.

“I’ll sort it out. I need some air.”

He walked to the doors and slid one back.

“What’s all this, then?” he demanded, but he suddenly choked in pain, staggered backward a step or two, and fell, blood spraying across the floor.

We stood frozen as two dark shapes filled the doorway, paused for an instant to scan the room, then an arm snapped and a blade flew through the air. Tyndall staggered back, eyes bulging, blood bubbling from his throat and mouth. He turned as he fell, for a moment the light of a gaslight sparkled from the diamond stickpin in his cravat, and then he collapsed twitching to the floor.

“NO!” Gordon shouted, his voice rising almost to a scream.

Blood pounded in my ears, and my perception became jerky, strobelike: shouts, curses, scrambling bodies, overturned furniture, and one of the dark shapes raising his hand and pointing at me.

“‘Ere ‘e is. Git ‘im!”

The other’s hand, holding a steel blade rose, and snapped toward me.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 06

The Forever Engine – Snippet 06

FOUR

September 23, 1888, London, England

Like a ghostly demon, London enveloped me in sulfurous tendrils of mist and smoke that smelled of hot metal, burning coal, and rotting garbage. The open air train platform stood at least twenty feet above street level, held up by iron girders. It reminded me of the Chicago Loop’s “El,” — the elevated train — or what it might have looked like a century ago. My gaze swept across the faint powdering of dirt and coal dust blowing across the platform’s walkway, the rust-streaked metal uprights and railings with their damp, grimy look, and then the city.

Brick and stone buildings rose into the sky, taller than seemed right for the period. Many larger ones sported an iron girder tower on top, with dirigibles docked to several of those. Two large flying machines droned slowly through the smoke and haze, but I couldn’t tell if they were also dirigibles or more of those flying ironclads.

The people on the platform around me wore ankle-length coats in dark colors — browns and grays and dusty blacks. They conversed with muffled voices, hair hidden under hats, faces behind goggles and dark fabric masks. Many women wore elaborate dark veils tucked into the collars of their coats. They reminded me of Afghan women in burkas, at least in their impersonal anonymity. But instead of hiding their shape, their coats exaggerated the female figure, accenting ample bosoms, flaring from narrow waists out over bustled skirts. The women glided across the platform with a deliberate grace I found seductive and creepy at the same time.

This wasn’t the London I had expected, but I had already abandoned my attachment to expectations.

“This way, Fargo,” Gordon grunted from under a rubberized mask that included both goggles and air filter. Two different Bobbies now accompanied us, having taken over from the rural constabulary at Paddington Station, our port of entry to Greater London. The Wessex men had, in retrospect, been easy-going compared to these two. Like Gordon they both wore goggles and masks. Their uniforms seemed darker and were augmented by thick gauntlets and taller helmets. They had a lean, tough look compared to their more portly country cousins, and black varnished wooden truncheons dangled from wrist thongs. One of them poked me in the back for encouragement. I’d put on the long coat they gave me, but no face protection was offered. My eyes burned already.

Ten minutes on a metro train brought us to a smaller station deeper in the city — St. John’s Square, the sign told me. Two flights of wrought-iron steps took us down to ground level, where horse-drawn cabs clip-clopped along crowded, litter-strewn streets, side by side with worn-looking freight wagons and one smoking steam-powered autocarriage. Most of the people here didn’t have elaborate masks and goggles. Instead, men in threadbare coats with collars turned up wore handkerchiefs tied over nose and mouth, and watched the Bobbies warily through red-rimmed eyes. They knew more about this world than I did, and they were afraid of the uniforms. Point taken.

We walked briskly for two blocks, then up the stone steps of a brownstone house, a knock, a few exchanged words between Gordon and a doorman, and we moved from the gloom of the streets into the gaslit twilight of the interior.

Heavy furniture, that was my first impression: big wardrobes, massive dark wood tables with legs carved to look like lion paws, overstuffed chairs, leather couches, and heavy brocade curtains hanging from near the high ceiling, puddling on the floor. Thick oriental carpets, bunches of them, carpets on top of carpets. Big oil paintings in heavy gilt frames covering whatever wall space was left — landscapes, seascapes, pictures of the moors or heaths or whatever, and one portrait of an angry old man whose eyes seemed to follow me as we marched through the front room.

“Who’s your decorator?” I asked. “Count Dracula?”

But it was just bravado, just whistling past the graveyard. The place had me spooked.

Up a broad flight of polished wood stairs, down a hall, and finally to a pair of sliding doors. Gordon knocked, the doors slid open a crack for a moment, he exchanged a few hushed words with whoever was inside, and then the doors slid open to let us in.

“You two wait out here,” he ordered the Bobbies. “And you mind yourself in here, Fargo. I have a revolver.”

He patted his right coat pocket to let me know he meant business.

We entered what I guess they called a sitting room. Four men conversed in the center of the room, and they turned to look me over without warmth. All wore dark suits except for one in an army uniform — same red tunic and dark blue trousers as Gordon but heavier with gold braid. Gordon joined them after gesturing for me to wait by the door.

One of the older men smiled and shook Gordon’s hand, and Gordon returned the smile. First time I’d seen him show any warmth at all.

This was supposed to be my interrogation, and I was here, but nothing was happening, so I figured we were waiting for someone else to show up. I glanced around the room. There were a couple love seats and wingback chairs set away from the walls but leaving a large open area in the center of the room covered by a single oriental rug. By the standards of the rest of the place, or what I’d seen of it, this room was sparsely furnished.

The double-paneled door we came through was behind me, and drapes on the opposite wall covered two windows, so that must be an exterior wall. As I faced the exterior wall, I had a fireplace to my left and then another double-paneled door on the wall to my right, so two ways in and out if you didn’t count the windows. Good to know if I had to make a break for it. I wasn’t sure where I’d run to, but I had a very bad feeling about this place.

Under the odor of cigar smoke, the room was filled with that same unfamiliar chemical scent I’d noticed at the hospital, and it seemed to be coming from the windows. Was that a room deodorizer of some kind? Maybe. It reminded me a little of Listerine.

“What’s that smell?” I asked, and the gang of five turned to me with startled expressions, as if a statue or caged animal had suddenly spoken.

“I beg your pardon?” one of them asked after a moment.

“That chemical odor. I smelled it at the hospital and now here, but I don’t recognize it. I think it’s coming from the drapes.”

They exchanged looks — confused, unbelieving, impatient.

“Carbolic acid,” the tall officer snapped, and the five went back to their conversation, but the three men in suits stole glances back at me.

Carbolic acid was an early disinfectant. I’d probably have recognized its odor from high school chemistry class, except I took biology and physics instead.

The paneled doors to my right slid open and another man strode purposely toward us, his eyes taking in the conversational group and then locking on me. He wore his big shock of reddish-brown hair, graying at the temples, like a well-groomed lion’s mane. His dark suit looked expensive, carefully tailored.

“Colonel Rossbank, gentlemen. So this is the fellow. What do we know of him?”

His voice filled the room without straining — a voice accustomed to filling rooms.

“Good day, Sir Edward,” the tall officer, presumably Colonel Rossbank, answered. “Aside from his preposterous story, I’m afraid we know nothing. The Americans profess ignorance, of course.”

“Of course,” Sir Edward answered. He stopped a couple feet away facing me, hands clasped behind his back under the tails of his coat, and he leaned forward and squinted at me as if I were some sort of museum display.

“Quo usque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra?” I asked him.

The five others shifted with surprise and muttered to each other, but Sir Edward barked a short laugh.

“Damn me if I wasn’t about to ask you almost the same thing. ‘How long, Cataline, will you abuse our patience?’” he translated. “Cicero’s ringing denunciation of Cataline’s base treason — very apropos, although I rather think of you in the role of Cataline. Now, what is a spy doing quoting Cicero? Oh, that’s right! You’re pretending to be an ancient historian, aren’t you?”

“Marduk belu rabu uihdiema, ana ia’ati.” I answered. This time he didn’t laugh. His face clouded over with uncertainty.

 

1636 The Devil’s Opera – Snippet 56

The book is out now so this is the last snippet.

1636 The Devil’s Opera – Snippet 56

“Oh, tell them not to worry,” Atwood spoke up with a grin. “I recorded the song on tape, and I’m going to play it on my music show on Voice of America in a week.”

          Klaus and Reuel looked at him wide-eyed. “Does Gunther know that?”

Atwood’s grin grew wider. “Since I just now decided to do it, I really doubt that he does.”

“‘Scuse me,” Klaus said. He stepped out into the street and whistled shrilly. Another man trotted up from a block away. “Will, you stay here. I have to get word to Gunther.” And he sprinted down the street.

A cab approached, attracted by the whistle. Franz flagged the cabbie down, and he and Atwood clambered up into the wagon with the baggage. The cabbie clucked to his horse, and they rolled off with a final wave to the CoC men.

“Keep watch?” Atwood repeated his question. “Why do you have CoC toughs loitering in front of your house like they’re keeping guard on it?”

“Because they are.”

Atwood frowned. “Give.”

“When we first came to Magdeburg, the CoC kept an eye over us because we were important to Frau Simpson. But after Marla started singing the Irish songs in the tavern, well, those songs spoke to them and they watched over her because the songs were important to them. And to keep her from being harassed in the tavern, until people learned who and what she was.”

“Oh, yes,” Atwood chuckled. “I got a good belly-laugh when I heard what she was doing. You do realize that most of those songs were from the Catholic side of that particular disagreement, don’t you? The thought of a bunch of mostly Protestant Germans singing music written by mostly Catholic Irishmen just really tickled my funny bone. Still does.”

They chatted about nothing consequential for a few blocks, until Atwood pointed to one side.

“Look at that.”

Franz followed the other man’s finger, and saw a young woman handing out broadsheets to grasping hands, broadsheets that had a familiar looking caption on them. He leaned back, as he began to absorb the reality of just what might come of Marla’s song.

****

          Friedrich von Logau sauntered into Walcha’s Coffee House later that day, pleased with himself, which wasn’t an unusual condition, and pleased with the world as well, which was a bit more irregular. He seated himself at his accustomed table, waving a hand at the serving maid and holding up one finger. His cup of coffee appeared almost before he could lower his hand.

He was midway through his first cup, doodling in his pocket notebook again as he mentally masticated on a new epigram that was refusing to take proper shape, when the door opened and Gronow and Plavius came in. They were arguing over something; not an unusual state of affairs for them. They broke it off when they saw Friedrich, however, and almost marched on him, wasting no time in crossing the floor and setting into chairs on each side of him.

Logau made a slow studied gesture of pulling out his pocket watch and checking the time. “Well, I would have said good morning, my friends, but according to this the morning has fled and afternoon is upon us.” He closed the cover of the watch and beamed at them. “So good afternoon to you, instead. What took you so long?”

“Ach,” Plavius said, “the pastor was long-winded in his homily this morning, and the choir had a new cantata to sing by Kappellmeister Schütz, which was so long I wonder if he got confused and decided to write an oratorio instead.”

Gronow waved a hand in dismissal of all that. “Friedrich, you knew, did you not, what that woman was going to do last night?”

Logau pursed his lips and nodded.

“And you purposely and intentionally did not tell us beforehand.”

Now Logau could feel his facial muscles stretch as the very broad grin fought its way onto his face despite all he could do to repress it.

“You son of a syphilitic sow,” Gronow exclaimed in English, sitting back as the serving maid slid a cup of coffee in front of him.

“Nice alliteration,” Logau commented, still smiling. He was enjoying this.

“No,” Plavius contradicted his friend. “You should not insult good swine that way. Myself, I would say he is more of a scrofulous, flea-infested, pox-ridden cur.”

Logau put his pencil down, and applauded.

“Well done, my friends. You have risen to new heights — or is it depths — of invective. Well done, indeed.”

He stopped clapping, and let the smile slip from his face. “Yes, I knew what she intended to do. And having heard her rehearse it once, I thought I knew what to expect.”

Logau remained silent after that, until Gronow set his coffee cup down with a clank and said, “Well?” Logau looked at him with his eyebrows raised. “What did you expect?” Gronow’s voice dripped with impatience.

“I really do not recall, now,” Logau replied, “but what we heard was far more than I expected. Gods and little demons,” Plavius frowned at his blasphemy, but Logau continued on, “if she had called for a march on Berlin after that song, I would have been in the front rank. Me; resident skeptic, Stoic, and curmudgeon in training after my august father. I am not at all sure that the wax of Ulysses would prevail against the siren’s voice of Frau Linder.”

Plavius checked his coffee cup in its motion to his mouth, and returned it to the table. “Along that thought . . .” He reached inside his coat and drew a page out that he handed to Logau. “The CoC girls were handing these out this morning. Doing a brisk trade, they were.”

Logau unfolded the page into a broadsheet. It was a momentary shock to see the words he had penned for Marla in print under a screaming banner. But then the reality of who had to be involved sank in, and a sardonic smile crossed his face.

“Of course. It was to be expected that the good Gunther Achterhof would not let this opportunity slip.”

The conversation turned after that to questions of what Gronow would publish in the next issue of Black Tomcat Magazine, as well as their various projects, such as Gronow’s libretto for the opera Arthur Rex. It turned, that is, until Gronow himself jerked upright coughing and spewing coffee from his mouth.

Logau leaned back to make sure that none of the spew landed on his clothing. He frowned at his friend. “Coffee is for drinking, not breathing. And what, may I ask, brought on this fit?”

Gronow held up a hand until he finally could clear his throat and get a breath of air. “It just dawned on me — she’s going to sing Guinevere in my opera!”

Logau began to laugh at the panic-stricken look on his friend’s face.

 

1636 The Devil’s Opera – Snippet 55

1636 The Devil’s Opera – Snippet 55

There was one thought on the minds of every man facing her. Franz could see it in their eyes. But only one had the courage to say it. There was a stir as men moved — or were moved — out of the way to allow Gunther Achterhof to reach the front. He nodded to Marla, which Franz knew was equivalent to a genuflection from a lesser man, and said in a quiet voice, “Wieder, bitte — again, please.”

         Marla nodded in return.

The room was quiet as she regained her breath, waiting with a hard singleness of purpose. After some moments, she looked over to Franz and lifted a hand. He looked to their friends, gave the nod, and began again.

The second time through was not as intense as the first time. It couldn’t help but be lesser. No singer could give at that most extreme level for very long. Oh, Franz could tell that Marla still felt the passion for the song, and she still gave it a superlative performance, but the unique edge was missing. She was just Marla with the angelic voice now, rather than being the Sword of Music, or of God. But that was still enough.

Men throughout the room mouthed the words, trying to commit them to memory. These were words that would change men’s lives. Franz knew it, and they could sense it.

The song came to an end a second time. There was a brief moment of silence, until Logau began rapping his walking stick on his table top in a slow regular beat that matched the pulse of the song. Hands and feet quickly followed suit, until the building rocked from the regular percussive slam of sound.

Marla faced the men. Franz could see her shoulders beginning to shake, so he handed off his violin to one of the Amsel brothers and went to guide her to a stool. Gronow leapt up from his and shoved it forward with alacrity. Franz looked up and caught Gunther’s gaze. He drew his hand across his throat sharply.

Gunther got the point as if they had discussed having a special signal. He gave a piercing whistle, then yelled, “Out! The evening’s over. Remember it, but go home now.”

CoC men coalesced from all over the room, forming a barrier between Marla and her friends and the rest of the crowd. The tavern emptied; amidst shoving and protesting, granted, but it emptied.

Franz waved Gunther over, and handed him a piece of paper from his pocket.

“She said you would want this.”

Gunther took it with upraised eyebrows.

“Words,” Franz explained.

Gunther unfolded it enough to see the first verse of lyrics to the song, and flashed a tight smile to them all. “She is so right. Thank you, my friend,” he shook Franz’s hand, “my friends,” he swept his gaze around the rest of the group, “Frau Marla,” he nodded again to her. “This will mean quite a lot to the people.”

There was a stir in the doorway, someone trying to go against the flow. Whoever it was managed to penetrate the crowd, until he bounced off of the CoC men.

Franz had just drawn Marla to her feet, ready to take her home. He looked around at the disturbance, and caught a glimpse of a familiar face being pushed away.

“Let him through,” he called out. A moment later, Andrea Abati squeezed through the barrier of muscle and hurried over to take Marla’s hands.

Marla looked up at him — one of the few down-timers who was taller than she — and her mouth quirked a bit, as if she was trying to smile.

“Did you hear me, Master Andrea?”

“I wasn’t able to get inside, but I was able to stand in the doorway and hear you.” He was very serious, and he swallowed before he spoke again. “Oh, child, what have you wrought?”

Franz could see the iron determination on Marla’s face, as weary and drained as she was.

“What I must, Master Andrea. What I must.”

****

          Franz arose early the next morning. By some miracle of scheduling, Atwood had managed to arrange for a ride on a river boat leaving Magdeburg that day, even though it was Sunday. By the time the sun was shining over the city walls, Franz and Atwood were walking out the front door to catch a cab for the river dock. Atwood allowed Franz to carry the duffle, but the up-timer still insisted on carrying the case with the precious recording rig.

A couple of men leaning against the front of their house straightened as they came out the door. Atwood frowned a bit, but relaxed when Franz greeted them.

“Klaus, Reuel. It has been a while since I’ve seen you.”

“Aye,” Klaus nodded. “Gunther said after last night that we should stand watch again for a while.”

“Watch?” Atwood asked.

“I am sorry, I forgot to introduce you. Herr Cochran, meet Klaus and Reuel, two of the staunchest members in the ranks of the Committees of Correspondence.” Atwood held his hand out. “Guys, this is Atwood Cochran from Grantville, Marla’s good friend.” They smiled and shook hands with the up-timer.

Klaus snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot.” He started digging through his pockets. “Gunther wanted you to have this right away.” He grinned in triumph and produced a much folded sheet of paper from his coat and handed it to Franz.

Franz unfolded it to produce a broadsheet. The caption blazoned across the top read:

Ein Anruf Zu Den Armen

          Atwood looked over his shoulder. “I still have trouble reading the heavy scripts,” he said. “What does it say?”

“A Call To Arms,” Franz translated. He gestured to the balance of the broadsheet. “And here are the words Marla sang last night.”

Atwood whistled. “That was fast work, to get this out so quickly.”

Klaus grinned. “Gunther had the press crew up out of bed as soon as he got back to the Arches last night. Told them he didn’t care what they had to do, he wanted this on the streets by dawn.” He chuckled. “They did it, too.”

Franz tried to hand the broadsheet back to Klaus, who held up a hand in refusal.

“That’s for you and Frau Marla, Herr Franz. Gunther insisted you have one of the first copies. ‘That’s little enough,’ he said, ‘for what she has worked for us.’”

Franz nodded his thanks, folded the broadsheet back up with care, and placed it in his own jacket pocket.

“Herr Franz,” Reuel spoke up, “you tell Frau Marla that we heard her sing last night, and we really liked it. But that last song,” his expression became very sober, “that last song was something special. You tell her that for us, and tell her that . . . just tell her that.”

“I will,” Franz assured him.

“There’s already men kicking themselves that they were not there to hear her last night,” Klaus added.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 05

The Forever Engine – Snippet 05

My only real hope was things had actually changed here, and done so in a way that left me some sort of return route. I knew next to nothing about physics, and when you know that little, anything is possible, right? So my first priority was figuring out if this really was my own past or that coin’s. I specialized in ancient Rome and the near east, not nineteenth century Europe, but I knew more than the average Joe on the street. Reggie had picked me in part because I had an instinct for little things not quite right. I’d need to focus that, look for subtle differences, something the average person might miss.

Gordon included a long overcoat with the clothes but it seemed like a nice day and so I carried it over my arm. Gordon and I, with two big constables in tow, walked out the front door of the hospital. I felt a breeze, heard the drone of machinery, a shadow fell across the broad stone steps ahead of us. I looked up.

Three hundred meters above us was . . . an ironclad? It was big, really big. It had too many surface features to be a balloon, things that looked like gun mounts and observation platforms, with shining brass railings and evenly-spaced rows of massive rivets, the kind that hold steel girder bridges together. The drone grew louder as it passed overhead. Black smoke escaped from a stack in the rear, dispersed into a dirty grey wake by three large propellers that apparently drove the ship forward. I had no idea what held the damned thing up. An intense downdraft enfolded us and piles of dried leaves on the lawn exploded into a swirling red-brown blizzard.

“Okay,” I said to no one in particular, “so much for subtle differences.”

#####

I don’t remember much about the carriage ride. I suppose I was still dazed, but I started paying attention again once we got to the train station – a little place out in the countryside called Creech St. Michael Halt. The locomotive hissed and throbbed nervously, reeked of hot rusty iron and sulfurous coal, and looked longer and more powerful than I remembered Victorian steam engines looking in Sherlock Holmes films.

Sherlock Holmes films? Flashman novels? And I called myself an historian? This was getting pathetic. Why couldn’t this event wave thingamajig have dropped me in fourth-century BCE Achaemenid Persia? At least I knew my way around there.

Gordon led the way with the Bobbies to either side of me. The one on my right slipped his hand around my elbow — not making a show of manhandling me, just letting me know he was there. Gordon looked through the open doors until he found an empty compartment and motioned us to follow him in.

The compartment was pretty much what I expected: dark wood paneling and brass fittings, a gaslight overhead, and a well-thumbed copy of The Times left on the overstuffed seat. Gordon sat facing me while the constables sat opposite each other by the windows.

“Where in London are we going?” I asked.

“You will see in good time,” Gordon answered.

“Who are these gentlemen I’ll be talking to?”

“All in good time.”

“Look, if you could just –”

“Do be quiet, Fargo. There’s a good spy.”

Be quiet. Sure. I was on a train about to take me to an interview with people Gordon had broadly hinted were going to torture me – if necessary – to find out what I knew. Since I didn’t know anything they were interested in, it was hard to see how this was going to end happily for anyone, but especially for me.

I picked up The Times and looked it over. Doing a quick scan was hard – these guys still had a lot to learn about newspaper layout, things like headlines and organizing from most to least important.

A penny had been removed from the pendulum counterbalance of Big Ben, which would slow the clock by four tenths of a second per day. Seems it had been running slightly fast. No one knew why, but a panel of study was being formed. Swell. There was a report on the Royal Horticultural Society’s flower show, another grisly murder in Whitechapel – when was Jack the Ripper running around? – and a letter from an unnamed correspondent about a Fenian Army massing in the U. S. Pacific Northwest. It also alleged several acts of sabotage against the Canadian Pacific Railroad near Vancouver.

Fenians – Irish separatists. I remembered there had been a border incident after the Civil War when a bunch of Irish veterans got together and tried to invade Canada, hold it hostage for an independent Ireland. Not much came of it, although it had been a big deal at the time. It seemed to me it had been earlier than the 1880s, though; weren’t Civil War veterans getting long in the tooth by now?

Then another article caught my eye. The Foreign Office announced its acceptance of the credentials of General William Ransom Johnson Pegram as the new ambassador to the Court of St. James from the Confederate States of America. General Pegram had expressed his government’s sympathy with Great Britain’s current difficulties vis-a-vis the United States of America.

“Son of a bitch! Those assholes actually won?”

Gordon and the Bobbies eyed me with disapproval and I tossed the paper aside.

The train started up, gathering speed quickly.

I couldn’t believe it. The South won? I wasn’t just in an altered history, I was in some stupid “Lost Cause” wet dream. If this place had taken a pass on emancipation, what other horrors had it decided it just couldn’t part with?

This place? As if there was somewhere else? No, this was all there was now. This was it. I had already spent too much time in a hospital bed. Whatever trick I was going to perform to fix all this, I had better get going on, and right away.

Son of a bitch.

 

1636 The Devil’s Opera – Snippet 54

1636 The Devil’s Opera – Snippet 54

Chapter 29

          Franz gave the downbeat for the next-to-the-last song of the night, what Marla referred to as her mother’s favorite ballad, Those Were the Days.

          During the slow verse, Franz looked around as his bow made the slight tremolo under Marla’s voice. The Green Horse was standing room only tonight, as the up-timers would have said — if any had been able to get in, that is. But with the exception of Marla and Atwood, the crowd tonight was all down-timers.

Some he recognized: the table at the front where Friedrich von Logau and Johann Gronow were planted with several of their friends; the CoC men who were scattered throughout the crowd; even the cabbie that had brought Atwood from the pier to the house had managed to squeeze in and was standing in a corner with a couple of friends.

Marla was winding up the verse. Franz stopped the tremolo, poised to put a foundation of broad bow strokes under the beginning of the chorus. He could see her take the deep breath that led into it. And . . . now!

“Those were the days, my friend,”

They were off. For all that the lyrics seemed a bit maudlin in their constant dwelling on the past, even in German translation, Franz couldn’t deny that the chorus could almost raise a corpse. It was a chorus made for singing along, and sure enough, at the end of the second verse, when they hit the chorus half the men in the tavern were singing right along with Marla, from Logau and his pals to the cabbie in the back corner.

When they hit the chorus the third time, everyone was singing, even Franz, who, as he had remarked before, had the voice of a raven or crow. It was the only time he allowed himself to sing in public, when the public was being so loud he couldn’t be heard.

After the last verse, Marla cycled through the chorus three more times, the last two on the “Lai, lai” syllables. If it was possible, the roar from the crowd got even louder. Franz cast a sideways glance at the walls. He didn’t think it was possible for them to bulge, but . . .

Marla took to a high note on “Oh . . .”and held it. Even over the roar of the men her voice penetrated, and within a short time they had all quieted. She glanced sideways at Franz, who gave a nod back. With that, she drew the song to an end with “. . . yes, those were the days!”

The players all snapped to a halt with her, and there was a bare moment of silence before the patrons of the tavern erupted into applause; claps, shouts, whistles, and very quickly a rhythmic stomping of feet. This went on for a timeless moment. Franz’s ears were starting to ring when Marla held her arms up at an angle, and just stood there.

Bit by bit the noise died down: first the stomping; then the whistling; then the shouting; and finally the clapping slowly faded away. A roomful of flush-faced men, hot and sweaty, sat and gazed on Marla. Franz had to chuckle to himself — it was a good thing that he wasn’t the jealous type.

At last Marla lowered her arms. Franz knew she was going to say something, but he didn’t know for sure what would come out. For that matter, he wasn’t sure she knew what she was going to say.

“Thank you,” Marla began. Someone in the back of the room started to clap again, but she held up a hand. “Please, just listen to me for a few minutes.”

The noise died down. Franz watched as she brushed her hair back behind her ears. At this moment, he was perhaps prouder of Marla than he had ever been in his life. He didn’t — couldn’t — know what she had been through the last few months. His own grief had been bad enough, but it wasn’t even a tithe of what she had felt; he knew that much. And yet now she stood before these men, mostly rough working class men, to try and do something she thought was very important. He tucked his violin and bow under his arm and clasped his hands behind his back, crippled left cradled in whole right, squeezing them together as hard as he could as he breathed a silent prayer for the woman that had proven herself to be far braver than he.

“I’m not very fond of politics,” Marla started again. A chuckle ran through the room. “I mean, I find them boring, and tedious, and most politicians are stuffy people. At least they mostly were up-time, and except for Mike and Ed, they mostly are down-time from what I can see.” The laughter got louder.

“But,” she stopped and swallowed, “every once in a while something happens that forces people like me to pay attention. Every once in a while someone does or says something so wrong, so raw, so evil, so . . . I don’t know . . . hellish, maybe, that even people like me will take a stand.”

The room was utterly quiet. It seemed as if the mob of men sitting and standing cheek by jowl were all holding their collective breath, hanging on Marla’s every word. Franz even found himself not breathing, until he noticed and let his air out.

“I’m talking about what’s been happening in Berlin,” Marla continued.

If it was possible, attention in the room got even sharper.

“I’m not a wordsmith. I’m not a philosopher, or preacher, or poet, or playwright. But I can recognize good words when I see them, and I found some in an up-timer song. So I give you tonight — tonight and every night — Do You Hear the People Sing?”

Marla bowed her head for a moment, then raised it again. She took a deep breath, then nodded without looking around. Franz gave the nod to the others, and they began the low unison tones that gave Marla the foundation for the beginning.

“Do you hear the people sing?

****

          Franz was awe-struck. He knew just how good a musician, how fine a singer, his wife was. And he had heard her rise above even her usual superlative level of performance before. But tonight, tonight she had elevated to another plane entirely; or perhaps a different world. He could hear the passion in her voice, he could hear the joy that she was pouring out like a very fountain, but tonight there was a keenness, a honed edge to her. She stood still as she sang, unlike her normal flowing movements; hands outstretched, no movement other than the rise and fall of her chest and diaphragm.

At the end of it, when Marla had finished pouring forth her soul like a fountain of liquid diamond, it was as if the voice of heaven had stopped; the world seemed darker and poorer for it. She stood there, breast heaving as she gulped air in, hand shaking as she tucked a loosened lock of hair back behind her ear again.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 04

The Forever Engine – Snippet 04

THREE

September 20, 1888, Wessex, England

A constable appeared outside my door after Gordon left. I needed some time alone anyway. Either I really was one hundred and thirty years back in time or I was in the hands of intelligence operatives who had gone to a lot of trouble to fool me.  As unlikely as that second option seemed, it was at least physically possible. But time travel?  Absolutely unbelievable . . . except for the coin.

The coin. Reggie’s ring had made it through with me, and my allphone sort of had. What about the coin?  Gordon hadn’t mentioned it, or anything else that might have come through.

I picked at my dinner, which was a small meat pie – some sort of bird, I assumed, since the top of the pie was garnished with its little amputated feet. Nice touch. It was okay, but there were too many things on my mind for me to have much appetite. Was it time travel, or was I enmeshed in the gears of the most complicated and improbable intelligence scheme I’d ever heard of? Never in my life had I so wished to be in the clutches of ruthless and diabolical villains; the alternative really sucked.

If I was in the past, which past was I in, mine or that coin’s? There was the business with the Royal Military Academy being at Woolwich instead of Sandhurst, but the more I thought about it the less sure I was that proved anything. I didn’t know where it was a hundred and thirty years ago – why not Woolwich?

I’d been thinking about the war talk as well. We’d never gone to war with Britain since the War of 1812, but we’d had some diplomatic bumps. I just wasn’t sure if any of them were this serious – or if this one was as serious as Gordon had portrayed it. He hadn’t said there was a war, only that he expected one. Maybe that was just his wishful thinking. This might still be the unaltered past.

But if the event wave hadn’t hit my present, how had I gotten here? Possibly the malfunction at WHEECOL was simply that, a massive accident which I’d managed to survive. If so, this was my unaltered past and I was, as Reggie’s SAS troopers in Afghanistan used to say, proper fucked. No one in my unaltered past would have the means of building a high energy particle accelerator, even if I had any idea how to go about doing it. My only hope was the event wave had already passed and altered this past enough to give me something – anything – to work with.

But if it had, why did I still have my memories? Why did I even exist? Was the event wave still someplace between 1888 and 2018? If so, how long did I have before it caught up to my childhood, my life? When it did, would it wipe me out? Or would those early memories fade first, one at a time, until it got to the Wessex event itself and then erase whatever was left of me.

When the nurse took away my dinner dishes I asked for paper and pencil. I thought that if I could write down the critical information then I could read it and keep acting, even if my memory of those events started to go. Or if it was going to snuff me out, I should write about that world I’d lived in, leave some concrete record of it having existed. The paper and the graphite in the pencil were from this time; the event wave wouldn’t erase them. It wasn’t a living, intelligent being, just a force of nature, like an avalanche.

For a long time I stared at the blank paper. Where should I even start? What was there to say about the entire history of a world which stood in danger of extinction? What was it about that world which made it so important I had to preserve it? Finally I picked up the pencil and began to write.

Dear Sarah,

I can’t imagine you will ever read this, but just writing it makes me feel closer to you, across the unimaginable gulf which separates us. There are things about me I need to tell you, should have told you before I left for England, but I put them off out of fear and shame. But as I sit here and think of you, of the young woman you have become, I know you are strong enough to hear them. . . .

#####

Two days later Gordon returned with a suit of civilian clothes. I was already up and in my robe but he tossed the clothes on the bed.

“Put those on. We’re taking the Express to London.”

I’d grown impatient, was anxious to start on whatever journey lay before me, but my heart still sank a bit. There had still been the faint possibility I was in my own world and had simply been fooled into thinking otherwise. Now that possibility was gone. Someone could have dummied up a hospital room to look like a century ago and hired a dozen actors to play their parts – London was a different proposition. So I was in the past. Now the question was, which past?

“Hurry up, damn you,” Gordon snapped. “We haven’t got all day.”

“A little touchy today are we, Captain?” I asked as I started to dress. “Have the boys upstairs overruled your plans for a hanging?”

“Never fear, you’ll have your trial and then we’ll hang you. It will be closed door, of course; we have some experience dealing with spies. But first there are some gentlemen who would like to ask you a few more questions.”

“I’ll be happy to talk to your people in London,” I told Gordon, “but I’ve already told you everything I know. I don’t have much more to give.”

He didn’t answer me; he just smiled. Actually it was a nasty little smirk, which wasn’t a good sign. I’d read enough Flashman novels to know what that meant. Those old-time Brits had a code of honor and standards of behavior, unless they didn’t think you were a gentleman. In that case they didn’t feel much need to act like gentlemen themselves, so this could get pretty ugly. Making a run for it started sounding good.

 

The Forever Engine – Snippet 03

The Forever Engine – Snippet 03

TWO

Somewhere in England

I lay in a bed, my eyes bandaged. Those bandages on my eyes frightened me more than anything else, more than the waves of pain that washed over me and made me cry out and try to sit up. Someone spoke, someone pricked my arm, the pain left, and for a while I floated in a narcotic fever dream.

In the dream Sarah needed a bigger bed. I got one of those kits from Ikea, and Tommy Nash, my platoon sergeant, came over to help. We had the parts spread all over the floor, trying to figure out which peg G went into which socket M, while Sarah stood in the doorway watching. She was small, though, only about six years old, with short brown hair like mouse fur. How could she go to college when she was so tiny?

After ten minutes, she asked, “How many hillbillies does it take to put together a bed?”

I laughed and grabbed for her, but she ran away giggling.

I turned back to Tommy, but he was dead, his legs blown off by an RPG round. He lay on the riverbank and his blood stained the water of the Darya-ye Helmond pink, but only for about ten meters downstream. Then it turned back to the same muddy brown as always, and you’d never even know he’d been there.

Then I was back in the bed of pain. People spoke to me. I answered, but don’t remember what I said or if it made any sense. Probably not.

Eventually my senses sharpened and I asked whoever was there not to give me any more of the pain medication. Hard to do. I liked the meds, had started looking forward to my shots.

The more my thinking cleared, the less everything around me made sense. Where was I? What happened to me? I couldn’t see because of the bandages, but what did my other senses tell me?

I was still in England. The nurses’ rural accents were barely intelligible and the food was terrible. The fare that morning, stewed kidney paste on toast, smelled like urine. Who but the Brits would eat that stuff?

The scent of alcohol, soap, and another strong chemical I couldn’t place hung in the air, but I didn’t hear any of the normal background noises – PA systems, monitor beeps. The breeze brushing my face and the smell of flowers meant an open window instead of central air. That was odd. And just as odd, they actually injected the pain medication with hypodermics. Why not just add it to my IV drip?

No IV drip.

Maybe I was in better shape than I thought.

A doctor – older fellow from his voice – talked with me about my burns. My back and upper arms would scar, but not my face. My hair was already growing back. They expected my eyesight to recover, though they wouldn’t know for certain until the bandages came off. I asked about Reggie and the others. He declined to discuss any other cases, but only after enough of a hesitation to make me fear the worst.

Had my daughter been notified? The doctor didn’t know but promised he’d look into it.

A police inspector interviewed me. Beyond the large explosion, he had no idea what happened. I couldn’t fill him in, not without going to prison for violation of the Official Secrets Act, but I told him I’d talk to someone from military intelligence out of London. I repeated my request twice before he got it. Apparently the British police did not reserve their most intellectually promising officers for service in rural Wessex.

The doctor removed the bandages from my eyes the next day. Even through blurry eyes my surroundings looked wrong. No monitors. The bed wasn’t adjustable, just a brass poster with no railings to restrain restless patients. The nurses wore long sleeves, long dresses, and long hair tucked up under little round white caps. Maybe a private Mennonite hospital?

Yeah, maybe. But that damned coin suggested an alternative. I tried to avoid dwelling on the implications but couldn’t. Had there really been an event wave passage? Was I in an altered world, and if so, how altered? But if the world had really changed, why did I remember the way it had been? Why weren’t my memories changed? No, none of that made sense.

The military intelligence guy showed up the following day: a slender, dark-haired captain in his late twenties named Gordon, in his own words “sent out from Horse Guards.”

My vision had improved to about eighty percent or so. He wore a red uniform tunic and dark blue trousers, like the foot guards in front of Buckingham palace. Why send someone from the Guards? Why wear the ceremonial uniform? And besides, the Horse Guards wore blue, not red.

I had learned enough British history to remember the Horse Guards barracks once housed the headquarters of the British Army. “Horse Guards” had been shorthand for Army Headquarters — but not for the last hundred years. So maybe that had changed – or not changed, I guess.

Gordon started. “You understand, Mr. Fargo, that this whole affair is quite a serious matter. The village of Somerton was all but destroyed, between the blast and fires. Over a hundred people died and Copley Wood is still burning. Now what’s all this nonsense about some Secret Law?”

He took out a pocket humidor, stuck a cheroot in his mouth, and lit the cigar from a big, sulfurous match. In a hospital!

A nurse came in with a pitcher of water and when she didn’t bat an eye at the cigar, my pulse increased and sweat broke out on my forehead. I remembered Reggie’s words: it’s something of a time machine. My breathing became labored, as if my ribs had fused and would not expand to inflate my lungs. A hundred years? No, too crazy.  But that damned coin . . .

“Are you unwell, Mr. Fargo?” Gordon’s tone told me the question was pro forma; he didn’t really give a damn.

“What year is it?”

“You don’t remember?”

“What year is it, goddammit?”

“No need to be a bore.” Disdain saturated his voice. “It is 14 September, the year of our Lord 1888.”

Sarah! Somehow I had to get back to my daughter. Crazy. She wouldn’t be born for another century, or might not be born ever, but I couldn’t believe that. As hopeless as it might sound, one thought came to me and stuck: wherever I was, whenever I was, if there was a way here, there had to be a way back.

Gordon was talking again and I knew I had to pay attention. I needed an ally, and Gordon was my best candidate.

“I’m sorry, Captain, what were you saying?”

“I wonder if you could identify this item.”

Careful to keep the object out of my reach, he held up a flat sliver of aluminum and plastic. He needn’t have bothered – there wasn’t anyone in this century to call, even if the plastic buttons and screen weren’t melted and fused into the frame. A bandage covered a still-healing burn on my right hip about where the phone had rested in my pocket.

“It’s my . . . oh boy. It’s called an allphone. It’s a communication device and . . . um, a web access tool.”

“I see.” Gordon made no attempt to hide his disbelief. “And this ring found beside you. Can you identify it?” He handed Reggie’s ring to me. Soot still blackened the crevices. My throat tightened,

“It’s a class ring of a friend. You say it was beside me. My friend . . ?”

“Deceased. All we found was the one arm and part of a skull, both badly charred. What does the inscription signify?”

Reggie dead? Reggie was . . . indestructible.

I looked up from the ring. What an odd question from a British officer.

“RMA Sandhurst? It means the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.”

He frowned. “Interesting. And the number 2006?”

“His year of graduation,” I watched his face for reaction. Mounting anger replaced his disbelief.

“Two thousand and six you say? AD? What do you take me for?”

What did I have to lose? Nothing. So I told him everything – who I was, when I’d been born, why Reggie had called me in, what the Wessex project was attempting, and the little I knew about what went wrong. I left out the part about trying to change the past back to what it had been, not knowing whether this time was part of the reality I wanted to save or the one I would have to extinguish to do so.

All that took a while. By the time I was done he was on his second cheroot and his anger had given way to contempt. He sat and smoked his cigar for a while, saying nothing. It’s a good interrogation technique – people like to fill the silence with sound. I filled it with my own silence. After a few minutes he gave in.

“You expect me to believe all this rubbish?”

“Not really.”

“Then why waste my time with it?”

“It’s all I’ve got, Captain Gordon. The truth. Who could make something like that up?”

“Some arrogant American scoundrel could. You think foreigners will believe any silly twaddle you invent. An attack on an English village gone wrong, an attempt to shift the blame to the British military — you could at least have done some research. The Royal Military Academy is at Wollwich, not Sandhurst.”

Anti-American bias on top of everything else. So much for my potential ally. Time to change direction.

“Maybe you better put me in touch with the American embassy.”

“That will be difficult, as I am sure you already know. Your ambassador was sent packing a month past. I shall be greatly surprised if we are not at war with the United States within the fortnight.”

My startled expression pleased him.

“You are under arrest for espionage, Fargo, if that really is your name. I don’t know what happened at Somerton village or why all those people had to die. We’ll get to the bottom of it, though, I assure you. And I will see you swing for it.”