Thirty Days Later: Steaming Forward: 30 Adventures in Time Read online

  “One did not,” she said.

  “But if one had, I should forgive it. These Americans, they do not understand true genius.” His lip curled. “My offer stands, Miss Grey.” Bowing low, he swept from the room.

  “See what I’m dealing with?” I muttered.

  “Mr. Crane, I do not think—”

  “No time. Where the Honorable Eddy goes, I go.” I hurried outside and found him striding into a hell, where he bought drinks for all. And that was this fellow’s other irritating habit. He was free with silver, but as Emperor, he never carried any. His lackeys were expected to pay for him, and that meant I had to foot the bill. Fortunately, the US Army fort nearby had orders to recompense me, but their patience with the Honorable Eddy was wearing thin.

  The next day, I set my plan in motion. I baited him with a hunting party and an aether gun my partner had confiscated from Miss Grey. Eduardo agreed, enthusiastically, and we rode south. He practiced with the aether weapon, shooting branches off the oaks.

  Zzzt! Crash!

  He was a deuced good shot. I admit I was growing a trifle nervous on my fellow conspirator’s behalf.

  But my pal, Nightfoot, was a pro. I’d just borrowed the weapon from Eduardo, as planned, when Nightfoot dropped from an oak, shrieking like a dozen outraged braves.

  The Honorable Eddy’s horse reared, dumping him unceremoniously to the leaf-strewn ground.

  Nightfoot was on the Emperor before I could react. It was a good thing we were on the same side. He gripped old Eddy’s hair and yanked his head back, the sharp edge of a knife poised at the Honorable’s hairline.

  “That’s no way to treat a friend of the old Chief,” the Honorable said in a flawless rendition of the Ohlone dialect.

  I nearly fell from my saddle.

  Startled, Nightfoot released his grip of the man’s hair. And to my horror, fifteen minutes later the two were chatting like long-lost Army pals.

  Nightfoot didn’t give me away, thank heaven. But he did slap my shoulder harder than necessary when we parted, pledging fidelity.

  We rode on, killing a wild pig or three with Miss Grey’s device, and then returned to San Francisco for another demonic night of carousing.

  The next morning, I staggered to the boarding house, stopping only to lose my breakfast beside a watering trough.

  Miss Grey sat at the long table, staring morosely at a rasher of bacon.

  Stomach roiling, I collapsed onto a bench across from her. “We’re sunk.”

  “I was afraid your plan wouldn’t work.” She turned a mug of tea between her slim hands. “What happened?”

  I told her the whole, sorry tale. “So those other ideas of yours … Care to share them?”

  She cocked her head. “It might be easiest if I speak to the man myself.”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  Well, the Honorable was over the moon about the aether weapon and wanted one of his own. He quickly agreed to another visit to Miss Grey.

  He swaggered into the parlor, as full of himself as someone who’d slaughtered three wild pigs with an aether gun can be. “Miss Grey, your reputation has not been exaggerated. You are a lady of true genius. For the defense of my nation I intend to purchase one thousand of your aether weapons.”

  She smiled. “A significant purchase indeed. But first, can you tell me which nation you intend to purchase them for?”

  “On behalf of Neruda, of course!”

  “I do not think so, sir. Let us end this charade now. You may well have made yourself an emperor of Neruda, but you are as American as Mr. Crane. And I do not believe the United States government will view your depredations on their courtesy or their purse kindly. Now why have you really come to the California Territory?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it.

  I stared. “American?”

  “Your report of his knowledge of the local Indian dialect only confirmed what I suspected. Neruda is a small nation and an unstable one. Leaders come and go as regularly as the changing seasons. If he is indeed — or was — its so-called Emperor, then I warrant he will not be for much longer. Your government has nothing to gain by hosting him.”

  The Honorable went white.

  I rubbed my face. “But … but … the Ambassador’s letter!”

  She waved her hands. “Ambassadors! What sort of man is appointed ambassador to a country the size of Neruda, where the only resource is an emerald mine?”

  I had a sickening feeling she’d tell me.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said. “The sort of person who plans to become the place’s next Emperor. That is how you rose to power, Mr. Eduardo, is it not?”

  Eddy didn’t respond.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Our last ambassador to Neruda … disappeared during the revolution.” I folded onto a chair and rubbed my temple. It was true. I pointed at the man. “You’re under arrest.”

  “Under arrest?” He gave a Kentucky-bluegrass yelp. “What for?”

  “I’ll think of something.” But here’s the rub. No one likes to learn they’ve been made a fool of, least of all the Army’s top brass. Eddy would spend time in the stockade, but my superiors weren’t going to look kindly on me either.

  “Or …” Miss Grey began.

  “Or?” I asked.

  “This gentleman can write a letter stating his intention to catch the soonest ship home, and disappear.”

  “I ain’t going back,” the Honorable said.

  “Then return to your old identity,” she said. “Or take a new one.”

  He gaped at me. Glared at her. “Got a piece of paper?”

  So that’s what happened. I thought I saw Eddy two weeks later, wearing miner’s clothes and haggling over a mule.

  I looked the other way.

  The Clockwork Writer, Part II

  by Steve DeWinter

  I positioned myself in the protective embrace of a storefront stoop on Whitechapel Road across the street from the only place still open at this time of night. Across the street was the same inn that had served patrons for over two hundred years. It was also the place where my twin brother, Joseph, and I were supposed to have our final showdown if my brother followed the clockwork writer’s exact instructions to the letter.

  At least I assumed this was to be our final showdown. I hadn’t seen him in several days. It might have well been years with how quickly he changed in the month since we found the mechanical boy with its ill-fated quill. I know now why our father never mentioned the existence of the doll, if he even knew it was in the attic in the first place.

  Nothing the clockwork writer told us to do ended well for others. The loss of a gold bar from the Bank of London resulted in several people losing their livelihood. And since management considered it an inside job, their freedom as well.

  My brother had many more questions for the clockwork writer and it quickly became apparent the writer maintained a balance in the universe with each response his quill scrawled on the paper. Each instruction that afforded us prosperity always resulted in someone else suffering for our gain. I stopped asking the writer any questions after the ferry sank in the Thames, drowning dozens of people. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else, no matter the personal benefit to Joseph and I through increased taxi fares, which happened to be our family enterprise. It took longer to take a carriage ride through town and over the bridges, but after the third ferry accident in as many days, taxis were the preferred way to go for safe travel over the water.

  Joseph didn’t see things the same way; he kept asking for more from the doll, and willingly did everything the writer asked of him. When his seemingly innocent action of dropping a steel bar down a sewer drain resulted in the derailment of the recently constructed underground Metropolitan Railway, another threat to our now thriving taxi company, I was determined to stop letting the clockwork writer dictate his actions.

  But Joseph refused to listen to me and chose instead to listen to the clockwork writer. As if he could write a better
ending for our lives than the hard work we had put into the family business.

  It was then I realized that if I couldn’t stop the writer, I had to stop the reader. And to do that, I had to ask a question of the infernal apparatus that I never thought I would ask.

  I lifted my collar against the bitter cold whistling through the streets of London and watched the entrance to the inn across the way. I held up the most recent note from the mechanical boy who had stared at me emotionlessly from his tiny writing desk as I removed it and read it again. “Tomorrow night, when the clock strikes two in the morning, go where the blind beggar resides on white. Bring a gun.”

  The note had to be talking about the Blind Beggar Inn on Whitechapel Road. I remembered glancing up at the wall over the fireplace. Grandfather’s intricately carved dueling pistols sat on their velvet stands. At least one of them did. The other was missing. I knew my brother had taken it before leaving the note for me to find. He knew I wanted to prevent him from using the mechanical boy and, with the disappearance of one of the pistols from above the fireplace, I knew how far he was willing to go to stop me.

  A shadow appeared at the end of the street, and every muscle in my body tensed as I prepared for our final showdown. I took a step out of the storefront before the shadow resolved into a woman of the evening and her escort, both stumbling drunkenly into the inn. I let out the breath I had been holding, only to have it catch again as someone spoke suddenly behind me.

  “Turn around. Slowly,” a harsh voice commanded.

  I slowly spun and Joseph took a hasty step backward as he raised his arm. I stared past the barrel of the hundred-year-old flintlock dueling pistol and into the emotionless gaze of my twin brother. I envisioned the twin of this same pistol as it hung on the wall above the fireplace where our grandfather had them professionally mounted. And where I had left it before coming here.

  Had I heeded the final message from the clockwork writer, I would look like the mirror image of my twin brother pointing a loaded pistol at my head. Instead I had refused to follow a direct order, was now unarmed, and about to pay the ultimate price for my disobedience.

  My brother’s hand was rock steady as he squeezed the trigger without remorse. I watched in slow motion as the hammer snapped forward a heartbeat before the gun’s discharge would blind me at the same moment the bullet would end my life.

  The gun clicked softly without result. My brother glared at the pistol as if it had betrayed him instead of him betraying me. He aimed and pulled the trigger again. But the pistol failed once more to fire. Then his face scrunched up in pain and he dropped the pistol as if it was on fire. He looked at the skin bubbling up on the palm of his hand and then looked at me in alarm.

  I held out a piece of paper to him. “There was another note from the clockwork boy before the one that brought us here tonight. I’m sorry, Joseph. I can’t let you keep doing whatever he tells you to do.”

  He snatched the note from my outstretched hand and read it, his other hand curled against his chest as his face contorted from the pain. He held up the note, waving it in front of my face. “What is this?”

  I licked my lips. “It’s the formula for a very specific and fast acting contact poison.”

  He looked again at the last line of the note as he read it aloud, grunting from the pain. “Take the guns from above the fireplace. Coat the flint in wax and dip the handles in the mixture prescribed below. Replace both guns above the fireplace mantle.”

  His muscles clenched tightly and involuntarily, crumpling the paper in his grip. His only response was to laugh as he regarded his injured hand. I watched in horror as the skin purpled and separated like waxed paper and curled away from the muscle. He looked up at me with a renewed appreciation. “You kept a secret from me. I didn’t think you could. Neither did grandfather. That’s why he only told me about the clockwork boy. You would have told the whole city and ruined it for us all. Just like father when he took over the taxi company. He refused to use the doll to keep business flowing and tucked it away in the attic. Grandfather entrusted its secret to me. He told me to use it to rebuild the business as soon as I had the chance. We almost didn’t get that chance. Father almost lost it on numerous occasions. But I got us back out of debt in only a month.”

  He coughed, his whole body convulsing as the poison filled his blood. His eyes rolled back and he pitched forward, sliding against the wall.

  I reached out to support my brother before he fell. He stood up straighter and pointed at me. “No! Don’t touch me!”

  I froze in place, wetness forming along the edges of my eyes. “I’m sorry, Joseph.”

  He slumped against the wall, and then stood up again before I could help him. “You — you did this? To me!”

  I blinked away the tears, but wasn’t able to bring myself to move towards him. “I didn’t want to.”

  He slumped down the wall again, the blood vessels of his face bursting under his skin and splattering his expression with dark red blotches. “Why? How?”

  “I asked him how to stop you without me having to harm you directly. I asked you to stop doing what he said. All you had to do was leave the pistol over the fireplace. You should never have let the clockwork writer dictate how your story ends.”

  The Shadows of the Moon

  by Michael Tierney

  In the month since Director Lawrence’s announcement that he had observed evidence of a civilization on the Moon, Susan Branham had had no rest. As a member of the observatory staff, she was used to spending her nights at the telescope. Now she had to work during her days as well, fending off inquiries from prying reporters, as well as from curious locals who had made the dusty trip up to the observatory from San Jose. All the while, Lawrence had held court at his home in San Francisco. He had only returned to the observatory once the month had passed and the time to observe Petavius Crater again was approaching. And he’s brought along a motley assortment of reporters and curious on-lookers in tow, she thought.

  He spoke to the crowd, “Miss Branham is on the staff at the observatory, a very capable young lady, and was assisting me that night. Miss Branham,” the director said, “please tell these gentlemen what it was like on the evening that I discovered the city in Petavius Crater.”

  She stuttered, and finally said slowly, “Yes, that is correct. I assisted the director in preparing the telescope for observing.”

  “Did you know at the time what a world-changing event you were witnessing?” asked a man writing into a brown bound notebook.

  “No, no, I did not. If you don’t mind, director, I promised Mr. Simpson I would assist him in calibrating the clock drive for this evening, and I am running late.”

  “Yes, of course, my dear.”

  She briskly walked away, lips pursed and tongue pressed firmly to the roof of her mouth. There were many things she’d like to say to the director, none of which were proper for a lady, even a modern woman who worked in science. Since the director had gone public with his so-called discovery, she and the rest of the observatory staff had had to suffer the scorn of their scientific colleagues.

  The astronomical establishment, led by the American Astronomical Society as well as their European counterparts (to whom word of Lawrence’s observations quickly spread) refuted his claims, stating that particular area of the Moon had been observed for centuries through ever more powerful telescopes, and never had anything like Lawrence’s fanciful drawings ever been seen. Besides, they sniffed, the Lick Observatory telescope, while of adequate quality, was manned by an inexperienced staff, and would scarcely be capable of resolving the details seen in the drawings.

  Susan bristled at being called inexperienced staff. She had studied long and diligently in what would usually be termed a man’s discipline, and was finally hired as the only woman on staff at the observatory. She performed her duties faithfully and her work identifying and cataloging double stars had earned praise. Inexperienced? She knew that the only person in this whole affair acting i
nexperienced was the director himself.

  She remembered that night with a clarity greater than she thought possible. She recalled the director’s strange giddiness when they started working. She had assisted him ably, she thought, anticipating his requests as he observed Petavius Crater. She had monitored the skies and had warned him when it appeared that the seeing was deteriorating. Then he started making such wild claims about cities on the Moon. Susan wondered at the time (and many times since) if his hard work at the observatory had brought on a type of nervous attack. She thought that he would ruin his reputation with such assertions. and begged him to be careful, “You are making extraordinary claims and should have correspondingly extraordinary evidence to support them.” But his previously jovial demeanor quickly soured. Lawrence accused her of questioning his scientific integrity. He ignored her suggestions to doubly check his observations, and was even so mean as to threaten the loss of her position. She remembered the fevered sketches that he had made. She thought them a fantasy, incorrect interpretations of geological formations. She was relieved when he finally retired to his rooms to finish his drawings.

  Relieved, because it gave her the chance to expose the two photographic plates that she had prepared, in hopes that they might provide a better means of recording than the eye and the pencil. Judging the brightness of the Moon through the eyepiece, she estimated the exposure, and opened the shutter just as Simpson entered the dome carrying an oil lamp.

  “Mr. Simpson! Safety light, please!”

  Simpson quickly blew out the flame. “I’m sorry, Miss Branham,” he said from the sudden darkness, “I thought the director had finished for the night.”

  “He has. But I have not, Mr. Simpson. I am attempting to photograph the surface of the Moon, but I fear your lamp has ruined the plate.” She slid the cover back and removed the cased plate from the mount. “I have just one other prepared.”