Beth Ciotta - His Clockwork Canary

“Distant cousin.”

“Michelle met him, you know. She was in charge of security.”

“Of the time machine?” Simon asked.

“No,” Willie said. “Of the Time Voyager himself. Right, Daddy?” She caught Simon’s gaze and noted his surprise. She realized suddenly that they’d never discussed any ties between her mother and his cousin. Their focus had been on the Briscoe Bus clockwork propulsion engine.

“You mustn’t hold that against your mother-in-law,” Michael said to Simon. “She was only doing her job. She was in charge of security and Briscoe was a national treasure, of sorts. He traveled through time, jumped dimensions. Gadzooks! No wonder they wanted to pick the man’s brain.”

“Who?” Simon asked.

“The agency Michelle worked for.”

“And what agency was that?” Willie asked. “I don’t recall.” In fact she never knew. Only that it was a British firm.

Michael held a shushing finger to his lips. “Top secret, that.”

“More coffee?” Phin asked, filling Michael’s cup before the man could decide. “I’m thinking a secret branch of the Metropolitan Police,” Phin prompted.

“No,” Simon said. “Mrs. Goodenough was at the top of her craft. National level, I’d wager. There was mention of an elite agency in the Book of Mods. MI5?”

“She went by Agent Price then,” Michael said, looking off as though somewhere else. “And she worked for the best.”

“The Mechanics,” Willie whispered.

Michael held up another shushing finger, then looked to Phin. “Are there any more eggs?”

Willie’s pulse raced with a surge of relief and excitement. She and Wesley had been right. Their mother had worked for Her Majesty’s Mechanics. Although in the twentieth century, not this century. Not everything had been a lie. Her mind scrambled, trying to connect the dots of her father’s scattered disclosures. She glanced across the table at Simon. He looked almost as far away as her father. Gads.

“According to the preachings of the Peace Rebels,” Simon ventured whilst Phin dished out more scrambled eggs, “the time machine was secured and locked away by the British government whilst Briscoe escaped and disappeared.”

“Quite the opposite, dear boy. That was the brilliance of my Michelle. What did you add to these eggs, Phineas? The flavor is most pleasing. I must know.”

Rigid now, Simon pushed out of his chair. “Excuse me.”

Phin traded a look with Willie, then tried to distract her father with his secret recipe whilst she hurried after Simon. By the time she caught up to him, he was outside in the rear garden. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I have to contact my brother.”

Her mouth went dry as he pulled some sort of palm-sized device from his pocket, much like the one Strangelove had given her. Had he found her telecommunicator? But no. This device was different. “What is that?” she asked as he toggled a switch.

He warded her off with a raised hand and turned his back. “Jules?”

She heard a squeal and then static. Then Simon calling his brother again, followed by more static.

“Damnation.” His shoulders slumped as he slid the device back into his pocket. He jammed a hand through his hair, making it stand every which way. “He couldn’t have made the leap already. It’s too soon.”

“What leap? What . . .” Heart pounding, she moved around and faced him. “What are you talking about, Simon?”

“My brother traveled to Australia to meet with Professor Merriweather.”

“Maximus Merriweather? The Peace Rebels’ genius scientist?”

He nodded. “Jules was convinced that Merriweather has the knowledge and expertise to build him a time machine, a machine that would transport him into the future. To 1969, to be exact.”

Time travel. Exactly what the Peace Rebels had meant to prevent by destroying the Briscoe Bus. At least that’s what they’d preached. Meanwhile the Houdinians had absconded with the most vital mechanism. Willie’s brain hurt trying to make sense of it all. Jules seriously intended to breach 1969? “For what purpose?”

“To obtain the Time Voyager’s original clockwork propulsion engine and to bring it back to our time.”

“But why?”

“In order to win the jubilee prize. To restore honor to the Darcy name. To secure our family’s future and fortune. Christ. ”

Unsettled by his panic, she reached up and palmed the sides of his face. Even though her right shoulder screamed, she ignored the pain. “Talk to me, Simon.”

“My brother is risking his life to leap into the future, to retrieve something that isn’t there. Don’t you understand, Willie? The Peace Rebels didn’t re-create Briscoe’s design. They stole the original clockwork propulsion engine. The engine that your mother and the other two Houdinians pinched from the Briscoe Bus, the engine they hid and protected all these years, is the engine. The Time Voyager’s engine. There is only one.”

Willie held Simon’s gaze, though her mind raced in several directions. “The depth of intrigue is beyond my immediate comprehension. But we’ll sort this out. It would seem destiny brought us together for some grand purpose, Mr. Darcy.”

He smiled at that, a pained smile, but at least she’d chased away some of the tension. He placed his hands over hers, saying, “How romantic, Mrs. Darcy,” then leaned in for a kiss.

Probably her imagination, but she’d swear she’d felt a merging of souls and purpose as their lips parted and their tongues met. Aye. Surely her cross-dimensional, love-struck imagination.

• • •

To think that he’d once thought his life in London exhilarating. Simon had felt more alive in the past two days—more challenged, more aware, more emotionally invested—than in any given moment in the last ten years. For once, the world did not revolve around his problems, his projects, his race for glory. In the last three hours alone his eyes had been opened and his focus turned outward.

The outrageous and unacceptable treatment of his wife by an establishment that barred her kind had seeped into his brain, forever changing his status as a passive bystander. Not that he had ever approved of intolerance or prejudice in any form, but, to date, he’d done nothing viable to advocate the rights of Freaks. That would change.

He had felt good about warming Mr. Goodenough’s house by stocking his hearths and for establishing a friendly relationship even though he wasn’t convinced the man would remember him upon their next visit. Indeed, Michael Goodenough’s mind worked in mysterious ways. His inability to accept his wife’s absence chained him to the past. Her past, their past. Making sense of his ramblings was like reading every other chapter of a book. The overall story was pitted with holes, leaving it to the reader to puzzle the missing parts. As it happened, Simon was a fan of working puzzles. Part of what had drawn him to being an engineer. In kind, Willie’s journalistic experience spoke of an inquisitive and analytic mind. Between the two of them and Phin, bolstered by Simon’s suspicion that Willie had time-traced her father on the sly, Simon was confident they would conquer the mystery of the Houdinians and the clockwork propulsion engine. Somehow Simon would make things right for his family and Willie’s family whilst acting in the best interest of mankind. He could think of no finer tribute to his father.

As for his brother . . . not wanting to unnecessarily compromise Jules’s position in HMM, Simon had decided to give it until the next morning before taking extreme measures. If he had not reached his brother by then, he would consider the situation an emergency and contact the only other Mechanic he knew. He’d ferret out the secret headquarters and storm the doors if he had to, whatever it took to cover his brother’s arse.