Robert Appleton - Prehistoric Clock

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

“On my way, Ver-Captain.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Bury oryx…onyx.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Vengeance?”

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

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

“And that is?”

He swung round and almost swiped her with his elbow.

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