Robert Appleton - Prehistoric Clock

“If you’ll let me finish- for Christ’s sake- I simply meant to say, I would like a chance to finally explain myself. You’ve heard one side of the story, the poisoned version, and yet you carry on half-cocked and continually ridicule me in public. I’ll not stand for it a moment longer.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Oh, and I suppose my half-cocked rescue when you fell over the side counts for nothing? Those insults-they may have been hasty.”

“Are you saying you no longer hold my family responsible?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Then allow me to speak my piece. You need to be enlightened.”

“Ha! Please, by all means, enlighten me, Your Worship.” Her snootiness knew no bounds, but if he were in her position, he might very well react with the same scepticism.

“Very well,” he said. “You suffered a terrible loss in Benguela. And you understandably accepted the official story of my father’s collusion in the rebel attack. Not a single newspaper anywhere in the empire, to my knowledge, printed a dissenting article.” He paused to catch his breath. “But when you’ve known a man as closely and for as long as I knew my father, when his unblemished military record and love for the empire are unquestioned by everyone who knew him well, when Britannia’s prosecuting arm is twisted behind her back by a notoriously corrupt body like the Leviacrum Council, when evidence is demonstrably falsified and then whisked from further public scrutiny to ensure a quick execution, you can understand why I no longer have any love for the empire.”

“With all due respect, every family of a convicted man cries foul. Why should I take your word over that of the Council?”

“What rock have you been hiding under? Good Lord, woman.” Before she could retort, he gave a loud sigh. “Verity, you must have heard the rumours.”

“No.” The lines in her puzzled frown might as well have said, Made by the Corps. “Pray tell. I haven’t lived in London for years.”

“Well, the Leviacrum towers serve no practical purpose, do they? Thousands of feet tall and for what?”

“Why build anything ambitious?” She shrugged. “It needn’t imply a sinister motive.”

“Verity, you can’t afford to be this naive. If we return to 1908-”

“ When we return.”

“-the Leviacrum Council is going to arrest Reardon and execute me for treason against the Crown. Don’t you see? The Council is the Crown, the government, the empire. British subjects everywhere are unwittingly pledging their allegiance to a secret society turned dictatorial power. They have subverted our democracy through science-steam technology has revolutionized the empire, and most of the patents for those inventions have been bought or bribed from private citizens. Over eighty percent of the nation’s wealth is subordinate to the Council, in one way or another. Trust me when I say the Freemasons are tadpoles compared to the bigwigs controlling the Leviacra.”

He raked his hair behind his ears. “Shortly after my father returned from Angola, he was approached several times to join something called the Atlas Club, and the offers kept him up nights. I never did find out why, or what the club itself actually was. But when he refused for the umpteenth time, explaining he was already a member of too many clubs and societies…he suddenly found himself facing an indictment for treason. It was odd, though, I didn’t connect the two events until much later. But here’s the clincher-my Uncle Ralph was also approached about the Atlas Club in the run-up to his arrest. He’d turned it down, as well.”

He paused while a chorus of distant roars from the coast suggested large dinosaurs were engaged in vicious combat.

“This is all very…conspiratorial, Embrey. You’d have us believe the devil resides in that copper tower, and his minions stand watch at every street corner. I say, show a fool his shadow and he’ll show you a shady world.”

“And if it really is a corrupt world?”

Verity laughed. “Then the joke is on me. But I’d like to hear more about your father’s trial. You say evidence was falsified. Have you proof of this?”

“No. Like I said, the evidence disappeared after the trial. The two handwriting experts they used were never heard from again.”

“As you say-very odd.”

Despite her obtuse remarks, Embrey felt sure he’d made his case, and that was enough for now. They were on cordial speaking terms. No need to overstep his good fortune. And surely he could think of something more congenial than politics to engage a beautiful woman during a sunset.

“I wonder, Verity, if we’d met somewhere else-” he began carefully, “-on safari in Africa, say, or in South America…”

His mind blanked.

“Hmm?” She appeared to blink coquettishly without realising, which made his heart squirrel.

“I only meant to say that, a few years back, if we’d shot each other on safari- met — I mean met each other on safari…” Kill me now! “…I’d have asked permission to call on you.”

She stared at him. Embrey wondered how long it would take his body to hit the deck if he jumped to save his further humiliation. But…was she…blushing?

“Would I have been too bold?” he asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

She smirked. “On where our bullets had hit.”

My dearest Edmond,

A happy turn of events! Today, Miss Polperro and her Whitehall comrades agreed to help us collect timber from the western forest. Only three days have passed since our adventure on the great lake and already our two factions appear to have coalesced. No more bickering, at least. Embrey doesn’t entirely trust this truce-he says he’d rather work cheek by jowl with a pig than a politician-but I’m relieved to have an end to the animosity. And with Carswell’s discovery of a freshwater brook in that same woods, our makeshift industry is running very well indeed. Kibo’s constant conveyance of timber and water on his tri-wheel vehicle is a godsend. I estimate in three days’ time we should have enough materials to power my machine. That ought to be more than sufficient.

When you are old enough to understand the physics of my invention, I shall explain how difficult it has been to realign the lenses for refracting psammeticum energy, and also why I believe young Billy’s imagination-his conscious thought at the instant of the time jump-determined our destination. My Harrison clock must somehow, during the reaction, have tapped into the very “consciousness” of time itself. Not in any human or even God-like sense, that age-old, perhaps infinite dimension we call time must be some sort of medium of exchange. It is not merely a cold abstract. It has a direct, determinable link to every molecule and every minute flow of energy ever found in the universe. We can interface with it, inject our thoughts and memories into it, and it will accordingly effect a time shift around our localised reaction. Is cosmic psammeticum energy itself a part of the physical memory of the universe?

Among all the thoughts conjured by our learned minds during the time jump, those of a young boy determined our destination. This, to me, suggests a child’s imagination is the purer form of consciousness. It is uncluttered by adult ambivalence and ambiguity. And the spider’s web? Well, what could be purer than animal instinct? This great force we have tapped into seems to react strongest to the simplest motivations of the living brain. One of escape-Billy’s; and the economy of survival-the spider’s perfect web.

Those are my theories, at least. In a few days time, I shall put them to the test and have Billy conjure a vivid memory of London. Aught else and I fear Miss Polperro’s objection-that resting our entire endeavour on a child’s capricious mind is a folly-may well be proven correct. But there is no alternative. We cannot leave him behind, and we must therefore have faith in his powers of concentration.