Robert Appleton: Prehistoric Clock

He wrestled her to arm’s length and, summoning all his hate, delivered an uppercut to her jaw with such force it felt as though his fist was made of iron. Her head snapped back, then she flopped at his feet.

“Cecil!” The boy ran to him, flung his arms around him.

“Hold tight, Billy.” Cecil picked the lad up and, calmly inside a torrent of inverted lilac rain, held him like he’d once held Edmond.

“What should I do?” Billy’s dampened words slurred with unearthly resonance, as though time itself were stretching them.

“Think of home, son. Just think of-”

Everything vanished in a blinding flash.

The second journey through time seemed to pass through an ocean of perpetual, curdled milk. Trapped with Cecil in that timeless, soundless oyster was the sum total of all the hopes and horrors his adventure had fed into the machine: befriending and losing his two sterling companions, Embrey and Verity; saving Billy, the very boy he’d made an orphan with his first time jump; the hideous, engorged baryonyx wreaking havoc in his factory; falling victim to Miss Polperro’s treachery; but also besting those myriad prehistoric hazards to repair his great machine. When all was said and done, even if he could never fully atone for ripping the heart out of London, he’d at least kept his word and conjured this second chance for everyone.

What happened next was out of his hands.

As the whiteness dulled, noises around the factory staggered in repetition as though time’s needle were stuck on a glitchy gramophone disc. Billy’s arms slipped from around Cecil’s waist. A draught whistled overhead, tossing dust. He coughed, then spun at the first uninterrupted roar this side of the time jump. Whenever here was.

Enraged, the barynoyx rampaged toward the aeronauts on the north side of the factory. It crushed one of the primary steam pipes, and backed away from the ensuing hot exhaust. Meanwhile, the aeronauts bolted for the rubble at the back of the factory, while the Whitehall posse-what was left of them-made for the front doors from whence the dinosaur had entered. It made after the latter group, probably following their coughs inside the dust cloud. But as it turned, its massive tail smashed into a primary piston shank. The impact uncoupled one of the steel scaffold supports, and the whole thing began to buckle, to topple…

With his injured leg, Cecil could never climb the pipes in time.

“Get away, Billy!” He grabbed the lad under his arms and hurled him sideways as far and as high as he could. Billy landed on the nearest pipe, his momentum sliding him over the other side.

Tonnes of brass and iron crushed Cecil’s trailing leg as he tried to escape. It hit with the pain of a thousand kiln burns all at once, and held him there, in hell, until his cry exhausted the air in his lungs. Then he cried again. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the grim, desperate face of his African friend, Tangeni, as the redoubtable aeronaut picked his way through the twisted wreckage of the time machine.

“Professor? Can you hear me? Professor?” A familiar voice-affected English, oddly enunciated vowels, almost amusing. “Professor Reardon?”

“Tangeni?”

He hadn’t been moved from the spot where he’d fallen, nor had the sweaty smell of soot and steam dissipated, nor could he yet tell to which destination the time machine had brought them. It was dark outside, beyond the mess of pipes and beams. A dozen black faces huddled in a semi-circle over him, greeting his gaze with either smiles or puzzled frowns. Tangeni’s torch flame lent the aeronauts a magnificent, mysterious air, as though they were indeed from another time, another world from Cecil’s.

“We all glad you okay, Professor,” one of the younger men said, an apprentice in Kibo’s engine room if Cecil recalled. “Billy and me-we make you up some sarsaparilla. It no longer fizz, but it still good.” He handed Cecil the cup.

“Thank you, young man.” When he tried to sit up, Cecil felt a tear in his right leg that knocked him sick. He yelped in pain and couldn’t stop coughing.

“Here. You need to drink something.” Tangeni pressed the cup to his lips, poured in a mouthful of sarsaparilla. “You’re badly hurt, Professor. The piston pinned your leg to the floor, almost severed it. I tied it with a tourniquet and the bleeding has stopped. But you’re in poor shape, I’m afraid. Reba and Philomena, they have gone for help. But Eembu taught me to always be honest in times like these-I think that whatever happens, you have lost that leg, Professor. Nothing can be done.”

Cecil shivered coldly, clasped Tangeni’s hand. Such terrible news and yet he took it well, only a vague regret of never being able to ride a penny farthing-something he’d always wanted to try but had never quite got around to-aching his heart. Punchdrunk priorities.

“Billy? Where’s Billy?”

“’Ere, Cecil. How are you feelin’?” The lad was watching from Cecil’s left, chin on hands atop a buckled beam.

“Like I’ve just slid down the biggest snake on the board.”

After a pause, “You can ’ave another throw if you like. You ’ave as many as you want.”

“Much obliged.” Sweet boy. Saving him from the clutches of Agnes Polperro had been a proud moment, one he would never forget. Speaking of which…

“Where is that she-devil?”

“Gone. Soon after the baryonyx left, one of her cronies woke up. I think it was the one you knocked cold, Professor.” Delaney. Tangeni had seen a lot. “He carried Miss Polperro out, that way.” He pointed at the front entrance. “Out into the centre of London.”

“Excuse me? Did you say-”

“Yeah, we did it, Cecil.” A note of barely-restrained defiance lifted Billy’s voice. “We proved that old witch wrong after all. It were nothin’. I pictured Embrey runnin’ there in the rain, right before ’e got into our car. That were just before the first time jump. It were easy. I could do it again any time, no problem.”

“So we’re back in London? The very same night?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Time-wise, they’d found the correct grain of salt on a sandy beach at night…in a hurricane?

“Not the same night, no,” Tangeni replied. “It is dry outside. No storm. And if this were even soon after the original time jump, would not the whole area be swarming with panicked people? With police? The military?”

“You’re right there, Tangeni.”

The African waved his torch away to the west, toward the centre of London. “It is only the factory and ourselves made it back. Eembu and Embrey, they-”

“I know. We lost them. I lost them, my friend.”

Tangeni held his head high, his bottom lip quivering.

“But I can get them back too.” Cecil didn’t have an inkling of how he might accomplish that feat, but the determination felt so inviolate inside every fibre of his being that he knew he’d either achieve it or die trying. Verity and Embrey had given him his chance to make amends, to return the survivors to London. They’d granted him this victory over time and over fate. Now it was his turn to repay the debt-a debt borne deep in his heart, for they would never be nearer and farther from him than they were at this moment.

He began to shiver uncontrollably. The faint sound of a dog barking reminded him where they were, what might be coming-the full wrath of the Leviacrum. It was time to think of the future.

“Tangeni, will you do what I ask? We don’t have much time.”

“Aye, Professor. Whatever you ask.”

“Is the Harrison Clock still intact, or is it crushed?”

“The Harris-”

“The device inside the cylindrical casing, a few feet behind you.”