Robert Appleton: Prehistoric Clock

His lips receded from his teeth. The molten metal in the vat below ran through his veins tonight. He’d just lied to the Leviacrum Council, staked his fortune and his life on a roll of the dice that might never come to pass.

But the device at the heart of his difference engine held more than just promise. It was destined, a family affair. He’d fashioned it after his famous ancestor’s blueprints for a celestial chronometer. John Harrison had invented the first accurate seafaring chronometers used by the British Navy in the late eighteenth century. Yet, unbeknownst to the public, he had also drawn up plans for a timepiece so accurate, so versatile, it could be adapted into a difference engine of mind-boggling application.

Cecil had achieved that and more besides. And the world’s first steam-powered temporal differentiator ticked away beneath him, the numbers on its brass dials hidden from official science like the invisible countdown of life was hidden from all living things. For now, God alone was privy to the correct sequence that would turn back history to before the crash. But finding those numbers, he knew, was only a matter of time.

He sat once more on his chair on the gangway and crossed his legs. How many days and nights had he waited here, watched over the instrument of his salvation? The hissing, whirring, clanking brain below seemed to speak to him. It said, “Everything within our power. Let God stop us if He must.”

Minutes passed like hours. He’d begun to nod off when a noxious fizz in the air made him cough. He eased to his feet and scowled at a strange lilac light seeping up through the steam like luminous grains in an upside-down hourglass. His pulse outpaced the machine’s rhythm for the first time in weeks. The light appeared to have emerged from… the Harrison clock? The only thing he could think of was to get to his differentiator and record the numbers. Something truly extraordinary had happened inside his machine, and he needed to know when and why.

In moments, the entire factory glowed with lilac webbing on the walls and rain that fizzed, burned on his skin. He pulled his dinner jacket over his head and rushed for the stairwell, never more frightened or excited in his life.

Before he left the gangway, a blinding purple flash blazed throughout the factory…

The propellers’ waspish drone comforted her like a familiar voice through the tumult outside. Kibo had suggested she rest awhile in his quarters at the rear of B-deck, as hers had flooded during the sea landing and the captain’s cabin had not yet been cleared. His bed was as neat and clean as his reputation suggested. Funny really, through the night’s chaos and the shocking loss of life on and below the raging Atlantic, how anything could remain so dry, so hospitable. She folded her arms under her head on the pillow and tried to make sense of the maelstrom of events. Bursts of apocalyptic imagery blazed in her mind’s eye: the exploding hydrogen envelopes of nearby airships, the decks capsizing in a sea-ring of orange flames, those underwater crimson flashes detonating in clusters like popping frog spawn. How many bombs had been set off, how many divers killed, how many crews lost in that concerted suicide mission?

It would take more time and distance to properly digest her part in the worst calamity ever suffered by the Gannet fleet. At least, according to initial reports, the pipeline had not been breached. And at least they had made it safely to the Dover amphibian hangar, along with Tangeni and his dirigible section. She heaved a sigh of relief for that. Her first officer had proven himself a formidable airship navigator. Their two halves of the Empress Matilda now reattached-the Dover crane crews were amazingly proficient compared with their colonial counterparts in Africa-Verity was making for the Gannet hangar on the bank of the Thames. The poor Dover boys had enough damaged craft to contend with. Relatively unscathed, the Matilda was ready for redeployment as soon as another crew could be found.

“Feeling any warmer, Eembu?” Tangeni stood dripping wet at the door.

“A little. I need to soak in a hot bath for a week, though.”

“This might help in the meantime.” He handed her a hot water bottle, then draped a second blanket over her. “Lieutenant Champlain, now Captain Champlain. You did amazing things tonight.”

“Thank you, and so did you. But it doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment, not when all those other crews-God, there were so many — ”

“Yes, but Eembu is not responsible for other crews. Empress Matilda performed her service with great aplomb-” she loved his ever-expanding vocabulary, “-and we are all still here because English women crazier than English men. In war, crazy always wins.”

“You think I’m crazy, Tangeni?” The notion rang eerily true, for she’d already confronted it during her underwater ordeal.

He shrugged and cast her a wide-eyed, questing gaze. “Sometimes crazy means not blinking. English are famous for not blinking in the face of enemies. So are Ovambo,” he said proudly. Then he rolled his eyes. “And who would fly on a balloon boat who wasn’t… how do you say…pots-for-rags?” Another English colloquialism he’d picked up, probably from her. She laughed out loud, exciting her tickly cough.

A junior crewman ran up to him. “Lieutenant Tangeni, come quick. Leviacrum tower is hailing us.”

Tangeni nodded and turned to leave. “Let me know if it’s anything urgent,” she reminded him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Through her porthole window, sheets of rain wavered over the gloomy city. Of the large, silhouetted buildings lining the riverfront, she first recognised the Westminster Observatory’s copper dome. Verity hadn’t seen London for over four years, but drifting toward Westminster, the heart of British regency, filled her with quiet awe. A patriotic swell she hadn’t experienced since Bernie’s funeral ached in her temples and behind her eyes.

The Houses of Parliament were deserted and only streetlamps illuminating rain-minted patches of road suggested life continued in the capital. She sighed, flipped onto her side to savour the view, and clutched the hot water bottle between her thighs. A flash of lightning lit Big Ben’s clock face. Only five past eight? The day had been dark for an eternity. She wondered if Aunt Jemima would still be awake when Verity reached her house on Challenger Row. Uncle Stephen probably would be-he usually smoked himself into a daze until the early hours. She snuggled into the glad memories. Safe eccentricities in a household where nothing ever seemed to change-that was the tonic she needed after a night like tonight.

The Empress lost a little altitude, drifted toward the embankment. It must be a strong wind veering her off course. Tangeni would compensate.

What on earth…?

After rubbing her eyes, she sat up and gazed at the factory next to the station house across the road from Big Ben. A peculiar lilac glow emanated from its roof and appeared to column-no, to mushroom-out into the night. Her heavy chest began to drum when the rain outside her window snaked, fizzed like streams of acid confetti. She could no longer see the shape of the lilac mushroom, which meant…

…the Empress must be inside it?

She leapt out of bed in the spare midshipman’s uniform Kibo had lent her, and sprinted across B-deck. The awestruck crewmen and women gathered at the windows, mesmerised. One or two ran after her, conversing worriedly in their native tongues. By the time she reached A-deck, the airship flew so low it was heading straight for Westminster Bridge! Tangeni yelled for Reba and Philomena to empty the port and starboard ballast tanks, but the ship was too low-it would not lift clear in time.