The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts (20 page)

They had established a link.

Mister Boothroyd was involved with paperwork, invention and the like; whereas Uncle Jeremiah studied books about stories, fables and myths from other lands. This made sense: researchers undergoing temporal relocation to times without a proper history would have to rely on myths as their guide.

Perhaps Uncle Jeremiah’s thesis on Atlantis had finally became useful?

They were connected in as much as Mister Boothroyd had had Uncle Jeremiah’s patent application, they’d been sending each other telegrams and they had both been arrested. How could a harmless man like Uncle Jeremiah be involved in a conspiracy to destroy the world? That made no sense. Perhaps he’d been led astray by this Mister Boothroyd character, who might come across as affable, but was instead somehow devious and cunning. Georgina hadn’t met him, so she had no way of telling.

And how did an MP and all the others – she must start a proper list – fit into it? If it was a conglomerate of arms dealers, then it would… but even they wouldn’t destroy the world. You can’t sell bullets to dead people. Even the most insane megalomaniac wouldn’t invent a weapon that could destroy the world.

There were too many questions.

Maybe someone could bring back a history book from the future and then she could just consult that for answers.

Miss Charlotte

When the day was nearly over and she wouldn’t be forced to do paperwork, Charlotte came back to see how Georgina was getting along. Charlotte felt flushed and alive, glowing from her activities, but, in contrast, Georgina looked like her blood had been leeched from her face by this dusty place.

Charlotte was bursting to tell her news: “I got Edgar up to the–”

“Edgar?”

“I’ve called the Duelling Machine ‘Edgar’ – come and see.”

Georgina allowed herself to be dragged through the secret door and beyond into a warehouse. Charlotte ignored all the machines and took Georgina to the Duelling Machine.

“Don’t you think it looks like an ‘Edgar’?”

Georgina considered the wooden and metal contraption, armatures sticking out at odd angles and a sword stuck in one.

“Not really.”

“Well, Edgar’s on the highest level.”

“Wonderful.”

“Yes, and I beat it.”

“It’s time to go,” said Georgina, clearly a spoilsport.

“How did you get on?” Charlotte asked when they’d returned to the office.

“I found Uncle’s patent application, but most of it is missing. There’s only this page and some notes.”

Charlotte glanced at it: “Ripped off.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Here, see the ripped edge. It was attached with a little string thing.”

“Treasury tag.”

“Yes, and someone pulled the pages away quickly and these sheets were left.”

“Yes, but how…” Georgina waved her arm about the masses of paper, a haystack of needles within which they were searching for a particular needle.

“It’s not here,” Charlotte said.

“How can you say that?”

“It’s elementary. Ness has sorted all these piles into type or whatever, they’ve got a weight on them, so she put all of Uncle’s pages into one pile. Ergo and Quod Erat Demonstrated.”

“Demonstrandum.”

“Yes, that.”

“I had worked that out for myself.” Georgina got her coat and bonnet: “We’d better lock up.”

“Why are you looking so dejected?”

“By not finding the complete application, we’ve failed Ness.”

“Ness knew the pages were missing.”

“Then why did she send us on this fool’s errand?”

“Because she wanted us to find something else.”

“But what? And where?” said Georgina, indicating the room. “What’s the right move?”

“The right move?”

“Well, it does look like a giant chessboard, doesn’t it?”

Charlotte considered this and saw what her sister meant: St George from Uncle Jeremiah’s pile, the flat iron to the armchair stack, the book to the secret room. They were all moves – a game. But what did it mean? A book, a secret book, like Uncle Jeremiah’s.

“The dog didn’t bark,” Charlotte said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Can I buy a deer stalker?”

“Pardon?”

“A hat, a deer stalker hat.”

“Charlotte, you’d look ridiculous.”

“But Gina–”

“Don’t whine.”

Charlotte was hurt, but then she remembered something about Uncle Jeremiah’s rooms.

“Uncle Jeremiah had a missing book as well.”

“Charlotte, what was the missing book?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think, Lottie, think. This could be very important.”

“I don’t know because it was missing.”

“We saw Mrs Frasier take a book off him, didn’t we? ‘Do you have it’, she said.”

“It was between Verne and Wells.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“On Uncle Jeremiah’s shelf.”

“How do you know that?”

“When I went round that was where the gap was, between Verne and Wells.”

“So an author between ‘vee ee’ and ‘double you ee’.”

“Or Verne or Wells themselves.”

“Yes, that’s right, but it’s gone.”

The Patent Pending Office was in such a state that whole sections could disappear and no–one would be the wiser. However, Charlotte realised there was a link, a gap in Uncle Jeremiah’s shelf, the book that Mrs Frasier wanted, and the missing patent. The invention sounded like it would be like a textbook, but the missing book might be an adventure. It was in Fiction in Uncle Jeremiah’s study after all. Or maybe he just hid it in fiction? A reference book disguised as a work of fiction, just the sort of wheeze that Uncle Jeremiah liked. She’d loved listening to Uncle Jeremiah tell her stories about far off lands.

“I like Jules Verne’s
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
and
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
and–”

“Yes, thank you Lottie.”

Charlotte made a face.

Chapter XII

Miss Deering-Dolittle

Earnestine stumbled to her knees, her hands falling onto the strange mat with its copper wires, as her stomach heaved. She kept her breakfast and was thankful for that. When she blinked away the glare, she saw that she was exactly where she had been, the same position on the mat, the same men standing around her and the same view down the corridor, except that it was lit with the strange yellow glow of galvanic lighting. The gas taps had been replaced.

Through the window it was night–time. The same window she’d stared through when she saw Mrs Frasier and the Temporal Peelers disappear, but, of course, this meant that she was now one of the ‘disappeared’.

“Time?” Mrs Frasier asked.

A different technician stood at the control lectern: “Zero zero ten.”

The operator – a different person, of course! – started unscrewing a lever from the controls.

Those around her adjusted their pocket watches, but Earnestine felt too disorientated to follow suit.

“Come!”

Mrs Frasier led them all back the way they had taken when they’d arrived, but the interior was subtly different. The new paint was old and peeled now, and other areas had clearly been renovated. Strange posters adorned the walls of brave men in heroic poses wearing top hats and white glasses: ‘Policing Yesterday for a Better Tomorrow’, ‘Correcting Mistakes’ and ‘History in the Re–making’.

Instead of leaving, they turned a corner and went deeper into the building. Further along was a rotunda, a large, open circular room that served as an atrium with four main corridors leading off. The signs pronounced Judiciary, Prison and Accommodation. Earnestine glanced back: they had come from the ‘Temporal Engineering’.

Mrs Frasier took them left and they went past rooms labelled variously: dormitory, canteen, billiards and smoking room. Finally, they reached a solid door and Mrs Frasier showed Earnestine the interior. It was a bedroom, more of a box room, with a simple bed, small table and chair.

“I thought I was going on a tour,” Earnestine said.

“Impossible now. Everything is closed up for the night.”

“But it was day.”

“It was day seventy odd years ago.”

“I suppose, I just assumed.”

Mrs Frasier had a tight smile: “I’m used to it, I forget how disconcerting it can be.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“I know. I’ll wake you in the morning.”

“But it’s only… three in the afternoon.”

Mrs Frasier took two watches from her bag, a gold and a silver one: “More like a quarter after midnight.”

Earnestine nodded.

“Get some sleep,” Mrs Frasier said. “Early start.”

Mrs Frasier shut the door behind her and Earnestine heard the lock turn.

She was a prisoner, as much as if she had been arrested. Uncle Jeremiah was here somewhere, she realised, although maybe he had been tried years ago or possibly there were still years to wait. She prepared herself for bed, but her heart wasn’t in it. How could she sleep? It was the middle of the afternoon for her, but the next day would start in six or seven hours, which would be nine or ten in the evening for her.

She lay down, and then had to get up to switch off the galvanic light. She was used to blowing out a candle, so she was thrown by the severe disadvantage of this future technology. It was all familiar and yet unfamiliar, English words but with twisted meanings, strange noises that could be plumbing or machinery in this cross between a factory and who knew what.

She wasn’t going to sleep.

There was a glass of water, but it had an acrid taste.

She checked her fob watch, but couldn’t see it in the dark, so, in the end, she risked the cold to turn the light on. It was still only twenty five to four. She turned the light out, stubbed her toe and hid in the warm covers.

She stared into the dark.

How was she going to fulfil her duties as an Ambassador for the Yesteryears? It was such a weight for her young shoulders, she hadn’t the experience – it was too much to ask. She was only twenty and felt so alone, and she wanted Uncle Jeremiah to tell her a story, an adventure that she’d heard before and knew, because she’d read the book, one that had a happily ever after and, at the end… the adventurers returned to England with tales to tell and riches to distribute, and they hadn’t left their daughter to look after her two sisters all on her own, before she was whisked off into this hereafter.

She snored.

“Rise and shine,” said a jolly lady standing in the doorway, the light shining around her.

“What time–”

But she was suddenly dazzled when the room’s galvanic light came on.

“It’s eight o’clock, sleepy.”

“Is it?”

Earnestine felt panicked, not really knowing where she was and then it dawned on her that she didn’t know
when
she was. She fumbled for her pocket watch: it was quarter to eleven… eleven, ante meridiem or post meridiem, she wasn’t sure, but she did the arithmetic in her head and realised that it was very late. She was something like nine and one quarter hours ahead… or rather many years and nine and one quarter hours ahead.

She washed; the woman had bought in a bowl of tepid water and waited patiently as Earnestine dressed.

Outside it was daylight, back in her time it would be –
would have been
– night time.

The woman showed her down a corridor and into a canteen. There were men seated at the benches eating porridge. Once it was pointed out to her, she found the serving bowls and helped herself.

“We don’t have much, my dear,” said her guide, “what with the war and everything.”

“Thank you, it’s delicious.”

It was.

She ate in silence, blowing on the surface to cool each spoonful.

Some of the Temporal Peelers left, their swords clattering as they went, and other men arrived. They wore white, slatted glasses and sullen expressions. Obviously, having been brought up properly, Earnestine would not have introduced herself, but their bearing forbade any conversation, even if someone could have acted as a chaperone.

“I’m Miss Androlucia,” said the jolly woman.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m Miss Deering–Dolittle.”

“Oh yes, we’ve heard such a lot about you. You’re famous, although I know I shouldn’t be telling you that now, should I?”

“Famous? But I was only appointed yesterday.”

“Oh, that was just the start, just the start. I’ve read the history books. It’s such an honour. To think, me, cleaning out your bedpan.”

She laughed and made her way out.

Another man intercepted Miss Androlucia and they conversed. The pointing convinced Earnestine that she was the topic on everyone’s lips. She felt her face burning, so she concentrated on finishing her breakfast.

Afterwards, she was taken to Mrs Frasier’s office which was straight over the Rotunda and off to one side of Judiciary.

Whereas the rest of the building had been plain walls, with only a few high windows like a fortress, this was plush, wood panelled with an old fireplace, bookcases and swords over the mantelpiece. Mrs Frasier was seated behind an oak desk, its green leather surface sparsely occupied by various objects.

“…yes, yes… but it’s important…” Mrs Frasier waved Earnestine towards a chair. “…get it done. The Chronological Transfer Points must be maintained otherwise the conveyor is likely to send the subject to who knows when. Thank you.”

She took a small device off her head and saw Earnestine’s quizzical expression.

“It’s a telephone,” Mrs Frasier explained. “The sound first travels – how shall I put this – through the ether as radio waves. You’ve heard of a telephone?”

“Yes.”

“And radio waves?”

“Tesla, isn’t it?”

“That’s right; and the bulky devices of your day have been distilled down to this contraption that you wear like a headband.”

“How wonderful.”

“You are concerned about your Uncle Jeremiah,” Mrs Frasier said. “Don’t worry. There are mitigating circumstances. He and I… He helped design all this and, well, he was led astray.”

“Can I see him?”

“Sadly no, but I assure you that he is alive and well. I would not see any harm come to him.”