The Diamond Conspiracy: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel (31 page)

“Wellington, Eliza, if you please?” asked Sound as he motioned to an ornate door in front of them.

With a polished brass handle designed as the face of a clock at its centre, the door’s shape was reminiscent of an old cathedral hatch, and was incredibly out of place compared to the polished metal and odd wood—if that was what Wellington was indeed feeling under his touch—reaching to either side of the chamber they stood in. It was a wonder he had not
noticed the hatch before. The wooden door was stout and heavy, made of a rich, dark cherrywood, polished almost as bright as the sophisticated materials surrounding it; and as it was nearly fifteen feet in height, the portal towered over them. Wellington could not be certain if it was growing taller the closer they drew to it.

Sound placed a hand on the door handle and then turned back around to the two of them. “Ready, are we?”

“For?” he asked.

“A trip ‘through the looking-glass’?” he said, the lights around them creating a twinkle in his eyes.

The handle turned quite easily in the director’s grasp. From the other side, inviting smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, and burning wood invited them across the threshold.

Feeling Eliza’s grip tighten ever so slightly, Wellington looked at her, managed a smile that conveyed a “Why not?” sentiment, and together they followed their director through the open door.

In Which Eliza Braun Marvels at a Sunset

A
fire crackled in an impressive hearth. There were small incense burners filling the room with scents that reminded Eliza of Christmas. With the amount of books—and there were a lot of them—she would have surmised this was a study at a fine English manor had it not been for two rather odd qualities of this conservatory. There were large glass panes above and around them revealing a landscape reminding her of the Arizona Territories in the United States, only this landscape was far darker. It took her eyes a moment to realise the glass above and around them was tinted. It was a deep golden hue but not such a dark colour as to prevent the dying light from still illuminating the room. The other oddity of this expansive room was how its walls—not the furniture, but the actual walls in which the bookshelves and desks were built—were not wood or brick, but of raw stone. Eliza ran up to the wall and touched the cool rock, confirming her initial thoughts of the wall’s slope, its composition, and their relative height based on their breathtaking view.

“We’re inside a mountain,” she stated.

Turning back in the direction she had come, she could see, just behind Wellington, Sound closing a completely different
door, this one weather worn and beaten with a rustic door handle far less ornate than the one they entered through. Just before the door closed, she caught a parting glimpse of Event Control.

“Yes, indeed you are,” a voice answered her. From its gravelly baritone and American drawl, it was obviously neither Wellington nor Sound. “My wife and I come here often to entertain dignitaries or friends from far-off places.”

Eliza felt her back straighten just a fraction at the sight of the tall man entering the room. The stranger exuded a commanding presence, through a confidence he carried and eyes of a hard, steel-grey colour. All this kept her rooted to the spot. He wore his long raven hair in an intricate braid tied back with a leather thong. While that hair was greying slightly at the temples, his face and trim, muscular frame was that of a man no older than thirty.

The man’s eyes softened when he turned to Doctor Sound, his smile warm and inviting as he approached the Ministry director. “Herbert,” he said, laughing gently as he embraced him, “you are looking . . .”

His words trailed off as he looked over Sound.

“I look forward to your probing observations, Jonathan,” Sound chortled.

“Well, it has been a while,” their host offered. “When I last saw you, you were in better physical condition—but also twenty years younger. Now, look at you!”

“It’s the perils of time travel, as you know, different selves and all those complications . . .”

“Yes, yes, and please, don’t remind me again of how it all works,” implored Jonathan. “I doubt if I understand it anymore. It’s all too fantastic to grasp, anyway.”

Sound motioned around him. “You’re one to talk!”

Their laughter subsided as Jonathan glanced over to Eliza, then to Wellington. “I see by the looks on your faces,” he began, striding over to a bar, fully stocked with decanters of what Eliza could only hope were the best in spirits, “that Herbert has told you about his fantastic machine, so I will assume you will want a drink immediately. Would you care for scotch? Cognac? Or perhaps something stronger?”

“I could do with a scotch,” Wellington said.

Being of a curious nature, Eliza selected, “Stronger.”

When his steel-grey eyes looked at her now, Eliza felt her knees weaken slightly. “A girl after my own heart.” He poured two fingers deep of scotch into the first glass and handed it to Wellington with a polite nod. Into the second glass, he poured a deep red liquid. Then, as Eliza looked on, Jonathan tapped the rim of the snifter, causing the left portion of the liquid inside to suddenly glow with a dull orange flare. “The locals call this
Ketumsh-ke
. The Sunset. Drink the part that isn’t glowing.”

Eliza nodded and took a sip of the crimson liquid. What struck her taste buds was an unexpected combination of bourbon and citrus with an overtone of vanilla. It was far stronger than anything she had ever tasted in her travels around the world, and threatened to knock her back a step; but the warmth receded as quickly as it had overcome her.

Whatever this Sunset was, she wanted more of it.

“Where are my manners?” Sound said, clicking his tongue as Jonathan handed him a glass. Of what, Eliza could not be certain. “Wellington, Eliza, may I introduce to you Captain Jonathan Carter.”

“Friends and welcomed guests call me John,” he said, offering Wellington a hand. “I prefer that.”

Wellington returned the handshake. “American? The Carolinas?”

“Virginia actually,” John said. “Welcome to my home. Please, have a seat.”

Sound took a seat in a luxurious, high-backed chair. “And how is the family, John?”

He sat back in his own grand chair and shook his head. “Healthy and happy, although I am in for a very hard ascension. My daughter. Oh, Herbert . . .” He groaned lightly. “She is growing up to be just like her mother.”

“Well, seeing as how well things transpired between you and your wife, you have an inkling as to what lies ahead.”

John toasted his drink to Sound. “You have a point there, Herbert.” He took a quick sip, then set his drink to one side. “However, I believe this visit is hardly social in nature.”

“Not entirely, no,” he admitted.

“When I received your message—”

“Excuse me a moment.” Eliza took a deep sip of her drink; the glowing portion of it felt warm against her face. Her courage somehow returned to her, and so she turned to Sound. “Did we just time travel?”

“Well, we did not go so far back in time,” Doctor Sound said with a shrug, “but yes, Eliza, we did travel.”

She looked over to John. “When did you receive this message from Sound?”

The man took a sip of his own drink, and she had the distinct impression he was studying her closely. “This is their first trip, isn’t it, Herbert?”

It could have been an effect of the drink or the lighting of the room, but Eliza thought she could see Sound blush. “Yes,” he admitted.

John’s mouth bent into a smirk. “When did you plan to explain the principles of how you travel?” He pointed to Sound with an accusatory finger. “I am speaking from experience. Nothing is more unnerving than finding yourself unexpectedly somewhere other than where you plan to be.”

“Things have been moving rather quickly,” Sound replied, a tone of sudden regret in his words. “Sometimes I get a bit—”

“Caught up in things, yes, that happens with you often.” John motioned to Eliza and Wellington. “Why don’t you take a moment? Get your agents here caught up?”

Sound blinked. “I know your time is most valuable . . .”

“Knowing how they must feel, I insist.” He raised his glass to the agents. Eliza returned the gesture with an awkward and slightly uncertain smile.

“Very well.” Sound took another sip of his scotch before setting it down and clapping his hands together lightly. “So, while I did explain in brief how we travel between two fixed points in space and time—I should have explained exactly how Event Control accomplishes this.” Sound reached for the table between him and John, and took from the small memo desk a simple slip of paper. “The central analytical device searches for the closest fixed point and narrows down either previously visited points or stable coordinates in which to establish a connection.” He quickly drew two
X
marks at the top and at the bottom of the paper before holding the paper up for Eliza and Wellington to see. “A brilliant physicist will
hypothesise”—he cleared his throat before adding—“fifty years or so from now—that the most efficient way to travel either through space, time, or both, is to connect a departure and an arrival point,” Sound explained as he bent the slip of paper, making the two
X
points touch.

Eliza inclined her head to one side. “So it is a bit like æthergate travel? Only instead of just going from point
A
to point
B
as you do there, you’re going from year
A
to year
B
.”

“A simplified analogy,” Sound chortled, “but yes, yes indeed.”

“And so the technology we’ve seen—the automatons, the Restricted Area, and so on—this is all from a distant future.”

“Or perhaps,” Wellington ventured, “distant worlds, as you are no longer restricted to planetary boundaries as æthergate travel seems to be?”

“Exactly,” confirmed Sound, his satisfaction tinged with a hint of pride. “Well done, both of you!”

“So why not have us jump forwards into time, grab what we need, and then return to Old Blighty?” Eliza asked. “That makes far more sense than having a small band of disavowed agents dive into the belly of the beast, as it were.”

Sound nodded. “A compelling notion, but the fabric of the universe is delicate, to be certain. Every time technology is brought from the future to the past, infinite possibilities arise of where future technology impacts history, bringing about what can only be described as a chronological chain reaction. This is why I carefully monitor my travels and how it effects my timeline.”

Wellington snapped his fingers, pointing at Sound suddenly. “That odd clockwork model in your office,” he stated. “I had seen it so many times in your office but never asked you what it was. That was how you tracked the outcome of your visits.”

“Correct, Wellington. That was what I retrieved from my office. My chrono-model will be coming back to Whiterock. Every time I returned from a journey, either past or future, I would consult my model to see exactly what outcome came with it.” He leaned closer to Eliza. “Yet another reason I chose to shoulder the burden of this technology alone.”

“So for all we know,” she began, her tone growing colder
than the study they were meeting in currently, “one of your trips through time could have sparked this whole mess.”

“On the contrary, I have been journeying back and forth into the future, attempting to manage any fallout from this approaching point.”

“What approaching point?” Wellington asked.

“Event Control has been effectively tracking various points in past, present, and future; but those points have been growing fewer in numbers the closer we grew to 1895. There is an ‘age’ for the lack of a better word between 1897 and 1915 that is simply hidden.”

“Hidden?” Eliza asked. “You mean, as if it is blacked out?”

“Yes,” Sound replied, “and ever since this blackout first appeared within my model, Event Control has adjusted and re-adjusted future events to compensate. It was so unpredictable that just before I activated Phantom Protocol, I had to visit my younger self to protect my very existence. Each time Event Control’s calculations are concluded, the outcome either falls back into the future that I know, or other futures of various outcomes, most of which are most unpleasant.”

“So even with travelling through time . . .” Eliza began.

“Even with fixed events in the cosmos, time is still fluid and always changing,” finished Sound. “This strange period of lost time, hidden to both Event Control and my model, has but only one constant.”

“What?” Wellington asked.

Sound polished off his own drink, took a deep breath, and then stated, “The two of you.”

Eliza felt Wellington’s warm hand gently take hers. It seemed as if the madness of everything unfolding around her knew no limits. She was suddenly reminded of the death spiral she briefly struggled against when undercover at the Phoenix Society, but then she felt weighted down with Wellington along for the ride. This time, she felt stronger.

“With each calculation and projected outcomes,” Doctor Sound revealed, “both your names continue to appear as important and influential—in what way remains a mystery. It could be in your victory over insurmountable odds or your death for the greater good of the Empire that sets things right
or tips the scales deeper into darkness. I cannot say for certain.”

“Lovely,” Eliza stated flatly.

“Bringing more technology from the future presents risks that are just too great,” Sound said.

“So we have to make do with the technology at hand?” Eliza asked. “Technology of the present day.”

“Yes.” Sound then turned to John. “Which brings me to you.”

“I was wondering when I came into play within this delightful drama,” the other man said, setting his drink down.

Sound’s face darkened. “You know what I need.”

“How many?”

“Just one.”

“One?” He chuckled softly, and then motioned to Eliza. “I would side with this lovely lady here. It is Eliza, yes?” She nodded, tightening her own hold on Wellington’s hand. He inclined his head in a silent reply, then returned his attention to Sound. “I would imagine a fleet is what you need, if I understood your message.”

“I don’t need an army.” Sound winked, his smile oddly comforting to Eliza. “I just need one. It will suffice.”

John arched an eyebrow at Sound’s request. “Now, Herbert, you know my head for strategy. What are you playing at?”

“It’s an endgame I’m laying out,” he replied, “and I’m playing to win.”