Prehistoric Clock sc-1, page 19
part #1 of Steam Clock Series
“Who are you? Tell me why I shouldn’t throw you back out right now and pin a bill for the window to your backside.”
“Five past eight. We’ve got seconds!” The man yanked at the knot around his waist, unfastening the rope, then he tossed it onto the floor. Next, he tore his slicker off to reveal a bizarre metallic contraption, about the size of a large rucksack, strapped to his back. He tightened the thick harness about the shoulders and around the waist of his khaki suit.
“What the hell is that? Who are you? ”
The young man was too busy to answer. He clicked two levers on either side of the metal box and without warning snatched Cecil toward him by the wrists. “Here-when we jump, you’ll need to wrap your arms and legs around me. Make sure the mechanical one is set to its walking gear so you can hold it bent around me. Is that clear?”
An escape! After all these years? “I understand.” He didn’t, but he would rather take this chance, perhaps his last, than spend the rest of his life cooped up in oblivion. “It’s already set to that gear.”
“Good. All right, here we go. Hold on tight, Cecil.”
Cecil? Who called him that? None in the tower, and he hadn’t spoken to a friend from the outside for going on a decade.
Ugh! His stomach vaulted into his brain as they jumped into a million suspended dew drops. The five past eight time glitch had rendered the storm a three dimensional, interactive tableau-spectacular and terrifying in equal measure. He crushed his limbs around the man. About a third of the way down, a whirring, clicking noise began in the metallic contraption. A dozen bulky silver rods shot out from either side. They immediately doubled in length, then tripled, becoming slenderer with each action. Finally, dovetailing metal lengths fanned out from each spine, forming streamlined wings. This new air resistance snatched Cecil and his rescuer from their deadly plummet and set them on a gliding path away from the tower.
The storm resumed with a shimmering stutter. A flash of lightning jived a million raindrops back to life, and they pounded the metal wings. Cecil clung even tighter as the birdman let go of him to pivot and angle the wings by means of levers at the base of the shell. He expertly guided them toward the deck of a medium-sized airship hovering a hundred feet over the Thames. A dozen African aeronauts waited with a giant net, to catch the fliers if they should overshoot their landing. Luckily, the birdman brought them down safely, skidding onto several wet mattresses arranged together on the quarterdeck.
“Well, how the hell do you do, Professor?”
Were he not already punchdrunk from too many shocks in too short a time, Cecil would have cried out with joy at the sight of his old Namibian friend, Tangeni, bounding over the mattresses wearing a slicker several sizes too big.
“Tangeni! I knew it was you behind this.”
The African pilot, now sporting a short, black-grey beard, threw his arms around Cecil and wouldn’t let go, and Cecil fancied he outdid that grip of affection with one of his own-one of the most heartfelt embraces he’d ever given.
“I thought you’d forgotten me, my friend.”
“Never. We thought of everything to free you, but they were one step ahead of us at every turn. In the end, we took inspiration from our old friends, the flying dinosaurs. It was his crazy idea.” He motioned to the birdman, who gave a bow. “The timing was everything-in and out before your captors knew a thing. And now that we have you back, there will be no stopping us. But come, they’ll hunt us to the ends of the earth when they find out you’ve escaped.”
Heavy rain thrashed the deck. Tangeni returned to the wheel, promising to share a brandy or five with Cecil as soon as he’d seen to their escape from London. Meanwhile, the birdman fetched blankets, raincoats and sou’westers for Cecil and himself.
“I can never thank you enough, young man. And now will you please tell me your name.”
His rescuer grinned, then gave a cheeky shrug. “’T weren’t nothin’.” The lad mimicked a Lancashire accent. The professor stood up straight, looked the young man over from head to toe, questing for further proof to support his unlikely assumption. But it couldn’t be. This stranger no more resembled the boy he’d left behind in the factory wreckage than “I believe I’m a few squares ahead of you this time around, Cecil.”
“Billy?”
“None other.”
“My God, you’ve grown…unrecognisably.”
“So have you.”
They inched toward each other, shook hands. A more restrained and tentative reacquaintance than he’d shared with Tangeni, but harder to grasp. More filled with questions. With wonder. The boy had become the man Cecil had always dreamed of meeting. But it was not Edmond. It was Billy, the surrogate son of time travellers.
“Join me for a brandy?” Cecil asked.
The lad saluted, then placed his arm over the old professor’s shoulders, leading him to Tangeni’s cabin. “Aye, though I have to admit, I still prefer sarsaparilla. Don’t tell anyone, though.”
Inside the cabin smelled of incense and candle wax, while two amber oil lamps hung from the low, panelled roof. Three wooden chairs with cushioned seats faced each other in the centre, around which four tables had been arranged in a semi-circle. The latter were full of boxes and folders and curious archaeological specimens.
Tangeni noticed him studying the paraphernalia. “The expedition is all but underway, my good professor. You are the last to join-if you have no objection, of course.”
He pursed his lips in mock contemplation. “Hmm, I will have to cancel my appointment with the barber first.”
His two friends laughed. Billy poured them each a brandy.
“If it be to rescue Verity and Embrey, or even to find a small piece of that puzzle, I will gladly outdistance a thousand Phileas Foggs until we achieve it. To where do we fly?” Cecil asked.
“First to Marseilles.” Billy plucked a fancy pipe from a drawer in one of the tables, packed it with rich-smelling tobacco from a leather pouch as he spoke. What an extraordinary transformation the lad had undergone. He was now an eloquent and self-sufficient young gentleman, not to mention ingenious for having orchestrated such a daring rescue. “Our sponsor awaits us there. We have over two dozen men and women ready to venture where few have ever set foot, including most of our aeronaut friends who survived the time jump.”
“Smashing. And where lies this untamed land, may I ask?”
“In a remote region of Central Africa,” Tangeni said. “That is where our next adventure begins, and a perilous one at that, if even half the legends are to be believed. It is a trail that leads into the bowels of the earth.” He handed Cecil a flat, granite rock about the size of a fist. Inscribed upon it was the Embrey family coat-of arms! “The clues all point to Eembu and Embrey, to something extraordinary having occurred in a world far beneath our feet.”
“McEwan’s antediluvian realm?” Breathlessly, Cecil swigged the remainder of his brandy and asked for a refill. “And time travel? Has Professor Sorensen-”
The African lifted his eyebrows. “He will have to explain that to you, I’m afraid. He has yet to emulate your great feat, but he says he is close to a breakthrough-one that could be the key to rescuing our friends marooned across time. He requires your collaboration.”
“And he shall have it.”
Tangeni raised his glass. “Cheers, Professor. Here’s to your escape, and the return of old friends.”
“Hear! Hear!” Cecil and Billy responded in chorus.
On the wall next to the starboard oil lamp hung a framed photograph. The date was marked 1907. It featured the entire crew of the Empress Matilda, arm in arm, forming three ranks. On the back row he recognized Kibo, the proud engine man wearing his smart waistcoat; Djimon, who had lost his life in the diving bell; and the two tall Kenyan women, Reba and Philomena. The middle row was full of faces he recognized, some of whom he might yet see again. And in the front row, centre, the unmistakable duo, whose great friendship and resourcefulness had triumphed over the direst moments of their prehistoric adventure, crouched side by side, grinning joyously. Verity’s cropped red hair and beautiful face were indelible, her spirit insuperable. And Tangeni had proven his loyalty to her across two epochs.
On the left of the photograph hung a small portrait of Lord Garrett Embrey, the most impressive man Cecil had ever had the privilege of calling friend. Despite his youth, Embrey was already worthy of his father’s title and others higher still, for he represented all that was best about the English under pressure. Despite all that had transpired to kill his compassion, he had never lost sight of the meaning of family.
He was a man after Cecil’s heart. And they would meet again soon.
Let God stop it if He must.
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Document creation date: 16.09.2012
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Robert Appleton, Prehistoric Clock sc-1
