An Excerpt from Looking Back (published in Athena's Daughters by Silence in the Library Publishing)
As she drew close to the carriage house, it was impossible to tell if Langstrom was even inside, given that the windows were shuttered and draped in such a manner that there was no means of seeing through the glass. Anxious, she lengthened her strides further until she near ran in a shameful fashion. Stopping a moment as she gained the door, she allowed her breath and color to settle before she entered. The air carried the faint scent of her late mother’s roses from the nearby garden. The perfume served as an anchor. Each breath she drew restored and reinforced the demeanor of Lady Pemberton.
As if acting with the utmost propriety could ever countermand the scandal if my arrangement with Langstrom were discovered… She pushed the uncomfortable thought aside and carefully unpinned her hat from her upswept, sable hair, leaving it and her white gloves beside the door, where they would not be ruined. She then gripped the doorknob and gave a sharp twist, moving across the threshold with purpose. Only by will alone did she manage not to flinch back from the brilliance of the thermolampes ringing the single room within. When she’d had a caretaker, this space had served as that one’s room of all purpose: cooking, eating, sleeping, and fortnightly, bathing. In her desperation, Lady Clara had gambled. Letting the caretaker go, she installed in his place her inventor and set him the task of discovering the means by which to find Rockford.
Stepping from the entryway, she grabbed her full-length, stained leather duster—cousin to the one Langstrom wore—from its customary hook by the door. As she slipped it on over her dress and secured it, making sure the coat fully covered the finer fabric, she moved across the room to the massive worktable that now dominated the space. Not once did she glance away from Fritz Langstrom or the contraption before which he stood, and yet she managed to navigate her way past massive coils of copper wire and bundles of brass, copper, and glass tubes, sacks full of coal and iron gears, and barrels of dark, rank oil which lubricated the inner workings of the device.
The inventor gave a start at her voice, all but for his hands, which remain absolutely steady as they made adjustments to the plethora of connectors. “You’re here!”
She presumed he beamed at her, as was his usual habit, but it was difficult to tell as the goggles that had been perched atop his head were now drawn down, a small, magnifying lens swung into place over his right eye. Clara pursed her lips disapprovingly. Langstrom was like an ill-disciplined hound, yapping and clambering and familiar, without restraint. She was not at all comfortable with that aspect of their interaction. Carefully he set the delicate watchmaker’s tools with which he currently worked upon the table and hurried to her side, pushing the goggles up until they again perched atop his head.
A subtle change in his demeanor unsettled her further. Her back went rigid and her chin lifted. “Well?” she said as she arched a delicate brow toward the device he had been working on.
“Yes…of course,” he said, his eyes widening ever so slightly. “I have not yet tested it, per your instructions, but it is ready, and now that you are present…. Please, if you will join me over here, by the Futuraositor.” A muscle in her cheek twitched faintly as he uttered that infernal name with which he had christened her machine. She spoke not a word, her eyes alone revealed her displeasure. Instead she watched as he ran a lightly oiled rag over the invention, wiping away any dirt or dust that might interfere with the process. It took more than a few minutes as his so-called Futuraositor took up three quarters of the rather large worktable. Clara waited impatiently, tapping the toe of her pearl-buttoned boot against the worn boards of the floor. She watched as he adjusted dials, opening some valves, while closing others, and precisely positioned various levers. When all was set, he used an ironmonger’s gauntlet to slide a brazier filled with lit coals into the belly of the beast, beneath where she knew a rather costly copper boiler had recently been installed. Within moments she heard the hiss of steam and tasted hot iron with each breath. Water began to boil in an array of hollow, glass tubes mapping the surface of the…Futuraositor…like veins. Those delicate tubes continued across a few inches of empty air to connect with a narrow brass box framing two sheets of the most perfect glass she had ever seen. Her breath caught in a gasp as the space between those sheets slowly filled with a swirling fog that behaved rather different than the steam she’d expected.
This was new. “What…?” she managed.
Langstrom anticipated her query: “Aether,” he said, his response distracted as he reached over and adjusted the settings on an object that looked like an ornate astrolabe centrally placed atop the mechanism.
“This,” he said in hushed, reverent tones, “is what has brought us to this moment. This is the guarantor of our success….”
Clara found it maddening the way he went on. “And this is…?”
Langstrom’s gaze snapped to her as if he only now truly realized she were there. His eyes had obvious trouble remaining focused upon her, straying to his grand invention, before gravitating back. “This, my Lady Clara, is the diurnalscope.” His voice became animated rather than distracted as he caressed the orb and explained this latest innovation: a device to track and orient the Futuraositor to the motion of the celestial bodies circling the Earth, past, present, and future. “Astrology is the key,” he said. “By mapping the diurnal arc of the stars, it should be completely possible to glimpse any place you seek, and in any point in time.”
“But how can it possibly work?” Clara did not try to keep her skepticism from her voice. Langstrom did not seem to notice.
“It is simple! Everything around us is made up of aether…it is the fundamental component of reality.” The fervor in his expression unnerved her. “By calculating the diurnal arc of the stars, in this case forward, and projecting those calculations through the aether lens,” he pointed to the glass box and its swirling contents, “we align now with then and can glimpse whatever is in a given space for the point in time which we desire. Simple!”
The look he cast upon her was eager and hopeful and proud all at once, as if more than pleasing her, he sought to make her proud. Unfortunate for him, a full third, if not more, of what Langstrom said made absolutely no sense to her. That did not matter, though, as she held tight to his claims: They would focus their attempts upon the future in the hopes of discovering the key to locating Rockford.
(She refused to consider they might learn of more dire things.)
Her chest rose and fell more rapidly with each breath as she watched Langstrom attach a bowl-shaped assemblage of riveted brass plates to the back, upright facing of his device. It pointed toward the sole section of table untouched by clutter or machine, the space right beyond the window-like glass.
Langstrom turned one final knob, then snatched a second set of goggles from the table surface and hurried toward her. Swiftly drawing them down over her eyes, he then lightly, but firmly gripped her by the elbow and drew her away behind a thick, woven-metal screen before she could protest either action.
She tugged her arm away and rounded on the man. Her cheeks burned uncomfortably, as did her arm where his fingers had held her, but before she could voice her protest the machine’s hissing became a whine, and then a sharp-pitched whistle, and the air became heavy upon her, pressing against her ears, forcing the breath from her chest more thoroughly than any whalebone corset had yet managed. Clara gasped and looked toward the machine, just visible through the small gaps in the woven screen. The device appeared infernal indeed, with the glow of red-hot coals reflecting from the tempered glass tubes and steam billowing throughout the cottage until it would not have surprised her to have the Great Deceiver step forth from its depths. Unconsciously, she clutched at Fritz Langstrom’s arm and did not even take exception when he patted her hand reassuringly.
“Watch,” he said in a voice as reverent as any fanatic.
Clara complied without question as the red glow gave way to blazing white heat and the cry of the pressurized steam threatened to pierce her eardrum. The machine…the table…the very cottage walls began to shake. She swayed as she felt her heartbeat in every inch of her body; her vision blurred and her breath came so labored she scarcely noticed the taste of coal dust on the moist, heavy air. As the thermolampes flared, then flickered, and the room took on a darker aspect, Clara grew concerned she was about to have the vapors as she never had before.
The moment passed, but Clara’s pulse and breathing didn’t slow until the clouds of steam faded to a light mist, then to nothing. Langstrom scrambled past the protective screen, grabbing her hand to draw her after him. She barely noticed. Her body shook and she told herself she merely shivered, the condition brought on by the sudden film of chilled, dew-like moisture coating every surface in the cottage, including herself. She refused to acknowledge the dread-steeped excitement pricking every inch of her skin.
Eagerness and caution were at war within her.
