His Clockwork Canary

CHAPTER 29

Upon leaving West Norwood Cemetery, the grave-poking threesome (as Willie had begun to think of herself, Simon, and Phin) had returned to the Covent Garden town house in order to wash away the odor and grime of the underground before setting off for Notting Hill. Fletcher had fussed over their “deplorable” outerwear, determined to pound away patches of dirt. Simon and Phin had ducked into the library to consult the city map, and Willie had slipped into another room to ring Dawson. Simon hadn’t flinched when she’d said she needed to touch base with her editor. She was, after all, officially on the job.

“How are you faring?” Dawson had asked. “Please tell me you’re in the midst of a rollicking adventure.”

“You have no idea.”

“Intrigue? Peril?”

“A brush with death and forbidden love.”

“Brilliant!” Dawson had bellowed, no doubt punching his fist to his desk to emphasize his exuberance. “Readers will be enthralled. The Informer will flourish. I knew I could count on you, Willie. The Clockwork Canary at his best.”

“Yes, well . . .” Adopting her former and feigned manner of speaking had proved surprisingly difficult. At some point she would have to come clean with Dawson about her true self, but for now, one challenge at a time. “I read about the attempted kidnapping of Prime Minister Madstone. Who did you put on the story?”

“Bloomenboyd.”

“Bloo is a narrow-minded ninnyhammer.”

“Everyone is a ninnyhammer in your book, Canary. Just carry on with Darcy and the Triple R Tourney and leave the delicious rest to me. There’s a reason I’m managing editor.”

Willie had been thrown by her extraordinarily ordinary discussion with Dawson. Had Strangelove’s taunt been a red herring? “On the run,” she’d said in her affected boyish tone. “What’s the blether around the pressroom?”

Dawson had spewed a dizzying amount of gossip before ending with “But the latest kerfuffle revolves around an anonymous tip that there’s an impostor on staff. Someone who’s leading a double life. Naturally there is much speculation and imaginations are running rampant. Abbernathy started a betting pool. And before you interrupt,” Dawson said, “yes, I know and quite agree that Abbernathy is a ninnyhammer. Still and all, a bit of intrigue and fun is jolly good for the spirits. Speaking of, you must be flying high with this Darcy assignment. Any scuttlebutt on Project Monorail?”

“Working on it. Speaking of, I best be off.” Willie had ended the conversation quickly, her pulse pounding with dread. Strangelove had flexed his browbeating muscles. Since she intended to come clean with her identity the moment she’d completed this mission, she couldn’t care less if anyone at the Informer pegged the Clockwork Canary as the impostor. She did worry, however, that Strangelove would step up his game and threaten the well-being of her family, which now included Simon.

Intensely motivated to manipulate the bastard toff and to bring this exasperating chapter of her life to a close, Willie had procured a secret keepsake from her cherished copy of the Book of Mods. Something with which to snag Thimblethumper’s attention. As a bonus maybe she’d finally learn the name and purpose of the thingamabob she’d found tucked into a secret crevice when she’d painstakingly re-covered the book years ago in an attempt to disguise its true content.

Now, less than an hour later, Willie entered Thimblethumper’s Shoppe of Curiosities with a dual sense of anticipation and dread. Call it a revelation, an epiphany, or divine intervention. Whatever the reason, she was most certain she would glean valuable information pertaining to the Houdinians from the former Mod Tracker. She’d bet her wedding ring, her most valued possession aside from her BOM, that Thimblethumper knew far more than he’d first shared. Considering he’d been guarded and crotchety after learning Simon had gotten his name from a Mechanic, Willie thought it best to start with a clean slate, as a new acquaintance.

Upon her last visit, she’d been introduced as Willie G. She’d been dressed as a boy. Her hair had been dyed black. She had slouched her shoulders and spoken in a lower tone, using a more brash vocabulary.

This moment her hair was a brilliant red and she wore a fashionable and shapely ModVic greatcoat and a feminine, accessorized derby. Instead of brown corneatacts, she’d opted for the color of her youth, the same vivid green shade as her mother’s, and she planned to introduce herself as Mina. Her goal was to engage Thimblethumper in casual conversation and then to segue into a subject that would set her up to time-trace specific memories.

Her pulse skittered as she crossed the threshold. A bell tinkled as she shut the door behind her.

“With you in a moment,” Thimblethumper called from the till.

“Just browsing,” Willie called back.

He was speaking with another shopper and she preferred to have the merchant to herself. She’d wait until this customer left and pray for a slow period.

Willie pulled off her gloves and stuffed them in her pocket. She skirted a few tables, examining collectibles past and present, as well as a few reproductions of futuristic devices. Merchandise as described by the Peace Rebels or portrayed in the Book of Mods. She recognized a bong and a model of a moonship. Her mother had owned a similar model, a reminder of her time at NASA.

Intrigued, Willie skimmed more items—a jar of marbles, a telephone with buttons instead of a dial, and a mug sporting the sign of peace—but spied nothing similar to the thingamabob in her purse. The thin black square was a little over twenty centimeters in diameter, near the size of the front cover of the Book of Mods, and had a hole in the center. When she’d first discovered it, soon after her mother’s death, Willie had shown it to a few Mod enthusiasts, but no one recognized the article. Someone had likened it to a futuristic beverage coaster. Someone else, a durable page keeper or perhaps a portion of a modern ringtoss game. Willie had ended up tucking the black square back into its secret pocket, cherishing it simply because it had belonged to her mother—whatever it was. Perhaps Thimblethumper would have an inkling.

The sole customer, aside from her, brushed past Willie and out the door. Intent on taking advantage of the privacy, she pulled the plastic square from her sizable drawstring purse, turning just as the old Mod Tracker approached.

Thimblethumper winced as though slapped, stumbled back, and knocked into a table. “Mickey?”

Willie blinked at the sound of her mother’s modern nickname. She grasped Thimblethumper’s arm as he tripped over his own feet, connecting not only physically, but mentally.

“There was too much information for one disk. This is but one of three.”

“So the Aquarian Cosmology Compendium is in fact a trilogy?” Mickey said. “Where are the other two volumes?”

“As far as I know, Professor Merriweather is still in possession of one disk. The other he entrusted to Dickey Everest.”

“Dickey was killed last month.”

“I know.”

“So where is that disk?”

“I don’t know. Maybe someone stole it. Maybe he hid it. All I know is that I don’t want the responsibility anymore. As if protecting the clockwork propulsion engine isn’t enough. I’ve been saddled with this additional enterprise for twenty years. I’m too old for this cloak-and-dagger bullshit. My eyesight is going and my reflexes are poor. I want out, Mickey.”

“But you’re a pledged Houdinian.”

Willie broke contact and blinked out of the memory, her chest tight, her heart racing. Out of habit she glanced at her time cuff, but since she hadn’t checked the time before tracing, she could only guess how long she’d been in this man’s memory. Three seconds? Five? He was staring at her now as if in shock. She was more than a little stunned herself. “Ollie Rollins,” she choked out. She’d seen him in Filmore’s memories, but as a much younger man. The years had not been kind.

He licked his thin, chapped lips. “How . . . how is this possible? You’re dead.”

She realized then that Thimblethumper, Rollins, still thought she was her mother. Michelle Goodenough had had red hair and green eyes and she was probably around Willie’s age when she and Rollins first met in the future. Worried the man was on the brink of having a heart attack, Willie corrected his misassumption. “My name is Wilhelmina Goodenough, Mr. Rollins. I’m Michelle . . . Mickey’s daughter.” Her previous plan of how to handle this situation had been blown to smithereens. Like any good journalist, she would now operate on the fly.

Rollins pushed his thick spectacles to the top of his balding head, shut his milky eyes, and rubbed his wrinkled lids as if trying to dispel a hallucination. “Lock the door.”

Willie rushed over and turned a locking mechanism. She also flipped the WELCOME sign to CLOSED.

“How did you find me?” he asked, his weight propped against a table. “Where did you get the memory disk?”

So that was what it was called. “My mother bequeathed me her copy of the Book of Mods. The . . . disk was hidden in a pocket devised into the inner cover.”

“I can’t decide if that was a brilliant or hideous place to conceal such dangerous and valuable information. And it’s been in your possession these past seven years?”

“It has.” One-third of the legendary Aquarian Cosmology Compendium. Willie was beyond incredulous. “I have some questions, Mr. Rollins. Some concerns.”

He winced, looked over his shoulders in a cautious and worried manner. “Please. I am known as Thimblethumper now.”

She nodded. “You are retired. No longer an active Houdinian and afraid of being publicly branded a Mod. I understand.”

“No you don’t. No one understands. No one is capable of understanding what I have seen. What I have done. I want only to live out what is left of my life in anonymity. But I will answer your questions, Wilhelmina Goodenough,” he said whilst pushing off the table and gesturing her to follow. “Out of respect to your mother and because I sympathize with your dismal and colossal responsibility.”

She did not understand how an innocuous black square translated to a collection of scientific designs from the twentieth century. She could not believe her mother, a woman who had been so emotionally and physically distant, had entrusted her daughter to keep something so valuable and volatile safe. As Willie followed the retired Houdinian, an original Peace Rebel, to the back of his shop, her heart swelled even as her knees quaked.

• • •

“Willie just turned the ‘Welcome’ sign to ‘Closed,’” Simon said, whilst peering across the street. “Why?”

“To assure privacy?” Phin ventured.

“I don’t like it.”

“Of course you don’t.” His friend gestured for an attendant. “Something stronger,” he ordered.

“I’m sorry,” the female server said with a tight smile, “but we don’t—”

“Of course you do,” Phin said, flashing a banknote.

“One moment,” she said, then scurried off.

“I’m going over,” Simon said.

“Don’t be a mug,” Phin said. “Give Willie a chance.”

Being likened to a half-wit chafed, but Simon recognized the good intention behind the cocky slur. Relax and show trust in your wife’s abilities. Simon tried but to no avail. He’d allow Willie ten more minutes and then he was busting in. “Tell me about Dr. Caro.”

“What about her?”

“Jules’s lover?”

“For a time.”

“Your lover?”

“No. Although I was tempted.”

Intrigued, Simon raised a brow.

“When Jules backed off from the affair, Bella turned to me. For a cool and aloof woman, she’s extremely . . . passionate. I almost succumbed to her wiles, but then I realized she was only using me to make Jules jealous.”

“Did it work?”

Phin shook his head. “Jules cares about Bella, but he doesn’t love her. Although, damn her obsessed heart, she believes otherwise.”

“What led up to this?” Simon asked, an ancient and buried question flaring back to life. “Why was Jules declared a war hero? What did he do and why is he living a double life?”

Phin rolled back his shoulders, obviously relieved when the server returned with their heavily spiked coffee. Simon could smell the whiskey fumes even before raising the cup to his lips.

“Not within my power to reveal details pertaining to the mission that led to Jules’s injuries nor his affiliation with the Mechanics,” Phin replied. “However, I will say this. A lesser man would not have survived or fought as fiercely as he did to live. The only time his spirits flagged dismally was after the reconstructive surgery.”

Simon and his family had been barred from visiting Jules for several weeks. The extent of his injuries too severe, they’d been told. The risk of infection via outside sources too great. Early on they’d seen Jules only through a window and at a distance and only from the chest up. Their visitation rights during rehabilitation had been rigidly restricted as well, but part of that had been due to Jules’s determination to push through the ordeal in private. It had been a trying time for the Darcys. Most especially for Simon, who’d felt literally severed from his twin. Respecting Jules’s privacy had proved one of Simon’s greatest challenges in life. Knowing Jules had chosen a friend as a confidant over his own brother stung Simon to the core. But he didn’t blame Phin. “What can you tell me of the reconstruction?”

“Bella . . . Dr. Caro exacted drastic measures to save Jules’s life and, as it were, to make him whole again. After spearheading a mind-boggling surgical procedure, Bella pushed forth therapeutic measures. She made it her personal mission to convince Jules that although he was not wholly normal, he was fully functioning by normal standards.”

“Are you saying he feared he’d lost the ability to make love to a woman?”

“More like he’d lost the desire. He felt like a monster.”

“I don’t understand.”

Phin downed the rest of his whiskey-laden coffee, then leaned forward, gaze intent. “For the most part, Simon, Jules’s legs are not his own.”

Simon struggled with the sickening revelation. What the devil would it feel like to lose part of oneself? No wonder Jules had been adamant about his privacy. Simon would have reacted in the same exact fashion. Yet the man did in fact have legs. Or rather some extraordinary facsimile. “Artificial limbs?”

“Highly advanced prosthetics.”

Simon thought about his Thera-Steam-Atic Brace. Although the device wasn’t highly advanced, it had proved astoundingly advantageous in Willie’s efforts to regain strength and mobility in her arm. Simon wished he would have been the one to devise prosthetics for his brother, to enable Jules to walk again. Although he acknowledged that his engineering skills were not as honed then as they were now. And, no matter how advanced his creation, it would not compare with prosthetic limbs as engineered by someone with superhuman intelligence. “Bionics,” he said, repeating the word Phin had mentioned before, a term that meant nothing to Simon.

“I don’t profess to understand it,” Phin said. “I don’t think anyone does. Or can. Aside from Bella. And, much to the disappointment of the Mechanics, she has yet been able to duplicate the process.”

“So Jules is one of a kind.”

“And extremely valuable to the agency. I find it hard to believe they’d send him on a mission they didn’t believe he could return from.”

“Why are you telling me this, Phin? Why now?”

“Because Jules has doubts regarding his return, and if the subject regarding his surgery came up, he wanted you to know. At least as much as I know. Which is, quite frankly, only basics.”

Simon dragged a hand down his face. “Swear to God this is like something out of one of Jules’s science fiction novels. Damned hard to believe. I assume these bionic prosthetics are what make Jules so invaluable to the agency.” He frowned. “Yet he walks with a limp.”

“A glitch Bella has yet to modify. A glitch that disappears when the prosthetics are fully engaged.”

Simon wondered if he could vanquish that glitch. He’d die for a chance to try. Senses buzzing, he leaned forward and lowered his voice even more. “How does bionics enhance Jules’s worth, Phin? What is he capable of?”

“Superhuman speed. Brace yourself, brainiac. He can move from here to there so fast, it renders him invisible.”

Hence Jules’s ability to disappear before Simon’s very eyes. “Bloody hell.”