The Ladies Temporal League

“Audrey, darling! How’s tricks? Tell me how fab I look or I’ll slice your head off.”

Accompanied by a burst of light and a column of misty temporal/spatial distortion, Gwendolyn’s supremely theatrical entrance came at the very moment we least needed one. When you’re a League agent stealing buildings in the middle of the night from a place like Babbage, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself. But I had to admit, Gwen did look fairly “fab” even if her blue satin dress was more appropriate for a winter ball than a night of sonic welding and heavy lifting. I, on the other hand, was much more sensibly dressed for acts of grand theft in the wee hours of an abnormally temperate late-winter evening.

“The bustle is pretty far out,” my fellow agent enthused, “in more ways than one! I might have to hold onto it for when I get back home. Regrettably, I’ve had more than one tactless toy boy remark on my shortcomings in the butt department.”

Gwen and I were both out of our usual work zones and 1880s glad rags definitely take some getting used to. How did Victorian working women get anything done in such cumbersome clothes and these crazy tight corsets? (Don’t even get me started on the shoes!) The last time I visited New Babbage in this era, I was supposed to, mostly, stay out of sight, so I was able to get away with one of my normal, fantastically fashionable flapper frocks. This time, as much as we were trying to be discrete, there was a serious possibility of getting caught red-handed. If that happened, the last thing I wanted to worry about was explaining a jazz-baby cloche hat or one of Gwendolyn’s “groovy” polyester mini-skirts.

“Welcome to Babbage, Gwen! I hope you brought your own magno-spanner. It didn’t occur to me to bring an extra one.”

“Fear not, Aud, I come prepared.” Gwen held up an oversized, beaded reticule which clanked reassuringly letting me know that it did indeed contain useful tools. “Kind of unlike you to be under-equipped.”

“It’s not as if I had a lot of time to prepare for this little jaunt,” I explained. “I was in the middle of a pretty important investigation, but when the boss sends you a Gamma-1 order telling you to pop back in time and steal an aetheric power station, she doesn’t mean ‘at your convenience.'”

“Did your orders give you the full info? My communiqué told me zilch-plus-zero.” Gwen began helping me take the protective wrapping off of the atrycheon field generators — six-foot-long shiny, silver pylons that needed to be attached to the outside of the power station.

“All I know is that it’s a red box code 20c,” I told her, “meaning, ‘Be a good little agent and eat up all your vegetables and we might explain to you what you just did. Eventually.’ Considering where we are, I’m thinking it has something to do with the missing Mr. Arkright.”

“This seems pretty larcenous for us,” said Gwen. “I’ve gotten a lot of weird orders from HQ, but they’ve never asked me outright to steal anything before, never mind a whole power facility! But kooky stuff happening always makes other kooky stuff happen. And I guess someone the boss has under observation disappearing out of space and time counts as kooky. Does Arkright’s son know what you’re up to or did you just leave him high-and-dry in the 1920s?”

“Oh, please! That cretin’s got enough to worry about… like trying not to trip over his own shoe laces. And failing, I might add.”

“Watch what you say, Aud! I think the boss is grooming him for something big.”

“Something that has nothing to do with any of our work, I hope!” I hauled the first of the pylons over to the facility’s aetheric furnace.

“Seems I heard Arkright the Elder was a pickle puffer. How is it even possible that he has a son?”

“Apparently, you haven’t seen the two of them together. I still don’t know the whole story, but junior was quite obviously adopted. One thing I do know, daddy dear didn’t exactly volunteer for the job.” I carried another pylon over to the furnace and leaned it against the side. “We’ll transport this first and then take care of the main buildings. Orders are to leave the two towers. And neatness does not count here. Can you attach these while I work on setting the CM vectors for the buil-…”

My heart nearly froze. I spotted lights moving toward us through the midnight shadows of Clockhaven and heard the faint electronic whine of a familiar device that should have been alien to our current time period. At first, I thought it was a young boy who had joined us in the courtyard next to the power station, but as the person moved into the glow of our lamplights, I could see our visitor was a young Asian woman wearing thick glasses and a mannish tweed suit. She looked as if she were a gentleman going out for a morning of shooting with her cloth cap and the legs of her trousers tucked into her boots. Given that she was carrying a League-issue vario-scanner, I found myself feeling more puzzled than worried about being discovered.

“The middle of the night?!?” said the stranger who seemed to be a bit angry. “What are you doing showing up in the middle of the night without so much as a signal that you were coming?”

Gwendolyn set down her pylon and stepped toward me. “You know this girl?” she whispered in my ear.

“Me? I thought she must be talking to you!”

“That’s not funny!” said the newcomer who clearly possessed superior hearing. “Is this some sort of official mission, or did you just feel like waking me up and acting oddly?”

“You’re talking as if you know us,” I said. “Who are you? And where did you get that scanner?”

“You mean this scanner that you gave to me? Are you really going to mess about at this hour, Audrey?”

The stranger knew my name. My puzzlement-to-worry ratio instantly flipped. “When did I give you that scanner, Miss…?”

“Getting me out of bed in the middle of the night,” grumbled the new arrival. “What are you two playing at? If you’re just here to check up on me, I will be very, very cross!”

“Why would we be checking up on you?” I asked.

“Exactly what I say! Every one of my status reports has been quite complete in its details and submitted in a most timely fashion!”

Gwen and I exchanged quizzical looks. “Reports?” I wondered aloud. “What reports? You’ve been sending reports to our headquarters?”

The stranger gave us a look as if she found the pair of us quite disgusting. “Trust you two to not be reading my reports!”

Gwendolyn — an extraordinary improviser and a peerless actress — masterfully read the situation and played along. “So, catch us up, luv,” she said. “What’s been happening?”

“Well, I solved the Arkright thing, so that’s done.”

“What?!” I exclaimed. “Solved it? Solved it how?”

“I found him. He’s not in town, but I managed to track him down.”

“Are you sure you found the right one?”

“The right one? What do you mean the right one?”

“Well,” I said, “right about now, Arkright the first is dead (doesn’t mean he isn’t the one you found, of course); number two is a London bookseller; number three is… well, just a younger version of number two, really; number four is the troublesome flying teenager who seems to have dropped out of the whole space/time continuum; and number five is a time-travelling yutz, but he’s not due to show up here for a while. Oh! And how could I forget Arkright the Sixth!”

The stranger looked as if she were struggling to keep up. “Six?”

“Number six is God. Possibly. We think. Still looking for confirmation on that one.”

“Ummm… okay, maybe the Arkright situation isn’t resolved,” said the stranger, “but I have established remote electronic surveillance on that irritating little German boy.”

“Which irritating little German boy?” I asked.

“Einstein. Albert. Is he really worth so much fuss? ”

“Nice to know you’re keeping busy,” said Gwendolyn sounding more than a little impressed.

“Busy, true, but I assure you, I’ve got everything under control! There’s no need for you lot to…”

Gwen interrupted our visitor, “I seem to have lost your contact information. Would you happen to have one of your cards handy?”

“Just the old ones, I haven’t had time to get new ones made.” The young woman retrieved a calling card from her jacket pocket and handed it over. Gwen held it up so we could both read it.

Jing Qian
Electromagnetic Investigations
Ephinburg, Eastern Telenarchy

“So you don’t live in New Babbage?” I asked.

“I moved here at your suggestion!”

“I told you to move here?”

“WEEKS AGO!!” shouted the stranger, her frustration clearly at a peak. “When we were investigating that ship. The spaceship. The one at the bottom of Iron Bay.”

“That’s when I left you that scanner?”

“Well the one I built myself clearly wasn’t up to the job, not compared to this one… no quantum counters, no decay analog compositors… and the neutrino filament thing, I didn’t even know what neutrinos were before. And I’ve confirmed what you suspected the last time you were here: Someone other than the alchemist has been tech-looting that ship.”

“Alchemist?” The more Miss Qian talked, the more confused I became. I had hoped the opposite would be true.

“That alchemist you met last time who was trying to jigger the ley lines and get his magic whatsits working again. The one I wrote all about in my thorough, typewritten, expertly-prepared, faithfully submitted status reports that you don’t seem to have been following! So, tell me: Have I passed your wretched little inspection so I can go back to bed?”

“I think we need to consult,” said Gwendolyn. “Miss Kilcanon, a quick word, if I may.” She pulled me aside and whispered into my ear. “This is all starting to sound uncomfortably like a little paradoxie woxie, don’t you think?”

“I don’t believe it!” I replied. “The Core technicians transported me here directly along with the pylons! Could they really be that stupid?” I was in denial, natch. There was every reason to believe Gwen and I had been sent to an unmistakably wrong moment in time; to a point where my first meeting with Miss Qian was in her past and my future — something even a rookie League agent knows is a nasty, nasty no-no. The science of the situation was beginning to fall into place as I felt myself running face-first into one of the primary annoyances of leading a non-linear life. But before I could begin my understandable descent into the deeper wells of rank bewilderment, the environment shifted, an unnatural wind rose, and a whole new class of strange events began to unfold.

A thick, billowing mist, glowing as if somehow energized, came pouring out from under one of the power station’s stone archways. Screechy, scraping metal noises echoed and bounced off of the adjacent walls. It was as if unseen hands were pulling railings, pipes and assorted stray scraps of machinery from their place and bending them into a giant metal web that hung eerily over the courtyard. At the center of the web, where the luminous smoke began to concentrate, a curious object was taking shape: a brain floating within a transparent container. For a moment, I was relieved. I consult with a number of brain-in-jar types on a fairly regular basis and they’re all damn decent chaps. But then the image in the smoke changed into a giant human head — someone I did not recognize — and this new cove floating ghostlike above us gave every indication of being steeped in malevolence.

“YOUR PRESENCE HAS UNBALANCED MY EQUATIONS!!” The voice seemed to be emanating from the drifting head illusion. “DATA GATHERING A STOCHASTIC BABBLE OF FLUX AND CHAOS… EXPERIMENTS RENDERED USELESS!! YOU WILL LEAVE THIS ZONE IMMEDIATELY!!”

“First of all,” I said, ” you’re really loud. Second: Who are you to be shouting orders at people?”

“IT IS NOT IN YOUR INTEREST TO QUESTION ME. ONLY TO OBEY!”

I thought to myself, “Doesn’t anyone live around here? Who could still be sleeping with this fool shouting?”

“Friend of yours, Jing?” asked Gwen. “Or another one of your investigations?”

“Oh, this is very new to me,” said Miss Qian. She raised her vario-scanner and began making adjustments. “Let’s see what this tells us…”

“FOUL WENCHES!! DAMNABLE BUSYBODIES!! YOU HAVE NO CLAIM HERE!! LEAVE NOW!! TAKE YOUR DEVICES AND GET OUT!! YOU’LL NOT PERSIST IN DISRUPTING MY ENERGIES!!”

“Hold it, head-case!” said Gwen boldly. “Do you own this pile o’ bricks? We’ll leave when we’re ready!”

“BABBAGE IS MINE BY RIGHT!! MY EXPERIMENTS WILL CHANGE THE VERY NATURE OF REALITY AND I’LL BROOK NO INTERFERENCE!!

This was all very unexpected. I was growing more curious by the minute. “Who are you? What are you planning?”

“MY PLANS ARE NOT FOR YOU TO KNOW!! BEGONE!!”

“No mass detected,” said Miss Qian, reading from the vario-scanner’s display. “Lots of power, but it all seems to be directed toward maintaining this illusion. Let me see if I can isolate the source.”

“ENOUGH!! QUIT BEING BITCHY AND JUST DO AS I SAY, YOU FOUR-EYED COW!!”

“Did the head really just say that??” Gwendolyn was scandalized. “Mad science villainy is one thing, but that was just rude! Apologize, dickwad!”

“BE SILENT, WOMAN! DON’T DARE TO THINK YOU CAN PRESUME UPON MY GALLANTRY, FOR I HAVE NONE! I AM UN-BEWITCHED BY YOUR TIGHT GARMENTS AND SHAPELY LADY FORMS! YOU WILL LEAVE THIS PLACE WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY OR DISTRACTION! HEED THE WARNINGS OF DR. FLAY OR SUFFER THE GRUESOME CONSEQUENCES!”

“Wait a minute, let’s back up here,” I said. “Your experiments are effecting ‘reality’? The continuum itself? You’re not deleting people by any chance, are you?”

“MAYBE. I COULD POSSIBLY DO THAT. WHAT’S IT TO YOU?”

“You aren’t targeting anyone in particular, are you? For example, Arconus Arkright?”

“YOU KNOW THAT LITTLE WRETCH?? WHERE IS HE??”

“You don’t know? You’re not targeting him?”

“THE FOOLISH BOY ACTED AGAINST ME! SUCH ACTIONS WARRANT DEATH!! OR TORTURE. NO, WAIT… TORTURE FIRST, THEN DEATH! YES, I’VE DECIDED! THAT IS HOW WE SHALL PROCEED WHEN I LOCATE HIM!! OH IS HE GONNA GET IT!!”

“The field is breaking down,” said Jing, still staring at her analyzer. “The power levels are dropping fast. I think whatever is generating this is failing.”

“I WEARY OF THIS CONVERSATION!! SWITCH OFF YOUR STUPID GADGETS, GO BACK TO YOUR KNITTING AND WAIT TO BE CONQUERED. GET LOST!!”

The floating head vanished and the metal web collapsed in clangs and clatters.

“Right,” I said, “time to call it a night, I think.”

“‘Call it a night’?” Absent the loud, translucent distraction, Miss Qian recovered her temper. “You’re leaving? Just like that?!?”

Gwendolyn was already scooping up her tools and returning them to her purse. “I think we’ve about hit our quota of things going pear-shaped for one evening, don’t you agree?”

“I’m not even sure I understand what just happened here,” said Jing. “Is one of you going to explain what just happened here?”

“Later, dear,” I said. “Once we catch up to you.”

“Catch up to me?” Jing sighed and rolled her eyes. “You know what? Since I have no idea what’s going on, I’ll let you write the bloody report. Good night!” She turned on her heel and left the courtyard in a huff.

Gwendolyn was hastily gathering up pylons and putting them in a pile. “Disembodied mad scientists, aetheric power plants, a mystery spaceship at the bottom of the bay… this city is the utmost, ever-lovin’ end! Shame on you for keeping it to yourself, Audrey!”

“This is nothing,” I said. “Sometimes, something really weird will happen around here.”

I didn’t like failing to follow through with the assignment, but there were just too many big questions hanging over us. At least this time I didn’t bungle anything; orders were followed to the letter. But the boss can be pretty cagey sometimes: It’s quite possible the point of the assignment was to confirm that such an assignment was impossible to carry out, kind of like sending a canary down a mine — an early warning indicator that bigger things are going on that need our attention. Certainly something very, very unusual was happening with space/time, that’s for sure. Did we finally break the damn thing? And who was Mr. Bizarre-Hologram-Guy? Too many questions to ponder while wearing a tight corset and without the benefit of a hot bath and a large martini. It was time for Gwendolyn and me, not to mention Miss Qian, to get back to our “normal” lives.

Where the devil are you, Arkright?