Come on then, Tess thought. Where are you? She was perched on a high stool in her lab, where she’d been for over an hour. The Secret Garden lay beside her on the bench, underneath her experiments notebook, but all she’d managed to note were some random doodles. Now she was using her magnifying lens to zoom in and out on the back of her own hand, marveling at how it was harder to truly see something the closer you got to it.
It had been three days since she’d last seen Mr. Cleat for longer than a few moments at a time, and just over a week since she’d last been in the lab. However, as soon as she’d walked through the door, she’d realized that someone had paid it a visit in her absence and she could take a guess at who. Things weren’t as she had left them: her lab coat had been left hanging on a hook near the door and she’d found it lying across the back of a chair; some of the things in her top drawer had been disturbed, as though pushed aside by a questing finger. She reached for the Star-spinner, a tiny bulge at her waist, and gave it a gentle squeeze. I won’t let him find you, she told it.
“What a surprise!” came a voice behind her, and Tess fixed a smile in place before turning around. “How nice to see you back in here. I did wonder whether you’d lost your taste for science.”
Tess gave Mr. Cleat an incredulous look. “Not at all. Mrs. Thistleton’s been keeping me busy, but I have this morning free.”
Mr. Cleat inclined his head. “What’s on your agenda, then?”
Tess reached into her cardigan pocket and took out a small envelope, trying her hardest to appear meek. “I wanted to give you this,” she said, holding out the envelope.
Mr. Cleat grinned. “Oh?” Three long strides had him in the room and by her side. He took the envelope but didn’t open it. Instead he gave her a curious look.
“It’s what you wanted,” Tess replied.
Eagerly, Mr. Cleat tore the seal and looked inside. “Ah,” he said, smiling an embarrassed-seeming smile. His enthusiasm faded a little, but he gave Tess a warm look all the same. “Your hair?”
A lock of hair lay inside the envelope—but it wasn’t Tess’s. It was Millie’s, and she’d darkened it as much as she could to try to match Tess’s shade by soaking it in strong black tea and letting it dry on a sunny windowsill. It still didn’t look quite right, but Tess was hoping Mr. Cleat wouldn’t notice. He hadn’t seemed to. “I’m sorry I didn’t give it to you the other day,” Tess said. “I wasn’t feeling too well, I suppose.” She smiled, and hoped it looked heartfelt.
“Please don’t apologize, my dear. I was in the wrong. I shouldn’t have woken you so abruptly.” Mr. Cleat smiled back and Tess bit her tongue. That’s not all you shouldn’t have done, she thought.
“In any case, I don’t need it now. The time for that experiment has passed, sadly. The members of my Society are looking for proof that these outlandish theories about other worlds and realities are actually true.” He sighed, tucking the envelope of hair into his pocket almost absentmindedly, but Tess had a feeling it was anything but.
“I was hoping the experiment on your hair would act as a control, you know—a demonstration that two people from the same reality would have the same vibrational frequency.” His gaze grew cooler. “But I met my fellows in the Society yesterday evening, and they’re looking for a greater exhibition than that. No, a couple of clumps of hair won’t satisfy them any longer.”
“Oh really?” Tess looked guileless. “So what are you going to do now?”
Mr. Cleat sighed, looking away from Tess as he spoke. “The existence of other realities, Tess, is something I take for granted. Sometimes I find it hard to remember that other people don’t. Mrs. Thistleton, for instance, thinks I’m a fool; she hardly believes the ground under her own feet is solid until she stands upon it. It’s people like her I’m trying to convince. And the only way to do that is to give them something they can see and feel.” He paused, raising his eyebrows. “To actually send something between worlds right in front of their eyes.”
“But how are you going to do that?” Tess asked, clutching the edge of her desk so hard her fingertips ached. “I thought you said it was impossible.”
Mr. Cleat smiled. “No indeed. I don’t believe it to be impossible at all. I’m firmly of the opinion that if it’s possible to send a radiogram signal far enough that it can be picked up by someone in a neighboring reality, then it’s possible to send other things too. People, perhaps.” He licked his front teeth. “Machines.”
“Machines?” Tess tried to keep her tone bright and interested. “You work with those, don’t you?”
“I do,” he agreed. “I work with large engines, Tess, which power steamships and airships and the new faradic trams you might have heard of—they run right through the heart of our own city. My father did it before me; it’s the family business. But the machines I’m talking about now involve significant investment on the part of some of the members of the Interdimensional Harmonics Society, and I must show a return on that investment or fall foul of their graces.”
Tess squinted at him. “You mean—they’d be upset with you? For wasting their money?”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” he said with a chuckle.
“But why do you care so much?” she asked. “Why is all this so important?”
Mr. Cleat settled himself more comfortably on his stool as he searched for a way to answer. “I know you’ll know what I mean,” he began, “when I say it’s important to feel that you belong somewhere.” He looked sidelong at Tess. She nodded and he continued. “It’s the same with me. I think all of us who grew up without parental figures might share that feeling. We can seem rootless. Am I making sense?”
Tess nodded again, giving an encouraging smile, and Mr. Cleat narrowed his eyes just a little. “My interest in all this began with my father, who was taken from me when I was around your age. My mother sadly passed away when I was so young that all I have left of her are some letters and a tattered photograph.” He paused but Tess remained silent. In her hair, Violet stirred as if warning her to be cautious and Tess tried to relax. Breathe, she reminded herself. “I began to cling to the things my father had loved—machines, engines, money, and Interdimensional Harmonics most of all. I vowed that I was going to get to the bottom of the things that had eluded him and I was going to leave my name—his name—all over them as a living testament. This is it.” He waved his hands around, taking in everything. “This house. This Society. This quest, which I’m determined to see through.”
Tess gulped, waiting until her voice was steady before she spoke again. “What quest?”
“To change the course of history, Tess. Not only in my own reality, but in another. Perhaps in all of them. To design and build machines that, when sent between worlds, will start and finish wars, or solve problems that have no other solution. I’ll be paid astronomical sums of money to do this work, of course, but that’s not important.” He waved his hand dismissively, as if Tess had accused him of being greedy. “There happens to be an ongoing war in a nearby world; I want to start there. The bombers I’ve built will—”
“Bombers?” Tess couldn’t help but interrupt, thinking of the dark terror in Thomas’s voice as he’d spoken to her about cities being flattened by things called bombers. Cities whose names she couldn’t remember. Cities that were real to him.
Mr. Cleat smiled indulgently. “Flying machines, Tess, that can destroy things on the ground. Nothing for you to be worried about. They’ll do you no harm—but of course you’ll see that for yourself. You’ll have the seat of honor at my exhibition. Indeed, the night couldn’t go ahead without you.”
“Wh-what night?” Tess hoped her fear sounded like excitement.
“It’s not far away now,” Mr. Cleat replied carelessly. “Oh, and by the by—do you still have that old book of mine? Or rather of yours. I seem to remember giving it to you.”
Tess blinked, then turned to fetch The Secret Garden. She held it up. “I can’t seem to put it down,” she said. “I’m not sure why.”
“Are you enjoying the story?” Mr. Cleat asked, a smile hovering on his lips.
Tess looked at him apologetically. “Not really,” she admitted.
“You and that book have something fundamental in common, you know,” Mr. Cleat said. “I’d wager my considerable fortune that it’s the reason you seem so drawn to it and it to you.”
Tess turned the book around so that its front cover was facing her. “Something in common?” she said. “I’d never heard of it before I saw it in your library.”
“Nobody in this world has ever heard of it,” Mr. Cleat continued, his voice low and prowling. Tess froze as she listened but remained still. “It was published by a company that doesn’t exist, written by an author who doesn’t exist—or, if she did, she became a nun or a physicist or a farmer instead, who knows.” Mr. Cleat paused, as if waiting for Tess to respond, but Tess found she couldn’t. She just kept her eyes fixed on the cover of the book and tried to take comfort from Violet’s gentle movements in her hair.
“I really don’t know what you mean,” she said, looking back at Mr. Cleat and fixing him with the widest, emptiest stare she could muster.
“I don’t think that’s true,” he replied. “I’ll leave you to think on it. Maybe you’ll conclude something different once you’ve considered it a little.” He stood up, pulling his waistcoat straight and settling his tie, gazing at Tess all the while. “Speaking of which, I’m away to a Society meeting. I’m sure they’ll be interested to hear how your reading’s going,” he said, nodding his goodbye.
Tess watched him leave. She didn’t breathe again until he’d closed the door behind him and his footsteps had faded away.