As beautiful as Nepal is, I cannot say that I am sad to see it drop away beneath me. The Hercules air transporter takes to the air like some magical metal whale, and we begin the final leg of the journey home.
Not that the journey back to Kathmandu was that bad. It was significantly better than the journey away from the capital. It was downhill for one thing. And we did it almost entirely by raft. Kayla made it the morning after our escape from the fort—a surprisingly large and sturdy thing, capable of toting even Herman and Volk, who made for powerful polemen pushing us along with the current. Well, Volk did most of that admittedly. But it left Kayla and Hannah free to spear fish, and Clyde and Tabitha free to study the journals we retrieved from the fort.
I’m not sure I’d call it totally functional research. Tabitha refused to put away the two halves of her laptop. Clyde sat further and further away from them each day, until his feet were trailing in the water. And then Kayla speared something almost as long as the raft with teeth to match, and Clyde decided to find another spot to mope in. Fortunately, Tabitha doesn’t seem to have lost any data. At least that’s how I interpreted, “In the cloud, moron.”
As for me, there honestly wasn’t much to do. Sit back and wait for my new stitches to heal. Felicity was in a surprisingly good mood. She seems to have taken our successful retrieval of the journals as proof positive that news of my oncoming death has been greatly exaggerated. And, lying on my back, slipping down some nameless river in some nameless valley in the back of beyond it was occasionally easy to let fear sublimate into hope.
Hannah can scoff, but we have what we came for. We’re that much closer to success. And with the roar of the Hercules’ four prop engines propelling us toward the clouds it’s time to come up with a game plan.
I lean forward from the bench where I’m perched in the plane’s cavernous fuselage and look at Clyde and Tabitha. They sit opposite each other, the full width of the plane between them. Clyde studies one journal intently, three more stacked at his feet. Tabitha has three open on the plane floor.
“So,” I say, “how’s it going?”
“Ah, well, I mean,” Clyde looks up from a legal pad full of notes, warming up his word factory, “as I believe previously described, Lang not the easiest experimental thaumatophysicist to understand. And that’s not exactly a crowd much lauded for their crystalline prose. Not to disparage their many accomplishments. Very important subset of folk are experimental thaumatophysicists, and interesting and remarkable in a great many different ways. As are all people really, I think. Don’t mean to imply there are any dull people in the world. The miracles of one’s inner life and all that. And really what we find interesting is a very subjective measure, and not one that I think would stand up to any sort of rigorous quantification. Though I have read a couple of interesting papers on quantifying subjectivity. All a bit flawed in my opinion, but noble efforts. Much like the efforts of experimental thaumatophysicists to parse their theories into prose. But all that said, and with a number of warnings about presumptive thinking on my part, one can’t help but feel that Lang rather delighted in obfuscation.”
“Total jackass,” Tabitha adds. “Lang was.”
Clyde nods several times. “Yes, yes. Very valid conclusion based on the available evidence.”
“Don’t fucking patronize me.” I think it’s the first time Tabitha has made eye contact with Clyde in almost a week.
Clyde looks horrified. “Oh no, of course not. Wouldn’t dream of it. Though, I suppose could be an unconscious thing. But God that would be horrible. Totally going to make it a conscious thing.” His look of horror intensifies. “Not that I’m going to consciously patronize you. The opposite of that. At least, well, the opposite that is being consciously unpatronizing. Not the opposite that is being unconsciously patronizing. Doing that already. Or might be. Don’t know. Going to fix it. I’m all over it, Tabby. Very responsive to advice. I mean, I am.” He flashes teeth at her in what is likely meant to be a smile.
She has returned to her journals and doesn’t look up.
“So,” I say, attempting to rescue the conversation, “it’s not going well?”
From the back of the plane Hermann lets out what I interpret as a mechanical sound of disdain. I don’t think he has the requisite anatomy to fart.
“Oh, wouldn’t necessarily put it that way,” Clyde says. “Definitely making progress. Just sorting the signal out from the interjected attempts to mathematically prove the superiority of German gerunds to other languages is a touch tricky, especially when he’s attempting the whole thing in rhyming couplets.”
So Tabitha is right. Lang was a jackass. The Nazi thing probably should have clued me in.
“Rather a lot of unnecessary metaphor use, as well. Especially in his engineering notes.”
Tabitha grunts. “Pretty sure no part of Hermann should be referred to as a Liebes-pumpe.”
“A what?”
“My love pump,” Hermann says, without any apparent emotion.
Part of me wants to ask, but not enough to outweigh the part of me that is blanching.
“Ooh!” Against all that is good and holy in the world, Clyde sounds genuinely excited. “I haven’t read that bit. Don’t suppose you could share your notes when you’re done with it, could you?”
Tabitha grunts.
An ugly thought strikes me. “Wait,” I say, “you two have been sharing notes, right?”
Another grunt from Tabitha.
“Well…” Clyde drags the word out. “I wouldn’t exactly say it’s a typical one-on-one direct comparison of research findings. Rather a sort of unstructured, erm, kind of, well…”
“No,” Tabitha summarizes for him.
I think I know why Felicity rubs her temples so much. “Jesus,” I say. “I realize that you two are going through a rough time right now, but seriously, please, demonstrate the smallest modicum of professionalism. Talk to each other. Instant message. Something.”
“Can’t instant message,” Tabitha says pointedly. “Laptop chopped in two.”
“Then something.” My teeth are grit. Maybe some sort of anxiety medicine would be helpful. If I can get the prescription filled before bloody Ragnarok, or whatever.
“Come on,” I point at Clyde. “Go and sit next to her. Talk to her.” Of the two of them, I’m more likely to have success getting him to move. And that’ll be a start.
Without ever actually meeting Tabitha’s eye, Clyde shuffles across the fuselage. I slump back beside Felicity.
She pats my leg. “Good work, love.”
“We’ll see.”
She rolls her head until it rests on my shoulder. “It’ll be fine,” she says. “Probably have it figured out by the time we get back to England. Save the Uhrwerkmänner. Put this whole end of the world nonsense behind us. And then you can move your boxes over to my place.”
Oh Jesus. My boxes. My completely nonexistent boxes. Maybe it would be better if I did protract this crisis a bit. Just so I have time to pack.
“I’m just going to shut my eyes,” Felicity tells me. “Try to catch some sleep before we land.” She nestles her head closer against my shoulder, sighs slightly. Relaxes.
Relaxes.
And long after Felicity has slipped into sleep, I am staring at Clyde and Tabitha reading, never exchanging a glance, and feeling my stomach roil into knots.
England is damp and gray and reassuringly mundane. It feels comfortable, like one of my dad’s cardigans. It even manages it with two hulking World War II-era robots standing on an RAF base runway. I stretch, feeling joints pop, trying to realign after almost ten hours on the plane. It’s mid-afternoon, time for a good jetlagged kip, and then some vigorous world saving bright and early tomorrow.
“OK,” says Hermann, advancing on Clyde and Tabitha, “you will give me the journals now.”
“Wait,” I step forward. “The journals they’re in the middle of going through to fix your problem? The ones we need so we can keep on doing the job you asked us to do? The ones we just almost died about eight times each in order to retrieve? Those journals?”
Hermann shakes his massive head. “You use too many words. You waste my time.” He holds out a large bronze palm. “The journals. Now.”
“No,” I say flatly. Hermann’s snark and attitude I’m willing to put up with. Directly interfering in my ability to take a nap in the next hour or so is something else entirely. “We need those if you want us to provide any sort of effective help and you know it. Because it’s bloody obvious.”
Hermann snorts laughter. “Effective help? That is what you call this parade of disasters you have led us through? You have had your fun. Now we will take the journals and do this properly.”
Volk lays a hand on Hermann’s shoulder. “Let me handle this.”
“Handle this?” Hermann snorts. “You are almost as laughable as the these fools.”
Volk shakes his head. “Why do you always have to make everything more difficult? If you had not always been this steel-headed I would think your gears falter.”
Apparently that’s what passes for a smackdown in Uhrwerkmänner society.
“Do you want the journals or not?” Hermann asks him. His accent makes it “vant,” like some 1980s movie villain.
Volk sighs, turns to us.
“Actually—” Clyde steps forward before Volk can speak. “This whole need for journals, and possessiveness, I mean, not trying to belittle anyone’s motives or anything at all like that. Don’t want to get us all off on the wrong foot. I mean, this whole interjection is sort of an attempt to course correct. That is to say, I don’t wish to imply anyone has knocked us off course. Not at all.” He shrugs twice at Hermann, who looks at him, bewildered. Clyde bumbles obliviously on. “It’s more that I can see us coming to a fork in the road ahead and I wish to ensure we remember to turn the steering wheel. Probably comes across like the worst sort of backseat driving now that I’ve made that comparison. Metaphors really aren’t my strong point. Not like checkers. Very good at checkers. Well, that is to say, not to brag, but objectively speaking my win-loss ratio is far more than two standard deviations above the norm. But metaphors, completely rotten.”
“Clyde…” I manage to slide a warning note into the conversation.
“Oh yes, my point,” Clyde says. “Good point. Yours. Not mine. Well, hopefully mine is, but I probably shouldn’t be the one to judge. I was just going to say that based on our whole back-and-forth, putting-minds-together thing, that Tabby and I may have this all figured out and the whole journal-possession thing may be a moot point.”
Standing nearby, Kayla shakes her head. But I hear her say under her breath, “He feckin’ gets there in the end.”
Volk is more exuberant. He claps Hermann on the shoulder hard enough to make him take a step forward. “This is wonderful news. Do you not say, Hermann? This is all we could have hoped for. Everything comes to fruition. Just as we knew it would.” He seems utterly guileless in his enthusiasm.
Hermann harrumphs.
“Excellent,” Felicity claps her hands. “Well then. Change of plans. Let’s jump on this now, and we can solve everyone’s problems.” She beams from Clyde to Volk and back.
I feel myself pursing my lips. And God help me, but I think I might be closer to Hermann’s response on this one.
“Wait,” I say, “really?”
Clyde nods. “Oh yes, you know, me and Tabby, once we get together. Greater than the sum of the parts. Well my part anyway. Tabby’s part is of the highest order. Really lifts my part up. Wait… that sounds… didn’t mean it that way. Of course.”
And there it is, the grit in my sandwich. How desperate is Clyde in his desire to make Tabitha think of their union positively? How much will he over-emphasize, and exaggerate?
“The guy who wrote mathematical prose poems and took tangents without warning? You just double checked each other’s notes and it was all fine?” Admittedly, it was a ten hour flight, but Tabitha and Clyde were pretty far from their end goal when we took off, and I can’t imagine their collaboration was that efficient. “Tabitha?” I look to her, silent so far.
She looks like she’s been sucking on a lemon, but that’s not exactly different from normal. “Maybe,” she says eventually. “Could work.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Volk asks, moving away from the group, toward the air base’s gates. “We must go now.”
But I’m still not sold. “‘Could work’ is not quite the same as ‘will work.’ And it’s not like we don’t all have pretty intimate history with magical shit going wildly and spectacularly awry. Shouldn’t we double check this one a couple of times?”
“And wait for Friedrich to find us again?” Volk asks. “He has been on our heels the whole time. We cannot wait. Your little man and lady,” he points to Clyde and Tabitha, “they can save my people.”
We’re rushing, I know we’re rushing. Too many people just want this to be over. Hell, I want this to be over. But I want it to be really over. Not just another screw-up that gets us in deeper.
I look to Felicity. Felicity is strong, and smart, and sensible. Always has been, always will be. “This doesn’t strike you as hasty?”
Felicity smiles. “Listen to Clyde,” she says. “When was the last time you heard him be that definitive? We’re going to fix this. Everything’s going to be taken care of. Just like we knew it would be.”
Strong, and smart, and sensible. Except when it comes to me and the universe foretelling my death.
Or am I worrying too much? Everyone seems to think I am. And maybe there’s a point when professional paranoia, just becomes paranoia… Didn’t I accuse Hannah of having exactly that problem?
I cast around, looking for any ally left. For a moment my eyes meet Hannah’s. She stands there, pensive, hands clutched behind her back. And she agrees with me. I can see it there. But she won’t say anything to help me. It’s gone too far for that. And it’s gone too far for me to ask her for help.
“There,” Felicity says. “It’s settled. Come on, let’s get this sorted out.”