The Diamond Conspiracy: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel (30 page)

Wellington saw his own distorted reflection in the
automaton’s face say, “Er . . . thank you?” He gave a sheepish grin. “Excellent work.”

“Thank you, sir,”
it replied politely, then it turned back in the direction of the airlock with its companion.

“Well then, perhaps I should start at the beginning.” Sound’s jovial voice jerked Wellington out of the reverie he had momentarily fallen into. He smiled warmly and gave the archivist’s shoulder a firm squeeze. “To better understand this place, I think you will need to understand more about your director.

“I once took a journey that changed my life. Quite the feat you must understand as, after half a decade, you would think my course in life would be not only set, but enjoy quite the foundation.” He looked around himself and gave a little chuckle. “I suppose you can never be too old to learn, now can you?”

“If you don’t mind my asking, sir,” Eliza dared in this sudden break of Sound’s thoughts, “what did you learn?”

He blinked at the question, and his eyes seemed to twinkle as his smile widened. “I learned, my dear Eliza, that Shakespeare was right. There are, indeed, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in philosophy. One of those philosophies includes the sciences. No matter what we learn, no matter what we prove and reaffirm, there is that which cannot be explained. Those people, places, and objects that challenge the sciences, I believed, needed to be understood. As so, with the blessings of Her Majesty the Queen, I founded the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.”

Wellington was trying to keep an open mind but that revelation, combined with the image of a slumbering Sophia del Morte
floating
by them all of a sudden, suspended between two automatons, struck him as hard as Eliza slapping him in the face. “I beg a pardon—
you
founded the Ministry? The Ministry was founded nearly half a century ago by Professor Culpepper Source. From Ministry records, he was a man of the sciences and academics.”

“Yes, he was. And so he sat as the director for just over a decade, followed by Dr. Galen Phund. He was then followed by . . .”

“Woodruff Spring, a professor of the sciences, yes, but—”

“Bloody hell!”
Eliza snapped, startling them both.

It was the New Zealander who was now looking at Sound wide-eyed, her jaw threatening to become completely unhinged.

“Oh, you are clever,” she said, wagging her finger at Sound. “I mean, if I’m right . . .”

“I assure you, Eliza, you are,” he said with a wink.

“I always thought you were clever, but
this
?!”

“Hello!” Wellington waved at the two of them. “I happen to be here as well. Do you mind enlightening me?”

“You don’t know, Welly?” Eliza pointed enthusiastically at Sound. “You haven’t figured it out?”

“Figured
what
out?”

Her smile was now almost as bright as the director’s. “Really?” She clapped her hands together, giggling ever so softly. “Ooooh, I figured out a riddle before Wellington Thornhill Books. How delightful!”

“Eliza . . .” he warned.

“No no no no, just let me enjoy this moment. It’s quite lovely.”

“Do you mind?” He couldn’t help the rising inflection in his voice; he was becoming rather annoyed.

“It’s like beating you in chess. Or in a marksmanship competition.”

“Eliza . . .”

“Or more like beating you in chess while beating you in a marksmanship competition.”

“Oh for God’s sake, please out with it!”

She looked at him with a hard glare. “You really know how to spoil a girl’s victory lap, you know that?” Eliza opened her mouth, but then caught herself. “On second thought, I’d rather lead you through this little conclusion.”

His skin prickled; the heat underneath it he could swear was at a boiling point.

“Go on,” she urged. “Name the directors.”

“In chronological order?”

“If that gives you a bit of a thrill, certainly.”

Wellington gave a sigh, and recited, “Culpepper Source, Dr. Galen Phund, Woodruff Spring, St. John Fount, Basil Sound.”

“And the pattern you see there?”

Pattern? There was a pattern? “Well . . .” He looked upward
as he whispered the names again and again. Then his brow knotted. He could see in his peripheral Eliza bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet. Terribly distracting. “All right . . . Source, Phund, Spring, Fount . . . hold on . . . Sound. Those are all the same thing.”

“I know,” Eliza said, the excitement in her threatening to explode as one of her sticks of dynamite.

“So then . . . Culpepper, Galen, Woodruff, St. John, Basil . . . herbs.” His eyes jumped back to Sound. “Herbert—
Wells
?”

Sound gave a soft chuckle. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“The director of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences is H. G. Wells?!”
he asked, his voice echoing all around them.

“Since its very founding in 1840”—he gave Wellington a wink—“yes.”

“That’s so bloody amazing!” Eliza bounced on her toes.

“And this,” began their director, again motioning to the seemingly endless number of onyx cubes underneath them, “is the Archives that I—pardon me, Wellington—
we
built. Although Beta Archives covers a bit more of the past.”

Wellington went pale. “I see.”

“And the future.”

Earlier, Wellington would have loved a strong cup of tea. Now, all he wanted was a brandy. Several fingers deep.

“Mr. Wells.” Eliza shook her head. “Nope, sorry, mate. It just doesn’t work for me.”

“You’re having trouble accepting who I am. This is underst—”

“No, I can accept you’re H. G. Wells. In fact, it explains a lot.” Eliza looked him up and down. “But you’re . . . Doctor Sound to me, and quite frankly you always will be.”

Wellington felt an urge to correct Eliza, to explain that no matter how sentimental she felt, this man who had led them all these years into investigations of the unknown was in fact an accomplished writer of both fact and fiction, an artist, a biologist, and a man of many other talents. This revelation changed everything they knew, everything they accepted as fact.

No matter what we learn, no matter what we prove and reaffirm,
Wells had said earlier,
there is that which cannot be explained.

Doctor Sound was absolutely right. This cannot be explained. Perhaps it was best not to try.

“She does have a point, Doctor Sound,” Wellington said.

“Oh, how disappointing, I had hoped after telling you this little secret, I would hear my own name between us.” He gave a shrug. “Perhaps I should look on the brighter side. At least this chaos didn’t occur when I was Woodruff Spring. I had one agent from Dorset—Smithers was his name. Lyle Smithers—who insisted on calling me ‘Woody’ all the time. Bloody annoying.”

“Doctor Sound, if this,” Eliza said, motioning to the array underneath them, “is the Archives, then what exactly were Wellington and I maintaining all this time? It just all feels like a grand lie.”

“Not at all. Quite the contrary,” Doctor Sound said, nodding to both her and Wellington. “This incredible journey that inspired the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences needed a central point, as it were, of activity, and it was this time period—a time period I flourished in—that, according to the models I’ve been following, seems to be where the trouble in the space-time continuum first grew roots. When Ministry agents would unearth or solve various phenomena, I would return to the origins of said case and see if I could go further into the mystery. Sometimes, that would mean travelling to the past. Other times, it would involve the future, although the future can prove rather tricky, as every event of the past carries a cascade of consequences, much like throwing a stone into a millpond.”

It was Wellington’s turn to interrupt. “If you are doing what you are insinuating—”

“I am not insinuating anything here, my boy. I am doing it. Perhaps just hearing yourself say it may help you accept all this much easier.”

Wellington swallowed hard, took in a long breath, and felt a calm wash over him. Doctor Sound’s logic, considering all things at present, was absolutely staggering. “Sir, if you are travelling willy-nilly through time—”

“And space.” Doctor Sound looked over to Eliza. “I’m particularly proud of that trick.”

“Exactly why do you not invite the Ministry in on this little secret of yours? Could you imagine the lives we would have saved in the field had we been able to do what you are doing?”

“Oh, I would agree that we would have saved quite a few lives by allowing agents to take advantage of this incredible technology.” Sound leaned against the railing and crossed his arms as he looked at the both of them. “But in light of Agent Campbell’s betrayal, a frailty in men and women that is not foreign to this or other agencies under the Queen’s rule, I could not risk it.”

“So you shouldered the responsibility of time travel all on your own?” Eliza’s eyes narrowed. “Aren’t we an arrogant pommy bastard?” Her earlier delight looked to have worn off.

Doctor Sound’s smile faded. Eliza’s bold statement, Wellington admitted, was quite sobering.

“You are not God, nor should you consider yourself the only one able to wield such power,” Wellington stated. “I can think of several men and women in our Archives that fell to such seduction.”

“An intriguing argument.” Sound’s voice adopted an unexpected chill that Wellington had never heard from the man, nor ever wished to again. “However, I am shouldering it nevertheless and sharing the burden now with you. If I have made the wrong assumption about the two of you, I will rectify this judgement and do so with a clean conscience.”

“Mate,” Eliza said, her tone bristling with confidence and a hint of rage, “I’d like to see you try.”

“Do keep in mind, Eliza,” Wellington said, his eyes motioning around them, “you’re not only threatening the man who has led the Ministry for over fifty years, but who has also mastered the ability of traveling through time.”

“And space,” Sound added once again.

Eliza shook her head. “It’s pretentious. It’s disgusting. It’s—”

“Necessary, Eliza,” Sound insisted. “Think for a moment if not one but many people were floating throughout time. Do you think they would be bandying about dimensions benevolently?” He shook his head. “And then there is a matter of balance. One person travelling through time on his or her own volition can effect everything from individuals to empires. Introduce an international government agency to time travel, and you increase the potential for Armageddon exponentially.”

“So why exactly did you decide to show us all this?” she asked.

“My chrono-model revealed that the both of you were entrusted with this secret. That is what I rescued from my office—fragile piece of equipment don’t you know.” He took out the watch from his pocket and his eyebrows popped up. “Now, if you please, follow me. We cannot miss our upcoming window.”

Eliza and Wellington shared a glance between themselves before following Sound towards the end of the walkway. Ahead Wellington could make out a large bank of displays and larger versions of the glass monitors that he had seen in the airlock. Floating by a rather impressive door—a most sturdy one, made of a heavy dark cherrywood and sporting a single thick brass handle—was Sophia, still asleep on the floating stretcher. This must be the area of Beta Archives that Sound had referred to earlier as Event Control.

“Window?” Eliza asked. “Why would you be concerned about missing anything? You’re travelling through time.”

“Time travel is hardly a matter of saying, ‘I would love to enjoy a bite with Marie Antoinette on September 23, 1775, just past noon,’ but more of calculating intersections between events.”

His mind should have shut down the moment they entered this Archives of Sound’s making. Wellington knew the mind simply reaches a point, be it in the battlefield or in the confines of a library deep in research, where it can no longer take in any more information. Presently, he could not stop taking it all in. Doctor Sound continued to peel back layer upon layer of this mystery, and all Wellington could do was keep exploring, keep delving into this amazing revelation.

He also just couldn’t help himself. He had to know. “Events? Are you saying there are points in time that are fixed?”

“It’s a bit of a theory that has proven to explain quite a bit of what I’ve been doing, but yes, there are these moments in time that are so clearly defined that the array—my Time Machine, if you will—can connect them, and this is how I travel back and forth.”

“But the amount of power it would take to power such a
device,” Wellington began, looking from one end of the computer banks to the other. “It is—”

“The Thames.” Sound rocked back on his heels, crooking an eyebrow. “Are you telling me that you truly believed the generators here were solely for your analytical engine’s operation?”

“Well . . .” His voice trailed off as he felt a blush rise on his cheeks. “If this area hadn’t been so restricted, as it were, perhaps I would not have been led to believe as such.”

“Perhaps,” Sound chortled. He then turned to the array’s main keyboard and monitor and began to tap into it what Wellington could only assume was a sequence of some kind. “Now then, we have an errand to run for our Whiterock compatriots. There is an ally that I have remained very tight-lipped about within our ranks.”

“Another secret? Blimey,” Eliza grumbled. “With this much trust, it’s a wonder you bothered to let us loose in the field at all.”

“I’ve remained tight-lipped about this ally,” Sound repeated, giving Eliza a sharp stare, “on account of this man’s rather unique situation. He has provided incredible intelligence in the past . . .”

His words trailed off as he continued to type on the keyboard. Wellington started at what sounded like massive generators spinning to life underneath them. Eliza’s hand clasping into his own reassured him that feeling unnerved was proper, if not completely understood.

Words, displayed in their strange typography, materialised on the main screen above them:

Event horizon stable. Connection established.