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Page 37.
 What we did not realize was that our lives, and theirs, and in fact the world's, were about to change in a matter of minutes. The Membrane wasn't done sorting through the calculations of what it had to do all up and down the line of its local transit stations. It is remarkable, really, how networked this entire organic entity is when you think about it. What an accomplishment on the part of the Laars, but we knew almost nothing of them at this point. In that sense, we were almost as much in the dark as these two Victorian gentlemen who had been enjoying a quiet evening of brandy and cigars on a frosty November night while snow blew about the gas lit streets. It would be some time before we pieced together who we were, much less that they would understand who we were.
"Are you with some sort of circus or theater company?" Tatnall said as he opened a box of Cuban cigars. I didn't know what they were, and took one out. I sniffed it, while the two Londoners watched with smurks and hilarious eyes. When I tried to bite into it, thinking it was food, the started laughing again. The taste of that thing was so strong, and so vile, that I threw it down and ran to the kitchen, where I retched into the sink. Moments later, as I stood pastily looking out over Tatnall's pond outside, they came strolling after me. Each had thumb hooked in a suspender, and a lit cigar in the other hand. "Care for a puff, old man?" said Tatnall. They had had a bit more brandy than I'd given them credit for, and they burst into little puffs of laughter. I was puzzled as they inhaled smoke from these brown cylinders. The smoke had an odd smell I have a hard time describing. It was not entirely unpleasant, and of course these were the finest, mildest cigars a man could buy. It was a sort of smell that filled a room and made it cheerful, I thought, as I slowly puffed on Wells' cigar and began to like it if I just took tiny draughts of it. I still turned green and retched again, but they did manage to teach me this deadly habit, and I had some difficulty later divesting myself of it—the less said about that, the better. The two women found it distasteful, and did not smoke.
As we stood in the kitchen, we three men, there was a crash in the pond. The house shook, rolled, rumbled, and we each clung to the nearest piece of furniture.
"Earthquake," said Tatnall, who had served as a youthful infantry private during the Second Afghanistan War that ended disastrously for the British in 1880, as all Afghan adventures over time seem doomed to end.
"Impossible," Wells said, "tidal wave."
"Nonsense," Tatnall said, then dropped his cigar on the floor as he turned white and pointed outside. "My God, what is that?"
I turned to look, and saw a remarkable object protruding from Tatnall's pond. Good thing we weren't in there at the moment, or we would have been crushed.
"A train or a circus wagon," Wells said. "Maybe a gypsy cart."
"I'm not so sure," Tatnall said. "My God, should we go out again, or send for a constable?"
"Both, I'd say," said Wells, "but first let's go out and see if there are lives to be saved. Isn't there a railway track nearby?"
"Oh, that's several streets over," Tatnall said, "and this couldn't possibly be a car that derailed." The women came into the kitchen to see what was going on. All in a babble, we moved as a group to the rear door. "Does this have something to do with you people?" Tatnall demanded.
Trini said: "If it does, we don't know what."
Wells had his service revolver again, and Wells the bird gun, as for the second time in as many hours they trod carefully down the snowy lawn out from under the glass roof of the greenhouse. Meanwhile, the carriage that had fallen from the sky had bobbed upward somewhat and sat askew. One end rested on the lawn, while its other end floated in the water.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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