Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl by David Barnett

him. “I do not understand how I could have invented that. How could Professor Einstein have given me memories of things I have never seen?” She laid a hand on his bare arm and his hairs prickled. “Sometimes I wonder where they came from, whose they once were.”
    “Did he never speak of the memories and dreams he had given to you?” he asked gently.
    She shook her head tightly. “What ever reasons Professor Einstein had for keeping them a secret, he must have thought they were valid. However, he is gone and you have emancipated me from the yoke of dreadful Crowe. Now I can seek answers.”
    They stepped out into the sunshine just as the omnibus rattled through the village. Gideon paid the money and they were directed to a double seat halfway down the carriage. “The outlook is fine for London, today,” the driver said with a smile. “Perfect weather for lovers.”
    Gideon flushed and tried to protest but Maria hushed him. She said, “Would you mind awfully if I took the window seat?”
    As the bus steamed forward, Maria became lost in the countryside unfolding outside the window. Gideon reached into the cloth bag to count the remaining money, and his hand paused over the book. It was written in English, in diary form. Much of it was dense formulae and scientific jargon, but he reckoned he could get a sense of the book from the intermittent prose entries. He settled back in the seat and began to read.
    January 11, 1888— A most intriguing visit from a Mr. W, who represents the British Government and who I anticipated was here to, as the British say, “lean on me” to work faster toward our goal. I was all prepared to tell him going to the moon is not quite as simple as taking a train to Birmingham. But he came bearing gifts. A recent exploratory mission to the bed of the Atlantic Ocean by a Royal Navy submersible had uncovered the remains of a sunken Viking longship. Among the booty recovered from the wreck was a most unusual item that Mr. W. brought to me for my investigation, with the possibility that it might aid me in my endeavors.
    So: The item appears to be of some kind of opaque glass, frosted with a slight yellowish tinge, almost as though it had been forged from sand. It weighs three pounds and has a size of seventy-five cubic inches, and it is shaped like a rough, slightly distended half-sphere, the top being smooth and bisected by a slight indentation, the underside sporting exactly one hundred symmetrically arranged holes, each an eighth of an inch in diameter, and one larger hole. If it is indeed glass, it is extremely tough; I made the mistake of allowing Crowe to hold it, and the damn fool let it slip from his fingers. It hit the floorboard of my workshop and did not crack, chip, or otherwise become damaged. Crowe’s mishap did, though, reveal a hitherto unseen mechanism allowing the flat bottom of the artifact to open on tiny hinges, revealing a hollow interior.
    Quite what the point of it is, I am at a loss to explain. Other items from the longship have been dated at the tenth century ad, so all I can say for certain is it is very, very old and manufactured by a very advanced civilization.
    February 23, 1888— Investigations into the Atlantic Artifact have been sidelined of late, to allow me to concentrate on my work in other fields, but a strange occurrence today causes me to pick up my pen once more.
    The artifact had been on my desk, gathering dust and proving no more use than a paperweight. But then Baxter, the venerable cat who patrols the grounds of the house, padded into my workroom bearing a present of a half-dead mouse, which he deposited proudly upon my desk, and the poor beast twitched as its life essence deserted it. It was then the development occurred. . . . Baxter had lain the mouse by the Atlantic Artifact, and almost immediately it was suffused from within by a red glow, faint but definite. I immediately placed both the dying mouse and the artifact in a glass fish tank,