If it was strange to see an Autoviathan in pink and blue colors, wearing a bustled white dress and with a huge white wig perched atop its lumpy head, Space/Time Lincoln did not remark. He calibrated his pack. There was always more to do, and he disappeared with a pop. Soon, the Autoviathans were gone as well, the wreck of the first dragged through the portal with the second.

“Come, mon cher, let me show you a place we can recover,” she whispered, and they appeared in New Versailles, a moon-covering palace in full Baroque finery. The lab they came to was decorated like an exquisite bedroom, only the brass and gold machines half-hidden behind drapery showing its true purpose. There, laid out on a canopied bed, was Marie Antoinette’s headless body: part white flesh, part gleaming brass.

Tesla’s repair spiders started rebuilding the Autoviathan.

“Mon dieu! It is done!” said Marie happily.

“You have skill,” said Tesla with a smile.

“Non,” said Marie. “You built all this—in the past of our future.”