The Technologists

by Matthew Pearl

  Though his personal circumstances could not have been more different from Marcus’s, Bob had made Marcus feel as if he understood him from the first time they spoke. They had been freshmen, but more than that, since they were the first class and therefore the only students. They considered themselves princes, involved in the greatest overthrow of an old and worn-out system since the destruction of tea in 1773—in this case, the classical education they and their professors were kicking out the window.

  In those weeks after the Institute opened in temporary space rented from the Mercantile Library while the construction of the building was under way, Marcus had habitually found an empty corner of the lecture room in which to sit alone and do his work during dinner. His stepfather hadn’t been too far from the mark when he had predicted that, whatever Rogers promised to the contrary, nobody would want him at the college. “Factory boy! You there, factory boy!” This time the taunt was issued not in a sneaking whisper but in a booming, unapologetic voice. Still, Marcus wouldn’t turn his head. A paper dart glided over him and landed rather gracefully between his boots. He picked it up and studied it. “Notice the lower corners are folded up to the middle—that provides far better flying velocity. My own design. My governess looked like a porcupine by the end of a lesson, with her hair filled with these—but then again the old girl looked like a porcupine without help.” Marcus now faced a tall, handsome young man, with an air of brashness and familiarity in his wide smile, as though the two young men had known each other all their lives.

  “Is that really what they’ve been calling you?” the stranger went on. “Factory boy? Is it intended to be insulting? Goodness! I’d as soon walk through fire as take that as an insult.” Marcus asked the stranger why. “It means you’ll be more of a machine man than any of us can learn to be from a classroom,” the young man said blandly, stretching his hand out. “Mansfield, right? Bob Hallowell Richards, by the way. You are the one who took Tilden by the neck. He is jackassable. I’ve been wanting to do the same thing since we were five years old. They are afraid of you, old boy, only because you belong here. Fellows like me, on the other hand … How my father would toss and turn below the dirt of Mount Auburn to know I chose the Institute over Harvard. Here, have one. Not a smoker? Well, come anyway—you can finish my dinner while I have a puff before mechanical drawing.”

  “What makes you think I want your dinner?”

  The truth was, he was living on about a dollar a week. He had to spend most of his small store of money on the books and papers he needed for classes, and food was the first thing he sacrificed, since his stepfather deemed his lodging enough charity.

  “I know because I watch. That is what I do and have done since I was a boy, spying on the habits of the birds and animals, before long learning what every twitch and movement of the frog’s eye meant. You take small bites from the same biscuit throughout the day.”

  “I’m not a frog,” replied Marcus bitterly.

  “Understood. You aren’t letting me go alone, right?”

  * * *

  NOW HE WAS FOLLOWING Bob Richards again. Marcus arrived back in Boston safely before the appointed hour and followed the map along the riverbank. He thought he was at the approximate meeting spot, but did not find Bob or Edwin or the shell and he was about to give up. Then a hand shot out of the bushes, pulling him down and in.

  “Quiet! Stop breathing so loudly, won’t you, Mansfield?” came a whisper from low in the thicket.

  “What are you doing, Bob?” Marcus asked, then stopped when he heard a noise. “Why is he here?”

  A few feet away, Hammie also crouched in the grass. Hammie’s distinctive silhouette was easily identified even in the low light of dawn.

  “Eddy wouldn’t come and I needed a third hand for my operation,” Bob answered. “Hammie was the perfect choice.”

  “I thought we were rowing!”

  “Now, keep calm, Mansfield. Don’t grow warm with me this morning. It’s an important and, moreover, just cause.”

  “You know with graduation so close I cannot afford even a trifling breach of order, much less whatever it is you’re planning with him. That lunatic nearly tried to blow up a policeman yesterday for sport!”

  Bob motioned him to keep his voice quiet and looked over at Hammie, who was occupied sorting through a chemical case and did not seem to have heard.

  “I told you to come out for your benefit alone,” Bob insisted.

  “Mine?” Marcus asked skeptically.

  “I didn’t want to deprive you of any pleasure, old boy. Does that surprise you, even after four years of bosom friendship? Don’t worry—if we’re caught, I’ll tell them you and Hammie tried to stop me. You’ll be heroes!”

  “I don’t want to be a hero,” Marcus grumbled.

  “Then just enjoy the scenery,” Bob said, peering down at the river before turning back to Marcus. “Besides, if they find us and start a set-to, I’ll need you. Eddy’s too much of a dig—he would run away. You know his blasted philosophy in life is live and let live and wait for God to sort it all out. He’s a noncontroversialist. Not you. I heard you finally used Tilden up; at least that is what the rumor-mongering freshmen say. I wish I could have been there. One thing, though. He can lie and tell them you struck him on college property, you know.”

  “I don’t think he will. He’d have to admit he was licked, and he wouldn’t do that, even if it meant my being shipped off.”

  “Lucky God gave you the fists of a prizefighter!”

  He bowed his head. “I’m not proud of striking him. Well, maybe a little. I was mad as thunder, Bob.”

  “Say, what puts you in such a brown study this morning? That little social call yesterday from the men in blue?”

  “There was a faculty meeting yesterday before the police came. Albert Hall and I were assigned to help there.”

  “So? You go to one almost every week, don’t you?”

  “The police can make nothing of the events of late. And yet, when it came up, the faculty voted not to do anything about it. Not to even try to help.”

  “Repeating myself: So?”

  “Squirty Watson made some noise, but I think he rather enjoys disagreement, more than it being a matter of conviction. Bob, even Rogers voted to do nothing. Rogers! I have lost my respect for him.”

  Bob looked at him with genuine surprise. “Truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Think of it this way, Mansfield. Tech cannot afford to create a scene in Boston any more than you can afford to create a scene at Tech. Do you see?”

  Marcus swallowed hard. “There must be something to do.”

  “What?”

  He tossed his hand in the air. “I don’t know. But even when we sit and do nothing, the police are still sent to bother us.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a difference because of the principle of the thing—those who embrace the new sciences, who experiment forthrightly and dare search for truth, will be seen as harboring secrets and dark intentions. Science explains so much, anything unexplained is pinned to it.”

  “There will be time to show them what we are really all about. Remember how close we are to graduation—they are right to protect our college until then. They are professors and not policemen.”

  “I suppose I was hoping you would convince me.”

  “Have I?”

  Marcus thought about it, then smiled. “No.”

  “Mind and Hand! You have it in spades, by heavens! You never could watch the sun go up without trying to push it along. When we march out the college doors for the last time, I’m following you, Mansfield!”

  “I haven’t a clue what I’ll do.”

  “No matter what, I’ll be by your side.”

  “I’ll still be a former factory hand, even with a diploma. I may have to go far away from here to be given a position.”

  “Wherever!”

  “Say I’ll go to Japan.”

  “I’ll be
there!”

  “India?”

  “Skipping through the poppy fields!”

  “I don’t think I’ll go to those places.”

  “Just you wait, Mansfield! There’s Cuba, too. We’ll go to the ends of the earth, you and I!”

  “Well, right now, I have to get to the Institute to study. The train from Newburyport was late last night, plus I hardly slept—my thoughts would not rest.”

  “Your thoughts, or your dreams?” Bob asked.

  Marcus turned to Bob with a questioning look.

  “I’ve seen it, you kicking and tossing in your bed,” said Bob, “the times we’ve shared a room, or after you’ve fallen asleep on a train. Is it scenes from the war you see?”

  “Your imagination is too vivid, Bob.”

  “Wait!” Bob grabbed his arm when Marcus began to rise. “Why not stay with me in my rooms at Mrs. Page’s through the end of examinations?”

  “I cannot afford to pay my share.”

  “Pay! What nonsense. You know I spend half the nights at Mother’s, anyway.”

  “If you are certain … It would be an immense help for the busy season.”

  “It’s settled, then. Be a good fellow and stay for the performance, though, won’t you?”

  Marcus reluctantly crouched back down as payment for Bob’s generosity. “What is it he has there?” He pointed to the instruments Hammie was arranging.

  “An element,” Hammie interjected, as though he had been part of the conversation all along, “that would not be protected from explosion by remaining isolated in water, but prompted to one.”

  “Sodium,” Marcus answered the riddle.

  “Bravo, Mansfield.”

  “Pure as could be,” Bob added, beaming. “I happened to have asked around, furtively, mind you, about Will Blaikie’s practice schedule for his Harvard six. The worthless scamp is very protective of it, afraid that Oxford has secret agents here, I suppose.…” He held out his palm for silence and inclined his head to the water. “They’re coming! Do you hear that? Hammie, old boy, get ready! No, that’s not them,” he said with disappointment. “Hold it, Hammie.”

  “Bob, you cannot seriously—” Marcus began.

  “If we’re to be graduated!” said Bob.

  “What?” Marcus asked.

  “Did you hear the squirtish little miser Blaikie say that out on the river? If we’re to be graduated. As if the future of Tech were some kind of fairy tale. Wouldn’t you like to fix his flint?”

  Marcus tried to think of a good answer, but knew his silence gave him away.

  “Then you will do it! Do you remember what that graceless scoundrel called me out on the river?”

  “No,” Marcus said.

  “You lie, and I thank you. But he called me ‘Plymouth.’ When I was at Phillips Exeter, I was always at the foot of my class. Studying Latin and Greek was to me like hitting my head against a stone wall. When I asked why I should study them, I was told that was the way people like me were educated. But I was a misfit, and had no facility for learning dead languages. No matter how many tutors were thrown my way, I liked climbing around the floor of the forests and studying rocks, not books. One fine day, I was asked to tell the class where the pilgrims had landed, as we had been assigned to read about. I froze. ‘On the shore, sir,’ I finally replied. This brought down the house, as you might imagine, and I can still see Blaikie’s grinning phiz right in front of me. He called me ‘Plymouth’ ever after to memorialize the moment. I did not know Eddy well back then, for he was an out-and-out dig, and I was well known as a bird, and digs and birds do not mix at Exeter. But he never called me that. I secretly loved that little fellow for that.

  “My examination for admission at Harvard was even more distinguished. They asked me to translate the first three books of The Iliad on sight. How I stared at Felton’s Reader until the old blind poet was my mortal enemy! Rejected by Harvard, even with the Richards name.”

  “Rejected,” Marcus repeated, then stopped himself.

  “I know, I know. I might tell people now and again I turned them down, but it’s a cowardly lie. However brave dear Eddy might think me, he was the one to go to Harvard and decide Tech was the right place for him instead. To give up such a guarantee of position and respect in order to pursue a passion the world thinks is worthless—there is courage! I have always been the stupid one in my family, Mansfield, the dunce of every school, and since my father died it was assumed to be my brothers who would carry on the family success. My rambles in the woods and by the river, watching the habits of birds and animals, and studying the earth formations, these were my shameful delights.

  “Because President Rogers’s wife is my mother’s cousin, Rogers had urged Mother to consider his new college for me. At Tech, well, finally I found mathematics, languages, and history were nothing but a means to the end. I had always tried to study because I knew I ought to want to study, done only from love of Mother. Now I study because I cannot help it. The first days at Tech captured me body and soul. You see why I have to make Blaikie pay for running down Tech.”

  “What is the plan?”

  “Hammie has done calculations on the water current, Mansfield. Don’t worry—we know just when to drop—” He held one hand out again as the bandannaed Blaikie and his grunting oarsmen flowed into sight. He now looked down at a gold pocket watch, which lay next to an open notebook with a messy list of scrawled calculations in Hammie’s oversize handwriting.

  “Now!” he hissed and Hammie promptly used a modified slingshot to launch a solid mass into the middle of the river, then a second one, right by the Harvard shell. All three students on shore held their breath, Bob taking up his opera glass. He usually kept the device on him to spy on the Catholic girls’ academy located a few lots down from the Institute building, and had replaced the one so peculiarly damaged on State Street.

  At first, the Harvard shell rowed on in its usual grandeur. Then a blinding, fiery ball exploded out of the water like a rocket. Three of the rowers dropped their oars; one shrieked, and another yelled something about war breaking out. Blaikie shouted for order, but then another rapid pair of dull booms followed by explosions burst simultaneously on the other side of the shell, and on the first side, yet a new round of eruptions. The whole river seemed on fire. The shell tipped as half the boys tried to steer away from the fires and half tried to lean their bodies away. The team tumbled headfirst into the frigid waters below.

  “Mind and Hand!” Bob bellowed. “Mind and Hand!” The words echoed up and down the river.

  Blaikie pulled himself up to his chest onto the overturned boat, as his dazed crew flailed and coughed up water. The stroke oar scanned the river on all sides, but could see nobody and heard only the sounds of distant spasmodic laughter.

  “Tech,” he said, spitting out the word. He pounded his fist on the boat bottom. “Technology, I’ll be satisfied, upon my word! I’ll be satisfied, do you hear?” He was so overcome with fury his speech slurred, sending such a paroxysm of joy through Bob Richards and Marcus Mansfield that they could hardly take his next proclamation seriously:

  “You’ve dug your grave now, Tech!”

  XII

  Temple Place

  THE AIR OF MISCHIEF CLINGING TO THEM, the three seniors slipped quietly through the double doors leading into the chemistry laboratory. They were two minutes late for class by Bob’s watch, three and a half by the tall clock in the polished oak case at the end of the corridor. They had left the river with ample time to spare, and had rid themselves of any sign of having spent the morning in the thistle and brush, but the horsecars had been delayed by a cow on the tracks, who was impervious to the shouts of the conductor. By the time the animal was dragged to another spot, they lost nearly ten minutes in their journey. By any reasonable clock, at least, they were well before the five-minute-late mark, a milestone that would come with a report to the faculty committee.

  The other seniors were arranging their instruments at their ta
bles. Marcus and his friends were pleased that Professor Eliot was writing instructions on the blackboard and had not yet begun the lesson. As they entered, Eliot’s sharp eyes followed Marcus from behind his small wire eyeglasses.

  “Mr. Mansfield.”

  Marcus and Bob had just taken an empty table near the back. Hammie was one table up.

  “Sir,” Marcus responded to the professor, rising.

  Eliot exhaled through his nose. “Mr. Mansfield, wait in the corridor to speak to me privately.”

  “Sir?”

  Bob and Hammie exchanged guilty glances. They had arrived late together. Yet only Marcus was to be punished. Hammie fidgeted with the cover of his notebook.

  “Professor Eliot,” Bob blurted out.

  “You have something to say about the oxidation of red phosphorous, I presume, Mr. Richards?” Eliot responded impatiently. “Then sit back down.”

  “But, Professor—”

  “Bob,” Marcus warned him off.

  “But, Mansfield, it’s not fair!” he whispered.

  “Mr. Richards, pray sit down!” Eliot rapped the table with his hand for silence. Impressively tall and slender, his youthful looks at thirty-five made him appear only slightly older than his pupils, an impression he tried to minimize with a set of long muttonchops. “You men have too much to accomplish to act as fools. Mr. Mansfield, you are here still?”

  “Just leaving, sir,” Marcus said, peeling off his apron.