The Technologists

by Matthew Pearl

  “Mr. Hammond,” Marcus blurted out, lowering the weapon. “How …”

  He was going to ask how he had reached Boston before they did, but he knew the question was foolish before he finished it. Hammond did not need to rely on the railroad schedule—he was the railroad. Edwin joined Marcus in the passageway to the shop.

  “Boys, forgive me. I fear I cannot take visitors in here at the moment,” Hammond said, smiling at them wearily. “You haven’t found my son, have you? Isn’t that my Whitfield rifle? Why have you brought it here? What’s the matter?”

  The gaslights were flickering above them.

  Edwin leaped to his own conclusion. “You cannot do this, not even for Hammie’s sake, Mr. Hammond. It constitutes destroying the evidence!”

  “You don’t understand—I need to do this,” the industrialist snapped. “It is the only way to stop this, Mr. Hoyt. To rescue everything and everyone I care about. Now, Mr. Mansfield, Mr. Hoyt, please do as I ask and find my Junior, so we can all be safe!”

  “Hammie must not be protected anymore,” Marcus said.

  “I’d give my life for my child, just as every good parent would. What are you trying to do? I thought you wished to help! I thought you were his friends. I see my mistake now.” Hammond’s face tightened. Just like the flames of the furnace, the magnate’s anger seemed to gather itself and then literally flare up within him. He put down the bundle of papers and whistled two sharp notes.

  Through the dim halls of the next chamber came a gigantic figure, bearing down on them through the aisle of furnaces. The light revealed Sloucher George, the enormous machinist. He had bandages on his face and neck, which Marcus presumed were from injuries suffered during the boiler explosions.

  “You didn’t bolt the door, you ape,” Hammond groused. Though he kept his eyes on Marcus and Edwin as he spoke, the reprimand was addressed to the machinist, whose big face reddened as he joined his employer. “Please help our friends find the exit while I finish my work here.”

  Sloucher George blocked the way as Marcus moved closer to Hammond. “You hard of hearing, Mansfield? Mr. Hammond said you can’t be here right now. I wouldn’t have expected you’d try something like this. You still remember your way out, I’d wager. You can give me that rifle.”

  “George, my friend and I need to speak to Mr. Hammond right now.”

  Hammond, back to his task, was once again the brusque businessman. “Mr. Mansfield, I must repeat that I am at some very urgent business just now. Take Mr. Hoyt, be on your way. I promise we will speak later—come to my offices tomorrow morning.”

  Marcus didn’t move.

  “You pigheaded whelp! I’ve always wanted a good excuse to lick you, Mansfield,” George said, his huge hand landing on Marcus’s shoulder. “Try to interfere with Mr. Hammond’s plans, and you’ll give me one.”

  “Careful,” Edwin said, leaning in toward the machinist bravely. “Just the other day my friend licked a whole gang of Harvard men who started a row!”

  Sloucher George laughed and raised his massive fist. “I ain’t no collegey, little fellow,” he replied.

  “We haven’t time for polite conversation,” Hammond said quietly, nodding a signal at his man. “Now!”

  George pitched his body into Marcus, grabbing the rifle out of his hands even as he raised it, and throwing it across the boiler shop. George picked up Edwin by the collar and tossed him like a pebble across the greasy floor. Marcus came up swinging but was easily blocked by the machinist, who delivered a rapid series of body blows in return.

  Staggering backward, Marcus recovered himself enough to stumble into the foundry toward Edwin, who was still on the floor. Before he could reach him, the large steam hammer plummeted down, sending sparks of fire shooting into the air over their heads. Marcus ducked, shielding his face.

  Sloucher George, at the handle of the machine, laughed harshly. As Edwin tried to rise, George maneuvered the small hammer into position and snapped its iron arm down ferociously into the floor, sending Edwin back onto the floorboards.

  “Ready to leave now, fellows?” the machinist yelled happily over the noise of the machine.

  “You have to help us, or we’ll all be at risk!” Edwin shouted to the machinist. “You can’t let him shield Hammie!”

  “Shield Hammie! What does Hammie have to do with it?”

  “You don’t know, George?” Marcus asked, regaining his footing and his confidence. “You will be under the threat of arrest for destroying evidence of serious crimes.”

  “What don’t I know? Crimes? Boss Hammond told me we had to destroy the plans for a new locomotive engine before Globe Locomotive tried to steal them while our operations were still down. It’s those wretched commercial thieves I’m here to guard against!” George spun around to face Hammond, who stood in the entryway, taking in the exchange.

  “Hold your tongue, boy,” Hammond said, pointing threateningly at his employee. “As long as you work for me, you do exactly as I say.”

  “First tell me what these fools talk about! What is this about Hammie?”

  “Nothing of your concern. Get back to the steam hammers and do as you’ve been instructed. Clear them out.”

  George hesitated, wringing his hands and clenching his teeth. “Mr. Hammond, I want to know what Mansfield is talking about first,” George shot back.

  “I believed you a loyal man, George!”

  “When Mr. Rapler tried to recruit me at the beer hall to organize against you, I told him to jump off a bridge. But he was right. You’re dishonest with your workers! You aren’t telling me the truth—I can smell it,” Sloucher George roared, swinging his body back and forth between Hammond and Marcus as if unsure where to turn or whom to hurt.

  Hammond pressed a hand wearily to his temple. “It seems you boys have all forgotten your places. I’m sorry it now comes to this. I never would have wanted any of you to be harmed.”

  Seizing Edwin by the shoulders, George was suddenly shaking him. “Someone’s going to give me answers. You! What is all this about Hammie? What’s that little swell done?”

  Edwin wheezed for breath in the frantic machinist’s clutches. As Marcus leaped forward to pull him off, the lights in the large chamber of machines flickered off. The three young men groped in the dark to find their bearings, Sloucher George shouting for Hammond to restore the lights.

  “Marcus!” Edwin called out.

  “I’m over here, Edwin. Don’t move— Oh, God. I think he’s—”

  With a flash of fiery sparks, a revolving shaft of a suddenly live machine clutched Sloucher George by the jacket and threw him twenty feet into the air.

  “Marcus, what’s happening?” Edwin cried out.

  “George! George, where are you?” Marcus called, but there was no reply and no trace of him in the pitch-black cavern of the foundry. He began to grope his way across the wall in the direction of the tossed workman. Massive machinery whirred and clicked all around them. Marcus called out again to Edwin to stay still as he braved one methodical step after another, following his memory of the arrangement of the foundry. A slight lapse, a momentary brush with the wrong machinery in action, could rip an arm off a shoulder in a flash, or separate head from neck.

  He followed the groans now coming from the fallen machinist. Just before he reached George, the floorboards, damaged by the boiler explosions, gave way, and Marcus crashed through the floor down into the planing room.

  “Marcus! No!” Edwin screamed.

  Marcus landed on his back on the top of the enormous wheel lathe, thirty feet above the floor and now activated at full strength. Light was streaming in from a boarded-up breach in the brick wall. When the dust clouds cleared, he drew his head up and assessed his situation. At first relieved his fall was broken, once he realized where he was he was horrified.

  Edwin, dashing down the stairs from the foundry into the planing room, stopped short of the machine, now staring up from below at his fallen friend.

  “I need
help, Edwin,” Marcus said as calmly as he could manage.

  “Can you jump down?” Edwin asked. But even if Marcus could survive the fall, the wheels on the machine were spinning below and would likely catch him and sweep him under the lathe. “You’ll have to climb down the wheel, Marcus.”

  “I can’t. If I move more than an inch up here, it will mimic the operator inserting a plane of wood—the wheel I’m on will turn and I’ll be thrown right into the moving parts of the machine.”

  “Then I’ll find a rope and pull you up from above.”

  Marcus shook his head. “The boards are all broken on the foundry floor—you won’t be able to get close enough. Edwin, I need you to shut the machine down as quickly and carefully as you can, but without jolting anything.”

  Edwin hurried to the other side of the wheel lathe, where the controls were operated under a hood. The massive wheel on which Marcus balanced was shifting back and forth as he tried to keep his weight centered between the sharp wheel spokes.

  “Edwin!” The wheel creaked and shivered.

  “Don’t speak, Marcus! Try not to move a single muscle! I’m going to stop it! I won’t fail!”

  Even as he said the words, both Tech students knew the truth: Even the blessed brain of Edwin Hoyt could not train itself on the controls of the sophisticated machine in the next thirty seconds. That was all the time remaining to Marcus—sixty seconds, maybe, at most—before his weight would inexorably trigger its movement and he would be crushed under the wheel, swept into the machinery, or thrown into one of the other heartless machines now activated by Hammond.

  If he jumped he’d have a chance, however slim, of surviving. He closed his eyes and prepared himself. And then the machine sputtered and groaned and came to a screeching stop below. Lifting his head slightly, Marcus stared in amazement at what he saw.

  “Edwin!” he cried in distress.

  Edwin had lodged his body into the main gears that were turning the engine. “Marcus, you’re clear! Climb down!” Edwin shouted, followed by a rush of tears as he watched blood flow down his own flank. Marcus launched himself down the spikes of the now-fixed wheel and yanked Edwin’s body out of the machinery. His suit had been torn to shreds all along his side. Marcus ripped the sleeve from his uniform and wrapped it around his friend’s bloody abdomen.

  “Edwin, what have you done?”

  “Find him,” Edwin said, coughing and spitting blood. “You need to find Hammie!”

  “Come on.” Marcus pulled him to his feet. Miraculously, they found he was walking with less pain than they had expected and dreaded.

  “I’m not dead,” Edwin cried, marveling. He clung to Marcus’s shoulder.

  “You’re hurt, Edwin.”

  “But I’m not dying, Marcus!”

  They came to a sudden stop.

  “What’s wrong?” Edwin asked, trying to pull him forward. “We haven’t any time to lose. I can keep up.”

  “Edwin—think,” Marcus said quietly, then with a burst of realization. “All the clues we discovered. The set of steamer trunks were owned by the Hammond family, it was the Hammond yacht that went out with the iron, it was Mr. Hammond’s laboratory building in South Boston. What if he isn’t protecting Hammie? What if he is protecting himself?”

  “That’s impossible. Chauncy Hammond! He’s supported the Institute from the start.”

  “He didn’t come here trying to protect Hammie,” Marcus said, now certain of it.

  “I can’t follow it.”

  “He wasn’t even looking for Hammie. He was distracting us, sending us on a mission to find Hammie because we were getting too close, while he was preparing to get away free and clear, and to destroy all traces of what he’d done.”

  As they neared the machine shop again, the main engines were roaring at intervals, drowning out their conversation.

  “I don’t believe it,” Edwin said finally. “I cannot”—the roar of the engines again, then a blast of cool air from the machine cooling the cylinders and wheels—“I will not believe it, Marcus, not in this lifetime!”

  As they crossed the threshold into the shop, a solitary figure stepped forward. Chauncy Hammond raised the Whitfield at them with the target sight to his eye. There was no running—Edwin was too badly injured to move quickly enough, too easy a target.

  “Get down!” Marcus shouted, shoving him to the floor and throwing himself on top, braced for the worst.

  When he looked back up, Hammond had vanished completely from sight. Simply vanished.

  “Where—”

  “Up above!” Edwin called.

  A whirring drew their gazes to the immense crane built to lift fifty tons of iron or steel at a time. Hanging from the hook by the collar, twenty feet in the air, was Chauncy Hammond, who kicked and writhed and tried to keep a grip on the rifle until it slipped from his hands and crashed to the floor.

  Marcus ran over to the controls and stared at their current operator.

  “Now, who said I was too clever to ever be a good machinist?” asked Hammie, glaring at his father as he lowered him down to the floor. “Father, I believe it’s time we have a true talk.”

  LIV

  Witnesses

  “YOU DESTROYED THE INSTITUTE where your own namesake was a student,” Marcus said in disbelief.

  “It was Rogers who ruined it!” Hammond protested, then faltered as he looked back for his son. “Hammie, I was merely trying to find you—because if you were in Boston, you were in danger.”

  Hammie unhooked his father, who was slightly bruised, from the grip of the crane. “You should have trusted me enough to tell me that you were investigating this, too, Mansfield!” Hammie said to Marcus, making no attempt to conceal his hurt pride. “I thought we were true friends. I brought you to Nahant so I could confide my suspicions about my father, and then you ran away.”

  “No! Junior, listen to me, not these blackguards!” urged the senior Hammond. “I made Marcus Mansfield what he is and now he turns against both of us. You cannot take his side, son. Think of our family name—you’ll destroy it.”

  “No, I will not,” Hammie replied. “Doing what I now must do, Father, is the only way left to salvage the name Chauncy Hammond. That’s my name, too. Not yours alone!”

  “I cannot understand it, Hammie,” Edwin said, keeping his elbow close to his lacerated side as he picked up the rifle dropped by Hammond. “Why would your father have had anything to do with causing the disasters?”

  Hammie frowned and swallowed hard. “I believe I’ve discovered the answer in the last weeks, Hoyt. During the war, the company received contracts to produce locomotive engines for the government, cannons and ammunition, so on. It was a lucrative time, and he gambled. Gambled that the fighting would continue for several years longer by converting large parts of his locomotive works to war production. Investments were made accordingly. When the war ended, it all went to waste. The company stood in grave debt and remains so.”

  “Junior, how dare you spread lies! You have it all wrong!”

  “Father, don’t try fooling me! I have already thoroughly inspected the ledgers you were so eagerly casting into the furnace to hide your tracks! I know. I know you mortgaged the works to your creditors. I know how desperate you’ve become—I’ve seen the change in you. But still. That you would unleash a Frankenstein’s monster of technology … facilitate mayhem and murder, Father! And to think you are the one who has led to the breaking up of our Institute.”

  “You said it was President Rogers’s doing,” Marcus said to the businessman. “What did you mean?”

  Hammond’s eyes remained locked on his son. “Breaking up the Institute!” he repeated. “Break it. Why, I was the Institute’s greatest financial friend from the time Rogers incorporated on the very brink of the war! I allowed you, my only son, to be trumpeted as among its first pupils, for the world to see! But the Institute had enormous expenses and few students or supporters. It has permitted free scholars like you, Mr. Mansfield,
and the young woman, Miss Swallow, to attend without the usual fees, and was crippled by the costs of its building. Even so, every invention produced by the Institute represented its own vast fortune. I offered to purchase and patent them, to sell them far and wide and share profits with the Institute. I was hardly the only one who recognized this opportunity for the Institute to thrive and for industry to be advanced. Your president stubbornly refused to sell anything to anyone. He wanted the inventions to be open and free for all; he refused to use them as means for profit, even as revenues for the college shrank. He was committing financial suicide and dragging your entire college down with him!”

  Hammie removed a thick packet of papers from his coat. “These are applications for patents for inventions produced at the Institute. I found them several weeks ago in his office vault. Hundreds of them. Prepared by Father’s lawyer.”

  “You wanted to discredit the Institute,” Edwin said in astonishment. “So that you could be the one to control all of its inventions!”

  Hammond looked down petulantly. “You are all damned fools. Just like Roland Rapler and his agitators, every single day convincing more of the workers of the city to rebel—they are the true Frankenstein’s monsters, given life and force by our factories. How long before all industry finds itself bankrupt? Ten years from now, it will not be a question of how many men you employ, but only how many ideas you own. With the inventions to come, the railroad and the telegraph will seem as silly and prosaic to your sons as stagecoaches do to you.”

  Hammie had handed the papers to Edwin. “You see, Hoyt, if the Institute closed, its inventions would become freely available—that is, until Father’s corporation claimed control over them before anyone else could do so.”

  “How did he know that the Institute would be blamed for the disasters?” Marcus asked Hammie.

  “Suspicions of the new sciences were already strong—this was a push over a cliff,” Hammie said. “Cyrus Hale and the other hack politicians in the legislature. They serve as the satellites of all big business, and are easily guided. Once Professor Agassiz was appointed to consult for the police, with his own private grudges against President Rogers, the Institute’s fate was written.”