The Best of Kage Baker

by Kage Baker

  At last there was only Alf staring out, with the sweat shining on his moon face, real terror of remembrance in his eyes, and his voice had sunk to a hoarse late-night whisper that nonetheless carried to the back of the house.

  “A boat picked me up. Those who drew me on board were my old mates, but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveler from the spirit-land. My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. I told them my story. They did not believe it. I now tell it to you.”

  There was a profound silence. The lights went down.

  Finally there was an uncertain patter of applause, which abruptly swelled to thunder. The audience had struggled to their feet and were baying their approval. The ladies stared at one another, wondering. Mr. Morton, who had been helping himself to the flask since his exit, looked up foggily.

  “Good lord,” he said. “They liked it!” He rose to his full height and nearly fell over. “Curtain call! Shoo! Shoo! Get out there!” He flapped his hands at them. Meera caught his arm and pulled him out too, and he stood between Alf and Cochevelou, blinking in the glare of the footlights.

  Meera took Mona’s and Exxene’s hands, as much for support as tradition. A haze was in the air, for men were stamping now as well as applauding, with the dust flying up from their boots. She couldn’t see a face that wasn’t streaked with tears, white or black runnels cut through the red dust.

  Someone was pushing through the crowd. Mother Griffith reached the front row, waving, shouting to be heard above the commotion but still drowned out by the frenzied whooping.

  He’s okay, she mouthed at Meera. Just so she wouldn’t be misinterpreted, she made a circle with forefinger and thumb and winked broadly, grinning. Mona hugged her and Exxene pounded her shoulder, which hurt rather a lot, but Meera scarcely noticed.

  Her baby was dancing.

  ***

  Crispin was sitting up in the clinic bed, wearing an absurd gown with teddy bears on it, sipping from a juice box. His head was bandaged, but the color had returned to his face.

  “It was a hit because I wasn’t in it, you know,” he said ruefully. “Luckiest thing that could have happened.”

  “Oh, darling, you know you’d have been wonderful,” said Meera, stroking his hair back from the edge of the bandage.

  “They said it was all right if we visited,” Mona announced, entering with Exxene. “You left before you got your presents! Are you feeling better, Mr. Delamare? Look what Durk had made for us! Isn’t he an old dear? There’s three!”

  She held up a huge sweater in the rather sinister blue of the show lights. Across its bosom had been machine-embroidered The Maelstromettes.

  “Isn’t that funny? Except he had them all made triple-X-size for some reason. Mine comes down to my knees,” said Mona.

  “Here’s yer roses,” said Exxene, holding out a bouquet. “Know what? I’ve had five proposals of marriage tonight. Odd, ain’t it?”

  “And, you know what else, Mr. Delamare?” said Mona. “Mr. Morton wants to do a comedy next, as soon as you’re all recovered! Won’t that be wonderful? It’s this lost play or something about somebody named Ernest. At least, I think that was what he said. He was on his third glass of champagne.”

  “A comedy?” Crispin brightened. A bell rang, out in the corridor.

  “Crumbs, that’ll be Visiting Hours are Over,” said Mona. “Come on, Meera, we’ll walk you home. Goodnight, Mr. Delamare.”

  “I’ll be here first thing tomorrow,” said Meera, leaning down to kiss him. She took a rose from her bouquet and carefully threaded it down the straw of his water carafe.

  Walking up the tube with Mona and Exxene, she realized that she didn’t notice the methane smell now at all. And how bright the stars were, up there above the half-finished city on the mountain!

  Speed, Speed the Cable

  “My friends, it is nothing more nor less than the Tower of Babel come again.” The speaker, a benign-looking gentleman with white side-whiskers, watched as his audience took in the statement. “Consider. Vile Man, in his pride, once more seeks to demolish the natural boundaries placed for his benefit by the Almighty. He does not now say, ‘I shall build great foundations and ascend through the stars, that the Lord may see I am exceeding great.’ No, he says rather: ‘Time and Space I shall make as nothing, that my voice may be heard when and where I will!’

  “My friends, you know that punishment must be handed down from on high for such sinful ambition. Yet I wonder whether any of you have truly considered the extent of our misfortune, were this Atlantic cable laid at last!”

  Among those listening was a man in his mid-thirties, pleasantly nondescript in appearance. His name was Kendal. The patient observer might study him at length, failing to find anything memorable in his features, save for one singular detail: Kendal’s left ear differed slightly in color from his right.

  Kendal shifted in his chair, wondering who had written Mr. Hargrove’s speech. He’d heard it all before, when the Preventers had first recruited him, but Mr. Hargrove spoke with much more elegance now: how the dear old familiar world of our infancy vanished a little more each year, with each unthinking embrace of the Machine in the service of Industry for the pursuit of Wealth. The dark satanic mills were invoked, the horrors of railway accidents and the carnage of steam boiler explosions. Each was a little foretaste of Hell, a warning from Heaven; and yet, that warning went unheeded!

  Kendal suppressed the urge to yawn. He knew that half the men in the room with him were wealthy, sons of men who’d amassed fortunes by embracing the Machine. Their clothing had been woven on steam-driven looms; some of them had come here by rail. Kendal was a poor man’s son, but he sat there with the rest of them, nodding solemnly as Hargrove spoke, now and again joining in when one or another of them cried “Hear! Hear!” with evangelical fervor.

  One man cried out that anything that brought them closer to the Americans—vulgar, ignorant, expectorating Americans—was a dreadful idea. Another shouted that worse was to come, if the Atlantic Telegraph Company had its way. What of national security? What should happen, if spies were able to transmit vital information to enemy forces instantaneously? What of the captains and crews of packet ships, who might be expected to lose revenues if the Atlantic cable were laid?

  An elderly man stood and declared that he had made a study of galvanometers, and knew for a fact that a cable of such length, passing through such a quantity of seawater, would most certainly deliver a monstrous charge from the larger continent to the smaller and incinerate the whole of Britain in the very moment the first transmission was sent.

  Whereupon someone pointed out that only Ireland was likely to be incinerated, since the eastern end of the great cable was to be fixed in County Kerry.

  “Even so,” said the elderly person, with a sniff.

  “My friends!” Mr. Hargrove raised his hands. “We are all agreed in what is essential: that this infernal device must be prevented. We want only the financial means to guarantee our victory.”

  Kendal rose to his feet. Removing his hat, he said: “Gentlemen, while I must commend Mr. Dowd for his heroic actions on the eleventh of August last—” a ripple of applause ran through the room as the saboteur smiled and half-rose to acknowledge his compliment—”I feel obliged to point out that next time, it will require more than simply jamming the release brake to sever the cable. My informants have given me to understand that the paying-out machinery has been completely redesigned at the behest of Mr. Bright. It is now self-regulating. What are we to do?”

  “Fear not!” Mr. Hargrove beamed at him. “It is true we have suffered setbacks, but so have our opponents. Mr. Cyrus Field may pop up as often as a Jack-in-the-box, bearing fistfuls of cash with which to advance his infernal design, yet we too have friends among the influential and powerful. For all that, gentlemen, we do require your support as well. Please give as generously as you may when the basket comes before you.”

  A pair of g
entlemen solemn as church elders rose and flanked the audience, sending two baskets up and down the rows of seats. This signaled an informal end to the gathering. Kendal duly dropped in a five-pound-note, but remained seated until the room had nearly emptied. When Kendal rose at last, making his way to the front of the room, the astute observer would have noticed something more: for he walked with a slight limp. “Mr. Perceval!” Mr. Hargrove extended his hand. “How delighted I am to see you again! We had hoped some would remain steadfast, and answer the call once more.”

  “I confess I was astonished to receive your letter, sir,” Kendal replied. “When I heard about the fire in Bridge Street, I assumed the whole enterprise had been given over.”

  Mr. Hargrove shook his head. “We thought so, too; yet a new friend has stepped forward to lend us his considerable powers of assistance. You’d recognize his name, sir, if I told you what it was, indeed you would. I have never been so confident of success as I am now!”

  “Thank God,” said Kendal. “I had some hopes of scotching the damned cable on my own, you see. Even made some inquiries about getting into the Gutta Percha factory to spoil it at the source. It won’t do; they’re a great deal more particular about whom they hire, now.”

  “Ah, we know,” said Mr. Hargrove ruefully. “No matter; we’ve quite an ingenious ruse to get around that. Our new friend pointed out that the later we wait to strike, the more of his resources the enemy will waste. Sooner or later we must ruin him completely, if we cut him off from his investors.”

  “Why, what’s the ruse?”

  Mr. Hargrove looked around, then leaned close to Kendal, lowering his voice. “A simple and effective one. Not only have we got a man aboard the Agamemnon, our new friend has supplied us with the funds for a diving-suit, if you please! When the cable ship comes into Galway Bay, our men will be at hand, disguised as Irishmen, in a fishing vessel. They will sail close and pretend to cheer on the Agamemnon, but will note carefully where the cable falls. Then one will slip overboard, descend to the cable, and cut it. Simplicity itself!”

  “Yet ingenious indeed!” Kendal pumped Mr. Hargrove’s hand. “And will it be Mr. Dowd aboard the Agamemnon again?”

  “No, alas. He departed under a cloud of suspicion last time. It’ll be Mr. Cheltenham.”

  “Ah! But he’s a stout fellow too. You will succeed, sir; I feel it in my heart.”

  They exchanged cordial farewells.

  Kendal emerged from a side entrance, climbing stairs to reach the street, entering the Strand quite unseen at that hour of the night. He had not gone above five paces when a hulking shadow detached itself from the greater darkness within a colonnade, following him.

  No human ear could have heard as it came up behind Kendal, for it made no sound; yet Kendal turned his head, acknowledging its presence with a nod. The next pool of lamplight revealed the two men walking side by side. Kendal’s companion was remarkably tall, with a long broken nose and pale eyes. But for these distinctions he had been as anonymous as Kendal, one more gentleman in evening dress returning from some amusement.

  They had reached Whitehall before the tall man spoke, barely moving his lips. “Much good?”

  “Oh yes,” Kendal whispered. The other nodded, saying nothing more for the duration of their journey, which ended in Craig’s Court at their club.

  Redking’s occupied premises not nearly so imposing as those of the Athenaeum, nor as cheerful as Boodles’, having as it did an undistinguished brick frontage. The two gentlemen climbed its steps, nodded to the porter who admitted them, and handed their hats to the waiter who met them within.

  “Mr. Greene requests your presence at once, sirs,” said the waiter. Kendal cast a longing glance at the dining room, where clinking cutlery suggested some fortunate party was enjoying a late supper. Nevertheless he turned and, with his companion, descended a flight of stairs.

  A right turn and then a left took them past a number of undistinguished-looking doors to one bearing a blank brass plate. Kendal heard the drone of a voice within, and recognized the speaker as Mr. Hargrove. Kendal’s companion knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” said a different voice, as Mr. Hargrove’s flow of speech went on without interruption.

  At a desk within a sparsely-furnished study sat a single individual, glaring at the apparatus occupying one corner of the room. It resembled a glass-fronted cabinet, in which could be glimpsed a rotating cylinder. From the cabinet’s top protruded a brass trumpet similar to those used by persons hard of hearing. However, it was presently sending out sound, rather than receiving it.

  “…Mr. Cyrus Field may pop up as often as a Jack-in-the-box, bearing fistfuls of cash with which to advance his infernal design, yet we too have our friends among the influential and powerful…”

  “Now, whom do you suppose he means?” said Mr. Greene, turning his glare on Kendal and his companion.

  “He never said, sir,” said Kendal. They listened to the rest of the conversation. When the voices receded into silence and nothing more was heard but Kendal’s recorded footsteps, Greene rose and took the cylinder from the cabinet.

  “Not impossible, I shouldn’t think,” said Greene. “But it should have been unnecessary. That was your business, Bell-Fairfax.”

  Kendal’s companion bowed his head in acknowledgment, but said nothing. “He did burn down their headquarters, sir,” Kendal protested. “We had every reason to believe we’d rooted them out.”

  “Clearly they were not sufficiently discouraged.” Greene looked meaningfully at Bell-Fairfax. “I expect more drastic measures are called for now.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax, in a quiet voice.

  “We don’t have unlimited resources, man. Have you any idea what it cost to produce enough gyttite for the job? Or what we had to bribe the factory, to have it wound into the cable? Or how much we stand to gain, if the cable is laid? They cannot sabotage our efforts again!”

  “No, sir.”

  Greene returned to his chair, scowling. “So they have a diving suit, have they?…Damn. This wants some planning. The Agamemnon sails on the 17th, with its portion of the cable. They’re anticipated at Knightstown the 5th, ergo…” He fell silent. Kendal and Bell-Fairfax waited patiently, until Greene seemed to remember they were there.

  “Go on, go to your beds. I’ll have orders for you later. Must think this through.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Kendal. As they were leaving, Greene called after them:

  “Probably have Bulger work with you on this one.”

  Kendal rolled his eyes, but said only “Yes, sir.” Bell-Fairfax snorted.

  ***

  Neither man having dined that evening, they spoke to the club’s cook before he went off duty and were shortly sitting down to cold chicken and a bottle of hock.

  “Thanks for your indulgence,” said Kendal. His hands were trembling as he picked up his knife and fork. Hunger weakened him oddly, had done so since the war. He was a former Marine, having served aboard the Arrogant when Bomarsund was taken. There he lost an ear and his right foot to a bursting Russian shell, and was shipped home, half-deaf and lame, to starve.

  One day, as he lay dizzy and sick in an alley, he’d been approached by a kindly-looking man who’d offered him food and a doctor’s care, if he’d join something called the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society. Kendal would have done anything the man asked, for a chance of healing his suppurating wounds; and so he allowed himself to be carted off to a clean hospital bed, expecting to be visited by some sort of absurd debaters’ club.

  Instead he had seen doctors, a great many of them, and undergone de-lightfully painless surgeries that had given him a remarkably lifelike prosthetic foot and reconstructed ear.

  To say his hearing had been restored would be an understatement; Kendal had lain there fascinated, listening to conversations of tradesmen three streets away from the hospital. He had listened all the more attentively, therefore, when his benefactor returned.

  The Ge
ntlemen’s Speculative Society was (as Kendal had been told) merely the modern name for an ancient association of philanthropists who attempted to improve the lot of mankind through scientific invention. The Society owed allegiance to no kings, bent its head to no gods. Many famous men had been members down through the ages since its founding, creating ingenious devices for its agents to use in the great struggle. Universal enlightenment, an end to War, and Paradise on earth were its goals.

  Kendal had taken his vows eagerly. The Society had granted him lodging at Redking’s Club, its London home; they fed him and clothed him. He was now in every respect their man. If his portion of the great struggle seemed to consist solely of spying for them, transmitting private conversations through the mechanism implanted in his skull, Kendal had only to remember starvation and deafness to restore his sense of gratitude.

  He knew nothing of Bell-Fairfax’s story, other than that he too was a former Navy man. The two men spoke little as they dined, Bell-Fairfax limiting his remarks to an enthusiastic comment on the wine. The waiter had cleared the cloth and they were rising to go to their respective rooms when Bell-Fairfax said, “Was there anything else said that might have identified this ‘new friend’ of the Preventers? Any intimation of his name?”

  “I did get the impression he’s providing them with advice, as well as money. Hargrove used to maunder on at those meetings; usual old Luddite cant. Tonight he made his points much more effectively, as you heard.”

  “He’s hired a writer, I suppose. Pity.” Bell-Fairfax shook his head.

  “I’ll tell you what’s a pity, is having to work with Pinny Bulger again,” said Kendal crossly. Bell-Fairfax suppressed a smile.

  ***