“Not a pretty image,” Mr. Chambers observed. “To have Ayesha eating out of one’s hand, though...”
“It works the other way round, according to rumor,” Mr. Twain told him. “Her name means She Who Must Be Obeyed, supposedly.”
“Whatever,” said Mr. Chambers. “So, if there are two hidden chambers in the refrigeration hold, and one’s full of pirated blood, what’s in the other one?”
“Did you know,” Apollinaire said, “that the Titan has 19 watertight compartments, with a total of 92 doors, all of which can be closed within half a minute if the hull’s breached. It was all on Quatermain’s plan.”
“I think you mean could, not can,” Mr. Robertson put in.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Miss Lee asked.
“It means that they could have been closed within half a minute before the funnel got struck by lightning,” Mr. Robertson told her. “Now that the internal telegraph system has been damaged, though, they probably can’t. If we were to be holed tonight–by hitting an iceberg, say–the subsequent flooding might not be containable. Or, indeed, if we were holed tomorrow or the day after, unless the crew can make adequate running repairs.”
“We’re all sailing to judgment,” groaned Mr. Vane. “Soon, we shall be face-to-face with God. And how shall we answer, when he asks us whether we have sinned?”
“Well, I for one,” said Monsieur Jarry, “shall say mais oui.”
“May we what?” asked the man from the Telegraph.
“We certainly may,” said Monsieur Lorrain, as the dessert arrived. Every eye on the table regarded the ice cream with slight suspicion, but the heroes of letters raised their spoons as one, and set to work.
On the morning of the 30th, Captain Rowland was woken by Mr. Hodgson, who informed him that eight bodies had been discovered during the night, of whom only three were victims of hypothermia and poor clothing.
“Not vampires again?” the Captain wailed.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Hodgson replied.
The obligatory meeting on the bridge was called.
Allan Quatermain was late arriving at the meeting, having been buttonholed en route by Edward Rocambole, who had explained regretfully that he had tried with all his might to stay awake all night for a second night running but had proven sadly unequal to the task.
“But now we know about the hidden compartments,” Rocambole had said, as Quatermain hurried off, “we’ll be sure of finding the secret blood bank! The scoundrels won’t get away with their nefarious scheme!”
“We’d better have the ringleaders up to my stateroom again,” Rowland told Mr. Black, when the council was finally complete. “This time, I suppose they ought to have brandy with their cigars.”
“That might not be enough, sir,” Mr. Black opined.
“On its own, no,” Quatermain agreed. “We should invite them to return later, as guests in the first class saloon, when Mr. Edison demonstrates his machine for communicating with the dead. They won’t want to miss an unprecedented demonstration of that sort. We can even suggest that the occasion might be an opportunity to solve the mystery–that the dead with whom we communicate might be able to tell us who the guilty parties are.”
“Excellent thinking, Quatermain,” said Rowland. “I’m extremely glad that you’re with us this trip.”
“A further suggestion, if I may,” the hunter added. “It might be worth including Mr. Rocambole in the party. He’s been doing a little investigating on his own behalf, and it would be as well to put a lid on any rumors he might be spreading.”
“Damned Frenchman!” said Rowland. “Oh well, if you think it advisable, we’ll do it. Take care of it will you, Black. How’s the work on the internal telegraph coming along, Hodgson?”
“Not terribly well, sir. If Mr. Edison hadn’t tired himself out working all night on his machine, I’d have asked for his assistance, but he’s put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on his cabin door. The weather’s no better, alas–but they do say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, so we’ll probably be fine.”
“Actually,” Quatermain said, “I remember once...”
“Not now, Mr. Quatermain,” said the Captain. “I’m sure that your story is an excellent one, but please save it for dinner. We need to get to work.”
“One more point of information, if I may, sir,” said the hunter, meekly. “What is in the two storage lockers connected to the refrigeration hold?”
Silence fell upon the entire company, as the Captain and his two mates exchanged uneasy glances.
After a few seconds silence, Captain Rowland said: “Ice, Mr. Quatermain. Just ice.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Quatermain, mildly. “I’ll pass the information on to Mr. Rocambole, just to set his mind at rest.”
That night, at dinner, Allan Quatermain held the Captain’s table enthralled with his account of multiple lightning strikes on an unnamed peak in the Mitumba Mountains, which had fortunately put an end to a number of hideously grotesque multitentacular creatures that had been directing a murderous native cult for centuries.
“I don’t understand what a gang of whistling octopi were doing up a mountain in darkest Africa in the first place,” Carnegie muttered to Edison, as fluttering hearts slowed in their paces and the members of the audience began to breathe more easily again.
“Actually,” said Edison, “the plural of octopus is octopodes, and the creatures described by Mr. Quatermain appear to have had more than eight tentacles in any case. There’ve been rumors of such creatures from a dozen different parts of the world. Traces of them have recently been discovered at several archaeological sites, but they don’t appear to have been bony enough to fossilize conveniently, so their taxonomic status remains dubious, and it’s difficult to tell how long they’ve been around–millions of years, probably. Some of their relatives still live in the sea, apparently; while I was at the Royal Society in London, I heard a rumor that some body-parts had been caught in the net of a vessel fishing off Madeira. The locals were terrified, for some reason–said they weren’t really dead, even though they were mere fragments, and that they were inherently evil. They were dispatched to London for examination, but they never reached England, alas–they were aboard the S.S. Dunwich, which sank off Selsey Bill the week before Christmas.”
Meanwhile, Ayesha was saying: “The lightning was a blessing. We had heard rumors of these creatures and their unspeakable depredations even in Kôr. The natives who worshipped them as gods–or as the petty representatives of gods even more unspeakably dreadful–had become excited of late, anticipating the imminent return of some ultimate horror that would put an end to man’s dominion over the Earth.”
“Savages believe all kinds of weird things,” said Rowland, staring into her wide blue eyes. “Mind you, we old seamen know better than to laugh at all their superstitions. We’ve encountered monsters in our time, haven’t we, Mr. Hodgson?”
“We have indeed, sir,” Hodgson said.
“Hodgson could tell you tales of the South Seas that might even startle Mr. Quatermain,” the Captain went on. “Mind you, you don’t have to go as far as that to find bizarre creatures nowadays. The beaches on the Isle of Wight...” He stopped suddenly as Hodgson put a hand on his arm. “Oh, of course,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Horror stories are all very well,” the Duke of Buccleuch opined, “but I’m not sure they’re fit accompaniment for roasted mallard and baked Alaska, especially when there are ladies present. I can see why a fellow’s mind might turn to morbid matters when we’ve got Mr. Edison’s phantasmagoria show to look forward to with our brandy and cigars, but I think a little self-control’s in order while we’re eating. Don’t you agree, Mrs. de Bathe?”
“I don’t mind at all,” the former Lillie Langtry hastened to assure Quatermain and Edison.
“I am not a stage magician,” Edison said. “My machine is not a phantasmagoria. What you will see tonight is one of the greatest experiments in hi
story, more important by far than Roentgen’s games with X-rays or Marconi’s attempts to develop wireless telegraphy. When my machine is connected up to the ship’s generators, everyone present will be privileged to witness the dawn of a new era in human history. It will advance the cause of Enlightenment by an order of magnitude.”
“Don’t know about that,” Buccleuch muttered. “Damn spiritualists have been pestering the dead for years, and all we have to show for it is stupid gossip.”
“The Duke has a point,” said Hearst. “If you’re aiming to horn in on the medium business, you’ll have to be careful of your overheads. It’s a limited market, and the clients aren’t big spenders, for the most part.”
“The marketing strategy will be a bit awkward,” Carnegie agreed. “A machine for talking to the dead isn’t like the electric light bulb–something that every home needs and has to buy repeatedly because of built-in obsolescence. Do you envisage it as a domestic appliance, like your phonograph, or will it be an institutional sort of thing, like the electric chair?”
“I’ve already explained that the machine isn’t amenable to mass production,” Edison said. “I envisage it as a wonder of the world, which might be placed in its own custom-built building as a modern oracle.”
“And what will it actually do for us?” Rockefeller wanted to know. “When you get down to the nitty-gritty, what’ll the news be worth?”
“I think that rather depends on exactly what the dead have to say for themselves when Mr. Edison opens his channel of communication,” Quatermain interjected. “Even if spiritualist mediums are honest–not that I doubt them all, mind–their links with the world beyond seem to be tenuous and discontinuous. If Mr. Edison can open a channel capable of carrying much heavier traffic for sustained periods, the dead may become a good deal more voluble.”
“That is my hope,” Edison confirmed. “At present, our forefathers can only communicate with us, if at all, in fragmentary whispers. My machine will hopefully give them the ability to speak clearly, at far greater length and in far greater detail.”
“But it might not work in the way you envisage,” Count Lugard suggested. “And even if it does... it has occurred to you, I suppose, that at least some of the dead may bear us some ill will–and that they might be at least as prone to mendacity, malice, inarticulacy, false belief and insanity as they were when they were alive.”
“Come now, Lugard,” Quatermain said. “Even aristocrats like yourself and the Duke of Buccleuch, who are heirs to centuries of feudal oppression, surely have nothing to fear from the bitter slanders of a few wretched peasants? Why, I dare say that there are hundreds of elephants, dozens of lions and not a few giraffes whose souls might harbor resentments against me, but I’d be willing to face them all as squarely now as I did when I gunned them down.”
“And what about the unspeakable octopodes from the Mituba Mountains?” Carnegie asked. “Are you willing to hear what their immortal souls have to whistle in your ear?”
“Of course,” said Quatermain. “That would be a small price to pay for such opportunities as the privilege of meeting up with my old friends Curtis and Good again.”
“You don’t think they might be a little envious that you walked away with all King Solomon’s treasure while they stayed behind to feed the vultures?” Hearst suggested.
“They have the treasures of Heaven now,” Quatermain said. “They were virtuous and generous men, and I cannot imagine that they would bear me any grudge.”
“They’re likely in a very small minority, then,” Hearst said. “What about the majority whose members are suffering the torments of Hell and the rigors of Purgatory? Shall we hear their screams of agony when Edison switches on his machine, do you think?”
“My machine will hopefully put an end to all such idiot superstitions,” Edison said, stiffly. “I am confident that it will demonstrate the infinite mercy of God–or His utter indifference to the condition of the dead, whose echoes beyond the grave must be natural phenomena, like electricity and X-rays, waiting to be revealed by the march of progress.”
“And exploited, of course,” Carnegie added. “After discovery comes utility.”
“Just so,” said Rockefeller. “Still can’t see exactly how you’ll make your money, though.”
Edison raised his eyes to the Heaven in which he did not seem to believe, but he remained silent. Presumably, there seemed to him to be no point in correcting the millionaires’ misconceptions yet again.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Captain Rowland, although it was unclear to his 11 dinner companions exactly what he meant by “that.”
At the writers’ table, the talk was similarly dominated by Mr. Edison’s impending demonstration.
“It will be interesting to converse with Shakespeare,” said Mr. Huneker.
“Chaucer and Malory,” Mr. Robertson speculated.
“King Arthur himself, and Sir Perceval, too,” suggested Mr. Twain.
“Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus,” added Mr. Chambers.
“Charles Baudelaire and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam,” Monsieur Lorrain put in.
“Sappho and Catherine the Great,” mused Ms. Lee.
“Napoleon Bonaparte and Georges Cadoudal,” was Monsieur Féval’s slightly mischievous suggestion.
“Horatio Nelson and the Duke of Wellington,” countered the man from the Telegraph.
“Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I,” supplied the man from the Mail.
“Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana,” said Monsieur Apollinaire.
“Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan,” Monsieur Jarry contributed.
“All mere flights of destiny’s fancy,” Mr. Vane opined. “We shall all meet the Lord, whether Mr. Edison’s machine works or not, and we shall all be judged.”
“Percy Shelley and John Keats,” Mr. Huneker went on, blithely.
“Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift,” Mr. Robertson added.
“George Washington and Julius Caesar,” said Mr. Twain.
“Homer and General Custer,” added Mr. Chambers.
“Salome and Cleopatra,” was Monsieur Lorrain’s second contribution.
“Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci,” Ms. Lee suggested.
“Fra Diavolo and Cartouche,” said Monsieur Féval fils.
“Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin,” riposted the man from the Telegraph.
“Richard III and Henry VIII,” said the man from the Mail.
“Merlin and la fée Morgane,” said Monsieur Apollinaire.
“Gilles de Rais and Jeanne d’Arc,” said Monsieur Jarry.
“If the lines of communication remain open, of course,” Monsieur Féval observed. “We’ll have some stiff competition in the new century. If every home in the world acquires one of Mr. Edison’s machines, Father will want me to serve as his amanuensis, I’m sure. Now that we have the electric light bulb and the typewriter, the transcription of the dead’s pent-up literary works could become a long and arduous task.”
“It could be worse,” said Mr. Twain. “We might be historians.”
When the dining room had emptied again, the gentlemen reassembled in the saloon, where they brought out their pipes and cigars as usual–except for those who preferred a glass of absinthe, with or without a dash of ether.
Mr. Edison’s machine had already been set up, and connected to the ship’s generator. In appearance it was somewhat reminiscent of a cross between a telephone exchange and a church organ, its manifold pipes being tuned to catch and amplify the voices of the dead, while its multitudinous switches were designed to secure and facilitate connections between the mundane and astral planes.
There was a stool at the front, from which all the indicators were visible and all the controls accessible, but Edison did not take his seat immediately; he busied himself checking the various connections for a full 15 minutes, during which interval his audience–augmented now by Edward Rocambole, a select handful of his fellow second-class passengers and an equal number of re
presentatives of the third-class–shuffled for position. Almost all of the watchers were standing up, the seating in the saloon being arranged about the walls, offering a very poor view. Thanks to the Titan’s stabilizers, the waiting men were only swaying gently from side to side even though the storm outside was raging as never before.
Finally, the moment of truth arrived. Mr. Edison turned to his audience, bowed and opened his mouth to make a speech.
“Oh, get on with it, man!” said the Duke of Buccleuch, rudely. “We all know why we’re here. Let’s hear what the dead have to say, if anything.”
Edison was obviously not pleased by this demand but he scanned the faces of the crowd, as if in order to measure their opinion. What he saw there evidently disposed him against further delay, and he sat down. He reached out his right hand to take the lever that would activate the machine’s electricity supply, and pulled it down decisively.
The machine crackled and hummed. The pipes emitted eerie sounds, reminiscent of harpstrings stirred by a wayward wind–but then the voices began to come through.
They were voices–no one in the saloon could have any doubt about that–but it was quite impossible to distinguish what any one of them might be saying. There were thousands, perhaps millions, all attempting to speak at the same time, in every living language and at least as many that were no longer extant.
None of the voices was shouting, at first; they were all speaking in a conversational tone, as if they did not realize how much competition there was to be heard. As the minutes went by, however, this intelligence seemed to filter back to wherever the dead were lodged. The voices were raised a little–and then more than a little. Fortunately, the volume of their clamor was limited by the power of the amplifiers that Mr. Edison had fitted to his machine, and he immediately reached out to turn the knob that would quiet the chorus–with the result that the voices of the dead became a mere murmurous blur, denied all insistency as well as all coherency.
Edison’s own voice was clearly audible over the muted hubbub when he turned to his audience to say: “If you will be patient, gentlemen, I am certain that our friends on the Other Side will begin to sort themselves out, and make arrangements to address us by turns, in order that each of them might make himself heard. It is just a matter...”
Tales of the Shadowmen 1: The Modern Babylon Page 33