Ghosts of Engines Past

by McMullen, Sean

  That was the end of the journal for 1810. Clearly the device had worked, but I still did not believe in Electrica. Sir Charles was very lonely, and of course he was fabricating her within his mind, yet...

  I got out of bed and walked into the parlour. Here my physician was mixing tonics in a jar and pouring them into a row of bottles. He was a wiry little man with wispy, graying hair and thick spectacles. His manner was always firm but optimistic.

  “Ah, lieutenant, my greatest triumph,” he said cheerily. “Are you feeling more sure of your feet today?”

  “I'm weak, but steady,” I replied. “How long before I may ride?”

  “Ride? My, my, you are a young hero. Another fortnight, no earlier.”

  “I need to ride now, today.”

  “Out of the question, I'm afraid. You took a gunshot that would kill ninety-nine out of every hundred men.”

  “But I must go to Ballard House.”

  “Then why not take Sir Charles's carriage when you are stronger? It's been in the village stables for two months.”

  The pang of alarm caused by those words was as intensely painful as being shot by Captain Hartwell. Lady Monica was to have taken the carriage to London, and had supposedly left two months ago. The shock must have been clear on my face, because the physician made no attempt to stop me as I dressed in my uniform. I was able to find four soldiers on leave in the town, and these I rallied. At the stables I requisitioned Sir Charles's carriage, a driver, and four more horses for the soldiers.

  Two guards barred our way as we approached Ballard House in the late afternoon, but they fell back, aghast, as I stepped from the carriage. I sent one of them to fetch Sergeant Adams. He was not so much dismayed as terrified by the sight of me up and about, conscious and coherent.

  “Sergeant, you are to be complimented for doing without an officer for so long,” I said as he stood to attention before me.

  “Thank you sir,” he replied.

  His voice was hoarse and strained, his face beaded with sweat.

  “As soon as I return to Portsmouth I shall recommend that you and your men are sent to fight in Spain.”

  “What? But sir—”

  “And all mention of forcing me into that duel with Captain Hartwell will be omitted from my report.”

  “Yes sir. Thank you sir.”

  I walked on to Ballard House alone, leaving the carriage at the camp. It was nearly dusk, so Sir Charles would be supervising the swapping of the steam engines and generators in the stables. The footman tried to stop me at the door, but I presented my pistol between his eyes.

  “I'll tell Sir Charles,” he babbled.

  “You do that.”

  He hurried away to the stables. Pausing only to inspect the gun rack in the hall, I went upstairs to the raven room. I still had Monica's key, and it turned easily in the lock.

  Lady Monica was sitting in a chair, awake and alert. Beside her an oil lamp was burning, and a book rested in her lap, open at a page of diagrams. Her head had been shaved, and five or six dozen pairs of wires were affixed to her scalp like a magnificent mane of hair. These led away to an apparatus on a bench in the middle of the room. Within it was a sphere of pale, clear amber surrounded by a constellation of metal plates and wires. Beside the bench was a bed.

  A raven was tethered to a hat stand beside the window by a long cord of red silk. The feathers of its head were twisted and rumpled, as if they had grown within a little helmet. Electrica no longer spoke through the bird; the wires were now attached to Monica. By the look of it, a lot more wires had been added.

  “This is not as it seems,” she said, speaking very slowly.

  “What is my name?” I asked.

  “You are... Lieutenant.”

  “There is more to my name than that.”

  “I cannot recall you. It has been so long.”

  “I find this unlikely,” I said, holding the key up on its chain. “Monica seduced me by means of this key, so to her I should be rather more memorable. You are not Monica.”

  From downstairs I heard shouting, then hurrying footsteps. The footman had alerted Sir Charles to my intrusion, but the footsteps of only one person pattered on the stairs. Apparently Sir Charles did not want the footman to see what was in the raven room, or what was about to happen.

  It is a common mistake for those outside the military to think that a pistol renders one invincible. The truth is that even a well maintained flintlock will fire only four times out of five, so to be sure of a kill, carry two. Sir Charles was not entirely stupid, for he stopped before the open door and noted that I was standing there with my arms folded. Only then did he step inside. He trained his pistol on my heart and pulled the trigger. There was just a click. As his eyes stretched wide with alarm, I seized the barrel of the gun with my right hand and delivered a straight punch to his nose with my left. In the manner of those not accustomed to pain, he fell to his knees with his hands over his face, moaning and blubbering. Blood streamed between his fingers.

  “Before coming up here I removed the powder from the flash pans of the two pistols in the hallway rack,” I said, tossing his weapon aside and drawing mine. “The gun now pointing at you killed Captain Hartwell. Bear that in mind and do nothing foolish.”

  I addressed the woman without taking my eyes from Sir Charles.

  “You are Electrica,” I said.

  “Yes.” It was Monica's voice, but was flat and distant.

  “And you have existed in Lady Monica for two months.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sir Charles, I owe you an apology,” I said. “You are far more astute than I realized.”

  He fumbled for a handkerchief to hold over his nose, but did not reply.

  “You fell in love with Electrica, even though her mind was a ball of amber, her lifeblood was electrical charge, and her eyes, ears and voice were those of a raven. How much better if the wife who despises you were to be the body through which Electra was brought to life?”

  “Faithless slut,” he mumbled, breathing through his mouth.

  “Captain Hartwell was your only problem. He doted on Lady Monica, and he was guarding Ballard House. How very convenient if a new lover were to arrive, be challenged to a duel by the young and brash captain, and slay him. You sent word with a maid that I had tumbled Lady Monica, then you supposedly sent her away after the duel. In reality you probably rendered her senseless with laudanum, dragged her up here, shaved her head, and turned her into Electrica by means of that tangle of wires.”

  I indicated the bed.

  “Up here, Electrica could be everything that you desired. A truly faithful wife, a companion of the soul, a fellow philosopher, and an ambassador from some wondrous but dead place, perhaps Atlantis. I should imagine that you have had two months of complete bliss and sensual fulfillment. Now I have come back from the dead, however.”

  “Rough, uncouth wretch!” he snapped. “You could never see her as I do.”

  “I see her far more clearly than you, Sir Charles, I have read your journals. You chose to ignore the fact that Electrica is not human.”

  “How dare you?” he shouted, blood splattering at me from his lips.

  “Tell us, Electrica. Tell us how packs of your kind would run down huge game beasts and tear them apart.”

  Electrica and I locked eyes for a moment. Unlike Sir Charles, I was not blinded by passion, and I was holding a gun. She apparently decided that lies might hurt a lot more than the truth.

  “Our form was not that of humans,” she said slowly, pausing at each word.

  There was something profoundly unsettling about her eyes. Have you ever seen a cat watching a songbird within a cage? Her eyes had that sort of sharp, predatory intensity.

  “What happened to your... your people? Why did they vanish?”

  “Our teeth and claws were only for hunting, we fought our wars with weapons of the mind. Our mindslayers left vanquished enemies emptied of even the inclination to breathe. Alas, males were
more vulnerable to the mindslayers. My swarm-pack won the final war, but too late we realized that all males had been wiped out on both sides.”

  “So boneheaded military incompetence is not confined to humans. How did you survive?”

  “The last of us fashioned amber spheres with images of our minds confined within, then cast them into the stream of time.”

  “Why? Surely they would just be tombs for your minds, buried forever.”

  “Not so, the spheres call to minds such as ours, minds quite unlike those of humans. In time, new creatures like ourselves might have arisen and be drawn to the spheres. They would call us back from oblivion, with all our skills and wisdom.”

  Like a good spy, I had maintained a calm and even voice, yet I was masking the greatest of fears. I took a deep, steady breath.

  “If your mind has been preserved in amber, surely your mindslayer weapon must have been preserved too.”

  There was just the slightest of hesitations, then her eyes stretched wide. Slivers of pain blazed through my mind like a grenade set off in a bag full of pins. I survived. Electrica had probably never struck out at a human, so perhaps the structure of my mind was not what she expected. The resolution that had enabled me rise to my feet with a lead ball in my guts, shoot Hartwell down, then ride five miles into Wimbourne Minster now helped me to put the pain aside, turn about, and take aim at the amber sphere.

  “No!”

  The scream was that of Sir Charles, but it was cut short by the blast of my pistol. The half inch ball of lead shattered the sphere, then it was Lady Monica who screamed as the other intelligence within her head collapsed. I staggered backwards until I struck the wall, my mind still numb from the onslaught of whatever had reached into my brain. Sir Charles snatched up the oil lamp and flung it at the apparatus on the bench. Flames and ragged arcs of electrical charge erupted.

  “Damn you!” he shouted as he backed away to the door. “You killed Electrica.”

  “She was not human!” I shouted back.

  “You will have nothing of her secrets for your war! Nothing.”

  With that he ran out. The raven was flapping frantically at the end of its silk tether as I ripped the wires away from Monica's head. The hat stand that was its perch was beside the window and there was now an inferno in the middle of the room. All I could do was leave the door open as I dragged Monica into the corridor. If the silk cord burned through before the flames consumed the poor bird's feathers, it might escape.

  Out in the corridor I saw that fires were already burning in other rooms upstairs. Gunshots were coming from below, and as I reached the head of the stairs I saw two soldiers lying by the front door. Sir Charles had a collection of muskets and pistols with him, and had overturned a table. He was shooting at anyone who tried to enter.

  When in dire peril the temptation is to act in frantic haste, yet a calm head had served me well in the mountains of Spain and Portugal. Putting Lady Monica down, I took the pistol from my belt, and drew a paper cartridge from my coat pocket. I make up my own pistol cartridges, because I like an absolutely consistent shot every time. Before I poured a measure of powder into the flash pan, I checked the touch hole. It had been fouled with residue.

  Something in a room down the corridor exploded as I drew a sharpened nail from my pocket and cleared the hole, then I primed the pan and closed it. Burning wax streamed out of a doorway as I poured the rest of the gunpowder into the barrel. I would be shooting downwards, so I wadded the ball with paper, then rammed it in tightly. A steep, downward shot is not at all easy, but I had fought in mountains and knew the method of aiming. I made Sir Charles's head my target, not because I wanted to be sure of a kill, but because heads are of a consistent size, and give a good approximation of range. The range was beyond what was reasonable for a well maintained Tower pistol, but there was nothing I could do about that. Allowing the instincts sharpened by three years of service to guide my hand, I lay the barrel across my left arm to steady it, then squeezed the trigger.

  When the smoke cleared I could see Sir Charles lying on his back, slumped across his collection of guns. I have only the vaguest memories of descending the stairs, one arm around Monica, my free hand clutching my wound. I counted on my red coat to distinguish me from Sir Charles as I dragged her outside. Nobody fired at me, and it was Corporal Knox, who had been my second in the duel, who came to our aid. Monica revived as we lay on the grass. Before us, Ballard House had become an inferno.

  “Tell me who I am!” I asked her as the pain in my abdomen eased.

  “Michael? Michael! Lieutenant Fletcher.”

  This time it was Monica speaking. I took her in my arms and hugged her with relief. Her mind had not been blotted out by Electrica, it had merely been imprisoned within some recess of her brain.

  “Where have I been?” she whimpered. “There were huge lizards all around me. They were running on two legs and they had claws like harvesting scythes. We killed other lizards, we ate them alive...”

  Her words became sobs, and I felt a sudden chill. The amber sphere had been shattered, so Electrica's memories should have gone with it. Apparently prolonged exposure to her mind left an imprint upon the host. Even in my wildest imaginings I had never thought of Electrica as a large, intelligent saurian. She must have looked out at us through the eyes of both the raven and Monica like a wolf awaking amid a flock of sheep.

  “All a dream,” I said soothingly.

  “No, no, I tasted blood, I liked it.”

  She might have said more, but the corporal now called me away to the side of the house. He pointed upwards.

  “Someone's trapped upstairs, they's broke a window, sir. I sent Sykes ter fetch a ladder.”

  It was one of the windows of the raven room. The glass in a lower pane was broken, and smoke pouring out through it. As I watched, more glass was smashed away, then the raven emerged through the hole and perched on the windowsill. Taking the silk tether in its beak, it began to draw it across a jagged fragment of glass that remained in the frame.

  Sir Charles had been deceived. Electrica had not told him that memories from the amber sphere gradually imprinted themselves upon the host brain. Monica was still mostly herself after two months of exposure, but some memories of Electrica's past life definitely lingered. The raven had been Electrica's host for two years! The bird had become Electrica, and for Electrica we humans were merely dinner that could hold a conversation. What had she been planning?

  “Corporal Knox, give me your musket!” I said, holding my hand out.

  The weapon was one of Tower's Brown Bess models, not as accurate as the new Baker rifles, but quicker to reload. The distance was not great, however, so I could not miss. I took a bead on the fluttering raven as it sawed at the silken tether.

  “Oh sir, why kill a poor, bleedin' bird?” asked the corporal.

  “It's not a bird!”

  I squeezed the trigger and the flint struck sparks. There was a puff of smoke from the flashpan, but no shot. Without even looking I drew out my sharpened nail and cleared the touch hole, then tore a cartridge open with my teeth and poured a little powder into the pan. I had just taken aim at the raven again when the silk cord parted and it flew free. I fired, but against the darkening sky it made a very poor target.

  “Attend the condition of your musket very carefully from now on, corporal,” I said as I handed the gun back. “You are about to leave for Spain, and Spain is a place where you want to be very, very sure of a shot when you pull the trigger.”

  I had a lantern brought from the stables, but search as I might, I found not so much as a black feather beside the house. Beneath the window I did find a half-gill measure with a handle, the kind used to dispense the daily ration of rum to sailors. I had seen Sir Charles melting wax for his harpsichord wires in such a container. It was sufficiently hard and heavy to smash a window, but light enough to be wielded in the beak of a raven.

  The roof of Ballard house fell in after an hour or so, and the plac
e was burned out completely by midnight. The rooms upstairs had been filled with wax, lamp oil, modeling wood and many other materials that burned readily, and Sir Charles had known exactly where to set his fires. I had the troops guard the place closely, but although I picked over the ruins with the greatest of care the following day, I could find nothing useful.

  All that was saved were the two steam engines and Winter generators in the stables, and Sir Charles's journals for 1809 and 1810. I already knew that nothing of value was in the journals, and although I drew and noted everything that I could remember of the spark semaphore in the weeks that followed, the devices that were built from the memories of myself and the artisans did not work. A few more days of instruction from Sir Charles would have made all the difference.

  Now it is October. The war that is still raging on the continent will probably drag on for years, yet the spark semaphore could have had it concluded in months. Lady Monica has sold the estate and moved to London, there to wear a wig and disport herself before the very cream of aristocratic society. I worry about the raven with its mindslayer weapon, yet it has been used upon me and I am still alive. Perhaps the mindslayer merely distresses humans, without killing them. Whatever the case, surely one raven cannot conquer the world.

  Thus I try to reassure myself, but had I the choice, I would live within sight of Monica's house in London, a Baker rifle beside my window, watching for the comings and goings of ravens. Alas, I do not believe that I have such a choice. I am writing these words on a ship, as I return to the battlefields of Spain. It is my hope that you will read this account of my unlikely mission with sympathy, and I submit it to you in the hope that you will allow me to return to your staff. I only wish to be allowed to do what I do best, which is the breaking of French codes. After all, my country is still at war, and like Electrica, I am a living weapon.