The Steampunk Megapack

by Jay Lake

  * * * *

  It was calm outside. The mob had moved again, the noise was much fainter and from further west, toward the city proper. The shelling or bombing or whatever has stopped. Either the balloons fell or the shipyard did. His work done, the cards feel ridiculously small and flimsy in his hand. Maybe the Commune has a chance. Maybe they’ll burn all their cards until everyone is a wretched Independent. Maybe the Crown will abandon her noisy and troublesome children. No. Can’t think about that now. He takes out the earplugs. He gropes in the dark for the smooth and impenetrable card containers. The sound of the clasp sounding is so loud he thinks it’ll bring the crowds straight to his door. There’s nothing left to do. Maggie will be back soon and then they start working again on a new set of cards, cards to take them as far as San Fransisco if the Engines remain clogged with riots and bombs. All he can do is sit and wait. Sit and wait for the world to change.

  THE PATH OF PROGRESS, by Brian Stableford

  1.

  The upper floors of the house overlooking Holland Park were almost completely dark, because the windows were shuttered in the continental style and all the shutters had been closed. Chinks of white gaslight showed through the wooden slats in one of the ground-floor rooms—Sir Julian Templeforth’s study—and it was just possible to glimpse the ruddy glow of firelight in the master bedroom, which was doubtless being made comfortable in advance of the baronet’s retirement. The unshuttered windows of the servants’ quarters in the basement were, by contrast, all aglow with yellow candlelight; the staff still had two hours of the working day ahead of them.

  Mathieu Galmier took off his hat before he rang the bell at the gate, acutely conscious of the fact that a Frenchman—even a former Professor of Medicine at the Sorbonne—was expected to be humble in this part of London, even before lackeys who were not, strictly speaking, English themselves. It was a long time since Britain and France had last been formally at war, but no one in the British Isles had forgotten Waterloo, and those who read the newspapers knew that any vestiges of French dignity that had survived Bonaparte’s fall had been shattered and ground into the dust at Sedan, less than twenty years ago.

  The concierge, Reilly—who preferred to be called a porter—scowled at Mathieu as he opened the gate, and did not trouble to accompany him to the perron, to which Sir Julian always referred as “the front steps”. Cormack, the butler who answered the door in response to the second bell, was too haughty to scowl, but that did not mean that he looked upon his master’s guest with any conspicuous approval. Cormack was duty-bound to accompany Mathieu to the study door and introduce him, once he had collected the visitor’s rain-soaked coat and hat, but he was not required to purge his conscientiously-schooled voice of all disdain, and he took full advantage of that license.

  Sir Julian was endeavoring to relax in a leather-upholstered armchair with a glass of brandy and a volume from Mudie’s library, but he gave the impression of having a great deal on his mind. He made no show of being glad to see his visitor, but he got to his feet, smoothed the creases in his blood-red waistcoat and adjusted the ruffed sleeves of his old-fashioned shirt.

  “Come in, Professor,” Sir Julian said, suppressing a sigh and inviting Mathieu with a casual gesture to take his armchair’s twin, positioned on the other side of the fireplace. “Is there a problem with regard to tomorrow’s appointment?”

  Mathieu sat down. He declined the glass of brandy that Sir Julian offered him by means of another quasi-theatrical gesture. The baronet waved Cormack away; the butler closed the study door behind him, ostentatiously clicking the catch to emphasize that his master’s privacy was guaranteed.

  “There is a problem, Sir Julian,” Mathieu said, bluntly. “As I warned you at the time, I was unable to retain enough of the agent following the last administration to continue the principal course of the experimental scheme. Given the desperate need to find a means of reproducing the agent, if the project is not to reach an impasse….”

  “What you mean,” Sir Julian said, cutting him off, “is that you want me to bring you more money tomorrow.”

  “I do need more money, Sir Julian,” Mathieu said, tiredly, relaxing into the comfortable leather upholstery in spite of his anxiety and determination to remain alert, “but I also need more…volunteers. If you continue to increase your personal demand for the agent—and I’m not denying your need for larger and more frequent doses—then the supply has to be increased commensurately. It’s as much in your interest as mine that I find a means of producing the agent in vitro. I told you when we began this project that I could not put a firm price on the achievement, nor specify a time-limit. Organic chemistry is in its infancy, as is microbiology. We’re explorers and pioneers, attempting to beat the path of progress on a trackless frontier.”

  “Don’t talk like some damned American,” Sir Julian observed. “You’re a man of science, not an Indian scout. You were supposed to be Pasteur’s most promising pupil—the man to take medical biology into a new era. Perhaps I should have befriended the one with the Russian name and left you to the mercy of the gendarmerie. It’s all very well for you to talk about needing an increased supply, more money and more time—we all need time, and my need is the most pressing of all. Your job is to deliver it, not to demand it. I don’t understand this obsession with inducing the so-called agent to reproduce. The original idea was simply to extract it and employ it as a vaccine, like Jenner’s. It wasn’t supposed to require more than one dose, let alone doses of increasing magnitude and frequency. I understand that explorers don’t always find what they’re hoping to find, but when they don’t, they have to tailor their plans to what they do find. Cormack can get you more raw material easily enough, I suppose, but there are risks, as you know only too well.”

  “The risks will be a thing of the past,” Mathieu told him, “if and when I can find a substrate that will enable me to maintain and reproduce the agent outside the human body. If that can be done, we won’t need any more…raw material.”

  “If and when,” Sir Julian repeated, thumping the am of his chair with a closed fist. “It’s always if and when with you, Monsieur Galmier. Well, girls are cheap enough, and there’s no shortage of supply, but you’re already costing me too dear in rent, laboratory equipment and living expenses. There’s a limit to the indulgence you can expect in terms of buying new equipment and messing about with substrates.”

  Sir Julian was staring at Mathieu in a markedly insistent fashion, as if he were attempting to mesmerize his visitor, or at least to dominate him by the power of his will. The stare was difficult to resist, even though it had no occult force. Mathieu had to admit though, that the baronet had the appearance of an idealized natural aristocrat, possessed of an innate right to rule. Sir Julian’s actual title was meager, but his bearing was not; he gave the impression of being a seventeenth-century Cavalier displaced into the nineteenth century by some freak of time, reminiscent of a lush Dutch portrait of Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

  Sir Julian Templeforth was an exceptionally handsome man nowadays, Mathieu thought, proudly. There was nothing in the least unmasculine about him—indeed, he had an exceptionally robust and virile frame—but his face had a particular perfection of form and complexion that was rarely seen in a male of the species. His black hair was sleek and glossy, with a hint of a natural curl, and his sky-blue eyes had a clarity that was quite marvelous, even in the Celtic type that routinely combined dark hair with blue or green eyes. If ever there was an irresistible stare, Mathieu thought, this was it—but he had to resist it, if he could. Given that it was, in a sense, his invention, he ought to be able to do it.

  “The extraction process runs much more smoothly now that I’ve mastered it,” the scientist persisted, patiently. “I’ve also improved the filtration process and acquired considerable skill in the purification of the agent, but I need to take the next step. Even if we were to set other considerations aside, and regard the project as a merely personal matter, we can’t be co
ntent to continue doing extractions at increasingly frequent intervals. Eventually, something will go wrong, in spite of all my precautions. Many of these girls are carrying multiple infections, none of which we fully understand. So far, in my opinion, you’ve been exceptionally lucky. I’ve been keeping close track of Elie Metchnikoff’s immunological work at the Institut, as well as Monsieur Pasteur’s quest for new vaccines and the latest advances in apochromatic microscopy. Everything suggests that the range of pathogenic agents is much greater than was first supposed. If I can’t isolate the agent in which we’re interested, and discover out how to reproduce it in vitro, there’s a risk that you might lose everything I’ve so far been able to do for you.”

  Sir Julian got to his feet, perhaps hoping to increase the dominating effect of his stare, but after looking down at his visitor for a few seconds he turned away. His eyes went to the portrait hanging over the fireplace: the portrait of his father, who had fought at Waterloo as a mere subaltern and had subsequently commanded a brigade in the Crimea, where he had somehow avoided being singled out by The Times as yet another glaring exemplar of British military incompetence. Sir Malcolm Templeforth had not been a handsome man, and his son—who looked far too young to be the older man’s child—did not resemble him at all.

  “Things are bad in Ireland and getting worse,” Sir Julian said, suppressing another sigh. “Ever since Gladstone gave the rebels that first inch they’ve been determined to take far more than a mile. Even with an honest steward in place, the estate’s revenues are sinking like a stone. The poor fellow’s under siege. Even bog-Irish peasants are taught to read nowadays, it seems, and encouraged to delude themselves that they’re capable of philosophical thought. What they read, alas, is the radical press, and the form their philosophy takes is obsession with the rights of man, trades unions and all that nonsense. My tenants have formed some sort of association, it seems, and badger my steward daily with lists of grievances. He’s demanding, on their behalf, that I go over there—not requesting, you understand, but demanding. He won’t believe me when I say that I can’t, although you know full well that I really can’t leave London now. It wouldn’t do any good, of course, if I did go—the wretches complain bitterly about absentee landlords, but they make it impossible for anyone to work comfortably in residence.”

  Mathieu did not know how to respond to this tirade, and began to wish that he had accepted the offer of a brandy, if only to have something to do with his hands.

  “Anyway,” Sir Julian went on, “my purse isn’t bottomless, and I’m feeling the pinch at present. There’s no way I can increase my funds, except perhaps by marrying again, but the marriage market isn’t what it was thirty years ago. I could probably snag some damned American whose father’s in steel or oil, although they all seem to want an earldom at least, but that would take time.” He paused before adding: “You’re not thinking about looking for another backer, are you? You do realize how unwise that would be?”

  The way the questions were phrased made them appear to be defensive moves in the face of a hypothetical threat, but Mathieu knew that they constituted a serious threat in themselves, and perhaps a deadly one. He had always known that Sir Julian was a dangerous man. At first, he had obtained a certain thrill from playing with fire—but he was older now, and the ultimate objective of his research seemed to be as far away as ever, in spite of all his efforts. Had he been prepared to serve as his own subject, he thought, his history might have been quite different. Unlike Sir Julian, though, he had never been reckless, rich or lucky.

  “I’m fully aware of the trouble you could cause for me,” Mathieu observed, quietly, “and the violence you might do to me. I sometimes wonder whether I might have been thrown to the wolves already, or worse, had the agent been as successful as we first hoped.”

  “And I sometimes wonder whether you might be playing me like a fish,” Sir Julian retorted, “keeping me hooked by deliberately doling out your drug in doses that become less effective by degrees, simply in order to keep extracting money for me to fund your greater ambitions. But we mustn’t let such suspicions get the better of us. We trusted one another once—it would be better for both of us if we still did.”

  That was true, but Mathieu was saved from having to admit it by a discreet knock on the door.

  Cormack waited for his master to call out a summons before he opened it, and came in hesitantly. “I’m very sorry to disturb you sir,” the butler said, “but I thought you ought to know that there is someone watching the house from the bushes in Holland Park. According to Reilly, he took up his post immediately after Mr. Galmier’s arrival, and might perhaps have been following him.”

  Sir Julian fixed Mathieu with a different kind of stare, which testified eloquently to the extent of the loss of trust between them.

  “I had no idea!” Mathieu protested. “I wouldn’t have been able to take a hansom, even if I’d tried, because of the rain….”

  “That wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference, you fool,” Sir Julian said, hotly. “The point is, who is he? And how did you attract his attention in the first place?”

  Mathieu shook his head, helplessly.

  Sir Julian was not a man to waste time in circumstances like these. He went to the cabinet beside the door and took out his father’s old saber, with a promptitude that suggested to Mathieu that he always relished an opportunity to do so. Rumor had it that he had killed half a dozen men in duels—though none, as yet, on English soil.

  “Tell Reilly to work his way around behind the fellow if he can,” the baronet instructed Cormack. “He’ll need a stout cudgel, but tell him not to wield it too brutally. We want to question the man, not split his skull. We’ll leave five minutes, then we’ll come out of the front door and make directly for the spy.”

  Cormack nodded, and hurried away to relay the order. Sir Julian raised the saber and weighed it in his hand, in eager anticipation.

  “The fellow can’t see anything, with all the shutters closed,” Mathieu pointed out. “His vigil will be wasted.”

  “Even if he didn’t follow you here,” Sir Julian said, “he’ll probably follow you home, given the chance. The mere fact that he’s aware of our association means that he knows too much—enough, at any rate, for us to need to know exactly how much he does know, and what his interest is.” The baronet put on his black coat, donning a kind of emphatic arrogance with it that Mathieu could not help but think of as Rocambolesque, although Sir Julian would probably have preferred “Wellingtonian”. Cormack had brought Mathieu’s coat too, which was shabbier by far.

  When the five minutes had elapsed, Sir Julian made for the main door of the house, beckoning to Mathieu as if he were commanding a footman. Mathieu followed, content to remain three paces in rear.

  Sir Julian bounded down the steps and raced through the open gate, crossing the deserted street in three strides—but there were iron railings around the park, and the nearest gate was ten yards to one side, requiring an awkward detour. As Sir Julian headed for the gate there was a flurry of movement in the bushes beyond the railings, and the quarry set off like a startled hare.

  Reilly, alas, was no greyhound. By the time Sir Julian had reached the place where the watcher had been stationed, the porter had already engaged the spy in a brief scuffle, but had been knocked down without being able to bring his cudgel into play. By the time Mathieu caught up with his patron, the baronet was fulminating at his aged retainer. Reilly complained in vain that the unknown man had been considerably taller, younger and stronger than he was, and that the grass had been exceedingly slippery after the rain.

  Sir Julian rounded on Mathieu then. “This is your fault,” he declared, although Mathieu knew that no one had any real reason to suppose that it was. “Make sure that no one follows you home, if you can. I’ll come tomorrow, at seven, as arranged. You’ll have the usual delivery before noon, but I’ll try to make provision for another before the end of the week. I’ll bring some extra money for
you—but I warn you that I expect results. You’d better find a means to grow the vaccine in a flask pretty damned quick, else you and I will need a further reckoning.”

  “This kind of adventurous research can’t be done to order,” Mathieu said, feeling obliged to mount some kind of formal protest. “There’s no precedent to guide us.”

  “Necessity,” Sir Julian stated, with not a hint of irony, “is the mother of improvisation. It was you who put yourself under its spur—where I’ve long grown used to living. There’s no use complaining that you need more time when the sand has all but run through the hour-glass. If that was a policeman, he’s more likely to be after you than me—which means that you need me even more than I need you, and not just for money. Whether you walk back to your lodgings or take a cab, keep looking behind you.”

  2.

  Cormack brought the girl in person, arriving shortly before noon, as promised. She was no more than thirteen, in Mathieu’s judgment, although she claimed when asked to be sixteen. Either way, she seemed unlikely to reach twenty, whatever was done or not done to her in the meantime. She told Mathieu that her name was Judy Lee, which he had no reason to doubt.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Judy?” Mathieu asked, when Cormack had gone, leaving him alone with the girl in his laboratory, which was constructed in the only large room in his basement flat south of Goldhawk Road.

  “Y’r gwin t’bleed me,” the girl said. “Bin cupped afore—din’ do me no good, though they said it would.” She looked around anxiously, intimidated by the mass of apparatus. She had surely never been to a public lecture at the Royal Institution, so the only place she might have seen such an assembly of equipment before was on the stage of some cheap theatre. Laboratory equipment had been the standard décor of exaggerated melodrama ever since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been adapted for the Porte-Saint-Martin more than sixty years before.