The Steampunk Megapack

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by Jay Lake


  “I’m not going to cup you,” Mathieu said, as soothingly as he could. “I’m going to insert two hollow needles into veins in your forearms. I’ll swab the flesh with alcohol first to sterilize it. The cooling effect of the alcohol’s evaporation will help numb the pain. I’m going to leave the needles in place for some time, so that I can put the blood I draw from one vein through a special filter, and then return it to the other. It might seem rather horrid, but it’s quite safe. One day, in the not-too-distant future, it will be standard practice in hospitals all over the world.”

  “I had worse done to me,” Judy Lee reported, making an effort to remain laconic. Mathieu had no reason to doubt that, either. He thought it best to keep talking, not so much by way of paying lip-service to the principle of informed consent as to reassure her that this was something that he had done before, many times, and that it really would become a normal aspect of medical practice—scientific medical practice, not quackery or the obsolete traditions that the majority of physicians still insisted on following.

  “You’re contributing to an important study, Judy,” he assured her. “You and I are adventurers on the path of progress.”

  The girl attempted to smile, but she had not been a whore long enough to have mastered that kind of insincerity. She was still beautiful, as much because of the consumption that had begun to eat her away as in spite of it. The disease gave a certain semi-transparent gloss to the skin and sculpted her lean features, exaggerating the eyes in a strangely soulful fashion. He told himself that she would not be beautiful much longer, whether he intervened in the process of her deterioration or not, and that it might be good for her to be saved from a career of prostitution, if that turned out to be the result of her participation in his project.

  One day, Mathieu thought, he would be able to pay back what he took from his “volunteers”, with abundant interest. Soon enough, if he were only allowed time and adequate financial support, he would find a way to isolate the bacillus—or whatever term he might invent to substitute for “bacillus”—and feed it in vitro, so that it would be able reproduce itself independently of its host. Then the transactions in which he dealt would no longer be a matter of robbing Petronella to pay Paul, but a matter of assisting in the evolution of humankind, of building a hitherto-unimaginable Utopia on the rickety foundations of London’s slums.

  “French, aintcher?” the girl said, as the second needle went in. The original syringe, having injected the anti-clotting serum, had been hooked up to the pump and the filtration apparatus. Now Mathieu hooked up the second modified syringe, completing the circuit. He had good grounds, now, to be sure that he could feed at least three liters of the girl’s blood through the machine without undue risk, although he would have to give her careful instructions to limit subsequent blood-loss, given that the anti-clotting agent would remain in her bloodstream for anything up to three days. It had been the induced hemophilia that had caused two of the three fatal casualties in Paris, rather than the extraction process itself, but a Parisian tribunal would have been unlikely to appreciate the nice distinction. There had only been one fatal accident since he had decamped to London—but that would likely prove to be one too many, if the spy who had been watching Sir Julian’s house the night before really had been a policeman investigating his activities.

  “That’s right,” Mathieu admitted, without looking up from his work. “I worked with Louis Pasteur before I came to London.”

  “Heard o’ him,” Judy Lee boasted. “Germs ’n’ that.”

  “That’s right,” Mathieu said, approvingly. “He’s developed a method of sterilizing milk too, and a treatment for rabies. A great man—a very great man. The Institut is also doing experiments in blood transfusion, now that the legal prohibition has been lifted. We lost two hundred years of potential progress in that regard, because the scientific method came into conflict with the law. The first blood transfusions were carried out within walking distance of this very spot, by Sir Christopher Wren—the man who designed Saint Paul’s Cathedral—in 1657. He was hoping to find a method of rejuvenation, but it turned out that one man’s blood is sometimes another man’s poison. My countryman, Jean-Baptiste Denis, was sued by the widow of a man who died in the course of one of his transfusion experiments, and the practice was outlawed.

  “All that was necessary was to figure out a simple pattern of incompatibilities—even the primitive microscopes of the day would have been adequate to the necessary investigations—but the work wasn’t done because no one dared take the risk of prosecution. If they’d persisted, all kinds of surgery would have become safer and more effective two hundred years ago—the metalworkers of the day would have been easily able to produce hollow needles and Pravaz syringes, if only there had been a manifest need for them. As things turned out, though, it took another two hundred years to put together the kind of apparatus that could replace blood lost in surgery, just as I’m now replacing yours.

  “Scientific medicine might have made vast strides in the eighteenth century, if only medical scientists had been permitted to experiment. Instead, there was a Golden Age of quackery, when all kinds of bizarre patent medicines flourished, while orthodox physicians fought tooth and nail to defend their own superstitions. The possible deaths of a few dozen or a few hundred volunteers in controlled experiments were prevented, while hundreds of thousands of people who had no choice at all died by virtue of licensed but misguided treatments, and millions more by virtue of ignorant inaction. Things are different now—very different—but the necessary research requires time, and money, which is direly hard to come by. If the governments of Europe would only take their responsibilities seriously, instead of spending all their time and revenues plotting and preparing for war, there’d be no need for self-serving buccaneers like Sir Julian Temp….”

  He trailed off, realizing that his tongue had run away with him, and that it was perhaps as well that the girl could not be expected to understand what he was saying. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What I mean is that you’re helping in a great cause, and have every reason to be proud of yourself.”

  “Doin’ it for the money,” she observed, dully. “Y’c’n buy a girl in Bethnal Green for a shilling—a guinea’s good scratch. Done worse for far less.”

  Mathieu gritted his teeth. “One day,” he said, in a low voice, “my work will do wonders for girls like you. You’ll be its true beneficiaries, at the end of the day. The twentieth century will be a new Age of Miracles, not just for the rich but for everyone. Do you mind if I leave you now, just for a little while? I’ll come back in ten or fifteen minutes.”

  Judy Lee nodded. Mathieu knew that he really ought to stay, but her taciturnity was putting undue stress on his conversational skills, and the atmosphere in the subterranean laboratory was becoming foul with the reek of blood. He needed fresh air—and today, fortunately, was one of the rare days on which London’s air really was fresh. Yesterday’s rain had washed the accumulated smog-particles out of the atmosphere, and a brisk south-westerly breeze was preventing its reformation. Although the new network of sewers had not yet taken up the entirety of the river’s burden, the days of the Great Stink were long gone.

  Mathieu went up the steps to the pavement of the street and leaned against the railings protecting the hollow in which his front door was set. There was a faint unsteady vibration beneath his feet, which was primarily a side-effect of the construction-work on the underground railway, although the excavation of the sewers still had a minor contribution to make. London’s Underworld was a complex hive of activity now, with countless workers toiling round the clock in shifts, largely unnoticed by the denizens of the surface.

  Men of science, Mathieu thought, were not unlike those subterranean laborers, their patiently heroic endeavors being largely unheeded by journalists and historians alike. The chroniclers of the modern world, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, paid close attention to the actions of kings, statesmen and generals, but rarely noticed
the subtle revolutions in technology that were the true motor of history.

  Mathieu realized, however, that he was not presently unobserved. There was a tall, lean man bundled up in a dark blue overcoat leaning casually on the railings of the house opposite, who never looked at him directly but never excluded him from his field of vision either. Mathieu had no idea whether it was the same man who had been watching Sir Julian’s house the previous evening, and had no way of determining whether or not the watcher might be a police detective, but he was in no doubt that he and his lodgings were under surveillance. The laboratory was invisible from the street, and from the back yard too—the apartment’s only front window looked into Mathieu’s kitchen, while the rear window was in his tiny bedroom—but that did not make him feel any more comfortable.

  He went back inside immediately, and hurried back to the girl, who was drowsy but seemed as well as could possibly be expected. He fed her a small measure of port wine, holding the glass to her lips so that she did not have to move her arms. When he had detached the needles and bandaged the residual wounds he gave her a generous cup of hot sweet tea and a slice of toast with marmalade before sending her on her way. She was a little unsteady on her feet but she could walk perfectly well. She looked around as he ushered her through the hallway, taking what note she could of the circumstances of his life.

  “I c’n come back, if y’like” she said, as he opened the door. “For company, mind, not blood.” She sounded genuinely hopeful, perhaps because he seemed a cut above her usual clients, or merely because she thought him a likely prospect.

  “No,” he said, brusquely. “Please don’t come here again—not ever.” He knew that she probably would, when the after-effects set in, but he had learned to steel himself against such occasions, and to turn the visitors away.

  The watcher on the other side of the street did not budge from his station when Mathieu escorted the girl back up to the pavement, and did not follow her when she made her way back to Goldhawk Road. He studied the girl as she walked away, though, before returning his eyes to Mathieu’s lodgings, abruptly enough to catch Mathieu’s gaze for a moment. Mathieu judged, as the two of them locked stares momentarily, that the other man knew perfectly well that he had been spotted, but did not care. The watcher’s eyes were dark and keen. His short-cropped hair gave him the appearance of a seaman, and the uneven coloring of his face suggested that he had recently shaved off a well-grown beard and moustache.

  Mathieu hurried back to his laboratory, to begin work on the filtrate; it was a few minutes after four o’clock, and he was anxious to get the preparatory work done before Sir Julian arrived. He wanted the laboratory to be spick and span, to present an image of efficient, dedicated and productive labor. He wanted Sir Julian to feel confident that his money was being well spent, and would prove to be an excellent investment, on his own behalf and the world’s.

  Mathieu tried to put Judy Lee’s image out of his mind. He did not want to see her again, under any circumstances. By the time her blood was clotting properly again—if she suffered no serious mishap before then—the change would be becoming noticeable. Within a week, at the most, the metamorphosis would be complete. Time would ameliorate the problem slightly, as the indwelling population of the agent began to increase again, but experience suggested that it would never be able to make up the deficit that his filtration had caused. All the evidence he had so far collected suggested that she would never recover what she had lost.

  Mathieu split the filtrate into two unequal, parts: one for Sir Julian and one for the continuation of his in vitro experiments. He would dearly have loved to retain the larger fraction for the latter purpose, but he did not dare. Sir Julian’s need—if need were the right word—was increasing too rapidly. Had the baronet been given the choice, Mathieu would probably have been instructed to reserve all the filtrate for his use, but Mathieu still had power enough within their relationship to insist that the broader purpose be maintained. Sir Julian had had plenty of opportunity to see what happened to the “volunteers” who provided him with the means to maintain his condition, and he knew exactly how valuable Mathieu’s expertise was. As a last resort, the baronet might take the chance of replacing him with some ambitious graduate of Guy’s or St Thomas’s—but only as a last resort. Theirs was the kind of Faustian bargain that could not easily be substituted, on either side.

  3.

  While Mathieu was working on the filtrate, the oil-lamps illuminating the laboratory began to burn low. One of them went out, but it was the more distant of the two from his work-bench and he did not immediately get up to refill it. His supply of oil was running low, and it would be better to make do with one lamp, if he could, at least until Sir Julian had handed over the promised cash. His work would have been more brightly served by gaslight, of course, but the laboratory was only fitted with a single gas tap, which he reserved for his Bunsen burner.

  Had Mathieu’s rooms been located under the eaves of the house, instead of in the basement, he would have been able to work by daylight, but when he and Sir Julian had selected his place of work they had both thought a windowless room best suited to their purpose. At that time, they really had imagined that a single dose of the “vaccine” might suffice to work a miracle that could be repeated a hundred times over, but the combination of Jenner’s practice and Pasteur’s theory had not been as simple as Mathieu had hoped. The fundamental thesis had been sound enough—it really did seem to be the case that Jenner’s vaccine worked because it transmitted a biological agent of some kind, rather than by observance of some strange homeopathic principle—but it had proved impossible to construct a strictly analogical procedure with respect to the agent that Mathieu’s fungal filters had caught. The human microcosm was, it seemed, even more complicated than the macrocosm that scientific astronomy had recently begun to reveal, with the aid of photography, spectroscopes and increasingly powerful lenses.

  When Mathieu heard the click of a catch in the corridor outside the laboratory he immediately looked up at the clock, which indicated half past six. Sir Julian had a key to the front door, of course, and was not given to ringing doorbells, but he was a punctual man and it was unlike him to be early, even when he was anxious.

  Mathieu looked around for something that might serve as a weapon, and picked up a scalpel from the bench. He moved to the door, but did not reach for the knob; instead, he positioned himself so that he would be concealed behind it if it were opened.

  It did open, very quietly, and swung inwards slowly. That, too, was not Sir Julian’s way—he was a man more inclined to throw doors open and march in boldly, no matter what the circumstances of his arrival might be. Whoever was opening the door now was peering in gingerly, attempting to look around before setting foot across the threshold. Had the intruder been anyone with a legitimate reason for being there, he would surely have called out, but he seemed intent on maintaining the strictest silence.

  Mathieu did not wait for the invader to step inside, but put his shoulder to the door while the other was still within the compass of its swing, and shoved it with all his might. The other, quite unprepared for such an assault, cursed loudly and yielded ground—but did not fall over and immediately began to shove back.

  It was obvious to Mathieu that his adversary was the stronger man, for he felt himself gradually pressed back against the wall, trapped by the pressure of the solid wooden door. He reached round the batten and slashed downwards with the scalpel. The thrust brought forth another curse, but the blade had caught the sleeve of a thick overcoat, and it was not a wounding blow. The other leaned on the door even harder, trying to crush the breath from Mathieu’s body.

  Mathieu cried out for help, although he had no reason at all to think that any might be close at hand. The crushing pressure continued, and he shouted again, knowing that he might not have enough breath left for a third appeal. He lashed out with the scalpel twice more, but now that his assailant knew that the instrument was in his hand, the thr
usts cleaved empty air.

  Mathieu knew that he was beaten, and had just decided to issue his surrender and beg for mercy when the weight pressing on the door was suddenly relieved. There was the noise of a sudden furious tussle on the other side of it, and then the sound of running feet as one of the two combatants—presumably the one who had been using the door to crush him—scrambled for the front door.

  Mathieu moved around the door ready to greet his rescuer, assuming that he would see Sir Julian—but the man standing in the corridor watching his erstwhile opponent beat an ungainly retreat was the man who had been leaning on the railings opposite, watching the house. For a moment, Mathieu assumed that the wrong combatant had been bested, and raised the hand clutching the scalpel as if to stab is enemy—but then he realized that the watcher really had run to rescue him, and that the man who was now running up the steps beyond the front door was completely unknown to him. It seemed that Mathieu really had had a narrow escape, because the man who was running away was every bit as tall, and even more heavily-built, than the man who had come to his aid.

  Mathieu hesitated over what to do next—and while he hesitated, the watcher from the far side of the street grabbed his wrist and disarmed him, saying: “No need for that, Frenchy.” His accent had a distinct cockney twang, but that was no guarantee that he was not a policeman. At close range, Mathieu was able to estimate that the darker parts of the man’s complexion were the consequence of exposure to tropical sunlight. The dark blue overcoat was, in fact, the sort worn by merchant seamen, and his heavily-callused hands provided that final proof that he was indeed a sailor recently returned from a long voyage.

  “Who are you?” Mathieu finally found the courage to demand.

  “A friend, it seems—at least for the moment.”

  “Why were you watching my house? Have you been following me?”

 

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