Jack Faust - Michael Swanwick

by Unknown Author

  He bristled. "Small talk? While my comrades fight and die?"

  "Yes. Gossip you have heard, pleasant things you have seen, witty comment upon items you have read in the newspaper. Surely that lies within your grasp."

  "I have no gossip. I am a soldier, and very little of what I have seen is pleasant. As for the papers—well. I am surprised you mention them. You seem to be in bad odor with the papers." 1

  "Do you refer to the business news or the scandal pages?"

  "I—" He stopped, flustered. "I have been crude and tactless. Please forgive me."

  "It's because I smoke cigarettes and dye my hair,"

  Gretchen said carelessly. "Their minds are so firmly made up against me it hardly matters that I also wear nylon stockings and skirts so short you can see my ankles/' Then, when his eyes automatically darted downward, she laughed. "Ah, oui— c'est assez immoral, да."

  He went bright red. But despite her continued hints, he stubbornly refused to switch over to court French. It was, she supposed, a kind of courtesy to insist upon speaking only her vernacular.

  Still, it was no easy thing to flirt in German.

  The path led them through an oak grove. "I am taking you further into my grounds than I permit most guests," she remarked, "because I wish to show you my little arbor." In the distance, she saw a last liveried servant slip over the top of a hill and disappear. She had ordered that they be left alone and undisturbed in the arboretum for the rest of the day. It was an order that she confidently expected to be obeyed.

  There was a summer house in a small clearing among the pines, its trellis walls artfully overgrown with flowering trumpet vines. It was too airy to serve as shelter, too dark for reading. Even from a distance one knew that the air within was green and shadowy, and scented with the perfume of the blossoms. "There it is. We'll visit it after we eat."

  In the field above, she'd arranged a picnic. It awaited them in gauze-covered Limoges dishes laid out upon a low table draped with Irish lace. Oriental carpets were placed to the table's sides, and silver buckets with iced Alsatian wine.

  They climbed the grassy slope, Gretchen and Anna Emels strolling almost languidly, but Czenski rather like a loyal officer going dutifully to his own execution. He plumped himself down upon the carpet.

  Anna Emels removed the gauze from the plates, exclaiming at the cold roasted partridges with white grapes, spooning the whipped cream from its ice-packed copper bowl onto the bande d'abricots. From a wicker basket, Gretchen produced three wreaths, two of wildflowers, and the third of laurel leaves. Czenski submitted to his with a gloomy smile, and watched intently as Anna donned hers, blushing like a bride.

  "Open your mouth," Gretchen told him. She plucked a grape from the partridges and placed it in his mouth. "Now close."

  He swallowed and shook his head. "I am no—"

  "Hush," she said. "Eat."

  Czenski's appetite was not great. But neither was it a heavy meal. Gretchen had no desire to start the afternoon feeling bloated and lethargic. She drank two slow glasses of wine and noted that Anna quietly had three and their guest nearly four. Then, when all were feeling quiet and comfortable, she said to him, "Make a wish. Anything at all... and if you are good, I promise it will be yours this very afternoon."

  Involuntarily, his eyes shot toward Anna and then back to Gretchen where a leather attache—magicked into existence by the same sprites who had set the table—lay by her knees like a faithful hound.

  She opened it.

  Within was Faust's inner, esoteric letter, and alongside it a new-drawn contract. She gestured, and Anna set a clean plate before the Silesian. She placed the contract upon it.

  He snatched it up, began quickly to read. "This says—" He looked up, then down again, flipping through the pages, muttering to himself.

  While Czenski was preoccupied, she sopped up the last dribbles of juice from her roasted peppers with a twist of rustic bread, and idly perused her own reading matter.

  Finally he looked up wildly. "I'll need ink!" he cried. "A quill!"

  "I'm so glad it's acceptable." Gretchen firmly took the contract from him, and tucked it back into her attache. "We can dispense with the formalities at the house—afterwards." Then, mischievously, "So you see, I am more than just infame des scandales, eh?"

  She folded the letter away, and watched it play out before her.

  ... Send your servants away, all but for your secretary. Command her to stand before you in silence. Let her experience your gaze, briefly, and wonderingly. Then direct her to remove her clothing. She is secretly in love with you, and will do whatever you direct.

  First Anna undid her brooch. Then, slowly, almost unwillingly, she lowered her dress. Her small white breasts appeared, nipples hardening as the air touched them. She looked stricken. Her face was white and still, her lips thin. Czenski lay upon one elbow, looking at her, hardly breathing.

  "All of it," Gretchen said. "Your stockings as well. Everything but the flowers."

  Czenski will be shocked, transfixed, ensorcelled. He is expecting nothing of the sort. Direct him to ...

  "Monsieur?" His head whipped around at the word and he started to his feet. It was as if he had not expected her to still be there. Perhaps he had not. Surely he had not expected her to take advantage of his inattention by beginning to remove her own clothing as well. "You have the advantage of us. Sois gentil—do the honorable thing."

  His mouth opened, then closed. Without saying a word, he began to undress.

  When they were all three naked, she took them both by the hand and led them to the summer house. There, among the cool breezes and green shadows, waited an enormous bed, sheeted in silks as white as a snowdrift. A fairy light washed over it, gentle and transforming, and a quiet in which all was permitted.

  "I—I never ..stammered Anna Emels.

  "Have you never?" Gretchen said. "It is the most natural thing imaginable. I am certain you will enjoy it." Though in truth this was a fib, for it was nothing she had any experience with either. But Gretchen was certain that she at least would enjoy it, for Faust had assured her so.

  They entered, naked and innocent: Adam and Gretchen and Eve in the Garden.

  The secretary is, unfortunately, of an emotional temperament and the experience will unsettle her in the aftermath; she will be of little use to you afterwards. Fire her.

  * * *

  DREADNOUGHT

  The riverfront was alive: Its wharves and shipyards seethed like anthills. Tugboats guided in freighters and cranes swung out to meet barges. Engines hammered in the summer heat. Carts and vans jostled in the streets; locomotives idled while hopper cars poured coal into waiting sluices; mule teams hauled ore boats up the canals. Exhaust blasted from smokestacks. Puffs of steam leaked from exhaust vents.

  A shift-whistle screamed, a hundred gates opened, and workmen flooded the streets. It was late afternoon and the mighty gears and pistons of industry meshed and merged so perfectly that all London seemed a single organism, a living machine, the Mother of War, who took in raw materials through uncountable orifices and, after brief gestation in the broad brick womb of her foundries, gave birth to a Titanic new race of armaments.

  Yet the Spanish fleet had already set sail. All that could be done, had. Now, for all the frantic activity, there was nothing left but the playing out of what had long ago been set in motion.

  Faust opened the humidor on his desk, selected a cigar, and put it down unlit.

  There was no word from the physicists in the converted tennis court in the City. They labored, and summed, and spoiled countless reams of paper with small notation, but produced nothing. He understood now that the project was ahead of its time. Mephistopheles was right—a pyramid could not be built from the top down. There was simply not the scientific and technological base to allow his genius full play. So his masterwork would not be deployed in the coming conflict.

  This action would be fought with more conventional arms.

  The Spanish
ironclads were armed with Nuremberg guns. There were no finer cannons in all the world: Their range was unsurpassed, their accuracy preternatural. The ships' armor cladding was more than three inches thick. There were, moreover, rumors of phosgene gas shells.

  But neither were the British steamships without resources. The ballistics engineers in the whimsically nicknamed Spaniard Works, and the chemical engineers in munitions, and the electrical engineers in radar, had worked long and hard and often without sleep to fit them for this day. They were ready.

  Faust, restless, left his office and took a turn through one of his plants.

  It was a hellish place—dark, airless, as bad as any prison. He wasn't even sure which factory it was, or what was done there, for he had chosen blindly, walking down Electricity Road and up Steam Hammer and striding past the startled gate security on a whim. But today, despite the roars and clashes of machinery, there was a strange underlying silence. Nobody shouted. Supervisors gave their orders quietly, with a hand laid upon a shoulder for comfort. Workers obeyed with a quick nod of the head, a lifted thumb. Faust saw a welder burst into tears for no apparent reason.

  (Talk to your men!) Mephistopheles urged. (Hand out small silver. Ask after their wives and sons by name. Call them together and give a speech. Say that all have worked hard and suffered much to prepare against this day. Tell them that the contest will be close and hard, but that one free man is the equal of ten Iberian slaves, and the battle must surely go to England. Tell them that the victory will belong as much to them as to the brave sailors of the Fleet. Apologize for being foreign-born, then tell them that their land—their home—has won your heart and loyalty. That today you would proudly lay down your life for it! Lead them in a cheer for the Throne and the ass that currently occupies it. Then give them the rest of the day off. They'll love you for it.)

  "I don't want their love."

  Faust passed through the plant as if enchanted, recognized by all but approached by none for fear of his now-famous wrath. The plant supervisor and his upper managers, recognizable by the hard-hats they wore as none of the floor workers did, anxiously paced him from a distance, ready to come at a gesture. He ignored them.

  In all the building, only one person met his eye: a gaunt scarecrow of a mechanic, standing upon a catwalk high above the floor by an opened hoist-motor, toolbox at his feet. The man stood spraddle-legged, glaring at Faust with an absolute and perfect hatred. The air all but crackled with the force of his emotion.

  (Go to him.)

  Faust climbed a ladder to the man's side.

  For a long time neither spoke. Finally Faust said, "Who are you? What have I ever done to you?"

  "My name is Lambart Jenkins. You gave me a scholarship."

  "Oh," Faust said. "One of those."

  "Yes. One of those." Each word fell from the mechanic's mouth separately, four drops of purest distillate of bitterness. Lank hair hung sweat-damp down the young man's brow; his eyes were unblinking to the point of madness. "I don't suppose you even remember your visit to Glouchester."

  Faust shook his head. "All I remember is that it was raining, and I stepped in such a puddle that I swore never to return. There were so many cities to visit... So many seeds to plant."

  "I was enrolled in the technical college. One day you walked into our mathematics seminar. You spoke on the nature of light, and the geometry of space-time. You said that sometimes light behaved like a particle, and other times like a wave. Until that moment, I thought myself an algebraist. You made me a physicist. You cannot imagine how I worshipped you!"

  "You feel differently now, though."

  Jenkins continued staring, said nothing.

  "Come," said Faust. "Walk with me."

  The mechanic had a long, swooping stride with a hesitation at the end of each step as he waited for his companion to catch up. This was clearly habitual, for Faust himself was no dawdler, and it left him in constant danger of tripping over his own feet. Together they strolled past the rail terminus, the gas-works, and the brickyards, into the surrounding tenements.

  They turned a corner and Faust almost collided with a colliery-woman, stooped under a sack of coal. Her eyes went wide with recognition and she crashed to her knees.

  Mephistopheles, discorporate, a bubble of thought, said, (See the hypocrisy of the rabble! A thousand times this woman has prayed for your death. Yet today she will not so much as spit upon you, lest England be conquered by a tyrant who would treat her no worse than she is presently. Kick her aside, and she will cherish the bruise forever.)

  Without stopping, Faust threw the woman a silver angel. Jenkins, hurrying after, gawked over his shoulder at her.

  The tenement streets were narrow, filthy, and crowded. Children scattered like sparrows at Faust's approach and, like sparrows, returned to their scratchings in his wake. Beggars extended hands like claws. From a rotting third-floor window, an old woman lowered a string with a tin can at its end holding two knives and a copper penny.

  "Yoo-hoo!" she shouted. "Mr. Scissors-man!"

  A hunchbacked grinder, his wheel set on a hand-barrow, hobbled and shoved the device her way with a wild, shoulder-looping gait. Suddenly one of the sparrows swooped in front of him to tip the can, scatter the knives, and scoop up the penny. The urchin ran away, laughing, in a rain of shouted abuse. One idler shied a brickbat after him, but missed.

  Faust watched all with the bright eye of an outland barbarian who knows so little of civilization that to him such squalor seems colorful. "It has been a long time since last I walked for pleasure. This air seems fresh to me. These people—captivating! Talk to me. I have not had any decent conversation for months."

  "Not even your peers will speak to you, then?" Jenkins asked suspiciously.

  "I have no peers. I am unequaled, and thus solitary. Save in my imaginings, my work has been my only companion, my deepest passion, my all, for I forget how many years. It is a terrible thing to labor so, to force one's way through the caverns of ignorance, to struggle under the crushing weight of economic necessity, to suffer fools with money and idiots with influence, to toil, and muck, and swelter, watching lesser men enjoy the rewards that should properly be mine, but burdened so that I could not enjoy those rewards were they offered me—and then to be done. Suddenly I am without purpose. One direction is the same as another to me. Everything is equally meaningless. I am bereft."

  Jenkins stared. "I am dumbfounded to hear you say so."

  "Do you doubt me, you gnat? Do you dare?" Faust turned upon the mechanic in a fury. "I assure you: I have suffered much."

  (Faust. Remember his purpose.)

  He smiled grimly. "Or could it be that, against your will, you find yourself in sympathy with me? That you hear me giving voice to words that might well have come out of your own mouth?"

  "I—yes." Jenkins looked pale, shaken.

  "There is the difference between us. I know you down to the bottom of your soul, and you comprehend me not a whit. Divert me! Tell me ..." He glanced about, seeking inspiration from the crowded1 street, with its ragged and unhappy denizens, its filth. "Tell me of..."

  (Ask about the incident of Sandwich's coach.)

  "Tell me of Lord Sandwich and his coach."

  "I had all but forgotten." Jenkins's lips twisted up on one side at the memory. "It happened on this very street. I—but how did you know to ask?"

  "Never mind. Go on."

  "I was returning from the plant when I saw it. Twelve hours' labor in your forge of human degradation, and what little time was left to me spent—well, never mind. I saw it: all gilded and painted like a whore. It filled the street. You cannot imagine what an astonishing sight it was to see here, where no lord has honest business. The Virgin herself could not have created a greater stir.

  "People came running into the street to see this wonder and try for a glimpse of the great man himself—but he kept his window curtained. The driver I now believe was lost, for he was crimson with choler, and when the crowds did not g
ive way fast enough to suit him, he cursed them and laid upon them with his whip."

  "I take it that was inadvisable."

  "It worked for a moment." Jenkins snickered. "Then somebody flung a turd."

  "A what?"

  "A turd. It hit the coach with a moist sound, and then slowly slid down the enameled side. The coachman was so amazed he could not move. Nor did anyone else on the street. They stood like so many wax-mannikins.

  "Then a woman laughed—a coarse laugh, like a donkey's bray. It was as if all had been awaiting just that token of permission to vent their passions. Women jeered and shook their fists. Stones were dug out of the street. They rattled the coach like hail. Men beat upon its sides with sticks.

  "Oh, but it was glorious! I had never before seen the people so aroused against their exploiters. A festive madness gripped us all and filled us with joyous rage. For a moment I thought the Revolution was upon us. But then the driver managed to rouse the horses sufficiently to break free of the press of bodies. Lord Sandwich, who had stayed hidden throughout, stuck his head out to shout abuse at us all as base knaves and unpatriotic rogues. And that was when he was struck by the second turd." A merry light danced in Jenkins's eyes, so that for an instant his face was young again and surprisingly pleasant.

  Faust chuckled. "I would have given much to see it!" Then he said, "So you are a radical?"

  The mechanic's face hardened with dismay. He had clearly not intended to reveal so much. But he straightened his shoulders and thrust out his chin. "Yes—I am. In thought if not in deed. You can kill me for my beliefs, if you like—I know I cannot stop you—but you can never kill the beliefs themselves."

  "Kill the Collectivist dream?" Faust said. "Why should I desire such a thing? It was I who wrote its ideologies."

  "You! But—why?"

  "Factory work is difficult, tedious, and injurious to the soul as well as the body. Men cannot live without hope. So I gave them some—a perfect world for their grandchildren and free beer on Sundays! A harmless enough drug, you might say, a soporific for the distraction of the working class and the alleviation of its despair."