The Technologists: A Novel

by Matthew Pearl

  There were still almost two hours before morning courses would begin. What in the land was Tilden doing? Maybe he came for extra study time, in a desperate attempt to pass all his courses.

  “That lighting demonstration went a bit out of control last night,” he mused.

  Marcus started back toward the Institute building as though the matter were no concern to him. “You want to clean, Tilden?”

  “Probably you’re wondering why I’m here.”

  “Not really.”

  “Looked to my eyes like Rogers lost control over what was happening,” Tilden went on, following at his heels. “Then ran away like a coward! That cross old devil must step down before we’re seen to have a cripple for a president, and I’ve come to write a petition to that effect and circulate it around the college. He’s going to die, and when he does the whole place will die with him.”

  Marcus felt his stomach clench. He tried his best to master his anger.

  “Come now, Mansfield,” Tilden went on. “You know the truth more than any of us. We will be the first graduates, the men of ’68, who will represent the Institute to the rest of the country. Rogers is holding the Institute back from where it must go, but so are you. You never belonged here. You were one of the old goat’s mistakes. You were never entitled to be here with the rest of us. You were an experiment, a shipwreck, a flummux, just like that wicked witch they’ve put in the freshman class.”

  Marcus stopped walking. He placed the bag of glass on the ground and buttoned up his coat. “Rainy morning. You should go inside.”

  “Don’t twist the subject!” Tilden tapped his finger on the button just under Marcus’s raggedy cravat. “Oh, Mansfield,” he said, catching the fury in his eyes, “you’d like to strike me ever so much, wouldn’t you? That would impress old Miss Swallow, wouldn’t it? I hear she’s religious, though—no use trying anything with her. I’ve thought about it, believe me, with her down there in her basement laboratory, alone.”

  “Keep a civil tongue in your head, Tilden.”

  Tilden snapped his finger and thumb together two inches from Marcus’s face. He had the habit of snapping, indiscriminately, to express every kind of emotion or to signify emphasis. Sometimes, he snapped finger and thumb on both hands simultaneously, sometimes one, then the other. “Do you threaten me?” he asked Marcus.

  “With fair warning.”

  “We both know that you can’t do a thing to me, Mansfield. If you strike me while on college property, by strict rule you will be immediately hauled up before the faculty and shipped off. No excuses, no exceptions. A charity scholar walks on such a razor’s edge I almost feel sorry for you. A man without a father to his name.”

  He might have said “a man without a farthing to his name.” Either way, Marcus’s fists clenched.

  “Have you taken good notes this term on Professor Henck’s lectures on survey, location, and construction, Tilden?”

  “Now there’s a course that’s a soft snap,” Tilden guffawed. “I use it as my nap hour. Why?”

  “Because,” Marcus said, gesturing with a flick of his chin, “the college property ends at the well.”

  Tilden turned to look and suddenly paled. He turned back in time to catch Marcus’s fist full in the face. He flew flat on his back into a pool of mud.

  Marcus’s knuckles were stained with blood and his body pulsated with release.

  Tilden blotted his bloody nose and glared at him as if he were a wild beast let out of his cage. “Scoundrel! Scrubby scoundrel! I’ll serve you, Mansfield, you miserable insect! I see what you are now!”

  “What is that?”

  “You’re not one of us.”

  “A factory boy. I know. I’ve heard it from you for four long years.”

  “That’s not all, Mansfield! Your knot is not screwed on right. There are shadows in your eyes …” Tilden rolled onto his stomach, grabbed a big rock, and threw it with all his strength.

  Marcus easily dodged the missile, then, when Tilden pushed himself up and tried to run, Marcus tripped him back down and this time pressed the heel of his boot onto Tilden’s wrist and jammed his knee into his back. “You leave Miss Swallow alone. Do you hear me, Tilden? Do you?”

  “Yes! Get off me! I will!”

  “Good. One more thing: Bother Rogers at your peril.”

  “What’s the old man to you, anyway?”

  “He’s the only person who never tried to tell me I was not entitled to something better. And if you dare make a move against him, I’ll rip your guts out.” He did not let his boot up until Tilden cried out his agreement. A second more and the wrist bone would have snapped against the stone beneath it.

  “Thank you, Tilden. You have a good morning.”

  VII

  Particles

  COMMISSION STOCKBROKER JOSEPH CHESHIRE walked briskly through the narrow zigzag of streets. He carried the newspaper under one arm and his walking stick angled before him to push people out of his way. An early morning rain had become snow, which had quickly begun melting, but it still hobbled the pedestrians. Mr. Cheshire was not one to bow down to weather or people. On this April morning, as every morning, he displayed the same rugged determination that had first brought him from Cape Cod to Boston as a young bookkeeper setting out to make his fortune. None of his family or friends believed he could do it. They had underestimated him. Now that he had his fortune, people still underestimated what he might accomplish. It was some kind of a curse with Cheshire—his money inspired as little respect from the businessmen of Boston as his dreams had on the Cape.

  That was one theory to explain the curling snarl that permanently fixed itself under the shadow of the stockbroker’s long, brushed-out mustache.

  * * *

  PINK CHEEKS BELOW FRIZZY AUBURN HAIR, Christine Lowe had already gone to the Continental Theatre, thence by crowded horsecar to the dressmaker’s to leave a package for the theater manager, thence by foot here, to the crowded business-and-banking portion of the city, toward the telegraph office. The Old State House clock struck nine-thirty. She had been at the theater until late last night and was tired. So tired. How heavy were the rings under her green eyes by now? How would she make it through the day, and another night at the theater, before sleeping?

  * * *

  THEOPHILUS! THEOPHILUS! His name was called constantly, summoning him to one task or another. Among the crowded rooms of bank porters, most boys thirteen or fourteen like himself, he was known for being quick, reliable, attentive—the best. He was ever on the move, head swiveling, eyes surveying the floor, up on his toes, alert. Theophilus! Even his unusual name helped to single him out, unmistakable from all the others moving about the middle of the bank in the middle of the busiest business-and-banking portion of the busiest commercial metropolis in America. Only occasionally did he allow himself to dream—of far-off places he had never seen, such as San Francisco—his eyes growing distant, a slight smile on his lips. Then, Theophilus!

  When he was younger, Theophilus would run circles around the city with two of his bosom friends, pale wisps of human beings, splattered with dirt and mud, tattered coats fluttering in the wind, hungry and bored and happy as princes. They used to like this region of the city best because everyone around them was in a hurry. When men were in a hurry, they dropped small things without noticing, coins included.

  Even now that Theo was a respectable fourteen-year-old bank porter, when he walked along the streets his eyes would still duck and dash for lost coins or trinkets. Not that he could stoop and pick them up anymore; the risk would be too great that his employer would spot him, or a customer of the bank, and lower their opinion of his respectability, which was a thing still only a few months old, since the day he started his position.

  Back in the olden days, Theo and his friends also liked to find the bank and insurance porters and messengers a few years their senior, crossing the streets on errands, and tease and provoke them until the tormented fellows, endeavoring so hard to remain sober
and gentlemanlike, broke down and chased them. But Theo’s very favorite hobby, to tell the truth, had been quietly observing repairs. Something was always breaking on these busy, narrow streets—wheels came off coaches that were speeding heedlessly, horses had shoes that needed urgent fixing, people fell down from hurrying and required assistance to get on their way. There was no greater pleasure for a boy than watching something in the grand process of being fixed, be it human, animal, or thing, and hoping it would be a long entertainment. Theo had turned into one of those serious bank porters now, but he still gave in now and again to his curiosities to see the repairs around the city.

  Just yesterday, it was a fireplug near the bank that needed repairing. The young porter had sidled up behind the laborer to investigate the purpose for this latest repair. These apparatuses, positioned near the gutters at every few street corners, were often broken by the firemen themselves during their tests, or when being attached to their hoses. During the winter weather, too, the frost had the effect of cracking the plugs, and they would be filled with a salt mixture to prevent that.

  He was well acquainted with the master of fireplug repairs who was assigned to these streets, and because of this familiarity was usually offered a close view of the activity and sometimes the opportunity to touch the hydrant’s internal equipment, which was hidden to the rest of the world. When the person kneeling on the ground turned around Thursday morning, though, Theo had started, for two reasons. First, it was not his familiar acquaintance. Second, the face that met him wore a decidedly unpleased expression at the sight of him. Could a bank director be disguised as a fireplug laborer for the purposes of proving Theo’s interests were too juvenile for his place at the bank? Anything was possible, so he had turned to run, too quickly to notice that the usual hydrant tubes were being replaced by a series of alien nozzles and tubing that even a boy of fourteen would have known had no place inside a hydrant box.

  * * *

  TRUTH BE TOLD, Christine was not born an actress. She did not even think she was pretty. She was tall, her face was long, her nose little, her frizzy hair dull, and her arms and legs skinny. But she did not let this dampen her spirits. Other girls cultivated beauty. Christine was just happy to be onstage, playing opposite handsome actors. Take her current role. She was Miss Miggs in a production of Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge. She was better suited for it than any one of the prettier gals in the company. People complimented her on her wit, and if Charles Dickens himself were to walk by he would no doubt recognize his literary creation.

  In part, that was because she remained in her costume even now, a bright-pink gown meant to demand attention and look somewhat above a servant but below a mistress. It surely drew all eyes to her as she took the narrow stairs to the telegraph office on the second floor. “There!” She could almost apply one of her lines from the stage: “Now let’s see whether you won’t be glad to take some notice of me, mister!”

  * * *

  ALTHOUGH THE COMMERCIAL QUARTER housed some of Boston’s great relics of the past, here the people lived only in the present. Boston had been called an “old new city” by one of the well-known literary scribblers of Beacon Hill, and nowhere was it truer. The crisscrossing of streets, the vortex of business in the heart of Boston, was an almost impenetrable labyrinth of brick. It swallowed strangers whole, physically and spiritually, in the confusion of telegraph rooms, banks, notaries, insurance offices, tailors, and constantly newer, taller buildings, reaching six stories into the sky. Joseph Cheshire knew every street by name and sight, and he recited them to himself as he approached: Washington … State … Court.… Long forgotten were the days when a much younger man had gotten miserably lost in this area of the city.

  Clearing space in the busy stairwell with his walking stick in his usual fashion, Cheshire entered a large office building and carried himself up to the fourth floor, kicking the filthy slush from his boots along the way.

  By his calculations, the higher the floor for his bank, the safer his money. Not that he trusted any bank. He distributed his fortune in multiple institutions, like Hansel leaving his trail of stones after learning the bread crumbs would be eaten. He knew that his caution and precise methodology should have won him any number of friends if even the greatest men of Boston were not his inferiors in the area of pure pluck.

  He took off his damp beaver hat as he entered the bank but disdained the pegs on the wall, instead looking for—

  “You there!”

  “Yes, sir,” said the boy, running over.

  “Theo, isn’t it?” asked Cheshire.

  “Theophilus, but familiarly called Theo,” confirmed Theophilus, beaming with pride.

  “Well, just so. Don’t expect me to remember. Must I be expected to remember the name of every lowly porter and shop boy in the city? Hold my hat and stick, will you, while I speak to your google-eyed ugly clerk over there about my business.”

  “Yes, sir! Goin’ to be a foul day outside, sir. Read the news today, sir?”

  “About the compasses?”

  Theophilus bit his lip. His question had just been for the sake of conversation, since he hadn’t read the news, but he replied, “Compasses! Compasses, sir!”

  “Some mysterious mischief behind what happened at the harbor, the newspapermen now report. Tell you this: Shipping business has been at an awful standstill ever since.”

  Cheshire took a chair across from the old clerk and thrust onto the table a sheaf of documents regarding changes in his bank account. The clerk leaned forward, mopping his damp forehead with his handkerchief, and pushed up his small eyeglasses, which had slid down the bridge of his nose.

  “I have business and I expect my business to be conducted immediately, Mr. Goodnow. You can adjust your glasses another time.”

  Foul day outside, foul day inside Front Merchants’ Bank.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A LONG LINE of people at the telegraph office. How many of them wanted to wire about money, like Christine did?

  Twelve dollars a week from the theater and two dollars for the odd sewing job was hardly enough to pay for her boarding, plus sundry expenses, even with a roommate. Her parents, who lived in Vermont, did not have money to spare, yet they had told her to wire if she ever needed help. Instead, she set aside every free dollar she could for them, and wired instructions to retrieve it at their bank. Though this increased her financial woes, she refused to entertain gentlemen in private outside the theater, the way some of the other actresses did.

  The wait seemed endless. If only she weren’t in such a silly costume, she could have gone to a better telegraph office at one of the elegant hotels like the Parker House, where Charles Dickens himself had dined.

  Her feet were throbbing from the walking she’d done that morning, not to mention the hours onstage rehearsing last night, and she rested her weary body on the narrow windowsill. Across, she had a view inside the Front Merchants’ Bank. Her eyes skipped to the street below. It teemed with activity, and yet, from her high vantage, she could hear nothing. It seemed a tableau, as if the Bostonians below were in dress rehearsals until the curtain would rise on their drama.

  * * *

  THEOPHILUS HAD WALKING STICK and hat ready even before the stock commission agent finished with the old clerk.

  “Here you are, boy,” said Mr. Cheshire, retrieving his belongings, and fulfilling his prediction that he would no longer remember Theophilus’s name. He dropped a coin to the floor, then, after careful consideration, another.

  “Thank you, sir, Mr. Cheshire,” said the apprentice. He knew this man could be cross if business was not conducted in the proper way.

  The clerk at the desk sighed heavily as he began to organize the stack of documents Joseph Cheshire had generated in his wake. His audible consternation seemed to please Mr. Cheshire, all his desires evidently met by leaving some of his life’s sundry burdens behind for others.

  “Good day, Goodnow!” he called cheerfully. “Good day, boy!”


  Theophilus bowed as the stockbroker exited.

  Whenever he bowed to a customer, he felt again the long path he had trodden since the days of being a school truant.

  * * *

  CHRISTINE HAD FALLEN into a deep sleep on the windowsill, her head pressed flat against the cool glass, her bonnet pushed askew. The telegraph clerk, who on some other day would have chastised loitering, was too busy.

  Perhaps she dreamed. Or perhaps she was immersed in that species of daytime sleep that blocked mental visions and instead ushered in complete blankness.

  It is difficult to guess whether she consciously felt how unnaturally warm and rough the glass of the window became on her skin. Whether she heard the startled gasps throughout the telegraph office.

  * * *

  “THEOPHILUS! LADDIE!”

  In the Front Merchants’ Bank, someone was calling urgently for the apprentice, but this time he did not respond.

  He was mesmerized by the most ordinary of objects—the plate-glass window. He had never seen anything like it.

  The glass was changing color, first yellow, then dulling into a shade of brown, then a surprising, exuberant pink. Then, as if continuing its playful game, the glass began to change still further. It was moving, dancing, as if the particles inside it were trying to come out.

  It was melting. There was no unusual heat, no fire or flame in or outside the bank that could explain what was happening. The glass had simply come to a decision to melt, and the decision was unanimous, apparently, for every piece of glass up and down the street, in windows and spectacles and on clock faces, also started to melt.

  Behind him, somebody fainted. Theophilus, jaw hanging in amazement, stretched out his hand.

  * * *

  JOSEPH CHESHIRE, walking stick outstretched, at first ignored the shrieks behind him. The donkey masses, he thought to himself. They should scream, just looking at themselves and their dress and the ways they carried themselves, the ungloved–donkey–hoi polloi. But there were more screams, and people ahead of him pointing up. Some pigs barreled under people’s legs to get away, knocking two ladies to the ground.