The Technologists: A Novel

by Matthew Pearl

  “Take a deep breath now! All brag, right? Remember, they are adept at making people believe they know more than they do.”

  Marcus calmed down. Bob was right, of course. The man now returned to his work, muttering to himself.

  “So, then,” Bob said when Marcus had grown calmer, and they were on their way again. “So.”

  “What?” Marcus asked with pointed irritation.

  “That Irish serving girl at Rogers’s. You saw her at the harbor?”

  “Yes. After I visited Beal, I happened upon her.”

  “Is she your ‘lassie’ now?”

  “I would be lucky if I were to say yes. But no, she hardly knows me.”

  “She is a biddy. A housemaid!”

  “She does what she must, Bob, so she and her family can eat.”

  “Take no offense! But you remember that young lady, a Miss Lydia Campbell, I introduced you to in the Public Garden a few months ago. She is not only a stunner; she and her sisters hail from one of the great families. I know you want to make your way in Boston, and a wife is what defines a man in the city. I saw her again recently and was talking you up to the sky.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do that, Bob. Tell me, with all your generous advice, why don’t you court one of the fair Miss Campbells, then?”

  “I!” Bob asked, titling his head back thoughtfully. “I, you ask? You have ambition, Mansfield. Understand, I was born respectable, and must find my way from it somehow. That rare girl who can mesmerize me is out there.”

  “You have met her?”

  “No, but I shall find her if I must kiss every pair of female lips in the kingdom of Boston to do so.”

  When they reached the next street, Marcus turned in to an alley, where he removed a city directory from the pocket of his coat.

  “I’m sure as a gun no one is listening now. What were we looking for at the Old State House?” Bob asked.

  “Fourteen minutes past ten,” Marcus said. “The time on the clock above the building.”

  “And you didn’t plunge to your death to find it. What does it tell us, though?”

  “If my idea works, it tells us our first of many numbers. We have more places to go, Bob, and we’ll need your best foot forward. Come, look this over with me.”

  If they had known about another pair of eyes watching them, through the lens of a powerful spyglass, they would not have lingered even in the shadows of the alley.

  XXI

  Natural History

  HOW HE EVER FOUND HIMSELF floundering like this, he could not say. Seven years as a policeman in the first and finest department in the country, two years and counting in the role of a sergeant. He considered his varied experiences quite valuable. Yet nothing from his past seemed to apply to what he now saw before his eyes.

  The Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard had been transformed. It was another kind of museum now, a museum of unfathomable disasters, you might say. The disasters that had descended upon the people of Boston were in this building dissected into their parts by the natural scientist as though he had found an exotic crocodile or other beast. Each room had been turned to another small piece of the disaster—in three of the small chambers, innumerable shards of debris collected from the harbor had been methodically cleaned and given neatly written labels. Three other chambers were similarly dedicated to the souvenirs from the State Street catastrophe. To Sergeant Carlton’s eyes, the objects so petted and coddled—ranging from lost shoes to a giant barnacle-encrusted anchor—seemed rather arbitrarily organized, and each one seemed to be viewed by the scientist as equally as important as the next. The portly naturalist himself had over the last week and a half spent more and more time closed away in his private office, watched over only by a row of human skulls, where he pored over antique maps, to the point where he hardly emerged at all to give Carlton any new intelligence.

  A few days earlier, Carlton had called for him when something slithered across his boot. “Agassiz! Agassiz! Come quickly—there is a snake in here!”

  “Dear me!” Agassiz cried, hurrying over. “But where are the other five?”

  When he later pressed the naturalist for any answers to the problems they were studying, Agassiz deferred, explaining, “If I have more ability than some men, my dear sergeant, then my mistakes are more dangerous than theirs. I shall continue my investigation until I reach a degree of certainty.”

  Once he came out of his private study laughing with glee. The scientist always smelled of oil and fish. Carlton, hopeful for some real and heartening news, jumped up and asked him what happened.

  “Do you know, Sergeant, the story of Chamisso’s Chinaman?”

  Carlton did not.

  “He decides he is quite discontent with the braid hanging from the back of his head, so, trying to escape it, he turns left, then right, but finding it still behind him, he keeps on spinning, expecting it to get in front. Don’t you see?”

  “I still do not see the joke,” Carlton said.

  “It just occurred to me that the Chinaman is just like the Evolutionists, who say they can effect anything, if given enough time and repetition, and so continue to turn around in circles!”

  For the last two days, the scientist had ceased giving Carlton any information altogether, leaving the policeman to ramble through the museum and wonder in the company of a Dodo bird skeleton how this had become his lot. Finally, the sergeant sent for Chief Kurtz, whom he now greeted at the street door.

  Kurtz listened with a sympathetic ear. “But you see, Carlton, Agassiz keeps the legislature at bay, forces them to increase our funds, and to leave us alone!”

  “No matter how eminent the professor may be, Chief, I do not see how his methods alone can resolve the matters at hand.”

  “Pray they can, Carlton.”

  “Sergeant! Sergeant!”

  Agassiz’s assistant was scrambling toward where the police officers stood on the front steps.

  “Yes?” Kurtz answered for him.

  “Come inside, please, gentlemen. The professor should like to have an urgent word with you.”

  “About time,” Carlton said, nodding happily at Kurtz.

  The two policemen were brought to Agassiz’s office. The naturalist stood impatiently, as though he had been waiting for them all day. “Here you are, gentlemen!”

  “Professor,” said Kurtz, “the sergeant and I would most appreciate hearing where we stand.”

  “Have you made some progress, Professor?” asked Carlton.

  “Of course I have!” Agassiz huffed. “I know precisely who is responsible for the disasters.”

  “The dastard will hang higher than Haman for it!” Kurtz declared. “God save the mark! Who is it?”

  “Yes, who?” Carlton asked, his heart rising, and feeling for a moment he could embrace the science professor.

  “Man!”

  “Any particular one, Professor Agassiz?” Kurtz asked after a long pause.

  “What I mean is, mankind, Chief Kurtz,” Agassiz said. “Them—everyone—out there! I shall explain. Please, have a seat. I have been studying these ancient maps of the Massachusetts landmass.” The creased, yellowing maps in question were hanging from the top of a blackboard. “What I believe has happened is there has been a shift, a movement, in the plates and fissures of the land encompassing Boston. This would be due, in all likelihood, to the unprecedented alteration and perversion of our prominent land forms by industry and government alike to accommodate the ravenous and growing population. Over time, I suggest, this has resulted in a shift in the geological character of our region.”

  “How in the deuce does that explain what happened?” Kurtz demanded.

  “I approach the whole question, mind you, from a standpoint entirely different from any popular opinion, as I do every question where science comes into collision with popular belief. My supposition is that the magnetic qualities inherent in any landmass shifted, and at a crucial period of this shift, influenced the navigational instru
ments as observed in the harbor, and, in a similar fashion, an unknown combination of minerals and chemicals were forced to the surface somewhere in the vicinity of the business district, resulting in the strange and unforeseen effects on all glass substances within a temporary interval of time.”

  “Do you mean to say, Professor, that nobody is responsible for what occurred?” Carlton asked in disbelief. “How is it possible?”

  “What is impossible is for man to harness the forces of science to create such spectacle and destruction. That sort of plan is the exclusive domain of the Divine Mind, carried out according to the laws that regulate the geographical distribution of both men and animals on this planet. No, I do not mean to say nobody is responsible. I mean to say, Sergeant, that Boston itself is responsible, and I mean to prove it!”

  “You see,” Kurtz turned to Carlton and muttered, “science smiles upon us and prepares our resolution!”

  “Be skeptical for now, gentlemen. But remember every scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Second, they say it has been discovered before. Last, they say they always believed it.”

  XXII

  The Watchmakers’ Apprentices

  IF ONE SPOT ON THE MAP OF BOSTON, perhaps even on a globe of the world, had the highest proportion of men consulting their watches at any given moment, it might be Boston’s financial quarter. It was natural, therefore, that watchmakers sprang up in these fertile grounds.

  Marcus and Bob visited six different watchmakers within three streets of the site of the disaster over the next two days. They explained that they were learning the art of watch repair and wished to observe the sorts of problems exhibited in a sampling of watches. In this fashion, they convinced all but two watchmakers to show them their selections of watches awaiting repairs. One of the watchmakers nearly put them out on the street, until Bob spoke dreamily about the isochronal adjustment of the balance spring, inspiring the man to not only open his cabinet of watches, but to offer them a detailed demonstration of the balance spring operations. “I heard Eddy say something about that when he was fixing his watch in the study room once,” Bob later explained to Marcus.

  By the time they’d finished, they had collected the times frozen in melted glass on twenty-three watches and matched each one with the name of the owner cataloged by each of the watchmakers. Using the city directory, each name was then given an office address.

  “There you have it,” Bob said, holding out a list of times and locations. They had reunited with Edwin between classes in the Technologists’ basement laboratory. “Because of our friend’s clever brain, Eddy, we have the time minute by minute as the incident spread over State Street.”

  “Marcus, that is A-one work!” said Edwin.

  Bob added, “I had the same thrill that Galileo had when, making his first telescope, he looked at Venus and found she was a crescent like a new moon, which was what his studies had told him she ought to be.”

  “Of course,” Edwin mused, “people do not always wind their watches correctly, and there are always some so-called timepieces that never keep time properly, but I believe I have come up with the formula to leave room for errors so that we will be as close as possible.”

  “We need to mark these on a map,” Marcus said.

  “Our City Hall map is as recent a one as is made, but is already out of date in the details,” said Bob.

  “The mapmakers cannot keep pace with the changes in the city. Every time a new one is printed, ten new buildings have been constructed, a waterway has become a street, and a street a railroad.”

  “What about the Architecture Department?” Edwin proposed. “They have been building a perfect facsimile of the entire city all year, continually changing it as the city grows.”

  “Bravo, Eddy! But we are not allowed in,” Bob said. The Architecture Department, the first one in the country, though seen as another branch of industrial and practical education by Rogers, constituted its own island in the Boylston Street building. The professor at its head, Mr. Ware, had not started training his students until the previous year, meaning it had only underclassmen enrolled. In part because of its rarefied subject matter, in part because of its late start, the department and its students jealously guarded its equipment and rooms from the rest of the students.

  “I think there’s a way, Bob,” Marcus replied. “Gentlemen, meet me on the third floor in, say, fifteen.”

  When Bob and Edwin arrived at the architectural rooms at the time Marcus appointed, a fresh-faced younger student stood in the doorway.

  “Well, come on in,” he said, closing the door behind him. “This way, fellows, and walk fast.”

  Inside, Marcus was waiting for them. “French, how much time do we have?”

  “Twenty-five minutes, Mr. Mansfield,” answered the younger student. “The sophs are in freehand drawing and the freshes are sitting in geometry with Professor Runkle—who won’t miss me one bit, with my marks.”

  “We’ll see those rise, I vow to you. Thanks for the help, French. I’ll signal you when we’re finished.”

  “Who is the young cub?” asked Bob as they left French at a table by the entrance to the next room.

  “That’s Dan French—one of the freshmen I’m assigned to coach. Masterful draftsman, they say, but received a sixty-two in geometry and a sixteen in chemistry at midyear examinations.”

  “Will he keep quiet, Marcus?” Edwin whispered, after gasping in horror at French’s marks.

  “From what I know, he’s a discreet fellow.”

  They passed a series of drafting tables and entered a long, narrow room dominated by a table that stretched almost the room’s entire length. On it was displayed a scale model of metropolitan Boston that stopped them in their tracks.

  “Welcome to Lilliput, fellows,” Bob said. “I never gave those architecture scrubs enough credit.”

  “Remarkable,” Edwin said, marveling at the model.

  “French says they plan on presenting this to City Hall when it is finished as a symbol of the Institute’s gratitude to Boston for granting our plot of land,” Marcus explained.

  “A miniature Boston, from a bird’s-eye view,” Edwin said, kneeling down for a better look. “It is genius. Even has the cannonball lodged in the wall of Brattle Street Church.”

  The model included each street, sidewalk, pier, and building of the city proper, carved out of wood with mathematical exactness and painstaking detail as to its relative size and position. It rested on a platform that represented the elevations and foundations of the city. It was as though a machine had condensed Boston into the space of a room. Bob and Edwin located the various houses and churches they had known since childhood. Marcus found the miniature of the Institute itself and studied its design.

  He was most impressed by the sensation brought on by seeing Boston all at once. Living in the city, he found it impossible to ever capture it whole in his mind. Every direction gave to the eyes a new Boston. There were the shanties and tenements crowded with foreigners, the elegant groups of brick houses shielded by trees and sloping hills, the busy commercial districts immune to the concerns of any outsiders.

  “Nothing at all is missing, down to the very fences and sheds,” Edwin commented, still in awe.

  “French says they call it ‘Boston Junior.’ But there is something missing,” Marcus said.

  “What?” Edwin asked, inspecting the model for its error.

  “A hundred ninety thousand people. Remember, that’s why we’re doing all this.”

  “Of course,” agreed Edwin, chastened.

  “French said they built this to exact scale?” Bob asked.

  “Yes,” said Marcus. “Here is our list of timepieces as they were stopped, and the time of each.”

  “This could allow us to surmise the type of chemical compound released into the air, by creating a formula for its rate of distribution based on the model,” Edwin said.

  Edwin took measurements on
the model as Marcus read out the locations and times.

  “Are you finished in there?” Daniel French inquired with a knock at the door. “Five more minutes before they return.”

  Marcus called out their thanks.

  “I think we have what we need. Here are my preliminary calculations on the rate of distribution,” Edwin said, holding up a piece of paper.

  “Already!” Bob exclaimed. “That’s fantastic, Eddy.” Then, to himself, he said, “Hold on. Look at fireplugs.”

  “What, Bob?” Edwin asked.

  “Remember what that laddie Theo said, Mansfield, about the workman repairing the fireplugs on that street? Fireplugs get damaged from time to time, but the odds of multiple ones needing repair … it sounded odd to me at the time, but I didn’t think more about it. Look at the neat arrangement of the fireplugs squaring the area of the disaster. What if the fireplugs were used to release the chemicals that caused the glass to melt?”

  “We’ll go back right away—” Marcus began.

  “No point, the experimenter is too careful,” Bob said. “Any evidence of it would have been removed by now, but if we can include the position of these fireplugs”—he pointed to the tiny models of the water hydrants—“in our calculations, our precision may be greatly increased.”

  Edwin already began doing this. “We can put it all together downstairs by testing some combinations of chemicals to see how quickly they spread,” he said, as they quietly slipped out of the Architecture Department.

  Back in their basement laboratory, Edwin prepared the series of chemical tests while Bob helped Marcus in designing trial experiments for their underwater equipment. Many hours later, darkness had fallen outside and each of the three had taken a turn lying on the rough brick floor to rest.

  “Say, look at this,” Bob, perching himself on a stool, whispered to Marcus while Edwin had his nap.

  Marcus took the piece of notebook paper Bob was proffering. “What is it?”