The Technologists: A Novel

by Matthew Pearl

  The magnate rests a hand on one of the two brass cannons displayed there, under which is the inscription SACRED TO LIBERTY. “I know what you did with Captain Denzler at Smith Prison.”

  “How …?”

  “I will explain another time. You needn’t be afraid, Brewer, I promise! You had no choice, and it is not in my interest to tell anyone what you were made to do. Why, if Junior had been in your place, well, I cannot conceive his fate. Let us apply the skills you received from that scoundrel Denzler to better use. Let us give Boston a small scare or two, and in doing so shake the stubborn will of Tech to my purposes. What say you, my boy?”

  “Yes,” answers Frank, faster than he ever would have imagined.

  LVII

  White Whale

  “IT’S SO COLD.” Bob’s head twisted into his shoulder. “Nellie, Nellie! Nellie, it’s cold. Where are you? I can’t see you!”

  “Stay calm—don’t try to walk!” Ellen cried, putting her arms around him to prevent him from falling. “The ergot produces convulsions in the joints. Can you hear me? Lie down on the grass. As long as you understand what is happening, you need not be frightened by it. Your vision may be affected, and you might see things—shadows and shapes—that aren’t there. Listen to me! You will feel tingling in your hands and feet, and you will feel hungry, but you mustn’t try to move or eat until your body is cleansed of the effects. Robert, can you hear me? Robert Richards?”

  “Thank heavens it’s you,” he groaned.

  “What?”

  “If I am to die—”

  “You’re not going to die!”

  “Thank heavens it’s you. You can save me.”

  As she loosened his neckcloth, she said lightly, in an attempt to calm him, “I am only a mere woman of the weaker sex, remember.”

  “I love you,” he mumbled, his lips curling into a strange smile. “Not only a woman, the best woman. I love Ellen Swallow.”

  “Really! Robert, must a man wait until he is delirious to declare such a thing?”

  “I love your hands. The tips of your fingers. They are such a delicate shade of—purple, is it?”

  “Yes, I was working with iodide of potassium and chlorine gas earlier.”

  “Ellen Swallow Richards.”

  “Excuse me!” she gasped at the presumption.

  A young woman in a frilly dress fell only feet from them, while others ran in all directions, attempting to escape the wrath of an assailant already inside their skin.

  Pulling Bob out of the way of being trampled, Ellen rushed into the crowd, waving her arms. “Throw down your beer! Your food! If you feel sick, lie down on the grass and don’t move!”

  “Why should we listen to you, woman?” groused a doctor who was tending to the mysteriously ill.

  “My name is Ellen Henrietta Swallow. I am a student at the Institute of Technology, and if you listen to me, you’ll save lives.”

  As she shouted this back at the chastened man, a black column of smoke shot into the sky in the distance.

  * * *

  GEORGE PROPOSED using a wire rope on a pulley from a steam engine to transmit the power they needed to drill the holes. He explained that they had used a similar scheme before to bring power from the machine shop to some of the outer buildings where the materials were too combustible to maintain engines nearby. He knew of a mill not half a mile from the bridge with an engine that could be easily accessed.

  Marcus detached a great black-and-white mare from Chauncy Hammond’s team. He ran his hand across her eyes and over her wide nose to familiarize her senses with him. The rest of his cohorts were finishing loading the wire rope and pulley, and pushing Mr. Hammond inside his carriage with them.

  Hammie helped steady the lone horse for Marcus to mount it.

  “I should be at your side, Mansfield. It was my father who started this all in motion.”

  He shook his head. “Get them safely to the bridge with the materials, and have one of the men bring your father to the police station to tell them exactly how all of this was started. Whatever happens, if I succeed, or if I fail to stop Frank today, the world must learn the Institute was not to blame. It’s vitally important, Hammie.”

  Hammie considered this momentarily before resigning himself to climb into the carriage with the others.

  Marcus called out: “Hammie! I always swear by Tech and always mean to.”

  He smiled back at Marcus with his wide, off-center grin. “I always swear by Tech and always mean to! No daredevilry now, Mansfield,” he added.

  Marcus prodded the horse onto the street and kept his heels in position for maximum speed.

  As he traveled over its gravel streets, Back Bay seemed more a deserted island than ever. When he reached the massive Institute building, he dismounted at the central streetlight in front. Unlatching the box at the bottom of the lamppost, which ran into the ground, he caught his breath as he saw the vast array of coils and devices that had been inserted among the electrical cables and the wheel. He put his rifle down on the ground. Here was confirmation of Frank’s plan—but how to stop it?

  He stared at the configuration, feeling the time slip away as he studied it, and then set doggedly to work. After fifteen minutes of sustained effort, his hands buried within the tightly packed wiring, he cursed as he shredded the skin on his knuckle on a sharp edge, and sat back, hand to his mouth, to stanch the flow of blood. His fingers were throbbing, aching, and swelling red to the point where his right hand would be useless in a matter of minutes. He tried to form a fist and flinched at the agony in his joints, falling to his knees and crying aloud in pain.

  “Well, I see you’ve discovered my circuit. What a place to build a college! You have to be very careful with circuit closers here, with the tide in these marshlands.”

  Marcus turned and saw Frank approaching. With his hands hooked over his pockets as though he were a gentleman of leisure on an afternoon stroll: his uniform on, posture tall and proud, he looked nothing like the tired machine man he had been.

  “Here, let me help you up,” Frank offered. “You must be careful with that hand.”

  “Don’t touch me,” Marcus snapped.

  Frank looked to be deeply injured. “Marcus? Why, I thought you’d be grateful.”

  Marcus shook his head in confusion and disgust. “What have you done, Frank?”

  “Oh, how I wanted so much to tell you all about it when you came with your class to the machine shop! I actually believed you’d understand it, and appreciate it, more than anybody in the land! Then, when you asked me to bring those iron samples to the beer hall, I realized what you were doing, already trying to stop me. I knew then I would have to prove to you I was up to snuff before I told you the truth.”

  “The truth?” Marcus said, so astounded he almost broke into laughter. “What do you mean?”

  “That I was saving your college.”

  “What?”

  “Hammond wanted to damage it, possibly even see it disappear for his own purposes. But I realized right off I could do something about it, that I did not have to merely vanish into the dark corner of a machine shop any longer. I would show Boston that they needed the Institute—that their money and family names were no longer a shield—not from the weapons you and I possess. Not from the highest intelligence: not from technology. Starting today, the city will finally reach the point where they realize they will have to beg the Institute for help, they will have to crown it, guard it, celebrate it, as they have done for Harvard for hundreds of foolish years!”

  Marcus was flabbergasted. “Why?”

  Now Frank laughed as though Marcus was joking. “Why? Didn’t I tell you? When you came with your class to the shop, I told you I was ready for something better. Because it was finally my chance, my chance to leave the machines and do something by joining the Institute—and I wasn’t about to let Hammond take that away!”

  “You could have refused him then!”

  “He would simply have found someone e
lse to do his bidding! The Institute was finally giving men like you and me a chance, but the college was always being kicked around by someone. How long before the distrust and stupidity of the legislature or the public brought down the Institute? No, this was bigger than Hammond—by proving to Boston that they had nowhere else to turn, I’ve given the Institute the freedom to be more powerful than any institution ever before!”

  Marcus squinted at him as if he were a mile away and he was trying to identify him as friend or enemy. “What do you think is going to happen now, Frank? Look me in the eye and tell me!”

  “Boston is slow to change, slow to act. I need not tell you! The people of Boston turned their back on us when we were imprisoned at Smith.”

  “They did nothing like that.”

  “Oh, but they did! My family, my regiment, my government, they all knew where I was, only a poor lad, and nobody did the least thing about it. Rich boys like Hammie paid for substitutes like me to go and be killed or captured instead of them. As long as they felt safe, we were forgotten, as good as dead. Boston cannot pretend to be safe now, Marcus. Today we prove to them they cannot protect themselves, and then the Institute will be uplifted! Why, I know for a fact the police are already coming to the conclusion that the city must bow to the college, and after the damage today they will bow at your feet for you to stop what’s next—which we will make certain you do. You will be graduated, I will begin as a freshman, and we will be respected. This will be my examination for admission! Come, give me your hand, old friend. We will finish this together.”

  Marcus examined the outstretched hand for a moment, then looked back at Frank’s face, a face that had brought him so much comfort over the years. His teeth were showing in an excited grin and he was nodding. Marcus took a step back.

  “You didn’t leave the prison camp as a shoemaker, did you?” he asked.

  “Indeed I did,” Frank corrected him calmly. “And Captain Denzler was in a fury about my release. That monster found some value in me. He came to me at the shoemaker’s and said I must assist him as an engineer or be executed right there, and be responsible for others to be executed, too. For you and the other men in Smith to be executed. I did it, Marcus. I used my abilities to make better bullets for the Rebels. To explode mines and collapse bridges underneath our soldiers’ feet.”

  “You betrayed your army.”

  “Betrayal, did you say? Look at the fate they left me to, Marcus! Then to offer to exchange us like we were worthless cows at the market. Do you know how many ‘simple soldiers’ like you and me they counted as worth one officer? Ten … twenty, sometimes even more.

  “Chauncy Hammond had heard what I had done in the war from a man he had hired to design an engine part, an engineer from the South who recognized me from when he had visited Denzler’s office during the war. Hammond chose me, recruited me, just as Denzler did, this time to craft demonstrations to shape the public mind against technology and force Tech into selling their inventions. But I did what Hammond couldn’t dare imagine. I finally taught Boston the superiority of technology over all else! I’ve done that myself, my friend, not anyone at your Institute, not any of your brilliant companions from your classes! Those who can’t recognize and reward our special knowledge and accept our power over them, I say damn them all. Damn Hammond, too. He was too weak-kneed to understand the scope of his own mission and that’s why I had to turn the tables on him. And damn Hammie more than all of ’em.”

  “Shame on you, Frank.”

  Frank fidgeted, his hand slipping back into his pocket. “He never deserved to be the heir to a man of innovation—that is why his father chose me to wear the uniform in his place!”

  “You even let Hammond’s locomotive works be damaged, and knew where to be to avoid serious injury from the boiler explosions. You murdered Joseph Cheshire. You’ve hurt innocent people. You’ve hurt Runkle, and …” Marcus paused, his back teeth clenched on his next phrase.

  Frank bowed his head. “You know she was an accidental casualty. I wept for her. And for you. That scoundrel Cheshire, well, he nearly nabbed me removing evidence from the yacht Boss Hammond gave me use of, and when I realized he had also found you, he had to be finished. Then I couldn’t risk the superintendent at the private laboratory becoming suspicious after your friend Bob showed up. Runkle was getting too close, as well. I had agreed to come to the Institute for Inspection Day; I heard when Hammie told you what Runkle said to him.”

  “You might have killed me with that explosion, instead of injuring Runkle.”

  “I didn’t know you’d go to Runkle’s office, Marcus!”

  Marcus shuddered with a new thought. “And you lifted him from my arms—you would have finished him in cold blood. Was that your plan?”

  Frank shrugged. “If that Negro janitor had not scooped him up, I would have had my chance. But you’d admit the blast safely removed Runkle from being any trouble, anyway.”

  “Bob and Ellen. Where are they? If you’ve harmed them—”

  “I don’t know where your new friends are! I suppose they might have been at the Decoration Day festivals, with the rest of Boston, poisoned into a daze as they gorged themselves on the memory of real soldiers. Always trying to control his friends, trying to protect them—that’s Marcus Mansfield. Marcus Mansfield, who thinks he is the chief of police for the world, the arm and hand of God. Well, if you can’t see this is the right way, then damn you for it, too!”

  “Frank, this isn’t you! Hammond tried to use the Institute and he used you, to make up for his own greed and his mistakes during the war.”

  “No. Hammond pointed the way, gave me a sip of true power. I found I liked the taste of it very much, Marcus, and I drank deeply.”

  “You could have left me when your laboratory building collapsed. You should have let me be crushed.”

  “You still don’t understand! I have looked forward to this moment, Marcus, more than anything. For you to come to finally understand that running away to Tech did not make you the better man, did not make you my superior, that I am just as good as you. That I could be the one to make the world finally give the Institute its due!”

  “I never said I was superior!”

  “You asked me to serve you, to bring you iron bars, but you didn’t ask for the help of my mind!”

  “That’s not it, Frank—” Marcus protested.

  Frank did not let him finish. “Four years ago, you left me behind quickly enough! You thought going to Tech made you special—improved—that you’d left your previous life behind. Left behind the machine shop, the twelve-hour days, Smith Prison, me. You heard what your friend Albert said, that Tech no longer could help charity scholars—you got lucky, as usual, to join while you could, and I would still have been trapped on the machines. Now you see the truth. You cannot escape the station you are born to, but we can prove to the world how we are better and stronger than any Boston gentlemen. It’s too late, far too late to stop this. This had to come to pass, whether by me or someone else. This is the future. You do understand that now?” Frank held out a pocket watch where Marcus could see it. “The circuit will be completed by the train just two minutes from now. I saved your life at Smith, Marcus, but it was still you people respected, you who they thought had brass. I’ll save you again. Come with me, we’ll be safe inside the Institute. I would not stand outside when that train completes the circuit, it will be Judgment Day in Boston.”

  Marcus looked behind him at the Institute. The building was a battered shade of its magnificent former self, a relic of empty classrooms behind shattered windows. Frank’s vision of bringing it to life again by tearing apart Boston chilled him to the bone because Marcus knew it could work. There could reach a moment where Boston had no other choice but to turn to the Institute for protection.

  “This is over. Your circuit will not work, Frank. You’ll have to answer for what you’ve done, even if I have to drag you all the way to the police station. Hammond is there telling them every
thing.”

  “Come now!” Frank laughed joyously, throwing his head back. He had never looked so pleased, so strong and so free in his body. “You shouldn’t have tried so hard, not with that weak hand of yours. Did you know how much worse it was getting, and that you wouldn’t have a choice but to leave the machine shop sooner or later? You weren’t the brave one I believed for going to Tech—you just couldn’t admit even a little weakness, even admit it to yourself. Tell me. What would you have done with your diploma, once your hand was fully lame? Even an engineer needs both hands, I’d venture. Well, do not blame yourself. Nobody could cut the circuit the way I’ve managed to arrange it—not in twenty minutes, not in ten hours. Nobody. That includes you.”

  “You’re wrong, Frank. A Tech man could and has. I’ve done it already. Hammie and my friends are going to stop the train once it gets to the first bridge. I’ve stopped your circuit. There was one thing you failed to realize in all this, Frank. One better way to bring the Institute into a new light than all the horrors you concocted.”

  “What is that, exactly?” Frank asked.

  “To show the world that a group of Tech students could stop your destruction.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Frank said, his eyes narrowing. “You were always willing to die for a cause.”

  “Believe what you want. Don’t touch that box, Frank. I warn you. Stop right now!”

  Frank took his place at the circuit box.

  Marcus launched himself at his former comrade.

  To Frank’s own apparent surprise, he was able to fend Marcus off with one hard push, which dropped him to the ground. As though finally overcome with exhaustion years in the making, Marcus got back on his feet slowly, brushing the dust off his tattered, bloody uniform.

  “You took it all upon your shoulders. To save a city that cares nothing for you. Look at you. You haven’t slept, you’ve barely eaten. Now you’re too weak to do anything, Marcus.” Frank examined the contents of the circuit box for a few moments and then laughed. “Why, I knew it. So much for the genius of a Tech boy. You weren’t able to cut the circuit!”