Remembering that there were bills remaining from the money Jenny had given him, Will began pulling them out of his pocket. Jenny stopped him with a hand.
“No, keep it. If you’re going to pretend to be my husband you’re going to have to do all the paying. It won’t look right if I do it.”
Jenny stowed the two bags she’d brought with her—a little calfskin handgrip and a canvas laundry bag—under the front seat. Noticing Will’s puzzled glance at the laundry bag, she said: “There wasn’t time to make sandwiches. But I figured we’d get hungry, so I got a couple of the pies and some of the leftover turkey meat from the icebox.”
Will had already stowed his own bag the night before. He was bringing nothing but his tools. Everything else he could pick up in Detroit, but his tools—instruments of all sizes, from wrenches and come-alongs to delicate watchmaker and jeweler’s sets—were like extensions of his hands, and he could not imagine being without them.
Jenny began doing up the buttons on her light canvas duster. “I talked with Dad last night. I told him one of my friends from back East was stuck at Miss Murison’s over the holiday, and I was going to go back to keep her company. I told him you’d offered to hitch up the buggy and take me over to the station to catch the early train. He won’t miss me until he’s back in San Francisco on Monday. With any luck, we’ll be in Detroit before anyone thinks to look for us.” She climbed into the car, tucking her skirts tight around her legs and fussing with her hat. It was an enormous hat, swathed all around with heavy gauze, just as Lillie’s had been. It must have made the trip from San Francisco in the Pierce Arrow’s trunk, for there certainly hadn’t been room for it in the back seat. “How about you? After that show last night, won’t your folks suspect the worst when you go missing?”
“Oh, I always run off to Pask’s house when I’m mad,” Will swung the steering tiller up and climbed into the driver’s seat. “He promised to cover for me. If my parents call over, he’s going to tell them that I’ve barricaded myself in their barn and nothing short of an act of Congress will get me out.”
Jenny lifted an amused eyebrow. “Well, I certainly hope you didn’t tell him to say exactly that,” she said. “After all, I’m sure your brother Argus is just itching to draft some maiden legislation.”
Will smirked as he lowered the tiller over his lap and reached down to press the ignition switch. The car made no sound as it started, but the needles on the two half-moon dash gauges—one for volts, one for amperes—jittered and rose. He moved the controller—a knife switch by his left leg—into the car’s first forward speed, and the Baker slid noiselessly into motion.
The service road was rough and badly rutted, and Will had chosen it only because it would take them to the main road without passing the house. A crisp breeze rattled the branches of the oaks, sending a flurry of bright yellow leaves swirling before them. Will expected that Jenny would pull her heavy motoring veil down over her face, but instead she just closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The chilly air made her cheeks flush pink.
“I always love starting a trip,” she sighed. “It’s like ... oh, I don’t know, sharpening a pencil for the first time. It’s very satisfying. I’m so glad you’re coming with me. I knew you would.”
“What made you so sure?” said Will. “You couldn’t have known how much I wanted to get away.”
“Actually, I did,” Jenny admitted. “Your mother wrote my dad about the fight you had with your father, and I happened to catch a glimpse of the letter. So I figured you might be amenable.” She paused. “And if you hadn’t the guts, well, at most I would have wasted a little time. Maybe I would have asked one of your brothers instead.”
The very idea made Will bark a laugh. “Like who? Laddie? San Francisco’s most eligible bachelor? As you’ve pointed out, he and Lillie are like the stones of the pyramids.”
“Why didn’t she marry him?” Jenny wondered. “I can’t even imagine marrying a man like your brother Argus. He takes up every particle of air in any room he’s in.”
“Laddie has no ambition,” said Will. “Argus has enough for both of them. You’re a girl, you tell me. I guess girls marry ambition.”
“Girls like Lillie do,” Jenny said. “Girls who have none of their own, that is.”
“You don’t think she has ambition?” Will said. “Seems to me she’s got plenty and then some.”
“Yes, but she only cares about being the social queen of San Francisco,” Jenny sniffed. “That’s not the kind of ambition I’m talking about.”
“What other kind of ambition can a girl have?”
“Oh, forget it,” Jenny snapped. “Let’s stop talking about them. I had quite enough of those three on the way down from San Francisco. Now, as far as which other Edwards brother I would marry, if you were unavailable ... I was thinking more of your brother Ben.”
“You’ve never even met him!”
“I’ve seen your Ma’am’s pictures of him. He’s not bad looking.”
“A fine thing for my future wife to say,” Will grumbled. “Besides, when it comes to being unavailable, Ben’s got all of us beat.” Thinking of Ben reminded Will of the letter in his coat pocket, and its simple, mysterious reference to The Warlock’s Curse. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder if he really exists at all.”
“What does he do out there in New York? He has a job at the Stanton Institute, doesn’t he?” Jenny asked. “Does he actually work for the Dreadnought Stanton, help him retrieve artifacts and quiet restless mummies and all that, just like it says in the books?”
“I don’t know,” said Will. “From what I’ve heard, his position is more ... administrative. I heard Laddie once call him a functionary. Argus says he’s wasting his life in service to an outdated ideal.”
“And your mother and father? What do they say?”
“They don’t say anything.”
Jenny knit her brow. “Dad says your family’s strange,” she said, but did not elaborate. She reached up and braced herself as they rounded a sharp curve, where the service road angled to skirt the farm’s southernmost pasture. In the east, the rising sun was casting its first bright rays over the tops of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and in the chilly pinkish light Will could see the sorrel mare—Nate’s despair—standing by the split-rail fence, happily munching on clover.
Will smiled with secret satisfaction. The last thing he’d done before he’d met Jenny that morning had been to throw open the mare’s stall and shoo her out of it. She’d found her way to where she wanted to be. Good for her.
Even a dumb animal deserves a choice.
Will and Jenny did not speak much after they turned onto the main route south to Stockton. The morning was clear and fine, and the sky was painted with colors bright as the label on a produce box.
The silence went beyond their lack of conversation. Except for the creak of the Baker’s leaf-springs and chassis, and the crunch of its rubber tires on the small gravel of the dirt road, the machine was perfectly silent. The Otherwhere Flume Will had installed emitted only a faint hiss, like the sound of a mighty waterfall heard from very, very far away.
“We’re not going to have to stop and charge up the battery, are we?” Jenny asked. “Can we make it all the way to Stockton?”
“We sure can,” said Will. “It’s not an electric. Or rather, it is an electric motor, but it doesn’t use a conventional electric battery. This car is powered by an Otherwhere Flume.” When she gave him a blank look, Will added, “It’s my own design. I based it on a classical Otherwhere Conductor, but I made several improvements.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the first thing about Otherwhere power,” Jenny said. “I did read an article once about how it’s going to revolutionize civilization, or end tyranny, or increase global grain yields—something like that.” She paused, knitting her brow thoughtfully. “Or maybe that was an article about steam tractors. I can’t quite remember.”
“I don’t know about ending tyranny or increasing grain
yields,” Will said. “But I do believe Otherwhere power will revolutionize civilization. And I know Mr. Tesla thinks so too.”
Jenny nodded. “So how does it work?” She lowered her voice and leaned slightly toward him. “An Otherwhere isn’t ... magic?” The last word was spoken with a distinctly apprehensive edge. But then, remembering who she was speaking to, she hastily added, “That’s not to say anything against your Ma’am, of course ... you know I haven’t a thing against Old Users ... it’s just some do, and ... oh, I’m sorry.”
After stammering all this out, she sank back into the seat, red-faced and embarrassed, and pressed her lips tightly together.
Will said nothing. He’d had this exact same awkward interaction dozens of times, always with others close to his own age. They would seem to take the fact that his mother was a witch in stride—until, in some unguarded moment, their true feelings would slip out. Their distaste, their resentment—their fear. This was always followed by a clumsy apology. It was like clockwork.
But he hadn’t expected it of Jenny.
Of course, he couldn’t really blame her. They were both members of what the newspapers had dubbed the “Malmantic Generation”—the first generation to live under the shadow of the Black Flu.
The first case of the gruesome malady—typified by greasy tar-colored eruptions and blazing fever—was reported in 1878. By 1880, the epidemic had engulfed the globe. The wildfire quickness with which the disease emerged and spread was horrifying. But stranger, and even more terrible, was the fact that it only affected children. Infant children. Not every child caught it, but few families were spared the heartbreak of at least one case. Will’s own sister, Catherine—born a few years before him—had lived only a few days before succumbing. And while Jenny’s older sister, Claire, had survived the illness, it had left her a lifelong invalid.
Over the next ten years, hundreds of thousands died and the lives of millions more were ruined. The turning point came when scientists at a company called Sanitas Pharmaceutics made a key discovery—the Black Flu was not a strain of influenza. It was not any kind of virus or bacterium at all. Rather, it was an allergic reaction, triggered by the passage of magical energy through the channels of the body. And while some degree of allergic sensitivity was found in all children born after 1878—the scientists could not find a single individual born earlier who showed signs of it.
The scientists could not explain this strange sharp demarcation. They could only give it a name and a date: The Great Change of 1878.
Learning the true nature of the malady had made it possible to develop a medication to combat it. Stopping the allergic reaction merely required blocking the channels through which magical energy flowed in the body. Creating a chemical compound that produced this effect was not difficult. It was called the Panchrest, and it successfully brought the Black Flu to heel. In less than two years, the worst was over.
But the Black Flu had shredded the civic fabric, and that was not so easily mended. Before the Great Change, magic had been woven into society at every level. It was called upon for small daily conveniences and grand splendid achievements alike. Magic, it was often said, had built America. And in the decades preceding the Great Change, the uses of magic had become ever more industrial and expansive—so vast that no one could have imagined any limit to them.
But then the Malmantic Generation had come along. They could not use magic as their parents and grandparents had. Those who even attempted it would suffer bouts of violent illness, the result of their inborn allergic sensitivity. And the more magic they used, the sicker they would become.
People born before 1878—like Ma’am—came to be called “Old Users.” They suffered no ill-effects from channeling magic. There was nothing stopping them from using it as they always had—and so they did. Why shouldn’t they? They had grown up in a world steeped in it. They were used to its conveniences, and they were unable to comprehend the fear and resentment they engendered in the distinctly different species of human that was destined to replace them.
But now the century had turned. The Malmantic Generation—the first generation of the twentieth century—was coming into its own. The youngest members were already well into their thirties. What form would those fears and resentments take, Will wondered. Would the day come when his Ma’am would be truly hated for what she was, even by her beloved goddaughter?
Jenny broke what had become a long silence. “You sore at me?”
Will had slowed the Baker to a crawl. They had come to a place where irrigation runoff from the hill above had made the road soggy.
“You asked if Otherwheres are magic,” Will finally said, as he looked down along the running board to gauge the softness of the mud as he brought the Baker across it. “Otherwheres are just different dimensions of our own reality. Back in the day when witches and warlocks were more common than they are now, Otherwheres were mostly accessed using magic. But now we access them using science. So ... nothing to worry about. All right?”
“All right,” said Jenny, relaxing visibly. “But I still don’t quite get what an Otherwhere is, exactly.”
“It’s a different plane of reality, a different ... shade.” Will struggled for the right words. “Scientists believe there must be an infinite number of them. Some Otherwheres are very much like the world we know. Some are very hostile places, where human beings can’t even exist because the laws of physics are so different. Exploring Otherwheres has always been dangerous for just that reason. You don’t know where you’re going to end up, or if you’ll be able to get back.”
Jenny tapped a fingernail against her chin. “I wonder if anyone’s ever tried using Monsieur Poincaire’s hyperbolic geometry to mathematically map this infinity of universes,” she mused. “It seems perfectly suited to the job. And it might be kind of fun.”
Will emitted a low whistle, looking at her sidelong. “Fun?” He pulled down the bill of his tweed touring cap against the glare of her blinding intellect. “I’m beginning to think that math professor of yours was staring into your eyes out of pure confusion.”
Jenny snorted derisively. “It’s all just numbers, William.”
“Well, let’s get back to my Otherwhere Flume, which is what you asked me about. It all starts with finding an Otherwhere compatible with our own universe’s physical laws. Maybe Poincairian hyperbolic geometry could be applied to finding one, but that’s neither here nor there. Because over two hundred have already been found, as the result of decades of risky exploration. They’re called the Golden Dimensions. They’re uninhabited and mostly physically identical to our own universe.”
“Wait, there are some that are inhabited?” Jenny’s eyes became big as plates. “By who?”
“I’m an engineer, not an anthropologist,” Will shrugged. “Anyway, over the years, bright industrialists have built power plants in these Otherwheres. Coal plants, steam—whatever unique generating resource is available. There’s one Otherwhere that’s filled with enormous waterfalls; they’ve put in hydroelectric turbines just like they have at Niagara Falls.”
Jenny was rapt.
“Anyway, all that power is transmitted from the Otherwhere into our world. That’s what an Otherwhere Conductor is. It’s the power of a whole coal plant, or hydroelectric plant, or steam plant, whooshing through an infinitesimal transdimensional portal into our own reality, where we can put it to whatever use we like.” He paused. “Hey, could you dig out some of that food? I’m starving.”
Jenny reached under the seat for the bag she’d packed, and from it, withdrew a whole apple pie. It was clearly a condemnation of the quality of pie to be found in San Francisco that Jenny expected to be able to break his Ma’am’s pie into neat wedges. But the flaky pastry crumbled in her hand, and she frowned at the pie filling on her dainty brown leather gloves.
“Great,” she muttered. “Now my gloves will smell like pie. Here.”
Resting one hand on the tiller, Will took the ragged hunk of pie in his other an
d quickly devoured it, licking the sweet sourness of apple and cinnamon from his fingers then wiping his hand clean on his trousers. Jenny eyed him with mild disdain as she used a corner of the laundry bag for a similar purpose.
“No wonder you want to go to Tesla Industries!” Jenny said as she tucked the bag away. “But what I don’t understand is why everything isn’t powered by Otherwhere Flumes, or Conductors, or whatever? This car runs beautifully! It’s quiet, and not at all dirty or smelly. And as long as there’s power coming from the Otherwhere, there’s nothing to stop us, isn’t that right?”
“Not a thing,” said Will, knowing that it wasn’t entirely the truth. But he liked the glow of Jenny’s admiration, and thus he had no immediate interest in explaining Old Randall Rudge.
Of course, Old Randall Rudge had to be explained eventually, but Will preferred to wait for that discussion until it became necessary.
They were passing through acres of almond orchards, the trees stretching out in neat rows as far as the eye could see, when the Baker began to slow. Glancing at the dash, Will watched the ampere gauge plummet to below five, and knew that it was futile to continue; he steered the auto off to the side of the road and brought it to a stop beneath a brilliantly colored billboard advertising the premiere of Edison Studios’ moving-picture version of The Warlock’s Curse. The enormous advertisement was dominated by the sharply handsome features of the idealized Sophos of the Stanton Institute. The famous warlock’s eyes were rendered particularly prominently; large and green-glowing, rimmed with blackest movie-idol kohl.
Given that they were driving along the well-traveled main road between Sacramento and Stockton, they had already seen several such billboards—and each time, Will had wondered about the letter from Ben.
“What’s wrong?” said Jenny. “Why have we stopped?”
Will took his hands off the tiller and leaned back in his seat. Pushing his motoring cap back on his head, he looked at his wristwatch.
The Warlock's Curse Page 8