by Ron Miller
“You don’t believe for an instant that this egomaniacal salad chef knows what he’s doing, do you?”
“Salad chef?” shrills the first scientist.
“That’s all that disgusting fluid is good for!”
“And what do you plan to do with that? Weave yourself some new underwear? Musrum knows you need it.”
“This? This? This is the explosive you are describing! Not that feeble stoat drool you have there.”
“That fluff? I know all about that. I’m surprised you haven’t blown us all to atoms. That miserable stuff’d go off if you breathed on it too hard . . . or in the case of your breath, breathed on it at all!”
“At least my explosive will explode, that impotent muck you have there wouldn’t clear the snot out of your nose . . . though I’m willing to admit that might even be a difficult job for a real explosive . . . like mine!” he hisses, pushing his wad of cotton under the other’s nose, as though anxious to prove his point, one way or the other.
“The few drops in this vial could turn this entire laboratory into a finely divided aerosol!” snarls the other, waggling the little bottle in his rival’s face. Bronwyn thinks they are handling their inventions a little too cavalierly if they really believe what they are saying.
“A mere firecracker! With just this handful I could reduce this whole building to individual pieces no larger than a playing card! And produce a crater no less than fourteen feet deep in the process!”
“Liar! “
“Braggart!”
“Sciolist!”
“Mumpsimus!”
“Shall we move on?” suggests the professor quietly.
“Please!” says the princess, and they are able to walk away from the feuding chemists without their exit being noticed
A corridor separates the chemical laboratory from a room of equal size on the other half of the floor. This is filled with machinery for the most part, as opposed to the ubiquitous glassware of the laboratory they had just left. Where the one had been bright and transparent, this is dark and sinister. Black cables, thick and thin, draped in catenary festoons from the rafters, gives the room a vaguely tropical look, as though they are lianas or sleepy boa constrictors. Bronwyn thinks the hulking, squatting devices cluttering the space below are so indescribable that they may as well have been primitive totems or idols.
The atmosphere is not only filled with crackling sounds and the same acrid odor that follows a thunderstorm, but seems itself to be charged with electricity. Bronwyn feels the fine hairs on the back of her neck and arms prickling uncannily. When she brushes back her hair with her hand, it crackles and pops like crumpled cellophane.
“This is the electrical laboratory,” explains Professor Wittenoom, perhaps unnecessarily. “This isn’t my field, so I’ll have to find someone to explain things for us. Ah! Never mind, here comes Doctor Tudela now.”
A tall figure had appears from between a pair of large machines, a figure as tall as Professor Wittenoom, but somewhat more substantial. He resembles the baron to the degree that he, too, could have passed for a stage magician, sharing the same gaunt, melodramatic features. Tudela, however, has none of the baron’s mischievous twinkle, substituting a dark, aloof seriousness that is almost somber. He has thick black hair combed straight back from his high, broad forehead, with dramatic wings of grey over each ear. Black arched brows shadow opaline eyes that flare like gas jets. A nose like an engineer’s triangle, a moustache drawn with a ruling pen and an imperial as sharply pointed and precise as the indicator on a galvanometer complete a list of features that are as rigid and uniform as though they had been ordered from a catalog. He wears an immaculately white laboratory smock, a high collar and black cravat.
“Well, Professor Wittenoom!” he says in a tone that at first seems so friendly that it surprises the princess. But then she sees that it is unmatched by the cold light in his eyes. “You haven’t graced my laboratory with a visit in weeks. It’s pleasant to see you!”
“Yes, good morning, Tudela,” replies the professor in an oddly reserved voice. “I’ve brought you some visitors.”
“Well done!”
“May I present the Princess Bronwyn, her, ah, man Mr.Mollockle, and the Baron Sluys Milnikov?”
“Princess,” says the doctor, bowing formally and very nearly but not quite kissing her hand, she feels only his cool breath, and then shakes Milnikov’s hand vigorously. She notices that the doctor wears thin white gloves. “Baron. It’s a great pleasure meeting both of you. Princess Bronwyn? Tedeschiiy? You’d be the daughter of the late King of Tamlaght?”
“I would.” Bronwyn replies, not doubting that the man knew exactly who she was.
“You must be finding Londeac fascinating.”
“Yes, I am,” she says, not really liking the self-assured and condescending assumption. “And, Baron, I’m forced to admit that I’ve been addicted to reading your published adventures. I hope there’re more to come?”
“I hope so, too. I need the royalties.”
“Professor Wittenoom, have you taken your guests to any of the biological departments? I’m certain that Biology, Comparative Anatomy or perhaps even the teratologists in Pathology would be fascinated by the princess’s man, here.”
“Not yet. Those areas are a little out of my field.”
“A pity. Tell me, Princess,” the doctor says abruptly, “what do you know of electricity?”
“It may as well be nothing. You’d be safest assuming that, anyway.”
“I applaud your candor. Perhaps you may already know that electricity vibrates? Or that many of its qualities depend upon the rate of that vibration?”
“No, I didn’t know that exactly.”
“Ordinary electricity,” he continues, as though she had not spoken, “like that supplied to homes for lighting . . . Oh, that’s right; forgive me, I forgot there’s no electrical supply in Tamlaght . . .”
No you didn’t, thinks Bronwyn a little resentfully.
“ . . . ordinary electricity vibrates at a rate of a few hundred times a second. However, my electricity vibrates at rates of scores of thousands of times each second. It’s an entirely new order of electric current.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“It’s the low vibration rate of ordinary power that requires a power plant on nearly every street corner, it simply hasn’t the force to move through more than a few thousand feet of wire. My electricity will change all that. This device,” he says, gesturing toward a tall cylinder that rises from the floor in one of the few clear areas in the room, “is the latest generator of what I term ‘ultra-oscillating current.’”
The cylinder indicated is perhaps two feet thick and slightly taller than the doctor. It is tightly wrapped with fine copper wire; on its summit is balanced a small polished brass sphere. Tudela gives an order to one of his assistants, who extinguishes the electric lighting and begins to draw shades over the tall windows. The laboratory is plunged into a gloomy twilight. Phthalocyanine flashes from humming devices elsewhere in the room glimmer like aurorae or will-o’-the-wisps.
“Ordinary current passes directly through a human body, accounting for the terrible injuries it can cause, or even death. Ultra-oscillating current passes over the surfaces of bodies, human or otherwise, doing no harm. It’s also capable of passing from conductor to conductor directly through the air, with no intervening material connection. Allow me to demonstrate.”
One of the assistants must have been waiting for those words, for the tall cylinder begins to buzz and crackle. A violet corona forms around the brass sphere, spitting needle-like sparks like the tongues of incandescent snakes. The noise is deafening and Bronwyn presses the palms of her hands to her ears, to little avail. The sound seems to emanate from within her skull. There are a rapid series of wicked pops, like the cracking of thousands of whips, coming in such rapid succession that they begin to blend into a continuous roar. The princess, even though standing more than a dozen feet from the m
achine, can feel every hair on her body bristling like a porcupine worshipping its angry porcupine god. The doctor, only inches away from his invention, is surrounded by a faint, corona of his own. Bronwyn is instantly reminded of Baron Milnikov’s hair-raising escape during the thunderstorm. Glancing at him, she can tell from the grim set of his mouth that he is having more personal, hence even grimmer, recollections.
The doctor picks a long glass tube from among several on a table and as soon as he grasps it, it begins to glow brightly, a wavering tendril of pink light coiling lazily down the tube’s axis. He brings it closer to the cylinder and the tube grows so bright that Bronwyn can scarcely look at it directly. How is it the doctor’s hands aren’t terribly burned? she wonders.
“Would her Highness care to try?” Tudela invites the princess, holding the tube toward her. She involuntarily shies away from it, as though it are a bar of white-hot iron.
“Go ahead, Thud,” she says, stepping behind her big friend.
As Thud takes the proffered tube, the doctor places his free hand on the side of the roaring cylinder. Instantly, Tudela’s hair stands away from his head like a sea urchin’s spines; even his moustache and imperial bristle, and little sparks shoot from their tips. His clothing billows away from his body as though trying to escape its very touch. The glass tube flashes like a bolt of lightning and Thud finds himself surrounded by a flickering green aureole.
“Pretty!” he cries in delight.
Tudela gives another order. The machine’s activity increases and its sound to a high-pitched whine. Now the doctor’s entire body is sheathed in a shifting network of light, beams spray from his fingertips as though each are a tiny flashlight and sputtering globes of fire danced up and down his arms, drifting around him like curious, phosphorescent fish inspecting a deep-sea diver. Every hair on the doctor’s head stands out as stiff as a wire, and every individual tip sparkles like a firework.
Bronwyn has never in her life even imagined a sight so terrifying and so beautiful. She wants to scream to Tudela to stop while at the same time is frozen by a fascination as compelling as that which the mouse finds in the cobra. It is a kind of religious ecstasy, halfway between terror and passion.
All at once the machine stops, and just as instantly its effects vanish. The shades go up and the laboratory is filled with a light that now seems heavy and lifeless.
“Well?” says Tudela, knowing exactly how impressive he has been.
“I don’t know if I ever want to see anything like that again,” says the princess.
“It’s enough to make a grown man take up religion!” comments the baron, wiping his brow.
“Oh, I hope it doesn’t go that far!” the doctor laughs coldly. “I’d like to think that my invention will be used for the good of mankind.”
“What is it good for?” asks Wittenoom.
“Good for?” repeats the doctor, a note of haughty irritation entering his voice, but before he can continue there is the sudden sound of two almost simultaneous explosions: sharp reports that rattle the windows and bring thin streamers of dust from the ceiling.
“What is that?” asks the professor.
“I hate to imagine,” replies the princess.
“So do I, I expect. Well, thank you very much for your entertaining demonstration, Doctor Tudela.”
“My pleasure, Professor Wittenoom. Princess. Baron.”
Tudela’s eyes defocus, as though the princess and her party have somehow evaporated, or have been a passing hallucination. The doctor turns and resumes his work as though he had never been interrupted.
“If I may say so,” says Bronwyn, as they left the laboratory, “I don’t think I liked Doctor Tudela very much.”
“I don’t think that knowledge would bother him at all,” replies the professor. “The opinions of others don’t overly concern him.”
“His experiments are very interesting.”
“I’ll admit they’re impressive, but so is a skyrocket, and probably no more useful. Perhaps I’m wrong; it really isn’t my field.”
“Where’re we going now?”
“To the roof.”
A spiral staircase gives them access to the flat, open expanse of the institute’s roof. It is as crowded with devices and busy scientists as any of the interior laboratories.
“Most of these are outside my field, so we’ll have to ask some questions,” explained Wittenoom.
“Professor,” asks Bronwyn, “what exactly is your field, if I may ask?”
“Palæocochleaology.”
“I see.”
The professor leads the princess from device to device. Among them she is introduced to a solar engine, whose mirrored bowl can turn ten gallons of water into steam in less than an hour. With the energy provided by the sun alone, the inventor is running a small engine at a great rate of speed. Another man is employing the sun in a different manner. With his device, a narrow beam of sunlight is reflected from a mirror onto a small silvered disc. This disc is made to vibrate by a person speaking into a rubber tube connected to its rear surface. At the other end of the roof, a hundred yards away, is a reflective bowl, something like that used to operate the steam engine although on a much smaller scale. At the focus of this bowl is a small cylinder consisting of copper plates separated by mica and filled with selenium. The sunlight beamed from the first device is concentrated by the reflector onto this cylinder, where it created a weak electrical current. This is translated into sound by a pair of earphones worn by the operator.
Bronwyn is allowed to test the invention. She speaks loudly into the rubber mouthpiece, asking the man at the other side of the roof to wave his hat if he hears her. She is delighted when she sees the distant figure immediately doff his cap in a jaunty salute. The inventor takes her to the receiver and invites her to place the earphones on her head while Professor Wittenoom speaks to her via the photophone, such as the device is called. She squeals like a schoolgirl when she hears a voice, distant and weak, but undeniably the professor’s, asking after her health.
From the parapet she can overlook the vast park surrounding the institute. A gleamingly white road winds through it, like a ribbon tying up a package wrapped in green paper. There is a large lake in the rear, encircled by gardens, in which even more groups and individuals are at work. Among them is a gang of navvies working at winches, hoisting a black object the size of a railway coach from the water. Whatever it is rises slowly: a fat, spindle-shaped thing.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“A submersible boat,” replies the professor. “I only know because its inventor has been working on it for a year, and I have to sign his appropriations . . . and you can see the results for yourself.”
“A submersible boat could be a wonderful invention.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure,” he replies in a patronizing tone.
“Are you getting your fill of wonders, as I promised?” asks the baron.
“All except one, the one you promised me.”
“Oh, you mean that thing you saw in the sky?”
“Don’t be obtuse!”
“Do you think,” says the baron, turning to the professor, “that we might examine an aerostat? The princess has a special interest in them.”
“What’s an aerostat?” she asks.
“I don’t see why not,” the doctor answers, “though it’s some distance from here, just beyond that copse. If the princess would really find that interesting?” he adds doubtfully.
“Of course she would!” the baron answers for her.
“Ah, well,” sighs the professor.
It takes less than fifteen minutes to regain the ground level of the institute and another fifteen to walk to the far side of the small woods. It is a pleasant stroll along a path shaded by the fragrant trees. It leads them to a large, unusually shaped building. Made entirely of wood, it looks very much like half a barrel laid on its side. It is perhaps fifty or sixty feet in height and twice that in breadth and length. One semicircul
ar façade faces a broad, flat, open area, something like a playing field. Along one side of this is a mountain of fat metallic cylinders, hundreds of them, all interconnected with rubber pipes.
At the far end of the field a group of men are busy with what looked like a brown canvas dome. This seems curiously unstable, bobbing and swaying lazily like a ship at its moorings.
As they approach the big building, a pair of enormous doors are sliding open, revealing a cavernous interior. Bronwyn shades her eyes from the sun, and can see that there is something nearly filling the vast, dark space. Something huge, grey and bulky. There is some peculiar quality about the shape that gives Bronwyn the unsettling feeling that she is looking at something alive. The great thing hung there like a captive whale, aloof and full of thought.
There had been little to give away the true scale of either the building or its contents until they drew close enough to see the men who busied themselves in the shadows beneath the looming curve of the whale-like thing.
“Princess!” says Thud, suddenly. “What’s that?”
“What?” she replies, turning to see what had surprised her friend. Where the brown canvas dome had been there is now a huge sphere, exactly like the one she had seen the day before, except that this one is as big as a house. It is hovering without any apparent support fifteen or twenty feet above the earth. She then notices that it is being restrained by dozens of ropes; the big globe is swaying gently to and fro, as though anxious to get away.
“All right,” she says, confronting the baron. “What is that?”
“That’s an aerostat,” he replies.
“That tells me a lot.”
“It’s very simple. That enormous bag is filled with a gas that is less dense than an equal volume of air. Being lighter than the air around it, it goes up. It’s so light, in fact, that it has enough lift left over to carry things along. See that little basket beneath it?”
There is indeed a small, wicker basket, like a large picnic hamper, that she had overlooked. It is attached to the globe by an arrangement of ropes. In the basket are three men.