Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion

by Howard, Jonathan L

  “Miss Butler, I am so glad to finally make your acquaintance, though I only wish the circumstances were less, um, fraught,” he said.

  He turned to Hardwick. “I believe we could all do with a medicinal tincture, captain. Would you be so kind?”

  The colonel waited until Hardwick could be heard clattering down the stairs before slumping into the chair opposite mine and pushing his spectacles onto his forehead so he could massage his eyeballs.

  “You’ve seen the Handlander process, I take it?” He said it without preamble, as if asking about differential gear ratios.

  I nodded. I didn’t think I’d be able to look at a cobalt blue anything without seeing the way it lit up that room.

  “What… I mean… How? How did that madman discover something so… so beastly?” I was quite pleased that there was only a minor wobble in my voice.

  “Man’s as sane as you or I, and an industrial chemist in point of fact. Even patented the process. Of course what he was actually after was a way of purifying dyes by running high-pressure electricity through some chemical soup or other. However, it seems that if you have a laboratory built over the ruins of some pagan temple and then one of your lab assistants manages to trip over the live side of your Wimshurst… Well… Ah! Hardwick. Good man.”

  I slurped from the glass that Hardwick offered me, then coughed politely when I discovered I’d taken a good swig of fine brandy.

  The colonel brandished some papers at me. “According to the patent, the pentagram contains the residual charge and funnels it into the receptacle when that containment is grounded out.”

  “You could say ‘soul’ if that’s what you mean.” I glared at the colonel. He went pink behind his whiskers and looked at Hardwick for help. Hardwick nodded once.

  “Yes. Soul. Happy?”

  I shook my head like a child refusing more cabbage. “Not even slightly,” I said.

  There was a pile of books on the desk behind the colonel’s right ear, and the sun was high enough in the sky to read the titles. All four volumes of Lovelace & Knuth, ‘The design and implementation of automatic calculation engines’, ‘High-speed computation’ and the Lions Book. Why was there a Jacquard hacker’s library in the attic of the Theosophical Society? Who were these people and what business did they have with daddy? Oh.

  “Those photographs I ‘found’. That was no mistake,” I said.

  The colonel inspected his brandy glass. “No, but we’ll get to that in a moment… Tell me what you think you’ve seen.”

  Hardwick folded his arms and shook his head. “For heaven’s sake, sir. She’s just a… I mean…”

  I rolled my eyes. “Spoiled and undereducated youngest girl-child of an awful nouveau-riche tradesman with no more sense than a penny whistle.”

  I took another sip of the brandy. I had to admit that the taste was growing on me. I peered over the top of my glass at the colonel, who appeared to be smirking quietly. “The dock cranes playing catch. Handlander had fitted them with the globes,” I said.

  “Yes,” said the colonel.

  “If they can play catch, they can run. One of those going at a hand-gallop would be as fast as a locomotive, yet not need rails.”

  “Yes.”

  “The only other thing even close to that speed would be a steam elephant, but… Oh. You need someone to make the running gear work.”

  “By George I think she’s got it,” said Hardwick. I gave him another venomous look for his trouble.

  “One question,” I said. “Well, to begin with, since I’ve no more sense than a penny whistle.”

  “Yes?”

  “There seemed to be an awful lot of those globes. Why d’you think he needs so many? It’s not like you can hide a battalion of ambulatory dock cranes round the back of Box mines.”

  This time the colonel looked me in the eye. “The charge leaks out, it transpires. Whatever is left of a person fades away in a fortnight or so.”

  I stopped sipping and polished off the rest of the glass. “You know, if I thought I’d died, then woke up again with the body of a huge crane, then discovered I was going to die slowly again within the month, I might get a little cheesed off and perhaps set about, oh, anything in my path.” I shrugged and plonked the empty glass on the most expensive looking book I could find. “Of course I merely speculate, since I only have a penny whistle to think with. With which to think.”

  The colonel retrieved the glass and handed me a pile of photographs. I considered throwing them in the air and storming out, but that would get me as far as the front door and then having to send for a carriage to bring me back home and thence into daddy’s presence for a lecture about the dangers of the very man or men he’d parcelled me off with in the first place. I picked up the first picture and inspected it. It seemed to show the front right ankle gear of a steam elephant in mid explosion. I flipped through a few more pictures before sorting the Muybridge set into the correct order and studying them properly. At some point I went to lean on the windowsill to check some details in frames twelve to fourteen. I could see the gait-control cards in my head. I inspected frame fourteen again… It had to be the clutch in the knee joint. Had to be. I smiled to myself. Daddy would have to listen to me now.

  Hardwick and the colonel were both watching me and wearing similarly odd expressions.

  “Miss Butler?” Hardwick managed to sound properly concerned.

  “Yes?” There was code to be patched and an elephant to be run up to full speed. I had to get back to Mayfield Park and my test elephant.

  “Are you quite well? Your knee?”

  I stared at Hardwick. What was he jabbering about?

  “What? Oh, no. I can fix the elephants. I have to go and fix the elephants. It’s the knee clutch. Maybe all of them. All the code-paths could be wrong… What?”

  The colonel was smiling at me in exactly the same way that uncle Jack did whenever the conversation strayed away from the weather or his garden. It was as if he was looking over my shoulder at someone else to say ‘Womenfolk, eh? Bless their little woolly heads. What will they teach them next?’

  “Colonel!” A woman about my age had appeared in the doorway. She was waving a telegram and a set of over-size Jacquard cards. “They’re on the move. Our best guess is that they’ll follow the railway line as far as Mangotsfield, then cut through Stoke Gifford to the dirigible works at Catbrain.”

  She took a couple more rapid paces into the centre of the book pile, then caught sight of me leaning against the window casement.

  “Oh, hello. Is this the new recruit?”

  I goggled at her. What was she on about and, more importantly, what were those cards? Her expression changed when she noticed my evident confusion.

  “Colonel, you have told her what we do here…? No, clearly you haven’t. Zoe Harker, Information Retrieval. You must be the elephant girl. Come and see me when this all blows over, I want you to tell me how you did it.”

  I blinked. ‘Elephant girl?’

  “Er. Did what?”

  Zoe grinned at me. “Made the elephants move at all. Didn’t you know it’s supposed to be impossible?”

  Hardwick coughed semi-politely. Zoe swivelled on one heel to face him.

  “Something on your mind, captain? Women having ideas making you uncomfortable?”

  “As if. No, I believe I am worried about a squad of rampaging cranes controlled by the extracted life-force of angry dead people.”

  She shrugged. “That is a sadly relevant point. Right. Go on. Hoskyns has the elephant up to pressure, you’ve got the girl, now go and see about the baddies.”

  You can’t make your way quietly in a steam elephant. Our progress out of Tyndall’s Park and on through Redland caused the same upset and excitement as two circus parades meeting in a narrow lane. Hardwick seemed to enjoy the attention and I left him in the howdah to look steely and determined on his own. I squeezed forward into the driver’s compartment.

  “Sergeant Hoskyns?”

>   “Yes, Miss Butler?” He didn’t try to turn round since he had his hands full with keeping the elephant at a brisk walk while avoiding street furniture, terrified horses and anyone considering a swift dart in front of us.

  “No faster than this, if you please. No matter what our lord and master says. I’m about to have the gait controller to pieces.”

  He pointed to a red-painted G-clamp that was locking out any speed over ‘brisk trot’. “Will it be safe?”

  “I hope so. I’m going to be working next to the transfer box.”

  “Rather you than me, Miss.”

  I wormed my way back to my usual station opposite the Jacquard. Hardwick appeared just as I’d managed to tip the card-hopper out of the way and carefully spill the complete gait-sequence from the front of the Jacquard. The cards were only bound together at the edge by strips of cotton duck, and a snag or a break would have exciting consequences. I watched the cards loop a few times before digging a kohl pencil from my bag and marking the spots where I planned to change the code.

  “Can I help?” Hardwick was looming over me. There wasn’t really enough space for him to be able to do anything else, but I still resented his presence.

  I sighed. “Yes.” I handed him a small folder filled with the perforated edgings culled from several sheets of stamps. “Tear these into sections long enough to cover the holes that I’ve marked. Moisten, apply, loop until finished.”

  “Very good. What if I cover the wrong hole?”

  “You’re going to be patching running code. If you make a mess of it, the transfer box will likely explode.” I pointed at the thing he was sitting on, and was pleased to see him squirm and glance around for somewhere else to perch.

  “What are you going to be doing? Knitting?”

  I waved my size 0 debugging needle under his nose. “The other half of the job, obviously.” I stabbed a fresh hole into a card as it shuffled up into the top of the Jacquard.

  Hardwick was quite good, for a man, and only made a couple of mistakes that I spotted before actual harm could start befalling. I concertinaed the cards back into the hopper and rested against the transfer box for a moment. I couldn’t tell if it were my imagination, but the elephant felt as if it were already running more smoothly. I wriggled forward again and leaned over Sergeant Hoskyns’ shoulder. There was no room for modesty.

  “Are you in the mood for a bit of an experiment, Sergeant?”

  “I’m in the mood for a quiet pint, if it’s all the same to you, Miss.”

  “Oh, go on with you. I’m the one who’ll end up with a corsetful of shrapnel.”

  “If you put it like that, Miss…” He leaned forward to twist the red clamp off the control quadrant, then pushed it as far as ‘canter’. The elephant seemed to hesitate slightly, like a cat, before throwing itself forward. I relaxed my shoulders with some effort and took a few deep breaths.

  “Right then. First part of experiment successful, I believe. Shall we proceed?”

  Hoskyns looked sideways at me. “It’s not going to help if I mention my wife and daughter, is it Miss? That sort of thing always seems to work in the periodicals.”

  “I’m sure Mister Hardwick and I will shield you from the worst effects of the deadly hail of sprockets. After all, since he’s a cripple and I’m a youngest daughter, we’re both mostly worthless.”

  “You know only officers are allowed sarcasm, Miss.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Hoskyns, I imagined as much. Now let’s try a full gallop, shall we?”

  Hoskyns shook his head and pushed the control fully forward. There was a rapid sequence of thuds as the ankle and shoulder clutches operated, hopefully in the sequence that would generate minimal explosions, a rising whine from the primary and secondary hydraulic pumps and a massive knot in my shoulders. This time the elephant actually did leap forwards. I gripped the back of Hoskyns’ seat and wondered if watchspring boning counted as armour and just how much you would need to be proof against gearbox explosions. All thirty tons of steam elephant felt like it was hanging in space, waiting for the Jacquard to cycle and drive the front legs into position. I could see Horfield Barracks up the hill on the left. There would be plenty of help to sweep up the scrap and collect the body parts should the worst happen. The elephant reached the top of its arc and began the stately plummet towards the road surface. The front legs were late and I’d made a mess of the sequencing. What had I missed? The thought of not knowing what I’d got wrong seemed worse than the thought of dying. I was just a silly girl and daddy would peer sadly into my grave and say to anyone that would listen that he’d told me so and that sort of thing was no place for a young woman. The hydraulic pumps changed pitch again as the elephant caught itself with an unlikely but welcome finesse and threw itself forward again. And again. And again.

  I returned from somewhere deep inside myself to discover that I was laughing with unladylike abandon and clapping Hoskyns on the back in a manner sure to leave a bruise. He didn’t seem put out by this and was now piloting a galloping steam elephant with fingertips alone. I clambered back past the Jacquard and up into the howdah. The wind from the speed of our passage was going to ruin my hair.

  Hardwick seemed pleased to see me. “I believe congratulations are in order, Miss Butler, since you seemed to have failed in your attempt to kill us.”

  “Thank you, Mr Hardwick. You’re very kind.”

  It was as good as I was going to get from him.

  The dirigible works looked deserted when we arrived. Hoskyns took us on a somewhat circuitous route through the edge of Catbrain village so as to approach from what we hoped was the opposite direction to that of the cranes. It’s hard to sneak up on an installation in a thirty ton machine, but we tried.

  The easy bit was hiding the elephant. Hoskyns trotted us into what was a tiny lean-to tacked onto the end of the smaller of the dirigible sheds. With a bit of care you could have stored a dozen elephants in there and still had enough elbow room to have all the panelling off and get grease-guns on the shoulder bearings. The dirigible shed itself blotted out two thirds of the sky. It was like standing at the bottom of a cliff-face made from wavy tin. I started to get a touch of vertigo just looking at the thing and was rather glad to have something else to concentrate on when a uniformed chap steamed into view round the near end of the shed.

  His bicycle kept on steaming quietly while he dismounted and hauled it onto its stand. He eyed the three of us, trying to work out who he should patronise, ignore or salute.

  Hardwick saved him the bother of a wild guess. “Sar’nt-major? Captain Hardwick. Sergeant Hoskyns, my driver, and, um, Miss Butler.”

  So I was an ‘um’. Splendid.

  The fellow looked relieved. Having an officer about to take the blame made everything better. “We had a messages from Mangotsfield Junction not five minutes ago, sir. They reported two cranes headed this direction and one disabled.”

  “Disabled?” echoed Hardwick.

  “Stumbled into a dewpond at Shortwood. Fell over, loud bang, blue lights went out. Sir.”

  “Interesting.” I said it without thinking.

  “How so, Miss Butler?’ Hardwick sounded as if he was about to ask me to decline some Latin verbs.

  “The Handlander process requires a massive electrical charge, which leaks anyway. Perhaps we may be able to make it leak much faster if we ground out the cranes, like Franklin and his kite.”

  “We do seem to be short ponds, kites and thunderstorms, though.”

  Point out the obvious, why don’t you?

  “The conductive pentagram in the processing room must be significant, otherwise why go to the trouble?”

  “Do I understand that you’d like to paint a similar pentagram here, lure the cranes into it and then do something with a kite?”

  “Yes.” You supercilious oaf.

  “Miss Butler, I suggest to stick to steam elephants and leave… Ah.”

  “Ah?” I was giving serious thought to kicking him in the shin,
but I couldn’t remember which was the tin one. No sense in ruining a pair of boots for the sake of pique, justified or no.

  “I owe you an apology, Miss Butler. Your plan is substantially correct.”

  I allowed myself the hint of a smirk.

  Hardwick turned to the men and issued orders.

  “Sar’nt-major, d’you have a pitch-marker, a tub of copper grease, distress rockets and phosphor-bronze rope?”

  The chap seemed entirely unsurprised by this list of demands, or perhaps the officers attached to the dirigible works specialised in unusual requests. “I’ll find out sir,” was all he said.

  “Very good. Carry on.”