by K. W. Jeter
Stonebrake himself appeared more presentable, without jacket at the moment, but a loosened cravat blossomed from beneath the buttons of an embroidered vest. Upon hearing his voice, while his figure had still been hidden behind the townhouse’s entry door, I had almost expected him to be garbed in the wetly shining diving costume he had worn at our initial seaside encounter, as though such might have been his usual lounging habiliments, with or without the Atlantic at his elbow. To see him now as a respectably clad member of society required some mental adjustment on my part, in particular given the shabby grotesquerie of the building in which he and I stood, as if we had agreed to rendezvous in a haunted house for purposes of idle chat.
“I had some apprehension,” he spoke, “that you might not have turned up at all. Given the gloomy situation in which I found you, and all. I’m gladdened to see that the expectation of wealth has outweighed your taste for self-destruction.”
His smiling comment irked me. I found it to be in poor taste, to find amusement in others’ despair.
“Let us not become overly familiar.” I imparted to my words as much formal stiffness as I could summon. “You made a business proposition to me. I have come here for no other reason.”
“That’s what I find so admirable about you.” Stonebrake clapped me heartily on the shoulder. “You never disappoint me. You, sir, are a rock of dependability.”
“Be that as it may. I confess that I feel some sense of disappointment, however. My journey has wearied me, and I was anticipating more congenial and restorative quarters than these.” I gazed around at the dank, decaying spaces, then back to my interlocutor. “Where, pray, is our host?”
Stonebrake frowned in puzzlement. “Host?”
“The Honourable Marston Dredgecock. The master of Featherwhite House—and more besides. I had expected to be greeted by him, or if not, by some senior chamberlain in his employ.”
“Ah. A moment, if you please.” He turned toward one of the dark hallways beyond the foyer in which we stood. “Oy!” His shout loosened plaster dust from the ceiling. “Where’s old Dredgecock to be found?”
“What?” An answering cry echoed from whatever rooms lay beyond. “What’s that you’re after?”
“Dredgecock! Where’s that fool Dredgecock?”
“How the flamin’ hell should I know?” A clanging noise reverberated from the unseen distance, as though of a two-handed spanner being dropped upon some iron surface. A moment later, a shortstatured figure appeared in the hallway, a fearsomely mustachioed and cloth-capped mechanical, wiping his grease- stained hands upon the leather apron extending to the tops of his boots. “Wouldn’t surprise me if the old bastard’s bleedin’ dead.” He glared at Stonebrake, this interruption to his labours evidently a personal affront. “Man was scarcely alive as it were, last I saw of him.”
“There; you see?” Stonebrake turned to me for sympathy. “Such are the conditions I endure. When riches are in my hands—pardon; our hands—it will have been effort and forbearance that put them within reach. The upshot being, at this moment, that if you desired to be greeted by the Honourable under discussion, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“I fail to understand.” My hand rose to gesture at the dilapidated walls. “I had been given to believe that this was his residence, at least while in town rather than his country estates.”
“It might very well have been,” replied Stonebrake, “at least at one time. But it has been, shall we say, converted to other uses.”
As though to echo this sentiment, a chorus of industrial noises sounded from beyond the hallway by which the workman had appeared. Unpleasant memories were roused in my head and breast by the shriek and clatter of great engines firing up, the grind of sharpedged gears meshing with each other, counterweights whirling about, all while the shrill whistle and hiss of escaping steam, the unseen machinery’s propulsive force, filled in the mechanical choir’s top octave.
“So it would seem.” I raised my own voice above the cacophonous discord that trembled the once elegant house’s musty air. Feathers drifted down from the agitated pigeons. “But what of Dredgecock himself? Has all this been accomplished with his permission? Or even his awareness?”
“It hardly matters.” Stonebrake’s amusement was apparent. “Even if the man is still alive, he’s so far advanced in his dotage that his awareness of much at all is a debatable quality.”
“But what of his various enterprises? His investments? The commanding position he grasps at the helm of those industries which draw this seething power from the bowels of the earth and convey it to Britain’s homes and factories?”
“Your rhapsodizing about the fellow is indeed eloquent, my dear Dower, but hardly warranted by reality. Dredgecock possesses none of those things you ascribe to him. As a specimen of impoverished gentility—the like of which rather overpopulates the land, particularly after the advent of these wondrous technologies—the old codger’s only usefulness was that of a front, a propped-up bit of pasteboard with his face and name painted on, behind which the actual masters of this new economy may go about their affairs at more convenience to themselves. As you might well imagine, certain grumbling types are not at all happy about certain changes that have come upon them; better that their incendiary—and sometimes even explosive—wrath be directed toward a dottering old fool of a figurehead, rather than the prosperous pillars upon which our society depends.”
I knew whereof he spoke—the example of the darkly muttering carriage driver was still fresh in my mind—but his pious sanctimony nettled me. “Better for you,” I noted. “And your various schemes. Given the desire for material gain, which you have already admitted is the only thing that animates you, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the poor old man is buried out in the garden.”
“Actually,” said Stonebrake, “I believe he’s in Brighton. The monthly remittance sent to him, in compensation for the commercial use of his persona, is adequate for him to subsist in modest comfort at a boarding house close to the Pier. Or if he has indeed passed on, it’s been enough for an anonymous burial service, the disposal of his meager effects, and a continuing discreet silence about the matter. Either way, it’s money well spent.”
Whatever small concern I might have had for the gentleman was dispelled by the mounting clang and screech from the townhouse’s farther rooms. “For God’s sake, what is going on back there?”
“Now we come to matters of more pertinent interest. Royston—” He turned and addressed the leather-aproned workman standing at the hallway’s opening. “I’m sure Mr. Dower here would appreciate a bit of a tour.”
“If he must.” It was apparent by the man’s sullen expression that he regarded me more as an inconvenience than a guest. “Come on, then, and make of it what you will.”
Stonebrake followed as the workman led me toward the source of the increasingly louder mechanical clamour. Though the corridor remained as dark as the rest of the house behind its boarded windows, I felt as though I were walking from winter and into a summer day, the blazing sun evaporating what remained of a brief morning downpour, so warm and humid was the air about me. All that betrayed the vernal impression was the acrid scent of lubricating oils, of the sort injected with long nozzles into the workings of overheated machinery.
“Mind your step,” advised Royston, aiming his ill-tempered glare over his shoulder at me. “The footing’s a mite precarious from here forward.”
Rounding a corner and entering to the wavering illumination of lamps inelegantly fastened overhead, I quickly perceived what he meant. The townhouse’s floors had been ripped up, with vast openings created to accommodate the steam pipes that had been introduced throughout the structure. I might very well have stepped into a nest of the serpentine forms, so thickly clustered about were they, with hissing knots and loops constructed of their interpenetrating shapes. My clothes hung clammy upon my body, as though I were some tropic explorer, ill-clad for the frond-bedecked environs in which he had arrived.
The pipes plunged through what little remnants were left of the walls that had formerly divided up the space. From the evidence of the plaster scraps strewn about, the bulk of the partitions and their doors had been crudely demolished with axes and sledge-hammers, leaving one vast enclosure. Even the ornately corniced ceiling had been sacrificed to the new enterprise to which Featherwhite House was now dedicated; a quick glance upward revealed an aspect continuing vertically to what seemed the townhouse’s roof.
These alterations had been accomplished for the sake of the mechanical constructions which dominated what had once been an abode of grace and charm, but which now seemed more like a seat of those industries so bleakly intimidating that a civilized society generally housed them amongst the lower classes who sweated at their forges.
“Tell me, Dower—” Stonebrake’s sly voice spoke at my ear. “What do you see, that amazes you so?”
I had no hesitation in telling him. “These are my father’s devices.” I gazed about at the fiercely animated scene before me. “Created by him.” This revelation seemed obvious, being indicated by the characteristically precise linkage of the interconnected parts, the sleek fury of the pistons’ reciprocal motions, regulated by the whirl of the spherical governor apparatuses, so like an astronomer’s model of our heliocentric universe, the planets reduced to hollow brass representations. Gears meshed with the inherent violence of unfeeling metal, their sharply machined teeth eager to rend the flesh of anyone so foolish as to lay a fingertip upon them. “No-one else,” I spoke quietly, “could have invented them.”
Stonebrake remained silent behind, leaving me to my filial meditations. For a moment, I seemed to have been hurled backward in time, to that long-past day when, standing upon a street in the district of Clerkenwell, I had shaken a key from a solicitor’s envelope and unlocked the door of my inheritance, my deceased father’s workshop. Marvels I had beheld then, upon the cobwebbed shelves and inside the dusty cabinets: devices such as these in their intricacy and mysterious purpose, their uncoiled mainsprings no longer set to life by their buried creator’s hand. . . .
What set apart those remembered machines was the far greater dimensions of the ones I now saw before me. At one time, when I had but first entered into adulthood and the clicking, whirring domain that my father had left to me, I had been so ignorant of the extent, while living, of his skills and ambition, that I had considered him to be no more than a watchmaker, exceedingly adept at bestowing his custom pieces with those features known in the trade as Grand Complications. Such creations, with their thousand-year calendars and astronomical displays and miniature larks springing from the cases to chirp out their minute repeater functions, are considered the pinnacle of haute horlogerie. Given the high prices they commanded amongst connoisseurs of fine timekeeping, I had been perplexed that my father had left no monetary estate to me. I had so little acquaintance with him during my childhood, that the most dreadful surmises had entered my imagination when the exact accounts of my penurious legacy had been revealed to me. Perhaps his mode of life had encompassed those unfortunate extravagances which beggared the most productive of men; I had had no way of knowing. Whatever the truth might have been, I had similarly assumed, upon the evidence of what I initially found in his workshop, that his creations had all been of such scale as to be easily encompassed in one’s hand or conveniently mounted on the wall for the marking of the passing hours. It had been only later, with bitter experience, that I had been made familiar with the larger and more intricate of his devices, culminating with that monstrous equipage with which the crack-brained Lord Bendray had intended to reduce the very Earth to gravel and dust floating in cold, infinite space. That creation had been impressive enough when I had first laid eyes upon it—but the ones encased here at Featherwhite House were even larger.
Indeed, I saw now that there were sources of illumination other than the haphazardly arranged lamps. A section of the townhouse’s exterior wall had been ripped away, from the ground to several floors above, in order to accommodate the massive devices that had been brought inside. Sections of canvas had been stitched together and hung from the eaves, affording a barely adequate protection against rain and other inclement weather; fluttering shafts of the late afternoon daylight slipped through, bringing random aspects of the machinery into brighter relief.
The conveyance of the devices had apparently not been without event. Beneath one such, the floor had given way, casting the machine partway into the basement, the heavy iron beams of its construction tilted at a severe angle. Evidently, there had been no means of hoisting the device and setting it on a level footing elsewhere; instead, the appropriate steam pipes had been attached to its receptacle mountings and the machinery urged into motion. Every stroke of its pistons set the ground trembling, the vibrations traveling up through the soles of my own boots.
“But what are these things?” I turned my head to enquire of Stonebrake. “That they were created by my father is indisputable— but what is their function?”
“Ah; there you have me at a loss.” He stepped forward and to my side. “Those of your father’s devices that are in the hands of the Royal Society, that were previously in your possession—those have been exhaustively studied by the finest scientific minds in Britain. Some have yielded a few of their technical secrets, yet others remain completely mysterious. These—” He gestured toward the clanking, hissing machines before us. “My backers and I have but recently acquired them, and it took some doing, I might tell you. We scoured the countryside for them, searched through rural estates and abandoned vicarages, followed every clen no matter how faint, spent untold sums—that is, I didn’t personally, but my associates had their cash at the ready. But while our efforts met with considerable success in regard to acquisition, I cannot say we have been equally fortunate when it comes to the understanding of our prizes.”
“My understanding is amiss as well,” I said. “I had been led to believe that the Royal Society had already procured for its own studies all the remaining examples of my father’s creations. It scarcely seems credible that they could have overlooked instances as massive as these.”
“There are limits to even the Royal Society’s resources,” noted Stonebrake. “If not financial, then in regard to the space in which its acquisitions can be housed, and the time that its learned members can devote to them. The result being that the Society, in fact, took to its collective bosom certain of the devices created by your father, and spurned others, leaving those to moulder and rust out in the wild, as it were.” He pointed again to the clanking and hammering machines. “Your father, it would seem, was even more prescient than anyone had conceived before of him. The clever devices by which his reputation was established, amongst those privileged to know anything of him at all, were contrived to operate by that which we term clockwork, the unwinding of coiled mainsprings providing the motive force required for the mechanisms to go through their various functions. To be sure, some of those mainsprings were of intimidating dimensions, requiring several men with levers, or even teams of drayhorses, to wind to their tightest constrictions. And of course, little imagination is required to envision the dangers involved with workings built to such scale. When the mainspring of a pocket watch snaps, the broken end of metal might be sharp enough to draw blood from one’s fingertip; the same event, involving a coil of steel vaster than many of this great house’s drawing-rooms, is fully capable of slaying a dozen workmen, the unleashed metal bifurcating them in the blink of an eye. This is not an hypothetical occurrence; indeed, some of the labourers employed here still shudder at the recollection of the deaths of their colleagues.”
Following the direction of his hand, I now observed in the space’s shadows those others, of similar garb to the ill-natured one to whom Stonebrake had addressed his previous requests and orders. The fellow Royston was apparently the foreman of a team of subordinate workers, all busily engaged in maintaining the operations of the devices towering beyond thei
r cloth-capped heads. So intent were they upon their labours that they barely allowed themselves a glance in our direction.
“Such a fate,” I spoke, “would hardly seem to weigh upon their minds now. For these machines are all apparently driven by steam.”
“Exactly so.” Stonebrake nodded in concurrence. “And therein lies the proof of your father’s astonishing prescience. For when he built such devices as these, a source of power adequate for their operations did not yet exist. But build them he did, as though he knew that at some future date that power would come to exist, and in such abundance as to set whirring the entire arsenal of his imagination. In that regard, your father was a greater and more far-seeing intellect than all the members of the Royal Society. For when they went scavenging about the nation, snapping up your father’s creations and freighting them to their headquarters here in London, they did not anticipate, as your father had, how our world was about to be transformed. Any devices they found, large or small, that did not in some manner operate on the clockwork principles of mainsprings and escapement, was considered by them to be merely so much useless ironwork, follies on their creator’s part, inert and incapable of motion—and thus were left behind by them, to moulder and rust away, in sheds and ware houses and lumber-rooms.”
“How many were there?”
Another voice answered. “A damned lot of the bastards; that’s for certain.” The foreman Royston’s glaring visage had come up alongside us. “These’re just the ones the lads call the big ’uns; there’re any number of others, scattered all ’bout this place.”