by Neil Clarke
“You just told a secret about the future,” he said with a cruel and twisted smile. “I could go out and invest in companies what make electric horses. Mr. Kellard wouldn’t like that.”
He fired. The bullet passed close to the side of my head before continuing on into the back of my chair. The shot was a warning to behave, and that he was not to be trifled with. Two of his bullyboys entered my room, seized me by the arms and dragged me out of the chair.
“The shot, it will bring the police,” I warned.
“The police won’t help, neither,” said Brunton. “We got friends in the police.”
He hit me five times before his men released me, and I fell to the floor. He had not needed to hit me, I think he just enjoyed it.
“You hired some slut today and showed her secret stuff in the factory,” said Brunton. “I got people watching her. It’s hard, like because she’s not staying here. Now you gotta make her move in here and keep an eye on her. Always. If any secrets gets out, you’re both in the shit.”
The following morning I went straight to Kellard’s office, with a punched paper roll in my hands. I was in a fury, but I made a point of keeping my words polite. That was just as well. Although the rich and powerful no longer dressed in armor and settled disputes by the sword, I was about to find out that they still had the power of life and death over the likes of myself. Kellard heard me out quietly, then sat forward with his hands clasped on his desk.
“The three typists that you did not hire are dead,” he said calmly. “They saw secrets inside the factory, and I’ll not tolerate that.”
After about fifteen seconds I realized that I was standing there with my mouth open. He had killed them. My employer was a murderer. My life was in his hands.
“Very good, sir,” I finally mumbled.
“I’m confident that you will do my work and preserve my secrets, because one telegram from me could send some cold and brutal men to visit your mother and sisters within about half an hour.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Now give me one good reason why I should not have your American typist killed.”
I have a talent for quickly recovering from shock and devising coherent answers. I pushed this talent to the very limit.
“Because without her, the technarion is crippled,” I said. “Examine this.”
I had intended to slam the paper roll down on Kellard’s desk, but it now seemed wise to put it down slowly and gently.
“Explain,” he said, unrolling the paper a little and staring at the rows of punched holes.
“The technarion is more complex than any other machine in the history of the world. It has to be reconfigured with instructions every time you want it to perform a different task. That takes me up to a week.”
“I know, you told me. I told you to find a solution.”
“Miss Landers took twenty minutes to type this configuration roll. The best of the men took an hour, and made ninety-one mistakes. Add an hour for me to do the checking. Each mistake would have to be corrected manually, taking two hours and a half in total. Allow a day for the glue on the patches to dry, and you have twenty-eight and one half hours to prepare a roll of instructions ready for use. Miss Landers typed a roll error free and ready for use over eighty-five times faster than can be managed with the best of the male typist, and two hundred and fifty times faster than me. If time is money, that is a lot of money saved.”
Kellard took another hour to make up his mind. This included a discussion with Flemming and a demonstration of my paper roll instruction reader. I suspect that he had decided to spare Miss Landers after my initial explanation, but it is important for men like him not to lose face in front of men like me. He led me back up to his office.
“Now listen carefully,” he said sternly as he closed the door. “Every day people are murdered in London in disputes over a shilling or two. The secrets in this factory are worth over a million pounds a year. Draw the obvious conclusion. I have the power of life and death over my employees, Mr. Blackburn, and the police are in my pay. You wanted a typist, well now you have her. You will not let her out of your sight. When outside this factory she will speak to nobody but you.”
When Elva arrived to start work, I explained that we had to observe conditions of extreme secrecy. To my immense relief, she agreed to move into Kellard’s rooming house at once. I went with her to her hotel, escorted by Brunton, and here she packed her bags while I settled her account.
Back at the factory, we got to work. We quickly dispensed with the more formal forms of address, and called each other Elva and Lewis. Because she typed so fast, she often had nothing to do but read novels and wait for more work. This suited me, because Elva was well above my social status, yet she was also my employee. It was an ideal opportunity to practice polite social banter.
“Folk around here treat you like you’re important,” she said one afternoon, about three days after she started.
“I suppose I am.”
“What do you do, apart from put paper rolls in machines?”
“I design electrical circuits for Mr. Kellard. Do you know about electricity?”
“Poppa says it’s in lightning, and it makes telegraphs work. Poppa says it’s not where the money is, though. He says steam is the future.”
“Burning coal to make steam produces a lot of soot, and soot makes the cities filthy,” I replied. “It also makes people sick. Electricity is clean.”
“Don’t you have to burn coal to make electricity?”
That caught me by surprise. Few women knew how electricity was generated.
“Well yes, but you can do that far away from cities, so the smoke blows out to sea. You then use wires to bring the electricity where it’s needed, and nobody gets sick. Everyone has a right to clean air.”
“Hey, are you one of those society reformers?”
I reminded myself that she was American and being innocently forthright.
“I think you mean socialists.”
“Oh, yeah. Poppa warned me about them, but I think you’re nice.”
That embarrassed me so much that I could not think of any sensible reply. I was not really a socialist, I just believed that everyone had a right to live happily.
“What else did he tell you?” I asked. The lecturer at the college had said that it was better to ask a neutral question than say something stupid.
“He said to watch out for strange men, or I might get abducted and made a white slave.”
“In a way, I suppose that’s happened to both of us,” I said, trying to make light of our situation. “The secrecy in this place really is a bit extreme.”
“I never thought I’d be a slave who had to type.”
“It won’t be forever. Meantime, just don’t gossip about your work.”
“I’m gossiping to you, Lewis,” she said, then giggled. “Is that allowed?”
“Yes. I already know all the secrets in here.”
“What’s really going on? Am I allowed to ask?”
I knew that I was treading dangerous ground, but as long as no secrets left the building I felt sure that Kellard would not order us killed.
“Come with me.”
I took her to my workshop next door. Here I showed her my code converter.
“This thing changes the holes you punch in paper into pulses of electricity.”
“A telegraph operator can do that.”
“True, but my device can do it a hundred times faster than a human, over and over again.”
“That’s impressive, but people can’t read that fast. Why bother?”
“I’m afraid you’re not allowed to know that.”
“I bet it’s another machine doing the reading, like a steam train reading a newspaper.”
We both laughed aloud at that idea.
“Actually, that’s not far off the truth,” I admitted. “One day I’ll tell you about the technarion. Meantime, are you interested in photography?”
Hav
ing Elva with me when I went out photographing London solved a lot of my problems. It meant that I was with her during her leisure hours, acting as her chaperone. I made sure that she did not talk to anyone else about her work, and she only seemed interested in talking to me. I was afraid that she might find the more squalid areas of London rather confronting, yet she came willingly wherever I led. I began to hope that she might be tagging along just to be with me.
“What do you do with your photos, Lewis?” she asked one day as I was setting up to photograph a street in Spitalfields. “I mean, you can’t sell them to be made into postcards or anything like that.”
“I’ve done a couple of exhibitions in Birmingham, there’s slums there too. People who are well off come along and get a view of places they’d never go to otherwise. Maybe next time a social reformer stands for election, they might remember the misery in my photographs, and vote for him so he can do something about it.”
“That’s great! It’s sort of . . . noble of you.”
I did not know how to take compliments. I changed the subject.
“One day I might publish a book of photos, so that people in the future can see how some of us used to live, and not let it happen again.”
“Like we remember how Christians were fed to the lions by Romans?”
“That’s right. Nobody’s been feeding Christians to lions lately, have they?”
Elva laughed. More significantly, she squeezed my arm.
“You’re a lovely man, Lewis,” she said, looking into my face, her expression suddenly quite serious. “If everyone was like you instead of poppa, nobody would live in slums.”
I nodded but said nothing. She liked me for what I was. This was probably a romantic moment, but I had no experience of romantic moments, or of what to do when they happened. Nearby, an old man was singing. I had paid him no attention until now.
Poverty, poverty, knock,
Me loom keeps sayin’ all day.
Poverty, poverty, knock,
Gaffer’s too skinny te pay.
Poverty, poverty, knock,
Keepin’ one eye on the clock.
An’ I knows that I’ll guttle,
When I hears me shuttle
Go poverty, poverty, knock.
“Strange that folk in the slums sing about being miserable,” said Elva. “Why don’t they sing happy songs to cheer themselves up?”
“Singing about bad times makes them easier to bear,” I replied. “They sing a lot where I come from.”
“Were your folks poor?”
“Aye. Grandad worked in a mill and earned less than it costs to feed a grand lady’s lapdog. Dad was a stoker on a steam train. He died when the boiler exploded.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
I reached out and squeezed her hand to reassure her, but to my surprise she grasped my fingers and squeezed back. Again she looked me right in the face, the way refined English girls are taught not to. I floundered for words that were appropriate. I could find none. Instead, I said the first words that came into my head.
“The man who owned the rail company was halfway decent. He visited my mother in our tatty little home, to give her some money. He saw me playing some mathematical board game that I’d invented and chalked on the floorboards, and realized that I was very bright. His own son had died of typhus a few months earlier, so he more or less adopted me. I was sent to a good school, then to a mechanics institute to learn a trade. I chose electricity, and here I am.”
It was a stupid thing to say in the circumstances, definitely not what a suave and dashing man-about-town would have said to a lady that he wished to impress. To my astonishment, her fingers fluttered up under my chin and drew my face toward hers. She pressed her lips against mine. Some of the nearby children laughed, clapped, and whistled.
“Sorry about being so bold, but I am American,” she said.
“No apology needed, I assure you.”
“Anyhow, I’ve never courted anyone before.”
“Really?” I said, still breathless with surprise. “But you lived in Paris. What about all those romantic Frenchmen?”
“They courted me, Lewis. I didn’t have to do a thing. Well, except to say Non! lots of times. I had to work hard for you.”
“Oh—ah, sorry. I’m not much of a romantic. You know, too much time spent with wires and batteries.”
“That’s okay. So what now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do I get to have a romance with you?”
Again my mind began to go blank, but this time I fought back.
“I could think of nothing better,” I managed.
They were good words. They were the right words. I felt giddy with relief.
We packed up my camera, and began to walk back toward the rooming house. Elva now had her hand upon my arm. Suitable matches had been presented to me by friends and relatives for years. Some proposals were to settle me with a solid, honest girl who would make a good home. Others sought to match me with girls from families above my station but in reduced circumstances. Love was never involved. Now a sophisticated and intelligent girl had kissed me and proposed a liaison.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see a man keeping pace with us on the opposite side of the street. One of Brunton’s bullyboy spies, I had learned to spot them by now. What would Kellard and Brunton make of our kiss? They would probably approve. Romantically attached staff would spend less time talking to others.
For no rational reason I suddenly began to panic about what to say next. Did I tell Elva how beautiful she was? That seemed clumsy. So what did sophisticated people talk about? Opera? I had never been to an opera, I had only seen opera songs like The Gendarme’s Duet performed in Birmingham’s music halls. Anyway, what if she really were a spy? She had already asked about the technarion. I loved her, so how could I keep her safe if she were spying? Questions kept cascading through my mind.
“If you could change the world, would you have machines do all the work?” she asked.
My relief knew no bounds. She had asked my opinion about something innocent.
“There was misery before factories and machines came along,” I replied. “No, I just think people should have the right to do work they love, and be paid fairly.”
“Do you love what you do?”
“Oh yes, but I’m an exception.”
“That’s good,” said Elva, looking dreamily up into the gray, grubby sky. “I misjudged you, Lewis. My apologies.”
“I . . . don’t follow.”
“I thought you believed in blind, headlong progress, but you don’t. That’s important to me, it makes you really special.”
“Aye, can’t have machines running the world. They might get too smart, and want things that are not good for people.”
“Smart machines? Go on!”
“Bad enough having humans fighting humans. Humans fighting machines, would be too much.”
“How many smart machines do you know?”
“I’m on first-name terms with a couple.”
She giggled and gave me a little push.
“What are you going to do with your life, like after we finish working for Mr. Kellard? You will have lots of money saved, and you can’t go back to making switches.”
“Well, I met a great man called Faraday fifteen years ago, and he was very inspiring. I thought I might attend university and become a scientist, like him.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a new sort of tradesman, like a philosopher, only practical. Would you like to marry a scientist?”
The words were out of my mouth before my brain could stop them. I bit my tongue to punish it.
“I do believe I would,” said Elva.
For me the dark and sooty skies of London suddenly brightened into a glorious, unclouded blue, and my knees went weak with sheer relief.
Brunton was waiting at the entrance to the rooming house.
“Give your camera gear to Charlie, he’ll see
it safe,” he said, indicating one of the bullyboys who was with him. “There’s a meeting of managers called.”
“But it’s Sunday evening.”
“When Mr. Kellard says bark, you only says woof. Oh, and the typist’s to be there too.”
“Elva? Why?”
“How’s I to know? You lot make the secrets, I only keep ‘em.”
For Brunton, that was being downright civil. He had never liked me, I being working class made good. Now he was uneasy, and even displaying deference. Something very important had happened, and I was needed. Kellard wanted Elva there, and that could only be if typing was required. If typing was required, it would involve the technarion.
The meeting was in Kellard’s office. Brunton and Elva were made to wait outside, while Kellard, Flemming, and I discussed what had happened.
“The radiative signal has changed,” Flemming announced. “This afternoon, it stopped repeating the design and started sending something else. New circuits and instructions, I don’t know what to make of it.”
“If you don’t, what hope do the rest of us have?” asked Kellard, whose face had turned chalk white.
“Sir, the captain is expected to command the ship, not build it. Mr. Blackburn is the master shipwright here.”
Flemming handed me a reel of ticker tape. His hand shook and his skin was clammy. He was probably in a blind panic, afraid of Kellard and unable to think clearly.
“There’s four hours of message on that. A new reel was fitted twenty minutes ago.”
“Did you miss anything?” I asked.
“No, I always save everything from the receiver, in case of something like this. I only noticed the new data when I went to change the paper tape.”
“So you’ve not read this yet?”
“Only a little.”
“I’ll need an hour or so to scan it.”
“We can wait,” said Kellard.
As it happened, it was just thirty minutes before I worked out what was now being sent. By then there was paper tape everywhere, marked here and there with paperclips and notes. I cannot say what possessed me, but I decided to be theatrical. Perhaps it was to unsettle the man who had the power of life and death over myself and Elva.
“Security has been breached,” I announced.