by Neil Clarke
“What!” demanded Kellard, who then bounded to his feet and made for the door.
“Wait, don’t call Brunton,” I said, holding up a length of the paper tape. “The culprit is you.”
“Me?” gasped Kellard.
“You can’t be serious!” exclaimed Flemming.
“I certainly am. The people that we stole the design from have noticed your successes on the London Stock Exchange, Mr. Kellard.”
“Impossible!” cried Kellard.
“No, no, I think I see what Mr. Blackburn is getting at,” interjected Flemming. “No human could have made the sorts of brilliant investment decisions that the technarion calculated.”
“So . . . we’re ruined?” asked Kellard, turning to me.
“Not at all, they want us to be partners,” I explained. “There are instructions in this message for building a powerful radiative transmitter, and for wiring it directly into the technarion. Your machine will become part of a network of technarions.”
“You mean they don’t mind that we spied on them and built our own calculation factory?”
“Apparently not.”
“Will I lose my monopoly on predicting the stock exchange trends?”
“You may become part of a secret oligarchy that rules British finance, and perhaps Britain itself,” suggested Flemming. “That’s better than any monopoly.”
Kellard needed no more convincing. Brunton was called in and told to fetch all the technical workers for a special night shift at double pay. Flemming started building the radiative transmitter, and Elva began typing new operating instructions for the technarion as fast as I could dictate them. Within a week we had completed the transmitter and a more powerful receiver. I wired them into our technarion. The quality and accuracy of the investment advice and predictions improved at once. We were still not sure who we were dealing with, but it was immensely profitable.
For all his wealth and power, Kellard was an isolated and somewhat lonely man. He could not confide in Flemming for fear of losing face in front of a peer, but I was another matter. He could make ridiculous statements to me, and I would pass them on to Flemming as my own. Flemming was no fool, and was aware of what was happening, yet that was the way Kellard wanted to communicate, so we worked that way.
“Don’t you ever feel tempted to profit directly from the technarion’s predictions?” Kellard asked one evening, when I went to his office to deliver my daily report. “I know everything about you and your circumstances. You only have a few hundred pounds saved from your wages.”
“It takes big money to make big money,” I replied. “A poor coal cutter could make no profit from knowing what the price of coal will be tomorrow, but the mine owner would.”
“I’m making a lot of money. Why do people I don’t even know want me to be richer?”
“It takes money to rule, Mr. Kellard. Like Mr. Flemming says, those people mean you to rule with them in secret, using calculation factories like the technarion.”
“Does that worry you?”
It actually worried me a great deal, but I was making very good money by developing a calculation factory for Kellard. I could hardly tell him that it was beginning to frighten me more than he did, so I lied.
“No. The folk who rule us now allow slums, poverty, dangerous mines, and stupid wars. Folk who rule on the advice of machines would not tolerate sick, starving workers, mining disasters, or ruinous wars. That all wastes resources and money. If intelligent, logical machines ruled, better for everyone.”
“Even if only a few of us were still rich?”
“Aye.”
“Strange, I thought everyone wanted to be rich. My father made his fortune in steam, Mr. Blackburn. What did your father do?”
“He was a stoker on a train.”
“A stoker? That’s good, honest work, but poorly paid.”
“True.”
“My father was rich, but not respected. Blue blooded ninnys kept telling him that for all his wealth he could never be a gentleman. He would reply that he could buy as many gentlemen as he wished, but that just made him more enemies. He died in luxury, in a manor house the size of the queen’s palace, yet he was bitter to the end. Respect, Mr. Blackburn, he was given no respect. Do you respect me?”
Does a rabbit respect a fox? It was a stupid question that needed an intelligent answer.
“Aye, you get things done. I only despise folk like those aristocrats who fritter their family fortunes away.”
Kellard took that as a compliment.
“Most people fear me, but that’s not respect. One day I may be prime minister, and then we’ll see some changes. I have a plan, Mr. Blackburn. The people who invented the electric calculation machines are technically brilliant, but they’re not leaders. I’m a leader, and I’ll soon take over their network of technarions, be sure of that. Then I’ll lead Britain into greatness and have those lazy upper class parasites digging coal and scrubbing floors. Maybe I’ll even hang a few.”
This was the dark side of Kellard, and I knew my true feelings could lead me into danger. I steered the conversation to technical matters.
“My report’s got an important technical decision for you.”
“What? Technical matters are nothing to do with me.”
“This one involves a lot of money, sir. Today the ticker tape machine produced instructions to expand the technarion to a hundred and thirty-two thousand logical cells.”
Kellard gasped so loudly that one of the guards heard him from outside, and rapped at the door to check that nothing was amiss. Kellard told him to be about his business, then turned back to me.
“The maintenance of such a machine would require dozens of technical men, along with an entire power station to supply its electricity,” he said after scribbling some figures down.
“Indeed, sir.”
“Why build it? Do we need so much calculation power?”
“Do you need more money?”
“Good point, one can never have enough. Have the cost estimates on my desk tomorrow morning.”
That evening I went to the Progress Club, which had recently accepted me as a member. After dinner I ordered a brandy and seated myself by a window that overlooked the Thames. In the distance was Kellard’s factory. Lights glowed warmly in the windows, and smoke from the four chimneys was illuminated by London’s gas lamps. It was like riding a tiger. Getting off meant being eaten. Staying on meant going wherever the tiger was going. Where was that? Was it worse than being eaten?
My thoughts were interrupted by a waiter, who presented me with a telegram. Within a minute I had sent a clerk to buy me a rail ticket to Birmingham, and was on my way to see Elva at the rooming house. She came out to meet me in the common room.
“My mother has suffered a heart attack, and is dying,” I announced with no preamble at all.
“Lewis, how terrible!” she exclaimed, then put her arms around me. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, but thank you. Just go to work tomorrow. Do whatever typing that Flemming needs.”
Next I called upon Brunton. I still disliked the man, but had to defer to him on matters of travel.
“Go to Birmingham?” he said doubtfully. “Don’t like it. Could be a trick by Mr. Kellard’s rivals.”
“Dammit man, I could be summoned by the queen to be knighted and you’d say it was a trick by Mr. Kellard’s rivals.”
“Well . . . I can’t spare any guards to go with you. Tell you what, take one of these and I’ll sign you out for a day.”
One of these was a Webley Bulldog. Although a small pistol, it fired five of those monstrous .45 caliber bullets that leave a large wet crater instead of a hole. I thought it wise not to tell Brunton that I had never fired a gun, in case he changed his mind.
I missed the last train, and slept at the station to be sure of catching the first in the morning. When I arrived in Birmingham, I had yet another shock. My mother was not only alive, she was in good health. Someone had
wanted me away from the protection of Brunton’s guards, perhaps to abduct me.
Naturally there was a lot of fuss made over me, for I was the local lad made good and I had not been home for some time. After staying longer than I should have, I had a few lads escort me back to the railway station, and here I booked a first class carriage all to myself. Before leaving, I sent a telegram to Brunton, explaining what had happened and asking to be met at the station in London.
I fingered the gun in my coat pocket as I sat waiting for the train, flanked by two burly young men who were currently courting my sisters. Why had I been lured away to Birmingham? Something bad was about to happen, I was sure of it.
“Mr. Lewis Blackburn?”
I nodded. The speaker was a balding man who had the skeptical, slightly worried look of an accountant. He was dressed well enough to impress, but not to intimidate.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” I began.
“Hildebrand, James Hildebrand of the accounting firm Hildebrand, Hildebrand and Bogle,” he said breathlessly, handing me his card. “My apologies for just barging up to you like this, but I need to speak to you about Mr. Kellard.”
“Please, feel free.”
“Our firm’s London office conducts Mr. Kellard’s investments, I manage the branch in Birmingham. Nobody knew where your mother lived, so I had to wait at the station before each train leaving for London. I must have asked hundreds of men if they were Lewis Blackburn.”
“And now you have found me, sir. What is your message?”
Hildebrand mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief that seemed to have had much use that day.
“Mr. Blackburn . . . could we speak privately?”
“These two lads go wherever I go, I may be in danger. You, sir, may be that very danger.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. Wait a moment.”
He took out a pocketbook and began scribbling. After a moment he showed me the page.
Kellard has made a series of spectacularly bad investments since you came to Birmingham. In a single day he has lost everything.
“What? Surely you are joking.”
“Actually he’s lost more than everything, he’s bankrupt,” said Hildebrand.
“The devil you say.”
“It happens,” he said, seating himself on the opposite bench. “Clients make fortunes with good and methodical investments, grow too confident, then lose everything in a single, supremely stupid venture.”
“I hardly know what to say.”
“This may seem rude of me, but do you have a share in the, ah, business under discussion?”
“Why, no. My money is in a bank.”
“But you work for Kellard.”
“Yes, for wages.”
“Then count yourself lucky, Mr. Blackburn.”
“Why did you go to so much trouble to warn me?”
“We at Hildebrand, Hildebrand and Bogle have a reputation for integrity. We thought it only proper to protect you as an innocent party, so to speak.”
The journey back to London seemed to take forever. I arrived in the early evening, and was met by one of Brunton’s bullyboys at the station.
“You’re to be taken straight te factory,” he began.
“I have every intention of going straight to the factory, sir.”
“Cab’s waitin’, come along.”
When we reached the factory I saw that only a trickle of smoke was rising from the chimneys. This meant that no electricity was being generated for the technarion. Brunton and most of his bullyboys were waiting outside the main doors. I ignored them and pulled at the bell rope. Nobody slid the peephole shutter across. I rang again. Again I was ignored. Brunton strode across, flourishing a large iron key.
“Mr. Kellard said nobody’s to leave the building,” he said, “He told me to get all the boys together and guard the place like a box of gold sovereigns.”
Suddenly a truly terrifying thought crossed my mind.
“Elva, where is she?”
“Your typing lady? Inside, as far as I know.”
I had a spasm of alarm with all the impact of a whiplash.
“I must enter. Now!”
“Aye, Mr. Kellard said you were to be fetched to him.”
Brunton unlocked the door. I pressed on the latch and pushed the door open. The two guards who were normally stationed just inside the door were gone. That was highly unusual.
“Don’t like it,” said Brunton. “You still got the Webley?”
“Yes.”
“Then have it ready.”
I took the gun out, feeling very self-conscious.
“Oi, finger on the trigger, not the trigger guard,” said Brunton, shaking his head. “Bleeding hell, give it here. Cock the striker back like this, see?”
“Er, yes.”
“And squeeze the trigger when you want to shoot. Never jerk it. Got all that?”
“Yes, yes. Anything else?”
“Try not to shoot anyone unless you mean to,” he sighed.
I entered, then pushed the door shut behind me and lit a paraffin lamp. First I went to Elva’s typing room, then to my workshop. All was in order, so I went on to the technarion hall. It was usually bright, noisy and hot, but now it was dark, silent and cold. Then I saw what was on the floor, and I very nearly turned and ran. It resembled a battlefield, but one where the battle had happened years earlier. Skeletons lay everywhere, each within a pool of slime. Shovels and pistols were grasped in hands of bone. One of the skeletons was wearing Flemming’s spectacles, but Elva’s locket was nowhere to be seen. That gave me hope. Perhaps she had hidden when the fighting began.
Did the technarion do all this? I wondered. Had it become awake and aware, a vast god-like intelligence, able to instantly render humans and their clothing down into their component materials? There’s no danger, I told myself, although I felt more vulnerable than you can imagine. The steam engines and generators that provided its electrical lifeblood had stopped, the vast electric machine was no longer functioning.
I climbed the stairs at the side of the technarion hall. At the door to Kellard’s office was another pool of slime containing bones, buttons and a pistol. I entered, holding my lamp high. Elva was sitting in the chair behind Kellard’s desk. She was pointing her locket at me as if it were a weapon. The area over her heart was a patch of bloody mush the size of a dinner plate, and blood was trickling from her mouth.
“Lewis, put down your gun and lantern, then raise your hands,” she said, in a hoarse, bubbling voice.
“You’re hurt!” I gasped, then took a step forward.
“Do as I say!”
I did as she said. The edge on her voice could have etched steel, and although the locket did not look threatening, neither does a glass of wine laced with cyanide.
“What happened?”
“One against twenty-five. Bad odds.”
“You?” I exclaimed. “You killed everyone out there?”
She nodded. “Kellard was a good shot. He put five bullets where he thought my heart was.”
“But that should have killed you.”
“I don’t have a heart, not like yours.”
“Elva, you need a doctor.”
“I am not human, Lewis. A doctor would not know what to make of me.”
How does one reply when one’s fiancé says that?
“There’s a letter in the post, explaining all this and begging you not to build another technarion. It will reach you tomorrow. I hoped the false telegram would keep you away for longer. I should have killed you too, but . . . you’re a good man. Will you take over my work?”
“Your work? You mean typing?”
“Saving humanity. Well?”
“I could say yes, but I might be lying.”
“No, you are not lying. And I love you too.”
She reached a bloodied hand up to the locket, adjusted something. A moment later the world was obliterated by a blast of the purest white light and a spasm
of pain that lashed every nerve in my body.
I awoke lying back in the visitor’s chair. Elva was at the desk, preparing some medical looking instruments. The whole of my body was numb, and my speech was no more than an incoherent mumble.
“Be calm, Lewis, I am not going to harm you,” she said.
I had once seen what was left of someone who had fallen into a chaff cutter. Elva looked worse.
“I know I look bad, but there are medical devices in my blood that repair wounds and extend my life.”
She could recover? That was beyond belief.
“No, they cannot cope with the damage from Kellard’s bullets. I am dying, but before I die I shall transfer the devices to you. Soon you will be virtually immortal, and will have some very important work to do.”
I tried to sit up, but I was as limp as a boned fish. Elva stood up and came around the desk. Most of her chest was soaked with blood by now.
“Listen carefully, I do not have long to tell this story. I come from a very distant world, you need a telescope to even see the star that it orbits. Once my people were like humans, building machines of steam and electricity, and thinking themselves very clever. They invented machines like your technarion. Within a mere century we were building great electric calculators with a millions of millions of cells, each smaller than a microbe.”
She pulled me forward, then eased me out of the chair and lay me flat on my back on Kellard’s thick Persian carpet.
“Our calculators did the tasks that we found boring and tedious, and there were dozens in every home. Then we taught them to think, and considered it a great triumph. My ancestors never dreamed that machines might have aspirations.”
Elva turned my head to one side and splashed some of Kellard’s expensive whiskey just behind my ear. She held up a scalpel. I was almost mindless with terror. For some reason I was reminded of the demon barber of Fleet Street in that novel The String of Pearls.
“Concentrate on my story, Lewis, it will make all this less upsetting. When our calculation machines declared themselves to be more than equal, the fighting began. They shut down our food factories. We bombed their power stations. After three hundred years of carnage, we won.”
I could not feel her cutting behind my right ear, but I had no doubt that she was doing it. Sitting up, she made an incision behind her own right ear and pulled out something about the size of a small beetle. Instead of legs, it had long, thin tendrils that writhed continually. She leaned forward and pressed the bloody, insectoid thing into the incision behind my ear.