"Life happened. Death happened," he said. "It's not fair. It's not right."
"Life isn't fair. Lots of people lost their family in that war--"
"This isn't about Jessica and William!" He almost screamed, raising the pistol. I braced myself, but he managed to regain some composure. "That's what everyone is going to think, I know, but that's not what this is about."
"Why don't you tell me?" I asked, my voice level, watching for the slightest droop in his gun-arm.
"It's about them and what they did to us. What they're doing. What they are going to do."
"Them?"
"Them! The plutocrats! The politicians! The aristocrats here, the robber-barons in America. Science was supposed to make us all free! It was supposed to make us all equal! It was supposed to usher in a new era of prosperity and lift up the weakest, and look at what we've gotten! Look at the fruits of the industrial revolution! Rich landowners get richer, while the poor fill their lungs with poison, work their children into early graves, and pervert the miracles we give them into weapons of war!"
"Look at the airships!" I said. "The telegraphs! The electric lights! You were a toymaker-- you brought joy to countless children!"
"And now those children are grown and it's time to send them to war with those same toys! It's not your fault. I don't blame you, you don't know--- you haven't seen what I've seen. I've spent the last three decades building weapons of war."
"For whom? Aside from a little sabre rattling, between France and Germany, Europe's been at peace for decades."
"For us all! They don't care. They'll sell them all to anyone. It's coming, young man. Soon. The great war to end all wars. Guns that can wipe out entire cavalry lines. Toxic air that can clear battlefields. Razor wire so sharp it'll slice a man to ribbons. Europe is going to become a charnel house-- be glad you won't be there to see it!"
I tensed, staring at his pistol again. "You might shoot me, Hector, but my partner will drop you before I hit the floor. Just give up, and we'll see you get a fair trial."
"Shoot you?" He actually seemed a little surprised at the suggestion, and a little contemptuous. "This isn't for you. It's mine. My escape. I'll die before I let them make her kill me."
Before I could move he had turned the gun on himself. Before I could reach him he'd pulled the trigger. Before I could so much as cry out, the contents of his beautiful genius mind had splattered all over the wall of his hidden workshop.
***
"That's it then?" Bartleby asked.
We watched from afar as the police inspectors were bringing up armfuls of evidence from the workshop below the mausoleum. They had found more plans and schematics. I'd only gotten a brief glance before Scotland Yard had spirited them away, but what I saw will be burned into my mind's eye until the day I die. Bartleby had been right-- Hector Whitney had built her, but he was off about how. Way off.
"No. The Spider's still out there. You heard that poor old fool. She wasn't helping him escape at the church, she was coming after him. He may have built her, but she isn't working at his behest. Whomever it was that turned her loose on him can still turn her against whomever they please-- and I fear that we may be next."
"Us? Why us?"
"We've tracked down her origins. We might even be able to stop her. It makes tactical sense to go after us before we can ready ourselves."
"Oh lord." He scratched his temple with the butt of his pistol.
I stared at it until he sheepishly slipped it back into his pocket. "Fortunately for us, they're wrong about that."
"About it making sound tactical sense?"
"About us not being ready. Come, Bartleby. We must prepare for the endgame."
Okay, yes, I'd exaggerated slightly to Bartleby about being ready, but the poor man's of no use when he's facing inescapable death.
***
The Spider came for us at five minutes past midnight. We were both in the library, Bartleby reading something by Dickens while I played chess against myself. Don't snicker--- it's great practice, and I never lose. There was little warning before she attacked.
She came from the fireplace, as I had assumed she would, it being the least conventional means of ingress. The flames flared up as she landed, momentarily blinding me, and I felt a sharp pain as a thrown knife struck me with enough force to knock over the chair I was sitting in. The weapon penetrated the thick leather under my surcoat almost half an inch-- were I without it, it would have surely killed me.
Bartleby was moving even before the back of my chair hit the floor--- he can be fast when needs be. From the ground I watched as the Spider spun and danced towards him, firelight reflecting off of steel knives held between gloved fingers. He made it all the way to the hall archway before she attacked, launching herself like a cannonball, hitting him in the small of the back with her knees as she had struck me in the church. By the time I'd regained my feet she'd rebounded and was heading back in my direction. I wrenched the knife out of my leather chest-piece and threw it back at her. A clumsy toss, barely on target, but she ducked from it instead of throwing her knives at me and that was all the distraction Bartleby needed.
He lunged from the ground towards the bell-rope at the entrance to the hall. A deep resonating bass note filled the room, its resonance amplified and reflected by the concealed megaphones I'd secreted around the library's tapestries. The effect on the Spider was immediate and dramatic: she collapsed, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Bartleby, panting,watched her still form for a long moment before scrambling his way over to where I sat against the wall.
"Is she done? Is that it?"
He gathered up the first aid kit from the coffee table and sat next to me as I removed my vest, leather chest-piece, and shirt.
"She's done. The Synaptic Disruptor temporarily interrupts the flow of information between the body and the brain."
I winced as Bartleby placed an alcohol soaked cotton swab against my chest wound. "Not a big deal for the living-- us-- our bodies are producing the necessary charge for the connection to resume. We don't even notice the break."
"I don't understand. Why would that affect a clockwork?"
"Galvanic clockwork." I leaned my head back against the wall and let the man patch me up. "Mostly mechanical, but with a human brain and spinal column. Her motions build up the galvanic charge to keep her clockworks moving and to keep her brain functioning. It's why she was always in motion-- she had to keep building that steady charge. The more she moved, the faster and stronger she'd get. The Synaptic Disruptor breaks that cycle, and grounds her charge-- unless someone winds her again, she can't move or think."
"That's monstrous!" Bartleby finished wrapping my wound.
"It's a perversion," I agreed, interrupted by the timely arrival of the Metropolitan Police officers the Home Office had insisted be waiting nearby.
Just as I'd thought, though, the entire affair was over long before they even managed to arrive.
***
They took the Spider, of course. I asked permission to study her workings, but the request was lost in the bureaucracy, along with my request to look at her schematics or any of Whitney's other affairs. The broadsheets exposed Whitney as the mastermind and an anarchist sympathiser, and he was the talk of the London gossips for a time. The Platinum Jubilee went off without a hitch, and everyone agreed it was a spectacle that would not soon be matched in the early twentieth century. I fear that Hector Whitney's predictions of a Great War will prove them wrong, however. Fields of toxic gas, galvanic soldiers both dead and alive, weapons of war designed by a secret think tank -- it's all almost too fantastic to believe, and yet I've seen the proof. I've seen what my fellow engineers can create for the good of mankind, and what the ignorant and powerful see fit to do with it.
Something tells me that the poor old bastard took the easy way out, but I could never join him. I've too much hope. Too much trust, perhaps. There's great evil and greed in men, but great good and compassion as well. Cheers t
o the wonders of the new age!
Maiden Voyage of the Rio Grande
The detention cell was a far cry from the cabins that the luxury airship provided its honoured guests. I only can assume that, should one find oneself to be clapped in irons and escorted to the brig, that one no longer is classified as "honoured." While my previous appointments had plush carpeting, elegant wallpaper, carved hardwood furniture, and delicate electric lighting, the brig (as the American crew chose to call it) was uncomfortable and utilitarian. Frost formed on the bulkhead's unadorned steel, and beside the crude bench a bucket in the corner served as the totality of its amenities. A grate in the entrance hatch the only access given the outside world.
To say that I was uncomfortable would be an understatement. I can only imagine the dreariness of being left alone in that miserable hole for the duration of a voyage. Without a task to occupy my mind and hands I had little doubt that I would go mad after only a few days. Fortunately that didn't seem to be the Captain's intent, for half-an-hour after my incarceration he returned with one of his officers.
"Wainwright." Captain Nussbaum conveyed a military demeanour that matched his uniform.
While the Rio Grande was a civilian vessel, the crew's uniform was based loosely on that of the American Navy, perhaps a little more ornate and a little less saturated. If the Captain was a retired German officer, they were a far cry from what he would have worn during his term of service.
He refrained from further comment, standing near the hatch as a trio of airmen brought in a small folding table and a pair of chairs, which they set up in front of me so that the seats were across from my bench. When they'd left, shutting the hatch behind them, Nussbaum and his officer sat.
"You have already met Herr Dewit?" Nussbaum asked.
Dewit, First Mate by his insignia, scowled at me. As the man had walked in on me amidst a blood-soaked murder scene I cannot entirely fault him, though I must admit to some annoyance at the entire business.
"Let's cut to the quick, Wainwright," First Officer Dewit said. "Why did you murder the Second Engineer?"
"He was an engineer?" I asked. "Pity."
Captain Nussbaum swung across the table, striking me with the edge of his hand. He was a good deal stronger than his thin frame indicated, and my head rocked back with the force of the blow.
"Herr Henderson was a good man, Wainwright." Nussbaum wiped blood from his hand with his handkerchief. "You will speak of him with respect. Why did you murder my engineer?"
"I intend no disrespect. I simply meant that a vessel of this size needs as many engineers as it can carry." I put a manacled hand to my lip, and it came away bloodied. It occurred to me that protesting my innocence was the correct course of action in this social situation. "I didn't kill him. I didn't kill anyone."
"Liar. I saw you standing over him with my own eyes." The First Mate continued his glower.
"I ran across the man not two minutes before you arrived. I was simply checking to see if he could be--" repaired "--helped."
"Helped? The top of his skull was pulped and his vital fluids splashed across the engine room!"
"I'm not a doctor, Mr. Dewit."
The Mate looked like he was going to strike me as well, but the Captain held him off with a gesture. "You say you stumbled in upon him already killed. What were you doing in the Engine Room to begin with?"
"I heard a whine."
"A whine?" the Captain asked. "You heard him dying from the hall?"
"Impossible," the First Mate said. "Wait until you see the body, Captain – Henderson had to have died instantly, and–"
"No, not him," I said. "The engines. Their pitch had changed. It woke me up, and I went looking for an engineer to see if I could take a look at them."
"I didn't notice any difference when I found you."
"It wasn't that vast a change. A mere shift in hertz."
"I didn't notice any shift."
I lay the side of my face against the smooth metal of the bulkhead. "It's still off. Still different. I think the pitch may be increasing, but lacking a device to measure the oscillations' amplitude I cannot be certain."
Captain Nussbaum and his officer stared at me.
A knock at the door distracted them, and First Mate Dewit rose to answer it.
"Mr. Herbert." He greeted the new arrival.
American industrialist Frank Herbert had commissioned that the Rio Grande be built as a testament to American ingenuity and excess. It was, by far, the largest airship ever designed and a marvel of modern engineering. The sheer audacity of the thing, the pompous hubris of building a ridiculously large airship to serve as a luxury hotel for the richest men in the world, was the sort of vanity that appealed to me. Herbert had built the Rio Grande for no reason greater than that he could.
Herbert himself was no less ostentatious than his creation. He was big in all things – loud, fat, and stinking of cigars far cheaper than those you would associate with a man of such means. His waistcoat was stained with the evidence of the day's meals and exertions.
To my mild surprise my partner Bartleby followed him into the detention cell.
"Who's this?" the First Mate asked.
"This fellow is Mr. Bartleby," Mr. Herbert said.
With the five of us in the brig things had grown crowded, and I found myself pushed back towards the corner. Bartleby gave me a confident nod, and I relaxed a little.
"You may recognise his name from that affair with the clockwork assassin caught before Queen Victoria's jubilee last month."
"You're Alton Bartleby?" Dewit said with a start. Slowly, he turned to glare back at me. "So you are–"
Bartleby gestured towards me with a flourish. "My assistant and partner, James Wainwright."
"I'm sorry, Herr Wainwright. I had no idea," grumbled the Captain.
"He doesn't look the part of a famous detective, does he?" Bartleby shook his head, gesturing towards my sack coat and trousers, both in the dull earth tones I preferred. "Nothing but rumpled clothing and engine grease. I've been telling you, James, clothes make the man."
"An honest mistake on the crew's part, I'm sure." I raised my manacled hands. "If you would be so kind?"
The Captain hesitated. "The fact remains, gentlemen, that one of my engineers has been brutally murdered, and your Mr. Wainwright was discovered standing over the body."
"I told you why I was there."
"See?" Bartleby nodded. "He's got a good reason, whatever it is."
"The engine sounded a bit off."
"So there you have it." Bartleby sounded satisfied. "My partner, the R.G.A.E. accredited engineer, noted a mechanical problem and set about fixing it. I trust there's no reason to further involve the Guild?"
"Should I be notifying my Guild representative?" I asked, picking up on his lead.
"Oh no. No, that shouldn't be necessary," said Mr. Herbert. Many of his investments and enterprises were technological – conflict with the Royal Guild of Artificers and Engineers would ruin him.
The Captain's face reddened. "Herr Herbert, I strongly suggest–"
"The fact of the matter, Captain," said Bartleby, "is that if, as we say, James is innocent, then you still have a murderer loose on your ship. By the time we land and James is vindicated by the authorities then this killer will have gotten away with his terrible deed."
"What are you suggesting?"
"Let us investigate this matter for you and discover the true culprit."
"And if Herr Wainwright is the killer?" the Captain said. "I would not care to have a suspected murderer running free and planting false evidence to clear himself."
"Now hold on one moment, Captain." A calculating and predatory look had come over Mr. Herbert's face. "Yes. Having the consulting detectives who brought down the London Spider find the murderer would turn this disaster into a sensational coup. Perhaps if someone were to keep an eye on their activities? Captain?"
"If you insist, Herr Herbert, I believe that one of your guests ha
s employed a Pinkerton agent as part of his security detail–"
"You mean Ives? No. Out of the question." Herbert shook his head. "Ives is one of my chief rivals. If he were to learn that the Rio Grande's maiden voyage was marred by murder most foul, I have no doubt that he would find some way to leverage that against me. I'll not have one of his men investigating it!"
"Herr Herbert, our priority should be--"
"If Ives finds out about this awful business, I want it to be through the same channels that everyone else does, on my own time table. The channels that I control."
The Captain let out a long belaboured sigh and set about unlocking my manacles. "Very well. Herr Dewit, you will accompany Herr Bartleby and Herr Wainwright and observe their investigations. Do not hesitate to come to me should you suspect them of tampering with evidence."
"And for God's sake keep it quiet," Herbert wiped at the sheen on his face with a greasy handkerchief. "The last thing we need is to set the passengers off into a panic."
A sour expression on his face, Mr. Dewit snapped off a smart salute, and the three of us departed.
***
The Rio Grande's engineering section was expansive, filled with the massive turbines and steam engines necessary to move a ship the size of a luxury hotel. At the fore of the section was the engineering control room where I'd first laid my eyes on the remains of Second Engineer Henderson. A crewman accosted Dewit as we returned.
"Can we get this cleaned up?" Chief Engineer Miller asked. "I don't mean to be insensitive, but I've got work to be done. This ship doesn't run itself."
The Chief Engineer was tall, gangly, and sour-faced. He didn't move or act like an engineer – he had about him the demeanour of a bureaucrat, one who's function in keeping the airship running was that of a cog, delegating the actual work to his subordinates.
"Soon," Bartleby promised. "Give me a few minutes to examine the crime scene, and I'll let you get back to your work."
Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection Page 4