Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection

by Michael Coorlim

  I put the Array down on the table, hands at my sides, eyes watching for the slightest change.

  ***

  I hastened to Bartleby's room. Aldora was sitting by his bedside, holding his hand, watching as he thrashed and whimpered in his delirium.

  "Have you forgotten something?" Aldora asked.

  "I've finished."

  "Already?" She looked up at me. "It's been a scarce twenty minutes."

  "I'm an efficient workman," I said. "There was no foreign substance in Bartleby's tea, but the leaves from which it was brewed come from a plant with hallucinogenic properties."

  She pursed her lips. "Ergot?"

  "Nothing fungal. No. More of a succulent with a psychoactive alkaloid."

  "In my travels I remember hearing stories about a tribe of indigenous American Indians who claimed one of their local cacti capable of bestowing powerful visions."

  An icy coldness settled around my gut. "Doctor Nash mentioned that Doctor Teague's therapies involved a South American plant extract. To bring her patients to a mental state conductive to her therapies."

  Aldora frowned. "If so, that might explain her disappearance."

  "I sincerely hope not." I handed her a small dropper full of an amber liquid. "Here. This should help speed Bartleby's recovery."

  She took it. "What is it?"

  "An extract from compounds that should counteract the alkaloid in his system."

  She may have assumed I didn't elaborate out of the drug's technicalities, but to be honest all I knew was that it would be effective. It was a concoction made from a number of other psychoactive chemicals; what its side effects might be I had no clear idea.

  Aldora did not need to know that.

  While she administered the dropper to her husband I stood and quietly left the room. There was a piece missing from this puzzle, but the only man who might be able to supply it was dead. In the past, that might have stopped me.

  But not now. Not when there was so much at stake. Not when some villain had struck a blow directly at my partner's mind.

  I had a good idea of who it might be.

  I hoped to God that I was wrong.

  ***

  I'd left with stealth assisted by Aldora's concern for her husband. As worried as she was, I had little doubt she would have attempted to dissuade me, if not outright forbidden the course of action I knew was the only avenue available to me. I had to be certain, you see. I had to test my theory.

  It was a common lament among the first and second year students at the Academy that the great unwashed and uneducated masses did not properly understand science. Their superstitious and primitive ancestral taboos. We loudly proclaim to one another that there is no cause or morality higher than science.

  By the third year we've heard the rumours. We might not believe that the Guild employs a secret agency to police its members, but there's no sense in taking chances. Our boasts are quieter, our projects somewhat more circumspect.

  But we remember. We know that the boundaries of scientific advancement are artificial. Social. We remember the abject lessons taught by men like Jekyll and Frankenstein, and we toe the line, but always, we wonder and whisper to ourselves in the night, "what if." And sometimes, we are tempted.

  I am, by all accounts, a good man. My standing with the Guild of Artificers and Engineers is impeccable. But I am no saint. I am just an engineer.

  I rolled the director's corpse onto his machine's recliner and began attaching the electrodes to his lifeless skull.

  This would work. After a few modifications to the workings and a steady galvanic current through the body.

  In theory.

  ***

  Sliding into the dead man's dreamscape was an experience entirely unlike that of riding alongside Doctor Vogle while he dreamed. I was no passive observer here. No passenger into Nod.

  When the void melted away it was replaced by a darker blackness, and I stood among it in my own form, as James Wainwright.

  That was comforting. I was afraid I'd have been the corpse of Director Paddock instead.

  I was in what remained of his cooling mind, active only by means of the steady current I was running through it. It was not much. Certainly not enough to reanimate him. Just enough to keep the brain idling so that I could have a poke about. The most benign of all possible necromancies.

  Everything was dark, monochromatic, and fading. I could see it happen as his grey matter decayed beyond the capability of his machine to interpret the information it stored, a return of that void within the very structure of his dying reality. I had little time, perceptually, to investigate his memories before they were gone. I wasn't sure what would happen to me, to my mind if I was here when that last spark was extinguished, but I knew from my experiences with Doctor Vogle that the connection between us was two way.

  I did not dwell on what I might be bringing back with me.

  All around me Bedford Mental Hospital was slipping into decay. I wandered its halls in search of memories.

  I found Paddock.

  He was a poor representation of what the man had been in life, a fading ego and a dying self-image. Callow and sunken, he walked along the halls in a robe-like doctor's coat, the very picture of Charon looking for lost souls. He found them.

  In each cell there was a patient, and as they spoke in a language meaningless to the ears of the living, I could see images appear over their heads. Memories of Paddock's interpretations of their psychological trauma. Abusive parents. Unfaithful spouses. Accidents and violence and tragedy.

  But always this, always some form of the Butzefrau, some form of the creature that had haunted Doctor Vogle, and always in the context of the hospital.

  "Who is it, Paddock? What is it?" I asked.

  He turned from his patient, the silent giant Dunstan, and looked at me for the first time. The void had reached his eyes, black cataracts a sign that his ego would not persist much longer.

  "September 18th, 1911," he spoke, the words appearing on diary pages over his head. "Someone is abusing the patients. This is no longer a matter I can ignore, not something I can continue to pretend is not happening. Already I have determined that the culprit is not one of the patients bug wo af eye on saf mol eke nf az..."

  His words trailed off into meaningless babble, the diary pages melting, their words abyssal. His flesh too seemed to melt from his bones, and I looked around in shock to see that the walls had lost almost all their definition.

  I could not afford to tarry. I was afraid that I no longer had need to.

  ***

  My return to the world of the living was a shock of light and colour and sound. Despite the muted nature of Paddock's office I found myself almost overwhelmed after my foray into death. I closed my eyes and covered my ears, rolling from the machine onto the carpet, waiting until the overwhelming vertigo had passed.

  "Oh, Loni," I whispered, standing and brushing myself off before returning to Aldora and Bartleby.

  In Which Alton Cracks the Case

  "Shortly after you'd attached yourself to Vogle the good Doctor provided us with a tea service," Alton said, smiling at James when he returned.

  His wife had joined him half on the bed, one foot demurely on the ground. To be honest, while she'd done an excellent job of concealing herself from him, he wasn't surprised to see her there. Truthfully he wouldn't have minded her assistance, but there was no correct way to request it. While his partner, James, would have dismissed such a concern as meaningless – and God bless the man for it – the Bartlebys were too well acquainted with the games of society to ever permit themselves to stop playing.

  While in London, at the very least.

  "Beastly stuff," he said. "Bitter as Turkish coffee."

  "It was made from a South American cactus," James said.

  "Disgusting."

  "More to the point, psychoactive," Aldora said.

  "Whatever it was, ghastly. The brandy barely made it tolerable. Now that I think it, I don't r
emember seeing her having drunk any."

  "I'm surprised it affected you so quickly," James said. "Botanical drugs and poisons normally take some time to be effective."

  "Quickly?" Alton said. "James, you were hooked up to that machine for hours."

  James blinked, then looked towards the door. "Fascinating. It didn't seem thus."

  "It did not actually begin to affect me until an hour had passed. Doctor Teague and I had been passing the time discussing trivial matters--"

  "Such as?" Aldora asked.

  Bartleby chuckled. He'd have seen jealousy in her interruption if he didn't know her better. "Politics, weather, suffrage, that sort of thing. I'd rather think James had gotten to know her better during their time together."

  "How so?" James asked.

  "Our conversation was superficial. Window-dressing. The sort of drivel that makes the firmament of my world, but that which you do not abide."

  "We spoke of our pasts," James said. "How we got to be who we are."

  "See? And we spoke of tensions in Europe and the rattling of German sabres. Meaningless fluff."

  "For hours?"

  "Not entirely," Bartleby said, his tone dropping. "For the first hour, yes, it was conversation and horrid tea. Much like an evening with Aldora's parents."

  He could feel the face she wasn't making at him.

  "But after an hour or so, my vision began to skew. I started seeing these... clouds of phosphorescent blue and green. I mentioned them to the Doctor, but she seemed neither surprised nor concerned."

  "That woman," Aldora said in a voice so soft that Bartleby wasn't entirely sure he'd heard it.

  "After that, well. My legs turned into serpents and my arms into a tree. It was a barmy all-around muddle from there on."

  "How dreadful!" Aldora covered her mouth.

  Alton found himself unable to maintain eye contact as his thoughts drifted back to what the drugs had shown him. Reality had become supplanted by metaphor, and he had found himself an unwilling audience to a stage play about his life. Scenes blended into one another, but the emotional resonance they carried was all too distinct. He was a child in the vast but draughty corridors of the opulent poverty he'd grown up in, watching workmen scrape the brass filigree from the stairwell, watching his father's debtors take away the family legacy piece by piece and replace it with ever more wine.

  He ran from those halls, still a child, onto the deck of the HMS Benbow with a toy sword and pistol, watching as his friends and countrymen bombarded Benin. They stormed the beaches, his cap-gun firing musket rounds, his wooden sabre drawing red-ribbon blood, his fellow child-sailors howling war crimes and stealing sweets from the children of West Africa, leaving burning corpses in their wake.

  In his vision Teague became Queen Victoria herself, impossibly tall and gaunt, watching him passively at first before leaving him alone in a ruined city drowning in blood – first it was Benin, then it was London.

  He told none of this to his companions, simply offering them a weak smile.

  ***

  Alton stood before his father, his real father, his greying asylum-committed father. "It's Teague. It has to be. She murdered Paddock when he discovered the nature of her treatment, and released the lot of you to cover her tracks."

  "Doctor Teague," Dennis repeated. "Loni. I find it hard to... no. No, I know it must be so."

  "Were you a patient of hers?" Alton asked, wondering if his father had undergone the same hellish experience.

  "No. Not me. Others. They speak highly of her methods. Will Scotland Yard accept this?"

  "Not willingly, but I don't see what choice they have."

  Dennis folded his hands. "If they accept Doctor Teague as the guilty party, then we will stand down. I will accept whatever punishment is due me."

  "They won't be kind, father. You did make them look rather foolish."

  "Kindness is in short supply, boy. But I am a Bartleby, and I will not deny my faults or seek to avoid what my deeds have brought me."

  Alton felt what might have been admiration for the old man.

  "Go, then. Consider yourself released. Save these poor wretches, Alton... so many have taken advantage of them for so long. Bring them... bring them a taste of justice. Just the once."

  ***

  The man from the home office was considerably less congenial after hearing the detective's report.

  "Are you quite sure?" Johnson asked. "Doctor Teague is a respected academic and medical professional."

  "E's just trying to save his sot of a father," Inspector Abel said.

  "We're certain," Alton said. "The nature of her treatment. She drugged me, for the love of god. I should say that her motive is fairly clear."

  "I'd dare say that an altered state of consciousness is no stranger to Mr. Alton Bartleby," Able said. "What've you got beyond the testimony of the mad and the drug-addled?"

  "There's bound to be fingerprints on the knife," James said. "And likely in the blood on the control panel. I am quite sure both will belong to Doctor Teague."

  "There's blood all over the asylum," Abel said. "Circumstantial at best."

  Johnson leaned back in his camp chair, hands across his belly, and let out a long sigh. "It's enough to warrant a search of Doctor Teague's quarters for further evidence of wrongdoing."

  "Oh, but sir--," Abel said.

  Johnson glared at the man. "Take four men, Mr. Barlteby, and Mr. Wainwright... where's Mrs. Bartleby?"

  "Fiske, please," Aldora said, stepping forward from behind the man.

  "Good heavens. You should bell the cat, Mr. Bartleby."

  "She'd claw my eyes out were I to try it, sir," Alton said with a twinkle in his eye, playing to the man's prejudices.

  Aldora didn't quite roll her eyes.

  "Perhaps it would be best for you to return home?" Johnson turned in his chair to address her. "If insufficient proof is discovered at Teague's home, then I'll have no recourse but to send the Metropolitan Police in to settle matters."

  "Our matter of settlement is not for a Lady's eyes, Missus," Abel said.

  "I would assume not," Aldora said. "Might I accompany my husband and the officers to Doctor Teague's home?"

  "I cannot imagine why."

  "Oh, you know." Aldora gazed at the opposite end of the pavilion tent. "I can see to it that her household is out of the way during the search. Being a woman and all that."

  "Excellent idea," Johnson said. "You've got a sharp one here, Mr. Bartleby."

  "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

  "Off with you, then."

  "Yes, sir."

  20 September, 1911 - 9:15 pm

  I knew that someone was waiting for me in my laboratory by the way that the lock felt loose when I opened it. There's a trick to it, you see – you've got to lift up and hold when you turn the knob, or the casing loosens. It would be trivial to fix, but I rather prefer knowing when Bartleby's been down below mucking about. So I can repair the damage his curiosity does before it blows up into my face.

  I knew that it was Doctor Teague because, honestly, who else was it going to be?

  "Doctor," I said, descending the stairs. I could hear her sobs. "Loni. What are you doing?"

  "James," she stepped into the light of my lantern, more dishevelled than she had been when we'd first met. Her golden hair was almost mane-like, its curls wild, the hem of her dress tattered and torn, muddied by her passage from the asylum back to my lab.

  "What have you done?" I asked.

  She came to me, tears cutting through the soot the rain had left on her face. "I've gone and ruined everything, haven't I?"

  "You've killed a man. Ended your career. Endangered countless lives. And for what?"

  "You have to understand!" she said, the heat from her sorrow soaking my shirt as she attempted to bury her face into my chest. "My life's work – the use of psychoactives in therapy. I've seen you – I've seen this place. I know you understand! Nothing is more important than the work. Nothing!"


  And the thing was, I did understand. My work was all consuming. It devoured any chances I had at a normal life, at personal relationships beyond those who didn't let my idiosyncrasies and eccentricities drive them away. I didn't mind. Only those who remained were true companions, and I had no use for the superficial.

  "You were the one, the one who'd been hurting the patients." I put Paddock's journal on the table. "He came to confront you about the abuse, and you murdered him."

  "I can't help it, I--" she faltered, "Sometimes I just get so angry. I can manage it, keep it under control, let it out in short gasps to punish the patients when they won't cooperate, but when Arthur threatened to expose me, threatened to take my research before the courts, it... it was just too much!"

  "So you killed him."

  "I didn't mean to! I was talking to him, and then the knife was in him, and I was holding it."

  "What did you expect to accomplish?" I asked. "Why did you come here?"

  "For you!" she said. "I know you felt this connection we share. Our love for the work. You understand it. You understand me."

  She turned to face the stairs, pressing herself into me. "You can help me get out of London. Get me a change of clothes. Onto an airship headed for the continent. Join me. We can leave London, James, leave England and its pedestrian morality for Bavaria or Prussia or somewhere anti-intellectual morality won't get in the way of the purity of our science!"

  "Our science?" I pushed her away. "Doctor. You have done nothing but betray your "science." Psychiatry is a profession to help the wounded of mind, men like Vogle and Earm and Dennis Bartleby. You... you used them. You betrayed them. You betrayed science, your calling, everything you worked for in order to support your pet theory."

  She seemed shocked. "James, what are you saying, I--"

  "What I am saying, Miss Teague, is that you are a poor scientist and a discredit to your profession. You're more a danger than the patients you've been hurting."

  A wordless scream issued from her lips, and she rushed towards me, hatred and venom in her eyes.