“Hello, Johnny. Are you looking for me?”
A soft hand settled on Jean’s arm. Only one person in all Leopoldville called him Johnny, which partly pleased him, but mostly irritated him beyond bearing.
He bowed politely. “Good evening, Miss Randolph. I suppose I should not be surprised to find you out in the gardens unescorted.”
Jenny Randolph laughed lightly. She was the most beautiful woman in Leopoldville, and the most impossible. Change her just the slightest bit and Jean—and every other young officer in Leopoldville—would be desperately in love with her. Her auburn hair crowned her head simply, without jewelry or ribbons, though her lavender gown was straight from pre-war Paris. Her shoulders gleamed alabaster in the gaslight. If only her ideas, and her country’s, had been less radical.
She swept the ostrich feather she was carrying thoughtfully along the underside of her chin. “You know I don’t care about that sort of thing, Johnny. No one in the United States does.”
“You will excuse me, Miss Randolph, if I decline to talk politics with you.”
Her hazel eyes softened. “I’m sorry, Johnny. Jean. I did not mean to offend you. You and your family are well known for your kindnesses to the natives. I hear you even have a school.”
He answered her quizzing honestly. “It is our duty to help the Africans better themselves any way we can. It is not their fault they are not European. But this is not the time to be distracting ourselves with the burden of our social responsibilities. We are at war, Miss Randolph. At war with a species that desires only our enslavement or extermination. If you were not American you would understand that. Your cities have not been destroyed.”
“But that’s just it.” Jenny’s eyes brightened. Whatever her faults, there was no meanness or insincerity in Jenny Randolph. She was a true descendant of the Abolitionists. And how close had they come to destroying their country because of their principles?
“The Jovians have no intention of overthrowing anything, Jean. They know they can’t live here. They only want to trade with us. That’s why the United States has gotten along so well with them. We support free trade. Europe prefers colonies, which is why you think the Jovians want to colonize you. But they don’t.”
“Nations do not sack each other’s cities in the name of free trade,” Jean declared.
“Tell that to Peking.”
“You Americans took what you could in that war.”
“Yes. But now that we are potentially on the other side, we know better.”
Jean shook his head. “I am sorry, Miss Randolph. You and I simply do not see the matter in the same way at all. London, Brussels, Paris, all three are smoking ruins because of the filthy poison the Jovians rained down on them from the sky. You Americans are fools to trust them. What have they given you in return for your iron and gold? Their technology? Of course not, just as Europe has never shared its technology with Africa or the East. Now that your country has allied with them in so cowardly a manner, all that stands between the Jovians and Earth is the handful of us fighting them here in Africa. Thanks to the abundant gas that powers our turbines,” Jean pointed up toward the great blades windmilling overhead, “and the GCAF, they have not been able to conquer the planet completely. We remain a threat, but the minute we are gone, mark my words, you will wish you were one of the natives on my family’s plantation.”
Jenny drew herself up stiffly. She started to say something, changed her mind, and said something else. “I would rather be dead.”
“And I would rather be alive. That is the difference between us.”
“A wide gulf. On second thought, Johnny, I’m not sorry I offended you at all. If you will excuse me.”
Pulling her shawl closer against her shoulders, Jenny ventured deeper into the garden. Given her extreme pacifism, Jean wondered why she had attended the victory ball at all.
He left in the other direction, but the vagaries of the garden paths brought him circling back to the same place several minutes later. Jenny had also returned, but this time she was speaking intimately to a man who stood with his back to Jean. Realizing she was having an assignation, Jean pivoted away.
Something thumped softly behind him, followed by a rustling in the bougainvillea. His stomach tensed. Fearing the worst, he turned around, only to be further surprised when he saw Jenny on the path, but not the man.
A Jovian in an unarmored mansuit emerged from the flowers.
“Did you get the key?” Jenny asked.
The Jovian displayed something in his mitten-like hand.
Jenny nodded briskly, and the two of them marched away.
Jean was dumbfounded. It was one thing to treat with the Jovians, but quite something else to conspire with them. He remembered the Jovian he thought he had seen escaping from the saucer over Stanley Pool. He had not imagined it. There was a Jovian on the ground, and Jenny Randolph was helping him.
He considered calling for help, but the orchestra had launched into a boisterous polka, and no one was close enough to hear him. His only choice was pursuit.
Passing the bougainvillea, he spotted a foot sticking out from under the flowers. Jenny and her mansuited companion turned a corner and disappeared, but there were few branches off the path they had taken, and Jean was confident he could catch them before they went too far.
The man groaned as Jean pulled him out of the shrubbery. Trevor Thorne-Hopping? What on earth? Thorne-Hopping did little beyond dine at his club and talk rubbish about the war. And then Jean remembered that Thorne-Hopping’s father was Thomas Thorne-Hopping, a planter best known for his mistreatment of the natives before the enactment of the Anti-Cruelty statutes. Thorne-Hopping had insinuated himself well enough with the government to be declared Interior Minister at the start of the war. And the Interior Minister was in charge of the fans.
They were heading to the works! He was sure of it. Thomas Thorne-Hopping doted on his son. It would be a simple matter for Trevor to trick him out of a key. That had to be what Jenny and the Jovian were after. Once inside the Clockworks, they could shut down the fans. And once the fans were shut down, Leopoldville would be as exposed to the Jovian’s poison rain as London and Paris had been.
Leaving Thorne-Hopping to recover on his own, Jean hurried after Jenny and the Jovian.
He found them climbing into a hot air balloon tethered to a mooring cleat on the far side of the garden. Like some grotesque parody of a gentleman, the Jovian handed Jenny into the basket, then followed. The basket sank swiftly under their weight, allowing Jean to climb onto the top of the balloon easily, without being seen. He twined his arms and legs securely through the netting as the burner roared to life in the basket below.
The balloon rose. Jean had first learned aeronautics on his father’s plantation in a balloon just like it. A simple craft, with a gas tank to fuel both the burner and the small propeller. As long as they encountered no stiff winds, Jenny would be able to guide the craft anywhere she wanted.
At first they only ascended. The fans of Leopoldville sucked them upwards. A western breeze pushed them towards the Governor’s Palace, which meant that Jean no longer needed to worry about informing the authorities. They would see what was happening themselves the moment the balloon passed overhead. Taking out his grandfather’s pocket watch, he estimated their airspeed at approximately three knots.
The burner shut off. The propeller kicked on. The balloon’s course swung several points north, toward the central tower. Did Jenny actually intend to fly them straight into the heart of the fans? Granted, there was enough room for a small balloon to pass between them—if the turbulence did not make navigable flight impossible. Jean would never have dreamed of flying through such a gauntlet, no matter how small the balloon, and he was one of the best pilots in the GCAF.
He was impressed by Jenny’s nerve.
But why head toward the central tower? The central tower emerged from the roof of the Interior Ministry, the most heavily guarded building in the world. Surely
the key Jenny had procured from Thorne-Hopping unlocked one of the works’ less conspicuous entrances. One that did not require threading the needle through an alley of veritable typhoons.
The balloon soared over the Governor’s Palace. Below it, the entire cotillion—orchestra, footmen, dancers—stared skyward in slack-jawed wonder.
Jean’s attention shifted to the whump-whump of the spinning blades as they approached the first fan. He tightened his grip on the rigging as the vortex sucked in the balloon like a cork on a raging stream. He tossed and turned, swayed and swung, as the winds swapped the balloon from fan to fan. Down, then up, then up, and down again. His ankles ripped loose from the netting and his legs swung free, whipping back and forth with every gust and gyration. He was certain he was going to fall, then the balloon found a spot of relative calm and he was able to resecure his grip.
A blade sliced through a single strand of netting as the balloon slid under the last fan. Rifles popped, only this time the Jovians were not the targets. Pale smoke puffed from the rifles of the Queen’s Guard as they shot at the balloon from the roof of the Governor’s Palace. Men in evening dress gesticulated wildly. Women fainted.
The central tower loomed ahead. Great fans thundered above and below, but Jenny was bringing them in between both as steady as you please. The tower’s glass siding blinked gold and black as the lower blades sliced through the rooftop’s gleam. Jean guessed they were going to miss the tower by at least five meters, until a grapple, presumably thrown by the Jovian, arced out from the basket. A perfect shot, the iron hook caught the rungs of a ladder that climbed the tower’s side. The balloon, still rising, pulled taut on the line before it hit the upper fan.
Jean peered around the balloon’s edge as Jenny and the Jovian climbed onto the ladder. The Jovian carried a large carpetbag hooked over his shoulder. Jenny had changed out of her ball gown into a leather flying jacket and the heavy dark blue cotton trousers that were all the rage with miners. Her gorgeous hair was tucked practically inside a leather flying cap, a revolver holstered at her hip.
Descending, they soon reached a small door. Jenny unlocked it with a key. The Jovian entered first, but, before following, Jenny pulled the revolver from her holster, and pointed it at the balloon.
“Well, Johnny, since the fans didn’t brush you off, I guess you can come down now. If you don’t, I’ll shoot the balloon.”
Sheepishly, he climbed down. Though a woman, she was an American, and he did not doubt she was an expert shot. And even if he did manage to wrest the revolver from her, he doubted he could overpower the Jovian as well.
“How long have you known?” he asked as he squeezed through the door.
“The balloon was significantly heavier than it should have been when we took off.”
“And you knew it was me because?”
“Who else could it be? You were the last person to see me before Trevor. I should have known you’d follow me. You’ve had a thing for me since the day we met.”
Jean swallowed his reply. No sense giving Jenny the satisfaction of knowing she was getting under his skin. And even if he had been attracted to her once, that could never be the case now that she had shown herself to be a traitoress to the entire world.
The inside of the tower was a lattice of iron similar to the Crystal Palace and la tour Eiffel Already the cables of the maintenance lift that filled the space hummed, gears clanking loudly in their housing overhead. Far below, massive engines thumped and steamed.
The lift arrived. The Jovian entered first. Jenny gestured with her revolver, indicating that Jean should follow. He closed the lift gate behind her and, again at her direction, hit the button that switched the car to manual.
“Where to?” he inquired, his hand on the drive lever.
“The bottom.”
“You’ll never get away with it, you know.” Jean’s stomach lurched as the lift jerked into a rapid descent. “A company of marines are probably sealing off the building right now.”
“This lift goes straight to the works.”
“Where you hope to do what, exactly?”
“Really, Johnny.” Jenny pointed at the carpetbag. “Even you aren’t so naïve as to think our bag is filled with coconuts.”
“It hardly contains enough explosive to destroy the entire works.”
“Perhaps we don’t need explosives to do what needs to be done.”
Once again a look came into her face that suggested she was about to say something she thought was important.
“You know,” she said. “It’s probably better you’re here. Now I won’t be the only witness.”
“Only witness to what?”
“The proof of everything I’ve said. About how the world will be better off with the Jovians in charge than it ever could be with us.”
Jean shook his head in disbelief. “You are mad, do you know that? Absolutely mad.”
“As you’ll be, once I show you what Trevor showed me. He actually believed it would make me think well of him.”
The lift slowed as it reached the bottom. Jean hoped to find a squad of soldiers with bayonets at the ready on the other side of the door when they finally came to rest, but the corridor was unfortunately empty.
The Jovian exited the carriage first, followed by Jean, with Jenny and her American revolver last.
They stood on an iron catwalk at the top of a vast cavern. Smoke and steam billowed around them, concealing whatever lay below. It was hot, too, and as humid as the jungle. Jenny removed her flying cap, her hair already frizzing. In five minutes, they would all be soaked to the skin.
An enormous piston swung out of the smoke, passing bare centimeters from Jean’s face before disappearing back into the steam. Far above, the fans whirled through another turn.
The catwalk followed the wall around the pit in a series of long descents. Further catwalks extended into the heart of the cavern, their destinations hidden by the seething tumult. The deeper the three of them went, the more cacophonous the cavern grew, and the more frequently they spotted the great belts and wheels, boilers and drive shafts of the works. It grew hotter, too. Jets of steam, some of them almost scalding, arced uncomfortably across their path. Jean felt as if he had plunged fully clothed into a bath. From the brief glances he got of Jenny whenever he looked over his shoulder, he could tell she was drenched as well. Her clothes clung to her revealingly and, had the circumstances been different, he would have admired her figure very much.
He hoped he would not have to kill her as well as the Jovian, when it came time to stop them.
They saw no one through the entire descent. Jean knew there were workmen everywhere—the need for power from the works was constant, which meant the need for supervision and maintenance of the machinery was constant, too. But whatever mechanics were about, they remained at their duty stations rather than wandering the stairs.
At the bottom, the passage branched both left and right. Arming himself with a revolver from the carpetbag, the Jovian disappeared along the left hand way. Jean descended the last few steps, and discovered a row of ragged natives sitting in a line along the far wall, their hands and feet manacled to a heavy chain. None of them looked up as Jean appeared out the darkness, but sat coughing in the dim light of an oil lamp guttering on the wall.
“What in the name of God?”
He looked up as the Jovian reappeared. A man materialized from the other direction. Although he was dressed in the greasy coveralls of a mechanic, he carried a rifle slung over his shoulder, and a heavy truncheon at his belt.
Jenny’s revolver boomed. The overseer collapsed, the chambered bullet that had been readied for Jean killing the overseer instead. Jean felt little regret at the man’s murder. If he was in charge of the poor souls chained along the wall, he deserved no less. But what in the name of all that was holy was going on? The worst excesses of the Congo had been put to a stop when Jean was a child, due in no small part to the efforts of his mother and father, and other like-min
ded reformers.
“Do you still believe the Jovians could be any worse than this?” Jenny gestured grimly toward the prisoners. Gunpowder smeared her face, her auburn hair streaking her cheeks in long strands.
Jean could not answer. There had to be an explanation, but he had no idea what it was. Even after the death of the overseer, the chained men and women kept their eyes averted from the Europeans.
He spoke to the closest ones, asking where they were from. But they answered neither his French, nor his Bantu, nor his Swahili.
“Don’t waste your time,” Jenny said. “They’re not from around here. You passed your laws, but did you really think that people capable of cutting off a man’s hand for not meeting his daily rubber quota would pay attention to them? Especially after they found such a profoundly more powerful way to use people?”
“What are you talking about? These people’s situation is grotesque, but I do not see how they are being used. This isn’t a mine, and there’s no rubber plantation down here, either.”
“You’ll see,” she said, and waved him forward.
She led Jean and the Jovian up a narrow stair to what looked exactly like an observation deck above a large operating theater in a European medical college. A rapidly spinning rod stretched from one side of the theater to the other, its middle a five foot long copper cocoon swathed in a thin haze of pale blue fire. On the far side of the room, white-jacketed scientists faced a wall of gauges and heavy switches, meters, and speaking tubes, their backs to the humming rod.
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