Aether Spirit

by Cecilia Dominic

  The fog had thickened but still moved in swirling ghostly patterns that made Chad’s arm hairs stand on end.

  “Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow,” Chad said.

  Patrick shook his head and blinked. “The damn stuff is mesmerizing. And no, we’re not waiting. Come on.”

  Chad wrapped his coat around him and stepped into the gloom. The patches of mist were no colder or damper than the rest of the air, and he scolded himself for giving into superstitious thoughts. His tendency toward paranoia was likely due to his suspicions about the low likelihood of him, Claire, and Bryce all ending up in the same place. Someone’s hand was trying to get them all together, and he aimed to know who. Or, rather, to confirm who and why. He made a mental note to send a telegram in the morning.

  When they reached the workshop, Chad bumped into Patrick’s back when the Irishman stopped suddenly.

  “What is it?” Chad asked and rubbed his nose.

  “Someone’s in there.”

  * * * * *

  Well, that was dumb.

  As usual, Claire’s voice of reason chimed in after she was in trouble. She had a vague—weren’t most of them?—memory of someone teasing her about it, but in an affectionate way.

  “What in God’s name is that?” The soldier at the door peered in, and he started toward the corner of the room where she hid. The glow behind her illuminated his wide eyes and barely whiskered face, but she focused on the weapon he aimed in her direction. She breathed as shallowly as she could, praying he would neither find her nor be startled into accidentally discharging the gun. He exuded wonderment, but mostly fear and hope that he could prove himself. The writhing light in the sphere drew him as it had her. She shrank back, and her bustle bumped a stack of crates, which shifted. They creaked and swayed over her, and the soldier aimed his gun in her direction.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, and his voice cracked. Her heart would have broken for his stolen youth had he not had the means to kill her in his shaking hands.

  She opened her mouth to reassure him she meant no harm, but the door banged open. The soldier lifted his weapon just before he spun around, and Claire jerked back. Whatever she was going to say came out in a squeak as the crates tumbled around her. One struck her left wrist with a bruising corner, but thankfully they were empty of anything but packing material. She cowered underneath the pile of wood and straw, her hands over her head. Her glasses had fallen off, but she couldn’t look for them now.

  “What’s going on in here?” It was O’Connell’s voice. Oh, she was going to get it now.

  “Private Derry, is that you?” And Radcliffe’s.

  Great. Why did he have to come? He’ll really think me a fool now.

  The boy soldier’s words spilled out in a melted rush. “Doctor Radcliffe, Engineer O’Connell, I saw the door open, and I came in to investigate, and there’s someone in here.”

  “Whoever it is, we’ll take care of them,” O’Connell said. “Get out of here before you shoot something you shouldn’t. And stop waving that revolver around.”

  “Your shoulder isn’t healed enough to handle the kickback from that,” Radcliffe added gently. “And thank you for investigating. We’ll take it from here. Do you mind if I borrow that? I know it was your grandfather’s gun, so I’ll be careful. I’ll return it when you come to see me tomorrow.”

  Claire allowed a little smile to creep to her lips as the boy’s embarrassment at O’Connell’s words warmed to gratitude and pride at Radcliffe’s. If she didn’t know better, she’d guess the doctor had abilities similar to hers. Or maybe he just understood people better than most of the neuroticists she’d known in Europe.

  “And don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen here,” Radcliffe told the boy. “It’s a top secret project for the general. You did a good job cornering the intruder.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The scraping of his boots on the hard floor of the workshop turned to muffled thuds in the mud outside and disappeared.

  Now it was just the two men, one irritated and the other one curious. Claire could guess which was which. O’Connell had the red hair and probably the Irish temper to go with it. Radcliffe would want to know who was in there and why.

  “Under the crates and straw,” O’Connell stage whispered.

  “Yes,” Radcliffe said. “I have no doubt that whoever is under there knows we’re here and that he’s been discovered. No need to whisper.”

  “Or maybe it’s just a big rat,” O’Connell said. “The best thing might be to shoot it and be done with it.”

  Claire didn’t want to be shot, and she didn’t know the extent of the Irishman’s ruthlessness. She couldn’t hope for them to leave her undiscovered, so she called out, “Gentlemen, a little assistance?”

  She cringed when she felt their attention—and possibly the barrel of the weapon—aimed toward her, but she had to add one more thing, “And if you could tread carefully, I’d appreciate it. My glasses are somewhere in this mess.”

  Of all the voices Chad might have expected to come from the pile of wood and straw in the corner of the workshop, Claire’s was not one of them. He was glad she couldn’t see Patrick turn to him with a grin and mouth, “Just like old times, eh?”

  “You can take the girl out of the workshop,” he mouthed in return. He’d take care of Private Derry later. He supposed he should be glad the intruder wasn’t a man with a gun or a member of the Clockwork Guild or neo-Pythagoreans. No, it was just Claire’s curiosity and clumsiness getting the better of her as it had in the past. But how had she gotten in?

  “Gentlemen? Doctor Radcliffe? Mister O’Connell?” Now she sounded plaintive. “Please help me out. I don’t know how much is on top of me, otherwise I’d extract myself.”

  “Watch out for her spectacles,” Radcliffe reminded Patrick.

  “Aye. And her pride. I don’t suppose we can keep this a secret from her now.”

  They moved the crates off Claire and dug her out of the straw. Patrick found her spectacles with unbroken lenses, but one of the arms had snapped off. She stood and accepted them. They sat crooked on her face, and she held them with one hand while she attempted to brush herself off with the other. Straw stuck to her clothing and in her hair. Chad put his face in one hand so he wouldn’t laugh at her, his silly Claire, or cry that she wasn’t his anymore.

  Why did she have to be the same scrape-finding girl he’d fallen in love with?

  “And what were you doing in here?” Patrick asked. “I told you the workshop was off-limits.”

  Chad regained his composure and emerged. He couldn’t say anything about it being typical of her.

  “I…” She looked from one to the other. “I got disoriented and found it. The padlock came off, so I brought it inside while trying to figure out how to alert you. Then I saw that.” She gestured to the Eros Element.

  “Under its sheet?” Patrick asked.

  “It wasn’t covered.” She looked from under her lashes at him. “I couldn’t resist a little peek. Then that soldier came in, and I hid, and…” She spread her hands, indicating the mess around her.

  The little cuss wasn’t repentant at all, and he knew she wouldn’t be unless someone or something had gotten hurt, either physically or emotionally, which would bother her for days. But what effect might the Eros Element have had on her damaged psyche if she hadn’t been stopped from, well, whatever she’d been doing? Concern welled up and twisted into anger.

  “This is a military base,” Chad told her. “I know you think you know your way around, but you could stumble into more trouble than you could ever imagine.”

  She rubbed her wrist and winced. “Well, perhaps you should let me see some patients, and then I wouldn’t have to entertain myself.”

  “She has a point,” Patrick mumbled. He repacked the straw in the boxes and stacked them.

  “Fin
e, you can come to the hospital tomorrow, but at the first sign of distress to you, I’m sending you back to the General’s House and telling Mrs. Soper to lock you in.”

  Claire grinned, and Chad groaned inwardly. He’d given her exactly what she wanted, and she still wouldn’t be punished for trespassing. Not for the first time, he didn’t envy Allen and Melanie McPhee their headstrong daughter. Still, they’d done the best they could under the circumstances.

  “Now what’s that thing?” She walked to the glass sphere and peered in. “How does it work? What is the fuel source? Where did you get it? What are you going to do with it?”

  Patrick held up his hands. “One at a time, please, Doctor. The answer to most of your questions is that we don’t know.”

  “What?” She turned. “Then why have it if you don’t know what you’re going to do with it? And what do you know about it?”

  “Put on some tea, Patrick,” Chad said. “This could take a while.”

  Now Claire stood with a gloved hand on the glass, and golden light poured from her fingertips into the element.

  “Patrick,” Chad said. He wanted to knock her hand away, but fear paralyzed him.

  O’Connell gently lifted Claire’s hand from the glass. “Now tell me, lass, what did you feel when you were touching it?”

  Chapter Ten

  Fort Daniels, 24 February 1871

  Claire wasn’t sure what to tell O’Connell. She snatched her hand from him and flicked away the thoughts that no man would want to touch her hands if he could see her scars. She’d felt a warmth under her fingertips, but more than that, she’d felt the glowing sphere’s amusement at what had happened. But how? She was enough of a scientist to not want to present what she’d found unless she had a good explanation. And then she’d have to explain herself and what she could do, which she also couldn’t do logically. No, she’d stick with simple description for now.

  “It’s warm,” she said with a shrug. “It feels good tonight. Is that what it’s supposed to be? A new heat source?”

  O’Connell and Radcliffe exchanged glances. They’d obviously been friends for a long time to be able to communicate like that. Somehow she felt she already knew they had a long relationship, even beyond what she observed. It was another frustrating example of how she sometimes knew things even beyond her talent. It had been a boon to find out she had some knowledge of tinkering. Everything was a tantalizing clue to the past her mind and her family hid from her. Would it be possible for her to figure out who she was without having to face the memories of the accident?

  “In a sense, yes,” Radcliffe said. “A new power source.”

  Claire nodded as bits and pieces of overheard conversations floated through her brain. Were they from before she left Boston or on the continent? The content said Boston. “They talked about the coal shortage in the north, even with limiting what we export to England. You still haven’t told me exactly what it is.”

  Patrick walked to a desk on the other side of the room and lit a lamp. Now golden light diffused through the laboratory—it was too wondrous to be a mere workshop—and made it all seem friendlier. The sounds of him making tea added a level of familiarity to it. Now she knew without specific memory that her father had been a tinkerer, and he had made tea when he and she worked together. She only wished she could know what they’d worked on.

  “I’m not sure how to explain it,” Radcliffe said. He moved some boxes off of a low bench and gestured for her to sit. “Now let me see your hand, please. You’ve been rubbing it. Did one of the crates catch it?”

  “Yes, but I’m all right.” She cradled her left hand in her right one. It did ache, but she didn’t want him to see the ropes of white and dark pink that had turned her once beautiful hands into a horrifying mess.

  “If you’re not comfortable taking your gloves off, I can feel the bones through the kid. I’ll be gentle.”

  Had O’Connell mentioned her hands to Radcliffe? The light smoldered in his gray eyes, and he emanated relief, probably that he wouldn’t have to touch her scarred skin. She didn’t blame him, but he was an army doctor. Hadn’t he seen worse? She almost wanted to take her gloves off to shock him, but she wanted him to tell her about the glowing orb that had its own feelings, and she wouldn’t allow him to distract her from her questions. She held out her hand. He felt it and turned it this way and that, asking if his manipulations hurt. She murmured yes when they did.

  “Probably just a bruise,” he told her. He released her hand, and she placed it with the other one on her lap.

  “Good. Now that you’ve confirmed I’m not injured, would you please tell me what that thing is? Just explain as best you can.”

  “Well, you’re familiar with aetherics, right?” O’Connell asked. He handed her a mug of tea. “Here, this will settle your nerves from your accident.”

  “Thank you.” She blew over the top of it. The heat she felt through her gloves was of the stinging kind, not the tingling warmth of the thing in the glass sphere. “And aetherics is a branch of physics, is it not?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. And aether has posed some challenges to those who work with it like stability.”

  Claire set the mug on the bench between her and Radcliffe. “You mean to tell me that’s a stable aether mass? How is that possible?”

  “The music of the spheres,” O’Connell replied. He pulled a chair up to join them but didn’t block Claire’s view of the glass sphere and its contents. “A talented aetherist found the right combination of frequencies to make it stabilize. We’ve been experimenting with its light properties, but so far, no one’s had any luck with turning it into power. You’re the first who’s felt anything temperature-wise.”

  Claire shrank back and picked up the mug, holding it to her chest. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Or did you?” O’Connell frowned, and the indirect light gave his expression fearful shadows.

  “That’s not true,” Radcliffe said. “Amelie Lafitte said she felt warmth during her treatments with it.”

  Claire sipped her now adequately cooled tea so she wouldn’t blurt out “Who is Amelie Lafitte?” She recalled how the hysterics at Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris had been treated like favored pets by Charcot and his ilk, but she didn’t want to think that Radcliffe had seen his patients the same way.

  She also wondered at the stab of jealousy that pricked her heart.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” O’Connell said.

  “You weren’t interested in that application of aether,” Radcliffe pointed out. “And there was nothing I could tell you about my method that you hadn’t already tried.”

  “What application are you trying?” Claire asked. She’d find more about Amelie Lafitte later.

  “I want to concentrate its glow into a weapon.” Now O’Connell’s face did appear frightening. “This war has gone on long enough, and they’re talking about negotiating. You know as well as I that slavery can’t continue, so we need a weapon that will end this war in the Union’s favor.”

  Claire tried to imagine concentrated aether light as a weapon. What horror would that bring to those who witnessed its work on the battlefield, not to mention those in its path? Would it cook its victims where they stood? Make it impossible for families to identify bodies like in large train crashes or fires?

  The emotions she’d felt from the stabilized aether seemed similar to those of a mischievous child happy for any attention it got. She couldn’t say it was alive—how could it be?—but she also couldn’t allow its innocence to be sullied by being put to a bloodthirsty use.

  And what about its effect on the person who wielded the weapon? The psychic injury would be unimaginable.

  “That’s a horrible idea!” She stood and shoved the mug at O’Connell. “You must stop your work at once, and the stabilized aether must be destroyed.”

  Radcliffe drew
her back to the bench with a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not all bad. In fact, it may help with what you’re trying to do with the soldiers.”

  Claire’s shoulder trembled under Chad’s touch. He didn’t know what stories she’d heard from the soldiers she’d treated, but she’d always had a vivid imagination. No doubt she pictured the worst possible scenarios for the Eros Element’s use. He removed his hand as soon as he was sure she wouldn’t bolt upright again. He and Patrick had slipped back into their old patterns of including and trusting her in their schemes, not considering the new Claire and the experiences she’d had during and since the accident. Now they had to correct the mistake before she went to the general and insisted the work with the Eros Element be stopped. Or worse—talked about it with the soldiers.

  “What do you mean?” Claire asked. “And who else knows about this?”

  “I did an experiment on a young lady in Paris who’d had some sort of psychic injury caused by a cult,” Radcliffe told her. “I still don’t know how it worked, only that it was the best course of action at the time. As for who is aware of our experiments, General Morley and Major Longchamp are the only two.”

  “What happened to the young woman? Is that the Amelie Lafitte you were talking about?”

  “Yes,” Chad said. “And we’re not sure. Her memories were garbled, but she saw many young people killed. Or thought she did.”

  “So she had hallucinations?” Claire wrinkled her nose. “That’s not the same as what happened to the soldiers.”

  “True, but what I did is similar to what the English have been doing with electricity in the treatment of severe melancholia. A current, or in this case, a frequency applied to a certain part of the skull as the skin is exposed to the aether as it flows through a rubber tube can potentially change the brain and heal whatever lesion is causing the symptoms. You could be on the cutting edge of a new treatment.”