by Richard Dee
The Sensaurum
And
The Lexis
By
RICHARD DEE
All rights reserved.
Published in 2020 by 4Star Scifi
4Star Scifi, Brixham, Devon, England
www.richarddeescifi.co.uk/4Star
ISBN 978-1-9996376-6-8 (eBook)
Copyright © Richard Dee 2018-20
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This book is issued subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and
coincidental.
Cover by 4Star Scifi
a chance remark, overheard,
can lead you on an amazing journey.
Prologue
Despite the bright, low autumnal sunlight, the laboratorium was in semi-darkness. Gas lights flickered behind grime-stained windows as the room’s single occupant worked, muttering to himself in a monotone. The room around him was littered with a forest of artificial limbs; arms and legs frozen in various attitudes. Some were complete, some mere shells of metal, their inner workings exposed. A collapsible bed sat in an alcove, off to one side of the room, with clothes and personal items scattered around it. A grubby velvet curtain, designed to give the sleeper some privacy, hung from a brass rail, its lower edge trailing in the rubbish on the floor.
In the main part of the room, glass-fronted cupboards held rows of hands, feet, fingers and assembled limbs. The room was clearly warm; the man was hatless, dressed in a shirt with an open collar, a once-white dustcoat over the top. The whole ensemble appeared to have been worn for many days and frequently slept in.
The workbench was cluttered with the paraphernalia of his trade; tools, wires and cogs as well as a strange contraption, consisting of a glass-sided box and a small wooden board. Looking inside the clear walls of the box, there were metal plates suspended in a liquid. Two shining wires projected through the top of this box, leading to the board where more wires were fixed in a circular arrangement. The wire was not complete; there was a gap in its circuit around the board. This gap had brass clips at each end, into which the man was placing various cylindrical objects picked from a pile on the bench.
Situated to one side of the apparatus and unconnected to it, was some sort of measuring instrument with a graduated dial and a needle. The man was comparing the motion of the needle and writing notes as each object was placed between the clips.
The door opened and a tall man, dressed in fashionable clothes, entered. The door slammed shut behind him, but the man at the bench was so intent on his work that he didn’t notice. After being ignored for several moments the entrant coughed.
The worker never flinched from his task. “What is it? I’m extremely busy,” he said impatiently.
“May I remind you, Professor, that you exist here to serve me? I rescued you from the gutter and could just as easily return you there.” The tone was slightly mocking, it was plain who was the servant and who the master. And his use of the honorific was significant, if he was displeased with progress, he used the rank. If things were going well, first name terms indicated his pleasure.
At the words, the Professor looked up. He remembered his life before. After qualifying, he had been apprenticed to Professor Woolon at the Institute of Medical Statics, a branch of the military investigating the forces in man that enabled life. They had a ready supply of maimed servicemen and women to practise on, those who would obey orders and endure any amount of experimentation.
Under Woolon, artificial limbs, controlled by the body’s own nervous system, had been developed and perfected. They were offered at first to the servicemen who had undergone the trials, with the intention that once the process had been perfected, with lower production costs they could be made more generally available.
Then he had gone too far, against Woolon’s instructions he had tried to advance the work in ways that were considered unethical, inevitably they proved to be fatal to many of those chosen for testing.
As far as the Professor had been concerned, the few successes were sufficient proof that his ideas were sound, all that was needed was more time and subjects to perfect his methods. A few casualties were inevitable; it was all a necessary part of progress.
But his protestations had fallen on deaf ears. He had been thrown out of the Institute, his qualifications cancelled, leaving him destitute and friendless. He had spent days lost in alcohol and introspection; seething at the injustice. In his opinion, Woolon was a fool. He failed to understand or accept that progress demanded sacrifice. Putting an individual’s life before the common good, that was not the way to advance science.
Which was when he had been found by his present employer and offered the chance to continue his work, in secret, for some unspecified purpose. Anything he had asked for had been provided; it was all of the finest quality. He knew not from where it came, had decided that it was probably better not to ask. The reason would be clear in time. He had the feeling that today’s visit might give him a clue as to whether the time was nigh.
“Come, Professor,” the man’s tone changed, becoming friendlier. He even put his arm around the Professor's bony shoulders. “How are your works on the Sensaurum progressing?”
The question was unwanted, he had said, many times, that all progress would be reported. The Sensaurum was his project. People had laughed at the name, but what did they know?
“As promised, I have found a way of switching control remotely,” he replied. “I need only to increase the range of the effect.”
“And when shall we be ready for a demonstration?”
“For a test, I will need a subject, a live person I can work on, with a fully functioning artificial limb, preferably an arm.”
“I will find one; I merely need to know when they will be required?”
“Give me three days to encase the parts and devise a way to modify the interior of the limb to accept them.”
“Very well then, you have three days.”
“And shut the door behind you,” said the Professor, bending back to his task. It was the only power he possessed; he was determined to exercise it whilst he could.
He had come so much further than Woolon had or could. The man might have been feted as a genius, but he was his equal; no, he was his better. It was not true that Woolon’s understanding of the human nervous system was second to none. He, not Woolon, had discerned its use of what was called statics energy to transmit messages from brain to muscle. He had isolated the pathways along which the signals were passed and devised a way to connect them to the inanimate. Woolon, as the man in charge, had merely taken the credit.
There was so much more that he had found and Woolon had taken it as his own. Woolon had failed to accept that the same signals could be generated outside the body, and it now appeared that they could be transmitted remotely through the air. He had seen the clues in the work of others, discoveries in statics and applications in apparently unconnected fields. He alone could see how it all fitted together. To be used and then cast aside in that way was humiliating. As far as he was c
oncerned, his rescue was only right. Thanks to his new benefactor, time would show who the greatest scientist was; he was sure that it would not be Woolon.
As to the legality of what he was doing, he had closed his mind to the concept as soon as Woolon had appropriated his findings. And it was obvious to him that the work he was now doing, what he was now capable of, had no lawful purpose. Nevertheless, he was convinced that history would absolve him.
What he had said was not strictly true; he might not be ready in three days. At least it had got rid of the interruption. Pleased to be alone again, he rummaged on the bench and found the next device he wanted to test. He was sure that it would work this time. If it failed in three days, he could always blame the subject.
Whistling a popular tune, he bent to his task.
Chapter 1
Jackson Thwaite was hungry. That was the trouble with the orphanage; there were just too many mouths and never enough in the serving dishes to fill them all. The staff were well-meaning, it was among the children that the trouble started.
The bullies and their gangs of sycophants generally did alright; it was the young and the weak that went hungry. Jackson was not young, as far as he could remember he was nearly one and twenty, but because he was polite and avoided picking on those smaller than him, he was seen as weak and ripe for exploitation. In consequence, he was always hungry or bruised from his encounters with the bullies, who were the only well-fed ones among the inmates. This mealtime had been the same. As soon as their rations had been slopped into the bowls the bigger had descended and grabbed at the plates of the slowest. The staff were supposed to intervene but rarely did. Only when Mr Templestowe, the headmaster, was watching would they call for order or discipline a pupil.
Even so, life in the orphanage was better than a life on the streets. Metropol City was not the safest place to grow to adulthood; there were dangers on every corner; from the machines in the factories to the new-fangled things that moved along the roads. And the people who preyed on their fellows, press gangs, robbers, slave-masters and all sorts of felons. That was before the effects that the smoke and choking fumes from industry had on your body and mind. At least here you were fed something and only had to do light work, picking oakum or cutting cloth for the military.
Jackson did have an advantage though, unknown to the bullies he had been befriended by Mrs Grimble, the cook’s assistant, she had seen him share what little he had and had developed a soft spot for the lad.
“My boy Edgar was like you,” she would say as she smuggled him a treat. Sometimes it was a biscuit, rich with honey, on other occasions a fruited bun from Mr Templestowe’s own table. “He went away with the army and never came back, my Edgar did. Lost in some foreign land he was, killed by savages and buried where he fell.”
Jackson thought her simple in the head, for she said the same thing every time they met. But it would be foolish of him to mention it; the treats might well stop if he did. He may have been many things, but he was not stupid.
Instead, he merely pulled a sorrowful face and said, “How sad,” being careful not to show too much emotion. To be honest, he was not really interested in the tale, people died, that was the way it was. Whether you were dead in Metropol City or dead in a foreign land it was all the same in the end.
Although he supposed, if you had to be dead, being dead in a foreign land had some attractions; at least you would have lived in bright sunshine and clean air for a while. And it was safe to assume that you were generally well fed in the army, or at least better fed than you were in the orphanage.
Jackson’s stomach rumbled again, and he sneaked away from the din of the common room towards the kitchen. At this time of the day Mrs Grimble would be there alone and that meant more chance of a treat. It was dark as he crossed the yard, flitting from pool to pool of gas-lit cobbles. A fine, misty rain fell, dragging the coal dust from the air, making the drops on his face feel coarse and gritty. His feet felt the wetness of the ground through the worn soles of his boots.
He looked up at a mechanical rumble, saw the lights on a flying machine as it passed over his head. It was unnatural, he thought, all those people in a box in the air, held up by goodness knew what, with two roaring gas fires pushing them forward. He resolved never to go in one of them; as if it were ever a possibility. The walls shut off the sound as the machine passed by, allowing him to hear again the ever-present soft growl of life in the city outside.
It was another world out there; it had been six years since he was last outside the wall. He wondered what changes he would see, if he were ever to be allowed. The way things were in his life, seeing outside was about as likely as flying. If he were really one and twenty in a matter of days though, he would legally be an adult. That was more than old enough to marry, old enough to die for Norlandia. Many men of his age, and women too, would have five or six years of working under their belts. They might even be married, with children to care for. Perhaps he could request to see Mr Templestowe; he could petition him to be allowed out, to make his own way in the world.
When he got to the kitchen doorway and peered around it, Mrs Grimble was absent. She must have gone home already, Jackson thought. At least she had left the gas lamp burning, there was light to aid him in his search. He ventured into the room; his hunger a real thing now, it felt like a worm writhing in his belly. Perhaps some comestibles had been left unattended. If he were lucky, he could maybe find a mouthful or two.
In the corner of the kitchen there was a large coal range, at least it was usually in the corner, now it seemed to be moved away from the wall into the middle of the room. Jackson could see that it was mounted on wheels, together with its tiled surround. He had never noticed that before, the flue had also been uncoupled and hung from the ceiling. There was a dark hole in the wall behind its place. He crept towards it, expecting all the time to hear a shout, he was poised to run and dodge the blow from a master’s swishing, stinging cane.
Reaching the hole, he saw the start of a flight of stone steps that led down. They were poorly lit by more flickering gas lamps. The plain brick walls had dark lines of condensation staining their faces. It smelt faintly musty, like the crypt at the church they were forced to attend most days.
There were voices below, faint and indistinct. As he tentatively moved toward the top step, he kicked a solid object, it made a scraping noise as his foot moved it across the flags. The noise below stopped. Jackson bent down; there were a pair of boots on the ground, stout boots with hobnailed soles, better than his boots which were more hole than sole. The tread had a strange pattern but Jackson assumed that it was to enable better grip on muddy paths.
He removed his own, battered boots and tried them on as, below him, the muttering resumed. The boots fitted him perfectly and when he laced them, he felt their robust construction holding his feet in unaccustomed comfort. Standing upright, they felt strange; perhaps it was due to the thickness of the soles. They were his now, he would soon get used to that.
There was an obstruction in each boot, a hard place by his big toe, like a stone. Apart from that, they were perfect. He had no qualms about taking them, just as long as no-one saw him do it.
He was more worried about how he could hide them from the attention of the other boys, especially from Alyious, who was the biggest and worst of the bullies. Perhaps if he dirtied them so they looked less like a new pair, they might remain his for a while.
His attention had been distracted by the boots; he had not noticed the soft tread of the person who approached. The hand on his shoulder was totally unexpected. He tried to duck and spin away but his new boots let him down. Sparks flew from their nails as they slipped on the flags and his feet skidded for purchase.
His balance lost, he fell. He bounced off each step on the way down, landing in a bruised, dazed heap at the foot of the stairs.
Fear took control of him, despite his bruising and dizziness he tried to get up and flee. No sooner was he on his feet than he found himsel
f held from behind. His feet were lifted off the ground. Unable to turn, he faced the stairs. He struggled but whoever was holding him was strong and pinned his arms to his sides with ease. He kicked back but his lunges encountered nothing but air.
“Be still,” a gruff voice said in his ear. He saw the feet of a man coming down the stairs, then his waist and then, just as he was about to see the face, a cloth bag was thrown over his head.
“What shall we do with this one then?” said the voice.
“That’s Jackson,” answered Mrs Grimble, in a voice which was hers and yet not so. “He’s the one that I told you about.” Her tone was no longer that of a slightly bemused cook, she sounded like a refined and confident lady of class.
A third voice, also rich with the tones of the ruling classes, joined in the conversation. “He’s all skin and bone, what good would he be?” it asked.
Jackson tried to speak through the folds of cloth. “I’m strong, let me go,” he shouted, but if any of them heard him they did not show it.
“He seems to have found the boots,” the first man said, “and they fit him.”
“They ought,” said Mrs Grimble. “Alyious stole his others to make a pattern.”
What was going on? Jackson’s boots had gone missing a week ago; he wondered who had taken them. He had looked at all the other boys expecting to see them on another’s feet. He had had to walk barefoot for a day and a half, cutting his feet badly on the rough cobbles of the yard, then the boots had reappeared by the side of his bed and nobody could explain it.
How could Mrs Grimble, old, silly Mrs Grimble, be involved in plots and plans like this? And Alyious, he was Jackson’s chief tormentor, what was his part?