Angelmaker

by Nick Harkaway

  So here’s to the bungled dead, expired of their own incompetence and my experience. Here’s to the long habit of survival. I’m sorry, Mrs. B and all the little Bs. I truly am. If I could bring them back—at a safe distance and possibly with a summary kick in the testes for justice’s sake—I would do it. No one is so wicked as to deserve extinction.

  Long ago and far away, Edie Banister was told that a human soul infallibly knew its own value when it was reflected in the eye of an elephant. She wonders what she would see if she went to London Zoo and somehow got close enough to check. The question of value has been very much on her mind of recent months. She can feel a coldness reaching for her, a chill she knows all too well, though these days it possesses a terrible finality. Mrs. Crabbe (whom she does not like) recently suggested on this basis that Edie must be a little bit psychic. Edie privately thought that anyone who didn’t feel death approaching after nine decades on Earth was probably some sort of idiot.

  Last dance. Best make it a good one.

  She raises her glass in recognition of the recent dead, and, to everyone’s vast embarrassment, not least her own, collapses into tears in the corner of the Pig & Poet. And then, little by little and aided above all by the damp, halitotic nose which settles on her chest as Bastion emerges from her shopping bag to give succour, she pulls herself together again, and very soon she is the woman she was, has always been—just a little older, and reddish about the eyes.

  All those years. Bloody hell.

  “Girls wishing to serve their country will need flat shoes and modest underwear.”

  It is the word “underwear” which wakes Edie Banister from the contented slumber into which she has fallen during Miss Thomas’s morning notices. The teachers at Lady Gravely School very rarely speak of underwear, and the reference to flat shoes is astonishing, because all other kinds are most strictly forbidden. As for the implied existence of immodest underwear—Edie can barely believe her tender young ears. This much is clear: Miss Thomas did not write the notice she is reading, and the matter is considered very serious—sufficiently so that this informational contraband is all the same being given a place here, between duty roster and closing prayers.

  “Underwear,” she murmurs, as everyone else says “Amen,” and duly presents herself at the appointed time in the headmistress’s study, wearing her most unimpeachable shoes.

  Three other girls have been bitten by the patriotic bug; presumably either the other sixty or so are not as mind-numbingly bored as Edie, or they fear they may be asked by their government to do something unladylike, a suspicion which was raised in Edie’s mind by the mention of underwear and to which she clings like a drowning woman to a spar. Prostitutes were sent to assassinate Napoleon, she recalls, and in a racy novel of which she read two-thirds before being betrayed by a prim little cow called Clemency Brown (and consequently slapped thrice with a ruler across the palm), the heroine had given herself regretfully but unswervingly into the lustful embraces of Skullcap Roy the pirate in order to deflect his wrath from her younger brother. Not, Edie suspected, without a certain measure of anticipation. In time of war, she reasons, one must be prepared to sacrifice oneself. She imagines herself lying back and thinking of England in the arms of a brutishly delicious enemy. The horror is very nearly too much for her.

  “Plant, good. Dixon, good. Clements, no, I don’t think so, girl, you’re in the Christmas play. Where shall we find another Magdalene who can sing? No, no. And … hmph.” Which is all the approbation Edie is likely to see, but no denay, and that will do.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Thomas, I didn’t catch that last?”

  The little man is long-faced and pomaded. A pimp, Edie decides, like Quick Jack Duggan or Herb the Knife. On the other hand, he wears a blue suit of the most conservative kind, with a longish waistcoat and a fob watch. The fob has a small gold flower on the far end. Not worth pinching, or not yet, but a chunk of stuff all the same and very fine. Not Masonic, which is disappointing. The Masons, she has heard, perform depraved rites.

  “Banister,” Miss Thomas mutters. “A lost child.”

  “My, my. How so, lost?”

  “In every sense, I’m afraid. Lost, because orphaned. Lost, because she must ask every question in her head and then another and another, and lost because she is stepped in spiritual grime and even in my most blessed and hopeful dreams I cannot see her ever casting out sin and admitting the Lord of Hosts.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Well, I shall certainly pray for her.”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  “Is there a particular prayer one offers up for young girls adrift on a sea of dreadful temptation? Something in the line of ‘Oh hear us, when we cry to thee’?”

  “No,” Miss Thomas says, displaying some exhaustion with the topic. “Just whatever you can manage.”

  “I shall manage what I can, then.”

  Miss Thomas nods, and proceeds to vaunt the other two girls and ignore Edie entirely. No surprise, and in any case Edie is not concerned. She has seen the spark in the gentleman’s eye, and knows that he has seen her seeing it. And she knows, too, by the flat-faced sincerity of his mien and his bland, unamused expression, that this man is a most unmitigated crook. Crooks do not go looking in distant corners for virtue. They can find that anywhere. Kindred wickedness, on the other hand, is a thing which must be sought out, and the seeking is the more difficult because it naturally masquerades, where virtue is drably ostentatious.

  “My name,” the little gentleman says, “is Abel Jasmine. I am in the employ of the Treasury of His Majesty George VI, who is, of course, our king. At least, I assume he is. Is there anyone here who isn’t a subject of His Majesty?”

  Tittering. Even Miss Thomas titters. Edie does not. It’s a perfectly valid question. There might be an Irish person, or an American, or even a French citizen in the room. Mr. Jasmine smiles and leans forward, hands clasped.

  “Excellent. All Brits together, eh? So, ladies. I’m afraid we come to a most difficult question. Which of you has recently told an absolutely egregious lie? Miss Thomas?”

  “No,” Miss Thomas says sniffily. More tittering. Never, Jessica Plant says, has she even embroidered the truth. (Which is, of course, an egregious lie, but a very stupid one.) Holly Dixon admits to having lied about having a stomach upset to avoid kitchen duty. Miss Thomas makes a note. Edie smiles and says nothing, and sees Mr. Jasmine’s eye settle immediately on her face.

  “No deceptions in your life, Miss Banister?” Mr. Jasmine asks at last.

  “It’s frightfully embarrassing,” Edie says breathlessly. “There must have been some, I’m sure. But for the life of me,” she offers him a broad, empty-headed smile, “I can’t think what they might have been, sir. Is that terribly bad?” She cancels the smile and the fluttery panic, and meets his gaze as hard as she can. “Is that what you had in mind, sir? Or more in the way of outrage at the very notion?”

  Miss Thomas makes an outraged little noise in preparation for a scolding, but the little man holds up his hand and smiles.

  “I believe you hit it on the head, Miss Banister,” Abel Jasmine says. He shrugs. “Well. Welcome to Science 2. You best go and pack. Thank you, Miss Thomas.”

  Edie keeps her face absolutely even, as if she had expected nothing less, and sees Abel Jasmine notice that, too.

  Tally-ho, Edie Banister thinks, with considerable pleasure.

  Abel Jasmine’s word is backed by most elevated persons, and while the laws of England cannot casually be broken, their action can be most miraculously expedited. Edie Banister finds herself in transit that very day, and her guardianship—never her most serious concern—is transferred from Miss Thomas to a stout woman named Amanda Baines who is Mr. Jasmine’s Second Director.

  Not “secretary,” Edie notes, as they drive away in an official-looking car, and her old life—such as it was—vanishes behind her. Not “mistress” or the more cowardly “companion,” nor “housekee
per” nor “cook.” Second Director, meaning deputy and fully empowered, which if it is not an entirely new thing is all the same a notable and important thing. Amanda Baines is a force in her own right. When Edie calls her “Miss Baines,” the woman responds with a deep, earthy chuckle, heavy hands on the steering wheel, and says that it is in fact “Captain Baines,” but that Edie should in any case call her Amanda.

  Captain as in—of—a ship?

  Yes. The good ship Cuparah.

  Is it a big ship?

  It is a research ship.

  What kind of research? What kind of ship?

  Amanda Baines produces a narrow pipe in white clay, and allows Abel Jasmine to light it.

  “A Ruskinite ship,” she replies, and her grey eyes peer at Edie through the smoke.

  Edie has not heard the word, but has no intention of admitting it. She has studied, in the cool classrooms of Lady Gravely, the work of an art critic named John Ruskin, who elected to refer to himself in Greek as Kata Phusin (“According to Nature”) and whose distaste for the processes of industrial construction had once led him to describe the Lady Gravely school itself as “impoverished of heart, devoid of soul, and unsuited to its function; a carbuncle of a building festering upon the fundament of Shropshire.” It is an assessment with which Edie can only agree. She pictures Ruskin leaning sadly on an oak at the far end of the drive and jotting in his notebook: Lady G, Shrop. Bloody ghastly. Write to The Times. Spare no spleen.

  Ho hum. Ruskin was against standardisation. He liked each aspect of a building to be the product of a unique human soul, an expression of the relationship with (inevitably) God. So, and so.

  “A unique ship.”

  “Yes.”

  “A special ship.”

  “We like to think so.”

  “A … a Victorian Gothic ship?”

  Amanda Baines makes a snorting noise which could be either affirmation or disdain, and that is all Edie learns, because they have arrived at Paddington station and, through the gloom and smoke, she sees the train.

  In this year of Our Lord 1939, of course, many people of means have private carriages which can be shackled to a train to provide the discerning—id est the wealthy and empowered, whose discernment need only reach so far as to know that they’re more important than anyone else—with a railway voyage at some remove from the common rabble. The wagons of the Rothschilds, the Kennedys, the Spencers and the Astors are spoken of in hushed tones at Lady Gravely as the symbol of grande luxe life and the thing to which every gal of character, charm and class might aspire. But no one Edie has ever heard of had his own train entire, complete with an engine, twice the height of a man, scrolled and chased in brass and trimmed in black iron. Certainly no one has anything so absolutely warlike, so defensible, armour-plated and fitted with a ram at the front, the engineer’s compartment sheltered from incoming fire. And …

  “Steam?” Edie murmurs.

  “Hah!” Abel Jasmine says. “Thought you’d like that. It goes over a hundred miles an hour, and barely makes a sound. And of course, it burns whatever you shove in the furnace, so it doesn’t deplete our resources as badly as a petroleum engine would.”

  “But it’s vulnerable,” Edie argues in spite of herself. “A shot to the pressure tank …” She trails off. This sort of interjection is the kind of thing which caused Miss Thomas to call her a lost child.

  “Quite right, Miss Banister!” Abel Jasmine cries, delighted, “quite right, indeed, which is why the steam is contained in the very heart of the vehicle and the cylinder is most heavily shielded. But you have spotted our vulnerability, all the same. Well done. The Ada Lovelace is a compromise between stealth, strength, versatility, and security. It is perfect in no respect save that it functions excellently in all.”

  Amanda Baines—the woman who has a ship of her own—looks at Edie as if to say “boys and their toys,” but Edie is smiling at the improbable thing, not for what it is, but for the world it promises. Having your own engine means no timetables, no delays. It implies that Abel Jasmine, indeed, can command delay, can re-arrange the structure of the nation’s rapid-transit system for his own convenience.

  “It’s amazing,” she says, and Abel Jasmine allows that it’s not bad at all. Edie stops, considering. “It’s Ruskinite, isn’t it?”

  He looks at her very sharply, then at Amanda Baines, who grins like a big dog around her pipe.

  “Yes,” Abel Jasmine says. “It is. Mind you, it’s behind the curve now. Out of date by the time we finished it. That’s the pace of change … Well,” he adds to the driver, a dour moustachioed fellow in blue, “carry on, Mr. Crispin. Let’s be about it!”

  The train is not less wondrous inside. Edie stares at rippling surfaces of wood and brass, trimmed with a rich azure and gold like a cathedral, and windows of resin-ish stuff which is like Bakelite, only tougher. She walks up an open spiral stair to the upper deck and peers out at the night as it hurtles by. For the first time in her life, she feels free. She presses her head against the not-glass and smiles a wide smile.

  “Blue colour is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.”

  She turns. A broad, grey-haired man in overalls stands at the far end of the carriage. Edie judges him to be nearly sixty, but very strong.

  “The train,” he says. Edie scrutinises him for signs of condescension, finds none. As he turns, she sees a monk’s tonsure at the back of his head.

  “It’s amazing,” she says.

  “It’s called the Ada Lovelace. Do you know who she was?”

  “Lord Byron’s daughter.”

  “Much more. A genius. A visionary. We named this engine for her.”

  “I’m sure she would have approved.”

  “Perhaps. It’s enough that we remember her a little. I’m the Keeper,” he adds, and then, because Edie’s mouth must be open as she tries to think of a polite way of asking, “Of the Order of John the Maker.” When she doesn’t immediately nod, he adds, “The Ruskinites.”

  It had not occurred to Edie until this moment that “Ruskinite” might be a noun. She ponders. The adjective, she has no problem with. A Ruskinite item is going to be crafted, considered, inspired. It will have respect for the human scale of things. It will strive to exemplify the divine in the everyday. It’s an admirable set of qualities for, say, a tea service, or even a giant secret locomotive.

  A Ruskinite person, however, is something other, and she’s not entirely comfortable with it. A strange sort of Christian with strong feelings about the working man and the essence of the world.

  The Keeper smiles.

  “What?” Edie Banister demands.

  “You’re trying to work out if I’m an engineer or a cultist,” he replies.

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Excellent, Miss Banister. Very good, indeed. Come. Let me show you the Lovelace. You can interrogate me on the way.” And to her amazement, he offers her his arm, like a baron to a duchess.

  The Lovelace is eleven carriages long. There is accommodation, a kitchen, bathrooms, and two carriages of strange machinery in glass and metal which the Keeper will not explain, but which looks to Edie like a mixture of a franking machine, a music box, and an abacus. She deduces it has to do with numbers and therefore with logistics, and possibly also with ciphering.

  There is a radio set, an engineering room, and a pair of administrative offices, a private stateroom occupied by Abel Jasmine himself, and a doorway leading to the engine beyond. From the cowcatcher at the front (first designed by a friend of the original Lovelace herself, a man named Babbage, remade by the Ruskinites and manufactured to specification by a foundry in Padua) to the scrolled ironwork at the back of the last carriage, there is not one inch of it which is not made and maintained by hand.

  “This train is our blood,” the Keeper says. “It is the product of our work. We know every part of it. The designs were perfect, but the materials are not. They cannot be. So we compensated. Does it look sheer? Does
it look absolutely true? It’s not. Here we shaved an eighth. There we padded. The rivets are not exactly the same. They are positioned to avoid splitting the wood. They are loosened here and there to allow for expansion. The machine doesn’t know when it is vulnerable. The mechanical drill has no idea when it is destroying the substance it cuts. But we know. We feel and hear. We touch. Touch is a truer sense than sight.”

  “And all this … it makes your machines better?”

  The Keeper shrugs. “It makes us better,” he says. “Or at least, it means we do not become casual about effort and art. We appreciate the weakness of the world and come to understand the glories and stresses of our selves. But yes. The product is better, by perhaps a single percentage point, than it would be if it were made by machines to perfect tolerances. It doesn’t matter until you stress it. Stress this train, and it will hold. It will hold beyond what the specifications say; beyond what any of us believes. It will hold beyond reason, beyond expectation, beyond hope. Derail it, drive it across sand, twist and heat it. It will do what it can for you. It will hold as if it was alive, and filled with love. And when it fails, it will fail hugely, heroically, and take your enemies with it. Because it has been made that way. But we trust it will not need to, in this case. The Lovelace is not a ship of the line.”

  “Cuparah is.”

  The Keeper smiles. “Cuparah will hold, too.”

  Which is reassuring, but does not tell her any more about Amanda Baines’s vessel. Drat.

  Edie Banister, six months later, in sensible shoes and modest underwear—although not entirely modest, because she has long legs and just a hint of womanliness about her now—sweats and toils amid strange machines. Ada Lovelace is narrow and sways with a strange, eerie motion, as if she were dangling off the edge of a precipice. For the first few weeks, this made Edie extremely nauseous, but now she hardly notices, except when something sticks briefly in its gimbal and falls out of sync with the rest of the room. The sound of metal against metal rings beneath her feet, and then is replaced by a sudden whooshing of waves and wind. Edie feels, around her ankles, a blessed gust of cool air. The machine room sheds a great deal of heat when it goes over a bridge.