The ciphering machinery—if that is what it is—burps frenziedly. Edie’s hair stands up and she feels dust and grime rush to settle on her. She scowls and taps the earthing rod on her left before reaching out to adjust the pegs and feed a new set of numbers into the machine.
The Ada Lovelace is where Edie works and lives and—to her amazement—learns. Before her shift begins in Hothouse 6 (this being the secret designation of the machine room on board the Ada Lovelace), she has four hours each morning spent studying any number of things girls are not generally encouraged to know, while the train rips across the British countryside, occupying empty sidings and blank slots in the timetable, rolling and slipping around the edges of the map.
The Ada Lovelace, she has begun to understand, is but one part of a curious pattern, a cross-hatched web of connections. Not all of them are trains, but each surely houses a machine room used for this kind of numerical unravelling. The work is not limited to code-breaking, but includes more generalised number problems and mathematical assessments of probability and chance. In the course of carrying answers from the machine to Abel Jasmine’s office at the head of the train, Edie has glimpsed enough to understand what the numbers signify: maps, armies, and fleets. She cannot begin to guess which numbers relate to which problem, but she knows now what is being asked in Hothouse 6: the rate of the enemy’s resupply; the depth of water in a harbour revealed by wave heights and frequencies; the presence of a secret installation by the early thawing of a snow-capped mountain. Properties of the real world, she realises, may be predicted by numbers on a slate. She has a sense that learning these things without ever being told them is a species of test, a continual assessment. Secrets, here, are prizes to be winkled out.
The train ducks into a tunnel, and Edie sighs as the heat immediately becomes stifling. She suggested a few weeks ago that they could probably go with a considerably less modest set of garments, and even the most reserved of the girls readily agreed until the Keeper respectfully submitted that a) it was hard enough to keep a group of monks and soldiers focused on running the engine and the galvanic system without surrounding them with sweating, naked girls and b) a lady should certainly not care, however patriotic she might be, to sustain a burn in a sensitive place such as might result from (here he hesitates, casting around for respectful terminology) an uncorseted bosom brushing against a hot pipe or valve.
Edie Banister: code-wife, secret engineer, plucking strange truths from the white-hot iron of progress to fight the advance of terror across Europe’s fields. Learning poetry and history and languages and marksmanship. And doing much of it all but nude, too, surrounded by other girls in similar undress.
Edie has read some Greek drama, and is feverishly aware of the possibilities. Such understanding is one of the benefits of a classical education.
Edie Banister glimpses her reflection in a smooth brass plate, and tries to see resolve in her own face. This is the day on which she has determined to find out more about where she is working. She understands that Abel Jasmine is practising a thing called information sequestration—which is a clever way of saying that no one is allowed to know much about Science 2 beyond what is required for them to perform their function within the network—but three things occur to her about this: the first, that Abel Jasmine knows and presumably also Captain Amanda Baines, and also whatever minister has governance of their efforts and any number of that person’s assistants and clerks, and that the addition of one junior employee to the list, while irregular, will not greatly compromise security; the second, that it is—while vanishingly unlikely—at least conceivable that Science 2 is in fact not a British operation at all, but a German one, and she has a duty to be sure she has not inadvertently been duped into betraying her country; and third, that she really, really wants to know about what’s going on. If she is caught—and assuming that, being caught, she has not also been shot by German spies for uncovering their evil plan—she will lean heavily on items [1] and [2] as justification and skate over item [3].
Thus Edie Banister, now eighteen years of age and slender as the rails she rides, prepares for her first covert mission.
Over the last weeks, she has surveyed the parts of Hothouse 6 to which she has ready access. The dormitories are at the rear; the monks’ last, with a small contingent of soldiers—it’s a barracks, really, and defensible—then the women’s, then the baths and communal mess, then the work area and the classrooms and finally a locked door leading to Abel Jasmine’s study and the output room, snuggled up against the engine and, like the barracks, armed to repel invasion. It seems to Edie—in her new guise as a student of strategy and war—that there is a tacit prioritisation here, a tactical triage. Edie has already ascertained that there is a remote decoupling system threaded through the train, operable only with a special key. There are access points along the main corridor, which zigzags around the rooms, making them more private but also obviating the possibility of an enfilade. A great deal of thought has gone into the construction of the Lovelace, above and beyond the strange, tactile prayers of the Ruskinites.
Which implies, of course, that measures have been taken to guard against infiltration as well as assault, but she’s fairly sure none of the security systems she is likely to encounter will kill her unless Abel Jasmine specifically orders them to.
Seventy per cent sure, at least.
Edie racks a new valve and glances at the girl next to her—Clarissa Foxglove—with some wistfulness. Clarissa Foxglove has smooth skin and short hair, and Edie, working beside her, has become acutely aware of her proximity and her energy, and the strong, purposeful way in which she does things. Clarissa Foxglove’s voice is husky, as if she has a throat cold all the time, and she smokes cheap cigarettes which her Free French uncle sends her in a monthly package which also contains admonishments to greater efforts in the cause of His Britannic Majesty’s United Kingdom. Edie, observing Clarissa purse her lips and wet each cigarette before they go in, suffers from pangs of envy. Not that she wants a cigarette. Just that she wishes, sometimes, with a belly-curdling lurch of desire, that Clarissa Foxglove would treat her in the same way. Two days ago, Edie had to pass a pair of pliers to Alice Hoyte, Clarissa’s neighbour on her other side, and at full stretch found herself pressed corps à corps with Clarissa, their hips rubbing gently and Clarissa’s shoulders moving under her chemise as she worked on replacing a blown fuse. Upon a soft cushion I dispose my limbs, oh, indeed.
Edie Banister pushes this thought firmly down—not because of its content, which she files away for extensive later consideration—but because it is liable to distract her from the task at hand. Before she can move her eyes away from Clarissa Foxglove, the girl catches her looking and smiles a conspiratorial smile, then quite deliberately leans forward to borrow Edie’s screwdriver, her lace-clad left breast drawing a line across Edie’s arm and shoulder which she can feel long after the contact has finished.
Focus.
The interior corridor of the Lovelace is patrolled and likely impassable. Thus, Edie has ruled it out. But in a few moments, the bell will sound for end-of-shift and another opportunity will present itself. Edie’s workmates (including Clarissa Foxglove, oh, my) will head for the showers. And isn’t that an opportunity worth savouring? Mm.
Focus.
A slim girl—a girl with strong arms and no chest to speak of—might lift herself out of the carriage onto the roof, if she had a screwdriver to open the filter on one of the ventilation hatches. So long as the train was not going through any tunnels and so long as it was travelling relatively slowly, she might then make her way along the roof to the engine, and slip back in via the roof maintenance hatch, then rejoin the train proper in Abel Jasmine’s study via the connecting door.
The bell rings. Time to go.
“Just got to fnafflebrump caddwallame, all right?” Edie says, and no one pays attention. She learned at Lady Gravely’s that nonsense which can be misheard is a very good way to lie without getting caught.
People just insert whatever they think you must be doing, and—having lied to themselves on your behalf—are disinclined to check up on you. She turns.
Clarissa Foxglove bends down, quite unselfconsciously, to pick up a spool of copper wire. Edie Banister, caught in amber, slides past her gingerly, trying extremely hard not to feel the rasp of cotton on cotton or the contours of Clarissa’s buttocks against her hips. Edie hears a faint, earthy chuckle, or it might be a pleased yelp, and shakes her head to clear it.
Really need to corner her later and discuss this. It’s very distracting. The whole thing needs discussion. Resolution. Needs to be laid out. We should bare our thoughts.
Um. Mm-hm. Upon a soft cushion …
Fortunately, Clarissa Foxglove’s backside is now twenty foot away and the door to the companionway and the hatch is ahead of her. The other girls are heading in the opposite direction.
That’s good, Edie tells herself sternly. That is not a pity. It is the whole point of the plan. I do not want to be wedged in here with Clarissa Foxglove.
God, I want to be wedged in here with Clarissa Foxglove.
But not now.
She levers open the hatch, and air roars in. Her ears pop. The rest of the train won’t notice, though, because Edie has already closed the hermetically sealed doors between carriages.
This stretch of the line—which she has selected carefully—is somewhere in Cambridgeshire. There are no hills to pass through, and the winding track restrains the speed of the train somewhat. It’s a gloomy, desolate stretch of fenland, though, with very little topographically between it and Siberia except shivering reindeer and mournful bears—so it’s bitterly cold. Well, nothing for it. She had considered wearing two sets of underclothes for today’s shift, but that would have made her sweat more, and thus increased the chill. She thought about concealing at least a jumper here, but reasoned that it would be discovered. The distance is comparatively short. She will be cold, yes. She will not be frozen.
She grasps the sides of the hatchway and lifts herself up.
Edie’s first impression is of having accidentally coincided with a bucket of cold water hurled upward from the carriage in front. The air is a liquid, clinging and chilly, filled with moisture. It takes away her sense of smell, flattens her skin against her bones. She nearly lets go and falls back into the train.
No.
She heaves again, and flies up into the airstream, catches the breeze, and blows over backwards, rolling towards the edge of the train. She flails, and catches the hatch cover, then draws herself to a crouch. Her hand is cut across the fingers, not deeply, but jaggedly. She’s covered in soot. And the alarming numbness in her fingers tells her that she has underestimated the chill.
She moves into the wind. Bloody-minded, much? Yes, she replies to herself. Yes, I am.
Half a minute later, she is standing on the next carriage, bare feet padding on the slick surface, toes gripping rivets and bolt-heads, hands reaching for ladder rails and corners, ventilation chimneys and antennae. Twenty seconds more, the next, and then the engine is in sight, long, sinister, strange, and dark. And what the bloody hell is that huge black thing blotting out the sky? Edie drops flat, and a scourging devil’s hand slams over her head, spiny fingers and thorns, then another and another, one catching her back and scratching, tearing at her.
Ow, ow, ow. And blast, I like this chemise. Buggery bugger. A chunk of her hair is gone, too, pulled out in a handful, but she has at least identified the enemy: a copse, hawthorn and oak, gnarled branches clasping.
And now she can’t undo the hatch. Her fingers are too cold, and she has no lever. She left the screwdriver she used to open the one in the companionway behind. Careless.
So. The way back is painful, the way forward, hard. Choose.
Edie’s fingers clamp around the handle, and she heaves. Slowly, stiffly, it comes up. Mercifully this one has no filter, just a shutter which lifts up, so … and then it gives way entirely and almost throws her on her back again.
She lets herself down into the shadows. The chamber is lit in red, covered in lights and buttons: the generator room, turning steam power into electricity for the code machines. She touches nothing, sees herself reflected in the door panel and almost screams: red light behind her, hair mussed up and flyaway, blood on her face and eyes like holes in a mask. She looks like her own ghost, if ghosts can be mussed.
Out through the door, ten steps to the back of Abel Jasmine’s office. Is there an alarm? Edie doesn’t know. Certainly, there is one on the other door. But did he consider the possibility of infiltration from this end? Perhaps not. How would they get here? Parachute onto a moving train? Drop from a bridge, perhaps—but to do so without being seen and awaited? Academic, anyway—she’s come this far. She checks it once with her eyes and—thinking of the Keeper—with her fingertips, too. No wires. No bulges. No secret switches. Surely there should be something?
She wonders whether there’s just a bomb on the other side, then reasons that Abel Jasmine or the Keeper or someone must come through here all the time to check on the generator, and it is therefore unlikely to explode without warning. And then, too, that would run counter to her perceptions about the strategic construction of the train: everything runs to preserve this room, not destroy it … though no doubt there is a mechanism for that, in extremis …
Enough. She opens the door.
Nothing happens. No klaxons, no furious shouts. So. She gropes along the wall, finds the desk, switches on the lamp.
“You owe me five shillings, Abel,” Amanda Baines says cheerfully. “She made it all the way.”
They are sitting in the shadows on a leather couch, Abel Jasmine in his dressing gown, and Amanda Baines with a jaunty sailor’s outfit complete with captain’s hat. It is not the kind of outfit you would go to sea in. It brings new meaning to the description “saucy tar.”
“Bloody hell, girl,” Amanda Baines says, “we need to get you cleaned up.”
“Good work, all the same, Miss Banister,” Mr. Jasmine says. “Very good, indeed.” He smiles.
“I’m not in trouble?” Edie asks.
“Oh, God, yes, of the most frightful kind. But no, you are not being disciplined. You are being promoted and transferred. You may shortly regard that as very big trouble indeed. But you passed what you may wish to think of as an informal test. You formulated a plan, acquired information, timetabled the whole thing, and refused to be distracted by … shall we say, physical blandishments?”
Edie blushes from the roots downwards.
“So now, my dear, you are moving up in the world. However, that’s tomorrow. Today, we need to get that cut seen to and—good Lord, whatever happened to your hair?”
“A tree,” says a husky voice from the doorway. “The Bracknell Woods.” And there is Clarissa Foxglove, in her dressing gown. “I waited until they were gone,” she tells Edie, “and the Ely bridge nearly took my head off altogether.”
Abel Jasmine smiles paternally.
“Off you go, both of you. Things are going to change for you, Edie. We’ll talk about it in the morning. But from all of us: well done. Well done, indeed. Now, Clarissa will sort out that hand for you.”
Edie allows herself to be led away.
Clarissa Foxglove cleans her hand quite ruthlessly, and Edie yelps a couple of times as she goes after an embedded bit of dirt. Then she escorts Edie to the baths and hands her warm towels with a very professional air, and finally walks her back to her stateroom.
“You knew all along?”
“Oh, yes. Someone goes for it about once a year. It’s who we all are. Fools for love of country, and so on.” Clarissa smiles. “Come on. Time to put you to bed.” She shunts Edie gently forward, pressing against her back, and Edie remembers the question of whether they should bare their souls. She can feel the other girl very clearly behind her. She turns around, smells mint and cigarettes, and knows it is the scent of Clarissa’s mouth.
Clarissa Foxglove stretches
. She throws her arms out to the side and lifts them very deliberately up above her head. Edie watches.
“I expect you’re very tired,” Clarissa says. “I know I am. It’s been a long day. But on the other hand, you might—just might …” she shifts her weight against the door and lets it close, her back arched just a little, revealing a deep, broad V of skin “… want to stay awake a bit longer.”
Edie makes a noise which is almost a groan and lunges forward. Clarissa Foxglove is already half out of her gown.
Edie Banister, girl superspy, lands on her back and makes a noise like someone dropping a set of bagpipes. She can see blithering yellow sparkles, playing on her eyeballs. Ooh. Pretty …
She tries to breathe. It’s extremely uncomfortable. She can feel the train rolling under her, the rails in her chest. Zigadashunk tchakak. Points. Shaddadtakak.
Little yellow sparkles. Bit spangly and brown. Mrs. Sekuni appears next to her and pokes her sharply. It provokes a cough, and suddenly she can breathe again, clear and deep.
“That was not very good,” Mrs. Sekuni says. “It was very not very good.”
“Bad,” says Edie hoarsely, now that normal services have been restored to her lungs.
“No,” Mrs. Sekuni replies. “It was not bad. It was very not very good.”
For Mrs. Sekuni, who is small and South-East Asian and very pretty, precision is important. If English does not possess the necessary nuances, the language will be modified until she can convey what she wishes to say. Thus a sequence of not-goodnesses ranging from “quite not very good” which is better than “not very good” but not actually acceptable, downwards to “very not very good” and “really very not very good” and “very very not very good.” Mrs. Sekuni is entirely capable of using a selection of English words to fill these positions in her measure, but English words mean subtly different things to each individual English person, and Mrs. Sekuni some months ago got tired of demonstrating her version of those words and having soldiers and spies and policemen argue with her. So now she just uses English in her own way, and one of the first things her students have to learn is where on the slide rule of catastrophe their latest effort comes.
Angelmaker Page 15