The Difference Engine

by William Gibson

  Sybil felt dazed. Was he teasing her? "But isn't that stealing, somehow?"

  "Try arguing that with Samuel bloody Houston! He stole a whole damn country once, stole it clean and picked it to the bone!"

  "But you're his man! You can't let him steal from you."

  Mick cut her off. "When it comes to that—you might well ask how I had that fancy French program made. You might say I borrowed the General's money for it, so to speak." He showed his teeth in a grin. "Not the first time we've tried such a stunt on one another. It's a bit of a test, don't you see? Fellow has to be a right out-and-outer, to travel with General Houston… "

  "Oh Lord," Sybil said, collapsing into her crinoline on the chaise. "Mick, if you but knew what I've been thinking…"

  "Brace up, then!" He hauled her to her feet. "I need those cards and they're in his room. You're going to find them for me, and nick 'em back. And I'm going back in there and brass it out, cool as ice." He laughed. "The old bastard mightn't have tried this, if not for my tricks at his lecture. You an' Corny Simms made him feel he was right and fly, pulling strings! But we'll make a pigeon of him yet, you and I, together… "

  "I'm afraid, Mick," Sybil said. "I don't know how to steal things!"

  "You little goose, of course you do," Mick said.

  "Well, will you come with me and help, then?"

  "Of course not! He'd know then, wouldn't he? I told him you were a newspaper friend of mine. If I stay too long talking, he'll smell a rat sure." He glared at her.

  "All right," Sybil said, defeated. "Give me the key to his room."

  Mick grunted. "Key? I haven't any bloody key."

  A wash of relief went through her. "Well, then. I'm not a cracksman, you know!"

  "Keep your voice down, else you'll tell everyone in Grand's…" His eyes glinted furiously. He was drunk, Sybil realized. She'd never seen Mick really drunk before, and now he was lushed, lightning-struck. It didn't show in his voice or his walk, but he was crazy and bold with it. "I'll get you a key. Go to that counter-man, blarney him. Keep him busy. And don't look at me." He gave her half a shove. "Go!"

  Terrified, she returned to the counter. The Grand's telegraph stood at the far end, a ticking brass machine on a low marble pedestal decorated with leafy gilt vines. Within a sort of bell-glass, a gilded needle swung to and fro, pointing out letters in a concentric alphabet. With every twitch of the needle, something in the marble base clunked methodically, causing another quarter-inch of neatly perforated yellow paper tape to emerge from the marble base. The night-clerk, who was punching binder-holes in a bundle of fan-fold paper, set his work aside, clipped on a pince-nez, and came toward her.

  "Yes, madame?"

  "I need to send a telegram. It is rather urgent."

  The clerk deftly assembled a small box of punch-cards, a hinged brass perforator, a neatly ruled form. He took out the reservoir-pen Sybil had used earlier. "Yes, madame. Citizen-number?"

  "Oh… Would that be my number, or his?"

  "That would depend, madame. Are you planning to pay by national credit?"

  "May I charge it to my room?" Sybil hedged.

  "Certainly, madame. Room number?"

  Sybil hesitated for as long as she dared. "I suppose I'll pay cash, actually."

  "Very well. Now, the addressee's citizen-number?"

  "I'm afraid I don't know it, actually." She blinked at the clerk and began to chew on one knuckle.

  He was very patient. "You do have a name and address, though?"

  "Oh yes," Sybil said hastily. "Mr. Charles Egremont, M.R, 'The Beeches,' Belgravia, London."

  The clerk wrote this down. "It is rather more costly to send a wire with only an address, madame. It's more efficient to route it direct through the Central Statistics Bureau." Sybil had not been looking for Mick. She had been afraid to look. Now, from the corner of her eye, she saw a dark form scuttle across the lobby floor. Mick was bent almost double, with his shoes off, the laces knotted around his neck. He charged headlong at the waist-high mahogany counter, grabbed the forward edge two-handed, vaulted over it in a split-second, and vanished.

  He had made no sound at all.

  "Something to do with the way an Engine handles messages," the clerk was explaining.

  "Indeed," Sybil said. "But I haven't his citizen-number. I shall have to pay the extra, then, shan't I? This is very important."

  "Yes, madame. I'm sure it is. Pray go on, and I shall take dictation."

  "I don't suppose I should begin with my address and the date? I mean, a telegram's not a letter, really, is it?"

  "No, madame."

  "Or his address, either?"

  "Brevity is the essence of telegraphy, madame."

  Mick would be creeping to the hotel's mahogany pegboard, which hung clustered with room-keys. She couldn't see him, but now she imagined she could hear him moving, almost smell him, and the clerk needed only to glance to his right to discover a sneak-thief creeping toward him, crazy-eyed and crouching like an ape.

  "Please take this down," Sybil quavered. "Dear Charles." The clerk began scribbling. "Nine years ago you put me to the worst dishonor that a woman can know."

  The clerk stared in horror at his pen, a hot flush creeping up past his collar.

  "Charles, you promised me that you would save my poor father. Instead you corrupted me, body and soul. Today I am leaving London, in the company of powerful friends. They know very well what a traitor you were to Walter Gerard, and to me. Do not attempt to find me, Charles. It would be useless. I do hope that you and Mrs. Egremont will sleep soundly tonight." Sybil shuddered. "Sign that 'Sybil Gerard,' if you please."

  "Yes, madame," the clerk muttered, eyes downcast as Mick sprang silently back over the counter in his stocking feet. Mick crouched low, hidden by the counter's bulk, then crept off quickly on his haunches, waddling across the marble floor, like a monstrous duck. In a moment he had rolled behind a pair of overstuffed chairs.

  "What do I owe?" Sybil asked the clerk politely.

  "Two and six," the clerk stammered, quite unable to meet her eyes.

  She counted it out from the little clasp-purse she took from her muff, and left the red-faced clerk at his station, punching telegram-cards from his box.

  Mick came strolling like a gentleman across the lobby. He paused beside a reading-rack hung with neatly ironed newspapers. He bent down, coolly re-tying his shoes, straightened, and she saw the glint of metal in his hand. Not bothering even to catch her eye, he tucked the key behind a cut-velvet cushion on the chaise-longue. Then he stood briskly, straightened his tie, brushed at his sleeves, and strode straight off into the smoking-room.

  Sybil sat for a moment on the chaise, pretending to read a gold-spined monthly, 'Transactions of the Royal Society'. Carefully, with the fingertips of her right hand, she fished behind her for the key. Here it was, with the number "24" engraved on the oval brass. She yawned, in what she hoped was a ladylike fashion, and stood, to retire upstairs, entirely as if she had a room there.

  Her feet ached.

  As she trudged along the silent gas-lit hall, toward Houston's suite, she felt a sudden amazement at having struck out at Charles Egremont. Needing some dramatic message to distract the clerk, she'd blurted out threats and rage. It had come boiling out of her, almost without her will. It puzzled her, and even frightened her, after having imagined that she'd almost forgotten the man.

  She could imagine the fear on Egremont's face when he read her telegram. She remembered his face well enough, fatuous and successful, which always looked as though it meant well, always apologized, always preached at her, and whined, and begged, and wept, and sinned. He was a fool.

  But now she'd let Mick Radley set her to thieving. If she were clever, she should walk out of the Grand Hotel, vanish into the depths of London, and never see Radley again. She should not let the 'prentice oath hold her. To break an oath was frightening, but no more vile than her other sins. Yet somehow here she was; she had let him do with her as he
would.

  She stopped before the door, looked up and down the deserted corridor, fingered the stolen key. Why was she doing this? Because Mick was strong, and she was weak? Because he knew secrets that she didn't? For the first time, it occurred to her that she might be in love with him. Perhaps she did love him, in some strange way, and if that were true, it might explain matters to her, in a way which was almost soothing. If she were in love, she had a right to burn her bridges, to walk on air, to live by impulse. And if she loved Radley, it was finally something she knew, which he didn't. Her secret alone.

  Sybil unlocked the door nervously, rapidly. She slipped through, shut it behind her, set her back against it. She stood in darkness.

  There was a lamp in the room somewhere. She could smell its burnt wick. In the wall opposite, the outline emerged of a square curtained window to the street, between the curtains a faint knife-slice of upwashed gas-light. She faltered her way into the room, hands outstretched, until she felt the solid polished bulk of a bureau, and made out the dim sheen of a lamp-chimney there. She lifted the lamp, shook it. It had oil. Now she needed a lucifer.

  She felt for drawers in the bureau. For some reason they were already open. She rustled through them. Stationery. Useless, and someone had spilled ink in one of the drawers; she could smell it.

  Her fingers brushed a box of lucifers, which she recognized less by touch than by the dry familiar rattle. Her fingers, really, didn't seem to be working properly. The first lucifer popped and fizzled out, refusing to light, filling the room with a vile smell of sulphur. The second showed her the lamp. Her hands were trembling badly as she raised the chimney and applied flame to the wick.

  She saw her own lamp-lit reflection staring wild-eyed from tilted cheval-glass, then doubled in beveled mirrors set into the twin doors of a wardrobe. She noticed clothing scattered on the bed, on the floor…

  A man was sitting on the arm of a chair, crouched there like a great shadowed crow, an enormous knife in his hand.

  He stood then, but slowly, with a creak of leather, like some huge wooden puppet that had lain years in the dust. He was wrapped in a long and shapeless grey coat. His nose and jaw were draped with a dark kerchief.

  "Best be quiet now, missy," he said, holding up the massive blade—dark, cleaver-like steel. "Sam comin'?"

  Sybil found her voice. "Please don't kill me!"

  "Old goat still whorin', is he?" The slow Texian voice slid forth like treacle; Sybil could barely make out his words. "You his fancy-gal?"

  "No!" Sybil said, her voice strangled. "No, I'm not, I swear it! I… I came here to steal from him, and that's the truth!"

  There was a ghastly silence.

  "Take a look 'round you."

  Sybil did so, trembling. The room had been ransacked.

  "Nothin' here to steal," the man said. "Where is he, gal?"

  "He's downstairs," Sybil said. "He's drunk! But I don't know him, I swear! My man sent me here, that's all! I didn't want to do this! He made me do it!"

  "Quiet, now," he said. "I wouldn't hurt a white woman, less I had to. Put out that lamp."

  "Let me go," she pleaded. "I'll go straight away! I meant no harm!"

  "Harm?" The slow voice was heavy with gallows certainty. "What harm there is, it's for Houston, and that's justice."

  "I didn't steal the cards! I didn't touch them!"

  " 'Cards'?" He laughed, a dry sound at the back of his throat.

  "The cards don't belong to Houston. He stole them!"

  "Houston stole plenty," the man said, but clearly he was puzzled. He was thinking about her, and was not happy about it. "What they call you?"

  "Sybil Jones." She took a breath. "I'm a British subject!"

  "My," the man said. He clicked his tongue.

  His masked face was unreadable. Sweat shone on a strip of pale smooth skin across the top of his forehead. A hat-brim had rested there, Sybil realized, to shield him from the Texian sun. He came forward now and took the lamp from her, turning down the wick. His fingers, when they brushed her hand, were dry and hard as wood.

  In the darkness, there was only the pounding of her heart and the Texian's terrible presence.

  "You must be lonely here in London," Sybil blurted, desperate to avoid another silence.

  "Maybe Houston's lonesome. I got a better conscience." The Texian's voice was sharp. "You ever ask if he's lonesome?"

  "I don't know him," she insisted.

  "You're here. A woman come alone to his rooms."

  "I came for the kino-cards. Paper cards, with holes in them. That's all, I swear!" No answer. "Do you know what a kinotrope is?"

  " 'Nother damn machine," the Texian said wearily.

  Another silence.

  "Don't lie to me," he said at last. "You're a whore, that's all. You ain't the first whore I ever seen."

  She heard him cough behind his kerchief, and snort wetly. "You ain't bad-lookin', though," he said. "In Texas, you could many. Start all over."

  "I'm sure that would be wonderful," Sybil said.

  "Never enough white women in the country. Get you a decent man, 'stead o' some pimp." He lifted his kerchief, and spat on the floor.

  "Hate pimps," he announced tonelessly. "Hate 'em like I hate Injuns. Or Mexicans. Mexican Injuns… French Mexican Injuns with guns, three, four hundred strong. On horseback, got them wind-up rifles, closest thing to devils on earth."

  "But the Texians are heroes," Sybil said, desperately trying to remember a name from Houston's speech. "I heard about… about Alamo."

  "Goliad," the voice gone to a dry whisper, "I was at Goliad."

  "I heard about that, too," Sybil said quickly. "That must have been glorious."

  The Texian hawked, spat again. "Fought 'em two days. No water. Colonel Fannin surrendered. They took us prisoner, all the niceties, polite as you please. Next day they marched us out of town. Shot us down in cold blood. Just lined us up. Massacred us."

  Sybil said nothing.

  "Massacred the Alamo. Burned all the bodies… Massacred the Meir Expedition. Made 'em pick beans. Little clay lottery pot, pull out a black bean and they kill you. That's Mexicans for you."

  "Mexicans," she repeated.

  "Comanches are worse."

  From somewhere off in the night came the scream of a great friction-brake, and then a dull distant pounding.

  Black beans. Goliad. Her head was a Babel. Beans and massacre and this man whose skin was like leather. He stank like a navvy, of horses and sweat. Down Neal Street she'd once paid tuppence to view a diorama of some vast waste in America, a nightmare of twisted stone. The Texian looked born from such a place, and it came to her then that all the wildernesses of Houston's speech, all the places with such queer improbable names, were truly real, inhabited by creatures such as this. And Mick had said that Houston had stolen a country once, and now this one had followed, avenging angel. She fought down an insane desire to laugh.

  She remembered the old woman then, the vendor of rock-oil in Whitechapel, and the queer look she'd given Mick when he'd questioned her. Did others work in concert with the angel of Goliad? How had so strange a figure managed to enter Grand's tonight, to enter a locked room? Where could such a man hide, even in London, even amid the tattered hordes of American refugees?

  "Say he's drunk?" the Texian said.

  Sybil started horribly. "What?"

  "Houston."

  "Oh. Yes. In the smoking-room. Very drunk."

  "Be his last, then. He alone?"

  "He…" Mick. "He's with a tall man. I don't know him."

  "Beard on 'im? Arm broke?"

  "I… Yes."

  He made a sucking sound between his teeth; then leather creaked as he shrugged.

  Something rattled, to Sybil's left. In the faint glow from the curtained window she glimpsed the gleaming facets of the cut-glass door-knob as it began to twist. The Texian leapt from his chair.

  With the palm of one hand pressed tight against her mouth, he held the great di
rk before her, a hideous thing like an elongated cleaver, tapering to a point. A length of brass ran along its spine; with the blade inches from her eyes she saw notches and nicks along the brass. And then the door was opening, Mick ducking through, his head and shoulders stenciled out by the light in the corridor.

  She must have struck her head against the wall when the Texian flung her aside, but then she was kneeling, the crinoline bunched beneath her, watching the man hoist Mick against the wall, a single great hand about his throat, the heels of Mick's shoes beating a frantic tattoo against the wainscoting—until the long blade struck, twisted, struck again, filling the room with the hot reek of Butcher Row.

  And all that happened after, in that room, was a dream to Sybil, or a play she watched, or some kino-show wrought with balsa-bits so numerous, so tiny, and so cleverly worked, as to blur reality. For the Texian, lowering Mick quietly to the floor, closed and re-locked the door, his movements unhurried and methodical.

  She swayed where she knelt, then sagged against the wall behind the bureau. Mick was dragged away, heels scraping, into the deeper darkness beside the wardrobe. The Texian knelt over him—there was a rustle of clothing, the slap of the card-case flung aside, a jingle of change and the sound of a single coin, falling, rolling, spinning on the hardwood floor…

  And there came from the door a scratching, the rattle of metal on metal—the sound of a drunken man trying a keyhole.

  Houston, throwing the door wide, lurched forward on his heavy stick. He belched thunderously and rubbed the site of his old wound. "Sons of bitches," he said, hoarse with drink, listing violently, the stick coming down with a sharp crack at each step. "Radley? Come out, you little whelp." He'd neared the bureau now, and Sybil snatched her fingers back silently, afraid of the weight of his boots.

  The Texian closed the door.

  "Radley!"

  "Evenin', Sam."

  Her room above the Hart seemed distant as childhood's first memories, here in the smell of slaughter, in this dark where giants moved—Houston reeled suddenly to slash at the curtains with his cane, tore them open, gas-light catching the patterns of frost on the glass of each mullioned pane, illuminating the Texian's kerchief and the grim eyes above it, eyes distant and merciless as winter stars. Houston staggered at the sight, the striped blanket sliding from his shoulders. His medals gleamed, quivered.