The Difference Engine

by William Gibson

  Oliphant bowed, wishing His Highness a good afternoon in what amounted to the Royal Family's language of choice, and pretended to examine the Swiss camera, an intricate creation whose stereoptic lenses, like eyes, stared from beneath a smooth brass brow. Like the eyes of Mr. Cart, the Consort's muscular Swiss valet, they struck Oliphant as being set rather too widely apart.

  "I've brought Affie a little gift, Your Highness," Oliphant said. His German, like the Prince Consort's, had the accent of Saxony—the legacy of a prolonged and delicate mission Oliphant had undertaken there at the behest of the Royal Family. Prince Albert's Coburg relatives, ever ingenious at the ancient craft of marriage-politics, were eager to expand their tiny domain—a delicate matter indeed, when the policy of the British Foreign Office was to keep the German mini-states as fragmented as politically possible. "Has the young Prince concluded his day's lessons?"

  "Affie is ill today," Albert said, peering through his tinted spectacles at one of the camera's lenses. He produced a small brush and lightly whisked at the surface of the lens. He straightened. "Do you think the study of statistics too much a burden for a tender young mind?"

  "My opinion, Your Highness?" Oliphant said. "Statistical analysis is indeed a powerful technique… "

  "His mother and I disagree on the matter," the Prince confided mournfully. "And Alfred's progress in the subject is far from satisfactory. Nevertheless, statistics is the key to the future. Statistics are everything in England."

  "Does he progress well in his other studies?" Oliphant hedged.

  "Anthropometry," the Prince suggested absently. "Eugenics. Powerful fields of learning, but less taxing, perhaps, to the youthful brain."

  "Perhaps I might have a word with him. Your Highness," Oliphant said. "I know the lad means well."

  "He is in his room, no doubt," the Prince said.

  Oliphant made his way through the drafty glamor of the Royal Apartments to Alfred's room, where he was greeted with a whoop of glee, the Prince scrambling in bare-feet from mounded bedclothes and hopping nimbly across the tracks of a most elaborate miniature railway. "Uncle Larry! Uncle Larry! Brilliant! What have you brought for me?"

  "Baron Zorda's latest."

  In Oliphant's pocket, wrapped in green tissue and smelling strongly of cheap fresh ink, was a copy of 'Paternoster the Steam Bandit', by one "Baron Zorda," the third volume in the popular series, young Prince Alfred having expressed his unbridled enthusiasm for the two previous numbers, 'The Skeleton Amy' and 'Wheelmen of the Tsar'. The book's garishly colored cover depicted the daring Paternoster, pistol in hand, climbing from the cabin of a hurtling vehicle one took to be a gurney in the latest style—sheathed in tin, bulbous at the prow, and very narrow in the rear. The frontispiece, which Oliphant had examined in the Piccadilly news-agent's where he had purchased the volume, offered Baron Zorda's raffish highwayman in rather more detail, particularly in regard to his dress, which included a broad belt of studded leather and bell-bottomed trousers with buttoned vents at the cuffs.

  "Super!" The boy eagerly tore the green tissue from Paternoster the Steam Bandit. "Look at his gurney. Uncle Larry! It's line-streamed like sixty!"

  "Nothing but the swiftest for wicked Paternoster, Affie. And see the frontispiece. He's got up like Smashjaw Ned."

  "Look at his narrow-go-wides," Alfred said admiringly. "And his bloody great belt!"

  "And how have you been, Affie," Oliphant asked, ignoring the boy's lapse in language, "since my last visit?"

  "Very well, Uncle Larry"—and a shadow of anxiety crossed the young face—"but I'm afraid I—I'm afraid she—she's broken, you see—" The Prince pointed to where the Japanese tea-doll slumped disconsolately against the foot of the massive four-poster, surrounded by a tumbled sea of lithographed tin and painted lead. A long sharp sliver of some translucent material protruded grotesquely from her gorgeous robe. "It's the spring, you see. I think it was wound too tightly, Uncle Larry. It sprang right out, on the tenth turn."

  "The Japanese power their dolls with springs of baleen, Affie. 'Whale-whiskers,' they call the stuff. They haven't yet learned from us the manufacture of proper springs, but soon they shall. When they do, their dolls shan't break so easily."

  "Father says you're too keen on your Japanese," Alfred said. "He says you think them the equal of Europeans."

  "And I do, Affie! Their mechanical appliances are presently inferior, due to their lack of knowledge in the applied sciences. Some day, in futurity, they may lead civilization to heights yet untold. They, and perhaps the Americans…"

  The boy regarded him dubiously. "Father wouldn't like that at all, what you said."

  "No, I rather doubt he would."

  Oliphant then spent half-an-hour, down on his knees upon the carpet, watching Alfred demonstrate a toy French Engine—operated, as was its cousin the Great Napoleon, by compressed air. The little Engine employed lengths of telegraph-tape, rather than cards, reminding Oliphant of his letter to M. Arslau. Bligh would have taken it 'round to the French Embassy by now; very likely it was already on its way to Paris by diplomatic pouch.

  Alfred was connecting his Engine to a miniature kinotrope. There came a ceremonious rattle at the door-knob; the doors of Buckingham Palace were never knocked. Oliphant rose, and opened the tall white portal, to discover the well-known face of Nash, a palace valet-de-chambre, whose unwise speculations in railway shares had briefly made him the unwilling intimate of the Metropolitan Fraud Bureau. Oliphant's politesse had successfully smoothed the matter—a kindness well-invested, he saw now, by Nash's unfeigned air of respectful attention. "Mr. Oliphant," Nash announced, "a telegram has come, sir. Most urgent."

  The velocity of the Special Branch vehicle contributed in no small part to Oliphant's general sense of unease. Paternoster himself could have asked for nothing faster, or more radically line-streamed.

  They flew past St. James's Park with the speed of dream, the bare black branches of the lime-trees flashing by like wind-driven smoke. The driver wore leather goggles with round lenses, and plainly relished their headlong flight, periodically sounding a deep-throated whistle that sent horses rearing and pedestrians scurrying. The stoker, a burly young Irishman, was grinning maniacally as he shoveled coke into the burner.

  Oliphant had no idea of their destination. Now, as they neared Trafalgar, the traffic caused the driver to yank the whistle-cord continually, steadily, setting up a mournful bellowing ululation, like the grief of some marine behemoth. The traffic, at this sound, parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Helmeted policemen saluted smartly as they sped past. Urchins and crossing-sweepers turned cartwheels of delight, at the sight of a sleek tin fish racketing down the Strand.

  The evening had grown quite dark. As they entered Fleet Street, the driver applied the brake and worked a lever that released a mighty gout of uprushing steam. The line-streamed gurney bumped to a halt.

  "Well, sir," the driver commented, raising his goggles to peer through the fretted glass of the vehicle's prow, "would you look at that."

  Traffic, Oliphant saw, had been halted completely by the erection of wooden barricades hung with lanterns. Behind these stood grim-faced soldiers in combat drab, Cutts-Maudslay carbines unslung and at the ready. Beyond them, he saw sheets of canvas, loosely hung from raw timber uprights, as though someone were attempting to erect stage-scenery in the middle of Fleet Street.

  The stoker swabbed his face with a polka-dot kingsman. "Something here the press aren't meant to see."

  "They've put it in the wrong street, then," the driver said, "haven't they?"

  As Oliphant climbed from the gurney, Fraser came walking quickly toward him. "We've found her," Fraser said glumly.

  "And seem to have attracted considerable publicity in the process. Perhaps a few less infantry would be in order?"

  "It isn't a matter for levity, Mr. Oliphant. You'd best come with me."

  "Is Betteredge here?"

  "Haven't seen him. This way, please." Fraser led the way bet
ween a pair of barricades. A soldier curtly nodded them past.

  Oliphant glimpsed a mustachioed gentleman in urgent conversation with two Metropolitans. "That's Halliday," he said, "chief of Criminal Anthropometry."

  "Yes, sir," Fraser said. "They're all over this one. The Museum of Practical Geology has been broken into. The Royal Society is angry as a nest of hornets, and bloody Egremont will be in every first-edition, calling it a Luddite outrage. Our only bit of luck would seem to be that Dr. Mallory is well away in China."

  "Mallory? Why is that?"

  "The Land Leviathan. Mrs. Bartlett and her cohorts attempted to make away with the thing's skull."

  They rounded one of the makeshift barriers, its coarse fabric stamped at intervals with the broad-arrow mark of the Army Ordnance Department.

  A cab-horse lay on its side in a great pool of darkening blood. The cab, a common one-horse fly, was overturned nearby, its dull black-lacquered panels stitched with bullet-holes.

  "She was with two men," Fraser said. "Three if you count a corpse they left behind in the Museum. The hack was driven by a Yankee exile called Russell, a bully-rock bruiser living in Seven Dials. The other man was Henry Dease of Liverpool, quite the accomplished cracksman. I'd our Henry in dock ten times, when I was on the force, but no more. They're laid out there, sir." He pointed. "Russell, the driver, evidently got into a shouting match with a real cabman, over who should give way. A Metropolitan on traffic-duty attempted to intervene, at which point Russell produced a pistol."

  Oliphant was staring at the overturned cab.

  "The traffic officer was unarmed, but a pair of Bow Street detectives happened to be passing… "

  "But this cab, Fraser…"

  "That's the work of an Army-gurney, sir. The last of the temporary garrisons is just by the Holborn viaduct." He paused. "Dease had a Russian shotgun… "

  Oliphant shook his head in disbelief.

  "Eight civilians taken to hospital," Fraser said. "One detective dead. But come along, sir—best we get this done with."

  "What is the meaning of these canvas screens?"

  "Criminal Anthropometry ordered them."

  Oliphant felt as though he were moving through a dream, his limbs numb and without volition. He allowed himself to be led to where three canvas-draped bodies were arranged upon stretchers.

  The face of Florence Bartlett was a hideous ruin.

  "Vitriol," Fraser said. "A bullet shattered whatever container she employed."

  Oliphant turned quickly away, retching into his handkerchief.

  "Sorry, sir," Fraser said. "No point in you seeing the other two."

  "Betteredge, Fraser—have you seen him?"

  "No, sir. Here's the skull, sir, or what remains of it."

  "The skull?"

  Perhaps half-a-dozen massive fragments of petrified bone and ivory-tinted plaster were neatly arranged atop a varnished trestle-table. "There's a Mr. Reeks here, from the Museum, come to take it back," Fraser said. "Says it isn't as badly damaged as we might think. Would you like to sit down, sir? I could find you a folding-stool—"

  "No. Why does there seem to be fully half of Criminal Anthropometry about, Fraser?"

  "Well, sir, you're in a better position to determine that than I," Fraser said, lowering his voice, "though I've heard it said that Mr. Egremont and Lord Galton have recently discovered they've much in common."

  "Lord Galton? The eugenics theorist?"

  "Lord Darwin's cousin, that is. He's Anthropometry's man in the House of Lords. Has a deal of influence in the Royal Society." Fraser brought out his notebook. "You'd best see why I thought it urgent you come here, sir." He led Oliphant back around the ruin of the cab. Glancing about for possible observers, he passed Oliphant a fold of blue flimsy. "I took it from the Bartlett woman's reticule."

  The note was undated, unsigned:

  That which you so persistently desire has been located, albeit in a most peculiar hiding-place. I am informed, by our mutual acquaintance of the Derby, Dr. Mallory, that it has been sealed up within the skull of his Land Leviathan. I would hope that you will consider this crucial intelligence a full repayment of all my debts to you. I am in some peril now, from recent political developments, and certainly I am observed by elements of Government; pray consider that in any further attempt to communicate. I have done all that I can, I swear it.

  The elegant hand, as familiar to Oliphant as it was to Fraser, was Lady Ada Byron's.

  "The two of us alone have seen that," Fraser said.

  Oliphant folded the paper in quarters before putting it away in his cigar-case. "And what exactly was it, Fraser, that was hidden in the skull?"

  "I'll escort you back through the line, sir."

  Reporters surged forward as Fraser and Oliphant emerged from the barricades. Fraser took Oliphant's arm and led him into a cluster of helmeted Metropolitans, some of whom he greeted casually by name. "To answer your question, Mr. Oliphant," Fraser said, the policemen walling off the shouting crowd behind blue serge and brass buttons, "I don't know. But we have it."

  "You do? By whose authority?"

  "None but my own lights," Fraser said. "Harris here, he found it in the cab, before Anthropometry arrived." Fraser very nearly smiled. "The boys on the force aren't too keen on Anthropometry. Bloody-minded amateurs, aye, Harris?"

  "Aye, sir," said a Metropolitan with blond side-whiskers, "they are that."

  "Where is it, then?" Oliphant asked.

  "Here, sir." Harris produced a cheap black satchel. "Just as we found it, in this."

  "Mr. Oliphant, sir, I think you'd best take that straight away," Fraser said.

  "Indeed, Fraser, I agree. Tell the Special Branch chap in the fancy gurney that I won't be needing him. Thank you, Harris. Good evening." The policemen parted smoothly. Oliphant, satchel in hand, strode smartly out through the throng who jostled for a better view of the soldiers and the canvas screens.

  "Pardon, guv, but couldyer spare a copper?"

  Oliphant looked down into the squinting brown eyes of little Boots, every inch the crippled jockey. He was neither. Oliphant threw him a penny. Boots caught it adroitly, then edged forward on his cut-down crutch. He stank of damp fustian and smoked mackerel. "Trouble, guv. Becky'll tell yer." Boots wheeled about on his crutch and hobbled determinedly away, muttering as he went, a beggar intent upon finding a better pitch.

  He was one of Oliphant's two most talented watchers.

  The other, Becky Dean, kept pace beside Oliphant as he neared the corner of Chancery Lane. She was gotten up as a rather successful tart, brass-heeled and brazen.

  "Where has Betteredge got to?" Oliphant asked, as if talking to himself.

  "Taken," Becky Dean said. "Not three hours ago."

  "Taken by whom?"

  "Two men in a hack. They'd been following you. Betteredge got on to them, then set us to watching the watchers."

  "I knew nothing of this."

  "Day before yesterday, he came to us."

  "And who were these men?"

  "One's a greasy little ponce of a private detective. Velasco his name is. The other was Government by the look of him."

  "He was taken in broad daylight? By force?"

  "You know well enough how it's done," Becky Dean said.

  In the soothing reek of his tobacconist's quiet stock-room, at the corner of Chancery Lane and Carey Street, Oliphant held the corner of the blue flimsy above the concise jet of a bronze cigar-lighter in the shape of a turbaned Turk.

  He watched the paper reduce itself to delicate pinkish ash.

  The satchel had contained a Ballester-Molina automatic revolver, a silvered-brass pocket-flask filled with some sickly, sweet-scented decoction, and a wooden case. "This last was plainly the object in question, encrusted as it was with raw white plaster. It held a very large number of Engine-cards in the Napoleon gauge, cut from a novel material, milky and very smooth to the touch.

  "The parcel," he said to Mr. Beadon, the tobacconist, "is to
be held for me alone."

  "Certainly, sir."

  "My man Bligh to be the sole exception."

  "As you wish, sir."

  "If any inquiry at all should be made, Beadon, please send a boy 'round to advise Bligh."

  "Our pleasure, sir."

  "Thank you, Beadon. Could you possibly give me forty pounds cash, against my account?"

  "Forty, sir?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes I could, sir. With pleasure, Mr. Oliphant." Mr. Beadon took a ring of keys from his coat and went to unlock an admirably modern-looking safe.

  "And a dozen prime habanas. And Beadon?"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "I think it might be a very good idea if you were to keep the parcel in your safe there."

  "Of course, sir."

  "I believe that the Lambs is nearby, Beadon, the dining-club?"

  "Yes, sir. Holborn, sir. A short walk."

  The year's first snow began to fall, as he made his way up Chancery Lane, a dry gritty stuff that seemed unlikely to adhere to the paving.

  Boots and Becky Dean were nowhere to be seen, which could reliably be taken to mean that they were about their customarily invisible business.

  You know well enough how it's done.

  And didn't he? How many had been made to vanish, vanish utterly, in London alone? How could one sit among friends at pleasant little dinners, sipping Moselle, listening to kind and careless talk, yet carry in one's mind the burden of such knowledge?

  He'd meant Collins to be the last, absolutely the last; now Betteredge had gone, and at the hands of another agency.

  In the beginning, it had made so horribly elegant a sort of sense.

  In the beginning, it had been his idea.

  The Eye. He sensed it now—yes, surely, its all-seeing gaze full upon him as he nodded to the tasseled doorman and entered the marbled vestibule of the Lambs, Andrew Wakefield's dining club.