Fiendish Schemes (20 page)

“Perfectly understandable.” Indeed, I thought reflections such as these all more or less twaddle, but refrained from saying so. “Pray, proceed.”

“So with this word which intrigues you, and its derivatives . . . ,” she continued in her schoolmistress fashion, the effect rendered somewhat more captivating by her lack of outer garments. “As I am sure you have already noted, the present day’s inhabitants are possessed and obsessed, as it were, with the advent of
Steam
.” She spoke with exactly such emphasis as might the devotee of some outlandish foreign cult, waving a gold-bangled arm in the direction of its vaporous idol. “There was the world before—a poor, trudging sort of place, unaided muscles straining against every weight placed upon them—and now this one that has been revealed to us. In which every effort is multiplied and enhanced with this new force, and accomplishment is only limited by imagination and daring, and the degree to which one dares to incorporate this hissing spirit into the essence of one’s being!”

“Yes . . . of course. Fascinating.” I attempted to shrink back into the sofa as far as I could, not from any aversion to her naked skin, glistening with either ladylike perspiring or condensation from the various heated emissions from her elaborate corsetry, but rather from aversion to her maniacal gaze. Her eyes had widened even further, the coy cheerfulness exhibited before by her now replaced by something rather more intimidating. “As you say, this has come to my attention.”

“You see only the surface phenomena.” Miss Stromneth brought her dampish hand to my brow and rested it there. “As one might, who watches the waves ripple across a sheltered cove, and believes thereby that he knows the ocean entire. But”—she locked her fervent gaze with my rather more appalled one—“there are depths yet unknown to you. No doubt you regard my present state as somewhat extreme.” Having drawn her hand away, she traced her fingertips down the trembling elements of her exposed undergarment. “Do you not?”

“It’s not,” I allowed, “the sort of thing that I have encountered before.”

“I rather expected such to be the case. Which is, of course, half the amusement to be derived.” She rested her hands upon her glistening hips. “But this—I assure you, my dear Mr. Dower—is nothing. Compared to those others, of whose existence I had intimated to you. My allegiance to
Steam
”—once more, that oddly inflected emphasis—“is, I confess, less apostle-like than that maintained by its more faithful adherents. I derive my living from an aspect of it; surely that convicts me of . . . which sin is it?” She frowned, briefly musing. “Simony, I believe it is.”

“You would be better off enquiring of Mr. Stonebrake.” I pointed to my companion beside the mantelpiece. “He has more of an ecclesiastical background than I do.”

“The benefits of this world,” he observed, “are of more interest to me than the punishments of the next.”

“Then we have nothing to fear, do we?” Miss Stromneth resumed her previous cheerful manner. “Our wickedness is but a trifle now, thanks to the modern world. For if we have become enthusiasts for that which emerges from the steam mines in the north of England, we are hardly likely to be discomfited by finding ourselves in a deeper and hotter place, after we have been laid in our graves.”

Once more, the conversation had veered onto what I judged to be a demented course. I wondered if perhaps the hissing and seething corset had produced a deleterious effect upon the balance of the woman’s mind, as though the heat had transferred to her blood and been sufficient to poach the contents of her skull.

“You said there were others? Of a nature that I would somehow find even more impressive?” I attempted to steer her attention back to the matters from which she had digressed. “I find that difficult to believe.”

“Oh, you have no
idea,
Mr. Dower. But you will! Given the elite circles into which you have just begun to set your feet. The wealthy are different from you and me—and the fabulously wealthy are fabulously so. The whole world, or at least the British species, adores
Steam
. They would eat and drink it if they could—and why not?— and sleep upon billowing clouds of its vapours, if they could but knot their bedsheets around them. Would that not be Heaven?”

“A charming notion, indeed.” The woman’s enthusiasms continued to frighten me. “You must think about it a great deal.”

“Not so much. If there were a way to generate a profit thereby, I might—but otherwise my interest is markedly less than that expressed by other people.
They
are the real enthusiasts! But, alas, for so many the world is not constructed as kindly as it is for the rich and powerful. The abilities of most people to indulge their fancies is confined by the meagerness of their pocketbooks. A few ill-manufactured contraptions, boilers and compressors and copper tubes, clanking pistons, snag-toothed gears grinding against one another—” She shook her head in dismay. “Scarcely a day goes by here in London, in which some tenement or other shabby hovel is not exploded to flinders by a malfunctioning steam-powered device, the mere possession of which had served as some scribbling lawclerk’s or seamstress’s testament and shrine to this, their new faith, supplanting the puny prayer-books and flickering votary candles of former beliefs. Indeed, these incendiary events happen so frequently that they go virtually uncommented upon by either the mundane press or the city’s appointed keepers of public order. But if you take the time to listen carefully—” She cupped a hand to one ear and inclined herself toward the nearest of the shrouded windows. “You can hear them, off in the distance or as close as the neighbouring building, one after another . . . all through the day and the night. . . .”

So evocative was her description of this auditory phenomenon, I imagined that I heard—or did in fact—a muffled, repeated boom traveling through the unseen streets, as though from the cannons of a besieging army that had managed to set itself up in Londoners’ drawing-rooms, or what was left of them after Miss Stromneth’s adored
Steam
had finished its destructive work.

“Poor sods,” observed Stonebrake. “Rather gone off the deep end, one might say. Victims of their own enthusiasms.”

“Well, I’m hardly one to be censorious in that regard.” Miss Stromneth took her teacup from the table and daintily sipped from it. “If people weren’t so ridden by their fancies, I and the rest of the staff here at Fex would be out on the streets instead. We pay our rent from others’ follies.”

“I would think you have more at stake than mere finances.” Her comment had evoked another raised eyebrow from me. “Your mode of dress—or undress, as the case might be—indicates some degree of enthusiasm on your own part.”

“Oh, Mr. Dower, there is—as I said before—
so
much of which you are unaware. This—” She laid both hands upon her corseted midriff. “This is but mere surface phenomena, as your scientific friends in the Royal Society might describe it. Something which can be discarded at a moment’s whim—”

“Please; don’t—”

“Have no fear. I perceive your discomfiture. That, too, is something which can be addressed when your own finances are at that higher tide you anticipate. All good things come in time. At this moment, however, all I wished to impart to your understanding was that my participation in this, as you have termed it, ‘enthusiasm’ is very minor indeed, compared to those who have both greater passion for it—
and
the monetary resources to indulge what can be a rather expensive taste.”

“Which is, I presume, the custom you serve here. At Fex.”

“Exactly so! To everyone’s satisfaction, I have been assured.”

“I rather hope,” spoke Stonebrake, “to ascertain such facts for myself.”

“Rest assured, you would be most welcome.” Miss Stromneth tilted her head to direct her roguish smile at him. “Along with your ample bank account.”

“Please . . .” I attempted by main force to drag the conversation back to a more productive channel. “You indicated but a moment ago that there was some hidden—or at least hidden to
me—
significance to the monosyllabic name of this enterprise. At this point, I would be satisfied myself, to know that much.”

“That? Simple enough, Mr. Dower—though I estimate that it would require a deal more to
satisfy
a manly specimen such as yourself.”

I held my silence. The woman seemed fixated on unseemly things.

“Consider the surgeon, if you will.”

“Pardon?” That comment’s approach had not been foreseen by me. “I’m not quite sure what is meant . . .”

“A
surgeon,
” Miss Stromneth. “A man of medicine, who employs a scalpel in the performance of his craft. You are aware, I’m sure, that are some such, who cut and trim not because their patients’ lives might be endangered by some awkward growth lodged in their tissues, but rather on behalf of some vanity conceived in their thoughts?”

“Certainly—though why scars and stitches, however minor or well-concealed, would be considered attractive is a matter beyond my comprehension.”

“
De gustibus non est disputandem,
Mr. Dower—an observation from the ancients, the truth of which I know better than most.”

“It seems,” I observed, “to have been adopted as the exculpatory motto of this new, ever-accommodating society.”

“Regardless,” she continued, “there is no disputing that if a person desired such services, and had the means to pay for them, it would have been to just such a skilled doctor the person would have turned. Now consider a pipe-fitter.”

“Why?” The discourse had again veered onto an unexpected tangent. “What does that—”

“Just do,” chided Miss Stromneth. “Indulge me for a moment. Surely it would seem equally obvious to you that individuals skilled in the juncturing of pipes, the securing of one to another so that their contents, however forceful, are channeled to the desired point—such individuals would be uniquely prized and rewarded in this, our world transformed by
Steam?
”

“Now that you mention it . . .” The possibility seemed logical enough. “I am sure they are.”

“Thus we progress. Now imagine, as I expect you are capable, that certain wealthy individuals, who in previous duller times might have indulged their vanity by employing a scalpel-wielding surgeon, now wish to incorporate their enthusiasm for all things Steamy into their very bodies, their flesh and blood.”

“What a ghastly notion.”

“Please refrain from judgement, Mr. Dower. Money buys one a great deal of indulgence in this world; that is why people, including yourself, seek its possession. That which is considered rashly mad, even criminal, when practiced by the impecunious—acquires an ample if perhaps somewhat eccentric nobility when indulged in by the rich. Continue with your imagining, based on that principle. Which would such a wealthy, impassioned individual require for the fulfillment of his desires—a surgeon skilled in slicing through the soft and spongy tissues of the human body, or a fitter with the knowledge sufficient for coupling pipes and junction boxes so that the desired
Steam
would be steered to its appropriate destination?”

“I suppose such desires would call upon the services of both specialists.”

“Yes! Exactly so.” Miss Stromneth clasped her hands before the swell of her partially revealed bosom. “And thus our enterprise here at Fex has thrived. As in earlier days, when the proprietors of certain discreet establishments—such as my dear, now departed mentor, Mollie Maud—brought a grateful clientele into contact with those who could provide satisfaction to their desire, so do I and my staff, at the direction of our senior management, achieve the same result for a new but just as fortunate set of customers. In rather an augmented fashion, of course; such are the blessings of these new forces and contrivances that men as clever as your father have unleashed upon a submissive world. As in this case, with the establishment of the entire concept and dependent institution of
ferric sex
.”

Of all the things of which the woman had spoken, this sounded the worst.

“It only seems distasteful,” continued Miss Stromneth, “upon first encounter.” She had perceived my poorly disguised revulsion. “But as I am sure your own experience has been with fleshly pleasures, further acquaintance leads to not just acceptance, but even enthusiasm, of exactly those things from which one had first shrunk in horror.”

“That might be the course of events,” I allowed, “with those activities that are necessary for the continuation of the species. But such is Nature’s cruel wisdom; our kind would have died out long ago if we had no innate, brutish capacity for those private activities which our higher selves regard as indecorous.”

“Thanks be to a merciful Providence for
that
.” She spoke with renewed cheer. “Otherwise I would be out of business, and Fex’s senior management would be hard-pressed to eke out a living from an ironmonger’s shop.”

“Which would have seemed to be their appropriate calling in this world, or at least in what it used to be.” Belatedly, I had managed to form a strategy for remaining abreast of her continuous string of revelations: I merely had to envision the least likely and most repellent possibility, and it would very likely be the next thing imparted to me. “Propagating the species is one matter, and if the means of doing so are on the unseemly side, it becomes more duty than pleasure. So be it—but I rather doubt that this notion of ferric sex qualifies in that regard. No doubt you and your customers have found some way of indulging your mania for
Steam”
—her odd manner of emphasizing the word had crept into my own speech—“with those biological proclivities with which they were born. ‘Ferric’ being the descriptor for metals such as iron, I can only assume that this is the well- spring of all your talk of surgeons and pipe-fitters enabling the wishes of your esteemed clientele.”

“Clever lad,” muttered Stonebrake from behind me. “How can we fail, with one such as you on our side?”

“You have seized upon it in a trice, Mr. Dower!” Upon setting her cup down, Miss Stromneth clapped her hands together in delight. “Exactly so! Thank
God
for rich people, who have already jaded themselves through the satiation of those tastes they share with the less enabled rabble, so that it requires virtually no inducements at all to convince them to fling off the restraints of
Nature,
and not just embrace
Science,
but incorporate its seductions into their very being!”