Fiendish Schemes (21 page)

“These are people with more money than brains, of which you speak.”

“Thus we progress,” she answered primly. “Common sense is but an anchor which keeps us mired in the shoals of existence. Our clientele has hoisted sail for those shores of experience which lie beyond the farthest horizons of possibility.”

To myself, I thought it rather likely that the woman’s clients would dash themselves to pieces upon those shores, as misguided ships did upon the rocks of that Cornish coast from which I had recently fled. But I kept silent upon that point.

“And thus this . . . whatever it is . . .” I gestured about the room and its opulent fixtures, as though they somehow signified all upon which we had discoursed. “This thing called
Fex
— both concept and commercial establishment.”

“Well, yes—though it’s rather difficult to say which came first.” Miss Stromneth waxed philosophical, as was her occasional wont. “It’s my recollection, however, that our senior management—bless their hearts!
and
their business acumen—desired a name for the enterprise, the alluring brevity of which would encompass all the power of that to which it pointed. In retrospect, it seems rather an obvious coinage, from ‘ferric sex’ to ‘fex’—but are not all such strokes of genius marked by a seemingly inevitable simplicity?”

“Very clever, I am sure. Little wonder that you’ve done so well.”

“As I indicated before, Mr. Dower—you have no idea. Those wealthy personages with whom you’ve recently consorted—the Fusibles and their lot, and no doubt others—they are but negligible in this grand transformative scheme. Oh, they know what they’re about, all right—but their plots and maneuvers are on a smaller scale. Not that I’m belittling your own involvement with them, of course.”

“Of course,” I politely echoed.

“But there are others, of greater wealth, greater power, whose headlong leap into the fexual world has wrought such changes upon them, that one might scarcely regard them as human now.”

“Hm.” I shifted uncomfortably upon the settee. “Is being less than human actually a desirable state?”

“I did not say
less,
Mr. Dower. This is perhaps why the great spiritual leaders have commanded us to
Judge not
—so that we might see things as they are, and have become, rather than with our otherwise clouded perceptions.”

“Perhaps.” Another point over which I felt it was not worth arguing. Such was my general tendency toward matters religious. “If you say it is so, I am perfectly willing to take it on faith.”

“You needn’t.” The woman stepped closer to me, so that I needed to tilt back my head to its farthest extreme in order to view her face. “There is nothing of which I speak, that I cannot prove to you.”

This near to her, the heat radiated from the steam-powered corset commanded my senses, the hissing vapours seeming as portentous as storm clouds massing in the distance, lit sharply by flickering lightning. My own breath laboured in my throat, just above my accelerating heart.

“Would you like me to do that, Mr. Dower?” She reached down and stroked my hair. “Do you desire proof? Or more?”

I could not answer her. Suddenly, the room seemed vastly larger, and I lost within it.

My empty teacup shattered on the low table as though it were an egg-shell, as she brushed it from my compliant hand—the better to seize that hand in her own soft one and pull me will-less to my feet.

“We shall return,” she assured Stonebrake, “in but a moment. This won’t take long.”

As a captive linnet tethered to a street vendor’s thread, I allowed her to lead me to the chambers that lay deeper in the house of Fex.

“It’s only a
small
one,” Miss Stromneth replied to my observation. Anticipating the cooler temperature of the high-ceilinged space to which I had been escorted, she had acquired a Japanese
kimono
along the way, to serve as an exotic dressing gown. Beneath its sash and silken cherry-blossom pattern, the steam-powered corset continued to hiss. “And actually, for us here at Fex, it is more of a business expense than an amenity.”

“Nevertheless—” Standing at the entrance to the platform, I gazed up at the spanning ironwork, oddly reminiscent of Victoria Station’s dark, cathedral-like spaces. “I would not have anticipated that you have such a volume of clientele, that a dedicated rail spur was necessary to receive them all.”

“Scarcely the reason, Dower.” From the parlour, Stonebrake had sauntered along behind us, stepping over the pliant steam-hose trailing from beneath the hem of Miss Stromneth’s Oriental gown. “The customers arrive here however they wish; their wealth affords transportation we can scarcely imagine. And for some of them, their requirements are . . .
unusual
.” With a gesture of his hand, he directed my attention to the iron tracks and other industrial details. “But this has all been installed here for their enjoyment, as it were, while partaking of those specific services provided by the establishment.”

“Once more,” I spoke, “you have exceeded my imagination. I have no idea of what is meant by that.”

“Oh, but you shall.” Miss Stromneth took my arm. “Let us retire to a more . . . shall we say,
discreet
location, from which our regard will discomfit no-one.”

A rackety spiral staircase, its iron treads clanking beneath our feet, brought us to an elevated chamber, scarcely large enough to accommodate the three of us. From its unlit windows, concealed behind a bolted lattice, we could vertiginously look down upon the platform we had left below and the tracks paralleling it. A few disoriented pigeons flapped about, marking the girders laced beneath the ceiling. The rain that the morning threatened had at last commenced, drizzling its soft percussion above our heads and adding to the general melancholia of the otherwise empty scene. The effect upon my spirits was similar to that experienced by a solitary traveler, who, having disembarked from a train shared by no other passengers, finds himself equally alone at a destination abandoned due to the lateness of the hour.

“What are we expecting to see?” I wrapped my arms across my chest in a vain attempt to fend off the surrounding chill. “Or is this the entirety of your exposition?”

“Patience, my dear Mr. Dower.” It was rather more easily accomplished for Miss Stromneth to retain her smiling equanimity, given the comforting warmth of the undergarment now concealed. “All shall be revealed—perhaps more than you, in your impatience, wish to have.”

“I fully expect as much.”

“Ah!” She perceived the sour apprehension in my voice. “Let me attempt to soothe your mind in this regard—forewarned is forearmed, as the customary wisdom maintains. What you must realize is the essentially erotic nature of the technology of
Steam
.”

“Surely you jest.” I spoke my objection as forcefully as possible. “These are machines, not flesh and blood.”

“Ah, yes
—
but consider the elements, both of construction and motion. All those furious pistons, pumping within cylinders so tight as to require constant lubrication; the mounting boil of the fiery chambers; the explosive release of the summoned energies—surely all these remind you somewhat of the more primitive animal passions?”

“Please.” I heaved a sigh. “I find the comparison both obvious and strained. Not to mention distasteful.”

“Perhaps so. Others, with the pecuniary means to follow such interests to their logical conclusions, find not just
satisfaction,
but
exaltation
beyond your experiences, in that connection.” The transcendence achieved by Miss Stromneth’s clientele seemed to radiate from her as well; her visage flushed with something other than the warmth from her softly hissing corset. “Given such a happy result, is it any great wonder that they hurl themselves upon the skilled attentions of those who can literally incorporate the steely lineaments of this new world into the soft and less impressive bodies they were given at birth?”

“These days, I wonder at nothing that people do.”

“You might, Mr. Dower, if you were to see them! If nothing else, you would marvel at the sheer size, the immensity, that they encompass. As a wealthy man lives in a palace rather than a hut little wider than the miserable occupant’s outstretched arms, so have certain individuals, blessed with both extravagant funds and the correspondingly unleashed imagination, magnified their forms. Why limit oneself to puny flesh and bone, when so much can be achieved with iron and steel?”

“Why indeed,” I spoke aloud, keeping the words that followed—
If one has nothing better to do
—to myself. “What else is money for?”

“Precisely; I
knew
you could be brought about to see the light! When your great good fortune arrives—as surely it must!—perhaps we shall see you here again at Fex, as a customer rather than a conspirator.”

“There are a few other things I would need to take care of first.”

“All in good time, I’m sure—” She suddenly turned away from me, elevating her gaze and intently listening. “Do you hear that?”

A low rumble animated the cavernous space, at a pitch more perceptible in the gut than audible. “What is it?” I asked.

“I was
hoping
to have such good luck!” She laid hold of my arm and drew me a step closer, as though to better impart confidences. “The wealthy
do
have such irregular habits, don’t they? They come and go as they please, the dears—of course, I don’t mind any inconvenience, as I’m well enough recompensed for being at their beck and call, but it does make a trifle difficult the anticipation of their comings and goings.”

The sound increased in both volume and ominousness, as though the earth below us were about to quake apart, rather than just the clouds above gathering to a storm. I could feel the vibrations traveling up my legs and into the base of the spine, an altogether unnerving sensation.

“It is this gentleman’s usual time, at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but one can hardly count on such events, can one?” Miss Stromneth continued her chatter, though I now realized that her grasp upon my arm was less companionable than pragmatic, the anchor afforded thereby preventing her slighter form from being knocked off her feet. “Driven as they are by men’s appetites—which, while impressively constant in their youth, do tend to become somewhat variable with advancing age.”

Dust and pigeon droppings had begun to sift down from the exposed iron girders above us. From the corner of my eye, I saw Stonebrake swatting at the drifting particles with an expression of annoyance on his face. The bolts holding the structure together, wider than a man’s doubled hands, creaked and strained in their sockets.

“There!” As her grip upon my arm tightened, Miss Stromneth directed my attention with her other hand. “You see? A thing of wonder, is it not?”

I had anticipated the appearance of some appalling thing, and in this regard my expectations were more than exceeded. Reader, recall if you will a sunlit stroll in a public garden, the pleasure multiplied by the absence of any thought other than the appreciation of the sunshine upon one’s upturned face, the caroling of the songbirds in the trees’ leafy canopy, the smiling whispers of parasoled maidens leaning close together to share their sweetly insubstantial confidences. Just such a memory, seemingly incongruous in the
faux
railway station’s shadowed, high-ceilinged cavern, arose in my thoughts as I gazed at the apparition upon the tracks below. More so in London than elsewhere, I expect, a promenade as I have attempted to evoke will be interrupted by the appearance of one of those
grandees,
noble or otherwise, whose wealth and power seem literally to magnify their ponderous bulk. The effect transmitted to the onlooker is rendered even more overwhelming by the swarm of attendants— valets, amanuenses, footmen, and others—accompanying their progress, as a great ocean-going vessel is tethered by a small fleet of boats piloting it to port. One is often forced off the margin of the path by such a crowd, as rural peasants might prudently retreat before an approaching army.

Rather than some titled baron, engorged with wealth and honours, the entity upon the station tracks appeared first to my eye as a steam engine, billowing white clouds of vapour from its vents in sufficient amount to partially conceal its iron flanks and the horizontal pistons that drove its wheels forward. It was only upon further scrutiny, as I leaned forward in the elevated perch to which I had been led, that I was able to discern the disturbingly
human
elements of the creature I beheld. If the ancients had envisioned their mythical centaurs as, rather than a merging of the equine species with their own, instead a combination of man with
machine,
some notion of what I presently saw, fantastic as was its appearance, would have already been encompassed in our mental vocabulary. In this immediate instance, the individual’s bearded face—in his original incarnation, he might have been a prosperous gentleman in his sixth decade, gaze narrowed and expression hardened with the selfsatisfied contemplation of his estate in life
—
was the only part left revealed by the encroaching metal. His shoulders and upper torso, rearing from the front of the steam engine, were bulkily sheathed in what might have been a suit of armour, if such had been fabricated for industrial rather than military purpose. I could see no arms or hands, or indeed any apertures from which they might have protruded from the torso’s iron-plated casing. What need the transmogrified individual might have had for such was served instead by the smaller, still entirely human figures who waited upon him, either clambering about the various mechanisms of the steam engine behind their master’s upraised form or on foot beside it. Their uniform livery denoted employment in a house hold of not just great wealth, but social prestige as well.

“This is monstrous,” I pronounced to my companions. I shook my head in dismay. “The clientele you serve, the patrons of Fex
—
they come here, seeking to be transformed into some unholy conglomeration of flesh and iron? All your talk of surgeons and pipe-fitters—and
this
is the result? For God’s sake, what is achieved thereby?”

“Oh, dear.” A frown appeared on Miss Stromneth’s face. “I had hoped we were making headway in dispelling this unfortunately judgemental attitude of yours. How do you expect to get on in the modern world, Mr. Dower, if every novelty is greeted by you with such disdain?”

“
Novelty?
You must be joking.” I drew back from the edge of our elevated perch and turned the full force of my gaze upon her. “If this is mere novelty, then what, pray tell, is
blasphemy
?”

“An outmoded concept,” spoke Stonebrake drily. “And one illsuited for our times. That’s why I left the ministry.”

“Really?” I encompassed him as well in my scorn. “I have come to doubt that you had ever been
in
it. Cozening gullible widows out of the funds necessary to go floating around on the ocean and proselytize whales—somehow, I am unable to believe that puts you anywhere in the line of apostolic succession. Our Lord and Savior told His disciples that He would make them fishers of men, not bloody whalers with breviaries stuck on the blades of their harpoons.”

“Quiet!” Miss Stromneth interrupted before Stonebrake could assemble a retort. “You’ll alert them to our presence here. This is supposed to be a
private
assignation.”

“Good God.” Her words appalled me to an even greater degree. “You imply that there is more than one.”

“But of course,” she replied. “We could hardly keep the business running with but a single customer. And you might regard me as an incurable romantic, but I like to believe that a
rendezvous
such as this does require a partner—”

No further explanation was required; the brute facts of what I now observed spoke with more crushing eloquence.

Upon a parallel set of tracks, another fearsome creation came into sight, of similar form if slightly smaller dimension than the first I had observed. It also was accompanied by a phalanx of liveried servants, only partly visible through the obscuring clouds as they attended to its various mechanical functions from aboard its bulk or pacing alongside its massive iron wheels. To my increasing dismay, the face visible atop the armoured torso at the front was distinctly feminine in appearance. This observation evoked a frisson of horror along my spine greater than that produced by the grey-bearded male face surmounting the other machine. The effect was little lessened by the fact that it was not a young woman’s face, but rather the overly rouged and powdered visage of one of that foolish elderly tribe who fancy that the lines and crevices of Time can be filled and rendered dewy smooth from the pots and jars ranked like an apothecary’s stock before their dressing-table’s mirror. What it possessed in common with its male counterpart was the same narrow-eyed gaze and thin, self- satisfied smile, redolent of savouring wealth and prestige. As this dreadful creation advanced, I was able to perceive the marginally more decorative aspect of the armoured torso below the woman’s face, gender suggested by the doubly rounded prow and the waist-like incurving that had been fashioned into the riveted metal.

“I’ve seen enough.” Ghastly apprehensions filled my imagination, of the scenes that were about to ensue on the tracks below. “There’s no need to remain here—”

“But there
is,
Dower.” Stonebrake’s animal spirits had been cruelly invigorated by the events trembling the structure about us. He pulled me away from Miss Stromneth and forced me to the edge of our elevated perch, directing my vision downward. “We’re depending upon you for a great deal; all our plans will run aground without your unflagging devotion to them
—
”