Not Less Than Gods (25 page)

“There, sir?”

Ludbridge shaded his eyes with his hand. “By God, so it is. Come along, then.”

The door in question, very far down the lane, belonged to a residence of slightly shabby gentility. Ludbridge climbed the steps, looking here and there for any kind of mark or symbol, and finding only a small ornate case vertically affixed to the right-hand doorpost about three-quarters of the way up.

He knocked anyway. A girl opened the door, clearly a servant, wiping her hands on her apron. Bell-Fairfax removed his hat. Ludbridge cleared his throat and spoke in Greek: “Er . . . what becomes of illusions?”

The girl looked bewildered. “. . . Perhaps you are here to see the rabbi?” she replied, also in Greek.

“I suppose we are, yes.”

“I’ll talk to them, Flora,” said a young man, coming quickly to the door. He wore a skullcap and, like Mihalakis, a Western-style suit. He waited until she had gone back to the kitchen and, looking Ludbridge in the eye, said in a low voice, “We dispel illusions.”

“Ah.” Ludbridge exhaled. “And we are everywhere. Thank you.”

“Come, please.” The young man stood back and bowed them in. “You are English, I believe? From the Society?”

“We are, yes. I am Mr. Ludbridge and this is my friend, Mr. Bell-Fairfax. A Mr. Mihalakis advised us we might find assistance here.”

“Ah! You must have come on the
Heron
. I am Asher Canetti. Please, gentlemen, follow me. I will take you to my father. He will do whatever he can for you.”

He led them through the house and out into a back garden, at the far end of which was a stable and carriage house. A pair of horses could be glimpsed within the stable, but the doors to the carriage house were closed. A rhythmic clanging noise came from within, suggesting that the rabbi kept his own blacksmith. Asher opened one of the two broad doors. The hammering stopped at once but a certain low roaring continued.

“Babbas, we have visitors.”

“I’m busy,” someone replied irritably, and with a hollow and echoing voice.

“These are Green Lion visitors,” said Asher. At this the door was opened from inside by another youth, wearing a blacksmith’s apron over his suit. He was formidable, six feet tall and broad shouldered, with a black beard, but at present he looked a little apologetic.

“Gentlemen,” said Asher, “this is my brother Mordekhay, and this—.”

“Close the damn door!”

“—is our father, Rabbi Yakov Canetti,” said Mordekhay, waving them inside and closing the door after them. A figure was bent over beside an immense black coach, welding with a wand from which jetted a continuous blue flame, and which was the source of the roaring noise. He wore a helmet with a visor. Mordekhay bent down beside him and shouted, “Babbas, this is Magi business!”

The figure stood, hastily beating sparks from his beard. Asher took the welding wand from him and turned a knob, extinguishing the flame at once. The rabbi pushed up the visor of the helmet and stared at them. He groped in his waistcoat pocket for a pair of spectacles and put them on. Blue-white light flared on the lenses, from a lamp hung in the rafters; glancing up at it, Ludbridge saw that it was clearly something like de la Rue’s vacuum lamps, and that all along the rafters and hanging from the walls were tools and machine parts of unknown purpose.

“Excuse me,” said Rabbi Canetti.

“Quite all right,” said Ludbridge.

Asher introduced them. “Pleased to meet you. May I offer you a glass of tea?” said Rabbi Canetti.

“We should be very obliged to you,” said Ludbridge. The rabbi started out of the carriage house, and after Asher caught his arm and Mordekhay removed the welding helmet for him, they all proceeded to a little summer house under a grape arbor and Asher went indoors to bespeak the tea.

“And how may we be of service to our brothers?” the rabbi inquired, when the tea had been brought and poured.

“We need to get to Silistria, on the Danube,” said Ludbridge. “Perhaps you might tell us the best route?”

The rabbi stroked his beard. “That would be, hmmm, in English I
think about a hundred miles. There is a diligence that goes through Bazargik that can take you there. I suppose you are not at liberty to provide me with any details?”

“Unfortunately, we are not,” said Ludbridge.

“Perfectly understandable,” the rabbi replied, with a wave of his hand. “Would you be able to tell me how many travelers?”

“Four. And a great deal of luggage.”

Mordekhay and Asher sat upright and exchanged glances.

“That is a shame,” said Mordekhay. “The diligences are small and cramped.”

“And their rates are outrageous, especially if you have many trunks,” said Asher. The brothers were both bright-eyed with suppressed excitement.

“Babbas, it’s a good road to Bazargik!”

“Smooth and straight and not very crowded!”

“And there’s no moon tonight!”

“And who knows whether there aren’t highwaymen on the prowl?”

The rabbi looked at his sons and raised an eyebrow. He glanced over his shoulder at the carriage house.

“Ahem. I wonder, Mr. Ludbridge, whether you would be averse to traveling at night? If you are not . . . we may be able to save you a great deal of trouble.”

“I shouldn’t think we’d have any objection at all, would you, Bell-Fairfax?”

“No, sir.”

“Excellent,” said Rabbi Canetti, and drank down his tea. “When you have refreshed yourselves, I will show you something interesting.”

“Based on the splendid Concord design, but look! Steel panels inside the walls,” he was saying, fifteen minutes later, as he ran a loving hand over the coach. “And, you’re thinking to yourself, plate steel? What kind of horse could draw a coach made of plate steel? Ah, but, you see, it isn’t.
Doesn’t need to be. My sons and I have developed a tempering process to give steel greater strength and flexibility. The panels are made of thin strap steel, woven like basketwork. They will stop a bullet at ten paces, standing still. When the carriage is moving, they are even more effective.

“And look at the suspension! Improved elliptical springs. Extra thor-oughbraces. Gutta-percha blocks to absorb impact. Coach lanterns here at the front. And what provides the light? Candles? Ha! Oil lamps, you say? Not at the speeds
we
can attain. Regard this lamp.” He pointed at the glowing orb mounted in the rafters. “An electrical current makes it glow, from a galvanic cell array hidden in that trunk in the corner. But look at these!” He indicated the carriage lamps gleefully. “Each one fitted with its own electrical lamp, and the rotation of the wheels charges the galvanic cell arrays concealed under the driver’s box. Genius, no? My Asher’s work.”

“A work of genius indeed, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax.

“And a self-lighting, bulletproof coach impresses, but! It has other remarkable properties, which I will demonstrate tonight,” said Rabbi Canetti. Asher and Mordekhay gave him a stricken look.

“But, Babbas, we thought we would go.”

“It hasn’t really been road-tested, and we thought—.”

“What if it breaks down? We’re young men—.”

“So you think I’m too old?” said the rabbi, with a dangerous light in his eyes, and both his sons turned red and looked at their shoes.

“No, Babbas,” they said in meek unison.

“We will all go. That is my decision,” said the rabbi. He looked at his coach and smiled again. “After all, it seats eight in comfort.”

They went back to their hotel, accompanied by Mordekhay with a wheelbarrow for their trunks. Ludbridge carefully deactivated the gyroscopic alarm, and Mordekhay lifted the great trunk and swung it up on his shoulder without any difficulty; Bell-Fairfax was able to carry most of the rest of the luggage, precariously stacked, leaving Ludbridge
with nothing more troublesome than a carpetbag and the Aetheric Transmitter. They left a note with the concierge for Pengrove and Hobson, and went back to the house with the green door.

Having spent a pleasant afternoon in the rabbi’s parlor discussing the state of the Ottoman Empire, during which time enticing aromas began to drift from the kitchen, they at length heard a knock at the front door. Mordekhay went to answer it and returned with Pengrove and Hobson, both of whom looked windblown. When they had been introduced, Pengrove saluted Ludbridge somewhat unsteadily.

“Lake expedition accomplished, sir!”

“Quite.” Ludbridge frowned at him. “Have you been drinking?”

“Well, we had to, you know, to keep from freezing out there,” said Pengrove, and Hobson nodded in solemn agreement. “Took us hours and hours. We were half-dead by the time we were halfway round the lake. And three-quarters dead by the time we were three-quarters around. So of course we ought to have been entirely dead by the time we got back, only the chap who owned the boat was most awfully jolly and directed us to his brother, who has a wine shop, and he sold us the most curious brandy!”

“Made from blue plums,” said Hobson, swaying a little. He was clutching a brown paper parcel to his chest.

“That would be slivovitz?” said Asher.

“To be sure!” said Pengrove, looking a little uncomfortable under the weight of Ludbridge’s deepening scowl. “Well. Er. Very pleased to meet you all, and terribly sorry if we’ve delayed you, and if you’ll just excuse Hobson and I a moment we’ll go dress for dinner—”

Bell-Fairfax directed them out to the carriage house, where the trunks had been left. A few minutes later they returned in formal supper attire, redolent of peppermint.

The dish served was braised chicken in a kind of tomato sauce with hot buttered noodles, and there was a decanter of muscatel on the table. Pengrove and Hobson, however, politely declined when the bottle passed their way, at which Ludbridge was a little mollified. The meal was rounded off with a splendid cheese tart. After Flora had cleared the
dishes away, Rabbi Canetti went to the window and drew the curtain aside to peer out at the evening.

“I believe we ought to set out,” he said. “You might wish to dress warmly, gentlemen.”

Asher and Mordekhay leaped to their feet and ran upstairs, followed at a more sedate pace by the rabbi, apparently to change their garments. Ludbridge and the others went out and, by the dim light of the stars, retrieved coats from their trunks and put them on. They were standing by the cucumber-frames, watching their breath smoking in the night air, when the back door opened and three figures in voluminous long coats—dusters, they saw—appeared, framed by lamplight. They hurried up the path to the carriage house. Ludbridge recognized the rabbi, who wore a broad-brimmed hat securely held on by a leather strap under his chin.

“Are you all ready? Good! Boys, push it out and load their trunks on. If one of you gentlemen will help me with the horses?”

Bell-Fairfax assisted him in fetching out the two horses—a handsome pair of coal-black geldings of considerable size—and they were swiftly hitched to the carriage traces, which seemed of a slightly unusual design, though it was impossible to see much in the dark. Rabbi Canetti climbed up onto the driver’s box. Mordekhay ran to open the gate, while Asher held the coach door open for the Englishmen and bowed them in. He climbed in after Bell-Fairfax, pulled the door shut, and leaned back and beamed at them.

“Comfortable, no?”

“Very much so,” said Ludbridge, and truthfully; for they were all sprawled at their ease in the coach’s vast interior, with the exception of Bell-Fairfax, who was obliged to keep his knees drawn up. The coach jolted forward through the gate and stopped, as Mordekhay closed and locked it and then scrambled up beside his father.

“The finest leather upholstery, stuffed not with horsehair but with cotton batting, and springs in the seats, just like a sofa,” said Asher, as the rabbi shouted a command and the coach began to move. “But now! Feel the smoothness of the ride!”

They set off at a brisk pace through the night. Ludbridge reflected that, had it not been for the rumble of the wheels and the jingle of harness, he might have imagined he was in a gently swaying hammock. “Extraordinary!” he said. Asher folded his hands and smiled.

“It seems like a lot of trouble to take, doesn’t it, to so insulate the passengers from the jars and bumps of travel? But wait and see. In the meanwhile, let me demonstrate a few other remarkable features . . .” He reached up and adjusted something on the compartment’s ceiling, and abruptly they were all bathed in the light of a vacuum lamp.

“Behold! Powered by the same source as the coach lamps. You are enabled to read or consult maps as you travel. And here . . .” He reached up and opened a vent, and turned a small knob. A jet of icy air emerged. “A system of funnels catches the rushing wind disturbed in our passage and compresses it as it directs it through tubes, and at last out this vent, lowering its temperature in the process. I will close it now, because we don’t want icicles to form on such a night, but you can see how this would make travel in the summer months much more comfortable.”

“Brilliant,” said Hobson through chattering teeth.

“It is even possible to heat the compartment by opening
this
vent,” Asher added, pointing. “But that must wait until we are well clear of Varna.”

“Hmm. Steam boiler has to heat up?” speculated Ludbridge.

“No . . . I had better not say any more. I believe my father wishes to show it off himself,” Asher replied. He reached up and shut off the light.

The coach sped along. For a brief while they saw the lights of Varna and, as those fell behind, the road began to climb, for they were proceeding westward into the hills. At last the road swung around to the north—Asher at this point could not resist opening a panel and displaying a compass, thermometer and clock built into the door—and the road leveled out. Here the coach slowed, pulled to the side, and stopped.

Hobson, who had fallen asleep, woke with a start. “Good God! We’re not there yet, are we?”

“No,” Ludbridge told him, with an interrogatory look at Asher. “Are we quite all right?”

“Perfectly,” Asher said. “Would you care to see the surprise now?”

On receiving a reply in the affirmative, he drew an ordinary lantern from under the seat and lit it with a lucifer. They climbed from the coach and saw Mordekhay, brilliantly lit by the twin carriage lamps, in the act of unhitching the horses. Rabbi Canetti swung himself down from the box and pulled what appeared to be a watering-can from a compartment beside the front wheels.