Not Less Than Gods (28 page)

A moment later an extraordinary thing emerged from the tunnel. It resembled a gigantic serpent made of gleaming brass. The riveted apertures of its eyes were windows, behind whose pale-blue transparency a pair of uniformed men could be glimpsed, apparently seated at a control panel. In its grinning jaws it held a faceted jewel, which threw a brilliant beam of light forward. A single horn projected from the top of its skull, and where a disc on the top of its horn touched the overhead wire a continuous shower of blue sparks ran and fell.

Revolving wheels and the subsequent emergence of railway cars behind it made plain that this was, indeed, a locomotive engine; and yet there was no billowing smoke and only the slightest noise, a smooth humming punctuated by the faint clatter of rails.

“Ah,” said Ludbridge, getting to his feet. “Five minutes early. I thought it might be. Aren’t you glad you hurried when you were told? Has every boy his ticket?”

“Yes, sir,” the others chorused, rather shaken. The train slowed to a stop. A door in the side of the first car opened, and a uniformed man stood within looking at them expectantly.

“Passengers to Aalborg?”

“Four, sir,” called Ludbridge, and led them across the platform.

“It’s a Galvanic Locomotive,” he explained, as they settled into their compartment. “Powered by the turbines, which are powered by the waterfall diverted from the river. Powered by rivers all the way across Europe, actually; there are ten different turbine banks on the route. No smoke. No coaling stops. No noise to speak of. No boiler explosions. No
collisions, for there’s only the one train and it simply goes round and round.”

“Why did we build it from Bucharest to Aalborg?” Pengrove asked. “Wouldn’t, I don’t know, London to Paris or Rome have been a little more useful?”

“Perhaps,” said Ludbridge. “But we didn’t build it. Oh, we built the railway line, no question of that; but the tunnel was the gift of our Infor mant. In the letter of ’24, I think it was. Instructed us to dig in a certain spot and there was the tunnel, bored who knows how many ages ago, ready for our use.”

“The letter of 1824?” said Bell-Fairfax, with a curious smile.

“So I’m told.” Ludbridge looked up at the door. Rather than opening on the outer air, as in a steam railway carriage, it opened onto an enclosed corridor that ran the length of the train. A uniformed steward had just entered the section beside their compartment, and raised his hand to rap on the window. Hobson jumped up and opened the door.

“Sirs.” The steward touched the brim of his cap. “Welcome to the Galvanic Express to Aalborg. Your luncheon menus,” he added, and proffered four cards printed with descriptions of various dishes. “Will you take your meals in the restaurant car, or would you prefer to dine here?”

“In the restaurant, I think,” said Ludbridge.

“Very good, sir; I shall arrange to have a table set for four. The same arrangements for dinner?”

“Yes, please.”

“And will you require the services of a bootblack, barber or laundress?”

“All three, I believe.”

“Very good, sir; the barber will call at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Items to be laundered should be placed in this compartment”—the steward demonstrated a sliding panel on the left side of the door—“where they may be collected without the necessity of disturbing you, for there is a corresponding panel opening on the corridor. Boots to be cleaned should be placed in this compartment to the right. I
will return in fifteen minutes to take your orders, and luncheon will be served at noon promptly in the restaurant, which is in Car Number Six. May I answer any questions?”

“Not at present, thank you,” said Ludbridge. The steward bowed and left them. Directly the compartment door had shut, there were whoops of gleeful laughter from the younger Residentials. Ludbridge looked on benignly.

“Look at this!” crowed Bell-Fairfax. “Oyster patties! Tournedos of  beef filets. Fricandeau of veal. Sweetbreads. Terrine de fois gras. Stuffed shoulder of lamb. Terrapin bisque. Asparagus!”

“There’s a wine list on the back,” said Hobson. “Oh, my sainted aunt.”

“I shall wake up soon and find myself back on that beastly barge, with nothing for breakfast but a lump of cheese and a crust,” said Pengrove. “Good God, fancy getting the mud of the Danube off our shoes at last! And a real laundress ironing one’s smalls. Utter bliss.”

“Just don’t make pigs of yourselves,” said Ludbridge. “It’s four days to Aalborg.”

“And . . . this is all some sort of ancient mining tunnel?” Bell-Fairfax peered out the window at the rock walls rolling past.

“No one knows,” said Ludbridge.

“Perhaps the Romans built it,” said Hobson.

“An immense circle from Denmark to France to Wallachia? Bit beyond even their engineers, I should think,” said Ludbridge. “It’s been speculated it’s a natural geologic feature, like one of those, what-d’ye-call-’ ems, lava tubes in the Sandwich Islands. I have my doubts. It’s a bit odd how it’s all one diameter the whole way through, and runs close to underground water sources at just the places one would need them, if one were going to run a system of galvanic water-powered turbines.”

“But what could it be, then?” Bell-Fairfax lowered his menu and stared at Ludbridge. Ludbridge shrugged.

“There are rumors that our Informant—whoever he, or they, might be—built it. You heard the story about the meeting at Ostia, I suppose, when you were first recruited?”

“Some chap visited them from the future, I was told,” said Hobson.

“I, too,” said Pengrove.

“And I,” said Bell-Fairfax.

“Well, there you are. If the Society discovers how to travel through time, at some point in the distant future—and clearly they will—then the first thing they’ll do, quite sensibly, is go back into the past and guarantee that that traveler walks into that house at Ostia on that particular day, and assures the Old Members that they must carry on their good fight. And then, what
I
would do next—and clearly they have done—is send the annual letters with helpful advice and instruction, based on their foreknowledge of what is to come.”

“Quite true,” said Pengrove. Ludbridge leaned forward, his eyes narrowed.

“But think for a moment about what that
means
,” he said. “If you had the ability to travel through time, would you stop there? I wouldn’t. If you knew that the very existence of that paradise of
technologia
in which you dwelt depended on some poor benighted band of fellows struggling along through the past, wouldn’t you give them all the help you could?

“I think
they
built this tunnel, for our use. If they can travel through time, is it too great a stretch of one’s imagination to think that they also possess machines that can burrow through rock as easily as an earthworm burrows through loam? Who knows what they might or mightn’t be able to do? You think this railway is a marvel, and yet we built it ourselves, simply employing well-known scientific principles our fellow men have been insufficiently visionary to put to use. Can you imagine the machines we’ll build, centuries hence?

“There have always been stories, you know, of mysterious strangers coming to the assistance of Society members who find themselves in difficult straits. Good angels, if you will. They appear at precisely the right moment, they guide one out of danger, they miraculously happen to have money or a fast horse or whatever it is one needs—and then they vanish.” Ludbridge made a sleight-of-hand gesture like a conjuror, and the stump of his cigar vanished from between his fingers.

The others stared at him, openmouthed. Bell-Fairfax in particular, he thought, looked like a child who had just been told about Father Christmas for the first time.

“Sirs?” The steward rapped politely on the compartment door. “May I take your orders now?”

“Yes, thank you.” Ludbridge smiled and handed him the menu card, then produced his cigar from thin air and flicked away a bit of ash. “I’ll have the terrapin bisque, poached salmon and green peas, with your best sauterne. Chaps? Tell the nice gentleman what you’ll have.”

They left their compartment at noon and proceeded along the corridor, past other compartments, to the restaurant car. For all that its windows looked out on black primordial rock, it was elegantly appointed and beautifully lit by vacuum lamps behind tinted shades. Each table bore a single fresh rosebud in a cut-crystal vase; a string quartet played quietly on a raised dais at the rear of the car. The steward conducted them to their table and retired; the moment they had seated themselves, waiters swept in and served their meal, departing with a bow after pouring the wine.

“If I wake from this dream now, I believe I shall throw myself in the Danube,” said Pengrove, considering a spoonful of terrapin bisque.

Ludbridge chuckled. “It’s real enough. Enjoy it while you can; it may well be rather more rough in the Baltic, in autumn.”

“Are we going to Rus sia?” asked Hobson.

“You’ll know when I tell you,” said Ludbridge imperturbably. “Do you often discuss private matters in eating houses, may I ask?”

“Of course not, but surely—” Hobson waved a hand at the other diners in the car. There were a pair of gentlemen in fezzes at the near table, a blonde lady and gentleman—alike enough to be brother and sister—at the table just beyond, and a solitary gentleman in a military uniform seated near the string quartet. “They’re our own people, what?”

“Quite true. Still, it doesn’t do to get out of the habit of prudence, does it?”

“It certainly doesn’t,” remarked one of the gentlemen wearing a fez.

“There, you see?” Ludbridge waved his soup spoon at the man, who acknowledged him with a slight bow. “You never know who might be listening.”

The Galvanic Express carried them on, gliding under Europe so smoothly there was scarcely a vibration in the wineglasses at meals. No scream of whistles, no Dopplering noise anywhere; only the clink and rattle of cutlery and the soothing music produced by the string quartet punctuated the hours.

Each evening, while they were at dinner, their compartment was converted to a dormitory by the steward, for there were ingeniously designed bunks concealed within the walls. The lavatory cabinet included a shower bath, in addition to other remarkable refinements in its fixtures. Their clothes were duly laundered, their boots cleaned, and a barber came and put them in trim—for they had all, as Pengrove expressed it, taken on the appearance of Romantic poets. A repairs technician took Pengrove’s talbotype camera away and returned it the next day in nearly pristine condition, though the lens tube still bore visible dents.

Quite recent editions of the London
Times
,
Punch
, and
The Illustrated Weekly News
were available for their amusement, when they weren’t playing cards. Hobson was given a considerable holiday, for the Aetheric Transmitter could not be used so far under the earth, and when he discovered there was a bar in Car No. Nine he wandered off there of an afternoon and generally returned breathing peppermint fumes. Ludbridge observed him closely, scowling, but said nothing before the others.

“And all good things come to an end,” said Pengrove with a sigh, as they watched the Galvanic Express pull away from the platform. The
grinning head and car after car vanished into the tunnel, bound for Calais; the last they saw of it was the fanciful leviathan’s tail fitted on the end car, from which a glowing lantern hung pendant.

“So they do,” said Ludbridge. “Hoist your trunks, then; we’ll have a devil of a climb.”

But even as they were collecting their baggage, a man approached them. He was blond bearded and ruddy, and pushed a baggage cart before him. “Mr. Ludbridge,” he called. Ludbridge turned and saw him.

“What becomes of illusions?”

“We dispel them,” said the man, wheeling the cart up to Ludbridge’s trunk. His English was excellent.

“And we are everywhere.”

“So we are. Hagen Stemme, at your service.”

They shook hands and Ludbridge added: “So sorry to hear you’re losing Orsted.”

“Ah! So are we. Still, it has been a life well lived. The Kabinet of Wonders welcomes you to the north. Will you please to step this way? We have an ascending chamber to the inn, which is much more con venient than the stairs.”

So they were spared a considerable climb, a fact they appreciated more with every minute that passed in the chamber before it finally bumped to a gentle stop. The door opened and they stepped into what appeared to be someone’s bedroom, with a heavily curtained bed in one corner and old-fashioned dark paneling.

“The guest room,” said Stemme, as a section of panel slid shut behind them. “You have a suite of four. Nicely arranged, is it not? No one ever sees the guests arrive.”

“Where are we?” Bell-Fairfax inquired.

“The Green Lion of Aalborg,” Stemme replied. “It made sense to build it over the railway station. Did you enjoy your journey?”

“Rather,” said Pengrove. Stemme laughed and rolled his eyes.

“Who would go to France in a coastal packet, I ask you, when he
could get there in such luxury? I will leave you to unpack. Here are your keys; when you have refreshed yourselves, come down to the private room and have a glass of akvavit.”

When he had left them, Hobson inquired, “What’s the Kabinet of Wonders?”

“Same as the Magi,” said Ludbridge, tossing him his key. “Only not Eastern. Name goes back to the days of old King Rudolf, Holy Roman Emperor in Shakespeare’s day. He was a bloody poor excuse for a king but he loved machines. Kept a whole court of inventors, astronomers, alchemists, that sort of thing. We were rather heavily involved with him—Kepler, for one—and the northern branch kept the name.”

“Why didn’t we try to influence him to be a better king?” asked Bell-Fairfax.

“That wasn’t our job,” said Ludbridge. “We might have used our influence to teach him
his
job, but what then? If he’d paid more attention to being Holy Roman Emperor, he wouldn’t have spent so much money in the cause of Science. And even if we had expended a great deal of effort trying to make him a virtuous, enlightened prince in the Socratic mold, it would all have gone for nothing once he’d died and a new fellow got the throne. Men don’t last, my boy. Machines do.”