The Difference Engine (11 page)

The machine set its course for the gouts of greyish vapor rising behind the pillared grandstands of Epsom. It humped slowly up the curb of a paved access-road. Mallory could see the garages now, a long rambling structure in the modern style, girdered in skeletal iron and roofed with bolted sheets of tin-plate, its hard lines broken here and there by bright pennants and tin-capped ventilators.

He followed the huffing land-craft until it eased into a stall. The driver popped valves with a steaming gush. Stable-monkeys set to work with greasing-gear as the passengers decamped down a folding gangway, the Lord and his two women passing Mallory on their way toward the grandstand. Britain’s self-made elite, they trusted he was watching and ignored him serenely. The driver lugged a massive hamper in their wake. Mallory touched his own striped cap, identical with the driver’s, and winked, but the man made no response.

Strolling the length of the garages, spotting steamers from his guidebook. Mallory marked each new sighting with his pencil-stub and a small thrill of satisfaction. Here was Faraday, great savant-physicist of the Royal Society, there Colgate the soap magnate, and here a catch indeed, the visionary builder Brunei. A very few machines bore old family arms; landowners, whose fathers had been dukes and earls, when such titles had existed. Some of the fallen old nobility could afford steam; some had more initiative than others, and did what they could to keep up.

Arriving at the southern wing. Mallory found it surrounded by a barricade of clean new saw-horses, smelling of pitch. This section, reserved for the racing-steamers, was patrolled by a squad of uniformed foot-police. One of them carried a spring-wind Cutts-Maudslay of a model familiar to Mallory, the Wyoming expedition having been provided with six of them. Though the Cheyenne had regarded the stubby Birmingham-made machine-carbine with a useful awe. Mallory knew that it was temperamental to the point of unreliability. Inaccurate to the point of uselessness as well, unless one were popping off the entire thirty rounds into a pack of pursuers — something Mallory himself had once done from the aft firing-position of the expedition’s steam-fortress.

Mallory doubted that the fresh-faced young copper had any notion what a Cutts-Maudslay might do if fired into an English crowd. He shook off the dark thought with an effort.

Beyond the barricade, each separate stall was carefully shielded from spies and odds-makers by tall baffles of tarpaulin, tautly braced by criss-crossed cables threaded through flagpoles. Mallory worked his way through an eager crowd of gawkers and steam-hobbyists. Two coppers stopped him brusquely at the gate. He displayed his citizen’s number-card and his engraved invitation from the Brotherhood of Vapor Mechanics. Making careful note of his number, the policemen checked it against a thick notebook crammed with fan-fold. At length they pointed out the location of his hosts, cautioning him not to wander.

As a further precaution, the Brotherhood had appointed their own look-out. The man squatted on a folding-stool outside the tarpaulin, squinting villainously and clutching a long iron spanner. Mallory proffered his invitation. The guard stuck his head past a narrow flap in the tarpaulin, shouted, “Your brother’s here, Tom,” and ushered Mallory through.

Daylight vanished in the stink of grease, metal-shavings, and coal-dust. Four Vapor Mechanics, in striped hats and leather aprons, were checking a blueprint by the harsh glare of a carbide lamp; beyond them, a queer shape threw off highlights from curves of enameled tin.

He took the thing for a boat, in the first instant of his surprise, its scarlet hull absurdly suspended between a pair of great wheels. Driving-wheels, he saw, stepping closer; the burnished piston-brasses vanished into smoothly flared openings in the insubstantial-looking shell or hull. Not a boat: it resembled a teardrop, rather, or a great tadpole. A third wheel, quite small and vaguely comical, was swivel-mounted at end of the long tapered tail.

He made out the name painted in black and gilt across the bulbous prow, beneath a curved expanse of delicately leaded glass: Zephyr.

“Come, Ned, join us!” his brother sang out, beckoning. “Don’t be shy!” The others chuckled at Tom’s sauciness as Mallory strode forward, his hobnails scraping the floor. His little brother Tom, nineteen years old, had grown his first mustache; it looked as though a cat could lick it off. Mallory offered his hand to his friend, Tom’s master. “Mr. Michael Godwin, sir!” he said.

“Dr. Mallory, sir!” said Godwin, a fair-haired engineer of forty years, with mutton-chop whiskers over cheeks pitted by smallpox. Small and stout, with shrewd, hooded eyes, Godwin began a bow, thought better of it, clapped Mallory gently across the back, and introduced his fellows. They were Elijah Douglas, a journeyman, and Henry Chesterton, a master of the second degree.

“A privilege, sirs,” Mallory declared. “I expected fine things from you, but this is a revelation.”

“What do you think of her. Dr. Mallory?”

“A far cry from our steam-fortress, I should say!”

“She was never made for your Wyoming,” Godwin said, “and that accounts for a certain lack of guns and armor. Form emerges from function, as you so often told us.”

“Small for a racing-gurney, isn’t she?” Mallory ventured, somewhat at a loss. “Peculiarly shaped.”

“Built upon principles, sir, newly discovered principles indeed. And a fine tale behind her invention, having to do with a colleague of yours. You recall the late Professor Rudwick. I’m sure.”

“Ah, yes, Rudwick,” Mallory muttered, then hesitated. “Hardly your new-principle man, Rudwick . . .”

Douglas and Chesterton were watching him with open curiosity.

“We were both paleontologists,” Mallory said, suddenly uncomfortable, “but the fellow fancied himself gentry of a sort. Put on fine airs and entertained outmoded theories. Rather muddy in his thinking, in my opinion.”

The two mechanics looked doubtful.

“I’m not one to speak ill of the dead,” Mallory assured them. “Rudwick had his friends, I’ve mine, and there’s an end to it.”

“You do remember,” Godwin persisted, “Professor Rudwick’s great flying reptile?”

“Quetzalcoatlus,” Mallory said. “Indeed, that was a coup; one can’t deny it.”

“They’ve studied its remains in Cambridge,” Godwin said, “at the Institute of Engine Analytics.”

“I plan to do a bit of work there myself, on the Brontosaurus,” Mallory said, unhappy with the direction the conversation seemed to be taking.

“You see,” Godwin continued, “the cleverest mathematicians in Britain were snug there, spinning their great brass, while you and I froze in the mud of Wyoming. Pecking holes in their cards to puzzle out how a creature of such a size could fly.”

“I know about the project,” Mallory said. “Rudwick published on the topic. But ‘pneumo-dynamics’ isn’t my field. Frankly, I’m not sure there’s much to it, scientifically. It seems a bit . . . well . . . airy, if you follow me.” He smiled.

“Great practical applications, possibly,” Godwin said. “Lord Babbage himself took a hand in the analysis.”

Mallory thought about it. “I’ll concede there’s likely something to pneumatics, then, if it’s caught the eye of the great Babbage! To improve the art of ballooning, perhaps? Balloon-flight, that’s a military field. There’s always ample funding for the sciences of war.”

“No, sir; I mean in the practical design of machinery.”

“A flying machine, you mean?” Mallory paused. “You’re not trying to tell me this vehicle of yours can fly, are you?”

The mechanics laughed politely. “No,” Godwin said, “and I can’t say that all that airy Engine-spinning has come to much, directly. But we now understand certain matters having to do with the behavior of air in motion, the principles of atmospheric resistance. New principles, little-known as yet.”

“But we mechanics,” said Mr. Chesterton proudly, ” ‘ave put ‘em to practical use, sir, in the shaping of our Zephyr.”

” ‘Line-streaming,’ we call it,” Tom said.

“So you’ve ‘line-streamed’ this gurney of yours, eh? That’s why it looks so much like, er . . .”

“Like a fish,” Tom said.

“Exactly,” said Godwin. “A fish! It’s all to do with the action of fluids, you see. Water. Air. Chaos and turbulence! It’s all in the calculations.”

“Remarkable,” Mallory said. “So I take it that these principles of turbulence —”

A sudden blistering racket erupted from a neighboring stall. The walls shook and a fine sifting of soot fell from the ceiling.

“That’ll be the Italians,” Godwin shouted. “They’ve brought in a monster this year!”

“Makes a mortal hogo of a stink!” Tom complained.

Godwin cocked his head. “Hear them try-rods clacking on the down-stroke? Bad tolerances. Slovenly foreign work!” He doffed his cap and dusted soot against his knee.

Mallory’s head was ringing. “Let me buy you a drink!” he shouted.

Godwin cupped his ear blankly. “What?”

Mallory pantomimed; lifted a fist to his mouth, with his thumb cocked. Godwin grinned. He had a quick, bellowed word with Chesterton, over the blueprints. Then Godwin and Mallory ducked out into the sunshine.

“Bad try-rods,” the guard outside said smugly. Godwin nodded, and handed the man his leather apron. He took a plain black coat, instead, and traded his engineer’s cap for a straw wide-awake.

They left the racing-enclosure. “I can only spare a few minutes,” Godwin apologized. ” ‘The Master’s eye melts the metal,’ as they say.” He hooked a pair of smoked spectacles over his ears. “Some of these hobbyists know me, and might try to follow us . . . But never mind that. It’s good to see you again, Ned. Welcome back to England.”

“I won’t keep you long,” Mallory said. “I wanted a private word or two. About the boy, and such.”

“Oh, Tom’s a fine lad,” said Godwin. “He’s learning. He means well.”

“I hope he’ll prosper.”

“We do our best,” Godwin said. “I was sorry to hear from Tom about your father. Him taking so ill, and all.”

” ‘Ould Mallory, he won’t a-go till he’s guv away his last bride,’ ” Mallory quoted, in his broadest Sussex drawl. “That’s what Father always tells us. He wants to see all his girls married. He’s a game sort, my poor old dad.”

“He must take great comfort in a son like yourself,” Godwin said. “So, how does London suit you? Did you take the holiday train?”

“I’ve not been in London. I’ve been in Lewes, with the family. Rode the morning train from there to Leatherhead; then I tramped it.”

“You walked to the Derby from Leatherhead? That’s ten miles or more!”

Mallory smiled. “You’ve seen me tramp twenty, cross-country in the badlands of Wyoming, hunting fossils. I’d a taste to see good English countryside again. I’m only just back from Toronto, with all our crates of plastered bones, while you’ve been here for months, getting your fill of this.” He waved his arm.

Godwin nodded. “What do you make of the place, then — now you’re home again?”

“London Basin anticline,” Mallory said. “Tertiary and Eocene chalk-beds, bit of modern flinty clay.”

Godwin laughed. “We’re all of us modern flinty clay . . . Here we go, then; these lads sell a decent brew.”

They walked down a gentle slope to a crowded dray laden with ale-kegs. The proprietors had no huckle-buff. Mallory bought a pair of pints.

“It was good of you to accept our invitation,” Godwin said. “I know that you’re a busy man, sir, what with your famous geologic controversies and such.”

“No busier than yourself,” Mallory said. “Solid engineering work. Directly practical and useful. I envy that, truly.”

“No, no,” said Godwin. “That brother of yours, he thinks the world of you. So do we all! You’re the coming man, Ned. Your star is rising.”

“We had excellent luck in Wyoming, certainly,” Mallory said. “We made a great discovery. But without you and your steam-fortress, those red-skins would have made short work of us.”

“They weren’t so bad, once they cozied up and had a taste of whiskey.”

“Your savage respects British steel,” Mallory said. “Theories of old bones don’t much impress him.”

“Well,” Godwin said, “I’m a good Party man, and I’m with Lord Babbage. ‘Theory and practice must be as bone and sinew.’ ”

“That worthy sentiment calls for another pint,” said Mallory. Godwin wanted to pay. “Pray allow me,” Mallory said. “I’m still spending my bonus, from the expedition.”

Godwin, pint in hand, led Mallory out of ear-shot of the other drinkers. He gazed about carefully, then doffed his specs and looked Mallory in the eye. “Do you trust in your good fortune, Ned?”

Mallory stroked his beard. “Say on.”

“The touts are quoting odds of ten-to-one against our Zephyr. ”

Mallory chuckled. “I’m no gambler, Mr. Godwin! Give me solid facts and evidence, and there I’ll take my stand. But I’m no flash fool, to hope for unearned riches.”

“You took the risk of Wyoming. You risked your very life.”

“But that depended on my own abilities, and those of my colleagues.”

“Exactly!” Godwin said. “That’s my own position, to the very letter! Listen a moment. Let me tell you about our Brotherhood of Vapor Mechanics.”

Godwin lowered his voice. “The head of our trades-union, Lord Scowcroft . . . He was simple Jim Scowcroft in the bad old days, one of your popular agitators, but he made his peace with the Rads. Now he’s rich, and been to Parliament and such; a very clever man. When I went to Lord Scowcroft with my plans for the Zephyr, he spoke to me just as you did now: facts and evidence. ‘Master first-degree Godwin,’ he says, ‘I can’t fund you with the hard-earned dues of our Brothers unless you can show me, in black and white, how it shall profit us.’

“So I told him: ‘Your Lordship, the construction of steam-gurneys is one of the nicest luxury trades in the country. When we go to Epsom Downs, and this machine of ours leaves the competitors eating her dust, the gentry will stand in queues for the famous work of the Vapor Mechanics.’ And that’s how it will be, Ned.”

“If you win the race,” Mallory said.

Godwin nodded somberly. “I make no cast-iron promises. I’m an engineer; I know full well how iron can bend, and break, and rust, and burst. You surely know it too, Ned, for you saw me work repair on that blasted steam-fortress till I thought I should go mad . . . But I know my facts and figures. I know pressure differentials, and engine duty, and crank-shaft torque, and wheel diameters. With disaster barred, our little Zephyr will breeze past her rivals as if they were stock-still.”