The Difference Engine (4 page)

Mick shook his head. “The Byron men, the Babbage men, the Industrial Radicals, they own Great Britain! They own us, girl — the very globe is at their feet, Europe, America, everywhere. The House of Lords is packed top to bottom with Rads. Queen Victoria won’t stir a finger without a nod from the savants and capitalists.” He pointed at her. “And it’s no use fighting that anymore, and you know why? ‘Cause the Rads do play fair, or fair enough to manage — and you can become one of ‘em, if you’re clever! You can’t get clever men to fight such a system, as it makes too much sense to ‘em.”

Mick thumbed his chest. “But that don’t mean that you and I are out in the cold and lonely. It only means we have to think faster, with our eyes peeled and our ears open . . . ” Mick struck a prize-fighter’s pose: elbows bent, fists poised, knuckles up before his face. Then he flung his hair back, and grinned at her.

“That’s all very well for you,” Sybil protested. “You can do as you like. You were one of my father’s followers — well, there were many such, and some are in Parliament now. But fallen women get mined, d’ye see? Ruined, and stay that way.”

Mick straightened, frowning at her. “Now that’s exactly what I mean. You’re running with the flash mob, now, but thinking like a trollop! There’s no one knows who you are, in Paris! The cops and bosses have your number here, true enough! But numbers are only that, and your file’s no more than a simple stack of cards. For them as know, there’s ways to change a number.” He sneered, to see her surprise. “It ain’t done easy, here in London, I grant you. But affairs run differently, in the Paris of Louis Napoleon! Affairs run fast and loose in flash Paree, especially for an adventuress with a blarney tongue and a pretty ankle.”

Sybil bit her knuckle. Her eyes burned suddenly. It was acrid smoke from the limelight, and fear. A new number in the Government’s machines — that would mean a new life. A life without a past. The unexpected thought of such freedom terrified her. Not so much for what it meant in itself, though that was strange and dazzling enough. But for what Mick Radley might demand for such a thing, in fair exchange. “Truly, you could change my number?”

“I can buy you a new one in Paris. Pass you off for French or an Argie or an American refugee girl.” Mick folded his elegant arms. “I promise nothing, mind you. You’ll have to earn it.”

“You wouldn’t gull me, Mick?” she said slowly. “Because . . . because I could be really and specially sweet to a fellow who could do me such a great service.”

Mick jammed his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels, looking at her. “Could you now,” he said softly. Her trembling words had fanned something inside him, she could see it in his eyes. An eager, lustful kindling, something she dimly knew was there, a need he had, to . . . slip his fishhooks deeper into her.

“I could, if you treated me fair and level, as your ‘prentice adventuress, and not some cakey dollymop, to gull and cast aside.” Sybil felt tears coming, harder this time. She blinked, and looked up boldly, and let them flow, thinking perhaps they might do some good. “You wouldn’t raise my hopes and dash them, would you? That would be low and cruel! If you did that I’d — I’d jump off Tower Bridge!”

He looked her in the eye. “Bar that sniffling, girl, and listen close to me. Understand this. You’re not just Mick’s pretty bit o’ muslin — I may have a taste for that same as any man, but I can get that where I like, and don’t need you just for that. I need the blarney skill and the daring pluck that was Mr. Walter Gerard’s. You’re to be my ‘prentice, Sybil, and I your master, and let that be how things stand with us. You’ll be loyal, obedient, truthful to me, no subterfuge and no impertinence, and in return, I’ll teach you craft, and keep you well — and you’ll find me as kind and generous as you are loyal and true. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Mick.”

“We have a pact, then?”

“Yes, Mick.” She smiled at him.

“Well and good,” he said. “Then kneel, here, and put your hands together, so” — he joined his hands in prayer — “and make this oath. That you, Sybil Gerard, do swear by saints and angels, by powers, dominions, and thrones, by seraphim and cherubim and the all-seeing eye, to obey Michael Radley, and serve him faithfully, so help you God! Do you so swear?”

She stared at him in dismay. “Must I really?”

“Yes.”

“But isn’t it a great sin, to make such an oath, to a man who . . . I mean to say . . . we’re not in holy wedlock . . .”

“That’s a marriage vow,” he said impatiently, “and this a ‘prentice oath!”

She saw no alternative. Tugging her skirts back, she knelt before him on cold gritty stone.

“Do you so swear?”

“I do, so help me God.”

“Don’t look so glum,” he said, helping her to her feet, “that’s a mild and womanly oath you swore, compared to some.” He pulled her to her feet. “Let it brace you, should you have doubts or disloyal thoughts. Now take this” — he handed her the guttering candle — “and hunt up that gin-soak of a stage-manager, and tell him I want the boilers fired.”

They dined that evening in the Argyll Rooms, a Haymarket resort not far from Laurent’s Dancing Academy. The Argyll had private supper-rooms in which the indiscreet might spend an entire night.

Sybil was mystified by the choice of a private room. Mick was certainly not ashamed to be seen with her in public. Midway through the lamb, however, the waiter admitted a stout little gentleman with pomaded red hair and a gold chain across a taut velvet waistcoat. He was round and plush as a child’s doll.

   ”Hullo, Corny, ” Mick said, without bothering to put down his knife and fork.

“Evening, Mick,” the man said, with the curiously un-placeable accent of an actor, or a provincial long in service to city gently. “I was told you’d need of me.”

“And told correctly. Corny.” Mick neither offered to introduce Sybil nor asked the man to sit. She began to feel quite uncomfortable. ” ‘Tis a brief part, so you should have little trouble remembering your lines.” Mick produced a plain envelope from his coat and handed it to the man. “Your lines, your cue, and your retainer. The Garrick, Saturday night.”

The man smiled mirthlessly as he accepted the envelope. “Quite some time since I played the Garrick, Mick.” He winked at Sybil and took his leave with no more formality than that.

“Who’s that, Mick?” Sybil asked. Mick had returned to his lamb and was spooning mint sauce from a pewter serving-pot.

“An actor of parts,” Mick said. “He’ll play opposite you in the Garrick, during Houston’s speech.”

Sybil was baffled. “Play? Opposite me?”

“You’re a ‘prentice adventuress, don’t forget. You can expect to be called on to play many roles, Sybil. A political speech can always benefit from a bit of sweetening.”

“Sweetening?”

“Never mind.” He seemed to lose interest in his lamb, and pushed his plate aside. “Plenty of time for rehearsal tomorrow. I’ve something to show you now.” He rose from the table, crossed to the door, and bolted it securely. Returning, he lifted the proofed canvas portmanteau from the carpet beside his chair and placed it before her on the Argyll’s clean but much mended linen.

She’d been curious about the portmanteau. Not curious that he’d carried it with him, from the Garrick’s pit, first to the printers, to examine the handbills for Houston’s lecture, then on to the Argyll Rooms, but because it was of such cheap stuff, nothing at all like the gear he so obviously prided himself on. Why should Dandy Mick choose to carry about a bag of that sort, when he could afford some flash confection from Aaron’s, nickel clasps and silk woven in Ada checkers? And she knew that the black bag no longer contained the kino cards for the lecture, because he’d wrapped those carefully in sheets of The Times and hidden them again behind the stage-mirror.

Mick undid the wretched tin clasps, opened the bag, and lifted out a long narrow case of polished rosewood, its corners trimmed with bright brass. Sybil wondered if it mightn’t contain a telescope, for she’d seen boxes of this sort in the window of a firm of Oxford Street instrument-makers. Mick handled it with a caution that was very nearly comical, like some Papist called upon to move the dust of a dead Pope. Caught up in a sudden mood of childlike anticipation, she forgot the man called Corny and Mick’s worrying talk about playing opposite him at the Garrick. There was something of the magician about Mick now, as he placed the gleaming rosewood case on the tablecloth. She almost expected him to furl back his cuffs: nothing here, you see, nothing here.

His thumbs swung tiny brass hooks from a pair of miniature eyelets. He paused for effect.

Sybil found that she was holding her breath. Had he brought a gift for her? Some token of her new status? Something to secretly mark her as his ‘prentice adventuress?

Mick lifted the rosewood lid, with its sharp brass corners.

It was filled with playing cards. Stuffed end to end with them, a score of decks at the least. Sybil’s heart fell.

“You’ve seen nothing like this before,” he said. “I can assure you of that.”

Mick pinched out the card nearest his right hand and displayed it for her. No, not a playing card, though near enough in size. It was made of some strange milky substance that was neither paper nor glass, very thin and glossy. Mick flexed it lightly between thumb and forefinger. It bent easily, but sprang rigid again as he released it.

It was perforated with perhaps three dozen tightly spaced rows of circular holes, holes no larger than those in a good pearl button. Three of its corners were slightly rounded, while the fourth was trimmed off at an angle. Near the trimmed corner, someone had written “#I” in faint mauve ink.

“Camphorated cellulose,” Mick declared, “the devil’s own stuff, should it touch fire, but naught else will serve the finer functions of the Napoleon.”

Napoleon? Sybil was lost. “Is it a sort of kino card, Mick?”

He beamed at her, delighted. She seemed to have said the right thing.

“Have you never heard of the Great Napoleon ordinateur, the mightiest Engine of the French Academy? The London police Engines are mere toys beside it.”

Sybil pretended to study the contents of the box, knowing it would please Mick. But it was merely a wooden box, quite handsomely made, lined with the green baize that covered billiard tables. It contained a very large quantity of the slick milky cards, perhaps several hundred.

“Tell me what this is about, Mick.”

He laughed, quite happily it seemed, and bent suddenly to kiss her mouth.

“In time, in time.” He straightened, reinserted the card, lowered the lid, clicked the brass hooks into place. “Every brotherhood has its mysteries. Dandy Mick’s best guess is that nobody knows quite what it would mean to run this little stack. It would demonstrate a certain matter, prove a certain nested series of mathematical hypotheses . . . All matters quite arcane. And, by the by, it would make the name of Michael Radley shine like the very heavens in the clacking confraternity.” He winked. “The French clackers have their own brotherhoods, you know. Les Fils de Vaucanson, they call themselves. The Jacquardine Society. We’ll be showing those onion-eaters a thing or two.”

He seemed drunk to her, now, though she knew he’d only had those two bottled ales. No, he was intoxicated by the idea of the cards in the box, whatever they might be.

“This box and its contents are quite extraordinarily dear, Sybil.” He seated himself again and rummaged in the cheap black bag. It yielded a folded sheet of stout brown paper, an ordinary pair of stationery-shears, a roll of strong green twine. As Mick spoke, he unfolded the paper and began to wrap the box in it. “Very dear. Traveling with the General exposes a man to certain dangers. We’re off to Paris after the lecture, but tomorrow morning you’ll be taking this round to the Post Office in Great Portland Street.” Done with wrapping, he wound twine about the paper. “Nip this for me with the shears.” She did as he asked. “Now put your finger here.” He executed a perfect knot. “You’ll be posting our parcel to Paris. Poste restante. Do you know what that means?”

“It means the parcel is held for the addressee.”

Mick nodded, took a stick of scarlet sealing-wax from one trouser-pocket, his repeating match from the other. The match struck on the first try. “Yes, held there in Paris for us, safe as houses.” The wax darkened and slid in the oily flame. Scarlet droplets spattered the green knot, the brown paper. He tossed the shears and the roll of twine back into the portmanteau, pocketed the wax and the match, withdrew his reservoir-pen, and began to address the parcel.

“But what is it, Mick? How can you know its value if you’ve no idea what it does?”

“Now I didn’t say that, did I? I’ve my ideas, don’t I? Dandy Mick always has his ideas. I’d enough of an idea to take the original up to Manchester with me, on the General’s business. I’d enough of an idea to pump the canniest clackers for their latest compression techniques, and enough of the General’s capital to commission the result on Napoleon-gauge cellulose!”

It might have been Greek, for all it meant to her.

A knock came. An evil-looking servant boy, cropheaded and snuffling, wheeled in a trolley and cleared the plates. He made a botch of it, lingering as if expecting a gratuity, but Mick ignored him, and stared coolly into space, now and then grinning to himself like a cat.

The boy left with a sneer. At length there came the rap of a cane against the door. A second of Mick’s friends had arrived.

This was a heavyset man of quite astonishing ugliness, pop-eyed and blue-jowled, his squat sloping forehead fringed in an oiled parody of the elegant spit-curls the Prime Minister favored. The stranger wore new and well-cut evening dress, with cloak, cane, and top-hat, a fancy pearl in his cravat and a gold Masonic ring on one finger. His face and neck were deeply sunburnt.

Mick rose at once from his chair, shook the ringed hand, offered a seat.

“You keep late hours, Mr. Radley,” the stranger said.

“We do what we can to accommodate your special needs, Professor Rudwick.”

The ugly gentleman settled in his chair with a sharp wooden squeak. His bulging eyes shot Sybil a speculative look then, and for one heart-leaping moment she feared the worst, that it had all been a gull and she was about to become part of some dreadful transaction between them.