Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (16 page)

Chapter
XXXXIII:

Plum
Brandy
 
– An Old Acquaintance

I
t was hours
later when I got through sampling
Tibor’s
various liquors.
 
Not only did he have plum brandy, but he also
had something called Rakia made from either apricots or
mangelwurzel
,
I forget which.
 
It was the Rakia that
did me in.
 
I was alternately staggering
and crawling by the time I got back to the van.
 
Climbing the stairs and opening the door seemed like too much of an
effort so I opted for lying on the ground between the front wheels.

I woke at daybreak with a mouth full
of bile and the barrel of my own colt poking me in the forehead.

“
Wakey
wakey
Sunshine,” I heard a voice saying.
 
“A new day is dawning.”

“Go away,” I said, laying my head
back on the ground.

This time the poke in the forehead
was more insistent.
 
“No dawdling now,”
the voice said.
 
“You and I have a train
to catch.”

I lifted my head to see who was
bothering me and saw a pockmarked countenance sporting two days’ worth of stubble.
 
I knew I had seen the face before but it was
only when the man spoke again to reveal a mouthful of gold teeth that I
recognized the ‘dodgy bloke’ Percy had warned me about.
 
What was his name?
 
Benny.
 
Benny Sherman.

“Now don’t go giving me the evil
eye like that,” Sherman said.
 
“It’s your
fault I don’t look my best.
 
Been
travelling all night
ain’t
I?”

“Where from?”

“Paddington station courtesy of the
Great Western Railway.
 
The same railway
that will be taking the two of us back to London this afternoon.”

“And why will we be doing that?”

“Little matter of a reward for
capturing a wanted fugitive.”

I sat up, leaned against the van’s
left front wheel and closed my eyes to stop my head from spinning.
 
Benny Sherman was still there when I opened
them again.

“Just out of curiosity, how do you
come to be here by yourself?” I asked.
 
“A man of your standing, don’t you have other people to do your dirty
work?”

A flush of embarrassment crossed
Sherman’s face.
 
“Normally I would of
course,” he admitted.
 
“But Mister Fox
wants everything kept
schtum
.
 
He was most insistent.”

“Ah, Mister Fox.
 
I might have known he was behind this.”

“Enough chatter.
 
Get yourself up and let’s be off.”

Easier said than done.
 
I tried standing in the normal way without
success.
 
Then I tried using front wheel
as a support but it was slippery with mud.
 
I finally put my hands around the van’s brass headlamp and pulled myself
upward.
 
I was nearly erect when there
was a sound of breaking metal and the fixture came loose, leaving me swaying
there, holding the lamp like a drunken Diogenes.

“Tell you what,” I said.
 
“I’m not feeling up to travelling today.
 
Think you could come back tomorrow?”

“Don’t play the fool with me,”
Sherman said, pointing the Colt.
 
“I’ve
got the whip hand thanks to this Yankee shooter you were wearing.
 
Nice of you to leave it out for me.”

By now you are probably doubting my
version of events.
 
“This guy Bob
Liddel
wants everyone to think he’s some kind of
cool-under-fire action hero, instead of the
chickenshit
nerd we all know him for,” you may be saying.

Well here’s the thing.
 
Remember when I told you I always won the
fast draw contests against the punters?
 
Here’s why.
 
The bullets in the
other guy’s colt were cast in silvery-gray wax.
 
They would burn up before they ever reached the target.

My bullets were wax too, but they
were impregnated with bird shot.
 
The wax
would burn but the bird shot would spread and keep right on going.
 
The balloon would burst if I pointed anywhere
near it.
 
Crooked?
 
If you’re surprised, you probably don’t think
professional wresting is fixed.

True, Sherman was holding my Colt
and not the punter’s but I knew that the worst that could happen was that I
would have to eat a bit of bird shot and how bad could that hurt?

That’s what I thought until he got
tired of waiting and fired a warning shot that I believe was supposed to miss
me.
 
It didn’t.
 
Those little pellets stung like a swarm of
red-hot bees.

“Knock it off,” I yelled.
 
“That really hurt.”

Sherman looked taken aback but
quickly regained his composure.
 
“No more
foolishness,” he said, waving the Colt at me.
 
“My time is valuable.”

“Do not shoot me again,” I said,
taking a step toward him.
 
“I’m warning
you.”

So he shot me again.

“
Sonovabitch
!”
I yelled.
 
I swung the headlamp and
caught him on the left temple.
 
He looked
at me in astonishment before falling heavily to the ground.

A sizeable crowd had gathered by
now.
 
Sarah stepped forward to help me
but I waved her away and went behind the van to puke.
 
When I returned, Chisholm was kneeling beside
Sherman with his ear to the man’s mouth.

“Looks like he’s out cold,” I said.

“Cold and dead,” Chisholm answered.

Chapter
XXXXIV:

Minor
Surgery
 
– Sarah’s News

T
here was a
metallic ping as Sarah dropped yet another piece of shot into the rectangular
tin whose painted surface claimed it had once held Solomon and
Gluckstein’s
navy cut cigarettes.
 
I was lying face up in the daybed while Sarah
extracted tiny bits of lead from my torso, one pellet at a time.

“How many does that make so far?” I
asked.

“I’ve lost count.
 
Stop squirming, you’re only making it
harder.”

“Easy for you to say.
 
You’re not the one with tweezers poking in
your stomach.”

“It’s your own fault.
 
Things like this wouldn’t happen if you
didn’t persist in killing people.”

“They both had it coming,” I
said.
 
That wasn’t really the way I felt,
I was just being defensive.
 
In fact, I was
dismayed.
 
Cold-blooded murderer was not
a description I wanted on my resume.
 
I
resolved to quit killing people before it became a habit and even made some
changes to the Adams revolver later that night in order to avoid further
fatalities.
 
Changes that would have a
major impact later.

“That is as may be,” Sarah
continued.
 
“Here in England “they had it
coming” is not considered a valid legal defense.”

“I know.
 
I’m just a colonial bumpkin.
 
Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“Whatever can you mean?” Sarah
said, as she dropped another piece of birdshot into the can.

“I’m going home.
 
Just as soon as we can hook up with Henry
Babbage in Devon.
 
That’s what you want,
isn’t it?”

To my astonishment, Sarah sat on
the floor of the van and began to cry.
 
“I’m
sorry you feel that way,” she said, wiping her eyes.
 
“I know I’ve been an absolute shrew.
 
I only wanted to help you.”

“All that nagging you’ve been doing
lately?
 
That was supposed to help me?

“I wanted you to fit in.”

“Well thanks, I guess.
 
But why is it important that I fit in?”

“You need to, if we are to make a
life together.”

“If we are to…?
 
It sounds like you just proposed to me.”

“I’ve grown fond of you.
 
Very fond.
 
And I don’t want to raise a child on my own.”

“Raise a child?
 
Are we being hypothetical or for real?”

The look Sarah gave me said it all.
 
I was overcome with a strange feeling that
was a mixture of pride and terror.
 
I was
proud that this beautiful, gutsy woman wanted to spend her life with me.
 
But I was terrified she would never get the
chance unless I managed to elude the people who wanted to do to me what Max the
Cat did to the rats in the dump.

Chapter
XXXXV:

A
Dead Horse
 
– A Coup D'état

“W
here is
everyone?” I asked when we emerged from the van.
 
I was doing my best not to rub my inflamed
torso but it was hard.
 
Those little
pellets had really stung.

“Gone.
 
Chisholm offered to stay but I told him not
to.
 
He doesn’t need any more
trouble.
 
For heaven’s sakes stop
scratching.
 
You’ll only cause
infection.”

An early autumn wind had already
covered the campground with a new layer of debris.
 
There was no sign of our former companions aside
from the cold campfire and a broken Rakia bottle.

“What happened to Sherman’s body?”

“The Roma buried it in the rubbish
tip and dragged the dead horse over top.
 
They reckon it will be so maggoty no one will go near it.”

“That’s one thing taken care of.”
 
Just about the only thing.
 
If I wasn’t going back to the “real” world, I
needed to sort out the mess I was in here.
 
“Got any ideas what to do now?” I asked Sarah.
 
“Cause I’m coming up dry.”

“We only have two choices,” she
said.
 
“Fox is desperate to get hold of
this translator thingy for some reason.
 
Either we give it to him or we don’t.
 
If we don’t, we have to come up with a way of defeating him.”

“Tell you what,” I said.
 
“We’re only a few miles from
Totnes
.
 
Let’s talk
it out over dinner.”

I
had an
ulterior motive for suggesting we eat in town.
 
Totnes
was the source of the bank draught
George Grenville had received for the work he did for Charles Babbage.
 
I had the details written down
somewhere.
 
If we did decide to challenge
Alistair Fox, we needed to find out more about the dimensional translator and
the likeliest source of information was Babbage’s son, Henry.

It was market day when we got there.
 
The streets were crowded with steam lorries
and horse-drawn carts and the town square rang with discordant sound. It was
still too early to eat so we decided to kill some time at the local kinescope,
a long gable-roofed building that had once served as a corn exchange.

The main feature was just ending
when we sat down.
 
William S. Hart was
challenging two bad guys to a duel.

“Why
don’t you both draw?”
 
read the on-screen title
.
 
“The
Government will string you up for murder anyhow, so take a chance.”

The theatre had no organist so the
only sound accompaniment came from the rhythmic clatter of the film working its
way through the projector.
 
A flickering cloud
of dust danced overhead as the reunited lovers, William S. Hart and Barbara
Bedford embraced on a knoll overlooking the Oklahoma prairie.

The lights went on so the
projectionist could thread the next film through the sprocket wheels and dimmed
again as the familiar newsreel introduction appeared on screen.

Empire Films Present

NEWS OF THE DAY

The first item was about something
called ‘The Lord Mayor’s Procession’ which, according to the titles had been an
annual event for the last eight centuries.
 
The flickering images showed a robed man in a gilded coach preceded by a
wheeled dolly carrying the giant effigies of two Roman Soldiers.

As
always,
read the titles
The procession is headed by Gog and
Magog
whose help
may yet be needed in the current constitutional crisis.

“What crisis?” I whispered to Sarah
who answered with a ‘no idea’ shake of her head.

We found out soon enough when the
picture
irised
to a long shot of the Houses of
Parliament surrounded by a menacing ring of black dirigibles whose purpose, the
titles said, was ‘to protect the realm from the revolutionists who would
destroy our cherished way of life.’

The next shot showed Sir Osgood
Wellesley speaking on the floor of the House of Commons.
 
“The temporary powers assumed by the
Government, while extreme, are necessary to ensure the maintenance of order and
stability,” he assured the Speaker of the House.

It was hard to concentrate on
William S. Hart and his pursuit of true love after that.
 
We left as a cannon shot signaled the start
of the Oklahoma land rush.

We were hungry by now and made our
way to a corner house restaurant where a nippy-hatted waitress named Bessie
served us steaming mounds of shepherd’s pie.
 
I asked what she thought of the coup d'état.

“I’m sure the government know
best,” Bessie said.
 
“My
Da
says it’s shocking what some of these Bolshie types get
up to.”

“What was that thing on the
newsreel about two giants leading a procession?” I asked Sarah once we were
alone.

“Surely you have heard of Gog and
Magog
?
 
They have
been the traditional guardians of London since the reign of Henry V.”

“I used to have a roommate who was
a fundamentalist Christian.
 
According to
him, Gog and
Magog
are emissaries of Satan whose
appearance foretells the Apocalypse.”

“Don’t be absurd.
 
Gog and
Magog
are
the offspring of the thirty-three daughters of the Roman Emperor Diocletian who
arrived in Britain in an open boat and coupled with demons to produce a race of
giants.”

You remember what I said earlier
about the unrestricted availability of drugs in this dimension?
 
Legends such as these are the unhappy result.

Sarah and I never did get around to
discussing our options because we hadn’t any.
 
Waitress Bessie’s assurances notwithstanding, we both knew we had to
find a way to defeat Alistair Fox and his fellow conspirators.
 
There was no way we wanted to raise a child
in a world ruled by the likes of Osgood Wellesley.