Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (17 page)

Chapter
XXXXVI:

Smethings
& Sharp – A Lucky Break

“A
re you
sure this is the place?” Sarah said, as we climbed the steps leading to the
heavy front door.
 
The only business sign
was a discreet brass plaque fixed to the masonry wall that read simply:
 
Smethings
, Sharp
& Company.

“
Smethings
& Sharp.
 
That was the name on
Grenville’s bank draft.”

You take banks where I come from, their
interiors look like a kids’ playground at McDonald’s.
 
They serve coffee and cookies while you
wait.
 
They give you football tickets for
opening a savings account.
 
“Whoopee,”
they seem to be saying.
 
“Money is fun.”

Messrs.’
Smethings
and Sharp took a less frivolous view.
 
Their
building was a kind of financial temple with high ceilings, brass-barred
teller’s cages and marble countertops, all projecting a pious devotion to the glory
of money.

The religious overtones became even
stronger when we were granted an audience with the assistant manager, a corpulent
 
man whose black suit and standup celluloid
collar would not have disgraced the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The man looked at me through a pair
of gold-filled
pince
nez
while I introduced myself as a visiting American and Sarah as my English
cousin.
 
I could tell his doubts were
growing with each passing word as I explained the reason for our visit.

There was a long pause after I had
finished, during which the assistant manager removed his
pince
nez
and cleaned them with a linen handkerchief.
 
He returned them to the bridge of his nose
when he was satisfied and looked first at Sarah, then at me.
 
“If I may summarize, Mister
Liddel
, you and your cousin wish to contact a lost
relative, one Henry Babbage, whose only recent interaction with you has been
through this bank.”

“He sent me a bank draught from
this branch.”

“That may, or may not be, but we
here at
Smethings
and Sharp take our responsibilities
to our depositors very seriously.
 
They
expect discretion and we provide it.
 
Under
no circumstances would we discuss the affairs of a customer.”

“Couldn’t you make an exception in
this case?
 
I sail back to America next
week.
 
Perhaps if we spoke to the manager?”

“Mister Poole is a very busy man,”
he said, nodding toward a glass-walled cubicle where another black-suited acolyte
was studying a cloth-bound ledger.

Sarah began kicking me at this
point and I glared at her before continuing.
 
“Still,” I said.
 
“I feel it is my
duty to cousin Henry to explore all possible avenues.”

The assistant manager removed a
hunter-case pocket watch from his waistcoat and opened its circular cover.
 
“You may return in a half-hour if you wish,
but I can promise you will receive the same answer.”

“W
hy did you
keep kicking me in there?” I asked Sarah when we were back outside.
 
“It was hard enough talking to that man with
him looking at me like I was something nasty stuck to his shoe.”

“His supervisor, the manager.”

“What about him?”

“Didn’t you recognize him?
  
It was Prince Albert.”

“The stage door Johnny who used to
send you letters?
 
No!”

“I am sure of it,” she said.
 
“Wait here.”

S
he was back
waving a sheet of paper ten minutes later.
 
“Got it,” she said, with a look of triumph.
 
“He’s not far away.”

Chapter
XXXXVII:

Off
To See The Wizard – Babbage’s Regrets – A Ray Of Hope

F
ourteen Canal
Hill turned out to be a converted lock keeper’s cottage with an octagonal toll
house in its forecourt.
 
The canal from
which the street drew its name had been long abandoned, judging by the weeds and
refuse choking its rank water.
 
We tried
the front door knocker, a curious fist-shaped mechanism whose loud thumps
echoed hollowly along the crumbling embankment.

There was no response at first but
then we heard a clanking sound and the toll house window shutters parted to reveal
a shadowy figure seated inside.
 
The
effect was menacing, as though we had raised the spirit of the dead toll
collector.

“Please state your business,” said
a disembodied voice.

“We’re here to see Henry Babbage,”
I said.

“I did not understand your response,”
said the voice.
 
“Please approach the
collection window.”

We walked over to the toll house
and peered through the grimy window.
 
It was
hard to make out who or what was behind.
 
“We would like to speak with Henry Babbage,” I repeated.

“There is nobody here by that
name,” said the voice.
 
Whatever was inside
lifted its hand and dismissed us with a machinelike gesture.

“It’s not a person, it’s a robot,”
I whispered to Sarah.

“What is a robot?” Sarah whispered
back.

“You must leave now,” said the
voice.
 
“These are private premises and
you are trespassing.”
 
There was another clanking
noise and the shutters closed in our faces. Then, to add injury to insult, I
felt something hit my jacket and looked down to see a yellowy trail of viscous excrement.
 
The culprit turned out to be a glossy black
bird sitting a telephone line running from a masthead at one corner of the toll
booth to the rear of the cottage.

“What’s that?” Sarah asked

“Looks like a starling.
 
Tell it to stand still so I can get up there
and poop on it.”

“No, I mean that wire the bird is
perched on.
 
Why would anyone stretch a
wire between two buildings?”

Then I remembered.
 
This world didn’t have telephone lines.
 
“Let’s see where it goes,” I said.

T
he cable
ended at a barn-like outbuilding with a pair of wooden sliding doors and a
smaller entrance door at one gabled end.
 
We could hear a man’s voice singing inside.

You
may look on me as a waster what?

But
you ought to see how I fag and
swot
.

For
I’m called by two and by five I’m out,

Which
I couldn’t do if I slacked about.

Then
I count my ties and I change my kit,

And
the exercise keeps me awfully fit!

Once
I begin, I work like sin.

I’m
full of go and grit.

I tried rattling the latch on the
double doors but whoever was inside was too engrossed to hear me.
 
Sarah gone to the entrance door in the
meantime and was now staring through one of its diamond-paned windows.
 
I joined her and saw a scene straight out of
H.G. Wells.
 
A white-coated man with
Einstein hair was seated at a wooden bench surrounded by an extensive array of
instruments and tools.
  
He was singing
as he adjusted a small clockwork device with a fine screwdriver:

I’m
Gilbert the Filbert, the Knut with a “K.”

The
Pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roué.

Oh
Hades! The ladies who leave their wooden huts,

For
Gilbert the Filbert, the Colonel of the
Knuts
.

I pushed the door open and called,
“Excuse me sir, can we have a moment of your time?”

There was no answer from the man
who was now peering at his work through a pair of magnifying spectacles.
 
“Hello?” I called. Still no answer.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Sarah said,
funneling her hands around her mouth.
 
“OY!
 
You there!”

The man jumped from his stool as
though he had received an electric shock and ran toward us, flapping his arms
like an enraged gander.
 
“Private
property, private property,” he shouted, as he tried to push the door
closed.
 
“Go away.”

“Mr. Babbage,” I said.
 
“If you can spare us just a moment of your
time.”

The man stopped and looked at me
with fear in his eyes.
 
“What did you
call me?” he said.

“Mr. Babbage.”

“No one here by that name.
 
Go away.”

“We know who you are Mister
Babbage,” Sarah said.
 
“We mean you no
harm.”

“You may mean no harm, but you are
putting me in harm’s way just the same.
 
How did you find me?”

“May we come in?” I asked.

“If you must,” he said, after long
pause.
 
I suppose you’ll want tea as
well.
 
Let me put the kettle on.”

I
brought
the dimensional translator from the van and Babbage fiddled with it morosely while
I offered him an edited version of the events that had brought us to
Totnes
.
 
“There was a
time when I would have taken an axe to this cursed machine,” he said, when I
had finished.

“Why not do it now if you feel so
strongly?” I asked.

“There would be no point.”

“I’m confused.”

“Have you ever heard of the
phenomenon of simultaneous discovery?
 
How two or more people, unknown to each other, work on the same problem
and arrive at the same conclusions simultaneously.”

“Does that happen often?”

Babbage took a long, noisy sip of
his tea before continuing.
 
“The examples
are numerous.
 
Newton and Leibnitz’
concurrent development of the Calculus.
 
Henry and Faraday each discovering electrical induction while separated
by an ocean.”

“How do you explain it?”

“Many theories have been advanced.
 
Group consciousness, morphogenetic fields and
the like.
 
All are wrong.
 
The truth is that ideas have a life of their
own.
 
Humans are simply the medium that
sustains them and allows them to evolve.”

This guy was starting to sound a
lot like Bill Fowler.
 
“How can an idea
exist independently of people?” I asked, wanting to see just how far the
similarity went.
 
“It sounds paradoxical.
 
A song without a singer.”

“I am tempted to say that they
represent God’s inner monologue, but perhaps I am overreaching myself.”

“So you think that even if we
destroy the translator, someone else will come up with it?”

“Once the cat is out of the bag,
there is no getting it back in.
 
The only
thing you can do, if I may coin a metaphor, is befriend it and hope it does not
bite you.”
 
He stopped to scratch his
head with a long bony finger.
 
“And from
what you say about Alistair Fox’s machinations in London, it is indeed about to
bite us.
 
And it is all my fault.”

“How could it possibly be your
fault?”

“If I had handled the translator
with respect, I might have learned how to use its power wisely.
 
Instead I treated it like a kind of
electrical
Planchette
, an Ouija Board.
 
And now it is too late.
 
The only person who truly understands the
device is in Colorado Springs, wherever that may be.

“You’re talking about Nikola
Tesla?”

Babbage looked at me with sudden
suspicion.
 
“If you know so much, why are
you here bothering me?”

“Sarah’s father mentioned him.
 
Have you ever tried getting in touch?”

“He refuses to communicate with
me.
 
It is almost as if he were
frightened.”

“And you have no clues as to what
he discovered about the translator?”

“Nothing more than a few hints and
a piece of equipment.”

“Equipment?
 
What kind of equipment?”

“Tesla called it a Particle Beam
Generator.
 
He told me to destroy it
before he left, but I hadn’t the heart.”

“Did you ever try to use it?”

“It never entered my mind.
 
Tesla was half mad, but if what he said was
true, it has unimaginable destructive powers.”

“That sounds like just what we need
to deal with Osgood Wellesley and his crew.”

“In any case, the device won’t function
by itself.
 
It needs the translator.”

“Well, there is the translator,
sitting right in front of you.”

“There are two problems.
 
First of all, Tesla’s machine is not here.”

“Where is it?”

“Hidden, as you might say, in plain
sight.
 
I gave it to The British Museum
telling them it was an unknown device built by my father.
 
It was too large to display inside the
building so they mounted it on the roof.”

“You said two problems.
 
What is the other?”

“The main component of the
translator is its vacuum oscillator.”

“That little glass thing on top?”

“Precisely.
 
And I can tell from the discoloration of the
filaments that this one will soon fail.”

“What if I knew where there was
another one?”

“Do you?”

“Maybe, but you have to make
something for me first.”