The Steampunk Trilogy (2 page)

“Please, say no more. Although here in a semi-private capacity, I am still a representative of the law.”

“It was my intention to test the depths of her intellect, and see if I could educate her. In the end, she proved lamentably intractable. Not wishing to destroy her, I had no choice other than de Mallet’s.”

“Why, if I may ask, did you name her Victoria? Was it a bad joke? Are you aware that in so doing you might have been guilty of
lèse majesté
?”

Cowperthwait was taken aback. “No, no, it was nothing of the sort. A chance resemblance to the new Queen, a desire to dedicate my scientific researches to her—”

Melbourne held up a hand. “I believe you. You need go no further.”

There was silence in the study for a time. Then Melbourne spoke, apparently on an unrelated topic.

“When the Queen came to the throne a year ago, she was incredibly naive and unsophisticated. Not lacking a basic intelligence, she had been reared in a stifling and cloistered atmosphere by her mother, the Duchess of Kent. My God, all she could talk about was horses and tatting! She was totally tied to the apron strings of her conniving mother and the Duchess’s Irish lover, John Conroy.

“I soon realized that, in her current condition, she would never do as the matriarch of our nation. It was up to me to form her personality along more regal lines, for the good of the Empire.

“I knew that the quickest way to do so involved becoming her lover.

“I will not bore you with the rest of my tactics. Suffice it to say that I believe I have succeeded in sharpening the Queen’s wits and instincts, to the point where she will now make an admirable ruler, perhaps the greatest this sceptered isle has ever known.”

“I fail to see—”

“Wait. There is more. I have steadily increased the Queen’s work schedule, to the point where her day is taken up with reading dispatches and listening to her ministers. I thought she was bearing up admirably. However, I now fear I might have taken things too fast. The Duchess and Conroy have been bedeviling her lately with picayune demands. In addition, she has been nervous about her Coronation, scheduled for next month. Lately in bed together she has been complaining about feeling poorly and faint, miserable and nauseous. I’m afraid I brushed off these sentiments as idle vaporing.”

“Surely you could let up a little on the poor girl. . . .”

Melbourne passed a hand across his brow. “I fear it’s too late for that.

“The Queen, you see, has just this day fled the throne.”

Cowperthwait could scarcely give credence to his ears. “Impossible. Are you sure she has not been kidnapped, or injured while riding? A search party must be mounted—”

“No, it’s useless. She’s not lying senseless on some bridle trail somewhere, she’s gone to ground like the cunning vixen she is. Certain personal items are missing, including her diary. To rouse a general search would only insure that her abdication became public knowledge in a few hours. And with political matters as they stand, Britain cannot afford even temporarily to be without a sovereign. Schleswig-Holstein, the Landgravine of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the Spanish Succession—No, it’s impossible that we advertise the disappearance. There are members of the nobility who would like nothing better than such a scandal. I am thinking particularly of Lord Chuting-Payne. And besides, I don’t want Victoria to lose the throne. I have a conviction about that girl. I think she’s going to make a splendid monarch. This adolescent impetuousness should not be held against her.”

“Oh, I agree,” said Cowperthwait heartily. “But why come to me? How can I help.”

“I am asking you to contribute the services of your Victoria. I want her as a stand-in for the Queen, until the real Victoria can be found.”

“That’s ludicrous,” expostulated Cowperthwait. “A newt sitting on the throne of England? Oh, I concede that with a wig, she might deceive from a distance. But up close—never! Why not just bring in another human woman, perhaps of low degree, who would impersonate the Queen and keep silent for a fee?”

“And run the risk of future blackmail, or perhaps of capricious misuse by the actress of her assumed position? No thank you, Cosmo. And despite what people say of me in connection with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, I am unwilling to have such a woman later assassinated to preserve the secret. No, I need a mannequin, someone utterly pliable. Only your Victoria fits the bill. Loan her to me, and I’ll handle the rest.”

“It’s all so strange. . . . What can I say?”

“Simply say, ‘yes,’ and the nation and I will be forever in your debt.”

“Well, if you put it that way—”

Melbourne shot to his feet. “Wonderful. You have no idea how relieved I am. Why, perhaps my Victoria, weary of playing commoner, might even now be on her way back to Buckingham Palace. But in the meantime, let us go secure your Victoria from her bed at de Mallet’s. You understand that you’ll have to fetch her, for I cannot be seen bringing her away.”

“Oh, of course. . . .”

Only when they were in the shuttered landau driven by McGroaty, rattling across the nighted town, with the womanly newt Victoria seated damply between them, a veil demurely drawn across her elongated features, did Cowperthwait think to tell Melbourne about the peculiar diet of his charge.

“Flies?” said the Prime Minister dubiously.

“Fresh,” said Cowperthwait.

“I assume the stables—”

“I can see, sir,” complimented Cowperthwait, “how you became Prime Minister.”

2

A TRAIN STRAIGHT TO CHINA

T
HE GRANDSTAND WAS
draped with gay bunting in gold and blue. Local personages of note, politicians and members of the railroad corporation, sat in orderly rows on the wooden platform, the women in their full bombazine skirts protecting themselves from the summer sun with frilly parasols. A brass band played sprightly tunes. Birds trilled counterpoint from nearby branches. A crowd of farmers and merchants, their wives and children, filled the broad meadow around the grandstand. Peddlers hawked lemonade and candy, flowers and souvenir trinkets.

The place was the small village of Letchworth, north of London; the year, 1834, shortly after the passage of the Poor Law, which would transform the rural landscape, sequestering its beggars into institutions. The occasion was the inauguration of a new rail line, a spur off the London-Cambridge main.

A few yards from the grandstand lay the gleaming new rails, stretching off to the horizon. The stone foundation of the station, its brick superstructure only half-completed and surrounded by scaffolding, stood south of the scene.

On the rails—massive, proud, powerful—rested an engine of revolutionary design. Not far off nervously hovered its revolutionary designer, Cosmo Cowperthwait, age twenty-one.

Next to Cowperthwait stood a fellow only slightly older, but possessed of a much greater flair and obvious sense of self-confidence. This was the twenty-eight-year-old Isambard Kingdom Brunel, son of the famous architect and inventor, Marc Isambard Brunel, genius behind the Thames Tunnel, the first underwater construction to employ shield technology.

The association between the Cowperthwaits and the Brunels went back a generation.

Clive Cowperthwait, Cosmo’s father, had been engaged to the lovely Constance Winks. Not long before their scheduled nuptials, at a ball thrown by the Royal Association of Engineers and Architects, Clive had chanced upon his fiancée in a compromising position with the elder Brunel, in a niche partially occupied by a bust of Archimedes. The offended man—doubly incensed by the joint desecration of both his bride-to-be and the ancient philosopher—had immediately issued a challenge to duel. Brunel had accepted.

However, in the interval between the challenge and the event, the two men had chanced to discover the mutuality of their interests. At first frostily, then more warmly, the men began to discourse on their shared vision of a world united by railroads and steamships, a world shrunken and neatly packaged by the magnificent inventions of their age. Soon, the duel was called off. Clive and Constance were married as planned. Marc Brunel became both Cowperthwait’s business partner and frequent house guest, bringing his own wife and young son along. Upon Cosmo’s birth, he and little Isambard Kingdom (“I.K.,” or “Ikky”) had been raised practically as brothers.

Now the young Cowperthwait turned to his companion and said, “Well, Ikky, what do you think? She’s keeping up a full head of steam, with only a few ounces of fuel. Is it a miracle, or is it not? Stephenson’s Rocket was nothing compared to this.”

Ever practical, Ikky answered, “If this works, you’re going to put an end to the entire coal-mining industry. I’d watch my back, lest it receive some disgruntled miner’s dirty pickax. Or what’s even more likely, the silver table-knife of a mine-owner.”

Cosmo grew reflective. “I hadn’t thought of that aspect of my discovery. Still, one can’t retard progress. If I hadn’t chanced upon the refinement of Klaproth’s new metal, someone else surely would have.”

In 1789, Martin Heinrich Klaproth had discovered a new element he named “uranium,” after the recently discovered celestial body, Uranus. Other scientists, among them Eugène-Melchior Péligot, had set out to refine the pure substance. Cosmo Cowperthwait, inheritor of his father’s skills, raised in an atmosphere of practical invention, had succeeded first, by reduction of uranium tetrachloride with potassium.

Casting about for new uses for this exciting element, Cosmo had hit upon harnessing its heat-generating properties to replace the conventional means of steam-production on one of his father’s engines. Clive Cowperthwait had reluctantly acceded, and today saw the trial run of that modified engine.

“Come,” said Cosmo, “let me instruct the engineer one last time.”

The two youths clambered aboard the train. In the cab the crew welcomed them rather coldly. The chief engineer, an old fellow with walrus mustaches, nodded ceaselessly as Cosmo talked, but the young inventor felt he really was not paying attention.

“Now, remember, there is no stoking of this engine, or addition of fuel. Depressing this lever brings the two portions of uranium closer together, producing more heat, while pulling it out increases the distance and diminishes the heat. You’ll note that this pin and cowling arrangement prevents the depression of the lever beyond the danger zone—”

Cosmo halted in alarm. “The cowling—it’s split and ready to fall off. It seems a deliberate breach of all my safety precautions. Who’s responsible for this malfeasance?”

The crew looked idly at the ceiling of the cab. One insolent superfluous stoker whistled an air Cosmo recognized as an indecent folk tune by the title “Champagne Charlie.”

Cosmo realized it would be futile to attempt to assign guilt now. “Come with me, Ikky. We must fix this before the trial.” The two descended the engine. Some distance away on the grandstand, Clive Cowperthwait had just kissed his wife and moved to the front of the podium to give his speech.

“I am sorry that my partner could not be here today, but I’m sure I can speak long enough for both of us. . . .” There was mild laughter from the crowd.

Cosmo was in no mood to join in the gaiety of the spectators. “Where can I find some tools?” he demanded frantically of Ikky.

“How about the blacksmith’s, back in town?”

“Good thinking. Let me tell Father to delay the start of the engine.”

“Oh, let’s just dash. You know how long your father speaks. We’ll have plenty of time.”

Cosmo and Ikky hurried toward the village.

While inside the blacksmith’s they faintly heard the resumption of the music, which had ceased for Clive’s speech. Cosmo and Ikky rushed outside in alarm.

At that instant an enormous explosion knocked them off their feet, shattering every window in the village. A hot wind rolled them along the ground. When they managed to regain their feet, they saw the remnants of a mushroom-shaped cloud towering high up into the sky.

With immense consternation, mixed with not a little trepidation, the pair of friends hastened back toward the site of the dedication.

Still many furlongs away, they encountered the rim of an immense smoking crater that sloped away into a glassy plain, the start of an excavation aimed at Asia.

Cosmo yelled into the desolate smoky waste. “Father! Mother!” Ikky laid a hand on his arm. “It’s plainly no use, Coz. There can’t be anyone left alive there. They’ve all been blown to Jehovah by your invention. I read this as a mark of Providence, which even your father’s usual loquacity could not forestall, signaling that the world is not ready for such knowledge, if it ever will be. . . . You may console yourself with the thought that it must have been a painless death, thank God. In any case, I venture to say we won’t find enough mortal flinders to fill an umbrella-stand.”

Cosmo was in a state of shock, and could not reply. (Later, his old friendship with Ikky would be forever somewhat strained, as he recalled Ikky’s callousness in the light of such a disaster, for which, by any fair measure, he was partly culpable.)

Feeling for some reason that it would be unwise to linger at the scene of the disaster, Ikky dragged his friend away.

Back in London, after a period of a few days’ insensibility, Cosmo, now sole heir to the Cowperthwait name, had gradually recovered his mental faculties. One of the first things he had noticed had been the appearance of strange sores on his body. Ikky turned out to be suffering from the same manifestation of their experience, as were the few surviving Letchworthians. With the help of a pharmacist, Cowperthwait had derived a Naturopathic remedy, which, kept continuously against the skin, seemed to stem the plague. (Four years later, the sores would be all but vanished, yet Cowperthwait continued to wear his Naturopathic garment, more out of extreme caution than any scientific reason.)

After attending to his own ills, Cowperthwait realized he must set about arranging a ceremonial funeral for his parents. He was ready to step forth from his home one day to visit a local undertaker. Opening his front door, he was shocked to encounter someone already standing there.

The fellow was on the shortish side of average height, wiry and eager-eyed, dressed in loose American style. He hailed Cowperthwait vigorously.

“Friend, I been observin’ of you in your bereavement, as you wander stupefied and pole-axed about this here town, and I come to the conclusion that you are in need of some moral companionship and support. In short, a personal valet.”

Cowperthwait knew not what to make of this character. “Are you from the undertaker’s?”

“Better’n that, young fellow. I’m from the Yew-nited States of Goddamn America, and I can get anything done that you order.”

In his confused and guilty condition, Cowperthwait latched on to this offer eagerly. “What—what’s your name?”

“Nails McGroaty, if it please you, Chief. Hell, even if it don’t. So-called since I am tougher than my namesake, and twice as sharp. Now you just put your affairs in my hands, and let your mind be at peace. We’ll show this town a wake, funeral and reception the likes of which they ain’t witnessed since of Henry the Eighth threw snake-eyes.”

Cowperthwait made up his mind. McGroaty was hired on the spot.

True to his word, the brash American arranged a first-class cortege to honor Clive and Constance Cowperthwait. There was enough black crepe to cover Westminster Cathedral.

After this performance, Cowperthwait grew assured that McGroaty was indeed no confidence trickster but apparently just a man in need of a permanent position with a lenient employer. Cowperthwait, apparently, had fit the bill.

McGroaty carried out his new household duties with dispatch. So invaluably, in fact, had he acquitted himself on a hundred occasions since, that Cowperthwait felt him more an older, more worldly brother sometimes, than servant.

The man’s selling points were not his personal appearance, nor his insouciant demeanor. McGroaty was flippant, wry and occasionally abusive—hardly the marks of a good servant. He affected a casual dress reminiscent of a frontiersman, a kind of roughneck dandyism. McGroaty neglected shaving, and had never been known to bathe—a failing somewhat mitigated by his liberal use of strong toilet-waters.

McGroaty was, as he liked to remind Cowperthwait at frequent intervals, “one hunnerd and ten per cent American.” His colorful history made his master wonder how one nation, even large as it was, could hold millions of such individuals, granted the representative nature of McGroaty’s past.

McGroaty claimed to have been with the Stephen Austin expedition into the territory of Texas. (“G.T.T.,” or “Gone To Texas” was currently American slang for fleeing the law, and Cowperthwait wondered if such had been McGroaty’s motives.) The man also maintained that he had been initiated into the Chickasaw tribe as a warrior, after saving the life of Chief Ikkemotubbe, and had willingly fought against his fellow whites who had sought to remove the tribe from their desirable lands in Mississippi. (A permanent weal on his buttocks, eagerly displayed to any chance female acquaintance, however reluctant she might be to view McGroaty’s bare arse cheeks, was alleged to represent tribal scarification.) He bragged that he had been a mooncusser in New England, and would slyly exhibit, upon much cajoling, a small flat ingot of gold known as a “smuggler’s bar,” which fit neatly into his vest pocket.

Cowperthwait never learned what had made him seek permanent refuge in England, but suspected it was an illicit affair of titanic proportions.

All in all, a man of remarkable dimensions—the shortest of which was culture—and a companion Cowperthwait felt helped to offset his tendency toward dreaming abstraction.

Under McGroaty’s stewardship, the years passed rather amiably. Ikky and his father ran the joint Cowperthwait-Brunel enterprises alone, insuring Cowperthwait, as absentee proprietor, of a guaranteed income and allowing him to indulge in his scientific investigations. Needless to say, he had lost all interest in further uranium-based transportation.

He had thought himself safe in turning his attentions to biological matters. What harm could come, after all, of experiments with tiny amphibians?

But woman-sized ones—Cowperthwait was beginning to suspect they were another matter altogether.