Theirs Was The Kingdom (57 page)

George said, “I know engineers have been trying to make horseless carriages of one kind and another for years, but I never thought of them as anything but substitutes for passenger vehicles, little coaches if you like. What I mean is, the cost and size of a machine like that for transporting goods overland, and not running over a track, would be very high, wouldn’t it?”

Maximilien cut him short with an impatient gesture. “Benz and Daimler, and Marcus here in Vienna, they were all ridiculed,” he snorted. “And before them were others, dismissed as tinkers by men who make a cult of horse-worship. Two centuries ago a Dutchman called Huyhens discovered a process of combustion that drove an engine, and I have used his idea in this very machine, as you will see when I generate enough power to spin those rear wheels. I have also used Mackenzie’s variable speed device, patented close on a score of years ago. Yet another of your countrymen has suggested the use of those inflated wheel cushions, which I hope might go some way towards reducing the risk of dislodging components when the machine crosses rough surfaces and road ruts.”

But by now George’s astonishment as regards the machine had transferred itself to the inventor. He said, thoughtfully, “I always had the greatest respect for your scholarship, Herr Körner, but to invent something like that… even if… well, even if it needs any number of modifications before it goes, why, that’s something stupendous. Almost like… like being God!”

Max accepted this compliment with a shrug. “My young friend, no one man invents anything. Many men, dead and living, contribute to every machine that passes into practical use. All one can do, the best that one can do, is to study the results of the processes piecemeal and then, after years at the drawing board and work bench, build something one hopes might result in further progress of one kind or another. That is all I have done. As regards locomotion itself, Karl Benz is already far ahead of me, and so, doubtless, are many others, both here and in your country and America. But we inventors do not hoard conclusions when we are sure of them. We are a brotherhood, yes? We correspond and confer with one another. All these diagrams have been back and forth to Herr Benz and Herr Daimler several times.”

He pointed in the direction of the window, where an angled drawing board supported a large sheet of cartridge paper, scored with what looked like a chart of the anatomy of this monster, and possibly its predecessors. A stack of discarded drawings spilled from a tray below the board and a glance at them suggested that years of dedicated work had gone into the assembly of this prototype. But Max was done with preliminaries and held up his hand. “I will generate,” he said, somehow reminding George of Moses descending from the mountain with the decalogue under his arm. “Stand away from the gas pipe, my friend, or you will be poisoned by waste vapour. That is a difficulty I have yet to overcome.”

George watched him stalk round to the front of the brass honeycomb and crouch, as though paying obeisance to his creation. Then, using a metal crank of some kind, he jumped up and down with amazing agility for a man of his years; before George’s astonished eyes the machine suddenly came to life, belching a plume of bluish vapour from its waste pipe and filling the store with a hideous clatter made up of a dozen different rattles and hisses emerging from various parts of the machine. He noticed then, for the first time, that the huge rear wheels had been jacked up clear of the floor and saw that they now were revolving at a steady speed and generating a low humming sound, like the approach of a swarm of bees. In spite of his intense curiosity he moved back, as though the machine might jerk free of its moorings and run amok inside the barn, crushing everything that stood in its way. But then Max reappeared holding his crank. Beaming at George like a playful five-year-old, he circled the machine warily, adjusting a screw here and a lever there, and somehow managing to reduce the clamour so that his voice could be heard above the steady, pulsating roar.

The demonstration went on for about five minutes before Max climbed on to the step of the machine, threw a switch, and spun a little brass wheel, situated about a foot above the front axle. Falteringly and after a few snarling coughs, the machine fell silent, but the rear wheels continued to spin for more than a minute.

Obviously the thing worked, inasmuch as it generated sufficient power to turn the wheels, but George’s imagination shied from the prospect of turning such a monster loose on the roads. It would certainly terrify most people and all horses, and quite possibly create a riot. In addition, he could not help wondering if the drive was powerful enough to propel such a cumbersome vehicle along anything but smooth, level ground.

Diffidently he mentioned these doubts to Max, who seemed to have anticipated them. “It will frighten some, yes,” he admitted, “but so did cannon and the early steam locomotives. Is that a reason for a man like me to cease experimenting with a new means of progression? The noise is a drawback but I shall moderate that in time, partly by casings but also by filtering the waste gases in some way. Come, my young friend, let me introduce you properly,” and he proceeded to conduct George on what amounted to a tour of the machine, beginning with the steering apparatus, which, he explained, was really no more than a variation of coach steering, based on a cog mechanism copied from apparatus at a local flour mill.

The central idea seemed to reside in the big brass cylinder, set midway between the steersman’s seat and the box where, presumably, goods would be packed. A network of brass tubes connected this cylinder with the fuel or oil chamber, a copper drum built into the structure under the driving perch, and Max went on to explain how an electric spark ignited a mixture of fuel and air, supplying the impetus for the powerful central piston connected to the rear axle, where a heavier cogwheel device had been installed.

He was very modest, George thought, for he gave credit to a whole company of other machinists, some still living and experimenting, others long dead, whose ideas had made his experiments possible. A man called Magnus, it seemed, had been the very first man to harness a cylindrical explosion in this way and had used benzine as his fuel, and Max was proud to announce that Siegfried Magnus was an Austrian. It was the German, Benz, however, who had greatly improved the idea and made it practical as regards transportation, refining not only the layout but also the fuel itself.

Pipe by pipe, lever by lever, Max’s tour of introduction continued, as though he was conducting George round a ballroom filled with important guests and equally important ghosts. Flywheels, crankshafts, all kinds of rods and their component parts were lucidly explained, and there was even a brake lever for bringing the machine to a halt. Excessive vibration, it seemed, had been one of Maximilien’s principal difficulties and he had yet to overcome it, for when the machine was started up again every part strained and quivered as though attempting to shake itself loose. Max paid tribute to one Robert Hooke, an English inventor of whom George had never heard, who had lived in the time of Charles I and manufactured a joint by means of which power could, so to speak, be made to turn corners. Without it, Max said, any engine capable of producing sufficient power to turn wheels of that size would shake itself to pieces in minutes.

It was dark when they emerged for supper, to be greeted by smirks on the part of the girls. Gilda the irrepressible remarked, as George took his seat beside her, “
Git-i-git
, you smell! Just like grandfather! I will not eat near you. May I sit beside you, Mamma?” And ostentatiously she changed her seat.

It was to take more than ribaldry, however, to deflect George from his new and absorbing interest. From that day on, through the wet months of January and February, he spent most of his spare time in the granary store, tinkering, at first fearfully but later with growing confidence, with the various components of the machine, until he was as familiar with its mechanism as was its creator. He even suggested certain modifications, including the introduction of a puncture plate in the exhaust pipe to help disperse escaping gases, and a means of strengthening the iron clamps that held the wheel-cushions in place on the rims.

By the time the spring came round, and the ground hardened on a level stretch of river bank south of Essling, Maximilien pronounced himself ready for the trial run. But here, to George’s surprise, the old man’s fear of ridicule forbade him to make the experiment public. Although it was not possible to bring the monster into the open without attracting a certain amount of publicity, Max insisted on reducing it to an absolute minimum by arbitrarily confining the women to the house and towing the machine to the selected stretch of road by a pair of horses borrowed from the firm.

This was carried out under cover of night and the machine was housed in a derelict barn against a dawn start, when it was unlikely that anyone save a few labourers would be abroad. Having got it there unobserved, Maximilien and George decided to sleep in the barn, partly as sentinels but also to be on hand for a start at peep of dawn.

The old man, George noticed, was feverish with excitement and inclined, at this stage, to be very pessimistic. As soon as it was light he fussed and fumed like an inexperienced housewife at her baking, leaving George to harness up the team and drag the engine to the appointed spot. The previous afternoon they had carefully surveyed the ground, marking it out with flags over a distance of about a kilometre. For accurate timing Max would have liked to measure it, but unfortunately, at each end of the level stretch, there was a slight hill. George thus calculated that the test run would be made over a course a fraction over half a mile by British standards, and he had a stop-watch, borrowed from one of the directors at the waggon works.

River mist masked the operation while they were getting into position and unharnessing the team, which was then led away and haltered at a safe distance. Perhaps because of the mist there were no observers, for which Max thanked his beloved Danube.

When everything was ready he climbed slowly into his seat and then, as though about to sail halfway across the globe, stretched out his hand to George to shake, so that for the first time in their acquaintance he looked old and frail and drained of most of the enthusiasm he had exhibited so often in the store.

George thought, “The old boy would have liked to have put off this moment and damned if I blame him. It must need an iron nerve to trust oneself to that monster but that isn’t what’s bothering him. He’s more afraid of failure than being pitched into the river, or cut to pieces in that mass of belts and wheels…” But he said, cheerfully, “It’ll be all right, Herr Körner. I know it and feel it. We’ve checked and double-checked everything and now there’s nothing left to do but to try it. Shall I start her? Are you quite ready?” And Max nodded, too moved to speak as George took the crank and went round to the front of the machine to set the ungainly apparatus in motion.

The noise, out here in the open, seemed much subdued when cogs and wheels were flying, and as he stepped back, leaving Max a clear field, it struck him that the old fellow looked positively unearthly perched on the steering seat, tense and grimly expectant, as though about to drive his juggernaut across the Styx. The sky in the east was lightening but river mist still veiled the lower half of the machine, so that its inventor, shrouded in vapour seemed almost to be riding the clouds. About two minutes elapsed as the requisite warm-up period, and then, with terrible deliberation, Maximilien’s right hand released the brake lever and slowly, moving it seemed by inches or even centimetres, the vast equipage crept forward.

For George it was one of the most electrifying moments of his life, for by now he was as closely involved with the machine as its creator. It trundled forward— its heavy wheels grinding the gritty surface, its iron drainpipe belching blue, vaporous clouds, its pace so fearfully laboured that George was able to keep up with it, remembering, at the very last moment, to start the stopwatch he held in his hand.

So they moved south, two men and a machine, linked in what George now accepted as an inseparable bond, but the pace was so painfully slow that he shouted, above the clatter, “Faster, Herr Körner! Faster!” and Max’s right hand moved to the valve whereupon the machine’s progress quickened appreciably. Its racket increased in volume but its speed doubled over the next twenty metres, so that George was obliged to break into a trot to keep pace. When he saw the terminus flag loom out of the mist directly ahead he overtook it at a run, darting across to the riverside and standing poised with his stopwatch, like a steward at an athletic meeting. The full distance, he noted, had been covered in a fraction over eight minutes and a rough calculation told him that this represented an average speed of about four miles per hour. In a way, a very modest way perhaps, it was triumph.

In spite of the chill of the morning, Max was sweating freely when he brought the machine to an uncertain halt a few yards beyond the flag. He sat still for upwards of a minute, looking quite exhausted; when George ran across to him, shouting his congratulations, Max switched off, carefully adjusted the brake and said, “A walking pace, eh? And a moderate one at that. It might have been worse, Herr Swann, but it should have been better, much better. What is your reading?” And when George said, by British reckoning, something over four miles an hour, “So! We must improve on that, but how to do it without boiling over or shedding parts?” so that George had a sudden insight into the mind of an inventor. For such a man, he told himself, there was really no such thing as achievement. Always he would be looking ahead, over the next range of hills.

“Try it again, Herr Körner. Give it a second run,” but Max shook his head. “We have learned all we are likely to learn,” he said, “I shall spend the next few weeks at the drawing board and then, perhaps, we will try again. You see, my friend, you have overlooked the main conclusion. Four miles an hour, and unladen at that, is ridiculous. A horse could do better, could it not?”