The Technologists

by Matthew Pearl

  “What do you mean?”

  Frank scooped up the statue of Hammie, glared at it, then stood and tossed it into the open stove in the corner with a big laugh.

  “Frank,” Marcus said as his friend sat down again, smiling with satisfaction. “What did you just do? What about Hammond?”

  “Boss Hammond!” Frank called mockingly. “Why, Marcus, I tell you, you’ve been an inspiration, and the Institute, too. I’m not going to be pinned down by him anymore and live my life in sackcloth.”

  Marcus was still beholden to Hammond, whose financial arrangement had allowed him to attend Tech, and Frank would need some similar arrangement even as a charity student. But he did not say that. Instead, he raised his glass to the notion of Frank’s freedom.

  “You will come to Inspection Day to see the Institute,” Marcus said, urging him in a more practical direction.

  “I count the hours, Marcus! Three cheers for the Institute!”

  They finished their beers and Marcus stood up from the table. Even before he heard his name called, the unmistakable odor had reached him: a mixture of grease, soot, and sweat.

  “Marcus Mansfield! You must have made a wrong turn.”

  Four young bucks from the Hammond Locomotive Works. Two of them he knew from the machine shop, and the other two he’d seen working in the wheel room and the pattern shop. The speaker, in the center of the group, was a man he remembered was called Sloucher George. He was known as a lovely singer around the works, but generally had a rough voice and crude manner.

  “Why would some collegey show himself here?”

  “Because he is drinking with me, George,” Frank said, rising swiftly from the table. Frank, though his body was more sinewy than muscular, was tall enough to make most other men insecure.

  “He doesn’t belong here, Brewer,” Sloucher George said, jabbing the air with his finger.

  “Come. You know what’s what. You forget he’s one of us.”

  “I ain’t forgetting,” Sloucher George replied, hitting a table with his fist. “Maybe he was one of us once, when his throat was filled with iron dust. Or maybe you want to be what he is, Brewer? A collegey, with the airs of a false gentleman.”

  “What if I do at that?” replied Frank.

  “He’s no companion of yours, Brewer, nor any of ours.”

  “I was about to go,” Marcus said. Sloucher George had probably wanted to start a row long before walking into the beer hall and seeing him. The truth was, the machinist’s punch was said to be harder than a sledgehammer, and Marcus did not like the prospect of a set-to. “Good night, Frank.”

  George put his hand out to stop Marcus, then gestured with a grin to the bar. “Aren’t you at least going to shout?”

  “I haven’t money, George,” replied Marcus. “You’ll have to buy your own beer.”

  “No money—is that right? You weren’t paid to gawk at us with the other collegey scum visiting the machine shop Friday last? What’s in there?” Sloucher George pulled at the handle of the bag Frank had handed Marcus. Marcus, alarmed, grabbed George’s wrist and held on tightly.

  “Let go of that,” Marcus said.

  “You better let my wrist free and let me see inside,” George growled. “Whatever it is feels awful heavy.” Frank stepped to Marcus’s side.

  “This ain’t your concern, Brewer! Step away!”

  Frank snatched a glass from the tray of a waitress passing nearby and dashed the wine into George’s face. “It’s my concern now, Sloucher George,” he said coolly, as the big man released the bag and wiped his eyes.

  The other workmen gasped. Nobody ever called the brute by his nickname to his face. For mild Frank Brewer to have done it, in front of a crowd of peers, while dousing him with a glass of wine, was a shock. The silence that ensued seemed interminable, as a flush spread over George’s big purple-stained cheeks, and perspiration formed a floating bridge over his brow. “Four beers!” he screeched to the waitress, suddenly intent on finding a table.

  Marcus, awed and a bit startled by his friend’s actions, whispered to him, “You should leave with me.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a real whaler, Frank!”

  Frank smiled, breathing heavily, but exhilarated. “You don’t have to protect me here, Marcus! All his wrath comes out the little end of the horn. Sloucher George is a big man and he takes pride in his work, and that is the one way he can be injured: to hear that his habits at the machine are slow. Go on your way, Marcus. And Godspeed—for whatever it is you’re doing. Remember, you are representing a thousand fellows like me who might one day be thought good enough to be collegies themselves.”

  “I never forget it,” Marcus said.

  * * *

  MARCUS WENT BACK to Bob’s rooms to pack up his belongings. He was hoping Bob might be sleeping at his mother’s, or out for the night, so he could just write out a note explaining, but he was there.

  “Mansfield, what are you doing?” Bob came out in his usual shabby silk dressing gown, chosen out of a wardrobe filled with newer ones, and carried a dumbbell.

  “I thought I might have woken you.”

  “I was doing my lifting. What’s this? You’re leaving?”

  “You are right that what I’m doing can call down trouble. If I go wrong and I’m staying with you, you might go overboard with me, Bob. I won’t risk dragging you down.”

  Marcus expected Bob to argue, either that he should stay or that he should give up his whole folly, but he listlessly stretched his long limbs out on the sofa and watched with vague attention as Marcus collected his things. “If it must be this way,” he said finally.

  “It must,” Marcus said, a little sad at the lack of protest.

  “Oh, Mansfield, I have something for you before you go. There.”

  There was a bulging potato sack on the floor in the corner of the room Marcus had not noticed.

  “What is that?”

  “Have a look for yourself,” Bob said nonchalantly.

  “Not another soph stuffed inside, is it?” He walked around from the other side of the table and bent down. Loosening the strings, he found in the sack an assortment of compasses and navigational tools. Marcus rummaged through them. “Bob, I need all this for the experiments! But yesterday you said …” He looked up in astonishment.

  “Oh, damn what I said, Mansfield! That was yesterday. I was in a fix.”

  “You were entirely sober.”

  “Yes, and now I’m a little liquored up and see everything clearly! If there is a time to build our own castles, this must surely be it.”

  Marcus tried to gauge his seriousness. “Do you mean it, Bob? You’re willing to help?”

  Bob was rubbing the palms of his hands together. “Of course. This is just the ticket. Yes, of course. Of course we must go onward! We’ll show Blaikie and those Harvard scrubs what Tech is worth! It’s decided. Put down your bags—you’re not going anywhere. We rescue Boston and Tech … together!”

  “Bob, remember our position. If we run into trouble, Rogers is in no position to help us now.”

  “You told me the Institute was yours, ours, Mansfield. Well, you’re right. The Institute is mine, too. I was also there in the first golden days when it was but three dusty rented rooms, when there were nearly the same number of students as instructors. Every Richards in history has gone to Harvard, and I’ll show them that what I’m doing is worth every bit of that stuff and more. You will need more pairs of eyes if you are not to be exposed. If droll old Albert Hall finds you out, or Squirty Watson or Eliot or any of the faculty members, it will be over in a flash. And there’s Tilden, who would relish nothing more than to see you sacked from the college for violations, and don’t forget that goblin Miss Swallow, who is everywhere and nowhere. I owe Rogers as much as you do for giving me my place at Tech. Your hand, Mansfield. Do you have a plan yet? Mansfield, your hand!”

  The machine man and the scion of Beacon Hill grasped hands and shook heartily, their grips st
rong, their smiles equally fierce and determined. “The start of a plan,” Marcus said. “By my count, the first step is to find out exactly how these two disasters were engineered, using Rogers’s notes as a beginning. I thought I would use the storeroom in the basement of the Institute, since I have a key.”

  “First rate! But we’ll need a better space to conduct our investigation properly, probably in one of the laboratories.”

  “Why would they permit us to use a laboratory?”

  “I don’t know yet. It will be an obstacle. But have no fear. Resourceful Bob Richards will find a way. Come, hand me that sack—we’ll decide more on the drive there.”

  “Drive?”

  “To Eddy’s. We’ll need Tech’s best physicist on hand, of course!”

  XVII

  Underwater

  CRAMMED INSIDE THE BASEMENT STOREROOM of the Institute, the three students arranged blocks of iron and a variety of compasses of different sizes around the shelves.

  “Where did you get all this?” Edwin asked.

  “I purchased the compasses from a warehouse near the Navy Yard,” Bob said.

  “Edwin, you remember the lectures on nautical navigation sophomore year?”

  “Excellent lectures,” Edwin answered Marcus, feeling himself gain some energy after being roused in the middle of the night and ushered into a carriage. “Yes, I remember. Bob, you wore one of those sailor’s caps slouched over your face, to annoy the professor.”

  “Ha! Exactly right!” Bob recalled fondly. “Let us remember the earth is magnetic. Really you might say the earth is one giant magnet, and since magnetic poles of opposite charge attract each other, the north point of a compass needle is actually a south pole, since it is attracted by the north pole of the earth. Likewise, the south point of a compass needle is a north pole. Edwin, hold that bar of iron horizontally—east to west, I mean. Thank you. Now, Mansfield, place that compass at the very end of it.”

  They did as Bob directed.

  “The needle is not disturbed at all,” Edwin said.

  “Edwin, try raising the far end of your bar one degree—right … there, stop,” Marcus said.

  “The south point of the needle is attracted!” Edwin declared.

  “And if you lower that same end, just a little,” Bob said, nodding to Edwin, who complied.

  “Now the north point jumped,” Edwin reported.

  “At any angle with the compass needle, soft iron attracts each pole of the needle with almost equal force,” Bob said.

  Marcus nodded. “Shipbuilders take this carefully into account so that the proximity of a nautical compass to the ship’s materials remains a neutral factor.”

  “There would be a magnetism, too, with the iron in the earth,” Edwin added.

  “Exactly. Watch this. You may wish to plug your ears.” With Edwin taking Marcus’s advice and Bob inclining his head as if to dare the noise to disturb a Richards eardrum, Marcus brought a sledgehammer down onto one of the bars of iron. Edwin stumbled backward. Upon the hammer’s impact, the needles of all the compasses twitched.

  “Wait another second,” Marcus said, the noise ringing in their ears. “And another second … Now, Bob!”

  Marcus tossed the bar of iron at Bob. He caught it, and all the needles of the compasses followed the bar. Bob swung the bar around like a baseball bat, the needles moving with it.

  “Of course,” Edwin declared after a moment’s thought. “The hammering increases the level of magnetism that would, under normal circumstances, hardly register, after the compasses had been in the magnetic meridian. The iron’s inductive magnetism now controls the permanent magnetism of the compasses.”

  “What I believe we will find in testing the different classes of iron Frank secured from the works,” Marcus said, “is that the softer the iron, the greater degree of influence on the magnetism when it is hammered or disturbed.”

  At that point, Bob asked for the softest piece of iron fresh from the Hammond foundry. He stirred the basin until it became a small whirlpool, then dropped the iron into the water. When the iron hit the water’s surface, the needles leaped into another frenzy.

  “The waves,” Edwin remarked. “If the iron is soft enough, the action of the waves on the solid will induce even greater magnetism. The waves were harnessed, as though by Neptune himself, to become tools of sabotage. Remarkable!”

  Marcus put his hand on Edwin’s shoulder and let it rest a moment before he spoke. “Edwin, you know you do have a choice.”

  “No, he doesn’t!” Bob took his other shoulder with a hearty laugh.

  “You do, Edwin,” Marcus repeated. “Rogers had just begun this work before he collapsed and his notes are not more than a start. We have no allies in this. It will be no easy task. It is your choice whether to join in or not. What do you say?”

  “Marcus,” Edwin replied, stopping to take a deep breath, “I think we should be getting to the harbor to make a round of inspections at first light.”

  * * *

  EDWIN HOYT LOOKED OUT at the cloud-covered sunrise. While the tide encroached against the piles, he marked the rhythm to himself and he shifted his glance to the islands along the entrance to the harbor, so singularly protected against invasion or attack. Not far from where he had paused were the wharves that had been decimated, two almost completely and one partially. Occasionally, wooden piers still floated by in fragments, clogging the channel. Two weeks after the event that overtook the harbor, the police were still removing wreckage from water and land and grappling for evidence.

  Being a true Bostonian meant having a respect for the order of the world, for the position of the authorities and the citizens. This all-too-real experiment would be unlike any they had encountered. But the police had already sank in place, as soon as those ships went down in flames, hadn’t they? As soon as they hitched themselves to Louis Agassiz.

  “I have been thinking more about it,” Edwin said when he caught up with his companions, who were now making their way through the eerie quiet of the wharf. “I still can’t puzzle it out.”

  “What do you mean, Eddy?” asked Bob.

  “Your experiments with the compasses in the storeroom are most impressive, Bob,” Edwin continued. “But that was in a confined space. Look out there—look at the expanse of the damage. The amount of tonnage of iron needed to replicate the experiment out there, and in exactly the right position, without being seen by so many witnesses … I simply cannot imagine how it might be done!”

  “Well, walking around the harbor in circles isn’t going to tell us enough to answer it,” Marcus said. “We need to know more about what happened. More than what has been in the newspapers, but without speaking to the police.”

  “Ha! I’d venture to say the police do not know what we already do,” Bob said brightly. “There is another force of men present from whom we will learn more. Look!”

  Marcus and Edwin both looked up and down the harbor.

  “I don’t see anyone,” said Edwin.

  “Who do you mean, Bob?” asked Marcus.

  “Rats!” Bob said.

  “Rats? Are you serious?” Edwin asked.

  “Of course,” Marcus said with a smile. “The wharf rats.”

  Scattered around the harbor were the so-called wharf rats, impoverished old scavengers who haunted the piers looking for scraps of food or discarded cargo.

  “I saw a few huddled in blankets, half asleep, as we entered the harbor,” said Marcus, taking to the idea. “How would we know which ones to speak with?”

  “Well, we’d want to find the ones who are most curious, watchful, who stay on their toes with one eye open at all times, even when asleep,” Bob said. “I think I know how we can start. Wait for me.”

  Bob sauntered between several warehouses, then along a row of cotton bales, then across the quays. All the while, he was jingling the coins in his pocket until, ten minutes later, there sidled out with a lead-footed step a wobbly stranger who had been sitting, unseen, a
t the center of a circle of pungent fish barrels.

  “I will give you some of these,” Bob began even before turning around, holding the coins out in his open palm tauntingly, “if you answer a few questions.”

  “Say, that is a dirty trick,” the man complained when Bob was facing him. The man’s bright-red face was wholly unprotected from the elements by the fragments of his crushed velvet cap. “I’d rather pick an honest pocket. It’s extortionate, that’s what!”

  “I’ll make it worth your time, I vow it,” said Bob. He whistled the signal for Marcus and Edwin, who soon caught up to them. Then Bob turned to face their new acquaintance again. “Tell us what you saw the morning of the disaster.”

  “Me! Why ask me, lad?”

  “Simple.” Marcus stepped forward. “Why make your home along these damaged wharves, instead of one that wasn’t damaged, unless you did so before the catastrophe?”

  “Foofaraw! Bull!” the old man proclaimed with irritation.

  After some further prodding, the wharf rat confessed almost with pride that he had been there when it happened, that it was the most stupendous and terrible thing he ever saw, and that his moral sensibilities were too shocked even to try to salvage anything from the water for almost half an hour afterward. The chaos of ships crashing into piers and into one another had grown worse with every passing moment. He indicated for them the basic boundaries of the event, and told how he watched the marvelous vessel Light of the East as it was abandoned and saw its captain, whom he’d heard later was a man named Beal, save some steamship passengers who had been sucked under the water.

  “Before it began, did you see anything or anyone suspicious, anything unusual or different around?” Marcus asked.

  The old wharf rat considered Marcus, then shook his head no. “But since then, the whole harbor has been different.”

  “How do you mean? Quieter?” Marcus proposed.

  The wharf rat shook his gray head again. “Aye, but more than that. Sailors haven’t shown up for their posts. The wharf masters say passengers with tickets for the steamships have stopped coming, too. The warehouses are empty of cargo to pilfer. Why, I’ve barely eaten, I haven’t! I once had the makings of a gentleman, you know, when I was your age.”