Lost Among the Stars

by Paul Di Filippo

  Bran’s father—and what exactly did that term represent, in the light of this startling revelation?—paused in his account and looked with a surprising beseechingness into Bran’s eyes, an intimately imploring gesture he seldom made.

  “You won’t think any the less of our father and son relationship, I hope, Brannock, just because of the accidental and unfortunate nature of your conception? I was intensely in love with your mother, and those lingering sentiments incline me to regard any legacy from her actions, however unwise, as part and parcel of my own estate. So as far as I and the world are concerned, your inheritance and position as a Gilead are secure and unquestionable.”

  Bran had been hopefully awaiting the word “love” to be applied to him, just this once. Instead, he had been deemed a mere “legacy.” And since his father’s speech seemed definitely to have concluded without any emotion-laden label for their relationship forthcoming, the lad resigned himself with a sigh to that word’s continuing and unsurprising absence.

  “Rest assured, Father, that all remains between us just as before.”

  Warner Gilead arose with a small smile, tousled his son’s hair, and departed.

  In the subsequent week, the idea of learning the identity of his blood father had never left Bran’s mind once. He had even dreamed about the man, a bulky, hazy figure emerging beckoningly from a cloaking mist. So compelling had been the urge to know more, that it had even driven Bran, this weekday afternoon, into his father’s study, a room generally forbidden to him.

  Warner Gilead was attending a meeting with Governor Bullock concerning next year’s presidential election, and so could be counted on not to intrude.

  Bran went to work searching his father’s papers, sliding open heavy wooden drawers, lifting the brass-hinged tops of box files, and riffling through overstuffed bellows folders. Such a lot of dry, boring paperwork, all given over to numbers and schemes. Bran swore he’d never let his adulthood be dominated by such stifling drudgery. He’d live a life of adventure, such as he read about weekly in The Young Men of America magazine.

  In a bottom desk drawer Bran came upon another ambrotype of his mother, one he had never seen before. She stood in the middle of a cluttered workshop, smiling, surrounded by somber leather-aproned men. Bran recognized one, Stan Lambeth, a machinist still employed by father. Could one of these other fellows be his mother’s paramour, and Bran’s sire?

  Bran pondered the frozen image for a very long time, but no clues obtruded themselves. When he eventually restored the picture to its hiding place, long evening shadows were stretching across the study floor. He’d have to hurry!

  Bran had been saving the big safe for last. He thought he knew the combination, having once overheard his father entrust the information to his secretary, Griffin Stumpf. So to the safe’s dial Bran moved.

  The sequence he had memorized failed to unlock the safe. But after cudgeling his memory, he tried a minor variation and succeeded!

  He had the weighty door open just long enough to register the image of some bundled currency, gaudy certificates, a revolver—and a ribbon-tied envelope bearing a red-bordered paper label that carried Bran’s own name! Then came the sound of someone approaching!

  Bran closed the safe door as quickly as was consonant with silence, spun the dial and stepped away from the vault.

  Warner Gilead entered the room, accompanied by the dour and pox-faced Griffin Stumpf.

  “—General McClellan’s a fine soldier, I give you that, but as President—”

  Gilead espied Bran. The older man’s face suffused with choler. His level voice was grave. “What are you doing in this room?”

  Bran could make no reply.

  Gilead turned to his assistant. “Mr. Stumpf, please fetch Hoskins, and have him bring a good wide length of leather.”

  Stumpf departed, and Gilead and Bran remained frozen, as if locked into some dull holiday charade. Bran saw his father’s eyes flick toward the safe, and appear to register relief that it had not been tampered with.

  The brawny, sweaty Hoskins—a gentle man with horses, expert saddle repairer and unerring farrier—trailed behind Stumpf. Dragged from his stables, the man looked miserable.

  “Mr. Hoskins, you are to administer five applications of your strap across my son’s buttocks. There will be no need to bare his skin, I think.”

  Hoskins eyed Bran ruefully. “Aye, sir.”

  Bran was made to bend over the desk. After the first apathetic blow, Gilead said, “Are you malnourished, Mr. Hoskins? If so, perhaps you could find other employment that offered heartier board.”

  The next four blows were sufficiently mighty to satisfy Warner Gilead’s sense of punishment, drawing stifled grunts from the boy.

  Bran retired to his bedroom without supper, nursing both his feelings and his bottom. He passed a couple of hours contemplating schemes of revenge and a further raid upon the safe. Then came a knock.

  His father entered, carrying something concealed in his fist.

  “Son, I know you miss your mother. So do I. That’s why I wish to give you this.”

  Gilead opened his hand and displayed a small oval silver locket, chased with filigree. Bran regarded it with a curiosity even his smoldering anger could not totally swamp. Gilead fumbled open the clasp.

  Inside rested a few delicate, almost luminous strands of golden hair.

  “Yes, they came from Pella, your mother. Keep this locket with you, and you will always have her close by.”

  Bran accepted the locket with an uneasy mix of gratitude and disdain.

  The next time he dared approach the study, he found the door locked with a new mechanism.

  And when he eventually got past that barrier, a replacement safe boasted not one but two dials, neither of which accepted the old combination.

  These obstacles between Bran and the packet that bore his name proved insurmountable, and he took solace in the locket, which he wore always on a chain about his neck, vowing that when he got older, he would find a way to secure that information, Warner Gilead be damned!

  * * *

  In the first half of the nineteenth century, Boston’s Fort Hill had acquired a reputation as an elegant neighborhood. A steep and formidable eminence suited only for residences, despite its developmentally tempting proximity to the waterfront and central commercial districts, the mount had hosted numerous mansions and the beautiful Washington Square atop its crown.

  But by the middle of the century, a disturbing change had occurred. The district had become a slum, filled mostly with unsavory, poverty-stricken Irish immigrants. Warehouses ringed the foot of Fort Hill, and over one hundred saloons dotted its filthy warren of alleys and lanes, along with several charitable poorhouses and a lone hospital ensconced in a former armory. “Fort Hill rowdyism” had become a byword for bad behavior.

  By the year of Bran’s birth, upstanding citizens were already agitating for the pit of iniquity literally to be leveled, as other hills in Boston had been, the burden of its soil being used as fill elsewhere. By the time Bran was attempting to burgle his father’s safe, solid schemes for the razing were being drawn up. Action commenced in the year 1866, when a gigantic trench had been driven through the middle of Fort Hill, to carry Olive Street from one side to the next. But in the year 1868, when Bran attained his eighteenth birthday, work had stalled, leaving the bifurcate hill like a troughed Christmas pudding, still a stew of illegality and want, with makeshift bridges spanning the chasm of Olive Street.

  Now Bran labored up the nighted, slops-wet pavements of Fort Hill, his way lit by the occasional lonely gas lamp out of sight of any mates. Bold doxies and judys leered and jibed from doorways; raggle-taggle children who should have been long a-bed solicited money and offered to run errands; and shady gonophs and bludgers seemed to lurk just within every pool of shadow between buildings. Bran nervously patted the pointed hoof-pick in his pocket, which he had secured from the stables. It offered scant protection against knives or guns, but at
least it was some kind of weapon.

  Finally, Bran reached his destination, a tavern whose partially occluded signboard read SPITALNY’S GROT. He entered the fusty, low-raftered, candle-lit cauldron of smells and noise.

  None among the seedy clientele took particular notice of him, obviously deeming Bran one of the Beacon Hill swells who often visited Fort Hill for their own illicit purposes.

  A description, Bran ruefully acknowledged to himself, that fit him perfectly.

  Bran approached a harried barmaid. “Can you please tell me where I could find Mr. MacMahon?”

  “Bucko? That’s him over there, playing at darts.”

  Bran approached the gamesters, but did not immediately choose to interrupt their loud-voiced sport, for much seemed to be riding on the outcome, judging by the threats and boasts being batted about. The fellow preparing to shoot wore a look of intense concentration, tip of his wet tongue protruding from the stubbled corner of his mouth. A shapeless cloth hat slanted over one eye. Shattered capillaries mapped his big nose. His patched suit appeared to have been fashioned from sackcloth. This unimpressive lout then was Bucko MacMahon, Bran’s only remaining hope for discovering the secrets of his past.

  Apparently confident of his aim and prowess, Bucko let fly with the dart, scored a bullseye, and was greeted with a roar compounded of cheers and razzing.

  “Now I’ll claim me prize!” Bucko strode to the bar and accepted a tall narrow yard glass filled to flaring brim with nearly a quart and a half of dark ale. He raised the bulb-bottomed vessel to his lips, tilted his head back, and drained the beer in seven seconds flat. After handing back the empty glass, he wiped the froth from his lips, spotted Bran and, with a broad wink and gesture visible at least a mile out to sea, indicated that Bran should join him at a corner table.

  Once seated, Bucko leaned in close to Bran, who responded instinctively by lowering his own head. The pungent odor of garlic frosted with hops assailed Bran’s nose and nearly made him recoil. But he maintained proximity, not wishing his business to be overheard.

  “Mr. MacMahon, I understand you’re a cracksman.”

  Tracking down such information had been a long and laborious process for Bran, with his dearth of underworld connections, and he quailed for a moment at the possibility he had been misinformed. But reassurance came instantly.

  “Aye, none better, boyo!”

  “Well, if I were to secure you unguarded access to a certain safe, with the promise of much reward inside, provided only that you pass over to me a designated packet of papers from the haul, would you be interested in the job? I have no money to invest up front, I fear.”

  Father Gilead kept Bran on a tight allowance, despite his near-adult status.

  Bucko rasped his stubble with one paw. “I might be willing to venture such a job. Is the treasure easy to convert to beer and wimmen, as it were? I’m not perzackly set up to trade in stocks and bonds, you know.”

  “Do five hundred Indian Head gold dollars seem reasonably susceptible to such a transformation?”

  “Describe the safe to me, lad.”

  Bran did so. Bucko said, “Sounds like an old Adams- Hammond Patent Salamander model to me. Piece o’ cake!”

  Bran had almost been hoping to hear the job deemed impossible. Now he would have to commit himself to this assault on his father’s property. Well, what choice had the old man given him? None!

  Bran grasped Bucko’s strong rough hand and shook.

  “Now for another yard of ale to seal the deal! You too, sonny!”

  Bran managed to quaff a few inches of his powerful drink before Bucko needed a third.

  A week later, the fateful night arrived, a temperate evening in May. Warner Gilead was absent in the nation’s capital, attending the impeachment proceedings against President Johnson. Bran had provided Bucko MacMahon with a map of the house. He had given the servants a night off, left the back door ajar, and then gone off to see a play, The Silver Lining, at the Adelphi Theatre in Court Street.

  As he strolled back to the Charles Street establishment, Bran tried to feel some relief and satisfaction at this fait accompli. Soon he would have the secrets of his birth in hand with no real cost to anyone. He could satisfy the hot urges of his soul. What he would do with the information about his blood father remained unknown. But why feel guilty at reclaiming what was rightfully his? And Warner Gilead could certainly spare whatever cash resided in the safe.…

  As Bran neared home, he began to encounter a crowd surrounding some commotion. He hastened his pace.

  Leaping flames illuminated a Dantean scene. A riot of avid gawkers surrounded several of the new steam-powered fire engines spraying the burning upper story of the Gilead manse. The efforts of the firemen seemed to be effectively containing the destruction to one corner of the house.

  “What happened?” Bran yelled to a stranger.

  “Some kind of explosion, I heard!”

  When Warner Gilead returned to Boston from Washington, he found Bran temporarily ensconced at the Revere House hotel on Bowdoin Square, with repairs to the manse already begun. After some stern quizzing, the old man eventually absolved Bran, and moved on from the disaster.

  A week after the explosion, Bran received a delivery.

  The scorched packet that bore his name, which Bran had glimpsed but once, frustratingly, five years past, and a brief penciled letter sans signature:

  That warn’t no Adams-Hammond, but somethin newfangled what stubrinly resisted all me talents, so I used some guncotton, mayhaps a bit too much. But all’s well what ends well, I allus say!

  * * *

  Now Bran knew all. His mother’s willing abandonment of Gilead, her lawful spouse. Her wild love for Hedley King. Their erotic cohabitation, resulting in Bran’s own conception and Pella’s perhaps preventable death. The deal struck between the two rivals. All contained in that singed folder! What a melancholy yet stirring saga. Bran had previously encountered its like only upon the stage. But now it formed his ineluctable personal heritage.

  The knowledge had engendered some changes in his feelings and attitudes: shifts surprisingly smaller than he had envisioned, pre-revelation, and less predictable in tenor.

  He found himself pitying his father more. Poor Warner Gilead, richer than Midas, yet deprived of the woman he loved above all. Bran could see how his own presence had been both a balm and a gall, explaining why the old man alternately clasped Bran to him, then pushed him away.

  Bran’s idealized sentiments toward his mother had changed the least. Despite any romantic treacheries in her heart, she remained an idol to him. He clutched now at the locket containing her hair, which hung as always at his bosom.

  His feelings for Hedley King, his blood sire, that enigmatic Colossus bestriding his imagination for so long, had altered strangely. He could not regard him as a cowardly scoundrel. After all, Pella had seen fit to love him, and Gilead had forced the man to remove himself from Bran’s life. In an alternate existence, Bran might have grown up as the loved and pampered Roland King, heir to his actual progenitor. There was no way of determining Hedley King’s real feelings and responsibilities in the matter without meeting him.

  But what most intrigued the son now was a heretofore unknown aspect of King’s character: his apparent flair for the natural sciences, and his inventorly skills. What was this “Morphic Resonator” for which King had been willing to bargain away his son? It must be a treasure beyond price.

  For any number of reasons, Bran simply had to meet his natural father! He was prepared to strike out on his own, against Gilead’s wishes. But where? The otherwise chatty documents contained no information regarding Hedley King’s current location, and not even a clue to his destination eighteen years ago, when he had been ejected from Bran’s life.

  For several days Bran contemplated the matter. And then, suddenly recalling that old image of his mother surrounded by workmen, he went to see Stan Lambeth, one of the few survivors of that era.

  Warne
r Gilead’s fortune, now diversified across many ventures (including heavy investments in several important national politicians), had been founded upon his machine tools enterprise, still the thriving core of his holdings. In fact, the recently ended War Between the States had bolstered the enterprise’s income, due to heavy demand for armaments and the milling machines and lathes involved in their production.

  The sprawling, noisy factory buildings of Gilead Toolmakers occupied a plot of land in Brighton, a town adjacent to Boston proper and given over to various industries. Once a part of Cambridge, Brighton had seceded in 1807, and become the abattoir of New England, rife with slaughterhouses and stockyards. Authorities had recently mooted a scheme seeking to upgrade the ambiance of the place by naming a small residential district after famed local artist Washington Allston, dead some years before Bran’s birth. But for now, the town’s pestilential and noxious nature kept property taxes low, which suited the economical Warner Gilead.

  At the works, Bran tracked down Stan Lambeth on his own, careful not to alert any supervisors to his presence, for fear news of his visit, however innocuous, should get back to his father. Bidden to speak privately, Lambeth willingly adjourned to a shed containing stocks of angle iron.

  Rail-thin and taciturn, Lambeth wore his advanced age of forty-five years well, his slim physique toned from his labors. All the staff at the works liked Bran, and Lambeth greeted the lad now with a certain parsimonious Yankee warmth. But when Bran broached the reason for his visit, Lambeth grew less welcoming.

  “Young sir, you’ll excuse my frankness, but I have to ask if you mean to persecute poor Hedley King further, on your father’s behalf?”