by Jean Rabe
Her word—against his!
She had proof, if she could get it. It lay buried within the mind of the perpetrator who had betrayed her. Penelope smiled.
“Sir, I will take that challenge. I will prove to you that what I say is true, from the very mouth of the cad on that stage.”
“And how can you possibly do that?” Albin demanded. But he looked worried.
Finbury smiled, catching her notion at once. “In the fashion of Herr Mesmer. The device in her eye causes one to fall into a mild trance so she can reach into the mind and exact unwitting truths. She has given me a demonstration. It was most effective.”
Albin sprang up, horrified. “I will not participate in such a charade!”
“And why not, Mr. Beauregard?”
He stammered. His mustache seemed to lose some of its crispness. “Well, well, well . . . she’s just not that good. Those crystals sitting around her lab—they were just toys.”
Finbury tilted his head. “Then you have nothing to fear. If you say she is just not capable of that level of invention, then you can prove it by submitting to the device. If you refuse, we may doubt everything that you have claimed against her. If you are sure it doesn’t work, then there is also no reason not to submit. If she tries and fails, your reputation stands; it closes debate for now and all time. It’s a foolproof chance to keep your name clear. Will you allow the attempt in the name of science and justice?”
“She has hypnotized you!”
“No, sir, she has unhypnotized me. I didn’t listen to her before, but I have reason to know that she can treat secrets like secrets. What do the rest of you say?”
“Hear, hear,” cried Mr. Tennison, the treasurer. “Show her up. What have you got to lose? Chances are all you’ll do is waste a few minutes. I’ve done advanced work in mesmerism and I couldn’t get that to work. I doubt a mere girl could.”
“A mere girl,” Mrs. Shanahan said, clearly stung. She shot an encouraging glance at Penelope. “Go to it, Miss Galferd. Sit down, Mr. Beauregard. If you have nothing to fear, that is.”
Albin glowered, but he sat. Penelope trembled as she approached the stage and set the monocle running. She understood now that she was fighting not only for her own honor, but that of every woman in the club. The eyes of the executive committee, Mr. Deed and the governor were on her like concentrated light beams.
She and Albin had played at hypnosis. He was not a good subject. He rarely could relax enough to be in a receptive state. His hostility could prevent him now. She approached him. He turned to face her with an insouciant expression.
“Please just sit back, Mr. Beauregard,” she said, nervously.
“I have loved you, Penelope,” he said, looking into her eyes with all appearance of sincerity. “Why do you seek to embarrass me now?”
“You have forced me to this,” Penelope said tightly.
“I thought we parted on good terms,” Albin said plaintively.
A few sighs issued from the female contingent of the audience at his doe eyes. Penelope was furious. She could well understand why the woman who poisoned her husband had done it. She turned the rotation of the crystal in the monocle all the way up.
“Please just relax, Albin.”
He beamed. “Aren’t you the brave little Daniel for bearding the lion in his den? This is my day. These fine people are all here to honor me.”
“For your invention?” she demanded.
He hesitated. His pupils contracted, then dilated. Penelope did her best not to react. It was working. Oh, please, in the names of Euclid, Archimedes, and Sir Isaac Newton, let it be so!
“Do you trust me, Albin?”
“Well . . . yes.”
Penelope felt her heart soar. “Why did you claim the invention?” she pressed.
He giggled. “It was too good,” he said. “It had to be brought to the public as soon as possible.”
“But who originated it?”
He paused.
She leaned forward. “Who? Who made that device?”
He looked over her shoulder at the display. “I did. My name is on the bottom.”
“You see?” Tennison demanded. “Her whining has wasted our time!”
Penelope could have fainted with frustration, but she realized her mistake. “Not the one in the case, Albin, but the one you took to the patent office. The original.”
“Well, you know,” Albin said. “It was you.”
A moment’s silence, and pandemonium broke out in the hall. Everyone shouted at Penelope and each other. Albin sat regarding them as though they were part of a stage show. Penelope tried to be heard, but the yelling went on.
“Quiet, all of you!” Finbury shouted, deafening them with the loudspeakers. “Miss Galferd?”
Penelope turned back to Beauregard.
“So it was not your own brainchild?” she asked gently.
“It could have been,” Albin said.
Penelope beckoned to the side aisle. “No. 31, will you come here, please?”
“Of course—click!—Miss Galferd.” The attendant glided up to her and presented her with her train case. With just a modicum of embarrassment, she connected the small gramophone to the lead under her waistband, inserted a cylinder and turned it on.
“Albin,” she said. “Tell me again who invented the elemental chemical separator. The original.”
“You did,” he said.
In the chaos that followed, Miss Armor rushed up to the stage and embraced her. Mrs. Shanahan rose regally from her seat and came to pat her on the back. Even Mr. Tennison shook her hand. Over their heads, Professor Finbury smiled at Penelope. She beamed back.
In the midst of it all, Albin suddenly looked up in puzzlement at the crush of bodies around him. “What is going on?” he asked.
“Well, you’re being expelled from the club, my boy,” Professor Finbury said. “It is my opinion that you are a lying, low-down skunk who doesn’t belong here.”
It was clearly not what Albin Beauregard expected to hear. “What? Why?”
“Because science is honest,” Penelope said, “and you are not.”
It was too much to expect that the medal that the Pinkertons had designed for Albin would be presented to her, but Penelope was asked to demonstrate the inventions at her disposal. In a delightful round of acclaim, her membership was restored by a vote of fifty-six to one against, that one being Albin himself, shortly before he was escorted from the premises by No.18 and No. 47.
“As long as you get rid of that gizmo of yours,” Professor Finbury said, with a laugh. “I’m afraid of our confessions ending up in your collection.”
“I promise,” Penelope said.
She was toasted afterwards with lemonade and champagne, a glass of the latter she permitted herself in celebration.
“To Miss Galferd,” Professor Finbury proclaimed.
“No, friends,” Penelope said, modestly. “To the professor.”
“No!” Finbury corrected himself. “To science!”
Everyone laughed and downed their drinks. Penelope was glad to remove the heavy eyepiece at last.
“Miss Galferd?” A quiet voice murmured close to her ear. She turned to find Mr. Deed of the Pinkertons at her elbow. “Miss Galferd, as long as you are retiring your Mesmeric eyepiece, might I suggest a use for it? It is such a gentle persuader that it could be of enormous service in difficult situations. Your government would be most grateful and generous.”
She placed it gladly in his palm. “It would be my pleasure, Mr. Deed,” she said. “It is always important to have the truth come out.”
Foretold
Bradley P. Beaulieu
Bradley P. Beaulieu is a SpecFic writer who figured he’d better get serious about writing before he found himself on the wrong side of a lifelong career in software. His story, “In the Eyes of the Empress’s Cat,” was voted a Notable Story of 2006 by the Million Writers Award. Other stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Writers of the Future, OSC�
��s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and several DAW anthologies. He lives in Racine, Wisconsin, where he enjoys cooking spicy dishes and hiding out on the weekends with his family. For more, please visit www.quillings.com.
Behind him, over the hiss of releasing steam, Maks heard the faint sound of snowshoes trudging through the drifts on the hill.
The night was growing long. Clearly impatience had won out over Maks’s pleas to be left in peace, and now the Kapitan was approaching to learn the results of the augury.
It had been twelve days since they’d left Syktyvkar, and they had days lying ahead before they would reach the edge of the striking grounds. This was the first augury of the season and by far the most important to the Braga and her crew, so of course the Kapitan would be anxious to hear the findings—pleas for solitude or not.
Maks was sitting on a wide woolen blanket with his apprentice, Yevgeniy, close at hand. He had time before the Kapitan crested the hill, so he quickly sighted through the telescope of his sextant, fixing it upon Uranus above the peaks of the Urals to the east. After completing his measurement, he passed the sextant to Yevgeniy and by the light of his whale oil lantern wrote down 13° 22’ in his journal. At the top of the page was the date—the 14th of December, 1889—followed by the measurements of the other bodies to which he had visibility: the moon, due south, waxing gibbous; Mars, seventeen degrees above the southeastern horizon; Saturn at thirty-eight.
He turned to a leatherbound case sitting at the exact center of the blanket. After closing his eyes, he set back the lid to expose the brass face of his orrery. With practiced hands he adjusted the nine ivory dials along the top to account for the position of each of the primary heavenly bodies. Then he turned his attention to the six dials made of ebony. These were not turned based on precise locations, but on the small indications of fate that lay all around him—things unexpected, things lost, moods altered. It was an art, what he was about to do, and it was something he had, for whatever reason, been unable to pass down to Yevgeniy. It was also the very thing with which he’d had the most trouble since taking Yevgeniy on as his apprentice.
But he couldn’t think about that now.
He cleared his mind and adjusted the dials to account for the state of their journey, the number of men aboard, the pace at which the Braga had traveled that day. He took dozens of things into account, touching the dials just so, until at last he was satisfied. And then he turned his attention to the door at the lower-right corner. He lifted it to reveal the three Daimones—the minor deities that ruled the fate of this expedition.
A smile came over him.
Epiphron, Plutus, and Bia . . .
Epiphron meant prudence, and the Kapitan and his handpicked crew were nothing if not prudent. The presence of Plutus—or wealth—clearly meant that they would have a good season. He couldn’t quite reconcile Bia, which meant force. He would have to think on that more, but he did know one thing: the Kapitan could be nothing but pleased.
Maks’s joy frayed just a little when he realized that Yevgeniy was still taking his first measurement. He shook his head, telling himself that at least his augury was complete, and there was nothing Yevgeniy could do to change it. His impatience heightened, however, when he noted that Yevgeniy was training the sextant too far to the north of Uranus.
“Enough,” he said, “give me the sextant.”
“Master, there is a comet.”
Maks’s face burned at these words. The sound of footfalls in the snow behind him grew suddenly louder, though he knew the phenomenon was due more to his own embarrassment than anything else. He turned and found Kapitan Shimon, a bear of a man bundled as heavily as one, hiking through the snow toward them. His wide, scruffy face was lit in amber momentarily as he puffed on his cigar. Farther down the slope, the pale yellow lanterns of the walker shined as the crew shoveled snow into the sluice for the walker’s reservoir.
“How soon?” the Kapitan called.
“Soon.” Maks grabbed the sextant from Yevgeniy and scanned the eastern sky north of Uranus to find the dim tail of Menippe, a comet he hadn’t seen in nearly eight years. How could he have forgotten about its arrival, this night of all nights?
“Is there a problem?” the Kapitan asked.
“None at all,” Maks lied. “Now leave me to my work, or we’ll never be done.”
He could hear the Kapitan’s heavy breathing, but Shimon had never been one for the cold, and in moments his heavy footsteps could be heard trudging back toward the walker.
Stomach clenching, Maks turned to the orrery. He closed the door showing the Daimones and then carefully readjusted the six ebony dials to account not only for the presence of the comet but this sharp change in mood. Then he held out his shaking hand, ready to hinge the door open. Even with all of his years in augury, it was rare for him to be so certain of the outcome, but this night he was.
He lifted the door.
And stared.
“You’re shaking, master.”
Nemesis, Dysnomia, and Moros.
Indignation, lawlessness, and doom.
Maks snapped the door shut and immediately secured the orrery’s leather case. It was the height of rudeness to refuse one’s apprentice a chance to view the results of an augury, but this was not something he could share with Yevgeniy.
The confusion in Yevgeniy’s bright blue eyes was followed by cold understanding. He couldn’t possibly know what the orrery had revealed, but just then the possibility seemed so real that Maks stood and pushed him away.
Yevgeniy stumbled back and fell into the deeper snow. “Master?”
“Return to the walker,” Maks said, trying and failing to hide the shiver that ran down his frame.
“Can I help with the—”
“Go!”
Yevgeniy bowed and complied.As the plodding sound of his snowshoes faded into the night, Maks turned and considered the silhouetted peaks of the Urals and the heavens beyond. He understood this reading like none other in his life. There would be tragedy on this journey, and betrayal, and the source could be none other than his young apprentice. He was tempted—as he had been many times on receipt of ill tidings—to urge the Kapitan to head for the southern range instead of the northern, to return to Syktyvkar and seek guidance from the oracle, or even to simply wait a few weeks before continuing on, but he knew that such a thing was foolish. As far as the gods were concerned, this bit of history he and the crew were about to experience was already written, and running from it would only serve to anger them.
Five days later the Braga stood upon a narrow ridge dividing two slender valleys from one another. The sky was dark, but the eastern horizon was beginning to brighten. Kapitan Shimon, a telescope pressed against his eye, was standing on deck directly over the ore chute hatch, while Maks sat at the base of the aft watchtower to the rear of the main deck, reading his journal by the light of a small lantern. Yevgeniy sat nearby with a lantern of his own, scribbling in his journal.
Ever since the augury, a sinking feeling had settled into the pit of Maks’s stomach when he considered the role Yevgeniy would play in their coming misfortune. The meteorite strike Maks had predicted was late, and the feeling was stronger than ever, but Maks ignored it as best he could and used his sextant to sight Uranus to the west. There was always the chance he had missed a number here or there, but the three falling stars they’d spotted on their way here had confirmed his initial prediction. So what had gone wrong?
The entire crew had waited up through the night. They were hoping that with a large strike—and a heavy amount of ore—they could disprove Maks’s initial reading. But this was not to be. By the time the sun was fully up, the heavens had remained closed and Shimon was furious.
“You said before dawn.”
“Kapitan, you know these things—”
“Are never accurate, but I expect some accuracy, Maksim.” Maks knew that this was as much a show for the crew as it was for him. “What of Yevgeniy?” Shimon continued. “What does he h
ave to say?”
Yevgeniy, the wind tugging at his short blond hair, sat silently on the deck with his nose in his journal. He was either ignoring Shimon in deference to Maks or so absorbed in his scribblings that he truly didn’t comprehend what was happening around him. Maks was surprised to realize he didn’t know which it was.
Refusing to let Shimon bully him, Maks stood and faced Shimon squarely. “Yevgeniy is an apprentice.”
“And has been for nearly three years. You hold him back, Maks. Let him stand and say what he thinks.”
Maks placed himself between Shimon and Yevgeniy. “He will do no such thing. He has not been properly trained.”
The Kapitan scoffed. “He is gifted, Maksim. When are you going to realize it?”
“Gifted or not, I will be the one to decide when his time has come, not you, and not our circumstances.”
“Circumstances you should have foreseen.”
“I did!”
Shimon’s eyes narrowed and he pulled his bearskin cloak around his frame. “So you did.”
Maks felt himself tighten. Shimon was implying that the augury had been Maks’s fault. Shimon was smart enough to know that such a thing wasn’t true, but the crew would believe his words. It was a blatant attempt at applying pressure, but Maks would have none of it. He was about to order Yevgeniy belowdecks when Leonid cried above him, “Strike!”
All eyes turned upward. Streaking through the pale sky was a trail of white. It flew overhead, less than a mile above them, and bit into the far side of the valley. Moments later, a boom shook the forest around them. Maks felt it not only on his scalp and on the hairs along the back of his neck, he felt it in his bones.
The crew raised their arms to the sky, shouting their elation. But the Kapitan did not. He stared at Maks, and Yevgeniy behind him. “We have work to do, and I’m thankful for that”—he nodded in Yevgeniy’s direction—“but from now on I’ll hear what your apprentice has to say.”
