Unseemly Science

by Rod Duncan

  And then the second law was signed.

  This law is an amendment to the Reconciliation and Extradition Act (2009). Its purpose is to restrict the retrospective effects of the aforementioned Act. Henceforth, no person who arrived in the Anglo- Scottish Republic before the Act was passed shall be subject to its strictures. This with the exception of the fugitive known as Elizabeth Barnabus.

  Councillor Wallace Jones had been tricked by his opponents. In politics, as in law, there is room in the gaps between words for the Devil to build all his palaces and pleasure gardens.

  I felt no anger or sadness when I read the report of the law change and saw my name listed as an exception. Not to say I’d expected it. But I had too much experience of ending up on losing sides to have believed I’d finally won. Instead, I felt a strange excitement – a tingling premonition of the road that lay ahead.

  It was the quiet watches of the night when I returned to the wharf and made my way to the boat house. The heavy padlock rested in the hasp, so that from a distance it seemed secure. But the arm of the lock had not been clicked into place. I lifted it clear, opened the door a crack and slipped inside.

  My heart constricted as I saw Bessie, my beautiful home. She was not as I had left her. Gone was the framework of her cabins. The superstructure had been ripped out – replaced for most of its length by a cargo hold covered with tarpaulin. The engine funnel sprouted from a small cabin at the back. The nameplate now read Harry.

  I had asked for it to be done, but never dreamed they would achieve so thorough a disguise. Walking the length of her, I brushed my hand against the paddlewheel. She would surely pass unnoticed among the working boats. I wondered how many hours had been spent to effect so complete a transformation. It seemed impossible that Mr Simmonds and Mr Swain could have achieved it on their own.

  From the aft deck, I felt my way down three steps to a covered area of engine controls and firebox. A short passageway took me past the engine and into the tiny cabin that was my new home. I ducked as I entered, but still knocked my head against a lamp that hung from the ceiling. A box of Lucifers had been wedged inside its glass, as if waiting for someone to arrive in the night.

  I struck a light and put it to the wick. As the flame grew, I saw the statue, the Spirit of Freedom, leaning from the aft wall, her metal now bright. They had left her uncovered. I reached out and stroked her face. Freedom – that is what this boat would give me. I would be able to steam away and lose myself in the waterways of the Republic. Or if I chose, travel south and cross the border to confront my enemy full-on.

  Turning to survey the cabin, I saw that it was filled with familiar objects. The lamp itself had been in Mr Swain’s workshop. The wall rack was stacked with plates and cups, the patterns of which I knew from other boats on the wharf. The Measham teapot, pride of the coal boatman’s cabin, rested on a shelf of its own. I touched it.

  “Oh, Mary, you’ve given me too much.”

  Now I understood where the workforce must have come from to transform my boat. The people of the wharf had gifted me with their time and effort as well as their possessions. Perhaps my ill-treatment by the constables had changed their opinion of me. Or perhaps Julia had been right about their feelings and I had misjudged them all along.

  An envelope addressed in my friend’s careful hand rested next to the teapot. For my dDear sSister. I picked it up and slipped it into my sleeve.

  A soft breath made me turn, though not with a start. I had been expecting it – hoping for it even. A ragged boy lay curled up at the foot of the cot. Tinker was fast asleep.

  I retraced my steps and opened the firebox. Coal, sticks and newspaper lay arranged inside, ready to be lit. At the bottom of the pile was the crude Kingdom flag I had been obliged to paste in my window. Remembering the lesson that Mr Swain had taught, I tapped the water gauge and saw that the tender was full. She had been left ready in anticipation of my return.

  Though I had never so keenly felt my love for the community of the wharf, it was time for me to go. I struck another Lucifer, reached into the firebox and set it to the kindling.

  The End

  Selected entries from:

  A Glossary of the Gas-Lit Empire

  The Anglo-Scottish Republic

  The northernmost nation formed by the partition of Britain following the 1819 armistice. The city of Carlisle is its capital, the seat of its parliament and other agencies of government. It is a democracy, with universal suffrage for all men over the age of twenty-one years.

  The Anstey Amendment

  An amendment to the armistice signed at the end of the British Revolutionary War. The border had initially been drawn as an East-West line from the Wash, passing just south of Derby. However, when news started to spread that Anstey was to be controlled by the Kingdom, new skirmishes broke out. The Anstey Amendment was therefore drafted, redrawing the border to include a small southerly loop and thereby bring Ned Ludd’s birthplace into the Republic.

  The border had originally been drawn so that it would pass through sparsely populated countryside. An unforeseen consequence of the Anstey Amendment was the bisection of the city of Leicester between the two new nations and its subsequent flourishing as a centre of trade and communication.

  Barnabus, Elizabeth

  A woman regarded by historians as having had a formative role in the fall of the Gas-Lit Empire. Born in a travelling circus, and becoming a fugitive at the age of fourteen, with no inheritance but the secret of a stage illusion, she nevertheless came to stand at the very fulcrum of history.

  No individual could be said to have caused the collapse of such a mighty edifice. Rather, it was brought low by the great, the inexorable, tides of history. Yet had it not been for this most unlikely of revolutionaries, the manner of its fall would have been entirely different.

  The Battle of Stanhope

  A skirmish that took place on January 30th 1816 between the men of the Prince Bishop of County Durham and local lead miners who had taken to grouse poaching because of poverty. Though it was merely a local dispute, the government crackdown that followed precipitated a series of battles of increasing scale and range. By April, the entire country was in flames. Being the spark that lit the powder keg, Stanhope is regarded as the first battle in the British Revolutionary War.

  The British Revolutionary War

  Also known as the Second English Civil War and as the Luddite Revolution, it ran for exactly three years from January 30th 1816 to January 30th 1819 and resulted in the division of Britain into two nations: the Anglo-Scottish Republic and the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. The untamed lands of northern Wales cannot be said to be a true nation as they are ruled by no government.

  The Circus of Mysteries

  One of the many travelling magic shows to tour the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. Original home of Elizabeth Barnabus. After years of financial difficulty it was finally closed in the early years of the 21st Century after its owner, Gulliver Barnabus, was declared bankrupt.

  The Council of Aristocrats

  The highest agency of government in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. It meets in London and has authority over the general population as well as the monarchy.

  The Council of Guardians

  The highest agency of government of the Anglo-Scottish Republic. Sixty per cent of its membership is appointed. Forty per cent is elected by universal suffrage of all men over the age of twenty-one. Its meetings are held in Carlisle.

  Cultural Drift

  A phrased used to describe the origin of cultural differences between the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales and the Anglo-Scottish Republic.

  The cultures of Kingdom and Republic were not dissimilar at partition. But years of priding themselves on their differences, caused them to drift apart. In A History of the Gas-Lit Empire, the process is described thus: How often do we see an unhappy couple changing over time so that each more perfectly manifests the aspect of their character that annoys
the other. So it was with the disunited kingdoms of Britain.

  Derby

  One of the three principal cities in the South East of the Republic. Derby is famous for engineering and heavy industry. It is home to the largest ice factory in the Anglo- Scottish Republic.

  From Revolution

  A collection of writings from the founding fathers of the British, French and American Revolutions. As early as 1828, attempts to compile an authoritative volume of approved revolutionary writings were resulting in fierce argument between moderate and absolutist factions. These were not resolved until the Conference of Nice la Belle in 1843, at which the apocryphal texts were finally excluded.

  Originally called ‘From Revolution: Essays of the New Society’, the title was shortened to make it more accessible to the common man. In the years that followed, From Revolution was translated into all state languages of the Gas-Lit Empire. Social charities distributed it to prisons, hospitals, workhouses and even hotel and guest houses. Detailed knowledge of the text became part of the core curriculum of public education.

  Pride and Prejudice

  A novel by Jane Austen published in London in 1813. After the British Revolutionary War it came to be seen as a symbol of the differing characteristics and values of the nations of Britain. Rooted in a world of aristocratic privilege and fixated on questions of wealth and display, it was held to be counter to Republican ideals. Its suppression north of the border caused the people of the Kingdom to embrace it with particular fervour. What started as a subtle difference of emphasis was amplified as each nation reacted to the other. Ultimately the printing and sale of the book was banned in the Republic, though its ownership has never been illegal.

  The Gas-Lit Empire

  A popular though inaccurate phrase coined by the Earl of Liverpool to describe the vast territories watched over by the International Patent Office.

  The term gained currency during the period of rapid economic and technical development that followed the signing of the Great Accord. It reflects the literal enlightenment that came with the extension of gas lighting around the civilised world.

  Though ubiquitous, the term Gas-Lit Empire is misleading, as no single government ruled over its territories

  The Great Accord

  A declaration of intent, signed initially by France, America and the Anglo-Scottish Republic in 1821, which established the International Patent Office as arbiter of collective security. Following revolutions in Russia, Germany and Spain the number of signatories rapidly increased until it encompassed the entire civilised world.

  The Ice Economy

  A phrase used to describe the physical and economic infrastructure of ice supply. In political discourse it has come to represent the dependence of large cities on food from distant locations.

  A village can live off the fields that surround it. Herds of animals can be driven into the centres of large towns and kept alive until their time of slaughter. But as cities sprawled outwards, they consumed the farmland that would have supported the population. The bigger they grew, the greater the distance food had to travel and the vaster the population it had to support. Beyond a certain threshold, cities would have become unviable but for the means of keeping food fresh. There was no single moment when this principle was understood. But as cities grew, the price of fresh food grew with them, stimulating the birth of the ice economy.

  The five components of the ice economy are as follows: production, transportation, processing, storage and supply.

  Production takes place at high altitudes where night time temperatures fall below freezing for four months of the year. It is carried out by small communities of ‘farmers’. Community ice houses are used to store the product until the canals unfreeze at the end of winter. Transportation from the ice houses is by means of specially adapted barges. Processing is carried out at centralised ice factories (see separate article) which are also responsible for storage. Supply is carried out via the canals and a network of local warehouses.

  Ice Factory

  Not, as the name might imply, a facility for making ice. Rather a facility for the processing and storage of ice harvested elsewhere. The three main functions of an ice house are as follows: compressing the ice into blocks of standard size, storing it until it is required and bringing its temperature down ready for transportation.

  The development of the ice factories was driven by the economies of scale and the inherent inefficiency of cooling technologies. Thus by the turn of the 21st Century, only a small number of ice factories survived, but these operated on a huge scale.

  The International Patent Office

  The agency established in 1821 and charged with overseeing the terms of the Great Accord. Its stated mission and highest goal is to “protect and ensure the wellbeing of the common man”. This it does through enforcement of International Patent Law.

  Agents of the Patent Office have wide powers to investigate, prosecute and punish patent crime by individuals and organisations. Were the Patent Office to judge any nation guilty, it would issue an edict calling on all other signatory nations to reduce the transgressor to dust.

  Though investing them with sweeping powers, the Great Accord and its amendments also subject agents of the Patent Office to certain restrictions of personal freedom.

  The Kingdom of England and Southern Wales

  The southernmost nation formed by the partition of Britain following the 1819 armistice.

  With its capital and agencies of government in London, it would be easy to mistake the Kingdom as merely the rump of the older, larger Britain. However, with the rule of the country passing out of the hands of the monarch and parliament and into the control of the Council of Aristocrats, it must be regarded as a revolutionary nation in its own right.

  North Leicester

  One of the three principal cities in the South-East of the Republic. It is famous for transportation , smuggling and its proximity to Anstey and thus, by association, with Ned Ludd.

  The Leicester Backs

  Although the Anstey Amendment partitioned Leicester with precision, the density of the Cank Street slums lent an ambiguity to the border that made it impossible to police. This sprawl of narrow alleyways and crooked cut-throughs became known as The Backs because it backed onto the border from both sides.

  Though an area of poverty at the time of partition, smuggling brought gold and gold brought vice. Gangs fought for influence over the opium dens, bath houses and betting salons. But all knew that complete anarchy would drive the trade away. Thus a balance prevailed in which the gaslights were turned low in those lucrative streets but not blacked out completely.

  The Long Quiet

  The cessation of open conflict and technological innovation that followed the formation of the Gas-Lit Empire. It was proclaimed by many political philosophers to be the end of history.

  With the eye of the International Patent Office watching over them, no nation could attempt to out-develop the others in the technology of killing. The armaments industry had previously been an advocate of war. Now it atrophied. Bound by international treaty, governments could no longer use their armies as a means of enforcing foreign policy.

  On the social front, technological innovation had previously been a driver of social change. During the Long Quiet, that too was reduced to almost nothing. The Anglo- Scottish Republic embraced this aspect of the Great Accord more vigorously than others. But even in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales, the least enthusiastic signatory, innovation came to mean the application of mere cosmetic changes. Between 1900 and the year 2000 there were fewer patents filed in London relating to engines than there were to differing designs of clock face.

  The New Apocrypha

  A collection of essays excluded from the canon of revolutionary writing at the Conference of Nice la Belle in 1843. Two categories of writings were thus rejected:

  Those that did not reflect the true spirit of the revolution.

  Those deemed not condu
cive to the best interests of the common man.

  Nottingham

  One of the three principal cities in the South-East of the Republic. Nottingham is chiefly famous for medical sciences. It is said that there are more hospitals per head of population there than in any other part of the Gas-Lit Empire. Most of the eminent physicians in the kingdoms of Britain will have spent time there. The concentration of so much knowledge in one place is said to be better for the patients. Thus, an industry sprang up transporting the sick and infirm to the city – and home again in the event that they survived the journey and the treatment.

  Its other claims to fame are lace making, and tourism related to Robin the Revolutionary.

  Patent Crime

  The production, sale or use of any technology judged by the International Patent Office to be “unseemly” or otherwise lacking a patent mark.