The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle)

by Catherine Webb

  Lyle stared back out across the Machine. At length he said, ‘Is it charged?’

  ‘Oh yes. We just need to complete the discharge mechanism. Which is, I believe, where you will help.’

  Lyle looked up at the ceiling. He decided there was no way to determine whether the looming blackness overhead was actual cavern-top or simply a thicker layer of darkness somewhere this side of it. Behind him, Havelock said, ‘We could not waste time with persuading you, Lyle. It would have been surprising, if pleasing, had we been able simply to proceed to the main event.’

  ‘I can’t repair it, you know. I only saw the plans for a second.’

  ‘But you are Horatio Lyle, a friend of Berwick and the son of Harry Lyle, a man who spent his tenth birthday party trying to analyse the bicarbonate that went into the cake, and a knowledgeable scientist in your own right!’ replied Havelock. ‘I think a glance is more than enough, at something so dear to your heart. After all, it was so nearly you, rather than Berwick, who was recruited for this project.’

  ‘I can’t make it work!’

  ‘You mean you won’t make it work. That, Mister Lyle, is something I am more than capable of rectifying.’

  ‘There is nothing you can do, Augustus. You can’t find them and I can’t fix it!’

  ‘Horatio,’ chided Havelock, ‘I am a man of greater means than you can even understand.’

  At roughly this time, in the house of the senior Thomas Henry Elwick, Peer of the Realm, a window on the fifth floor very quietly went click. It was slid carefully upwards, a hand groped inside, and a voice beneath the hand muttered, ‘Get a move on, will you?’

  ‘You want my boot up your nose?’ was the delicate reply from the owner of the probing hand. There was a scrambling in the dark, and after a moment a man slipped through the open window on to the floor of the room. He was followed by another, then a third, each wriggling through the window like fish through a cranny in the rocks, all bending backs and flopping limbs.

  One said, ‘Which first?’

  ‘The girl,’ replied another. ‘She’s more likely to scream.’

  ‘Mr Havelock said as how they weren’t to be damaged,’ pointed out the third. ‘He needs them, he said.’

  ‘He said as how they weren’t to be damaged much. Come on.’

  The three slunk towards the door, opened it a crack, peered out. The corridor was empty except for a single, snoring footman, a bottle open by his side, head lolling against the wall, curled up on a stool too small for a man half his size. Ignoring him, they picked their way quietly down the corridor to the next door. It was locked. One pulled out a pair of lock picks from his coat pocket and set to quietly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Another smelt the breath of the sleeping footman and wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘Rum,’ he hissed.

  ‘So much for Lord Elwick’s staff,’ muttered another.

  The lock clicked. They pushed the door back. The room beyond was shuttered and dark, its only illumination the faint lamplight that seeped in from the corridor. In the bed a figure lay, its back to the door, curled up and almost invisible under the blankets. The first intruder crept towards it, and reached out to put a hand over its mouth before it could scream.

  The figure rolled over, opened its eyes, and smiled.

  One yelped, ‘Bloody hell! It’s got a bloody beard!’

  ‘You must be the gentlemen sent to find my son,’ said the figure in the bed, sitting up swiftly and pulling out a hunting rifle from under the sheets. Outside, the drunken-seeming footman had suddenly acquired from inside his jacket a small but effective-looking pistol; at the end of the corridor, more shadows crossed in front of the light.

  Lord Elwick smiled grimly. ‘I’m sorry - you missed him. But I have so been looking forward to talking with you.’

  His name was Scuttle, he was twelve years old, so he claimed, and he was born to rule. More precisely, he ruled the north side of the riverbanks at low tide that ran between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower of London. No mudlark, snipe or spoon hunter could enter his domain without first begging an audience from Young Master Scuttle. His throne was an old bathtub with a hole in it, that, turned upside-down, allowed him to sit cross-legged, like the old prattler up on Cheapside said the Rajahs did in India. He wore a velvet burgundy jacket the thickness of a spider’s web, and a crooked top hat supported only by his protruding ears. He kept order over his assembled courtiers, who had an average age of about nine, with a hook of the kind used by dyers to hang clothes to dry above the vats.

  It was ten thirty in the morning when Tess, Thomas, Tate and Lin found him. Tate had been snuffling his way through the carcasses of boats rotting on the low-tide mark and his coat had quickly turned muddy brown from the slime thrown up by his paws and low-slung belly. Thomas was struggling to move under the weight of bags and equipment thrown across his shoulders - with which load neither of the ladies had offered to help, he noticed, with a pang of resentment that immediately made him guilty at the immaturity of his own feelings. He had, after all, volunteered to carry the bags, as befitted the man of the party. Lin and Tess had accepted his offer with, he couldn’t help but feel, a slightly too cheerful expression on both their faces.

  The presence of Lin brought a swift reaction from the crowd of children gathered with their goods for barter around the bathtub where Scuttle regally sat. Anyone over five foot tall was suspect in the eyes of the mudlarks, who cringed back from Lin with a look to Scuttle for guidance. Thomas, meanwhile, was trying in vain to shake some of the mud off his trouser legs. The mire from the banks of the Thames, all thin green slime on thick grey-brown sludge, had somehow crawled as high as his knees, even though he was sure he had walked with utmost care and discretion from the steps at Blackfriars Bridge.

  Scuttle said, ‘Oi, you here for the barter?’

  Thomas tried not to gape. Lin beamed, and said, ‘Aren’t you a quaint little specimen?’

  Tess marched up to the bathtub, ignoring the ooze of the mud and the rag-tag children who scampered out of her way. ‘Right, you, you owe me big, an’ now’s the time when it gets paid chop chop, all right?’

  Scuttle said, ‘You can’t go an’ talk to me like that! Ain’t you got no dec ... deco ... dec ...’

  ‘Decorum?’ suggested Thomas politely.

  Scuttle’s eyes narrowed. ‘An’ who the hell is this?’

  ‘Bigwig, this is Scuttle. Scuttle, this is bigwig,’ said Tess brightly. ‘Bigwig’s really called Thomas, I just call him bigwig ’cos of how he is. Scuttle’s really called Josiah, but he don’t like as people know that, ’cos it sounds all stupid.’

  ‘An’ what about the lady what ain’t normal-looking?’

  ‘Oh, you must mean me,’ exclaimed Lin. ‘I’m a knife-wielding fiend from ancient lore, a demon in the night, a dream in the moonlight and, may I say, I also make splendid chow mein. How do you do?’

  ‘Tess!’ wailed Scuttle. ‘You gone an’ met all funny sorts!’

  ‘Never you mind that,’ she exclaimed. ‘We need to go in the sewers, an’ you’ - an accusing finger stabbed at Scuttle’s chest - ‘are gonna take us there.’

  Seated on his bathtub, Scuttle flinched. ‘But Tess . . .’ he wheedled.

  ‘Don’t you go an’ try an’ get out of it. I done you plenty of good in the past. I lifted stuff what has kept you in bread an’ nice clothes when you was still scratching for teaspoons in the old tunnels, so watch it.’

  ‘Why you want to go there anyway? It ain’t nice down there, Tess, an’ besides’ - he leant towards her conspiratorially - ‘some of the snipes been goin’ missin’, ain’t they? Down in the new tunnels, it ain’t safe like it used to be.’

  ‘You mean, it ain’t safe like it used to be when the only thing what you had to worry about was bein’ attacked by rats or flooded by the tide or getting lost or havin’ poo drop on your head?’ asked Tess sweetly.

  Thomas had turned green.

  ‘All right, all right, I see what you’re on ab
out,’ muttered Scuttle. ‘But that don’t explain why you wanna go down there!’

  ‘I wanna go down there,’ replied Tess in a voice of infinite patience, ‘’cos there’s this evil bigwig bloke what don’t want me to go down there. I wanna go down there ’cos there’s this Machine what’s gonna kill these people an’ though I ain’t too sure of what these people are about, my guvnor says they’re all right really an’ as how it ain’t right to go judgin’ many all at once, an’ maybe he’s got a point there ’cos if you just say, “They’re all bad” then you’ll hurt everyone even if they ain’t all bad, an’ that’s summat I don’t rightly like the sound of. I wanna go down there ’cos this nice miss says my guvnor’s down there, an’ ’cos he needs savin’, an’ I wanna go down there ’cos I just find them sewers so nice, see? Now you gonna help or do I ’ave to sock you one?’

  ‘Miss Teresa!’ squeaked Thomas indignantly.

  ‘Stand back, bigwig,’ barked Tess. ‘This is lady’s work.’

  Scuttle wilted under the force of Tess’s glower. ‘Oooh . . .’ he complained. ‘You gonna get me in’na so much shitty poo, Tess.’

  She grinned. ‘You just about hit the nail on the head there.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Tides

  Later, Lyle wanted to kick himself for not having worked it out before. Later, however, wasn’t early enough. Later, he remembered it all in flat, unsympathetic statements, cold grey images, nothing really left for feeling, although he could remember the sensation in his throat from all the shouting, and how tall Havelock looked. Mostly he remembered the moment when he had realized - with a sudden blooming of understanding after the sneaking build-up of information which warned him - he could ... he might ... he can go so far ...

  He had wondered why, Havelock had just left him in a darkened cell with confused strangers and their voices. They didn’t know him; he didn’t know them. After maybe an hour in the dark, the door had been opened. Not just Lyle, but all of them, the cell’s many occupants, had been prodded out at gunpoint into the dull orange glow from the furnaces, and lined up. Several of the faces had surprised him: some were older than their owner’s voice, some younger, in a mishmash of characteristics that, as far as he could tell, had almost nothing in common, except that they were all clearly in disgrace with Havelock. And they were afraid.

  When they were all lined up, Havelock walked down the line, a bobbing face on a black shadow in the dull light of the furnace, seemingly oblivious to the heat rushing out from every inch of the bellied metal giants. He got to the end, where Lyle stood next to an oldish man with the beginnings of a rough beard, took a revolver from one of the men guarding them, checked that it was loaded, raised it and, without a word, shot the man next to Lyle.

  Lyle would remember the strange seconds of silence that followed, and every time he did so, the silence seemed to have been longer as people saw but failed to understand exactly what had happened. He would remember blood on his face from the shot, the other man’s blood, and that where a human being had stood, now there was just a prostrate creature on the floor, wheezing for breath, clinging to a hole in his chest and sobbing and choking and dying all at once, his face the colour of tomatoes, his fingers pale as snow. Only when a woman fainted, three places down the row, did the rest begin to stir and shout and scream, and only then did Lyle kneel next to the man and tear at his clothes to see the wound, and press down as hard as he could while the blood flowed between his fingers like water squeezed from a sponge.

  Havelock leant over Lyle to peer at the dying man with an expression of mild curiosity, and said calmly, ‘Well, he might survive for a while.’

  And the little piece of Lyle that was a detective before it was a scientist, that was a copper and, more to the point, an angry one who had seen too many bodies, who knew that no matter what it did, the world would not yet change - that piece of him cracked. He threw himself at Havelock with all the strength he had and actually managed to get his slippery, bloody fingers on the man’s throat before he was pulled back and pushed to the ground, kicking and biting at anything that got in his way.

  Havelock watched dispassionately while Lyle struggled, and then remarked, ‘Oh, look. I do believe he’s dead.’

  Lyle sagged on to the floor and put his head in his bloody hands, then tucked it in towards his knees like a child afraid of spiders. Havelock prodded the man’s body with a toe, and murmured, ‘I wonder what he was called?’ And turned to the next one in the line, and raised the gun.

  ‘Please, stop.’ It was barely a whisper, a sigh from somewhere inside the bundle that was Lyle. ‘Please.’

  Havelock raised his eyebrows. ‘I trust you understand this game, Horatio Lyle. I really do hope it is something you may comprehend.’

  ‘Please.’ Lyle looked up at Havelock and whispered, ‘Please.’

  Havelock hesitated, then lowered the gun. He squatted down so that his face was level with Lyle’s. ‘This, Horatio,’ he explained gently, ‘is why you are weak. I don’t need the children to control you; I don’t even need your friends. I can take anyone off the street, and kill them before your eyes, and you will know that they are dying not for their own insignificant merits, but because of you.

  ‘This makes you easy - very easy - to control, in a game hardly worth my time or their blood to play. So, we will be simple, indeed childish, about these things. You will rebuild the regulator, and I will not go down the line killing every single person in it before your eyes. And if the regulator does not then work, I will go into the streets and kill, and make sure the bodies are laid at your door. Do you understand me?’

  Lyle nodded.

  ‘Excellent! There, now, that wasn’t so hard, was it, Horatio? In the end, it will be much, much easier for you to build me a regulator that will kill hundreds of unseen, unknown Tseiqin at a stroke, than for you to watch a single person die and to know it’s your responsibility. I suppose that makes you a hypocrite; but frankly I’m more inclined to think it makes you a coward. To work, then! So much to do, such a busy time.’

  And he turned and strode away.

  All roads lead to London. This is a firm conviction held by most Londoners, who know that in every hamlet and village in the country there will sooner or later be a sign or a milestone indicating that in this general direction is the metropolis, and you should count yourself damn lucky to be going there, whereas in London itself, not a clue is given as to how you can escape its boundaries because, after all, why would you want to?

  In a similar way, there was a general sense that all things in London eventually led to the river. Although many inhabitants of the city lived in the shade of the hills beyond its northern bounds, even along the modest slopes of Pentonville Road or down near Charing Cross an unspoken feeling prevailed that the trend in London was downwards, bending towards the water. Of the railway stations that supplied London, only a small number did not cling to the banks of the Thames, and those few, such as King’s Cross and Paddington, were nested close to a canal anyway, as honorary riverside ports.

  This trend of the city towards the river had both helped and hindered the designers of the new sewer system, opened with much aplomb when the first pumping station belched into life just beyond the city’s south-easternmost extremities. Gravity had been the mechanism that also, with a lesser degree of success, powered the old sewer system. This had broached the riverside with a number of tunnels that slipped discreetly out into the water to the east of the Houses of Parliament - and whose contents had in recent memory caused such stinks throughout the whole river that parliament had been forced to close, for fear of deadly miasmas carried by the smell of sewage. Then, and only then, had the funds for a new system been provided - but the old tunnels remained.

  One of these tunnels came out half a mile downriver of the Tower of London. It had a small opening barely large enough for a child, let alone the fully grown Lin - and for the rats that snuffled, oblivious to humankind’s presence nearby. Until, that is, Ta
te barked at them and charged with teeth bared. It was here that Scuttle stopped, sniffed the air and announced, ‘Righty-righto. This’ll do.’

  Even then they had to wait for the tide, which had been rushing in and lapping the sides of the tunnel when they arrived. This took time. And time was something Thomas felt they couldn’t afford.

  This is why:

  Horatio Lyle sits at a workbench in the light of a single dull candle underneath the black cavernous roof, and chews the end of a pencil.

  He lays out paper in front of him, considers its blankness, half-closes his eyes, and remembers the images that Berwick had shown him, the shape of the thing, the details of its design, every dot and line. And he knows that this, here before him, would be a futile exercise were it not that, now he understands what the Machine is, now he realizes the scale of it, he knows it can work, and he knows how to finish it. He knows too that somewhere inside, there is a tiny, tiny part of him that thinks it is amazing, an achievement, a scientific miracle, and wants it to work. The thing is so very simple, the work of a few hours if you knew how to do it. His pa would have called it ‘elegant’, and so it would have been, if you forgot its purpose or the men with cruel faces leaning over his shoulder to watch him work.

  He puts pencil to paper, and starts to draw.

  The tide never changes so slowly as when you are sitting there to watch it. Usually the Thames was nothing more to Tess than a big, wet thing, that meant you had to go up- or downriver to find a bridge, if a ferryman wasn’t about; an occasionally inconvenient sloshy bit - not that she, Teresa Hatch, would ever be caught going south of the river, where expanding suburbs stretched towards such mysterious places as Vauxhall and the Elephant and Castle coaching inn. On that side of the water the brothels and music halls were practically one and the same, though more recently hidden behind the giant yellow-brick wharves built up by the shipping companies to receive their wares.