The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle)

by Catherine Webb

  Havelock’s eyebrows twitched; his mouth tightened. He reached out and wrenched Lyle’s face round so he could see into his eyes. ‘Are you going to double-cross me, Horatio Lyle?’ he hissed. ‘Would you dare?’

  His fingers dug into Lyle’s skin, dragging red marks across his cheek and jaw. Lyle tried to shake himself free, but the grip tightened. ‘Would you let so many die to save your enemies?’

  ‘It works!’ said Lyle quickly. ‘I swear - I swear it works, I swear.’

  And as he swore, just one wire under his fingers, one tiny piece a bit too long, that he bent back on itself to shorten to the correct length, ready to snap - bent back and round, a hook under his fingers ...

  ‘Please stop,’ he whispered. ‘Please . . .’

  Tying positive to negative, and all eyes were on Havelock, and Havelock’s eyes were on Lyle’s, and it didn’t seem to occur to him that fingers can work by touch alone. ‘Please . . .’ Or that you can have more than what you need to build a thing.

  Havelock let go. Lyle lapsed forward, clasping the new, strange, lumpy regulator, not nearly as neat or shiny as Berwick’s device, but just as well informed. Havelock took it carefully from Lyle’s hands and turned it over, examining it with narrowed eyes, then scrutinizing Lyle, and Lyle decided that Havelock read faces better than he did machines, and that under different circumstances that might almost be an irony.

  Havelock smiled. It was his first genuine smile that Lyle had seen, full of satisfaction and triumph, almost childish in its glee. ‘I choose to let you live, Horatio Lyle,’ he said. ‘At least, for now.’ He straightened up and said briskly, ‘Let’s finish this, shall we?’

  Lyle followed Havelock without a word, without being told to and without being told not to. He followed him from the workroom beneath the furnaces, across bridges spanning rivers of cable, down flights of stairs, and along passages that smelt of burnt metal and coal, through caverns piled with nothing but soot and wood, metal and wire, across gantries where the workers with black-stained faces watched the Machine waiting below, through billows of venting steam and past walls of fat pipes that hummed and hissed like a breeze gusting through a rusted organ. At the hall of capacitors, thousands of them that grew around him like trees in a forest, Lyle thought he saw a shadow move, and dismissed it. Then, at the start of the metal casing that stretched five hundred yards ahead and contained, somewhere inside, more explosives than the mind could comfortably conceive - even a mind as well adjusted to explosions as Lyle’s - he thought he heard a footstep somewhere overhead, a familiar pattering. For a moment, he nearly smiled. At the circuit-breakers, giant switches spun on a handle that took five men to move and snapped like a crocodile’s jaws when the connectors were swung into place, he felt almost ready for what he knew was about to come.

  He watched with no sign of emotion as Havelock disappeared into a small shed built within the cavern. Through this there passed a giant’s thickness of arm, composed entirely of cabling, each individual cable fatter than Lyle’s wrist, and hundreds of them to boot, carrying the regulator. He waited without particularly caring that he couldn’t see while men wired in the regulator, and briefly met the eyes of the scientists as they struggled to make his cruder device fit the area that had been designed for Berwick’s. That took nearly half an hour. He waited patiently, sniffed the air and smelt . . . brass, gold, bronze, iron, coal, smoke, dust, static, sweat, sewage, stagnant water, soot, salt, sugar and perhaps, somewhere close by, the tiniest, tiniest hint of ammonia, where there shouldn’t have been anything of the sort.

  Havelock emerged, without the regulator in his hand. Everyone stood well back.

  Lyle said, ‘Is there a lever marked “Bang”?’

  Havelock didn’t grace him with a reply. He waved up at a man on a gantry. The man on the gantry waved at someone down on the floor. Someone down on the floor waved at someone else in the red-black haze of darkness. Somewhere, very far off, a piston went umph. Umph. Umph. Umph umph umph umphumphumphumph ... A whistle blew. Lyle looked up and heard the sound of venting gas, the familiar eeeesssshhheeekkk! as it poured from a hundred different, overly stressed pipes. Little cogs started to click; somewhere a turbine went duummmduuummmmmduuummmmmm ...

  Teams of men started pushing the circuit-breakers shut, huge twists of metal clacking into place. If it was possible for the temperature to rise, it did, and so did the light as fires were stoked and sparks began to flash, little white-blue flickers in the darkness and a rising redness that crept surreptitiously towards the top of the cavern underneath the city. In the streets above, pigeons scattered; underneath Lyle’s feet, the ground hummed, a resonance that passed right up through his stomach and rattled around his teeth and head. Metal shook and strained.

  Havelock looked at his Machine, and laughed.

  Lyle said, ‘I’d stand a little further back, if I were you.’

  Havelock’s eyes flickered to Lyle, and now, for the first time in what felt like far, far too long, Lyle smiled.

  Later, Tess would say that it wasn’t that exciting. Watching capacitors charge and discharge was like watching cliff-face erosion - exciting if you could see what was happening just at a moment of crisis - but otherwise an unfulfilling experience. A charge that was stored in a forest of clay and metal discharged, as invisible as the current that had fuelled it in the first place. It did so from a thousand capacitors all at the same time and was, needless to say, invisible to Tess’s eyes, except for the odd hot-ness in one or two cables where the quality was lower than the required standard, and where resistance raised the temperature to a dull, ruddy glow.

  The discharge of the capacitors themselves was, therefore, unspectacular.

  The arrival of the charge at the point where the current divided - part to the coil that ran round and round the central metal core that filled the main hall which housed the Machine, part to the detonator that set off the shaped charge inside its bowls - approximately 0.00001 seconds later was, Tess grudgingly admitted, more interesting. It was interesting for the way in which a large part of the shed that housed the regulator exploded outwards in a jabbing shard of blue-white lightning; it was interesting for the way in which the ground boiled with racing electricity that dug itself into the earth; it was interesting for the way in which every single cable that ran from capacitor to the regulator suddenly exploded dancing sparks; it was interesting for the way clay boiled around the capacitors, the way wooden platforms too close to the cables caught fire, the way the furnaces screamed, the way the pistons churned, the way the lightning flashed across rotting pools of dripping sewer water and turned every droplet to a flying electrical snowdrop; it was very interesting for the way the single thin wire that carried a tiny, tiny, tiny part of charge from the regulator to the detonator that should, if all things had gone well, blown the explosive to collapse the magnetic field just so, only to blast it out again in a tidal wave of raw magnetism - it was interesting to see how that hung so loose and forlorn, just beside the detonator. Cutting the wire had been Thomas’s idea, although judging by the fireworks, Tess was beginning to think it might not have been such a good plan after all.

  CHAPTER 17

  Circuitry

  And the regulator exploded.

  Horatio Lyle, when he had decided that short-circuiting a device that was designed to carry millions of volts at any given second would be an interesting thing to do, had ironically been more concerned with the effect of said millions of volts trying to earth themselves anywhere within a fifty-yard radius, and what this might do for the soles of his shoes than any more material consequences of his action. Now, the thought seemed a silly one - there was far more to be concerned about than elementary electrical physics, strange though the idea could be.

  He did what he always did when something exploded violently, which was to throw himself to the floor with his knees tucked in and hands over his head and wait for the worst to stop. The ground beneath his fingers and his knees tingled, it burnt and bit with e
nergy as the electricity in the Machine, suddenly very, very confused about where it was going, went down into the ground, boiling it too close to the shattered remnants of the regulator and there was so much of it, artificial lightning, a man-made monster, a crude imitation of nature, of something he’d seen before: Havelock had spent a fortune on building something that could have come naturally from the sky. And now Lyle was angry, so angry, at every second of the last few days spent being lied to, chased, manipulated, used, a pawn in other people’s battles. For them it was a war, for them there was no limit and they would kill to make something as futile as this, to make artificial lightning and leave behind the bodies and murder and plot and scheme and steal and threaten and kidnap and bribe and blackmail and think nothing of it because they had a cause and somehow that made everything all right, and they had threatened the children.

  Another blast shook Lyle where he lay. The force of it sent bubbles into his ears and made his nose ache, the prickly heat in the earth stinging his fingers. He started to crawl away on his belly, wriggling like a snake from the dancing lightning, eyes half-closed against the sudden explosive glare of sparks and fire erupting underground, all across the length of the Machine - no wonder his Pa had disliked short circuits; what a mess, what a waste ...

  Another blast and there was something around Lyle’s ankle, restraining him. He looked back to see broken metal and torn walls and falling shards of fire and torn wire ripping through brick and stone, and to see Havelock’s face pressed to the earth but looking at him and Havelock’s bloody hand clinging to his ankle, anchoring him. He kicked, and when that didn’t shake Havelock, he rolled over and kicked again with his other foot, hitting Havelock across the top of his head and the grip went slack. Lyle tried to crawl up to his feet, reached out to grab a pipe, part of a bank of pipes that ran across one wall, and burnt his hand, staggering as the faster, smarter part of his brain instinctively let go before he even had time to register the pain. He pushed himself to his feet and turned, looked up, saw the broken wire leading to the detonator at the start of the hundred-yards-long metal case of explosive. He grinned, and saw a shadow move and felt he now knew absolutely what had to be done. He ran towards the detonator, looking for a path up to the broken wire, saw a ladder of black rungs on a black wall hiding in the darkness, looking thoroughly uninviting, and raced towards it, pulling himself up with a strength he was surprised to find he had, and not a little pleased, grateful that his body knew when it was an emergency. He peered over the gantry and looked straight into a pair of laceless leather boots that looked far too big for the ankles that housed them. He looked up from the leather boots, past a pair of pinstriped trousers held up with string and a red velvet jacket and into a small, spotty, frightened face that went, ‘Uuhhh!’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded Lyle.

  The child said, ‘Are you Tess’s guv’nor?’

  ‘I guess so, previous question still stands, and what are the soles of your shoes made of?’

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘I’m just thinking that if you’re going to stand in the middle of an electrical disaster, you might want to do it somewhere where the current won’t be inclined to earth itself through you.’

  ‘Wha’?’ squeaked the child.

  ‘Never mind,’ sighed Lyle, heaving himself up and carefully manoeuvring the boy to one side. ‘Let’s just trust to luck, despite the futility of the idea.’

  Somewhere in the distance, something irritably chemical met a spark, and did the irritable chemical thing, sending a rolling wave of yellow fire and acrid smoke spilling out across the Machine. The child mumbled, ‘Tess said as to how she should say hello an’ that she’s gonna rescue you.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why isn’t she here, then?’ asked Lyle, patting down his pockets and finding them embarrassingly empty. ‘What are the soles of your shoes made of, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, she’s tryin’ to sabotage the Machine type thing,’ said the child.

  ‘But I’ve already done that!’ wailed Lyle.

  ‘We noticed that, Mister Lyle! An’ I went to all this trouble!’ said an indignant voice from somewhere below. Lyle peered down to see two familiar faces and a large nose peering back up at him. ‘Oi, you!’ said Tess, stamping an indignant foot. ‘Me an’ bigwig, though it were all my work, see, well me an’ bigwig had a really, really great plan for how we was gonna save you an’ save Miss Lin an’ destroy the Machine an’ then how you’d give us more pocket money an’ . . . hello Scuttle . . .’

  ‘Uuuhhh,’ mumbled Scuttle, who was by this point trying to eat one of his own fists and doing surprisingly well in the effort.

  ‘Well, if you’d been here thirty seconds earlier,’ said Lyle, ‘I wouldn’t have gone and short-circuited the damn Machine as was my intention all along anyway, thank you kindly.’

  ‘What, all along?’ demanded Tess. Somewhere, something overhead rumbled and creaked, masonry bounced off the iron carcass of the explosive core, the useless, dead coil of wire around it sparking and bending indignantly under the pressure. ‘Even with the bits where it were goin’ horrid an’ you needed rescuin’?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re all right, Mister Lyle, sir,’ added Thomas.

  ‘Well, yes, another time, maybe,’ said Lyle, flapping indignantly. ‘You ... what’s your name?’

  ‘Scuttle,’ mumbled Scuttle.

  ‘Josiah,’ said Tess gleefully.

  ‘Little spotty person,’ said Lyle firmly, ‘you’ll be wanting to stand well back. Thomas, did Tess make you carry the bag of goodies?’

  Tess and Thomas were by now clambering up the ladder on to the gantry, which swayed as smoke started rising from somewhere in the distances. Lyle thought, And all that coal ...

  ‘Here, Mister Lyle.’

  Thomas slung the bags off his shoulder. Lyle opened it and gave a gleeful laugh at the sight of the tubes, bottles, glass contraptions and metal twists inside. ‘Oh, you two are very, very good,’ he said happily.

  ‘Is that like pocket-money-increase good?’ asked Tess, her face a picture of innocence.

  A scream from somewhere in the direction of the furnaces, a roar of gouting flame. ‘We’ll negotiate later, shall we?’ sang out Lyle, pulling a small dynamo from the bag, all wire, coil and magnet. ‘Let’s see how this goes.’

  He picked up the trailing end of metal that ran into the end of the explosive core and happily attached it to one end of the dynamo’s trailing wires. Tess yelped, ‘But I just went an’ cut that!’

  ‘I know, and I’m very impressed,’ said Lyle. ‘But now that there’s no risk of a current travelling through the coil simultaneous with the detonation, it’s all right to detonate, as there is no magnetic field to collapse.’

  Three blank faces and Tate’s nose stared back at him. Lyle sighed. ‘This is the lever marked “Bang”, Teresa.’

  ‘Aaahhh,’ said Tess sagely.

  ‘Oh,’ said Thomas helpfully.

  ‘Wha’?’ said Scuttle vaguely.

  ‘Never mind, another time,’ said Lyle. He turned the handle of the dynamo. It took a few seconds, but it came. The spark jumped from the dynamo to the wire, and sank into it. Nothing happened.

  ‘Wha’ happens now, wha’ happens now?’ shrieked Tess.

  Lyle peered at the giant iron cage, and tried to remember that somewhere inside there were more explosives than the Crimean War had used. Inside the cage, something on the edge of hearing went click. Something else started to spin; he felt warm air brush his face.

  ‘Erm ... I think we run.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Thomas.

  Tess gave him a sidewise look. ‘Ain’t you never learnin’, we is always runnin’, bigwig!’

  And she turned, and she ran, Tate bounding along beside her. Thomas hefted a bag, Lyle hefted another, and followed. Scuttle was rooted to the spot. Lyle hesitated. ‘Look, lad . . .’ he began, and then thought better of it. ‘For goodness’ sake,�
�� he muttered, and grabbing the boy by an arm half-carried and half-dragged him along the gantry, after the shape of the retreating Tess.

  Behind him, the explosive core - the last part of the Machine, the part of chemicals and acids and very carefully shaped and timed devices that would have made Stephen Thackrah sob to behold it and was, in its own, horrible, terrifying way, a work of beauty - rumbled and roared.

  The explosion was meant to be contained, caged in iron, designed to affect forces that were invisible to the naked eye. But perhaps the lightning storm, perhaps the shock of chemical blasts everywhere, perhaps the design was of itself flawed - Lyle never quite found out. For the first part, the initial series of blasts within the cage, the iron frame held, contained every blow though the shock made the metal bulge in ugly grey spots that ruptured and warped around the heart of the core, while pipes screamed and hissed as they blasted out hot air and steam and chemical smoke and purple-brown flames from the heart of the core, one detonation at a time.

  Where the iron cage failed looked no different from any other part of the system, but Lyle heard it go, and he felt it go, and when he risked looking back, he saw it, a flash of yellow and red somewhere in the endless dark of the tunnels behind, like staring straight at the evening sun after a day spent hiding in the shadows. He felt the burning of it as everything, everything went wrong, as the floor shook and the ceilings shook and the walls shook and mortar dust and sewage and water and sparks and wire and metal and dirt and wood and coal and dust and heat poured down like an avalanche, scratching and burning and punching and stabbing. He screamed out, ‘Everyone down!’ and they didn’t argue; even Tate didn’t argue, but threw himself wisely under Tess as she flung herself at the floor, perfectly prepared to be squashed in the name of being shielded.

  The shock hit from behind, knocked them flat and pressed them to the ground and shook and shook and shook and tore and broke, shattered the glass of the lantern, tore the pipes from the walls and played a one-note melody behind the eardrums, a roaring that became the memory of a roaring as loud as the real thing that became a buzzing that became a whine in the skull.