Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  “Well, then,” she said, when I was stuffed. “If you’re stepping up the hill you’ll be needing a mac. Jim put the one on when he went out, but we have plenty of spares.”

  Jim Trevelyan was apparently off somewhere tending the farm animals, and had been since dawn. Bill grinned sadistically at the look on my face. “You don’t want a little rain to stop work, do you?”

  I wanted to go back to bed. But I hadn’t come ten thousand miles to lie around. The “step up the hill” to Little House turned out to be about half a mile, through squelching mud covered with a thin layer of sour turf.

  “How did you ever find this place?” I asked Bill.

  “By asking and looking. I’ve been into a thousand like this before, and found nothing.”

  We were approaching a solidly built square house made out of mortared limestone blocks. It had a weathered look, but the slate roof and chimney were intact. To me it did not seem much smaller than the main farmhouse.

  “It’s not called ‘Little House’ because it’s small,” Bill explained. “It’s Little House because that’s where the little ones are supposed to live when they first marry. You’re seeing a twentieth century tragedy here. Jim and Annie Trevelyan are fourth generation farmers. They have five children. Every one went off to college, and not a one has come back to live in Little House and wait their turn to run the farm. Jim and Annie hang on at Big House, waiting and hoping.”

  As we went inside, the heavy wooden door was snug-fitting and moved easily on oiled hinges.

  “Jim Trevelyan keeps the place up, and I think they’re glad to have me here to give it a lived-in feel,” said Bill. “I suspect that they both think I’m mad as a hatter, but they never say a word. Hold tight to this, while I get myself organized.”

  He had been carrying a square box lantern. When he passed it to me I was astonished by the weight—and he had carried it for half a mile.

  “Batteries, mostly,” Bill explained. “Little House has oil lamps, but of course there’s no electricity. After a year or two wandering around out-of-the-way places I decided there was no point in driving two hundred miles to look at something if you can’t see it when you get there. I can recharge this from the car if we have to.”

  As Bill closed the door the sound of the wind dropped to nothing. We went through a washhouse to a kitchen furnished with solid wooden chairs, table, and dresser. The room was freezing cold, and I looked longingly at the scuttle of coal and the dry kindling standing by the fireplace.

  “Go ahead,” said Bill, “while I sort us out here. Keep your coat on, though—you can sit and toast yourself later.”

  He lit two big oil lamps that stood on the table, while I placed layers of rolled paper, sticks, and small pieces of coal in the grate. It was thirty years since I had built a coal fire, but it’s not much of an art. In a couple of minutes I could stand up, keep one eye on the fire to make sure it was catching properly, and take a much better look at the room. There were no rugs, but over by the door leading through to the bedrooms was a long strip of coconut matting. Bill rolled it back, to reveal a square wooden trapdoor. He slipped his belt through the iron ring and lifted, grunting with effort until the trap finally came free and turned upward on brass hinges.

  “Storage space,” he said. “Now we’ll need the lantern. Turn it on, and pass it down to me.”

  He lowered himself into the darkness, but not far. His chest and head still showed when he was standing on the lower surface. I switched on the electric lantern and handed it down to Bill.

  “Just a second,” I said. I went across to the fireplace, added half a dozen larger lumps of coal, then hurried back to the trapdoor. Bill had already disappeared when I lowered myself into the opening.

  The storage space was no more than waist high, with a hard dirt floor. I followed the lantern light to where a wooden section at the far end was raised a few inches off the ground on thick beams. On that raised floor stood three big tea-chests. The lantern threw a steady, powerful light on them.

  “I told you you’d see just what I saw,” said Bill. “These have all been out and examined, of course, but everything is very much the way it was when I found it. All right, hardware first.”

  He carefully lifted the lid off the right-hand tea-chest. It was half full of old sacks. Bill lifted one, unfolded it, and handed me the contents. I was holding a solid metal cylinder, lightly oiled and apparently made of brass. The digits from 0 through 9 ran around its upper part, and at the lower end was a cogwheel of slightly greater size.

  I examined it carefully, taking my time. “It could be,” I said. “It’s certainly the way the pictures look.”

  I didn’t need to tell him which pictures. He knew that I had thought of little but Charles Babbage and his Analytical Engines for the past few weeks, just as he had.

  “I don’t think it was made in England,” said Bill. “I’ve been all over it with a lens, and I can’t see a manufacturer’s mark. My guess is that it was made in France.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “The numerals. Same style as some of the best French clock-makers—see, I’ve been working, too.” He took the cylinder and wrapped it again, with infinite care, in the oiled sacking.

  I stared all around us, from the dirt floor to the dusty rafters. “This isn’t the best place for valuable property.”

  “It’s done all right for a hundred and forty years. I don’t think you can say as much of most other places.” There was something else, that Bill did not need to say. This was a perfect place for valuable property—so long as no one thought that it had any value.

  “There’s nowhere near enough pieces here to make an Analytical Engine, of course,” he went on. “These must have just been spares. I’ve taken a few of them to Auckland. I don’t have the original of the programming manual here, either. That’s back in Auckland, too, locked up in a safe at the university. I brought a copy, if we need it.”

  “So did I.” We grinned at each other. Underneath my calm I was almost too excited to speak, and I could tell that he felt the same. “Any clue as to who ‘L.D.’ might be, on the title page?”

  “Not a glimmer.” The lid was back on the first tea-chest and Bill was removing the cover of the second. “But I’ve got another L.D. mystery for you. That’s next.”

  He was wearing thin gloves and opening, very carefully, a folder of stained cardboard, tied with a ribbon like a legal brief. When it was untied he laid it on the lid of the third chest.

  “I’d rather you didn’t touch this at all,” he said. “It may be pretty fragile. Let me know whenever you want to see the next sheet. And here’s a lens.”

  They were drawings. One to a sheet, Indian ink on fine white paper, and done with a fine-nibbed pen. And they had nothing whatsoever to do with Charles Babbage, programming manuals, or Analytical Engines. What they did have, so small that first I had to peer, then use the lens, was a tiny, neat “L.D.” at the upper right-hand corner of each sheet.

  They were drawings of animals, the sort of multilegged, random animals that you find scuttling around in tidal pools, or hidden away in rotting tree bark. Or rather, as I realized when I examined them more closely, the sheets in the folder were drawings of one animal, seen from top, bottom, and all sides.

  “Well?” said Bill expectantly.

  But I was back to my examination of the tiny artist’s mark. “It’s not the same, is it. That’s a different ‘L.D.’ from the software manual.”

  “You’re a lot sharper than I am,” said Bill. “I had to look fifty times before I saw that. But I agree completely, the ‘L’ is different, and so is the ‘D.’ What about the animal?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. Beautiful drawings, but I’m no zoologist. You ought to photograph these, and take them to your biology department.”

  “I did. You don’t know Ray Weddle, but he’s a top man. He says they have to be just drawings, made up things, because there’s nothing like them, and there n
ever has been.” He was carefully retying the folder, and placing it back in the chest. “I’ve got photographs of these with me, too, but I wanted you to see the originals, exactly as I first saw them. We’ll come back to these, but meanwhile: next exhibit.”

  He was into the third tea-chest, removing more wrapped pieces of machinery, then a thick layer of straw. And now his hands were trembling. I hated to think how Bill must have sweated and agonized over this, before telling anyone. The urge to publish such a discovery had to be overwhelming; but the fear of being derided as part of the scientific lunatic fringe had to be just as strong.

  If what he had produced so far was complex and mystifying, what came next was almost laughably simple—if it were genuine. Bill was lifting, with a good deal of effort, a bar, about six inches by two inches by three. It gleamed hypnotically in the light of the lantern.

  “It is, you know,” he said, in answer to my shocked expression. “Twenty-four carat gold, solid. There are thirteen more of them.”

  “But the Trevelyans, and the people who farmed here before that—”

  “Never bothered to look. These were stowed at the bottom of a chest, underneath bits of the Analytical Engine and old sacks. I guess nobody ever got past the top layer until I came along.” He smiled at me. “Tempted? If I were twenty years younger, I’d take the money and run.”

  “How much?”

  “What’s gold worth these days, U.S. currency?”

  “God knows. Maybe three hundred and fifty dollars an ounce?”

  “You’re the calculating boy wonder, not me. So you do the arithmetic. Fourteen bars, each one weighs twenty-five pounds—I’m using avoirdupois, not troy, even though it’s gold.”

  “One point nine-six million. Say two million dollars, in round numbers. How long has it been here?”

  “Who knows? But since it was under the parts of the Analytical Engine, I’d say it’s been there as long as the rest.”

  “And who owns it?”

  “If you asked the government, I bet they’d say that they do. If you ask me, it’s whoever found it. Me. And now maybe me and thee.” He grinned, diabolical in the lantern light. “Ready for the next exhibit?”

  I wasn’t. “For somebody to bring a fortune in gold here, and just leave it…”

  Underneath his raincoat, Bill was wearing an old sports jacket and jeans. He owned, to my knowledge, three suits, none less than ten years old. His vices were beer, travel to museums, and about four cigars a year. I could not see him as the Two Million Dollar Man, and I didn’t believe he could see himself that way. His next words confirmed it.

  “So far as I’m concerned,” he said, “this all belongs to the Trevelyans. But I’ll have to explain to them that gold may be the least valuable thing here.” He was back into the second tea-chest, the one that held the drawings, and his hands were trembling again.

  “These are what I really wanted you to see,” he went on, in a husky voice. “I’ve not had the chance to have them dated yet, but my bet is that they’re all genuine. You can touch them, but be gentle.”

  He was holding three slim volumes, as large as accounting ledgers. Each one was about twenty inches by ten, and bound in a shiny black material like thin, sandpapery leather. I took the top one when he held it out, and opened it.

  I saw neat tables of numbers, column after column of them. They were definitely not the product of any Analytical Engine, because they were handwritten and had occasional crossings-out and corrections.

  I flipped on through the pages. Numbers. Nothing else, no notes, no signature. Dates on each page. They were all in October 1855. The handwriting was that of the programming manual.

  The second book had no dates at all. It was a series of exquisitely detailed machine drawings, with elaborately interlocking cogs and gears. There was writing, in the form of terse explanatory notes and dimensions, but it was in an unfamiliar hand.

  “I’ll save you the effort,” said Bill as I reached for the lens. “These are definitely not by L.D. They are exact copies of some of Babbage’s own plans for his calculating engines. I’ll show you other reproductions if you like, back in Auckland, but you’ll notice that these aren’t photographs. I don’t know what copying process was used. My bet is that all these things were placed here at the same time—whenever that was.”

  I wouldn’t take Bill’s word for it. After all, I had come to New Zealand to provide an independent check on his ideas. But five minutes were enough to make me agree, for the moment, with what he was saying.

  “I’d like to take this and the other books up to the kitchen,” I said, as I handed the second ledger back to him. “I want to have a really good look at them.”

  “Of course.” Bill nodded. “That’s exactly what I expected. I told the Trevelyans that we might be here in Little House for up to a week. We can cook for ourselves, or Annie says she’d be more than happy to expect us at mealtimes. I think she likes the company.”

  I wasn’t so sure of that. I’m not an elitist, but my own guess was that the conversation between Bill and me in the next few days was likely to be incomprehensible to Annie Trevelyan or almost anyone else.

  I held out my hand for the third book. This was all handwritten, without a single drawing. It appeared to be a series of letters, running on one after the other, with the ledger turned sideways to provide a writing area ten inches across and twenty deep. There were no paragraphs within the letters. The writing was beautiful and uniform, by a different hand than had penned the numerical tables of the first book, and an exact half-inch space separated the end of one letter from the beginning of the next.

  The first was dated 12 October, 1850. It began:

  My dear J.G., The native people continue to be as friendly and as kind in nature as one could wish, though they, alas, cling to their paganism. As our ability to understand them increases, we learn that their dispersion is far wider than we at first suspected. I formerly mentioned the northern islands, ranging from Taheete to Rarotonga. However, it appears that there has been a southern spread of the Maori people also, to lands far from here. I wonder if they may extend their settlements all the way to the great Southern Continent, explored by James Cook and more recently by Captain Ross. I am myself contemplating a journey to a more southerly island, with native assistance. Truly, a whole life’s work is awaiting us. We both feel that, despite the absence of well-loved friends such as yourself, Europe and finance is “a world well lost.” Louisa has recovered completely from the ailment that so worried me two years ago, and I must believe that the main reason for that improvement is a strengthening of spirit. She has begun her scientific work again, more productively, I believe, than ever before. My own efforts in the biological sciences prove ever more fascinating. When you write again tell us, I beg you, not of the transitory social or political events of London, but of the progress of science. It is in this area that L. and I are most starved of new knowledge. With affection, and with the assurance that we think of you and talk of you constantly, L.D.

  The next letter was dated 14 December, 1850. Two months after the first. Was that time enough for a letter to reach England, and a reply to return? The initials at the end were again L.D.

  I turned to the back of the volume. The final twenty pages or so were blank, and in the last few entries the beautiful regular handwriting had degenerated to a more hasty scribble. The latest date that I saw was October 1855.

  Bill was watching me intently. “Just the one book of letters?” I said.

  He nodded. “But it doesn’t mean they stopped. Only that we don’t have them.”

  “If they didn’t stop, why leave the last pages blank? Let’s go back upstairs. With the books.”

  I wanted to read every letter, and examine every page. But if I tried to do it in the chilly crawl space beneath the kitchen, I would have pneumonia before I finished. Already I was beginning to shiver.

  “First impressions?” asked Bill, as he set the three ledgers carefully on the table a
nd went back to close the trapdoor and replace the coconut matting. “I know you haven’t had a chance to read, but I can’t wait to hear what you’re thinking.”

  I pulled a couple of the chairs over close to the fireplace. The coal fire was blazing, and the chill was already off the air in the room.

  “There are two L.D.’s,” I said. “Husband and wife?”

  “Agreed. Or maybe brother and sister.”

  “One of them—the woman—wrote the programming manual for the Analytical Engine. The other one, the man—if it is a man, and we can’t be sure of that—did the animal drawings, and he wrote letters. He kept fair copies of what he sent off to Europe, in that third ledger. No sign of the replies, I suppose?”

  “You’ve now seen everything that I’ve seen.” Bill leaned forward and held chilled hands out to the fire. “I knew there were two, from the letters. But I didn’t make the division of labor right away, the way you did. I bet you’re right, though. Anything else?”

  “Give me a chance. I need to read.” I took the third book, the one of letters, from the table and returned with it to the fireside. “But they sound like missionaries.”

  “Missionaries, and scientists. The old nineteenth century mixture.” Bill watched me reading for two minutes, then his urge to be up and doing something—or interrupt me with more questions—took over. His desire to talk was burning him up, while at the same time he didn’t want to stop me from working.