Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  “I’m going back to Big House,” he said abruptly. “Shall I tell Annie we’ll be there for a late lunch?”

  I thought of the old farmhouse, generation after generation of life and children. Now there were just the two old folks, and the empty future. I nodded. “If I try to talk about this to them, make me stop.”

  “I will. If I can. And if I don’t start doing it myself.” He buttoned his raincoat, and paused in the doorway. “About the gold. I considered telling Jim and Annie when I first found it, because I’m sure that legally they have the best claim to it. But I’d hate for their kids to come hurrying home for all the wrong reasons. I’d appreciate your advice on timing. I hate to play God.”

  “So you want me to. Tell me one thing. What reason could there be for somebody to come down here to South Island in the 1850s, in secret, and never tell a soul what they were doing? That’s what we are assuming.”

  “I’m tempted to say, maybe they found pieces of an Analytical Engine, one that had been left untouched here for a century and a half. But that gets a shade too recursive for my taste. And they did say what they were doing. Read the letters.”

  And then he was gone, and I was sitting alone in front of the warm fire. I stewed comfortably in wet pants and shoes, and read. Soon the words and the heat carried me away a hundred and forty years into the past, working my way systematically through the book’s entries.

  Most of the letters concerned religious or business matters, and went to friends in England, France, and Ireland. Each person was identified only by initials. It became obvious that the female L.D. had kept up her own active correspondence, not recorded in this ledger, and casual references to the spending of large sums of money made Bill’s discovery of the gold bars much less surprising. The L.D.’s, whoever they were, had great wealth in Europe. They had not traveled to New Zealand because of financial problems back home.

  But not all the correspondence was of mundane matters back in England. Scattered in among the normal chat to friends were the surprises, as sudden and as unpredictable as lightning from a clear sky. The first of them was a short note, dated January 1851:

  Dear J.G., L. has heard via A.v.H. that C.B. now despairs of completing his grand design. In his own words, “There is no chance of the machine ever being executed during my own life and I am even doubtful of how to dispose of the drawings after its termination.” This is a great tragedy, and L. is beside herself at the possible loss. Can we do anything about this? If it should happen to be no more than a matter of money…

  And then, more than two years later, in April 1853:

  Dear J.G., Many thanks for the shipped materials, but apparently there was rough weather on the journey, and inadequate packing, and three of the cylinders arrived with one or more broken teeth. I am enclosing identification for these items. It is possible that repair can be done here, although our few skilled workmen are a far cry from the machinists of Bologna or Paris. However, you would do me a great favor if you could determine whether this shipment was in fact insured, as we requested. Yours etc. L.D.

  Cylinders, with toothed gearwheels. It was the first hint of the Analytical Engine, but certainly not the last. I could deduce, from other letters to J.G., that three or four earlier shipments had been made to New Zealand in 1852, although apparently these had all survived the journey in good condition.

  In the interests of brevity, L.D. in copying the letters had made numerous abbreviations; w. did service for both “which” and “with,” “for” was shortened to f., and so on. Most of the time it did not hinder comprehension at all, and reconstruction of the original was easy; but I cursed when people were reduced to initials. It was impossible to expand those back to discover their identity. A.v.H. was probably the great world traveler and writer, Alexander von Humboldt, whose fingerprint appears all across the natural science of Europe in the first half of the last century; and C.B. ought surely to be Charles Babbage. But who the devil was J.G.? Was it a man, or could it be a woman?

  About a third of the way through the book, I learned that it was not just copies of letters sent to Europe. It probably began that way, but at some point L.D. started to use it also as a private diary. So by February 1854, after a gap of almost four months, I came across this entry:

  22 February. Home at last, and thanks be to God that L. did not accompany me, for the seas to the south are more fierce than I ever dreamed, although the natives on the crew make nothing of them. They laugh in the teeth of the gale, and leap from ship to dinghy with impunity, in the highest sea. However, the prospect of a similar voyage during the winter months would deter the boldest soul, and defies my own imagination.

  L. has made the most remarkable progress in her researches since my departure. She now believes that the design of the great engine is susceptible of considerable improvement, and that it could become capable of much more variation and power than even A.L. suspected. The latter, dear lady, struggles to escape the grasp of her tyrannical mother, but scarce seems destined to succeed. At her request, L. keeps her silence, and allows no word of her own efforts to be fed back to England. Were this work to become known, however, I feel sure that many throughout Europe would be astounded by such an effort—so ambitious, so noble, and carried through, in its entirety, by a woman!

  So the news of Ada Lovelace’s tragic death, in 1852, had apparently not been received in New Zealand. I wondered, and read on:

  Meanwhile, what of the success of my own efforts? It has been modest at best. We sailed to the island, named Rormaurma by the natives, which my charts show as Macwherry or Macquarie. It is a great spear of land, fifteen miles long but very narrow, and abundantly supplied with penguins and other seabirds. However, of the “cold-loving people” that the natives had described to me, if I have interpreted their language correctly, there was no sign, nor did we find any of the artifacts, which the natives insist these people are able to make for speech and for motion across the water. It is important that the reason for their veneration of these supposedly “superior men” be understood fully by me, before the way of our Lord can be explained to and accepted by the natives.

  On my first time through the book I skimmed the second half of the letter. I was more interested in the “remarkable progress” that L.D. was reporting. It was only later that I went back and pondered that last paragraph for a long time.

  The letters offered an irregular and infuriating series of snapshots of the work that Louisa was performing. Apparently she was busy with other things, too, and could only squeeze in research when conscience permitted. But by early 1855, L.D. was able to write, in a letter to the same unknown correspondent:

  Dear J.G., It is finished, and it is working!. And truth to tell, no one is more surprised than I. I imagine you now, shaking your head when you read those words, and I cannot deny what you told me, long ago, that our clever dear is the brains of the family—a thesis I will never again attempt to dispute.

  It is finished, and it is working! I was reading that first sentence again, with a shiver in my spine, when the door opened. I looked up in annoyance. Then I realized that the room was chilly, the fire was almost out, and when I glanced at my watch it was almost three o’clock.

  It was Bill. “Done reading?” he asked, with an urgency that made me sure he would not like my answer.

  “I’ve got about ten pages to go on the letters. But I haven’t even glanced at the tables and the drawings.” I stood up, stiffly, and used the tongs to add half a dozen pieces of coal to the fire. “If you want to talk now, I’m game.”

  The internal struggle was obvious on his face, but after a few seconds he shook his head. “No. It might point you down the same mental path that I took, without either of us trying to do that. We both know how natural it is for us to prompt one another. I’ll wait. Let’s go on down to Big House. Annie told me to come and get you, and by the time we get there she’ll have tea on the table.”

  My stomach growled at the thought. “What about these?�
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  “Leave them just where they are. You can pick up where you left off, and everything’s safe enough here.” But I noticed that after Bill said that, he carefully pulled the fireguard around the fender, so there was no possibility of stray sparks.

  The weather outside had cleared, and the walk down the hill was just what I needed. We were at latitude 46 degrees South, it was close to the middle of winter, and already the sun was sloping down to the hills in the west. The wind still blew, hard and cold. If I took a beeline south, there was no land between me and the “great Southern Continent” that L.D. had written about. Head east or west, and I would find only open water until I came to Chile and Argentina. No wonder the winds blew so strongly. They had an unbroken run around half the world to pick up speed.

  Mrs. Trevelyan’s “tea” was a farmer’s tea, the main cooked meal of the day. Jim Trevelyan was already sitting, knife and fork in hand, when we arrived. He was a man in his early seventies, but thin, wiry, and alert. His only real sign of age was his deafness, which he handled by leaning forward with his hand cupped around his right ear, while he stared with an intense expression at any speaker.

  The main course was squab pie, a thick crusted delicacy made with mutton, onions, apples, and cloves. I found it absolutely delicious, and delighted Annie Trevelyan by eating three helpings. Jim Trevelyan served us a homemade dark beer. He said little, but nodded his approval when Bill and I did as well with the drink as with the food.

  After the third tankard I was drifting off into a pleasant dream state. I didn’t feel like talking, and fortunately I didn’t need to. I did my part by imitating Jim Trevelyan, listening to Annie as she told us about Big House and about her family, and nodding at the right places.

  When the plates were cleared away she dragged out an old suitcase, full of photographs. She knew every person, and how each was related to each, across four generations. About halfway through the pile she stopped and glanced up self-consciously at me and Bill. “I must be boring you.”

  “Not a bit,” I said. She wasn’t, because her enthusiasm for the past was so great. In her own way she was as much a historian as Bill or me.

  “Go on, please,” added Bill. “It’s really very interesting.”

  “All right.” She blushed. “I get carried away, you know. But it’s so good to have youngsters in the house again.”

  Bill caught my eye. Youngsters? Us? His grizzled beard, and my receding hairline. But Annie was moving on, backward into the past. We went all the way to the time of the first Trevelyan, and the building of Big House itself. At the very bottom of the case sat two framed pictures.

  “And now you’ve got me,” Annie said, laughing. “I don’t know a thing about these two, though they’re probably the oldest things here.”

  She passed them across the table for our inspection, giving one to each of us. Mine was a painting, not a photograph. It was of a plump man with a full beard and clear gray eyes. He held a churchwarden pipe in one hand, and he patted the head of a dog with the other. There was no hint as to who he might be.

  Bill had taken the other, and was still staring at it. I held out my hand. Finally, after a long pause, he passed it across.

  It was another painting. The man was in half-profile, as though torn between looking at the painter and the woman. He was dark-haired, and wore a long, drooping mustache. She stood by his side, a bouquet of flowers in her hands and her chin slightly lifted in what could have been an expression of resolution or defiance. Her eyes gazed straight out of the picture, into me and through my heart. Across the bottom, just above the frame, were four words in black ink: “Luke and Louisa Derwent.”

  I could not speak. It was Bill who broke the silence. “How do you come to have these two, if they’re not family?”

  His voice was gruff and wavering, but Annie did not seem to notice.

  “Didn’t I ever tell you? The first Trevelyan built Big House, but there were others here before that. They lived in Little House—it was built first, years and years back, I’m not sure when. These pictures have to be from that family, near as I can tell.”

  Bill turned to glance at me. His mouth was hanging half-open, but at last he managed to close it and say, “Did you—I mean, are there other things? Things here, I mean, things that used to be in Little House.”

  Annie shook her head. “There used to be, but Granddad, Jim’s dad, one day not long after we were married he did a big clear out. He didn’t bother with the things you’ve been finding, because none of us ever used the crawl space under the kitchen. And I saved those two, because I like pictures. But everything else went.”

  She must have seen Bill and me subside in our chairs, because she shook her head and said, “Now then, I’ve been talking my fool head off, and never given you any afters. It’s apple pie and cheese.”

  As she rose from her place and went to the pantry, and Jim Trevelyan followed her out of the kitchen, Bill turned to me.

  “Can you believe it, I never thought to ask? I mean, I did ask Jim Trevelyan about things that used to be in Little House, and he said his father threw everything out but what’s there now. But I left it at that. I never asked Annie.”

  “No harm done. We know now, don’t we? Luke Derwent, he’s the artist. And his wife, Louisa, she’s the mathematician and engineer.”

  “And the programmer—a century before computer programming was supposed to exist.” Bill stopped. We were not supposed to be discussing this until I had examined the rest of the materials. But we were saved from more talk by the return of Jim Trevelyan. He was holding a huge book, the size of a small suitcase, with a black embossed cover and brass-bound corners.

  “I told you Dad chucked everything,” he said. “And he did, near enough, threw it out or burned it. But he were a religious man, and he knew better than to destroy a Bible.” He dropped it on the table, with a thump that shook the solid wood. “This come from Little House. If you want to take a look at it, even take it on back there with you, you’re very welcome.”

  I pulled the book across to me and unhooked the thick metal clasp that held it shut. I knew, from the way that some of the pages did not lie fully closed at their edges, that there must be inserts. The room went silent, as I nervously leafed through to find them.

  The disappointment that followed left me as hollow as though I had eaten nothing all day. There were inserts, sure enough: dried wildflowers, gathered long, long ago, and pressed between the pages of the Bible. I examined every one, and riffled through the rest of the book to make sure nothing else lay between the pages. At last I took a deep breath and pushed the Bible away from me.

  Bill reached out and pulled it in front of him. “There’s one other possibility,” he said. “If their family happened to be anything like mine…”

  He turned to the very last page of the Bible. The flyleaf was of thick, yellowed paper. On it, in faded multicolored inks, a careful hand had traced the Derwent family tree.

  Apple pie and cheese were forgotten, while Bill and I, with the willing assistance of Jim and Annie Trevelyan, examined every name of the generations shown, and made a more readable copy as we went.

  At the time it finally seemed like more disappointment. Not one of us recognized a single name, except for those of Luke and Louisa Derwent, and those we already knew. The one fact added by the family tree was that they were half brother and sister, with a common father. There were no dates, and Luke and Louisa were the last generation shown.

  Bill and I admitted that we were at a dead end. Annie served a belated dessert, and after it the two of us wrapped the two pictures in waterproof covers (though it was not raining) and headed back up the hill to Little House, promising Annie that we would certainly be back for breakfast.

  We were walking in silence, until halfway up the hill Bill said suddenly, “I’m sorry. I saw it, too, the resemblance to Eileen. I knew it would hit you. But I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “It was the expression, more than an
ything,” I said. “That tilt to the chin, and the look in her eyes. But it was just coincidence, they’re not really alike. That sort of thing is bound to happen.”

  “Hard on you, though.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Great.” Bill’s voice showed his relief. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I had to be sure you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Fine, except that no more than a month ago a well-meaning friend of many years had asked me, “Do you think of Eileen as the love of your life?”

  And my heart had dropped through a hole in the middle of my chest, and lodged like a cold rock in the pit of my belly.

  When we reached Little House I pleaded residual travel fatigue and went straight to bed. With so much of Jim Trevelyan’s powerful home brew inside me, my sleep should have been deep and dreamless. But the dead, once roused, do not lie still so easily.

  Images of Eileen and the happy past rose before me, to mingle and merge with the Derwent picture. Even in sleep, I felt a terrible sadness. And the old impotence came back, telling me that I been unable to change in any way the only event in my life that really mattered.

  With my head still half a world away in a different time zone, I woke long before dawn. The fire, well damped by Bill before he went to bed, was still glowing under the ash, and a handful of firewood and more coal was all it needed to bring it back to full life.

  Bill was still asleep when I turned on the two oil lamps, pulled the three books within easy reach, and settled down to read. I was determined to be in a position to talk to him by the time we went down to Big House for breakfast, but it was harder than I expected. Yesterday I had been overtired, now I had to go back and reread some of the letters before I was ready to press on.

  I had been in the spring of 1855, with some sort of Analytical Engine finished and working. But now, when I was desperate to hear more details, Luke Derwent frustrated me. He vanished for four months from the ledger, and returned at last not to report on Louisa’s doings, but brimming over with wonder at his own doings.