Cruel Numbers

by Christopher Beats

  It worked. A lot of foreigners came to New York to look at this Wonder of the Modern World. It showed the Brits we still had brains and guts, that they could never bomb that out of us like they tried in the Niagara Campaign. And it was a sore reminder to the South what they lost when they broke away. Even with the financial interest of European firms, the South was still woefully behind in railway mileage, much less engineering marvels.

  But this was a privately built sanctum, not Central Park. I couldn’t just stroll in and ask for Bridget. Carnegie lost interest in the project as soon as he realized it would become a Coney Island for the rich so now the Upper Bay Trust ran things. These weren’t the sort of people who wanted to rub elbows with me. They made sure to keep the rest of the city at arm’s length. This was achieved by several swift steam-launches manned by the most vicious guards you could imagine.

  Flying in wasn’t an option, either. The Carnegium had its very own short-range dirigible to ferry the mega-rich who couldn’t be bothered with ten minutes of seasickness. While this was ostensibly its mission, the airship never went out of sight of home base, which probably meant it served as an aerial surveillance tower to alert the launches if anyone was coming.

  A tough nut to crack, all in all, but as usual, I had just the hammer.

  So I went back to Verhalla.

  “Any luck teaching her English yet?” I asked when Verhalen let me in.

  “English? Who says she’s gotta learn English?” His blond hair was in dire need of a wash, standing nearly on end. He wore his gloves and apron, as always, plus the usual smudges of grease.

  “All right…Dutch then. You started teaching her Dutch?”

  His assistant was nimbly addressing some kind of issue inside a half-opened Babbage, wearing the customary white gloves. It was a little galling to me that she couldn’t speak English but knew her way around an analytical machine better than I ever would. The damn things intimidated me. My few tries resulted in a scolding slip of paper that read Error/misfeed.

  “Why should Sanne learn anything? Isn’t her own language good enough?”

  “Excuse me…Sanne? Is that really her name? It don’t sound Chinese. Sounds Dutch.”

  Verhalen gave me a sheepish grin. “I’ve always liked that name. Besides…I have to call her something until I figure out what her name is.”

  “One more reason to teach her English.”

  He shook his head. “I like her like this.”

  “You mean, not understanding you?”

  “She’s an absolute genius with the analyticals.” He changed the subject abruptly. He walked over and took off his gloves to point an oil-stained finger at what she was fiddling with.

  Sanne used her elbow to knock his hand away from the delicate hammers and tubing.

  “So she understands how all this stuff works?”

  Verhalen nodded, hesitated, then shook his head. “Probably not. But she’s learning. I couldn’t have asked for a better assistant. That railway guy should have asked triple what I gave them. Can you believe they had her washing laundry?” He laughed.

  “What a strange idea, having women do the clothes. Wonder where they got it from.”

  “My mother never washed any clothes,” he told me sharply. “She built the absolute best automatic clothes-washer you’ve ever seen. She put it in the basement by the boiler. It could even iron! You should have seen it.” His blue eyes sparkled with nostalgia.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have it here,” I observed, noticing how wrinkled his breeches were.

  The inventor turned and picked up his goggles with a sigh. “Yeah. Too bad it exploded.”

  It was a marvel to me that young Verhalen had survived to mature Verhalen, given the number of explosions in his childhood home. If even half of his family’s inventions had avoided destruction and seen development, he might have become even richer than he was now. But in the end, the act of inventing was always more important than refinement and profit. When one explosion took an invention, they just moved on to the next.

  The explosion rate of new inventions was something of a concern to me, since I was about to ask for his help and Verhalen’s help always came in the form of a new invention.

  I yelled the situation to him as he welded some framework together. When he finished, he put it down, turned to me and cut the torch.

  “Quite within my means,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to try several inventions that might get us in. Come with me.”

  I followed him back behind the enormous shelving and waited as he turned on a light. Rising up from the floor was a gargantuan iron vat, the sort that Carnegie’s mills used to process tons of steel at once. The bottom of the vat was strangely fortified and there appeared to be shock absorbers attached.

  There was also, most disturbingly, a ladder going up to the lip of the vat. It was then that I noticed the vat was pointed at a skylight.

  “This better not be what I think it is,” I warned him, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “It is!” he exclaimed. “An enormous cannon! I’ve invented a new sort of balloon that inflates in minutes. The idea is that the cannon blasts balloon, gondola and riders into the stratosphere, where the sabot then falls away, the airbag inflates and the people on board have a delightful flight without any bothersome ascending. Instantly Skyward. That’ll be the slogan, I think.” He glanced at me with the goggles tucked up under his chin. “Catchy, right?”

  “It’s insane. Have you tried it out, like with dummies?”

  “Dummies?”

  I rubbed my chin and reminded myself that this was the sort of discussion one always had to have if you wanted his help. It was the cost of doing business. Since the inventor never asked for money, it was only fair that I listen to his lunacy.

  “Do you have anything that doesn’t involve artillery?” When I saw his crestfallen expression, I quickly added, “The noise would get everyone’s attention…plus, the Carnegium has a dirigible patrolling it. Someone would see it coming for sure.”

  Verhalen put his hand to his mouth and furrowed his brow. “I’ve got something else. The Invisilater! No…that probably wouldn’t work on the water, unless you rode a barge over, in which case they would see the barge but not you.”

  I listened patiently as he rattled on.

  “Of course!” He pulled his grimy hand away from his face to reveal a wide grin. “Why didn’t I think of it sooner? They watch the surface, they watch the sky, but why watch underwater?”

  He motioned me to follow him to the part of the warehouse on the river. At the edge was an indoor slip. It was unclear if the building had come equipped with it or if Verhalen installed it later. An enormous bronze apparatus hung suspended above the still black water, about twice the size of a carriage, with a propeller in back and broad lateral fins on the side. At the front was a thick convex porthole.

  “A while back I lost one of my ornithopter prototypes. Sure, I could’ve hired a private dive team with clunky suits or maybe some Greeks with a diving bell, but I thought, Why not retrieve it myself? So I built the Jona.” Its name was etched just below a porthole. True to his Fonetik sensibilities, he had dropped the “useless” H.

  It had only a small top deck with a hatch and no gunwales, barely enough for a man to stand on. I realized, as I stared at it, that the infernal device was meant to operate like those fearsome Black Sea ironclads the czar had developed in the Crimea. The Brits dominated the ocean, but Russian inventors, perhaps with the secret help of Prussia, had created a submersible ironclad which could hide beneath the waves and ambush surface vessels from below.

  Needless to say, Great Britain was less than pleased about the development.

  Since the Crimea, though, there hadn’t been a major war that involved naval actions, so the technology was back-burner. The last great war—ou
r Confederate Revolution—had been an entirely dry affair, since Annapolis defected with Maryland and took most of the Navy with it.

  “Is it safe?” I asked, circling it. There had been fatalities in the Crimea, but the reports varied as to how many were British-caused and how many were a result of an untested technology. “How do we breathe, exactly?”

  “Well, it has a limited supply of air, so suffocation is an issue. But being as our target is less than a mile away, it probably won’t come up. If it does, there is a snorkel I can raise to refresh the air, though it would give away our position and, if it takes in water, could swamp us.”

  We continued around the great metallic beast as if it were a prize stallion. Verhalen looked proud while I tried to find the flaws in it.

  “Where does the steam go?”

  “It doesn’t. That is to say, there’s no steam. It uses a kinetic power bank.”

  “You mean a spring?”

  He ignored me. “You wind it up with a steam-winch here. It has limited range, but then we don’t have to go far.”

  The idea of crossing the bay in a clockwork whale did not appeal to me. Once we were out in the open water, we had only so much bank to spend. Once the spring ran out of stored energy, the boat was dead.

  My face probably registered these thoughts, but Verhalen did nothing to allay them. He was optimistic, but not delusional—though the cannon-balloon made me wonder.

  “Everything’s a risk, Donovan.”

  I nodded. “So it is.” I bit my lip. “Jona is terrible bad luck. Don’t you have any sailors in your family?”

  He shrugged. “It holds us in its belly and it goes underwater. You’re thinking about this all wrong. Jonah was bad luck for a surface ship. The whale that swallowed him did fine.”

  Technocrat logic. Hard to argue with, particularly since in this case, we were arguing two different points. I had grown up reading the Bible as approved by His Holiness in Rome. Verhalen didn’t read that one, though. It was written in a dead language and was full of weird miracles and meandering family trees. Like many inventors, he read the Jefferson Bible, which was redacted of all nonscientific events and pointless commentary. When one removed the nonscientific and pointless commentary, though, the Bible was reduced to several dozen pages and a few maps, hardly thicker than a Saturday Evening Post, which was perhaps their real goal—a Bible they could read in a single sitting at the outhouse.

  Most days, I figured God wasn’t Up There or just plain didn’t care, but when Verhalen told me this, I crossed myself and tried to keep a safe distance of eight feet between us at all times, though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t far enough for a lightning strike.

  Verhalen’s inventions often brought out your religion. I crossed myself again before we submerged like a turtle into the mirror-surface of the river. The steam-crank winched the little brass boat for a half hour before it was ready. That half hour gave me plenty of time to gather some necessary tools.

  The derringer wasn’t going with me. I could hardly fight the entire Carnegium security force with two .38 rounds. The truncheon would stay on me, as it wasn’t much of an offensive weapon. I also brought some tools which would be familiar to any burglar, in case I needed more than words to get by an obstacle.

  It was a credit to Verhalen that Sanne even considered getting in the little metal deathtrap with us. The rail barons must’ve treated her pretty bad in her laundry days for Verhalen to elicit such loyalty.

  Of course, that didn’t mean she got in without complaint. If there was one thing Sanne was good at, it was complaining, despite the fact none of us knew what she was saying. This also made her a perfect navigator, since we really didn’t know where we were going anyway.

  The thought of bringing a woman with us had not appealed to me. Her mechanical skills, though formidable, were of little use under the river. The machine would likely sink or swim, whether we had a hundred engineers with us.

  Verhalen faced forward, making sure we didn’t hit a pylon or something. The porthole was fogging up badly.

  “Uh, can you even see?”

  “Who needs to see? We have our coordinates, our compass and our odometer. Sailors have been navigating with less than this for years.”

  “They usually have a lighthouse or two,” I grumbled. “And they’re on the surface. What if someone hits us?”

  He gestured disdainfully with a gloved hand as he peered through the murk before him.

  It was, grousing aside, surprisingly quiet inside the Jona. The clockwork machinery only clicked on when he released the tension on the spring, or as he called it, “spending the bank.” The power bank was enough to get us to the Carnegium and, unlike steam, did not rely on coal, which had to be kept stoked and burning. Though the spring lost a little bit of tension every now and again, for the most part, the kinetic energy was stored until you used it.

  I expected echoes of our breath, given that we were in the interior of what was essentially a brass globe, but the layers of winter clothing muffled sound so that it was eerily quiet.

  Sanne seemed to be holding her breath as Verhalen made a course adjustment. My stomach lurched as we drifted freely for a moment. He was peering intently at a dial when he suddenly released the spring and spun the wheel. Machinery pumped and clicked smartly behind me. My guts were tugged backward until we adjusted to the new momentum.

  I had a very specific stretch of the Carnegium I wanted to visit, but I suspected that if I got to the damn thing at all I should be grateful.

  “We’re there,” the pilot announced, leaning back on his little stool.

  His Asian assistant looked up at the ceiling.

  “Good idea, Sanne,” Verhalen said, tapping her knee warmly.

  She looked down at his hand with a frown, so he withdrew it.

  “Sanne and I think you should go topside and check.”

  “What happened to relying on instruments?” I asked, looking doubtfully at the hatch. “Can’t you see anything through the porthole?”

  “Nope. Relax, I’m sure we’re almost there. Besides…I think the air needs freshening.” There was no arguing with that. The air somehow contrived to be both stuffy and chilly at the same time. It was not pleasant.

  He pulled the ascension gauge and we started to bob like a cork. Waves lapped the sides around us.

  I undid the hatch and threw it open, instantly regretting it. A gust of frosty air flooded the cabin. I was shivering before I had taken two steps up the ladder. Outside, it was even worse. I could hear the water freezing on metal.

  “Fifty yards to starboard,” I announced, diving back down and slamming the hatch.

  “What did he say?” Verhalen asked Sanne.

  “Go right about a hundred and fifty feet,” I gasped, rubbing my arms and stomping my feet.

  Verhalen turned back to the porthole and began an elaborate dance with his hands. “Feet!” He coughed angrily. “Use meters, Luddite!”

  Our stomachs fluttered with the rapid descent, then again when we ascended back some distance later. It wasn’t where I wanted to go, but that didn’t matter. There was a clear, open walkway ahead of us with no guards. The sooner I was off the Jona, the better.

  Once disembarked, I sent Verhalen and his infernal under-boat away. He’d asked if I wanted him to wait, but I told him the guards didn’t check the identities of people leaving the Carnegium. It was a guess, but I’d shoot my way through a whole battalion of Pinkertons before I’d get into that icy brass coffin again. I felt relief as the clockwork monstrosity sank back into the cool black depths like Leviathan.

  The relief was quickly replaced by heightened alertness. I was stranded more or less in enemy territory, with nothing but darkness for company.

  Chapter Seven

  The Carnegium had a great looping walkway around it
, a stainless-steel beach with a brass handrail so the wealthy could admire Manhattan across the water. The Big City was a lot prettier at a distance, so I can’t blame them. Tonight it was dark, wet and cold, so I doubted any robber barons would be taking a constitutional right now. Sentries weren’t paid to be comfortable, though, so I knew I had to be careful.

  The walkway encircling this mechanical paradise was ten yards across, with a sort of grating on it which prevented it from getting slick and gave a place for the water to drain away so there weren’t any troublesome puddles to step in.

  I had not seen any guards yet, but I was certain they were here. God had set two cherubim with fiery swords to guard Eden; the Magnates would do no less.

  There were gaslights running the length of the perimeter, but none of them were lit. I suppose that on a night like this, the Upper Bay Trust couldn’t justify the expense, since the fat plutocrats would be hiding by a good fire, like I should’ve been. The Big City never sleeps, though, so there was plenty of ambient light from Manhattan to see where I was walking.

  I had expected lots of security and almost no locks, like the first floor of a large hotel. Wealthy individuals dislike limited access. They prefer to have discreet security people who know when to question somebody and when to leave them the hell alone. It was a surprise, therefore, when I found all the doors locked up tight.

  I had with me the usual tools for skullduggery—pry bar, knife, bit of rope—but if I broke in at this stage, it might leave evidence of intrusion. The more I explored, though, the more I wondered if I could break in. The doors were uniformly stout, constructed of a smooth steel composite to resist corrosion. Instead of a handle, they had levers. When I tugged, the only effect was an impotent clicking noise. With a little more scrutiny, I realized the portals were watertight. They were more hatch than door. On evenings when the Magnates weren’t inclined to stroll around, they must have been kept locked from the inside. It made sense; the wind was whipping up all manner of whitecaps. A rogue wave might cause a bit of swamping.