Grim Expectations

by KW Jeter

  “The residents of those colonies might have other things they would prefer to do.”

  “Pooh.” Jamford airily dismissed all such concerns. “Petty human desires are not to be allowed to stand in the way of the glorious and profitably evolved future that the Elohim have envisioned for mankind. There is such a thing as happiness, though you seem to have had little experience of it; if our present machines cannot grant it to us, then we must build even greater ones, that will be able to.”

  “Enough–” I raised my hand to forfend any further lunatical verbiage. “You have no need to attempt to convince me of the wonderfulness of these plans – for you cannot do so. What does it matter if I or anyone else cannot stop you, and these mad associates of yours, from driving such schemes upon the heads of those who most deserve to be simply left alone? All will come to ruin, as I have seen similar enterprises founder upon the rocks of an unforgiving reality. You think that your ambitions will overcome all difficulties; instead, they will be the engines of your utter defeat, as rigid in their operation as the mere iron machines you already believe that you command, but which order your thoughts about like the most imperious martinet.”

  “Bravo! Bravo, Mr Dower!” With evident delight, Jamford clapped his hands together. “It should not have been I who went about impersonating a fire-and-brimstone evangelical type, the better to conduct my surreptitious activities in the world above – you display a natural gift for such performance, that I could never match. You bring a genuine-seeming passion to your words – one might almost think that you believe them.”

  “Mock me if you wish; I am beyond caring. You have told me a great many things, all of which I would rather have not heard – but there is one thing you have not told me. There was some purpose in bringing me here; I would wish to know it.”

  “The boy!” From the other side of the room, Weebsome cried out in a surfeit of excitement. “Your son! Why else?”

  “Calm yourself–” Jamford’s injunction was directed toward the other man; he then turned back to me. “That is indeed the reason, Mr Dower; your son. Who was at one time thought to be an orphan, of indeterminate parentage – but who assumed a much greater significance, to both the Elohim and the More Loving Embrace, when it was determined that you were his father.”

  “To my shame,” I said, “that child was abandoned, his parentage a blank anonymity – though to what defence I can make for myself, I was not even aware of his existence. If I knew nothing of any connection between him and myself, how were you and your associates able to discover it?”

  “There are times when the workings of the Universe resemble those devices created by your own illustrious and clever father – we might not yet know their purpose, but those gears are precisely machined, to produce a definite effect. Perhaps, Mr Dower, there really is a divine Providence taking an interest in human affairs, and which gives a gentle nudge to move those affairs in a direction of which it approves. No one, either myself or the Elohim or the More Loving Embrace, would have known anything that would have indicated that your son was other than one more orphan, of no consequence – except that a person familiar to you came prying about, expending considerable effort to locate him. A certain Scape was that persistent individual; I presume you recognize his name.”

  “I knew him – though how well I knew him, I now wonder.”

  “What do we know of anyone, until after they’re dead… and even then. Nevertheless, it was his activities on behalf of your late wife Miss McThane, that revealed the boy’s importance. So much else might never have happened – and you would have grown old and undisturbed, safe in your bed – if a mother simply had foregone wondering what had happened to her lost child. Strange, is it not?”

  “Such speculations, I feel, are best left to those who have some interest in these matters, whether for good or ill – I have no such. I confess my hardheartedness about the fate of my son; I made no promise to anyone regarding him. It has already been demonstrated to my utter satisfaction that he possesses some importance to you and these Elohim people, with their fantastic agenda for what they profess to be the improvement of mankind; the significance of the boy is further indicated by the strenuous efforts of the More Loving Embrace, including the dispatching of their agents to murder me, all to prevent my being brought into contact with the child. All this striving back and forth baffles me. You have my son; I hold no wish to have anything to do with him – why not exploit the poor lad in whatever suits your purposes, and allow me to go my way? It is your seizing upon me that puts my life in danger; leave me be, and the More Loving Embrace’s lethal concern about my affairs would likely cease – or at least I would hope so.”

  “If only we could!” Such was Weebsome’s dark muttering.

  “Let me assure you,” spoke Jamford, “that my desire would be to act upon your suggestion with all alacrity – but unfortunately, I am unable to do so. The Elohim as well – if it were possible for them to forget all about you, and proceed unobstructed with their plans, they would do so immediately. But there is another – a single person – who wishes this meeting between yourself and your child to take place. And this is a desire to which we must acquiesce.”

  “I am astonished.” In deepest perplexity, I stared back at the Right Reverend Jamford. “Enormous engines of conspiracy, set into motion and funded by what would seem to be the richest and most powerful forces in the land – and they are all frustrated by the desire of one person? Who on earth could it be?”

  “The child himself; your son.” Jamford’s voice was tinged with the greatest import. “He calls the tune, to which we must dance.”

  “This is preposterous!” My gaze became even more wide-eyed. “How could such possibly be? He is an orphan, friendless and alone, with no more resources to call upon than a homeless dog attempting to shelter itself in a barn, from all the rain of miseries that lashes down upon him. This is the impediment to your grand schemes, that somehow requires my forced coöperation as well? You might as well say that an elephant of the Punjab is stymied by a pebble in the road, which he should be able to step over with no more effort than placing one colossal foot in front of another.”

  “Logically, it would seem so – and in a more logical world, such would be the case. But we live in this world, Mr Dower, and not in that other one. So we must proceed along the course into which we are compelled – and perhaps sooner rather than later. Are you sufficiently refreshed? I would have been delighted to give you more time for rest, as I am aware that you have endured quite a few incidents of an exhausting nature – but I fear that I must be a ruder host than I would otherwise have wished, and make some demands upon you.”

  “You are taking me to see my son? He is here?”

  “Within a short distance,” replied Jamford. “But yes, that is what needs to be done. I would hope you would have no objection – but in truth, it matters little if you do.”

  I was struck silent, gazing at the empty plate on the table before me, as if the crumbs there had been arranged into some decipherable omen. My feelings were as those of someone who had been snatched up by a tremendous whirlwind, spun across unreeling landscapes by energies beyond either his control or understanding, then deposited at last in a locale of unknown meaning – or worse, meaning that was soon to be revealed, whether I wished it to be or not. So much had happened to bring me to this point! To have set so much in motion, at the behest of a mere child – what could he want from me? I had forgotten about him, and been ready to force him from my mind forever – why couldn’t he have the courtesy to do the same?

  “No protest would suffice,” I spoke aloud, “to forestall this meeting?”

  “None. It is beyond your power to decide.”

  “Very well, then.” I brushed off my hands, and stood up from where I had been sitting. My bones and flesh still ached – I was certain that every inch of skin was a map of purpling bruises – but I had recovered sufficient strength to perform the functions to which I was comm
anded. “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly, as a Scottish lady is supposed to have said once.” My literary references were an attempt to maintain a philosophical state of mind, one of stoic resignation. “Take me to him.”

  “This way, if you would be so kind…” Weebsome’s words were delivered in a snide tone, as if he were taking some pleasure in seeing me compelled against my own wishes. He had stepped over from the desk at the side of the room, and to a position near the divan, so that with a slight bow of his head and a sweeping motion of one hand he could direct me toward the chamber’s door. “This journey will only require a moment – much less tedious, I am sure, than your other recent excursions.”

  I ignored him as he continued in front of me, and drew open the door. Dismayingly, a flood of mechanical noise washed over us as he did so, made even more unpleasant by the roiling glow from the furnaces beyond; the dreadful prospect of having to make our way across the factory floor was one that I had not anticipated.

  “Steel yourself, if you must.” Jamford spoke from directly behind me. “As I previously indicated, it is but a short way to go.”

  Having no choice in the matter, I prepared to follow Weebsome out from the chamber, when he suddenly lurched back against me, with sufficient force to almost stagger me from my feet. With head thrown back, his body started to slide down across mine; I instinctively grasped hold of him, keeping him from dropping entirely at my feet. Thus I saw the cause of this collapse; looking over his shoulder, I spotted a hole in the centre of his chest, made more prominent by the blood leaking from it.

  A shot had been fired, the industrial clamour masking its report – this much as well was immediately obvious to me. I took what evasion I could, to prevent myself from being the target of whatever assassin was there; throwing Weebsome’s lifeless body from me, I dove to the floor, my shoulder striking the carved jamb beside me.

  Taken by surprise, Jamford did not follow my example; my actions left him exposed just within the chamber. Looking up, I saw him stumble backward, a spatter of blood alongside his cravat. His uncomprehending eyes rolled upward, and then he dropped like a stone.

  I could see no chance for escape; I drew back as a figure strode past, his torso darkly silhouetted by the glare behind him, the rifle dangling in his grip. Still dazed, I watched as the person used the weapon’s muzzle to reach down and prod Weebsome’s corpse; satisfied of the man’s demise, the assailant stepped over me and did the same investigation on Jamford’s unmoving remains.

  “Fine, that is–” Spivvem glanced back over his shoulder at me, showing one of his characteristic lopsided smiles. “Double-crossers – do despise ‘em.”

  FOURTEEN

  Mr Dower Is Further Appalled

  “See this? Bluidy huge, it is.” Spivvem laid a hand on the riveted flank of the apparatus before us. “Do powerful amount damage, had mind to.”

  “Please – leave it be.” I reinforced my plea by grasping his arm, and making what token attempt I could to drag him away. All about us, the din of this hellish subterranean factory continued to pound away, near deafening; either of us had to shout at the top of our lungs, to make ourselves heard at all. “We have other business to attend – you told me as much.”

  It was not just the urgency of those affairs that prompted my words; I could see him eyeing a bank of controls, a series of knobs and dials, and levers so big it would take both hands and all of a man’s strength to shift them from one adjustment to another. With his propensity for tampering with disastrous effect, I feared his acting upon another such mischievous impulse.

  “Know what is?” He glanced over his shoulder at me, the glint in his eye so demented as to increase my anxiety even further. “Do you?”

  “For God’s sake, man – I do not even wish to know.” Clouds of steam cascaded by us, with an unnerving resemblance to those others through which we had passed with frightful velocity, when I had been marooned with him on that aerial cemetery, disintegrating even as it had shot across the sky toward London. “You were telling me…” I gasped for breath, stifled by the factory’s heat. “Important things… concentrate on those instead…”

  As best I could determine, we were in the centre of that industrial landscape, far beneath the earth’s surface. Spivvem had led me to this point, once he had assured himself that there would be no further interference from Jamford or his associate Weebsome; he had tossed aside the rifle as being an impediment of no further use.

  “Took off last of those bluidy assassins been following you about.” That was how he described his acquisition of the weapon. “Won’t have worry about any them, no more.”

  With those few clues, I had made my own surmise as to what had happened. Spivvem’s shouted warning had saved me from a bullet launched by that final agent of the More Loving Embrace, though I might well have been killed in the subsequent collapse of the rocky tunnel opening in which I had stood. Unaware at that time of my fate, Spivvem had then confronted the assailant, and fatally bested him, likely with the rifle that he had snatched away from the other’s hands. Making his way to the floor of the subterranean factory – a locale with which Spivvem was evidently familiar – he had then determined that I was in the hands of the Right Reverend Jamford, and had lain in wait for us to emerge from that chamber in which we had been conversing.

  That Spivvem did not immediately take some vengeance upon me, after he had dispatched both Jamford and Weebsome, was not something I found entirely surprising. Much there was about him of a calculated and deliberate nature, however the degree he flaunted his disturbing eccentricities; he still had his own agenda to pursue, and I was of use to him in that regard. And – he indicated as much – he could not fault me for having tried to escape; he would have done as much if our situations had been somehow reversed.

  “Damn me,” he had said, after returning from inside the chamber. “Bastard’s crawled away.” Looking past him, I had seen that there was a smeared trail of blood across the floor, but otherwise no sign of Jamford. “Have to track down at my leisure – ‘magine won’t get far. Had agreement with him, but he welshed on – do hate being cheated, so will make sure good and dead. But no time for that now; we’ve urgencies, you and I, so let’s be off.”

  Standing at the door of the chamber, with Weebsome’s body lying halfway out, I had then inquired as to what exactly it was that Spivvem wished to do, and had received the answer that he meant to take me to my son, just as Jamford had wanted.

  “I would rather not–”

  “And rather not wring your bluidy neck,” Spivvem had responded. “But will.”

  Thus our traversing the factory, through all its grinding clamour and wilting heat; wherever it was that my son was waiting, it was apparently at some point directly across from the luxurious chamber in which Jamford had received me. Passing the varied engines and machines, and the sooty human figures scurrying in attendance upon them, too intent upon their labours to even register notice of any intruders, we came to what I estimated to be the centre of the space. It was here that Spivvem had halted, expressing his admiration for the controls that were arrayed before us.

  “What is–”

  He ignored my protests, and continued eyeing the machinery with a keen avidity. “Regulates entire bluidy place, all its functions, from one end to other. Everything all interconnected, just way Jamford and his pals would like.” He laid his hand upon the largest of the levers, protruding vertically from a wide slot in the floor, and caressed its steam-damp metal. “Want all sped up? Push that way–” He mimed shoving the lever forward, without actually altering its current position. “Slow down bit? Give all these poor bastards a break? Just ease back – like this.” He peered down the row of controls, the various dials and only slightly smaller levers. “Know that much; what these others do – be lovely to find out.”

  “My son–” I shouted at Spivvem, hoping to distract him from the machinery. “You said you were taking me to him. Should
we not be on our way?”

  “Worried?” His smiling glance fastened upon me. “Needn’t be – just cautious as always am.”

  I could have made an acerbic retort to that claim, but I refrained instead, not wishing to goad him into any demonstration; his history with such devices was not of the most reassuring.

  “Onward, then…” To my relief, he drew his hand away from the prodigious lever, and strode into the factory’s complicated depths again, looking over his shoulder as he went. “Haste, will you?”

  At last, we came to the cavernous space’s perimeter, the noise and heat from the engines and boilers diminishing behind us, though only slightly.

  “Here we are,” announced Spivvem, halting before a doorway distinguished only by the iron plate bolted across its surface, and a padlock the size of a man’s doubled fists dangling from the hasp at its edge. “Soon enow, have your family reunion.”

  Extracting a small leather pouch from inside his jacket, he extracted a set of tools, rather similar to those a surgeon might employ. He bent down and commenced work upon the lock; within the span of a few moments, it dangled loose. Restoring the tools to their pouch, he pulled off the lock and tossed it aside; it landed with a heavy clunk on the grated metal floor, a yard or so away.

  “After you–” With mock gentility, Spivvem waved me forward. “No fear; be right behind.”