Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion

by Howard, Jonathan L

  The business of keeping track of numbers she entered in the large ledger volumes was no difficulty. She found she could see the patterns emerging and the more she worked the more it all made sense to her. After two months she was able to make a more telling report to Adamson.

  “Your distributors in the North West are holding back about half of what they owe you.” She showed Adamson the figures she had written down while everyone else had been at lunch. He perused them carefully.

  “I believe you,” he said. “I’ll look into it. Well done.”

  It was a week later that Vic received a more unwelcome response to her work. Walking at a brisk pace from street light to street light through the Autumnal dark she became aware of footsteps behind her but seeming to match her step for step. She increased her pace and, sure enough, her pursuer did likewise. Reaching the corner of Nugent Hill she turned sharply. Her relief that the footsteps seemed to stop there was tempered by the voice she heard quite clearly.

  “You think you’re clever, don’t you Missy?”

  Vic paused from her work to look up at the office calendar. The date that was fixed in her mind was tomorrow, possibly. If not, then another year at least. She returned to her book keeping task. She had, she believed, been followed twice more in the three weeks since the first, unsettling incident. She had changed her route home several times, there being many alternative ways of walking through the city, but it did not seem to have made a difference. The previous week the man, whoever he was, had followed her most of the way to Clifton. Vic thought she had managed to lose him near the end, but she was not absolutely certain. Perhaps he had been confused because that evening she had headed to report to Mr. Adamson at his house rather than going directly back to her lodgings. She hoped that she had not been seen going into the grand house, for more reasons than one.

  One week on from that last incident Vic was again due to see Mr. Adamson. She had worked quickly in order to be able to leave at the same time as the girls from the canteen. They had made it plain they didn’t approve of her, a slip of a girl taking on to work with the gentlemen in the office, but she was not looking for approval or friendship. It was enough to know that none of the canteen girls was her stalker and the façade of safety she felt, however thin, gave her a sense of confidence. After she parted ways with the last of her unknowing escort, somewhere in Redland, she quickened her walking pace. She thought she was safely on her own, and began to breathe easily despite the energy required by her stride pattern, when she caught a faint echo of a heavy boot on the stone pavement somewhere behind her. She glanced behind her briefly and saw a figure moving some way behind her but definitely in the same direction.

  By the time she reached the end of the street where Adamson lived the footsteps were audibly close. Vic tried to decide whether to keep her weekly appointment with her employer, balancing the relative physical safety of the big house against the longer term jeopardy of letting someone hostile to her know that she reported there. The decision was made for her.

  “Going in to please your fancy gentleman friend again are you?”

  The accent was not native to Bristol. Vic had never travelled beyond the city but thought it sounded like that of the sailors who alighted in the harbour from boats out from Liverpool. She started to run for Adamson’s house.

  “Of course, you’re just a whore from the street anyway, aren’t you? Don’t know no better, some might say. Should know better than to start sticking her nose into other people’s business, though.”

  Vic saw the man start to run after her. He was heavy set but made a steady pace.

  “Your fancy Mr. Adamson has enough money doesn’t he? Why should he keep it all to himself?”

  Vic finally reached the steps to Adamson’s house and started to run up. She stretched her arm out to pull the bell lever that would summon the butler or footman when she felt a sudden force impact into her back, forcing her to gasp for breath. Her shoulder struck the doorstep and she let out an involuntary scream. Rough hands pulled her up, turned her around so that she was face up and then pushed her back down to the floor. Pain lanced through her as her spine hit the smooth stone. In her peripheral vision she saw that the door to the house had opened. She tried to crawl towards it but the hands holding her stopped her making any progress. A well-polished shoe swung over and struck her attacker in the face. Feeling the hands release her as they instinctively went to protect her attacker’s face, Vic took advantage of the moment and scrambled for the doorway. She heard more sounds of violence behind her but kept moving into the hallway until she heard a familiar voice.

  “I think you are safe now, Miss Victoria,” said Mr. Adamson.

  Vic raised herself up to a kneeling position and tried to control her breathing. Slowly her gasping breaths calmed and she wiped the tears she became aware were sitting on her cheeks. The butler was pulling an unconscious man into the house.

  “What should I do with this, sir?”

  “Set him in that chair there, and be sure to send him on his way as soon as he is reasonably conscious.” Adamson offered Vic a small quantity of brandy in a large glass. She sipped a tiny amount, enough to jolt her back to a state of alertness.

  “So, who is he? Secret admirer? Business contact from your former ‘profession’?”

  “Someone who was not happy with me finding out that you were being cheated up north,” said Vic. “At least I think so. I’ve certainly never seen his face before.”

  Vic looked up at Adamson. He was smiling in a way that made her unsure if he was laughing at her or not. The butler had left to get some ropes to secure her attacker in his chair.

  “I wonder,” said Adamson. He rubbed his hand across his chin. Suddenly he seemed to have made up his mind about something. “Come with me.”

  Vic judged that his manner was such that he was not trying to lure her somewhere in order to take advantage of her vulnerability. He had not waited to see if she would follow.

  Following Adamson through a door somewhat smaller and less ornate than others off the main hall, Vic found herself at the top of a staircase leading down to, she presumed, a basement. Electric lights hung at regular intervals around the twisting stairwell. At the bottom there was one large room that must have stretched the whole length of the property above. In the centre of the room was a large machine with a seat centrally positioned within. Adamson was standing by it looking back at her, clearly a proud man.

  “I used to have a business partner, back in London, before I met Mr Friese-Greene. He invented this machine and I helped to supply the materials. He built two machines, one for each of us. He disappeared with his some time ago. This one is mine. I think you know what it is, don’t you?”

  “You travel,” Vic said, slowly. “In time, somehow. You travel back in time”

  “Very good. Although, I use it to go forward in time. Better for business.”

  “The light bulbs, the films, everything you’ve done — they were all other people’s ideas weren’t they?”

  “Well you should give Mr. Friese-Greene credit for the films. He really did invent that. I merely helped him make the money he surely deserved. As to the rest, well, perhaps you might have been right somewhere, sometime, but those places no longer exist.”

  Adamson walked around the machine, patting polished brass tubes and running his hand down mahogany panels. Vic edged forward to get a closer look. The machine was emitting a low hum and she could see lights on in certain places.

  “So, that is my secret,” Adamson said. “Now, tell me yours. How did you really find my cigarette case?” He pulled two cases from his pocket and held them up to the light. “I only ever had one of these made and engraved. Now I have two.” With his other hand he pulled a pocket watch out and looked at the time.

  Vic closed her eyes. She’d expected this to go differently.

  Opening her eyes again she caught a blur of movement on the stairs in enough time to jump out of the way as her attacker from earlier
in the evening lunged at her again. Adamson moved forward placing himself between the intruder and herself. Why was he not protecting his machine?

  Vic looked up to see the two men grappling hand to hand. The initiative seemed to be with the bigger, anonymous man but Adamson was gradually turning him round to use the attackers own momentum against him. The man kicked out at Adamson but only achieved the result of losing his own balance and falling backwards into the time machine. Vic saw that he had a cigarette case gripped in one hand and a pocket watch in the other. The time machine gave out a screeching noise for a few seconds and then both machine and intruder disappeared completely.

  Vic stood and stared at what she had seen. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a sudden chill in the room. From inside her clothing she pulled out a gold pocket watch, identical in appearance to the one the intruder had taken with him. She turned to Adamson.

  “I found these buried in the mud,” Vic said as she offered the watch to her employer.

  Adamson took the watch and looked at it carefully. The face was cracked and the time and date were fixed at the moment of breaking. The date was the very day, the time the very hour and minute that he had seen on his own watch when they had been disturbed.

  Vic spoke again. “I found them inside a skull.”

  “And you thought it mine?”

  Adamson looked philosophically at the place where the time machine had once stood. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled enigmatically at Vic.

  “I think,” he said, “that we are going to see the age of Mr. Edison after all.”

  Lord Craddock: Ascension

  - Stephen Blake -

  Lord Byron Craddock was deemed mad by many, at least strange by most. He treated his staff as just that — they were paid a fair wage and well cared for — regardless of colour. Here in Bristol, in 1801, the main stop-off for slaves imported from Africa, that was unheard of. If it wasn’t his fair treatment of slaves, then it was his passion for steam that made others think of him as odd. Eccentric, if they were kind.

  He had seen what others had done with steam: ships powering through the sea, without concern for the tide or the wind’s direction; engines pulling heavy loads along their tracks; carriages propelled without horses; airships that defied gravity. Craddock had seen these things and not stood aghast like everyone else. He was inspired, driven to push the boundaries of this science.

  He saw to it that the three children of the house were well educated. There was Benjamin, the maid’s son, Nathaniel, child of the head gardener and Robert, Lord Craddock’s only son. Nathaniel was blind from birth and yet he saw so much, through his compassionate heart. He and Ben became the best of friends almost straight away. When Ben told him “I am black” he screwed his face up and said, “All men are equal in the eyes of God.” Ben laughed at him, mocked his naivety and felt a burning within to blind the world, so that all might see as Nathaniel did.

  The first decade of Robert’s life had been spent as his mother’s constant companion. That ended the day a startled horse bolted toward her, trampling her with its hooves and pulling its carriage over her broken form. Robert saw it all. He saw the weeping servant, hanging onto the reins, powerless to prevent the tragedy. Unfortunately, he was blind to the truth of it — an accident. He saw only murder, and he felt only anger.

  Lord Craddock was distraught at the loss of his wife. To his eternal shame, in a moment of grief, he sought the comfort - and took advantage — of a desperate woman, straight off one of the ‘Guineamen’. Robert caught them together. Lord Craddock’s guilt ensured the woman became one of the very few to get home to West Africa. For Robert, apologies and ‘feigned’ guilt meant nothing. This was a betrayal.

  A burning rage had been lit inside Robert, and the flames’ intensity only grew with time. Once, Robert and his friends — little more than thirteen years old — decided Ben needed to be whipped, to learn his place. Lord Craddock caught them, but only after the whip had cut into Ben’s flesh. Robert was sent away to boarding school the very next day.

  The years passed and Nathaniel and Ben continued to learn. Nathaniel was of exceptional intelligence and sought only to feed his hunger for knowledge. Ben developed an aptitude for engineering and it seemed entirely natural for him to assist Lord Craddock with his work.

  In a warehouse near the harbour, Lord Craddock imagined and created. It was perpetually hot, steam always being piped around to operate every kind of machinery.

  The latest project was an automaton, a mechanised man. It stood around 6 ft. 3 in. height and its metallic body gleamed. It was a mass of cogs. Craddock had previously demonstrated that the ‘thing’ could walk, sit and lift items of extreme weight. With just a card punched with specific holes, placed in a receptacle in its back, it could turn left, right and pick up or put down.

  Robert had finished his schooling, and although he was home, they all knew it was just a temporary stay. He had grown into a tall wiry man with thick black hair, but it was his eyes, always his eyes, that held a man in his place. Such utter contempt and hatred burned within them. He smiled thinly and acknowledged those around him, but the eyes gave away his true feelings.

  “Yes! A perfect fit.” Craddock beamed with satisfaction. A small cog, which Ben had found, brought the old man to an excitable frenzy.

  The next generation automaton was almost complete. This one was mainly clockwork, able to keep going so long as it was frequently wound. Craddock could not abandon steam though. This creation could be augmented by steam power when required. Its legs and arms could store building pressure from the steam, using the power when needed.

  “Ben, are we ready for the test?” Craddock cried.

  He nodded and stepped aside as the correct punch-card was placed in the slot. The mechanical beast whirred into life and stepped forward with purpose toward the test wall. It stood with its right leg forward, its right arm cocked. The hiss of steam could be heard as the pressure built. They looked on as water droplets fell from the elbow. Then, in perfect motion, the upper torso swivelled, the right arm was thrust forward, driven like a piston and the fist smashed its way through the wall, obliterating it.

  “Fantastic!” Craddock exclaimed, “Now, for the next test.”

  Craddock rustled through his punch-cards and found the one he wanted.

  “Wait until you see this, young Benjamin.”

  Craddock gave his creation a quick once over, to make sure that all was well.

  He mused to himself, “Pressure? Yes, alright. Everything is looking ship shape and Bristol fashion.”

  He exchanged the punch-cards and hurriedly moved out of the way to stand beside Ben. Robert stood to the side, bored as always. He looked at his father like a man looks down at a stray dog. Not with pity, but contempt.

  They waited. A few minutes passed and nothing happened. Craddock and Ben exchanged looks. Neither was keen to step forward. They had seen too many steam related accidents to be anything other than exceptionally cautious.

  Craddock slowly took a step forward and then suddenly halted as the automaton creaked into life. It moved into a crouched position.

  Craddock scurried back. ”Robert, you’d best step back a bit.” Robert made a point of standing straighter, with his cane in front of him. He was not going to move.

  The machine creaked and groaned as the pressure from the steam built. A burst of steam filled the room.

  “Any minute now,” whispered Craddock, “it will leap into the air!”

  The mist cleared and the men looked on as the automaton hopped two inches off the ground, landed and slowly toppled over.

  Lord Craddock and Ben looked at each other, disappointed. They quickly replaced this with renewed determination.

  “Sir, what do you think about my gyroscope idea?”

  Lord Craddock looked at Ben with pride. “Yes, my lad I think you are right. We need to get it to balance itself. If only I could get it to react to different situations. I fear my ideas are too soo
n for this world.” He dabbed a cloth to his sweating forehead.

  Ben placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. ”I am sure you will find a way. You know my thoughts. We need to incorporate a pilot.”

  Laughter interrupted them. They turned to see Robert leaning on his cane, laughing at the pair of them.

  “See where you have ended up Father, taking advice from a slave. Why on earth you chose to educate this creature is beyond me.”