Fiendish Schemes

by K. W. Jeter

  A Low Proposition Is Offered,

  Then Accepted

  INSPIRING—DON’T you think?”

  I wrapped my arms more tightly about myself, shivering inside my thin jacket. The offshore winds had quickened, driving away the rain clouds, but also chilling the flesh on one’s bones.

  “To a certain degree,” I replied to Stonebrake. “But as with so much of Nature, I would appreciate it even more from indoors, gazing out through a window.”

  “You’ll soon have all the windows you could ever desire—a townhouse replete with them.” Stonebrake turned to look back at me, the waves surging to the height of his knees. “The only Nature you’ll likely see would be your manicured gardens.”

  He had led me out from the inn, to a sandy cove bulwarked with craggy rocks. Leaving me a few yards behind, he had plunged out into the foaming surf, seemingly deriving some obscure pleasure from the pull of the tide against his legs. Above us, the stars glittered with icy crystallinity, dimming when the brighter glow of the distant lighthouse swept past us.

  “I hope you’ll forgive my enthusiasms.” Stonebrake trod back across the sand and sat himself beside me on a rounded bank. He leaned forward to brush the salt-water from his diving garment. “I’ve rarely been considered to be of an excitable temperament, but the contemplation of vast fortunes has had, I admit, an unsettling effect.”

  “You might have murdered me.” My jaw still ached to a degree, from the blow I had received.

  “And thereby saved you a spot of bother. It would seem your gratitude would be more in order.”

  “You said you had something important to tell me.” Pressed to annoyance, I looked away from the man. “Important in the sense of profitable. Very well, you have my attention. But then, you had my attention back in the relative comfort of my room. The necessity of removing to this place eludes me.”

  “Ah.” Stonebrake nodded. “Perhaps I have been too long at sea. I forget that not everyone is equally charmed by the great roll and surge of the waters. That was in fact one of the attractions to me of the Mission—I fear I would have been of little value to the Royal Navy, coming from too poor a family to have purchased a commission as an officer, and not inclined to happily follow orders from those of more fortunate circumstance. But to walk the decks of a ship and do the Lord’s work at the same time . . .” He raised one hand in a beneficent gesture. “What could be finer than that?”

  “Obviously, to make a great deal of money. I suspect that the Lord is not greatly involved in that other ambition of yours.”

  “You wound me, Mr. Dower. I have done rather more on His behalf than you have. If God now sees fit to reward me with this munificent opportunity, let us consider it merely as payment for services rendered.”

  “Very well,” I replied. “However you wish. I can assure you that matters of conscience do not weigh heavily on my soul.”

  Stonebrake smiled. “I knew we would get along.”

  I ignored his insinuation. “And so what would be the exact nature of this opportunity?”

  “Hush.” He held a finger to his lips. “We must be careful.” A sidelong glance was cast toward the ocean. “They might be listening!”

  “Who might? These precious whales of yours?”

  “No . . .” Stonebrake gave a slow shake of his head, then leaned closer toward me, the very personification of intimate conspiracy. “The seas!”

  I was not taken greatly by surprise by his words, nor did they give rise to greater doubts about his sanity than those I already entertained. I knew whereof he spoke.

  “You refer, I take it, to that notion which has been so much discussed of late, of the ocean itself being an intelligent organism, as capable of thought as we ourselves?”

  “Not an intelligent organism,” corrected Stonebrake. “But many such. There might be as many about this island nation as there are parishes within it.”

  His point was well taken, at least in regard to that details of the conjecture which had so gripped both the official and the popular mind of Britain. Even I had heard of it, as deeply buried in the uncouth countryside as I had been. Somehow the news had traveled to my remote and rural corner, that the surrounding oceans had been discovered to be not just living, but thinking creatures, capable of independent decision and subsequent action. Two schools of thought had developed, debated even by the ignorant villagers amongst whom I dwelt: to wit, that the oceans had always been alive, from the dawn of time, but either they had never had the opportunity to display this aspect of their nature or oblivious Man had just simply never noticed when they did; or that the oceans had just recently undergone the transformation from large, unconscious, and inanimate bodies of water into vast creatures who appeared just as before, but now had the ability to think and move. Not even the controversied theories of Mr. Charles Darwin could account for an event such as the latter supposition, though a number of atheistic scholars, spurning the biblical account of Man’s creation, maintained that the soup of organic compounds coursing through our veins and sloshing about inside our skulls was but the simmering counterpart of the salts and other chemicals filling the sea-beds to their brims. If some portions of that great primordial ocean had had the notion to separate themselves from the larger aquatic body, evolving from gelatinous, tendrilled jelly-fish to the sort with eyes and fins, and then on through that grand procession of lizards and scurrying rat-like things, then monkeys and apes and other foreigners, culminating at last in those sturdy English yeomen who were just as we are today, except for their habits of wearing furs without undergarments and eating their meat raw— then why not other divergent possibilities? Perhaps the development of Life and Reason had occurred before all that jelly-fish folderol, and the bits of coalesced ocean that had stumbled dripping up onto the land, en route to becoming Mankind, had been cast-offs from the great thinking and living stew that had spawned them?

  Such were the matters being debated even now, in shabby pubs and learned parlours alike. I supposed that if I had desired the most scholarly opinion on the subject, I might have applied to those few distinguished persons who might still have remembered me, in connection with my father’s creations. But for me to initiate such a request, it would have been necessary for me to—frankly—even care about the issue, at least in regard to how and when the oceans had acquired these hitherto unremarked characteristics. In this regard, I fancy I had much in common with other Englishmen: all very fine to while away an evening over one’s pints, going in one door of the controversy and then, as the Arab poet puts it, leaving by the same. It was the practical aspects, however, that demanded the attention of both sailors and the landbound.

  “Continue with your exposition.” I suspected that Stonebrake was of the same mind. “To this point, you have only told me that which I already knew.”

  “Then I can assume,” said Stonebrake, “that you know much else besides. You are no doubt aware that here in Britain, we find ourselves surrounded not by a single sentient, active ocean, as might be the case if we were some small speck out in the tropical Pacific. We are instead swarmed about by waters composed of many sentient, liquid organisms. The currents off the Outer Hebrides islands are apparently one organism, as reported by both mariners and coastal observers. The Irish Sea is another organism, and so forth.”

  “So I have heard.”

  “You heard correctly.” He pointed to the dark, rolling waters before us. “What we see here is as separate a creature from its brethren off East Anglia and Humberside as you and I are separate examples of the human species. That these living seas appear to merge at their edges does not alter that fact. As with all living organisms, they might be coöperative with each other or antagonistic.” He smiled as he gestured between the two of us. “Just as it is with us.”

  “The bulk of Humanity has displayed more hostility than kindness toward me.”

  “All that will change,” insisted Stonebrake, “when you have the ready jingling in your pocket. That’s the mus
ic to which people listen—and applaud. But let me proceed. I take it that you are also familiar with the complications, in regard to navigation, that have arisen from the oceans being living creatures?”

  “Who is not?” I shrugged. “As you say, these living seas have been observed to act on their own initiative and agenda, in ways that might not be convenient for Mankind. An ocean strait that might have been deep enough for ships to sail through before, now might suddenly become shallow enough to rip a ship’s hull open with the exposed rocks below.” In relating that which the entire civilized world knew already, I could be as pedantic as him. “Or similarly, a passage that was previously too dangerous for ships because of its strong currents might now be safely calm and navigable—the task for sailors being to find those new, safe routes, without losing one’s ship and crew in the process.”

  “Well said.” Stonebrake’s smile was as irritatingly patronizing as before. “And what assists them in so doing?”

  Nothing would do for the man, apparently, except a complete recitation of the information with which we were both familiar. “The lighthouses, of course.”

  “Ah, but we had light houses before we had to deal with animate oceans. And it took a good deal of effort and entrepreneurial capital to construct them. To what avail? A lighthouse that was previously a valuable navigational aid, might find itself miles from the rocky shoreline that it had helped ships sail past, or be completely submerged and its light extinguished by an ocean that had decided on its own to shift its position but a couple of miles east or west. What would be the point of even constructing a lighthouse if its usefulness could be unpredictably ended the day after it goes into operation?”

  “Now I am perplexed.” I regarded the other man with a more incisive appraisal, as though in the darkness more had been revealed than by the room’s lantern. “You make claim to know my affairs— and so you initially seemed to—but these tiny lacunae crop up. Are you aware that just this day I attended a launch party for Phototrope Limited’s most recent venture?”

  “Of course I know. I observed you there.”

  “How odd. I don’t recall seeing you amongst the guests.”

  “The festivities up in the lighthouse’s bridge chamber?” Stonebrake shook his head. “No, not there. I observed you later, after the lighthouse had grappled its perch upon the rocks, and after Lord Fusible’s other guests had departed. Outside—that is where.” With one hand, he indicated his diving garment. “You were so intent upon your conversation with Lord Fusible—though I could have told you beforehand that importuning him for some type of commission would be pointless—that you didn’t see anything out amongst the waves. You didn’t see me, to be precise.”

  His words nettled me. However little I cared for being spied upon, I took even less comfort in knowing which ungracious moments had come under his scrutiny.

  “Very well.” I straightened, as though to gather the tattered rags of my dignity about me. “Then you must be fully versed as well in the nature of an enterprise such as Phototrope Limited. Being as it is, of course, one of several such limited corporations that have sprung up since the advent of the living oceans has come upon us. Faced with a dilemma that might well have put the builders of the original, stationary lighthouses out of business, these new corporations’ engineers have developed the solution.”

  “Yes,” said Stonebrake. “The walking lights.”

  “Exactly. Lighthouses that are capable of auto-locomotion; that is, lighthouses that can move under their own power from place to place. The same massive mechanized legs at the base of such lighthouses, that enable them to crawl spider-like across various terrain, also allow them to grapple a perch onto the rocky crags of a new location. Of course, the drawback to such cleverness is the expense of both construction and operation: such complexity is not cheaply devised or maintained.” I knew that Lord Fusible’s comments at the launch party, however coarsely made, were accurate enough. I continued my own exposition, as if there were some advantage to be gained in demonstrating to Stonebrake that I was not a complete fool. “The walking lights are obviously much more complicated than a simple tower with a rotating light source at the top; with engine rooms and steam boilers for power, they need entire crews to move from place to place, along with skilled captains to steer them to various remote and often dangerous locations.”

  “Bravo!” Stonebrake seemed exhilarated rather than intimidated. “You exceed my expectations, sir; I couldn’t have done better myself.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. The only thing of which I appear to be still ignorant—a matter which you promised you could rectify—is how all this translates into wealth for us.”

  “That part is simple.” Stonebrake leaned closer toward me. His voice lowered, as though there were indeed some risk of the envious ocean overhearing our secrets. “We wager, Mr. Dower; we wager upon the Sea and Light Book.”

  The reader may imagine the arc of emotions that rocketed through my breast upon hearing the man’s words. Yes, I had already contemplated suicide, and decided upon it as a reasonable course of action, given my desperate situation; and yes, I thought this Stonebrake at best a lunatic, but most likely a charlatan. Nevertheless, even at this extremity, a flicker of hope had been aroused in me. Not just to escape the sentence of death I had decreed upon myself, but to transport myself to the giddy financial heights of which he had spoken so passionately. The prospect was like that of those children’s fairystories, in which the peasant straps on the fabled seven-league boots, and strides from abyss to mountain-top in one go.

  How cruel to have one’s hopes raised, only to have them dashed at one’s feet. This time, the violent reaction was mine. I sprung from the rock, my fist cocked, but did not let fly at my tormentor. Instead, I turned and strode away, the waves’ pounding drowned out by the roaring of the blood inside my head.

  “Dower! Wait!” the other called after me. “Where are you going?” I made no reply. I kept walking, blinded by rage and disappointment. Toward no destination—the night was so dark, this spot so far from any human habitation, that all I could see was the faint blue phosphorescence of the waves splashing near my path. If any plan resided in my thoughts, it would have been no more than to somehow stumble my way back to the squalid inn, retrieve my father’s clockwork pistol, and finish the task for which I had kept it; or to climb to the top of one of the rocky bluffs surrounding this bit of sand and from there hurl myself into the ocean. Given the fury that sent my blood hammering at my temples, the effect would no doubt have been similar to dropping a red-hot ingot into a blacksmith’s cooling bucket, a burst of steam mounting skyward to mark my demise.

  “For God’s sake, man—” A hand grasped my shoulder and pulled me about. I found myself looking into Stonebrake’s face again. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Oh, that’s a fine question, all right.” My white-knuckled hand remained balled into a fist, the muscles of my arm aching to drive a blow between his eyes. “After all your easy boasting about how much you know about me, and about my circumstances.”

  “And so I do. Haven’t I indicated as much? You’re valuable to me, Mr. Dower; I’d be a fool not to have made a study of you.”

  “And fool you are, then.” I spat out my words. “If in all your picking at another man’s private affairs, you managed to overlook as salient a fact as this.”

  He blinked in confusion. “I’m not following you. . . .”

  “Evidently not. You come to me with some daft plan, spinning fantastic reveries about the vast sums in which we’ll soon be wallowing. I admit I was intrigued, more fool I. You caught me at a weak moment, when my thoughts were easily beguiled. But then, having thus ensnared me, when pressed as to the actual details of this grand scheme of yours, all that you can tell me is that it centers upon laying bets with those bookmakers who track who’s up and who’s down amongst the lighthouse corporations.”

  “So it does,” admitted Stonebrake. “If you’d but allow me to i
mpart the full details to you—”

  “What need is there? As God is my witness, your opacity astounds me. Are you not aware that wagering with the Sea & Light Book is what reduced me to these wretched circumstances?”

  The reader’s forbearance is requested. If, in the furious pace of my narrative, I write of matters unfamiliar to those whose lives have been more circumspect than mine—which I assume would encompass most of the population, there being so little effort or good fortune required to achieve that happy condition—my apologies are extended. So sunk in misery had I become, that it would be only natural to assume that everyone was as acquainted with such sordid matters as myself. No great charitableness is needed to recognize that others lead, in general, more virtuous lives than mine.

  To elucidate, in pursuit of understanding amongst those curious about such things:

  For the British nation, so thoroughly dependent upon oceangoing trade as we are, the awareness of the surrounding oceans as living creatures—with its accompanying effect upon navigation— gave rise to more than Phototrope Limited and its competitors. Scarcely a bale or crate of goods is loaded or unloaded at a British port, but that one of the lighthouse corporations receives a share of the merchants’ proceeds, for having guided their vessels safely about the hazards that ring our island. No business as large as that can stride upon the scene, like some valiant commercial hero, without other money-making endeavours trailing behind. The opportunity to profit from the activities of the new lighthouse corporations is not limited to those who had invested so wisely in them.

  The rivalry amongst the different lighthouse corporations, and between the walking lights and their celebrity captains, such as the much-admired Captain Crowcroft whom I had so recently met, is so exciting to certain easily impressionable minds that it is little wonder that interest in such matters has swept through so much of our society. The more genteel of our house holds limit their indulgence to reading about the latest exploits of Crowcroft et al. in the popular journals of the day. No doubt there are many tender-hearted maidens who catch their breath at the portraits that accompany such deathless prose, and who murderously envy Lord and Lady Fusible’s daughter, Evangeline, for her betrothal to the heroic lighthouse captain who had captured her heart. Such diversions are essentially innocent. The darker aspect to enthusiasm for walking lighthouse exploits is to be found in the betting shops and bookmakers’ parlours, in particular that constellation of the same that has become known under the general rubric of the Sea & Light Book.