SteampubkPrime

by Mike Ashley

  “He belongs to himself.”

  I am afraid we shall not agree on that point.”

  “Possibly not, Lord Baxter, and upon very few others, I believe. Your wretched progeny has taken refuge here as you surmise, and I request you to leave it here where it is pursuing an industrious life in the peace and comfort which was wanting in your laboratory.”

  “And if I do not, sir?” Inquired Lord Baxter acidly.

  “If you do not, I shall place the whole matter before the world. I am a writer by profession, and have some influence with the public. I think the result will be that your scientific liberty will be considerably curtailed.”

  “Pooh,” said Lord Baxter contemptuously. “I’m afraid you overrate your influence. I’ve just glanced at one of your books in the village inn, and it seems to me that it is you who ought to have your liberty curtailed. A man who pours out such balderdash at the rate I understand you do is either a public nuisance or a public danger. I have a notion you are both. But I have no time to waste with triflers. My train goes in half-an-hour. Permit me.” Without waiting for permission, he strode through the open window of my work-room.

  I followed. The Faun had evidently heard his voice. It now stood there behind the typewriter, quivering from head to foot, its long ears twitching with fright.

  “Ah, here is our little friend,” said Baxter sarcastically — “prettily dressed, too, and ready for travel. Get your coat and cap — my coat and cap, I believe, and come along. Billiter has a nice dish of phosphates waiting for you.”

  “I’m not coming,” clicked the Faun shrilly. “I’m going to stay with Mr. Broadbent. You won’t let him take me away,” it pleaded piteously to me.

  “Certainly not,” I replied. “I ask you to leave my premises instantly, Lord Baxter.”

  “I am going — with my automaton,” he answered.

  “It’s not an automaton,” I said. “It is a sentient being, and as such — ”

  “He’s simply an experiment,” interrupted Baxter, “and not a particular success at that. I ought to punish him for running away, but if he comes back with me we shall continue,to live in harmony as before.”

  “I’m not coming back,” said the Faun sullenly.

  “In that case,” said Baxter, thrusting his hand into his pocket, and producing a box, “I’m afraid I shall have to put an end to your existence. I’m experimenting for the good of mankind, and have no time to argue with one of my failures.”

  He opened the box, showing an electric battery, and projecting wires with antennae.

  “This may interest you, Broadbent,” he said. “You could introduce it into your absurd tales, and make them up-to-date for once. This is a little electric arrangement on the principle of the Marconi apparatus. It sends messages to bodies in harmony with it, and in this case, I regret to say, the message is going to be a little unfriendly. Each living organism has its own peculiar rate of vibration, and I can regulate my instrument into exact correspondence. I happen to know the particular rate of vibration of our friend with the snout and ears, and can make him dance to any tune I like. I press the button here, and you observe that our friend does the rest.”

  As he spoke the Faun gave a hideous shriek, and doubled up in agony.

  “A neat contrivance, isn’t it?” Continued Baxter in his bantering voice. “Your own rate of vibration, Broadbent, is slightly higher. If you have any curiosity to feel the same symptoms I can easily arrange the experiment. I presume your affairs are in order. If you have any messages to leave behind you might write them down while I am finishing off our friend here. Shall I press the next button?” He said to the Faun. “It would mean a somewhat painful death.”

  The wretched animal had fallen to the floor. Tears were streaming from its eyes.

  “No” it now sobbed. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I thought so,” said Baxter. “I should have been disappointed with that brain of yours if you’d said anything else. Get your topcoat.”

  He turned to me and produced a cigarette case, which he offered me. “No? Well, permit me, please. I must have my smoke after an interesting experiment,” he remarked as he struck a match.

  The man’s callousness was as appalling as was his power. But I could at any rate impress upon him that his proceedings were no longer unknown to the outer world.

  “Lord Baxter,” I said, “we may as well understand one another. You are carrying on experiments that would not be sanctioned by the Government of the country.”

  “On the contrary,” he replied, “I am working at my automata expressly for the benefit of the country.”

  “And what about your Tetrazzini frog and your calculating ferret? What about Billiter and his sports?”

  “Ah!” He said with an ugly smile. “So our little friend has been talking? I expected as much. As you say, it is just as well we should understand one another, Broadbent. Now between you and I and this thing,” be went on, pointing to the Faun, who now stood at our side in topcoat and cap, “I should forget everything you have heard or seen, if I were you. You know my power, and it may interest you to learn that distance does not count with me. I know your approximate rate of vibration on the cosmic plane, and can act accordingly. It would be just as easy for me to double you up from my laboratory by pressing the first button in my little box as it was to operate on our friend just now, and nothing would be easier than to make an end of you by pressing the second button between the songs of my accomplished frog. Verb sap. All things considered, I should strongly advise you to forget this little interlude in your existence. Now I have only just time to catch the train. Come along,” he added to the Faun.

  Tears were still raining from its eyes. “Good-bye, Mr. Broadbent,” it clicked hoarsely, “Don’t forget me.” Then it pulled its cap down over its face, and followed Baxter out of the window. That is the last I saw of them. I turned to my work, and tried to continue it; but try as I would the picture of the unhappy Faun and its captor came back, to me. What would happen to it on its return to the laboratory? In the best case Baxter would make an end to it when it suited his purpose, and what might not Billiter do in the meantime?

  These thoughts effectually prevented my working all yesterday. I am now five chapters behind in my novel — an unprecedented position for me — and whilst I have this matter on my mind I feel I can do no writing. I have therefore decided to let the public know what is happening in Lord Baxter’s laboratory, urging that immediate steps shall be taken to protect his hapless creations. I have no use either for a Tetrazzini frog or a calculating ferret, if these are found to be still alive, but I am prepared to offer permanent asylum to the Faun. Indeed, Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion is now waiting for it on my table.

  I am aware that I run considerable personal risk in making this exposure. Baxter knows my approximate rate of vibration on the cosmic plane, whatever that may mean, and probably can operate upon me from any distance; but if I should come to an untimely end the authorities know on whom to fix the crime.

  And now with a clear conscience, I am going to describe the terrible struggle in the roof-garden of the New York restaurant in the “The Multi-Millionaires.”

  THE AUTOMATON

  Reginald Bacchus and Ranger Gull

  The idea of a chess-playing automaton goes back to the time of Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804) who created such a contraption in 1770. It was known as The Turk and was exhibited throughout the courts of Europe. After von Kempelen’s death it was acquired by Johann Maelzel (1772-1838), a creator of musical automata. He toured throughout Europe and one of the contestants who challenged the Turk to a chess match in 1809 was no less than Napoleon Bonaparte. The Turk won. Maelzel subsequently toured New York and New England. It was in America that the Turk was exposed as a hoax, operated by a chess master hiding in the base of the machine. Edgar Allan Poe wrote an expose in “Maelzel’s Chess Player” (1836). By then the idea of an automaton chess player had become iconic and it appears in s
everal stories. Probably the best known is “Moxon’s Master” by Ambrose Bierce (1899). The following story appeared soon after in the January 1900 issue of The Ludgate.

  The two authors would both acquire notoriety. At the time they wrote this and several similar stories they were sharing accommodation in central London which became a regular meeting place for the literati. Both were journalists who were also editing a weekly society paper. Bacchus (1873-1945), or George Reginald Bacchus [“Reggie”], to give him his full name, came from a military family and had inherited money. He became a theatre critic and in the spring of 1899 married the actress Isa Bowman who, as a child, had been one of Lewis Carroll’s photographic models. The marriage did not last long and Bacchus led a rather desultory life writing a notorious erotic work, The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt, based to some degree on Isa Bowman.

  Ranger Gull (1875-1923) was born Arthur Ranger Gull, the son of a country vicar. He later adopted the first name Cyril, and later still took on the pseudonym Guy Thorne by which he became best known. Under that alias he wrote When it was Dark (1903) which looks at the social and religious chaos that follows the revelation that archaeological evidence has been discovered to prove that Christ was never resurrected. The book was an international bestseller and established Gull’s reputation. Alas it gave him even more opportunity to drink — he once claimed he was never more than a few hundred yards from a bottle. He settled in Cornwall and produced a mass of novels, many of them science fiction, including The Greater Power (1915), The Air Pirate (1919), The City in the Clouds (1921) and When the World Reeled (1924). Over time his plots became repetitive — he often rewrote earlier stories — but at his best he was a very creative writer and deserves to be better remembered. In his later years he became diabetic and died in London aged only 47. — M.A.

  ABOUT THE MIDDLE of this century public interest in the game of chess received a remarkable impetus from the arrival in London of it man named Greet, a Jew from Poland, who brought with him an automatic chess-playing figure. This figure had been first exhibited at Prague some six months before, and its subsequent tour of the great cities on the continent of Europe had excited an extraordinary interest. Most of the best-known masters of the game had taken up its challenge in St. Petersburg, Paris and Vienna, but one and all had suffered a defeat, inexplicable in its suddenness and completeness.

  Mr. Greet now announced that his figure was ready to play against, and beat, anyone in England who should care to oppose it. The Automaton (for this was the name that the public had given to the figure) was exhibited a number of times in London, and on each occasion a crowded and mystified audience witnessed the uncomfortable spectacle of an image made of wood and iron, defeating in an easy and masterful manner several well-known exponents of the most difficult game in the world.

  The machine consisted of a large figure of wood, roughly hewn and painted to resemble a man. It was about twice the size of a full-grown human being, and when playing was seated in a chair made on a very open design. It was quite motionless, except for the jerky movements of its arm and of the two long steel pincers that served it for fingers. It made no sound save the one word “check,” that rasped out from its wooden throat, and the final “check-mate,” pitched in a higher and more triumphal key.

  This soulless machine was a master of all the known gambits, and seemed to play them with a supreme inspiration not granted to any living professor of the game. Public excitement about the matter was acute, and speculation ran high as to the probable methods employed to bring about so marvelous a result. Every facility was afforded to the public for inspection. Before and after each game the figure was opened in full view of those among the audience who might care to come upon the stage, and the closest scrutiny revealed nothing but a mass of cogs and wheels, among which it was quite impossible for a man to be concealed. Moreover, Mr. Greet was quite willing to allow the Automaton to be moved about on the stage at the direction of its opponent, so that the theory of electrical communication with a player concealed beneath the platform, had to be abandoned by those who had conceived such an opinion. During the games, Mr. Greet sat or walked about on the stage, but two members of the audience were always accommodated with chairs by the chess table, and it was obvious that there could be no communication between the figure and its proprietor. In this way the public mind became unpleasantly harassed, and Mr. Greet’s purse grew to a comfortable fullness with the entrance money of the hundreds who blocked the door at each performance. The uncanny nature of the whole affair attracted numbers to the spectacle who did not even know the moves of the game, and many a man set steadfastly to the learning of chess, and the baffling of the problems proposed in the weekly papers, that he might better comprehend the nature of the mystery that was puzzling London.

  So with a clientele composed of professors and amateurs of the game, engineers and scientists, and the great General Public that loves a mystery, Mr. Greet might have remained in London for a long period of great pecuniary satisfaction. Then, without any warning, it was announced in the papers that the Automaton had made its last move, for the present at any rate, in the metropolis, and would shortly set out on a tour through the principal towns of the provinces.

  Birmingham, Manchester and all the great centers of the North and Midlands were visited with the usual triumphs, and one morning the public were startled at their breakfast tables with the brief announcement that Mr. Greet would back his Automaton against any chess player in the world for £2,000 a side, the match to take place in the Theatre Royal at Bristol within three weeks’ time.

  No one had been more completely mystified or more intensely amazed at the triumphal progress of the Automaton than Mr. Stuart Dryden, considered by most people to be the leading chess player in England. He had himself refrained from hazarding his reputation in a contest with the thing, for, after carefully watching the easy defeat of those noted professors who had been bold enough to put its skill to the test, he had been forced to confess that in this machine, by some unfathomable means or other, had been placed an understanding of the game that he could not hope to compete with. He felt, however, that a time must come when he would be obliged to court the defeat that he knew to be certain, and the growing nearness of the contingency embittered every day of his life. He worked ceaselessly at problems of the game, and studied with the greatest care the records of the matches that had been played against the Automaton, but he found it quite impossible to coax himself into the least degree of self-confidence.

  Professor Dryden was a bachelor, possessed of a small regular income, which he had always supplemented largely with his earnings at chess by way of stake-money and bets. He was a man of solitary habit and lived much alone in a small house in the northwestern quarter of London. An old woman attended to all his wants; he was surrounded by a large and complete library, and between his little house and the St. George’s Chess Club he spent almost the entire portion of his life. It was his custom to rise early every morning, and after a long walk in the Regent’s Park to arrive at the Chess Club about noon. There, as a rule, he stayed till about ten o’clock of the evening, when he would return to a quiet supper and several hours with his books.

  On the morning that Mr. Greet’s announcement had been made public to the world, he left the house very early indeed, before the arrival of the daily papers.

  On this morning he was in an exceptionally bad temper. He was by nature a sullen man, and the continued triumphs of this Automaton, which pointed to a probable reduction in his income, had been gradually making him more and more sour. Then, to complete his misery, he found last night, on his return from the club, that by the failure of a company, considered sound by the most skeptical, his small private means had been reduced almost to a vanishing point. All night long he had lain sleepless with anxiety, and as he tramped the Regent’s Park this morning his head burnt feverishly and his heart was very bitter against the world. The glorious freshness of the morning kindled no spark of happiness in his m
orose mind, and the children who met him stalking along the paths ran nervously from his dour expression. He examined the future with care, but could see nothing but ruin before him, as what now remained of his private income would be quite insufficient for his support. Moreover, in confident expectation of a successful season at the chess-table, he had of late allowed himself many extravagancies, and his creditors were beginning to put unpleasant pressure upon him. Several tournament, from which he was confident of gain, had been put off, since all interest was centered in the Automaton, and a mere contest between man and man fell tame after the almost supernatural strife with Mr. Greet’s image. Poor Mr. Dryden was unable to compose his ruffled temper or to suggest to himself any plan for the future, and wearying of the monotonous greenness of the park he turned his steps towards the club, though it was much earlier than he was wont to go there.

  The St. George’s Chess Club was a temple sacred to the upper circles of chess-players. The social or financial position of a member mattered little, but it was essential that he should be a real expert in the practice of the game. In this way a very motley and cosmopolitan gathering was usually to be found in the comfortable clubhouse situated in an inexpensive street near Hanover Square.

  Mr. Dryden walked straight upstairs to the smoking-room, and was astounded to find it, usually so empty in the morning, quite crowded with an excited throng of members. All of those present had attained or passed the middle age of life. Every face carried some strongly marked personality, and a rapid conversation was being carried on in different languages.

  Mr. Dryden was inexpressibly annoyed. He had promised himself peace and had found chaos, and his ugly face assumed a still more repulsive expression. He looked the very embodiment of friendless old age; a sour, tired old man whose death would conjure a tear from no single eye.