Magnificent Devices [5] A Lady of Resources

by Shelley Adina

  He laid the plate upon the table. On the other end of the table sat a heavy metal helmet—goodness, is that what one wore while attempting to sleep? That would make it even more impossible, unless there were a pillow concealed inside.

  “Because the conscious mind can be most unreliable. Imagine Sir Robert Peel’s policing force, for example. Five different witnesses to a murder could give five different accounts of the perpetrator. But if their dreams and memories were freed of the conscious mind’s tendency to edit and preserve itself, the police might obtain a more reliable image of the murderer—and they would have a better chance of catching him.”

  “I see,” she said slowly. “Is that the only use for it? Is Father sponsoring these experiments solely for the public good?”

  He smiled and touched the helmet, which bristled with wires and cables and a long hose that ran into the body of the larger device. “Many of our country’s advancements began as a way to accomplish one thing important to one individual. It is not until later that one sees how it may benefit many.”

  “And what does Father want to accomplish?”

  “He wishes to preserve as many memories of those he loves—or has loved—as possible. Apparently Cousin Claude remembers very little of his own mother. Nor, I imagine, do you remember much of yours. Or am I mistaken?”

  She gazed at him, marveling anew at the things she was learning about her father, who had been a stranger only a few short weeks ago. “No. You are not mistaken.”

  “He possesses no images of Claude’s mother. That is why he went to the trouble of having your own mother’s portrait painted. But once this device becomes fully able to do what he envisions for it, he will submit himself upon the table and hope that I can harvest some images to give to Claude.”

  Lizzie found her throat closing with emotion, and it was a moment before she could speak. “I should very much like to assist you, then, Evan. I should like to help make that a reality for both my father and my half-brother.”

  He gazed across the table at her, and a long dimple creased his cheek. “I am glad, and your father will be, too.”

  “Shall we begin now?”

  His dismay as he perceived that she was serious was almost comical. “Oh no, no. It takes a day to prepare the device for a subject, and with the crowd coming this evening I cannot even begin. I am to present a paper on it after dinner, and I must finish a few final notes.”

  “Tomorrow, then?”

  “They will tour this tower tomorrow morning, and return to London in the afternoon. But if I work part of the night, I could have everything ready by the next day.”

  “How can I assist you?”

  He reared back as though retreating from her in sheer incredulity. “Assist me? I think not.”

  “I do not see why you should say that. My sister—cousin—and I made a walking coop with hydraulic legs, powered by the lightning cell invented by Dr. Rosemary Craig, when we were ten. I am quite capable of lending my lily-white hands to this effort should you need them.”

  “Rosemary Craig.” His voice was hushed, the way some people spoke of Her Majesty—or God. “One of the greatest minds of our time.”

  “I am glad you agree. I shall tell her you said so, the next time I write.”

  Oh, she’d done it now. He goggled at her in such surprise he could not speak for a full thirty seconds. “You—you know Doctor Craig? Personally?”

  “Yes, of course. She assisted us with the walking coop. That was before she set out on her travels, and long before she took up residence in Edmonton, of course.”

  She had quite winded him now. “I must say, Cousin Elizabeth, that you astound me on a regular basis.”

  “For goodness sake, if we are to be related, you must call me Lizzie.” She tried to roll the dream helmet up to get a look inside it, but the bolts on the outside prevented it. “You should come out of your tower more. Clearly your sphere of experience is in need of expansion, if you judge me by so low a standard.”

  “I have not judged you at all, except to observe that you have rather a livelier mind than most, with fewer plates of metaphorical glass between it and the rest of the world.”

  What an odd way he had of saying things that she was not entirely sure were complimentary. She gave up on the helmet and wandered around the edges of the equipment.

  “I should be honored to be mentioned in the smallest capacity to Doctor Craig,” Evan said, returning to the subject at hand. “I will not presume so far as to speak of my great admiration for her achievements, but perhaps you might present my humble compliments in your next letter.”

  “I shall indeed. I was going to write letters this afternoon, in fact.”

  “Oh, don’t go yet.”

  She had no intention of going yet. “I do not see the telescope. Where is it?” She looked behind the equipment, and then up at the glass globe.

  “It is not in here, but up on the top floor—the parapet, I suppose you would call it. But no one is permitted up there except your father.”

  “And you, I presume.”

  “No, not even me.”

  “But we are family. Surely that restriction applies to the staff and guests, not to us.”

  She was quite certain he snorted, but since he had gone behind the screen to replace the plates, she could not be sure. “It certainly does apply to family—can you imagine the result if Claude decided to fiddle with the second most powerful telescope in England?”

  Look—here was the base of a stone stair that wound up the walls of the tower in a steep spiral. She began to climb.

  He came out from behind the screen and saw her. “Miss—Lizzie, no! What are you doing?”

  “I am quite sure that particular rule does not apply to either of us,” she called down. “I am going to see the telescope so that I may converse intelligently with our guests if the subject should come up this evening. And so should you.”

  “Lizzie!” His boots scraped on the stone steps as he began to climb after her. “I beg of you, come down.” When she ignored him, he climbed faster, his steps falling in a syncopated rhythm with hers. “Botheration, girl. Do be careful. There is no railing because I do not want any extraneous metal objects in here that could wreak havoc with the conductivity of the current. If you fall, the damage will be permanent.”

  “I have no intention of falling.” To someone who had grown up on the dockside catwalks, to say nothing of Athena’s rigging, climbing a set of stairs fixed into a stone wall that hadn’t moved in a thousand years was child’s play. Or so she told herself. Up and up they climbed, until she reached the point where she could look down no longer, and focused on the curving radius of each step. Not for worlds would she admit to him her fear of heights, which had not begun to affect her until she’d come level with the great glass globe. No matter. She had started this, and she would finish it.

  At the very top, the steps ran up into the ceiling, but with half a dozen to go, she saw a lever set into the wall, obviously to open the door. She pulled it down and with a smooth clicking of gears in good working order, the floor above retracted into a deep slot in the ceiling, leaving an opening like that of a trap door.

  She stepped through, into the breezy sunlight.

  Lizzie could not bring herself to look over the parapet at the ground some two hundred feet below. But even if she’d had no fear at all, her astounded gaze would have been drawn to the huge barrel of the telescope protruding from the brass dome built on top of the tower.

  Evan emerged from the trap door and lifted his face to the sky as though he had not seen it in some time. Then he crossed to the parapet and gazed out at the Cotswold hills, with copses of trees folded lovingly into their valleys, and a village not far off with stone cottages, thatched roofs, and a church spire. All of which she could see quite comfortably from the base of the telescope, thank you. There was no need to join him at the embrasure.

  The breeze snatched at her skirts and tossed them flat against her legs. B
efore it threw her hair over her face, she pulled open the door—which was not locked—and let herself into the dome.

  The apparatus that governed the telescope’s angle and direction of sight was equally huge. It looked like a cross between a gyroscope and the insides of an exceedingly large watch. Extending out of the complicated array of gears for turning and aiming it was the brass barrel, the tip of which was visible from the outside through a slot in the dome’s roof.

  “We are going to be in so much trouble if we are discovered.” Evan closed the door and gazed up in awe. “Great Caesar’s ghost. Look at the size of it.”

  “Why do you suppose Father has forbidden it to anyone?” She mounted the steps to what she could only call the pilot’s chair, and seated herself on the leather seat. The ocular assembly was too tall for her, as though a man usually sat here, so she gave it a tug. On well-oiled and silent bearings, the assembly lowered itself to her eye level, bobbing slightly, and she looked through it.

  Nothing.

  How very strange. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Of course not. There are no stars or planets visible at nearly noon.”

  As if she did not know that. “I should be able to see sky, at least,” she said impatiently. “But it is all black. Does it require electricks in order to operate?”

  “If you move and allow me to sit there, I will tell you. And if we are discovered, it is much better that I should take the blame than you.”

  She descended the steps and traded places with him. “Why should you do that? We are in this together, it seems to me.”

  Settling himself into the seat, he said, “Because firstly, I am the elder, and secondly, Charles tasked me with the responsibility to see that no one comes up, given that I am here most of the time. So you are safe.”

  He applied his eye to the viewing assembly. Frowned. Raised his head and gazed at the controls as if they were an equation that could be solved with sufficient concentration.

  “I told you.” Lizzie tried not to sound smug, without success.

  “There are no electricks up here, so it cannot require power. The engine powers the directional assembly only, it seems. The telescope itself is separated from it, and it appears the vertical aim is accomplished with this hand crank. So why …?”

  “Perhaps there is a cap on the end of it.”

  “Perhaps you are right. We may be required to remove it—but for now, I suggest we remove ourselves. Come, Lizzie. We need to go down.”

  “Just check,” she begged. “Have a look outside while I lower it. I should love to see the village, at least, if I cannot see the stars, and this may well be my only chance. Please?”

  “Very well,” he said after some mental struggle. “But only for a moment. If Charles should happen outside and see that the barrel has been moved there will be hell to pay.”

  Once the door closed behind him, Lizzie lowered the telescope’s barrel using the hand crank, which made the gears and wheels within the gyroscope circle and adjust. Her hands fell naturally onto two levers somewhat similar to the driving bar in the Lady’s steam landau. What were these for?

  Gently, her lower lip between her teeth, she moved the lever just an inch toward the barrel.

  Nothing.

  Another inch.

  Another set of gears engaged and began to turn. Lizzie nearly choked on her own indrawn breath, and pulled on the lever to make them stop.

  But they did not. Once engaged, it seemed the process must be completed.

  With a whimper, she pushed the lever all the way forward when it began to shake with the demand that she do so. The next set of gears engaged, and then a drive chain, and with a sliding thunk! the side of the telescope opened and a gleaming brass arm swiveled in her direction.

  She could not have moved if she tried. She was frozen on the leather seat, cold alarm moving over her skin at what she had done.

  The arm clamped onto a cylindrical object that had just slid heavily down a chute next to her, removed it, and inserted it into the slot in the side of the telescope barrel. The brass door in the barrel slid shut with a clang and the arm ratcheted back whence it had come. A light glowed in the ocular assembly.

  She put her eye to the eyepiece and saw the bright blue of heaven.

  She could still hear Evan’s boots on the stone outside as he circled the barrel, trying to see what was at the end of it as it tilted up to the sky. There was no cap. No, whatever had been blocking her view was gone now, because what it needed had been supplied.

  In the ocular assembly, on the side of the bright field of vision it allowed, a brass wheel engraved with tiny capital letters clicked into place.

  ARMED

  Lizzie’s spine lost its ability to hold her up, and she wilted back against the leather seat, immobile with horror.

  This was no telescope sitting on top of the tower, waiting for a clear night and a gentleman hobbyist’s leisure.

  It was a bloody great cannon.

  And she had just loaded it.

  16

  Evan must not know that Lizzie knew what the telescope really was. If he already knew, she might be in danger. If he did not, then she did not want to endanger him.

  Quickly, she returned the tilt of the barrel to what it had been before, adjusted the ocular assembly to its previous height, and hopped down from the seat. She had just stepped outside and closed the door behind her when he reappeared from around the back of the dome.

  “There is no cap that I can see, Lizzie … why … what is the matter?”

  She could not help the color of her complexion, nor its clamminess. But she could use it. “I—I did not want to tell you before, but … Evan … I have a terrible fear of heights. I’m afraid I can’t conceal it any longer. I—I need your help to get down.”

  “Good heavens, you goose.” He passed an arm about her waist and assisted her over to the trap door. “Pride has gotten many a good scientist into trouble, but I would never have suspected it of you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She took a few unsteady steps down after him and would have fallen to her knees in thanks when the trap door slid shut above them if there had been anything to fall upon.

  “Hug the wall,” he ordered from a few steps below her. “You must be brave, Lizzie. I cannot carry you. All I can do is provide a cushion to land upon, and even that may not save us both if you fall.”

  “I shan’t fall.” She concentrated on the cut stones in the tower wall, her shaking hands running over the cold edges where they fit together, feeling her courage return with every step downward toward the ground and away from that cannon.

  Did Evan know what it really was? Was he being paid to keep it a secret—to keep people out?

  No, that could not be. He had followed her up as blithely as she had gone, more like an older brother anxious for the well-being of a naughty child than a villain determined to keep her away from a terrible weapon.

  Her original instinct for silence, drilled into her by her years under Snouts’s protection, did not fail her. She refused his escort into the house, making light of her feminine weakness until she reached the safety of her room. Then she flung herself upon the bed while her legs twitched and trembled with the tension of that climb down the tower wall.

  That, and the urge to flee.

  If Evan were innocent of the telescope’s true purpose, she would do everything in her power to keep that knowledge from him. The greater question was, what on earth was it doing up there? Why was her father passing it off as a telescope when it clearly could never be used? What if someone heard about the “second most powerful telescope in England” and actually wanted to look at a star or two? One of the scientists coming that afternoon, for example. Would he simply tell them it was undergoing maintenance and could not be used at present?

  And for goodness sake, what was it being used for?

  She must find out.

  She could not believe that a man as kind and generous as her father wo
uld knowingly keep a weapon of that size and power on his roof. Perhaps he had been deceived. Perhaps he thought it was a telescope, and had simply never had the time to climb into the pilot’s seat and actually use it. Perhaps there had been a mix-up in the order, and someone in—in the Texican Territories was presently puzzling over a giant telescope in a crate instead of the cannon they had been expecting.

  Oh, how she wished Maggie were here!

  The two of them had ferreted out many a secret over the years, and solved a mystery or two as well. Even the Lady had laughed during their first Christmas at Wilton Crescent at her lack of success in hiding the presents from them. With Maggie here, at least she would have someone to talk to. Someone to tell her she was crazy for thinking ill of a man who had done so much for her. Someone to soothe her mind, which never failed to leap to the worst conclusions—a habit she tried hard to break but in which she had seen little success.

  No, she could not think ill of her father. It was a mistake, that was all—a mistake of colossal proportions, mind you, but it was the only explanation.

  Well, except for the one that suggested her father wanted to shoot something out of the sky.

  Lizzie tried to stop her mind from going there, but she could not. She and Maggie had not survived the streets of Whitechapel by blinding themselves to facts. If something walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, in all probability it was a duck. How many times had Snouts told them that? And how many times had he been proven maddeningly right?

  Stop thinking in this way. It is disloyal to your family.

  But she could not. The image of that cannon concealed on the roof of the tower haunted her.

  All right, then, if you must betray by your thoughts a man who has gone to such lengths to bring you back to him … what does one shoot out of the sky?

  Pheasant.

  Not with a cannon. Try again.

  Aeronautic conveyances.

  Yes. Airships, rocket rucksacks, pigeons—