by Sean Wallace
He stood on the platform, considering his next move. Algernon had never been to San Antonio de Bexar. After a moment’s thought Algernon tipped a waiting wog to take his steamer trunk to the Menger Hotel, just east of the Alamo complex. Valise in hand, he set out to find his counterparts in the Texian government.
“I need to speak to Mr Browning, please.”
Algernon faced a female secretary seated at a large desk beneath a Texian seal with the added motto “Cave Custodem”. The otherwise-empty antechamber smelled of dust and furniture oil. The outer door had proclaimed this the “Bureau of Antiquities”. “Antiquities” was the not-very-secret code name the Texians used for their external intelligence service. Every Texian High Commission in the world had an antiquities attaché. Doors to each side of the desk were labeled “Exports” and “Imports”.
“¿Como?”
God help me, thought Algernon, it was a white wog. He could have sworn the woman was European.
“Señor Browning, por favor.” His Spanish didn’t go very far.
The woman shook her head.
“Really?” Algernon set his valise on her desk, opened the snaps. The female wog watched with interest.
There were good reasons women were generally not considered employable within the Empire, Algernon fumed. With the exception of Her Imperial Majesty, of course. Asking for Mr Browning was supposed to gain admittance to the offices of friendly intelligence services, assuming one knew how to find them. Leaving again was another matter entirely.
Algernon removed a miniature daguerreograph from his bag. It was of the latest mechanology from the Lucas Works in England, quite small at perhaps six inches long with a narrow barrel. Holding the pistol grip, he sighted the daguerreograph at the secretary.
“¡No!” she yelled, diving under the desk.
The daguerreograph clicked as it impressed a daguerreotype of her empty chair. Algernon pulled out the plate and quickly inserted another. He aimed it at the seal this time, centering on the star in the middle.
A door hidden in the paneled wall behind the desk opened. “Come in, Mr Black-Smith,” said a tall, dapper man with broad shoulders. Algernon was quite startled to see Istvan Szagy. Szagy was from a cadet branch of an important Austro-Hungarian noble family. He had been a year ahead of Algernon at Choate, and prefect in his house, as well as a role model for Algernon, at least between canings, buggeries and other assorted Public School torments. Algernon vaguely recalled that Szagy had planned to go into the import-export business. Szagy’s English was, as always, flawless. “Mr Browning will see you now.”
Algernon impressed a daguerreotype of Istvan Szagy in the doorway before he lowered the miniature daguerreograph and followed him through.
“Was it necessary to threaten to shoot Carmella?”
“Was it necessary to have a wog at the front door who can’t speak a Christian tongue?”
Istvan sat at a small desk topped with files, binders and a film reader. “Spanish is a Christian tongue, Algernon. I should make an effort not to forget that if I were spending time here.”
Algernon studied Istvan Szagy. Ten years out of Choate, Szagy still had his upperclassman’s body, slim-waisted and pale. The familiar shock of blond hair showed no gray yet, but there were lines around the man’s verdigris eyes. “What are you doing in Texian service, Istvan?”
“Roughly the same thing you are doing in Her Imperial Majesty’s, I imagine.” Istvan’s smile was tight-lipped. “And what brings you to the lovely San Antonio de Bexar?”
They were deep within the bowels of the Alamo, in a windowless office chilly from the thick inner walls of the fortress. Algernon was acutely aware that if he never walked out of the Bureau of Antiquities the world would be no wiser. “I’ve an errand to run for Lord Quinnipiac.”
There. He had established his high-level sponsorship. A flimsy form of insurance, but stronger than none.
“One of Mr Browning’s errands?”
“Yes.” Algernon paused, then added, “as well as a little business of my own.”
“Interesting. Well, you’d hardly start roaching on the Republic by walking in here first. And I cannot imagine you stirring up trouble for us on your own account.”
“No. Assuming it wasn’t you that stirred up trouble for me in the first place.”
In the strained silence that followed, Algernon scanned Istvan’s desk. It was the desk of a man tasked with too many objectives: overflowing with maps, messages and files, rings of tea stains stretching across entire archaeologies of paper. The initials “I.S.” appeared on so many of them that this obviously wasn’t an office borrowed just to interview him. Furthermore, a bottle of Istvan’s favorite brandy, well remembered by Algernon from their Public School days, rested on a sideboy.
“The Texian Republic has had no interest in you . . . up to now,” Szagy finally said. “In the meantime, kindly stop reading my correspondence or I shall be forced to have you shot.”
“Why don’t you use an ordinator?” Algernon looked up to meet his host’s eyes with a small smile. It was like being back at Choate all over again – the camaraderie, the threats. “All this filing, all this reading.”
“Don’t like having the damned things around. Besides, something that costly is beyond the scope of our legislative appropriation. Her Imperial Majesty may have all the money in the Bank of England, but us Texians live and die by cotton, cattle and crude oil. Most of which we sell to you.”
“Perhaps I can help.” Algernon knew that two Mark VII Lovelace units were gathering dust in the cellars of the Bishop’s Palace in Galvezton, having been replaced by newer devices straight out of the boffin works at Bletchley Park.
“And why would you do that?”
“The Mexican Throne has something belonging to Her Imperial Majesty. Lord Quinnipiac believes it to be concealed here in San Antonio de Bexar. Quid pro quo.”
“And what would that ‘something’ be?”
“A Privy Report binder.”
“Lord Quinnipiac wouldn’t tell you what was in it, eh?” Istvan laughed. He pulled a sheet of type-impressed foolscap from under a smashed Krupp machine pistol cast in bronze. “Got a pneu directly from H.I.M.’s Consulate-General in Galvezton a few hours before you came. I decided to hold it back from my superiors to see what might turn up. You, in this case.”
Istvan handed the pneumat-o-graph to Algernon, who read the hand transcription from a presumably cryptogrammed original.
::: HIM-CG-GALVZ TO REPTEX-ANTIQ-SADBXR ::: STOP : ALGERNON BLACK-SMITH A-K-A IRONMAN IN TRANS TO SADBXR : STOP : ARMED-DANGEROUS : STOP : APPREHEND IN STRICTEST SECRECY HOLD FOR H-I-M GOVT : STOP : ALL REQUIRED FORCE AUTHIZED : STOP : REPLY ONLY THIS OFC : STOP ::: LORD QUINN : HIM-CGGALVZ :::
“Ridiculous,” said Algernon. “I am not armed.” His chest felt cold and tight. Clearly, it was Quinnipiac who had tried to have him killed. Why? Was the binder real, or some other plot afoot? “I see,” he muttered.
“No, you don’t, unless you’re a damn sight smarter than I am, which I know from Choate that you are not.” Istvan smiled more broadly and a produced a derringer from his desk drawer. “Oh, and, by the way, I place you under arrest in the name of the Republic of Texas.”
Algernon carefully laid both hands flat on the front edge of Istvan’s desk. “Very well. Now what?”
“Now we go for a short walk.”
Algernon had taken more than a few people for “short walks” in his career. He knew what that usually meant. He could smell the sudden, sharp odor of his own fear.
The Swiss-built funicular car lurched away from the Dillardo’s building, home to the largest group of shops in the Republic. Algernon sat gripping his valise, staring out at the skytowers. The car was roughly the shape of a bullet, windowed all around with glass except for the automated mechanology enclosed within the roof-spine. It hung from cables strung in tandem with the pneumatic lines that drove the car. Despite the modernity of the design, the interior had the famili
ar public transit smell of old shoes and hydraulic fluid.
Istvan had cleared the car by the simple expedient of showing a fare inspector’s badge. Now they were alone high above the ground, lurching from tower to tower on the long haul from Dillardo’s to the Zoological Gardens east of the city. The derringer was no longer in evidence, but Algernon wondered if Istvan planned to drop him onto the railroad tracks as they crossed.
“Even our best recorders do not work well up here,” said Istvan. “That was a treasonous statement I just made, by the way.”
This is it, then. Algernon imagined the plunge from the funicular car, the scream he would be unable to bottle in, the wind whipping across his ears like the slaps of his childhood governess. “So what are we doing here?”
“Speaking in the most secrecy I can manage on the spur of the moment.” Istvan grinned, his natural bully’s smile Algernon remembered so well from Choate. “Far away from unfriendly ears both Texian and Papist in that damned Alamo rat palace. There’s a question I want to ask in privacy. Consider this, Ironman: why would Lord Quinnipiac send a pneu directly to the Bureau of Antiquities and not go through H.I.M.’s High Commission here in San Antonio de Bexar? Especially a pneu as sensitive as a termination order for one of Her Imperial’s more successful field agents?”
“Because the bastard wants to kill me!” Algernon shouted, pounding his fist against the glass wall of the car. This would be a stupid way to die, at Istvan’s hands. He whirled, stalking down the length of the car, his frustration having finally gotten the better of him. “And I don’t even know why. Quinnipiac told me he suspects corruption here, complicity in the matter of the missing Privy Report. But someone tried to kill me in Galvezton two days ago. Quinnipiac made it clear he knew all about it before sending me on this snipe hunt. A steam ram jumped the electro-guides and nearly ran me down.”
“No harm done, eh?” asked Istvan. “Maybe a few wogs got squashed?”
Leaning against two of the iron ribs of the car, Algernon stared down at a landscape of cottonwoods and pecans as the funicular lurched closer to the zoological gardens. It could have been him ground to paste between the cobbles, like screaming nuns. But it hadn’t been. “No, no harm, I suppose.”
“No harm. They’re just wogs,” said Istvan. “That’s why I work here. Wogs are people too. Texas is a far cry from Budapest, London or Boston, but wogs are people here. Her Imperial Majesty has them snuffed out like candles at the first inconvenience. Suddenly, you’re Quinnipiac’s candle. How does it feel to be a white wog, Ironman?”
The car lurched past another cable tower. Algernon began whispering to the glass. “I’ve used a Thompson gun to force askaris forward against German armor in Tanganyika. In 1955, I threw Kazakh women over the walls of Urga. I once drove an entire Inupiat village to overrun Russian artillery. We do what we must, Istvan, to maintain order in the world, and the supremacy of the British Crown. You may be right about the wogs, but regardless of that I have my sworn duty.” He stopped, gathering his words. Duty, thought Algernon. Duty, even in the face of attack by his superiors. Was this what he continued to struggle for? An early death for someone else’s political convenience?
Algernon turned away from the window to face Istvan again. “I don’t understand something. Lord Quinnipiac could have had me killed in Galvezton without difficulty. Why send me to you?”
Istvan nodded, as if he had following the same line of thought. “I have reason to believe the stolen Privy Report is real, not a cover story. Perhaps he wants your death to contribute to whatever is momentous about that document. You would make excellent cover for a plot – a man of proven ability and ambition, resentfully believing he’d been denied advancement due to his station of birth.”
“I have been denied advancement. I will overcome that handicap in time. That’s the price I pay for being an Englishman.” He smiled toothsomely at Istvan. “There is no finer fate on God’s earth. Now, let me ask you a treasonous question of my own. Do you know what is in the report?”
“With luck, we both will soon.” Istvan stood to open the door of the funicular car to the ringing of a safety bell. “We exit here.”
They were still high above the ground.
Algernon was not afraid of falling, in the usual sense. He swam for sport, and had jumped from some stern cliffs while on seaside holidays. Istvan, though, had grabbed Algernon’s arms and simply shoved him from the car, valise and all. As Algernon fell, he was pleased to realize he was not screaming. He was surprised to see Istvan leave the car to fall above him, pacing Algernon in his descent.
Istvan called out to Algernon, but his words were lost in the wind. Somehow, Istvan looked less alarmed than Algernon felt. Algernon twisted his body to see a quarry lake approaching very rapidly. He released his valise and tucked into a dive just before impact.
It was like being beaten with hammers. The flat slap of the water tore at every joint in his body even as he cleaved the surface. Algernon twisted, arcing out of his sharp drop to avoid what was doubtless a rocky bottom. His lungs felt collapsed by the impact, and all he could see was a murky green. Algernon had no idea where the surface was. His head ached from the impact with the water and he could not find his balance. His nose stung with the itch of water forced into his sinuses.
Algernon began to kick, just to establish direction and get himself out of the cloud of bubbles that had followed him into the water. He still couldn’t tell where the surface was. His lungs stung while his mouth threatened to swell open and breathe in the entire lake. Red flashes of panic overwhelmed his murky vision of the world.
Something grabbed his ankle. Algernon tried to scream, caught himself in time, and kicked with his free foot. He was being pulled down, pulled under. His red flashes were going to black. Algernon knew he was about to drown as a hand caught his collar and pulled him to the surface.
“Good God, man!” Treading water, Istvan shook his collar. “You lettered in aquatics at Choate. Keep your head next time!”
Algernon coughed, then spat, choking on lake water and gratitude. Following Istvan’s lead, he swam toward one of the bounding cliffs.
They shook off the worst of the lake water inside a pocket cave at the waterline of one of the quarry walls. Somehow Istvan had also saved Algernon’s valise, though it was soaked. His papers were certainly ruined. Perhaps the daguerreograph could be salvaged.
“What was the purpose of that?” Algernon asked. The plunge and his subsequent soaking had driven the temper right out of him, restoring his rightful analytical perspective.
Istvan took off one shoe, dumping water and sludge. “I don’t do it very often, for reasons that should be clear. Not to mention it would eventually be noticed. But you have disappeared.”
“From whom? Certainly not you.”
“Mexicans. Papists. British. Perhaps even elements of my own government.” Istvan took off his other shoe. “Whoever wants you dead. I fear what may happen if the Republic is implicated in this growing British scandal.”
“You’re going to a lot of trouble for me.”
“I’m going to a lot of trouble for Texas. That it benefits a fellow Choate alum and a British gentleman is mere lagniappe.”
“Thank you, nonetheless.”
“Think nothing of it.”
They rose, Algernon now holding his dripping valise. Istvan led him to the back of the cave where he opened a hidden door. A narrow corridor lit by a few white gas lamps trailed into a dim distance.
The Bureau of Antiquities had a large complex in the cave system just east of San Antonio de Bexar. Algernon was impressed at the effort to which the colonials had gone, although it was more understandable with European nobility such as Istvan on their staff.
As they walked along, Istvan explained that the cave complex had its own electrical dynamos and hydraulic pumps. Water was drawn from the quarry lake, while fuel and hydraulic pressure were brought in from city mains. What surprised Algernon was the degree and sophisticati
on of the miniaturized mechanology all around him.
“Look,” said Istvan, leading them to an equipment room. He handed Algernon a sealed wooden box about the size of a loaf of bread. “This is a self-contained Stirling engine. It drives an electromagnetic emitter. A man could carry this inside a common valise or dispatch case and report his whereabouts and activities by wireless, from a distance of perhaps several hundred yards. This will bring our tradecraft into the twentieth century!”
“I’ve never see the like,” said Algernon.
“Of course not.” Istvan’s smile was tight again. “It was designed and built by wog boffins on staff here.”
“Wog boffins.” Algernon shook his head. What was the world coming to?
“And here . . .” Istvan picked up a pistol about the size of the one Lord Quinnipiac had fired at Algernon, but lacking a hose clipped to the butt of the grip. “We’ve been working on miniature high-pressure vessels for steam efficiency. That’s produced some side benefits.” He chambered a round. “Super-compressed air. Not as efficient as ordinary gunpowder, but portable, unlike hydraulics, and much quieter. Perfectly fine for short work and doesn’t tip off gunpowder-sniffing dogs.”
Istvan fired the gun into the wooden cladding at the far wall of the underground room. Splinters flew with a sharp thump, but there was no echoing report whatsoever.
“I suppose you’ve got ordinators down here too,” said Algernon.
Istvan smiled big again. “L’Argent Internationale, the best Paris will export. Two metric tons of fine-tuned Continental mechanology.”
Algernon thought again of the Lovelaces stored down in Galvezton. They were a fraction of the capability of the Texians’ froggie L.A.I., but at a fraction of the size and cost as well. Her Imperial Majesty’s ordinator boffins, whom the yobs called “stackers”, were combining small, cheap units to do the work of a bigloom like Istvan’s L.A.I. “I thought you didn’t have the budget for ordinators.”
