“Excuse me, mate.” I drew back the hammer of my pistol. Stevens looked up from his paper.
“You’re in my seat,” I said.
“Am I?” Stevens cocked whatever pistol lay under his gazette. “No need to get upset,” he said. “There’s a much better seat waiting for you in the luxury caboose. Our employer would like to speak with you.”
“If you…” I started. Stevens interrupted me.
“If you don’t get moving things are going to turn bloody chaotic here. If our employer meant you harm you would not have the benefit of seeing my face. Now be a good fellow, and I’ll keep an eye on your missus.” Stevens winked at Mary.
I tightened my grip on the pistol and looked at her. She saw my eyes, my hand, my face, and knew more about my intentions than any mind reader could have gleaned. It was at that moment that I truly fell in love with her.
Mary shook her head. I released my gun and withdrew my hand from my jacket.
“Good decision, mate. See you soon.” Stevens returned to reading his paper. I went about-face and made the long walk to the back of the train. We were six cars from the rear. Dining, baggage, passengers, a group of soldiers; everything in the world stood between me and the slow walk to my destination.
A lean Arabic guard lounged outside the luxury cabin. He opened my jacket, regarded my firearms and beckoned me through the door. It was strange to me that I wasn’t disarmed. What game was Darwin playing?
The caboose was adorned with lavender papered walls, thick carpet, overstuffed couches and a crystal chandelier that jostled with the train’s bumps and shakes. Bram Stoker sat on one of the couches, Charles Darwin on another. A second Arabic guard stood behind Darwin, motionless, expressionless. Stoker and Darwin were drinking giant snifters of brandy.
“Mr. Fellows!” Stoker rose and offered me his hand. I didn’t take it.
“How did you find me, Darwin?”
Darwin looked into his amber glass. He examined the brandy like a gypsy regarding a crystal ball, like a mystic source of knowledge and answers.
“Mr. Fellows, do you know how much of an imposition it is for a man of my age to travel? And the expense of traveling with suitable accommodations is… substantial. If it weren’t for the fact that my good friend Bram has an investigative assignment in Transylvania…” Darwin nodded at Stoker. “Well, I would be much more upset than I am.”
“How did you find me?”
Darwin waved his stick fingers to dismiss my question as though it was beneath him.
“At some point in time, I assume Lord Barnes told you his all-encompassing hypothesis of humanity. How greatness is dictated by breeding, schooling, luck, and specialty?”
“I heard him say something to that effect.”
“His absurd little bit of science is really the genesis of our rivalry. I’ve long said that man’s greatness is nothing more than his survivability. A young man can attend the best schools and die of tuberculosis before reaching adulthood. Well-bred parents can produce monsters. We see this in the royal families of Spain. Luck is a fool’s notion; it does not exist. All the world runs on cause and effect. If you are run over by a horse, it is because you stepped in its path, not because the forces of fortune are conspiring against you. And specialty, while useful, does not make up the entire equation. Specialty is food without water, bread without yeast, rain without cover. Survivability takes in all factors and focuses on results. The better man is the man who can survive the longest. Take yourself and Abraham Silver for example. He was an employee of mine, set against Barnes. You were two men of similar skills given similar tasks. In all things he seemed your superior. He was elegant, well-spoken, better educated, and less restricted to moral attachments. And yet here you stand before me while he rots in a pine wood box. You are the survivor, thus you are the greater man.”
“Get to the point, Darwin. I’m not here for your lectures.”
“You asked a question, Mr. Fellows. You cannot ask a question without receiving a thorough answer. Here is mine. I know how to find you because I see everything.”
“Pardon?”
“I see everything. I told you a moment ago that there is no such thing as luck. It would be more accurate to say there is no such thing as chaos. Ours is an orderly universe. Every event, every action and reaction is predictable. If you strike a ball with your hand the exact same way with the exact same strength over and over again it will always fly in the same direction. If this train strikes another train, the damage will be based solely on the speed of both vehicles and the point of impact. We accurately predict the days and seasons based on movement of our planet around the sun. We predict rain based on cloud formations and the better our view the more accurate our prediction. There is no such thing as chaos, Mr. Fellows. There is simply what we can observe and what we cannot observe.”
“That’s not true. I’ve been to war. Some men were lucky and survived. Some men had no luck. They were consumed by illness or torn by blades or bullets. We all went the same way but some of us came home and some of us didn’t.”
“Mr. Fellows, it is predictable that men will die in war. They always have. It is predictable that there will be survivors. There always have been. And if you were to put in front of me a regiment of men, I could unfailingly tell you which ones would come home and which ones wouldn’t. I could see which ones were faster, which ones were smarter, which ones were too brave or of weak constitution- all elements for accurate prediction. This is my gift. This is why I can look at trees and animals and tell you their accurate ancestry; this is why I knew that you would flee London and seek Mr. Alder Clemens of Budapest. I have access to your Central Bureaucracy file, I know your service record, and I’ve observed you personally. You cannot take an action that I cannot accurately predict.”
I pulled my pistol from my holster and pointed it Darwin. Bollocks to order over chaos! Darwin did not look alarmed.
“You won’t shoot me because you care about Mary. This is not a difficult thing to predict either. You have taken risks for her before, held her own safety above your own. That includes coming to this very cart instead of fleeing the train or attacking my secretary.”
I put my gun away. Darwin was right. Any action I did now was tempered by my desire to keep Mary safe. That was my main priority.
“I had a good idea where you were going. The rest was just confirming your location through contacts and setting up this meeting.”
“What do you want with me?”
“Our little game is not done. You are not done. We have much to do. Lord Barnes has been hurt. Taking the Bow Street Firm from him is the most damage I’ve ever done. He is on the ropes, but he is not finished. Lord Barnes is a worthy opponent. He has gone to ground. He has found a hiding place that I have yet to uncover, so I must draw him out. Or rather, you must draw him out.”
“I thought you could see everything. Why can’t you see him?”
“Lord Barnes has similar skills as myself, though not as well practiced. He has hidden himself in a place I cannot reach, and yet I know he will surface to come for you.”
“Why me?”
“Jacques Nouveau is dead. He was slain by an assassin’s bullet in his workshop the morning after Bow Street burned. With Nouveau gone, you are his next target, then Bram, then Stevens. These are the players of this game and when he has finished with them, when he has eliminated everyone who has any knowledge of Saxon’s automatons, he will have held me to a tie. He will hunt for you. He will find you. He will send men against you.”
“I’m your bait?”
“Yes.”
“And what if I don’t want to be your bait?”
The Arab guard made a subtle movement, a shifting in the way he stood, in where his hands were positioned.
“I’m going to present three scenarios, Jolly. Three possibilities that are within your capacities. Scenario one:; you come with me. We leave Mr. Stoker in the capable hands of Mr. Samir,” Darwin nodded at the Arab, “and re
turn to Oxford. I put you and your mistress in a well-provisioned cabin. Lord Barnes sends men against you, and we capture them using my immaculate planning. The soldiers lead to Barnes, and this ends. Scenario two: you refuse me and make a last stand in this car. You and Samir will fight to the death. You will eventually overwhelm him with your strength, but his brother outside will stab you in the back. A fatal wound I’m afraid. Also, Mr. Stevens will strangle Mary and throw her from the train. Scenario three: you agree with me in the car but decide to turn rogue outside. You shoot Mr. Stevens, claim your lady friend and leap from train into Lake Balaton, which we’ll be running parallel to in five minutes. You meet your friend in Budapest, gain employment, but are picked up by Budapest authorities within two weeks. There’ll be an international bounty on you for the murder of Dr. Saxon and you’ll have additional charges brought by your flight from justice. You will be extradited to London, convicted by a judge who sits firmly in the pocket of Lord Barnes, and hung from the neck. Your mistress will either be executed for aiding in your escape, or will be ignored by Lord Barnes and undoubtedly return to a life of prostitution. To say her pimp is upset is an understatement. Murderous would be more accurate.”
Darwin took another sip of brandy and rolled it around in his mouth before swallowing.
“So you see, Mr. Fellows, if you review the most likely scenarios, you will find that only one works in your favor.”
“What if Barnes kills me?”
“I trust in your survivability more than his. It’s a gamble I’m willing to make.”
“What happened between you two? Why all of this? I get the feeling that this really isn’t about automatic women.”
“You don’t need to know.”
“If I’m going to dangle from your fishhook, I have a right to know why.”
“Fine, it is about Saxon’s experiment, in part. His technology is new and vital and whoever claims it can absorb our former colleague’s greatness. Though to be honest I have no idea how Saxon got his Swan Princess to act on her own. She’s reassembled, you know. We have her in a cage, pacing and snapping her teeth at any who approach. With Saxon and Nouveau dead, I can’t imagine we’ll ever truly know unless I find an engineer equal to their abilities. We’ve made replicas, but none bear her life, her aggression. They are machines of war but no more useful than a sword or a gun. They only operate under specific instructions and the break-down rate is phenomenal. Not to mention the expense. Without knowing Saxon’s secret, the automaton experiment will come to an end.”
Stoker cleared his throat.
“Don’t you step in with your tale of magic Shiran runes, Bram. I’m not going imprint Babylonian mumbo-jumbo on precision machinery. If that is the secret then I refuse to accept it. Our world is a world without magic and unexplainable rubbish.”
“What about God?” asked Bram.
“God is the proxy in between science and the unknown. All things we do not know about we can attribute to God. The things we do find out about we can attribute to him also, but he is more useful as a catch-all for the unknown. How were the planets and stars formed? God did it. What energy powers the sun? God’s energy. The list goes on and on.”
Darwin turned back to me.
“Barnes and I both wanted what Saxon had. Now neither of us have it. Years ago Lord Barnes had my theories declared religious heresy. I was excommunicated from the Anglican Church. Even worse I’ve had to answer to every fool theologian since. I responded to Barnes’ attacks with petty revenges, discrediting, media attacks, anonymous accusations of sexual perversion, of mysticism. Lord Barnes defeated me over and over again. Not because he was the better man, but because I refused to go hard enough against him. He provoked my ire, and the destruction of his agency was the natural conclusion of my wrath. As I was saying, cause and effect. He will now react. He will react against you. I think we are engaged in the last act of a play that started with Lord Barnes’ words and will end with destruction of everything he holds dear, including his own petty, overestimated life.”
The cabin door swung open. Stevens and Mary entered.
“Oh good,” Darwin said. “Have a brandy, get comfortable. At the next stop we will leave Mr. Stoker and begin our journey home.”
Thirteen
Jolly and Mary Enter Forced Seclusion
Our return trip to London was significantly shorter than our voyage out. We arrived in Budapest, and parted ways with Stoker and Samir. Darwin booked us first class passage on the A.S. Sir Francis Drake, an English dirigible set for a return flight to London. The twelve hour flight to London consisted largely of Darwin getting drunk while Stevens and Samir’s brother kept a watchful eye on Mary and me. The deeper the drunk, the darker Darwin’s mood became. He got mouthy in his cups, pontificating on the functions of the living world, the causality of human interaction, and, of course, the right bastard actions of theHonorable Lord Barnes.
Lord Barnes was the founder of the evolution countermovement. He was the original naysayer of fitness and the origin of species. During our long flight I began to understand the depth and nature of Darwin’s obsession. To be called wrong when you knew you were right, to be held as a fool, to be scorned and ridiculed, was too much for a man of his abilities and disposition to bear. It was during this time that I also realized that Darwin was insane. From age or drink or rage or some combination of those, he’d gone past the edge of rationality. He’d gone to a place where war and murder could be justified, and like all old men who have a taste for war, he’d enlisted younger, impressionable men to do his fighting.
Stevens and Samir’s brother stood in silence. Stoic guards. I imagine they’d heard these rants before, but had become numb to the old naturalist’s raw anger.
Darwin felt that the true sin of Barnes’ attack on his theories, the truly infuriating thing, was that Barnes’ movement was based on faith and thus impossible to counter. A faith-based argument need not follow the chains of logic and can thus never be overturned in fair debate. Darwin would spend the rest of his living days defending what he saw as truth, as scientific law. And when he passed, for surely the day would soon come that old Darwin would shuffle off our mortal coil, his theories would continue to be disregarded. They would be held in scorn by people who did not follow logic, who would not read his books or follow his train of thought. People would dismiss him out of hand. His theories would never be counted as scientific laws because Barnes had fanned the fire of detractors. The old man broke into tears.
“Do you know what it means to hate, Mr. Fellows?”
I shook my head. I don’t imagine I’d felt a hate like he did.
“Hate is so much more intimate than love. When you truly hate someone, you take a piece of their soul. They become part of you, they occupy your thoughts, your attention, like a wound that itches and stings but you cannot reach it. The one you hate is in your thoughts when you wake. They are with you in the quiet moments when you are alone, and they are with you in the dark of night. They enter your dreams. The one you hate lives inside you, Mr. Fellows. A man can always turn his back on love. There are so many songs and poems stocked full of such tripe. But there’s no escape from hate, no turning away, no victory. I cannot expel Lord Barnes from my system, but I will hurt him. It gives me joy to hurt him. It’s the last joy granted to this withering body of mine.”
Darwin hiccupped and slumped into his couch. He returned to his place of dreams, the place of his thoughts. I assume Lord Barnes was waiting for him.
Time stretched as it does when you’re bored or frightened. At some point Mary found my hand and squeezed it. I looked at her delicate fingers, up to her eyes, and suddenly we were on a separate island. We were our own entity existing outside of danger and despair and Darwin with his violent goons. The lifts and whirls of the dirigible twisted my stomach and competed with the twists of Mary’s smile. Darwin could keep his hate, keep his rants, his grudge. Nothing was more important than that which was in front of me. Darwin said I could turn a
way from love, and that was his weakness. I disagree. When you’re in the thick of it, there is no turning away.
The A.S. Sir Francis Drake began its descent. Darwin snored loudly in his chair. Stevens broke from his stoicism and took the seat across from Mary and me.
“It goes without saying that you’ll miss your trial tomorrow,” Stevens said. “Rumors will blossom in the underworld that you’re in hiding and under the protection of Arabic smugglers. Those who have a deeper understanding will see Mr. Darwin’s hand in this. They will assume that Mr. Darwin is repaying you for your part in the destruction of the Bow Street Firm. We have a nice little place for you outside of Oxford, in Marley Wood, ideal for honeymooners such as yourselves. Mr. Hannosh and myself will be attending to you and will be apprehending any assassins who attempt to snuff out your life.”
“What if they succeed?”
Mr. Stevens cheeks dimpled as he frowned, giving him the air and look of petulant, mustached child.
“Were I a betting man, I’d say the precautions placed by Mr. Darwin give you a better than average chance. He’ll never admit it, but he was greatly distressed by Nouveau’s demise. He never makes the same mistake twice.”
“What exactly happened to Nouveau?”
“It just so happens I was there. We were in his workshop in the Bureaucracy. He was pacing the room, muttering in French about gear ratios, about sentient life, about finding himself a new line of work. I don’t think he knew I spoke his native tongue so his monologue was tragically unfiltered. All of a sudden, he turned, raised a finger in the air, shouted ‘sacre bleu’ and his head exploded. Top to bottom the whole back of his head was shorn off, like a Viking axeman sundered it. The walls, the Swan, myself, everything got a little piece of the great mind of Jacques Nouveau, the genius engineer, artist, Frenchman. At first I was speechless. The room was secure, our guards were out the front door, I was inside, and there were government agents crawling all about the place. Then I looked up. The ceiling had a near opaque skylight, maybe a meter diameter with a steeple slant. Across the street from Central Bureaucracy sits St. Clemens Dane. Whoever Barnes’ hitter was must have scaled the bell tower and waited, rifle trained on about twelve centimeters of visible space, through that God forsaken skylight. Lord knows how long he waited for Nouveau to walk his skull into the line of fire. An amazing shot, really. I can’t wait to get my hands on the shooter.”
Automatic Woman Page 14
