The Difference Engine

by William Gibson

  They worked in the gloom for a while, clearing space, digging in deeper, heaving up some of the bales to serve as crenellations. At the sound of their activity, more shots came, muzzle-flashes savagely lighting the darkness, bullets screaming off iron braces overhead. Here and there in the heaps of merchandise, the kindled light of lanterns glowed.

  More shouted orders, and the firing ceased. There was a flurry of pattering on the metal roof, swiftly gone.

  "What was that?" Tom asked.

  "Sounded like rats scampering," Mallory said.

  "Rain!" Fraser suggested.

  Mallory said nothing. Another ash-fall seemed far more likely.

  The gloom lightened again, quite suddenly. Mallory peered over the edge. A crowd of the rascals were creeping forward, almost to the foot of the ramparts, barefoot and in hushed silence, some with knives in their teeth. Mallory bellowed in alarm and began firing.

  He was blinded at once by his own muzzle-flashes, but the Ballester-Molina, kicking and pumping, seemed to have a life of its own; in an instant the three remaining rounds were gone. Not wasted, though; at such short range he had not been able to miss. Two men were down, a third crawling, and the rest fleeing in terror.

  Mallory could hear them re-grouping out of sight, milling, cursing each other. Mallory, his gun empty, grasped its hot barrel like a club.

  The building shook with the awful roar of Brian's pistol.

  The silence afterward was broken by agonized screams. A long and harrowing minute passed then, filled with infernal yells from the wounded and dying, with a crashing, a cursing and clattering.

  Suddenly a dark form came catapulting into their midst, stinking of gunpowder.

  Brian.

  "Good job you didn't shoot me," he said. "Damme, it's dark in here, ain't it?"

  "Are ye all right, lad?" Mallory said.

  "Nicks," Brian said, getting to his feet. "Look what I brought ye, Ned."

  He passed the thing into Mallory's hands. The smooth heavy form of stock and barrel fit Mallory's grip like silk. It was a buffalo-rifle.

  "They've a whole crate of such beauties," Brian said. "Out in a pokey little office, across the way. And munitions with it, though I could only carry two boxes."

  Mallory began loading the rifle at once, round after brassy round clicking into the spring-loader with a ticking like fine clockwork.

  "Queer business," Brian said. "Don't think they knew I was loose among them. No proper sense of strategy. Don't seem to be any Army traitors among this rabble, I'll tell you that!"

  "That barker of yours is a marvel, lad," Fraser said.

  Brian grunted. "Not anymore, Mr. Fraser. I'd only two rounds. Wish I'd held back, but when I saw that lovely chance for enfilading-fire. I'd got to take it."

  "Never you mind," Mallory told him, caressing the rifle's walnut stock. "If we'd four of these, we could hold 'em back all week."

  "My apologies!" Brian said. "But I won't be doing much more of a proper reconnaissance-in-force. They winged me a bit."

  A stray bullet had seared across the front of Brian's shin. White bone showed in the shallow wound and his filth-caked boot was full of blood. Fraser and Tom wadded clean cotton against the wound while Mallory kept watch with the rifle.

  "Enough," Brian protested at last, "you fellows carry on to beat Lady Nightingale. D'ye see anything, Ned?"

  "No," Mallory said. "I hear them plotting mischief, though."

  "They're back in three mustering-grounds," Brian said. "They had a rally-point just out of your line-of-fire, but I raked 'em there with the Tsar's slag-shot. I doubt they'll rush us again. They've not got the nerve for it now."

  "What will they do, then?"

  "Some sort of sapper's work. I'd wager," Brian said. "Advancing barricades, perhaps something on wheels." He spat dryly. "Damme, I need a drink. I haven't been this dry since Lucknow."

  "Sorry," Mallory said.

  Brian sighed. "We had a very pukka water-boy with the regiment in India. That bleeding little Hindu was worth any ten of these buggers!"

  "Did you see the woman?" Fraser asked him. "Or Captain Swing?"

  "No," Brian said. "I was staying to cover, creeping about. Looking for a better class of firearm, mostly, something with a range. Queer things I saw, too. Found Ned's game-rifle in a little office-room, not a soul in it but a little clerky chap, writing at a desk. Pair of candles burning, papers all scattered about. Full of crated guns for export, and why they're keeping those fine rifles back with some clerk, and passing out Victorias, is beyond my professional understanding."

  A wave of drowned and greenish light passed into the building—outlining, as it passed, an armed man rising up a pulley-line, seated in a noose. Swift as thought. Mallory centered his bead on the man, exhaled, fired. The man flopped backward, dangled from his knees, hung limp.

  Rifle-fire began to smack into the cotton. Mallory ducked down again.

  "Fine emplacements, cotton-bales," said Brian with satisfaction, patting the burlapped floor. "Hickory Jackson hid behind 'em in New Orleans, and gave us a toweling, too."

  "What happened in the office-room, Brian?" Tom asked.

  "Fellow rolled himself a sort of papirosi," Brian said. "Know those? Turkish baccy-wraps. 'Cept the bugger took an eye-dropper from a little medical vial, dribbled it about on the paper first, then wrapped some queer leaf from a candy jar. I'd a proper look at his face when he lit his smoke from the candle, and he'd a very absent look, deluded you might say, rather like brother Ned here with one of his scholarly problems!" Brian laughed drily, meaning no harm. "Scarcely seemed right to disturb his fancy then, so I took a rifle and a box or two real quiet-like, and left!"

  Tom laughed.

  "You'd a good look, eh?" Mallory asked.

  "Surely."

  "Fellow had a bump on his forehead, right here?"

  "Damme if he didn't!"

  "That was Captain Swing," Mallory said.

  "Then I'm a chuckleheaded fool!" Brian cried. "Didn't seem right to shoot a man in the back, but if I'd knowed it was him I'd have blowed his lumpy headpiece off!"

  "Doctor Edward Mallory!" a voice cried, from the darkened floor below.

  Mallory rose, peered around a bale. The Marquess of Hastings stood below them, his head bandaged and a lantern in one hand. He waved a white kerchief on a stick.

  "Leviathan Mallory, a parley with you!" the Marquess shouted.

  "Speak up then," Mallory said, careful not to show his head.

  "You're trapped here, Dr. Mallory! But we've an offer for you. If you'll tell us where you've hidden a certain object of value, which you stole, then we'll let you and your brothers go free. But your police-spy from the Special Bureau must stay. We have questions for him."

  Mallory laughed him to scorn. "Hear me, Hastings, and all the rest of you! Send us that maniac Swing and his murdering tart, with their hands bound! Then we'll let the rest of you creep out of here before the Army comes!"

  "A show of insolence avails you nothing," the Marquess said. "We shall fire that cotton, and you'll roast like a brace of rabbits!"

  Mallory turned. "Can he do that?"

  "Cotton won't burn worth a hang when it's packed tight as this," Brian theorized.

  "Surely, burn it!" Mallory shouted. "Burn down the whole godown and smother to death in the smoke."

  "You've been very bold. Dr. Mallory, and very lucky. But our choicest men patrol the streets of Limehouse now, liquidating the police! Soon they shall return, hardened soldiers, veterans of Manhattan! They'll take your little hideaway by storm, at the point of the bayonet! Come out now, while you've yet a chance to live!"

  "We fear no Yankee rabble! Bring 'em on, for a taste of grapeshot!"

  "We've made our offer! Reason it through, like a proper savant!"

  "Go to hell," Mallory said. "Send me Swing; I want to talk to Swing! I've had my fill of you, you poncey little traitor."

  The Marquess retreated. After some moments, a desultory firing b
egan. Mallory expended half a box of cartridges, returning fire at the muzzle-flashes.

  The anarchists then commenced the painful work of advancing a siege-engine. It was an improvised phalanx of three heavy dolly-carts, their fronts lashed with a sloping armor of marbled table-tops. The rolling armor was too wide to fit down the crooked alley to the cotton-bales, so the rebels dug their way through the heaps of goods, piling them up by the flanks of the freight-dollies. Mallory wounded two of them at their work, but they grew wiser with experience, and soon had erected a covered walkway behind the advancing siege-works.

  There seemed to be far more men in the warehouse now. It had grown darker yet, but lantern-light showed here and there and the iron beams were full of snipers. There was loud talk—argument it seemed—to add to the groans of the wounded.

  The siege-works crept closer yet. They were now below Mallory's best line-of-fire. If he exposed himself in an attempt to lean over the ramparts, without doubt the snipers would hit him.

  The siege-works reached the base of the cotton-bales. There was a sound of shredding at the base of the wall.

  A warped and muffled voice—assisted perhaps by a megaphone—sounded from within the siege-works. "Dr. Mallory!"

  "Yes?"

  "You asked for me—here I am! We are toppling the wall of your palace, Dr. Mallory. Soon you will be quite exposed."

  "Hard work for a professional gambler. Captain Swing! Don't blister your delicate hands!"

  Tom and Fraser, who had been working in tandem, toppled a heavy cotton-bale onto the siege-works. It bounced off harmlessly. Well-concerted fire raked the fortress, sending the defenders diving for cover.

  "Cease fire!" Swing shouted, and laughed.

  "Have a care, Swing! If you shoot me, you'll never learn where the Modus is hidden."

  "Still the Mustering fool! You stole the Modus from us at the Derby. You might have returned it to us, and spared yourself certain destruction! You stubborn ignoramus, you don't even have a notion of the thing's true purpose!"

  "It belongs by right to the Queen of Engines, and I know that well enough."

  "If you think that, you know nothing."

  "I know it is Ada's, for she told me so. And she knows where it is hidden, for I told her where I keep it!"

  "Liar!" Swing shouted. "If Ada knew, we would have it already. She is one of us!"

  Tom groaned aloud.

  "You are her tormentors. Swing!"

  "I tell you Ada is ours."

  "The daughter of Byron would never betray the realm."

  "Byron's dead!" Swing cried, with the terrible conviction of truth. "And all that he built, all that you believe in, will now be swept away."

  "You're dreaming."

  There was a long silence. Then Swing spoke again, in a new and coaxing voice. "The Army now fires upon the people. Dr. Mallory."

  Mallory said nothing.

  "The British Army, the very bulwark of your so-called civilization, now shoots your fellow citizens dead in the streets. Men and women with stones in their hands are being murdered with rapid-fire weapons. Can you not hear it?"

  Mallory made no reply.

  "You have built on sand, Dr. Mallory. The tree of your prosperity is rooted in dark murder. The masses can endure you no longer. Blood cries out from the seven-cursed streets of Babylondon!"

  "Come out, Swing!" Mallory cried. "Come out of your darkness, let me see your face!"

  "Not likely," Swing said.

  There was another silence.

  "I intended to take you alive. Dr. Mallory," Swing said, in a voice of finality. "But if you have truly confessed your secret to Ada Byron, then I have no more need of you. My trusted comrade, my life's companion—she holds the Queen of Engines in a perfect net! We shall have Lady Ada, and the Modus, and futurity as well. And you shall have the depths of the poisoned Thames for your sepulchre."

  "Kill us then, and stop your damned blather!" Fraser shouted suddenly, stung beyond endurance. "Special Branch will see you kicking at a rope's end if it takes a hundred years."

  "The voice of authority!" Swing taunted. "The almighty British Government! You're fine at mowing down poor wretches in the street, but let us see your bloated plutocrats take this warehouse, when we hold merchandise worth millions hostage here."

  "You must be completely mad," Mallory said.

  "Why do you suppose I chose this place as my headquarters? You are governed by shopkeepers, who value their precious goods more than any number of human lives! They will never fire on their own warehouses, their own shipping. We are impregnable here!"

  Mallory laughed. "You utter jolterhead! If Byron's dead, then the Government is in the hands of Lord Babbage and his emergency committees. Babbage is a master pragmatist! He'll not be stayed by concern for any amount of merchandise."

  "Babbage is the pawn of the capitalists."

  "He's a visionary, you deluded little clown! Once he learns you're in here, he'll blast this place into the heavens without a second thought!"

  Thunder shook the building. There was a pattering against the roof.

  "It's raining!" Tom cried.

  "It's artillery," Brian said.

  "No, listen—it's raining, Brian! The Stink is over! It's blessed rain!"

  An argument had broken out beneath the shelter of the siege-works. Swing was snarling at his men.

  Cool water began dripping through the ragged fret-work of bullet-holes in the roof.

  "It's rain," Mallory said, and licked his hand. "Rain! We've won, lads." Thunder rolled. "Even if they kill us here," Mallory shouted, "it's over for them. When London's air is sweet again, they'll have no place to hide."

  "It may be raining," Brian said, "but those are ten-inch naval guns, off the river… "

  A shell tore through the roof in a torrent of blazing shrapnel.

  "They've got our range now!" Brian shouted. "For God's sake, take cover!" He began to struggle desperately with the cotton-bales.

  Mallory watched in astonishment as shell after shell punched through the roof, the holes as neatly spaced as the stabs of a shoemaker's awl. Whirlwinds of blazing rubbish flew, like the impact of iron comets.

  The glass vaulting burst into a thousand knife-edged shards. Brian was screaming at Mallory, his voice utterly drowned by the cacophony. After a stunned moment, Mallory bent to help his brother, heaving up another cotton-bale and crouching within the trench.

  He sat there, the rifle across his knees. Blasts of light sheeted across the buckling roof. Iron beams began to twist under pressure, their rivets popping like gunshots. The noise was hellish, supernatural. The warehouse shook like a sheet of beaten tin.

  Brian, Tom, and Fraser crouched like praying Bedouins, their hands clamped to their ears. Bits of flaming wood and fabric fell gently onto the bales around them, jumping a bit with each repeated concussion, smoldering into the cotton where they lay. The warehouse billowed with air and heat.

  Mallory absently plucked two wads of cotton and stuffed them into his ears.

  A section of roofing collapsed, quite slowly, like the wing of a dying swan. Rain in torrents fought the fires below.

  Beauty entered Mallory's soul. He stood, the rifle like a wand in his hands. The shelling had stopped, but the noise was incessant, for the building was on fire. Tongues of dirty flame leapt up in a hundred places, twisted fantastically by gusts of wind.

  Mallory stepped to the edge of the cotton parapet. The shelling had knocked the covered walkway into fragments, like a muddy crawl-way of termites, crushed by a boot. Mallory stood, his head filled with the monotone roaring of absolute sublimity, and watched as his enemies fled screaming.

  A man stopped amid the flames, and turned. It was Swing. He gazed up at Mallory where he stood. His face twisted with a desperate awe. He screamed something—screamed it louder still—but he was a little man, far away, and Mallory could not hear him. Mallory slowly shook his head.

  Swing raised his weapon then. Mallory saw, with a glow
of pleased surprise, the familiar outlines of a Cutts-Maudslay carbine.

  Swing aimed the weapon, braced himself, and pulled the trigger. Pleasantly tenuous singing sounds surrounded Mallory, with a musical popping from the perforating roof behind him. Mallory, his hands moving with superb and unintentioned grace, raised his rifle, sighted, fired. Swing spun and fell sprawling. The Cutts-Maudslay, still in his grasp, continued its spring-driven jerking and clicking even after its drum of cartridges was empty.

  Mallory watched, with tepid interest, as Fraser, leaping through the wreckage with a spidery agility, approached the fallen anarchist with his pistol drawn. He handcuffed Swing, then lifted him limply over one shoulder.

  Mallory's eyes smarted. Smoke from the flaming warehouse was gathering under the wreckage of its roof. He looked down, blinking, to see Tom lowering a limping Brian to the floor.

  The two joined Fraser, who beckoned sharply. Mallory smiled, descended, followed. The three then fled through the whipping, thickening fires, with Mallory strolling after them.

  Catastrophe had knocked Swing's fortress open in a geyser of shattered brick dominos. Mallory, blissful, the nails of his broken shoe-heel grating, walked into a London reborn.

  Into a tempest of cleansing rain.

  On April 12, 1908, at the age of eighty-three, Edward Mallory died at his house in Cambridge. The exact circumstances of his death are obscured, steps having apparently been taken to preserve the proprieties incumbent on the decease of a former President of the Royal Society. The notes of Dr. George Sandys, Lord Mallory's friend and personal physician, indicate that the great savant died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Sandys also noted, apparently for purposes of his own, that the deceased had seemingly taken to his death-bed while wearing a patent set of elasticated underwear, socks with braces, and fully laced leather dress-shoes.

  The doctor, a thorough man, also noted an item discovered beneath the deceased's flowing white beard. About the great man's neck, on a fine steel chain, was strung an antique lady's signet-ring which bore the crest of the Byron family and the motto CREDE BYRON. The doctor's ciphered note is the only known evidence of this apparent bequest, possibly a token of appreciation. Very probably, Sandys confiscated the ring, though a thorough catalogue of Sandys' possessions, made after his own death in 1940, makes no mention of it.