The Difference Engine

by William Gibson

  "Till Byron's death, rather."

  "But we've Lord Brunel now, haven't we?"

  "Indeed, and bloody madness under him in Parliament!"

  Oliphant let the silence lengthen. "If you could obtain the text of the telegram, Andrew," he said at last, very quietly, "I should be very grateful."

  "He's a very ambitious man, Oliphant. With ambitious friends."

  "You are not alone in that assessment."

  Wakefield sighed. "Under the circumstances, extreme discretion—"

  "By all means!"

  "Aside from which our yardage is filthy. Condensed particulate matter. We're working the mechanics on triple-shifts, and having some success with Lord Colgate's aerosol applications, but I sometimes despair of ever having the system properly up and spinning!" He lowered his voice. "Do you know that the finer functions of the Napoleon have been unreliable for months?"

  "The Emperor?" Oliphant pretended to misunderstand.

  "The Napoleon's gear-yardage, in equivalent terms, is very nearly double ours," Wakefield said. "And it simply isn't functioning!" The thought seemed to fill him with a special horror.

  "Had a Stink of their own, have they?"

  Wakefield grimly shook his head.

  "There you are, then," said Oliphant, "most likely the gears are jammed on a bit of onion-skin… "

  Wakefield snorted.

  "Do find me that telegram? At your earliest convenience, of course."

  Wakefield inclined his head, but only very slightly.

  "Good fellow," Oliphant declared. He saluted the Under-Secretary with his furled umbrella and rose, to retrace his steps through Q C's cubbies and the bowed and patient heads of Wakefield's clerks.

  Oliphant had made his professionally circuitous way to Dean Street from the Soho tavern where he had instructed Betteredge to deposit him. Now he entered a soot-streaked house, its door unlatched. Latching it carefully behind him, he climbed two flights of uncarpeted stairs. The chill air smelled of cooked cabbage and stale tobacco.

  He rapped twice at a door, then twice again.

  "Come in, come in, you'll let in the cold… " The heavily bearded Mr. Hermann Kriege, late of the New York Volks Tribune, appeared to be wearing every article of clothing he possessed, as though he had wagered that he could all at once don the entire contents of a ragman's barrow.

  He locked and chained the door behind Oliphant.

  Kriege had two rooms, the one with the view of the street being the drawing-room, and behind it a bedroom. Everything broken and tattered, and in the greatest disorder. A large, old-fashioned table, covered with wax-cloth, stood in the middle of the drawing-room. On it lay manuscripts, books, newspapers, a doll with a Dresden head, bits and pieces of a woman's sewing things, chipped teacups, dirty spoons, pens, knives, candlesticks, an inkpot. Dutch clay pipes, tobacco-ash.

  "Sit, sit, please." More ursine than ever in his bundled attire, Kriege waved vaguely toward a chair with only three legs. Blinking through a haze of coal– and tobacco-smoke, Oliphant made out a chair that seemed whole, though Kriege's daughter had been playing kitchen on it. Choosing to risk a pair of trousers, Oliphant swept jammy crumbs aside and sat, facing Kriege across the sad domestic litter of the crowded table-top.

  "A small gift for your little Traudl," Oliphant said, taking a tissue-wrapped parcel from his coat. The tissue was secured with a self-adhesive rectangle, embossed with the initials of an Oxford Street toy-emporium. "A doll's tea things." He placed the parcel on the table.

  "She calls you 'Uncle Larry.' She shouldn't know your name."

  "Many's the Larry about Soho, I should imagine." Oliphant produced a plain envelope, unsealed, and placed it beside the parcel, precisely aligned with the table's edge. It contained three well-circulated five-pound notes.

  Kriege said nothing. A silence lengthened.

  "The Manhattan Women's Red Pantomime Troupe," Oliphant said at last.

  Kriege snorted derisively. "The Bowery's Sapphic best, come to London? I remember them in Purdy's National. They wooed and won the Dead Rabbits to the cause, whose sole previous involvement with politics had consisted of rock-fights and punch-ups in municipal elections. The butcher-boys, the bootblacks, the prostitutes of Chatham Square and the Five Points, that was their audience. Sweaty proletarians, come to see a woman shot out of a gun, flattened against a wall, and peeled off like paper… I tell you, sir, your interest is misplaced."

  Oliphant sighed. "My friend, it is my job to ask questions. You must understand that I cannot tell you my reasons for asking a given question. I know that you have suffered. I know that you suffer now, in exile." Oliphant glanced meaningfully about the tragic room.

  "What then do you wish to know?"

  "It has been suggested that among the various criminal elements, active during the recent civil disruptions, were agents of Manhattan." Oliphant waited.

  "I find that unlikely."

  "On what basis, Mr. Kriege?"

  "To my knowledge, the Commune has no interest in disturbing the British status-quo. Your Rads have shown themselves to be benevolent bystanders, with regard to America's class-struggle. Indeed, your nation has behaved as an ally of sorts." There was much bitterness in Kriege's tone, a curdled cynicism. "One imagines it was in Britain's own interest to see the Northern Union lose its greatest city to the Communards."

  Oliphant shifted cautiously on the uncomfortable chair. "You knew Mr. Marx intimately, I believe." In order to extract a given piece of information from Kriege, he knew, it was necessary to engage the man's dominant passion.

  "Knew him? I was there to greet him off the boat. He embraced me, and not a minute later had borrowed twenty gold dollars, to pay his rent in the Bronx!" Kriege assayed a sort of laugh, strangled with abiding rage. "He'd his Jenny with him, then, though the marriage didn't survive the revolution… But he'd a Brooklyn Irish factory-girl in his bed when he expelled me from the Commune, sir, for preaching 'religionism and free-love'! Free-love indeed!" Kriege's large pale hands, with their unkept nails, plucked abstractedly at a sheaf of papers.

  "You have been badly used, Mr. Kriege." Oliphant thought of his friend. Lord Engels; it did seem extraordinary, that the brilliant textile-manufacturer should involve himself, however distantly, with people of this sort. Kriege had been a member of the Commune's so-called "Central Committee," before Marx had sent him packing. With a price on his head in the Northern Union, he had sailed in steerage from Boston, penniless, under an assumed name, with his wife and child, to join London's thousands of American refugees.

  "These Bowery pantomimes…"

  "Yes?" Oliphant leaned forward.

  "There are factions within the Party…"

  "Do go on."

  "Anarchists disguising themselves as communists; feminists, all manner of incorrect ideologies, you see, covert cells not under Manhattan's control…"

  "I see," Oliphant said, thinking of the reams of yellow fan-fold representing the confession of William Collins.

  Again on foot, Oliphant made his roundabout way through Soho, to Compton Street, where he paused before the entrance of a public house known as the Blue Boar.

  "A SPORTING-GENTLEMAN," he was informed by a large bill, "a Staunch Supporter of the destruction of these Vermin," would give "A GOLD REPEATER-WATCH TO BE KILLED FOR BY DOGS under 13 3/4 pounds weight." Below the smudged bill, a painted wooden placard advertised "Rats always on hand for the accommodation of Gentlemen to try their dogs."

  He entered, and shortly was greeting Fraser in the rank smell of dogs, tobacco-smoke, and hot penny-gin.

  The long bar was crowded with men of every grade of society, many with their animals under their arms. "There were bull-dogs, Skye terriers, small brown English terriers. The room was low-ceilinged and quite unadorned. About the walls were hung clusters of leather collars.

  "You came by cab, sir?" Fraser inquired.

  "On foot, from a previous appointment."

  " 'Ere now," cried the barman, "don'
t block up the bar!" There was a general movement toward the parlor, where a young waiter now shouted, "Give your orders, gentlemen!" With Fraser at his side, Oliphant followed the crowd of sporting-men and their dogs. Above the parlor fireplace were glass-fronted cases displaying the stuffed heads of animals famous in their day. Oliphant noticed the head of a bullterrier, its glass eyes bulging hugely.

  "Looks as though this one died of strangulation," Oliphant remarked, pointing the thing out to Fraser.

  "They've spoilt her in the stuffing, sir," said the waiter, a fair-haired boy in a greasy striped apron. "Good as any in England, she was. I've seen her kill twenty at a go, though they killed her at the last. Your sewer-rats are dreadful for giving a dog canker, though we'd always rinse her mouth out well with peppermint and water."

  "You're Sayers' boy," Fraser said. "We want a word with him."

  "Why, I know you, sir! You were 'ere about that savantry gent—"

  "Your old dad, Jem, and brisk about it," Fraser interjected, preventing the boy from announcing the arrival of a copper to the assembled sportsmen.

  " 'E's upstairs lighting the pit, sir," the boy said.

  "Good chap," Oliphant said, giving the boy a shilling.

  Oliphant and Fraser mounted a broad wooden staircase, which led to what had once been the drawing-room. Opening a door, Fraser led the way into the rat-killing apartment.

  "Pit's not bloody open," bellowed a fat man with ginger side-whiskers. Oliphant saw that the pit consisted of a wooden circus, some six feet in diameter, fitted with a high rim at elbow-height. Above it branched the arms of an eight-mantle gas-light, brightly illuminating the white-painted floor of the little arena. Mr. Sayers, the Blue Boar's proprietor, in a bulging silk waistcoat, stood with a live rat in his left hand. "But it's you, Mr. Fraser. My apologies, sir!" Having caught the creature somehow by the throat, he deftly prized out its larger teeth with no more implement than his strong thumbnail. "Order for a dozen with their teeth drawed." He dropped the mutilated rat into a rusted wire cage with several others and turned to face his visitors. " 'Ow might we be of service, Mr. Fraser?"

  Fraser took out an Engine-stippled morgue-portrait.

  "Aye, 'e's your man," Sayers said, his brows rising. "Big chap, long in the leg. And a dead'un, by the look of 'im."

  "You're quite positive?" Oliphant could smell the rats now. "This is Professor Rudwick's murderer?"

  "Aye, sir. We gets all sorts 'ere, but none too many Argentine giants. I recall 'im quite plain."

  Fraser had taken out his notebook and was writing in it.

  "Argentine?" Oliphant asked.

  " 'E spoke Spanish," Sayers said, "or so I took it to be. Now mind you, we none o' us saw 'im do the deed, but 'e was on the premises that night, so 'e was."

  "Cap'an's here," Sayers' son called from the doorway.

  " 'Ell! And I've not drawed the teeth of 'alf 'is rats!"

  "Fraser," Oliphant said, "I fancy a warm gin. Let us retire to the bar and allow Mr. Sayers to complete arrangements for the evening's sport." He bent to examine a larger cage, this one of iron bands. It seemed to contain a solid mound of rats.

  "Mind your fingers there," Sayers said. "For believe me, you get a bite and you'll not forget it. These 'ere are none o' the cleanest… "

  In the parlor, a young officer, evidently the Captain, was threatening to leave the place if he were kept waiting any longer.

  "I shouldn't drink that if I were you," Fraser said, looking at Oliphant's noggin of warm gin. "Almost certainly adulterated."

  "Actually it's quite good," Oliphant said. "It has a very faint after-taste, rather like bitter wormwood."

  "An intoxicant poison."

  "Quite. The French use it in the preparation of herbals. What do you make of our good Captain here?" Oliphant gestured with his gin, indicating the man in question, who was pacing about in an agitated fashion, examining the paws of various animals as their owners presented them, all the while shouting that he should depart immediately if the pit weren't opened.

  "Crimea," Fraser said.

  The Captain bent to peer at the claws of a young terrier in the arms of a swarthy, rather portly man whose pomaded spit-curls protruded like wings from beneath his high-crowned derby.

  "Velasco," Fraser said, as if to himself, something nastily akin to pleasure in his tone, and was instantly beside the fellow.

  The Captain started, his handsome young face convulsed with a violent tic, and Oliphant's eye abruptly filled with all the red Crimea—whole cities aflame like bonfires, and shell-churned wastes of jellied filth sprouting white flowers that were men's hands. He shuddered with the intensity of the vision, then forgot it utterly.

  "Do I know you, sir?" the Captain inquired of Fraser, with a brittle murderous jollity.

  "Gentlemen!" Mr. Sayers cried from the stairs. Led by the Captain, the entire company, save only Oliphant, Fraser, the swarthy man, and a fourth man, made for the pit above. The fourth man, perched on the arm of a ragged brocade armchair, began to cough. Oliphant saw Eraser's grip tighten about his prey's upper arm.

  "Shouldn't bloody ought to do that, Fraser," the man on the chair-arm said, unfolding his legs and standing. Oliphant noted a certain calculation evident in his tone. Like the swarthy man, he was newly and nattily kitted out, all in Oxford Street's latest, his coat of Engine-cut gabardine dyed a blue that verged on lavender. Oliphant saw that his lapel, like that of his companion, was decorated with a gleaming cloisonne badge in the shape of the Union Jack.

  " 'Bloody,' Mr. Tate?" Fraser said, a schoolmaster about to deliver a tongue-lashing or worse.

  "Fair warning, Fraser," the swarthy man said, his dark eyes protruding. "We're about Parliamentary business!" The little brown terrier shivered in his arms.

  "Are you, then?" Oliphant inquired mildly, "and what business has Parliament in a rat-pit?"

  "Might ask the same of you, eh?" the taller man said insolently, then coughed. Fraser glared at him.

  "Fraser," Oliphant said, "are these gentlemen the confidential agents you mentioned in regard to Dr. Mallory?"

  "Tate and Velasco," Fraser said grimly.

  "Mr. Tate," Oliphant said, stepping forward, "a pleasure, sir. I am Laurence Oliphant, journalist." Tate blinked, confused by Oliphant's cordiality. Fraser, rather reluctantly taking Oliphant's cue, released Velasco's arm. "Mr. Velasco." Oliphant smiled.

  Velasco's face clouded with suspicion. "Journalist? What sort of journalist?" he demanded, glancing from Oliphant to Fraser and back.

  "Travel pieces, primarily," Oliphant said, "though I'm currently engaged, with Mr. Fraser's able help, in compiling a popular history of the Great Stink."

  Tate peered narrowly at Oliphant. "Mallory, you said. What about 'im?"

  "I interviewed Dr. Mallory prior to his departure for China. His experiences during the Stink were most remarkable, and highly illustrative of the perils that might befall anyone during such a chaotic period."

  " 'Befall anyone'?" Velasco challenged. "Rubbish! Mallory's trouble was savantry trouble and your Mr. Fraser knows it well enough!"

  "Yes, yes, quite," Oliphant agreed. "And that is why I am delighted to have encountered you gentlemen tonight."

  Velasco and Tate glanced uncertainly at one another. "You are?" Tate ventured.

  "Utterly. You see. Dr. Mallory explained to me the unfortunate contretemps with his rival and fellow savant, Peter Foulke. It seems, you see, that even in the most rarified circles, during a period of such unprecedented stress—"

  "You'll not see Peter bloody Foulke moving in your rarified bloody circles now," Velasco interjected, "not for all his gentry posing." He paused for effect. "He was discovered in bed with a girl not twelve years old!"

  "No!" Oliphant feigned shock. "Foulke? But surely—"

  "He was," Tate affirmed, "in Brighton, and those as found him beat the bugger silly and flung him stark-naked into the street!"

  "But it wasn't us did that," Velasco stated flatly, "and you'
ll not prove it was."

  "There's a new trend of thought about," Tate said, thrusting his shallow chest forward so as to better display his Union Jack insignia, the gin-reddened tip of his button-nose glinting wetly, "such as doesn't tolerate decadence," giving equal stress to the word's three syllables, "be it in the savantry or however high at all. Hidden wickedness ran rife under Byron, all manner of it, and well you know it, Fraser!" Fraser's eyes widened at this effrontery, as Tate turned in his excitement to Oliphant. "That Stink was Ned Ludd's work, mister, and there's your history of it!"

  "Sabotage on a titanic scale," Velasco pronounced darkly, as if quoting from a speech, "abetted by conspirators in the highest ranks of society! But there are true patriots among us, sir, patriots at work to root that evil out!" The terrier growled in Velasco's arms, and Fraser looked on the verge of throttling man and dog alike.

  "We're Parliamentary investigators," Tate said, "about a Member's business, and I'm sure you'd not care to detain us."

  Oliphant put his hand upon Fraser's sleeve.

  With a smirk of triumph, Velasco soothed his little dog and sauntered to the stairs. Tate followed. From overhead came the mad yapping of dogs and the hoarse cries of sportsmen.

  "They're working for Egremont," Oliphant said.

  Fraser's face twisted with disgust. Disgust and something akin to amazement.

  "There seems nothing more to be done here, Fraser. I take it you arranged for a cab?"

  Mr. Mori Arinori, Oliphant's favorite among his young Japanese "pupils," took a fierce delight in all things British. Oliphant, who customarily breakfasted lightly if at all, would sometimes subject himself to massively "English" breakfasts to please Mori, who on this particular occasion wore the burliest of golfing-tweeds and a scarf in the tartan of the Royal Hibernian Order of Steam Engineers.

  There was a certain enjoyably melancholy sense of paradox, Oliphant mused, in watching Mori spread a slice of toast with marmalade, while he himself indulged a nostalgia for his own days in Japan, where he had served as first-secretary under Rutherford Alcock. His stay in Edo had nurtured in him a passionate regard for the muted tones and subtle textures of a world of ritual and shadow. He longed now for the rattle of rain blown against oiled paper, for flowering weeds a-nod down tiny alleys, the glow of rush-lamps, for scents and darknesses, the shadows of the Low City…