Fiendish Schemes Page 18

  “Please.” I heaved a sigh. “I find the comparison both obvious and strained. Not to mention distasteful.”

  “Perhaps so. Others, with the pecuniary means to follow such interests to their logical conclusions, find not just satisfaction, but exaltation beyond your experiences, in that connection.” The transcendence achieved by Miss Stromneth’s clientele seemed to radiate from her as well; her visage flushed with something other than the warmth from her softly hissing corset. “Given such a happy result, is it any great wonder that they hurl themselves upon the skilled attentions of those who can literally incorporate the steely lineaments of this new world into the soft and less impressive bodies they were given at birth?”

  “These days, I wonder at nothing that people do.”

  “You might, Mr. Dower, if you were to see them! If nothing else, you would marvel at the sheer size, the immensity, that they encompass. As a wealthy man lives in a palace rather than a hut little wider than the miserable occupant’s outstretched arms, so have certain individuals, blessed with both extravagant funds and the correspondingly unleashed imagination, magnified their forms. Why limit oneself to puny flesh and bone, when so much can be achieved with iron and steel?”

  “Why indeed,” I spoke aloud, keeping the words that followed— If one has nothing better to do—to myself. “What else is money for?”

  “Precisely; I knew you could be brought about to see the light! When your great good fortune arrives—as surely it must!—perhaps we shall see you here again at Fex, as a customer rather than a conspirator.”

  “There are a few other things I would need to take care of first.”

  “All in good time, I’m sure—” She suddenly turned away from me, elevating her gaze and intently listening. “Do you hear that?”

  A low rumble animated the cavernous space, at a pitch more perceptible in the gut than audible. “What is it?” I asked.

  “I was hoping to have such good luck!” She laid hold of my arm and drew me a step closer, as though to better impart confidences. “The wealthy do have such irregular habits, don’t they? They come and go as they please, the dears—of course, I don’t mind any inconvenience, as I’m well enough recompensed for being at their beck and call, but it does make a trifle difficult the anticipation of their comings and goings.”

  The sound increased in both volume and ominousness, as though the earth below us were about to quake apart, rather than just the clouds above gathering to a storm. I could feel the vibrations traveling up my legs and into the base of the spine, an altogether unnerving sensation.

  “It is this gentleman’s usual time, at least on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but one can hardly count on such events, can one?” Miss Stromneth continued her chatter, though I now realized that her grasp upon my arm was less companionable than pragmatic, the anchor afforded thereby preventing her slighter form from being knocked off her feet. “Driven as they are by men’s appetites—which, while impressively constant in their youth, do tend to become somewhat variable with advancing age.”

  Dust and pigeon droppings had begun to sift down from the exposed iron girders above us. From the corner of my eye, I saw Stonebrake swatting at the drifting particles with an expression of annoyance on his face. The bolts holding the structure together, wider than a man’s doubled hands, creaked and strained in their sockets.

  “There!” As her grip upon my arm tightened, Miss Stromneth directed my attention with her other hand. “You see? A thing of wonder, is it not?”

  I had anticipated the appearance of some appalling thing, and in this regard my expectations were more than exceeded. Reader, recall if you will a sunlit stroll in a public garden, the pleasure multiplied by the absence of any thought other than the appreciation of the sunshine upon one’s upturned face, the caroling of the songbirds in the trees’ leafy canopy, the smiling whispers of parasoled maidens leaning close together to share their sweetly insubstantial confidences. Just such a memory, seemingly incongruous in the faux railway station’s shadowed, high-ceilinged cavern, arose in my thoughts as I gazed at the apparition upon the tracks below. More so in London than elsewhere, I expect, a promenade as I have attempted to evoke will be interrupted by the appearance of one of those grandees, noble or otherwise, whose wealth and power seem literally to magnify their ponderous bulk. The effect transmitted to the onlooker is rendered even more overwhelming by the swarm of attendants— valets, amanuenses, footmen, and others—accompanying their progress, as a great ocean-going vessel is tethered by a small fleet of boats piloting it to port. One is often forced off the margin of the path by such a crowd, as rural peasants might prudently retreat before an approaching army.

  Rather than some titled baron, engorged with wealth and honours, the entity upon the station tracks appeared first to my eye as a steam engine, billowing white clouds of vapour from its vents in sufficient amount to partially conceal its iron flanks and the horizontal pistons that drove its wheels forward. It was only upon further scrutiny, as I leaned forward in the elevated perch to which I had been led, that I was able to discern the disturbingly human elements of the creature I beheld. If the ancients had envisioned their mythical centaurs as, rather than a merging of the equine species with their own, instead a combination of man with machine, some notion of what I presently saw, fantastic as was its appearance, would have already been encompassed in our mental vocabulary. In this immediate instance, the individual’s bearded face—in his original incarnation, he might have been a prosperous gentleman in his sixth decade, gaze narrowed and expression hardened with the selfsatisfied contemplation of his estate in life—was the only part left revealed by the encroaching metal. His shoulders and upper torso, rearing from the front of the steam engine, were bulkily sheathed in what might have been a suit of armour, if such had been fabricated for industrial rather than military purpose. I could see no arms or hands, or indeed any apertures from which they might have protruded from the torso’s iron-plated casing. What need the transmogrified individual might have had for such was served instead by the smaller, still entirely human figures who waited upon him, either clambering about the various mechanisms of the steam engine behind their master’s upraised form or on foot beside it. Their uniform livery denoted employment in a house hold of not just great wealth, but social prestige as well.

  “This is monstrous,” I pronounced to my companions. I shook my head in dismay. “The clientele you serve, the patrons of Fex— they come here, seeking to be transformed into some unholy conglomeration of flesh and iron? All your talk of surgeons and pipe-fitters—and this is the result? For God’s sake, what is achieved thereby?”

  “Oh, dear.” A frown appeared on Miss Stromneth’s face. “I had hoped we were making headway in dispelling this unfortunately judgemental attitude of yours. How do you expect to get on in the modern world, Mr. Dower, if every novelty is greeted by you with such disdain?”

  “Novelty? You must be joking.” I drew back from the edge of our elevated perch and turned the full force of my gaze upon her. “If this is mere novelty, then what, pray tell, is blasphemy?”

  “An outmoded concept,” spoke Stonebrake drily. “And one illsuited for our times. That’s why I left the ministry.”

  “Really?” I encompassed him as well in my scorn. “I have come to doubt that you had ever been in it. Cozening gullible widows out of the funds necessary to go floating around on the ocean and proselytize whales—somehow, I am unable to believe that puts you anywhere in the line of apostolic succession. Our Lord and Savior told His disciples that He would make them fishers of men, not bloody whalers with breviaries stuck on the blades of their harpoons.”

  “Quiet!” Miss Stromneth interrupted before Stonebrake could assemble a retort. “You’ll alert them to our presence here. This is supposed to be a private assignation.”

  “Good God.” Her words appalled me to an even greater degree. “You imply that there is more than one.”

  “But of course,” she replied. “We cou
ld hardly keep the business running with but a single customer. And you might regard me as an incurable romantic, but I like to believe that a rendezvous such as this does require a partner—”

  No further explanation was required; the brute facts of what I now observed spoke with more crushing eloquence.

  Upon a parallel set of tracks, another fearsome creation came into sight, of similar form if slightly smaller dimension than the first I had observed. It also was accompanied by a phalanx of liveried servants, only partly visible through the obscuring clouds as they attended to its various mechanical functions from aboard its bulk or pacing alongside its massive iron wheels. To my increasing dismay, the face visible atop the armoured torso at the front was distinctly feminine in appearance. This observation evoked a frisson of horror along my spine greater than that produced by the grey-bearded male face surmounting the other machine. The effect was little lessened by the fact that it was not a young woman’s face, but rather the overly rouged and powdered visage of one of that foolish elderly tribe who fancy that the lines and crevices of Time can be filled and rendered dewy smooth from the pots and jars ranked like an apothecary’s stock before their dressing-table’s mirror. What it possessed in common with its male counterpart was the same narrow-eyed gaze and thin, self- satisfied smile, redolent of savouring wealth and prestige. As this dreadful creation advanced, I was able to perceive the marginally more decorative aspect of the armoured torso below the woman’s face, gender suggested by the doubly rounded prow and the waist-like incurving that had been fashioned into the riveted metal.

  “I’ve seen enough.” Ghastly apprehensions filled my imagination, of the scenes that were about to ensue on the tracks below. “There’s no need to remain here—”

  “But there is, Dower.” Stonebrake’s animal spirits had been cruelly invigorated by the events trembling the structure about us. He pulled me away from Miss Stromneth and forced me to the edge of our elevated perch, directing my vision downward. “We’re depending upon you for a great deal; all our plans will run aground without your unflagging devotion to them—”

  “I can . . . assure you,” I gasped as he brought my captured arm up behind my back, “that this is not . . . helping in that regard.”

  “It will.” He continued relentless. “The more you know of this world and what it has become, and what it holds that it did not before, the less trepidation you will feel as you investigate its darker byways.”

  The futility of arguing further had already been proven to me. Indeed, I found myself incapable of even closing my eyes to ward off the hideous spectacle. My companions’ previously expressed concerns about alerting others to our surreptitious presence were obviated by the deafening volume of the combined noises, the creaking and groaning of the structure’s bolts and girders now combined with the blasts of train-like steam whistles, the masculine creation’s basso groans answered by the higher-pitched shrieks issuing from its female counterpart. Stonebrake shouted something else into my ear, but I could no longer perceive his words.

  But what appalled me more was my sudden realization that it was not the overwhelming volume of sound that shielded us from accidental detection, but rather the degree of absorption in their activities that was displayed by the creations below us. Just as dogs mating in the street cannot be interrupted by anything short of a bucket of cold water, so it was with the participants in this obscene, mechanized endeavour. And similarly to canine procreation, when breeders must at times assist with specimens too awkward and ungainly to accomplish the deed on their own, so now did the liveried attendants wait upon their master and mistress. The necessity for such numbers was explained by the sheer muscular force required to elevate the appropriate segment of the masculine creation, somewhat to the rear of its form, by the use of hinged levers swung out from its flanks. Footmen strained at their hand-holds, with others clasping them about their waists and struggling to draw them downward. At the same time, the transmogrified female’s immense form was urged backward by its attendants, beneath the ponderously rearing inamorata upon which its favours were being bestowed.

  The scene entire summoned secondhand memories to me, of copperplate engravings in popular journals, adorning the writers’ descriptions of the aftermath of tragic collisions upon the railways, resulting in engines and carriages stacked in wild disarray, one atop another. But here there were no travelers’ corpses strewn about the bloodied fields on either side, but rather still more of the living throwing themselves into the struggle, their every effort directed toward facilitating this gargantuan conjugation.

  I had not thought it possible, but the combined noise grew even louder, its invisible impacts reverberating through my chest as iron thrashed against iron. What I had initially judged to be one of the enormous pistons by which the masculine creation propelled its spoked wheels along the tracks, was now revealed to have an altogether different purpose, ruder in design than mere transportation. Wider than a brace of horses, the cylindrical apparatus drove itself into a reciprocally fashioned portal in the female’s latter bulk, revealed by a pair of her attendants drawing aside curved plates large enough to have roofed the nave of a village church. Other servants, relieved of the task of hoisting one machine above another, busied themselves with frantic haste, wielding mops dipped in barrels and slathering glistening oil upon the polished metal surfaces sliding back and forth. As the piston’s motion increased in both length and speed, the lubricating attendants found themselves outpaced; tendrils of dark smoke, thicker than men’s arms, insinuated through the roiling clouds of steam as friction heated the metal to a red-hot glow. . . .

  Reader, let me reassure you that George Dower, originally of London’s Clerkenwell district, is not unacquainted with the more unseemly aspects of matters biological. Though I possess an Englishman’s proper reticence toward activities best done with the lantern extinguished and without an audience attending, I have nevertheless on occasion summoned the courage to do my duty, so to speak—once even sparing the world from total destruction thereby. I take more pride in having summoned the resolve to perform the untidy function, than in the salutary consequences achieved by having done so. Please bear in mind that I recount all this, however briefly, not in order to boast of my prowess, but merely to give evidence that I am not a blushing innocent when confronted with the carnal realm. And my knowledge is not confined to our own species; having resided for some time in a rural abode, surrounded by farms and all the beastly procreation committed on their premises, I frequently had my senses assaulted while on a meandering stroll, by the remarkably vigorous performances of various stallions and bulls in their fields, with their mates hardly less enthusiastic about the whole process.

  I inform you of all this in order to allay any suspicion on the reader’s part that my reaction to the thundering consummation of steam-augmented lust upon the tracks was due more to ignorance than by the essentially horrific nature of the deed itself. The mingled shriek and groan of the partially human creations rose in a dizzying crescendo, sufficient to have drawn blood from our ears if it had continued for more than a minute. There was no mercy in the noise’s termination, however, as it was replaced by the seeming apocalypse of the ironclad forms reaching the percussive climax of their joint exertions. The female of the pair, with an idiot stare transfixed upon its open-mouthed face, somehow managed to heave itself upward from the rails beneath, sufficiently so as to throw its spent, gasping partner to one side, its weighty bulk toppling against the iron pillars. The impact shuddered the platform with force greater than any previous event; bolts and rivets sprang from their mountings, the small bits raining about our heads like a metallic hailstorm. I was flung backward against Miss Stromneth as the elevated perch on which we had been standing and watching, like voyeurs in some ghastly combination of steel foundry and bordello, was wrenched free of its supports. The riveted floor tilted precipitously; we both would have been cast to our deaths if I had not managed, through sheer desperate instinct, to enc
ircle one arm around her kimono-clad waist and grasp with my other hand the curved rail of the spiraling staircase by which we had previously mounted to this height.

  With that proverbial strength evoked by sudden terror, I drew both myself and Miss Stromneth onto the treads of the staircase, just as the platform we had abandoned fell with an echoing clatter onto the station platform below. Whether the rest of the surrounding structure would continue to disassemble itself and bury us beneath the wrack and clutter of its pieces, I had no idea at the moment.

  The panicky course of my thoughts settled only a fraction as I found myself on top of Miss Stromneth, our position contorted by the rails and treads of the swaying staircase. Eyes widened, she gazed up at me—

  And smiled.

  “God in Heaven,” she said. “I love this business.”

  PART THREE

  TO THE DEPTHS

  CHAPTER

  13

  Into the Corridors of Power

  AS they are,” mused Stonebrake aloud, “so shall we become.” He brought his gaze around from the brougham’s window and toward me. “Don’t you agree?”

  His play on the venerable gravestone motto struck me as disagreeable. I shifted in the seat opposite him, arms folded across my chest to indicate the defensive mode of my thoughts.

  “If by that,” I replied, “you mean to assert that the day is coming when I will consent to have great slabs of iron bolted all about me, and a monstrous steam engine replacing the fleshly aspects with which I was born, then I can state with the utmost confidence that it will never happen. Do as you wish, of course, but I fail to see the attraction. Particularly after what we have just witnessed.”

  We continued our return journey through London’s nocturnal streets, moonlight silvering the clouds of steam that were ceaselessly emitted by the pipes winding amongst the buildings. Enough time had passed since our departure from Fex’s commercial premises, Miss Stromneth still clad in her silken kimono, somewhat dampened by the emissions of steam from beneath, and waving a cheery farewell to us from the building’s opulent doorway, that I had managed to regain the majority of my composure. A sufficiency of irritation still resided in my breast, the emotion directed toward my co-conspirator. Scarcely had I managed to rescue both myself and Miss Stromneth from the collapse of the elevated perch in her establishment’s faux rail station than I had discovered that the coward Stonebrake had fled before us and had already safely ensconced himself farther down the spiral staircase.