Angelmaker (42 page)

“Oh, dear,” Dotty Catty murmurs. “I hope we haven’t come at a bad time.”

The dark-haired woman—she cuts it herself, Edie guesses, from the strange, uneven fringe and the curious near-baldness on one side—throws her hands in the air.

“We must begin again!” she says. “Entirely! From the start. Immediately! Where is the compressor?” She turns around, and something makes a bonging noise, and then a soft gurgle as it falls into the river. “
Connerie de chien de merde!
Was that it? Pray to Heaven that was not my compressor?”

“It’s all right,” the burly monk says calmly. “It was the teapot.”

This does not seem to be a huge comfort. The woman pulls a piece of chalk from behind her ear and begins writing on the ground. Then she gets another piece from her pocket and starts writing with her other hand to save time.

“She is ambidextrous,” Dotty Catty whispers, “unless she is thinking very hard, she does different things at the same time. She says it is good for the brain. I tell her to eat fish, but apparently that is not sufficient.”

“I can hear you,” the woman calls, without looking round. “Please do not imagine it is any less distracting to have someone very conspicuously trying to be quiet while I work than it is to have a brass band come wandering through here playing ‘Hope And Glory’ while the Home Fleet fires all its guns at the Guggenheim Glass and China Collection, because that is in no sense the case.”

Denis—the big monk is apparently Denis—sighs into his hands for a moment, then looks up. “You have visitors, Frankie,” he says firmly.

“I cannot possibly have visitors because no one knows I am here and no one would care if they did know,” Frankie replies firmly, and carries on writing. Over by the side of the torrent, two monks have managed to draw up the teapot by hooking it with a rod. It looks … odd.

“Are you sure that’s a teapot?” Edie says.

“I have redesigned it,” Frankie announces.

“That happens to rather a lot of things here,” Denis says neutrally.

“The one we had was inoperable,” Frankie continues, “because it was designed on the assumption that it would only ever be half full. At least, I trust that is why it only pours correctly when the upper volume of the pot is empty. Unless … hm … is it possible that there are benefits to the steeping process in having a gas convection environment directly above the leaf suspension? Well, be that as it may, the pouring issue is a serious one. I scalded myself. Also, the quality of the tea was uneven. The end product, you understand. I controlled the leaves very carefully.” She appears to regard this as some species of deliberate action on the part of the old pot, which is now forming part of another apparatus over by one wall.

“My name is Banister,” Edie begins.

“I’m Esther Françoise Fossoyeur. You may call me Frankie. Hello, Banister.”

“Hello, Frankie.”

“It was nice to meet you and I’m glad we had this little chat! You can see yourself out, can’t you?”

She turns away. Edie stares at Dotty Catty, who gestures to keep things going, as fast as possible. The Dowager-Khatun looks a little twitchy, above and beyond what might be expected of a woman betraying her mass-murdering son.

“As for the Apprehension Engine,” Frankie says sharply, over her shoulder, “you may tell the Khan that it is not yet functional. There are some difficulties I had not anticipated. Observation of certain aspects of matter produces glitches which … 
eh, bien
. I have almost perfected a power source. In fact, it is possible … hm.” She stares away to one side, and Edie can almost hear the sound of the universe splitting open as her gaze reaches into it, prods at it. “Yes. Interestingly, the tea experiments may provide the key. I … hm.”

Dotty Catty intervenes. “Frankie, Commander Banister is from the British government. I asked them to send someone …”

Edie Banister nods. “I’m here to rescue you.”

“Rescue me?”

“Yes,” Dotty Catty says. “We did talk about this.”

Frankie stares at her a moment longer. A single curl of black hair is tickling her cheek, and she brushes it away, leaving a smudge of char on her skin. Her face is very pale and pointed, and she has freckles. She must be all of five foot two inches tall, and proportionately tiny. The sleeves of her blouse are covered in mathematical notation written in ink. She frowns. “Oh. Did we? Yes, you’re quite right, we did. Because Shem wants me to make him a weapon. Yes. Do you know, he is very charming? I had no idea that was what he meant. He seemed so philanthropic. ‘An end to war.’ I am an idiot. I should have seen. Well, I won’t do it, of course. But now’s not the best time for me to leave. I’m just in the middle of something rather important.” She peers at Edie, flaps a hand. “Do you think you could come back in a few weeks, Banister?”

Edie stares at her. “For the teapot?”

“No, no. That will take a day, at most. No, for some testing of the compressor and the … 
eh, bien
, your eyes are glazing over. For the machines, then. I have begun the process. I am isolating a standing wave. This wave, of course, is composed of water, but the dynamics are mathematically similar.” She gestures at the suspended water tank.

“A what?”

“A wave. From the river. I am taking the wave from the river and maintaining it in the box. You see, obviously, what that would mean?”

“No.”

“When I am very old I shall make a school for intelligent young persons to be educated in basic science.”

“Frankie,” Dotty Catty says firmly, “don’t be rude.”

Frankie gives a growl.

“All right! Very well, Banister, please listen closely and try not to say ‘What?’ too often or I shall scream …

“Truth may reasonably be understood as the consonance of our impression of the universe with the underlying reality. Yes? When what we believe matches the external truth about the world … You are staring at my trousers. What is wrong with them?”

Edie, who has been wondering whether to wallop this garrulous loony over the back of the noggin and carry her off, replies that there is nothing wrong with the trousers. In fact, this is true. They are odd, but shapely, and suggestive of decent legs beneath.

“
Boff
. So then: truth is the mind correctly understanding the world. So, like the water in the tank, the human mind is a wave. It is formed around the brain. A very complicated pattern generated by a moderately complicated thing according to fairly simple rules. Your brain is a special sort of stone. The stream runs over the stone, the surface ripples, yes? We call it a standing wave. So, your mind is the ripple. Life is the motion of water through the pattern. Death is the pattern disappearing when the stone is moved or ground away. You understand? For the mind to apprehend truth—to know, rather than simply to believe, the nature of the wave must change. The ripple must extend so that it is able to touch the bottom of the river, to know the reality directly, not via our eyes and our ears. The machine I make will extend the wave. It is like this new sonar: a new sense. A sense of knowing the truth. From this it follows that the world will change in positive ways.
Voilà. C’est simple
.”

“What’s the water?”

Frankie Fossoyeur stops and looks at her sharply. “I beg your pardon?”

“In your example. What replaces the water, in the case of the mind?”

“That,” Frankie Fossoyeur says, “is the first intelligent question I have been asked in twelve months. But you see, this is exactly the point. The water is the basic stuff of the universe. It is what matter and energy are made of. Hah! Tell the little Swiss I have overreached him!”

“Miss Fossoyeur …”

“Doctor.”

“Doctor Fossoyeur. What does it do?”

“It doesn’t do anything yet. It is a science, not a technology.”

“But in theory?”

“In theory it allows us to see the truth of things. The absolute truth. And perhaps later … well. The absolute truth is good enough to begin with, no?” She looks at Edie.

Edie looks at her a bit blankly. “I don’t understand.”

“How many wars will be averted? How many lives spared, if the truth cannot be obscured? If any statement can be tested for verity? Imagine the advances in understanding. In science. To
know
 … Suppose you could look at the world, Miss Banister, and recognise lies and deception when you heard them. Would that not improve the lot
of mankind? The death of falsehood. A new age constructed on the foundation of truth, Banister.”

“Commander Banister.”

Frankie Fossoyeur smiles suddenly. It’s like an English summer; a rare, rich blessing, warm on the skin. “Of course: Commander,” she says impishly. Her eyes travel the length of Edie’s body and she grins rather wickedly.

Edie Banister actually blushes.
Lions and tigers and bears … oh, my …

“We really, really need to go,” she says.

“
Non
. I cannot escape. I must finish my work. You must come back another day. Or perhaps after, it will not be necessary.
Hein?
”

Dotty Catty huffs. “Frankie, no. Absolutely no. She cannot come back, she cannot wait, the whole thing must be tonight. The timing is precise.”

Frankie Fossoyeur waves this away. “Consider … by how much might the lot of man be improved, in a world where truth was ubiquitous? One per cent? Five? How much positive adjustment is necessary to pass the tipping point and enable the spontaneous formation of a utopia?” Frankie beams. Then her face falls. “Oh. Although too much truth could create problems on a physical level. And one most definitely would not wish to create a determining cascade …” She scribbles frantically.

Dotty Catty throws her bony hands into the air. “Frankie! Commander Banister! You must leave, now!”

“I cannot, I am working—”

“Now! It must be now!”

“We could possibly wait a few hours,” Edie suggests, still looking at Frankie Fossoyeur’s smudged cheek.

“No, you couldn’t. It has started.”

This is true, but Edie catches in Dotty Catty’s voice some hint of more, and she wrenches her eyes away from the bemused Frankie Fossoyeur and looks at her guide.

“What’s started?”

Dotty Catty shrugs, a fine, unapologetic old-lady shrug, and half-turns her back.

“My plan.”

“Your plan.”

“My diversion.”

“What diversion?”

“I have created a diversion, in the finest military tradition, so that you may carry out your mission.”

“What diversion?”

“The gas taps in the kitchens,” Dotty Catty says. “I have arranged that they should catch fire.” She beams. Somewhere to one side, one of the Ruskinites makes a horrified choking noise. Brother Denis the Ruskinite stares at her, aghast.

“But this palace is constructed over a natural-gas reservoir,” he says in horror. “The entire citadel … You’ll blow the whole place like a bomb!”

“Yes,” Dotty Catty says. “It will be very distracting.”

And just like that, Edie Banister is having a really bad day.

Still swearing in terms fit to curdle whisky, Edie Banister hurtles through the burning palace with a wooden crate on wheels.

“My treasure!” the dratted old woman said, after Edie had screamed at her and put Frankie Fossoyeur in a fireman’s lift to short-circuit the escape discussion. “The last of all of them from Mansura, that is no more! In all the world, there is no greater virtue, no more splendid thing. The crate in the west chamber of my apartments—for God’s sake, take it to George in London! There are others here, but they are old, they cannot go with you. This will be their grave, one way or another. But this one … promise me!”

Edie has never been one to turn down a friend—never mind the grey-haired old tub has blown this operation to six kinds of shit with one finely judged insanity (Rig a gas explosion, you potty old trout? You’re out of your bloody head!) and never mind there may be utility in it, too, for good King George. This is a personal matter between Women of Consequence, and hell if whatever is in the crate will come to harm, even get a flake of ash on it.

She gave Dotty Catty a piece of her mind, though, while through the corridors she staggered, carrying that damned squealing scientist on her back and feeling the while a wash of sympathy for the abductors from the seraglio, and why in all the world was she running away with this bony genius without the sense God gave a hedgehog when she could be legging it out the back door with At Your Service and a couple of close friends for an entirely more agreeable adventure?

Girls wishing to serve their country …
Aiee, what a mess. Although
it was almost worth it to see a dozen monks hike up their habits and run for the hills with only what they could carry and Frankie’s blessed compressor—whatever that may be—on a trolley.

At her room, Edie handed the outraged Frankie to Songbird and told him to
get her to the river, get help, get it now, signal
Cuparah,
get us the Hell out! Let’s have the marines and never mind who knows it!

Then she barged out into the corridor, demanding directions and bloody quick, smelling smoke and thinking about how many kilos of gas at how much pressure per square inch exploding with how much force? Which was about when the first explosion erupted and the whole place shook and seemed to heel over like a ship in a beam sea, and when she got to her feet again the fire was really under way and a lot of bits of palace were looking alarmingly diagonal where they should have been perpendicular.