Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (4 page)

Chapter IX:

A
Rumpolian
Solicitor – The British League of Fascists
 
–
Newford
House

“I
will
remove my jacket with your permission, Lady Sarah,” said the florid man with
the whisky nose during the court adjournment.
 
He took her silence as an affirmative and settled himself behind a
leather-topped pedestal desk where he proceeded to review the series of
documents that had resulted from the first part of our court appearance.
 
“You have a very strong case,” he said, after
he had finished.
 
“But you must
understand that the crown attorney is under intense political pressure to hold
you while the investigation proceeds.”

“Don’t you have habeas corpus here…
Mister?” I asked.

“Cruikshank.
 
As for habeas corpus, you do take me
back.
 
I haven’t heard that term in a
dog’s age,”
said the
Rumpolian
solicitor, fingering the watch chain stretched tightly over his copious abdomen.
 
“We did away with that relic years ago, along
with the right to remain silent.”

“But is
it really necessary to involve my father?” asked the suffragette, who the court
clerk had identified as Sarah St. John.

“If I may
say so
Lady Sarah, Lord
Newford’s
influence is all that stands between you and incarceration,” the attorney said.
 
“After all, Her Majesty’s Intelligence
Service believes the man Schrödinger to be an agent for the British League of
Fascists.”
 
He went on to say that Schrödinger
was suspected in the theft of a top-secret government communication device from
HMIS headquarters in Amesbury.
 
I
recognized the equipment in the rosewood box from his description but decided
it was best to remain silent.

“What
will happen now?” Sarah St. John asked.

“I
believe the best we can hope for is that His Lordship will agree to house arrest
for the two of you.”

“House
arrest where?”

“At
Newford
House of course.”

“Isn’t it
bad enough this odious creature has got me into this predicament without my
family having to feed and house him?” Sarah protested indignantly.

“Lady Sarah,
as far as His Lordship is concerned, you are Mister
Liddel’s
associate.
 
It would hardly improve his
disposition to be told that your colleague is a person of no fixed address.”

A
nd that’s how I came to be living in the servants’ quarters
of

Chapter X:

My
life as a Dalit – Steam and Horse Manure
 
– Graffiti

I
have never
been known for my social skills (as you may already have noticed) but my
descent into pariah status “below stairs” was rapid, even for me.
 
Things started to go sideways as soon as I
arrived at
Newford
House when Coates, the butler,
took me aside and let me know that my presence at morning prayers would not be desirable
owing to my ‘irregular’ status in the household.

I’m no working class hero, but the
guy’s snooty tone rubbed me the wrong way.
 
I mean who was this cadaverous creep with his rimless glasses and black
tailcoat to tell me, a free American, where I could and could not worship?

“No problem there Jeeves” I told
him.
 
“The god I pray to doesn’t sober up
until noon.”

And so it was that I found myself
eating my meals at a table in the kitchen with the scullery maid and the hall
boy, both of who resented the intrusion into their already-cramped eating
area.
 
All the other servants ate a long
table in the next room with Coates at one end and Mrs. Davies, the housekeeper,
at the other.

Personally, I didn’t mind being
banished.
 
Mealtime conversation in the
main room seemed limited to requests for condiments and occasional remarks
about the weather.
 
At least Janet, the
scullery maid, and Percy, the hall boy, talked to each other although many of
their whispered conversations would have benefited from subtitles.

Janet:
 
“That old cow Davies was on at me
somefink
awful today. I’d give me notice if me ma wasn’t in
the family way again.”

Percy:
 
“Never you mind that.
 
That great
berk
Coates wouldn’t even let me go for a William.
 
I’d like to see him old it in for two
bleedin
’
hours.”

Janet
(giggling):
 
“‘Is
arse
is so tight ‘e cold
prob’ly
‘old it for a week.”

I
know I
said earlier that I’m lazy but even lazy people get bored doing absolutely
nothing.
 
I was in the servant’s hall one
afternoon when I noticed Percy polishing a long row of shoes.
 
He didn’t seem to have the first idea of how
to go about it and the shoes looked worse after he had finished then when he
had begun.

“Hey Perce,” I said, in my best
good
ol
’ boy voice.
 
“Need a hand?”

Percy looked at me suspiciously,
torn between wanting help and avoiding contact with an outcast.

“I might do,” he said finally.
 
“Know anything about cleaning churches?”

By now I had learned enough Cockney
Rhyming Slang to know that ‘churches’ was short for “church pews” i.e.
shoes.
 
As it happens, I am an expert on
shoe shining, having spent a month in ROTC.
 
(OK, so I was kicked out for calling the Command Sergeant Major a
redneck retard.
 
Big whoop.)
 
I taught Percy about using paraffin to keep
the polish soft and letting your moistened shine rag ‘skate’ over the
surface.
 
We sat back to admire our
handiwork when we had finished.
 
We could
see our faces on every surface of the gleaming footwear.

It was at this point that Coates,
the butler, made his entrance.
 
He looked
at me with distaste and then noticed the row of polished shoes.

“Mister Cowan,” he said, his voice
quivering with outrage.
 
“What on earth
have you done to these shoes?”

“Cleaned them up,” Percy
answered.
 
“Shiny
ain’t
they?”

“Mister Cowan, you were instructed
to clean them, not make them look like patent leather.”

“I thought they looked nice.”

“Your thoughts on the matter are of
no consequence.
 
Lord
Newford
and his family are members of the aristocracy, not a troupe of Flamenco
dancers.”

“Coates,” I interjected.
 
“Don’t blame Percy.
 
I talked him into it.”

Coates behaved as though nobody had
spoken.
 
“I give you fair warning Mister Cowan,”
he said.
 
“One more incident such as this
and you will be dismissed.
 
Clean these
shoes properly and have them back to their rightful owners within the hour.”

By now you are probably wondering
why I didn’t just bail out and go back to my life at USW.
 
Why stick around where I was not wanted?
 
Well believe it or not, I hadn’t been lying
when I told Ross Percival I had faith in my research and I wanted to see how my
new life would play out.
 
And even if I
had wanted to go back, I no longer had my
Lucidream
goggles.
 
I was stuck, unless I could
convince someone to stand in for Professor Weill and fall on me from a high
balcony.
 
And even then, I would need the
dimensional translator which was off somewhere with Schrödinger.

But putting up with Coates was more
than I could handle, so I gave up on trying to be part of household activities
and began to take long walks through the surrounding streets.
 
I would have kept notes on my first
impressions of what I secretly called Sideways London, but I had no money to
buy a journal.
 
I offer the following
random observations as I remember them.

O
ne of
the first things I notice about my new world is its atmosphere, a heavy
fug
of feces, body odor, steam and smoke.

S
moke
and steam?
 
No surprises there.
 
Sideways London’s famously murky air has
become even more opaque with the introduction of steam power. Everything from spoke-wheeled
carriages to dirigibles is powered by puffing engines enveloped in clouds of white
condensate.
 
I even saw a huge vacuum
cleaner called a ‘sucking
billy
’ parked in a narrow street
fronting a Mayfair mansion.
 
It took three people just to maneuver its
six-inch diameter hose through the front door.
 
But all this power comes at a price.
 
Most of the steam-powered machines burn lignite coal and emit a gassy yellowy
discharge that coats everything in the city with grease and turns the air into
a noxious haze that makes Los Angeles
smog look like medical grade oxygen.

P
eople
here seem perfectly happy with steam power, despite its limitations.
 
The only use they have found for petroleum is
in a primitive form of dry cleaning.
 
Cleaning establishments, by law, cannot be located in populated areas owing
to their alarming tendency to catch fire and explode.
 
Pickup and delivery costs are high as a
result and only the very wealthy can afford "
nettoyage
à sec.”

I
saw
the letters ‘BLF’ painted on many pillar boxes, walls and once, even a police
van.
 
Percy, the hall boy told me the
letters stood for British League of Fascists, an organization that had recently
been founded in response to the growing power of the labor movement.
 
I asked which side he was on and got the
opinion they were “all a bunch of
bleedin
’
nutters
if you ask me.”

S
team
may be taking over, but horses are fighting a strong rearguard action.
 
Literally.
 
The cobblestone streets would be covered in manure were it not for the
Herculean efforts of broom-wielding urchins who sweep the malodorous equine
deposits into neat piles.
 
These piles in
turn are collected nightly in steam-powered carts and taken God knows
where.
 
Some questions are best left
unanswered.

A
nd then
there is the whole matter of body odor.
 
There are no showers in Sideways London and preparing a bath is a
project similar in magnitude to digging the Suez Canal.
 
As a result, everyone reeks.
 
I probably reeked too after the first week
but by then, I had stopped caring.

C
arrying
on with the theme of personal hygiene, most people have teeth ranging from bad
to nonexistent.
 
Men often wear bushy
moustaches to hide their dental deficiencies, an affectation leaves them
looking like beloved cartoon character Wally Walrus.
 
Toothaches are cured either by removal, or by
swallowing patent medicines containing either cocaine or opium, or both.

A
nd
there’s another thing.
 
They don’t have
the D.A.R.E. program in Sideways London.
 
You can buy stuff across the counter that would get you seven to life in
The States.

M
oney is
huge here.
 
A crown is the size of poker
chip and you could wrap a grapefruit
  
in
a five pound note.

B
rass,
the yellow metal.
 
Designers here love
it.
 
No machine is complete without a few
brass fittings, every piece of furniture has brass corners and no uniform is
complete without a shining vertical column of yellow buttons.

T
here are
no telephones.
 
The fastest way of
sending a message is by way of a network of overhead pneumatic tubes running
through the city on utility poles.
 
These
same utility poles also carry insulated pipes which distribute steam heat to
both houses and businesses.
 
I never did
find out how steam usage was metered.

T
here are
no black people.
 
Music sucks as a
result.
 
‘Ta Rah
Rah
Boom Dee Ay’ is fun the first time you hear it
but, trust me, it gets old really fast.

N
ice
women wear no makeup.
 
Fortunately for
the cosmetics manufacturers the not-so-nice women more than make up for it by
using layers of the stuff to hide the ravages of sexually transmitted diseases.

A
nd of
course, there are no such things as radio or television.
 
The only forms of mass communication are
newspapers, sold on the streets by disrespectful cockneys, and silent films shown
in many small theatres called ‘Kinescopes.’

I was attempting to enter one of
these establishments when I next ran into trouble with “the man.”