Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (5 page)

Chapter XI:

Town Planning? –
Hard Seating – Mister Fox and Mister Flowers

T
here is one
other thing I should mention about Sideways London.
 
The city would appear to have been laid out
by the same town planner who designed the
Cretan labyrinth.
 
Streets bend and
twist like Chinese gymnasts.
 
North, South,
East and West who needs ‘
em
?
 
Even street names are subject to change
without notice.
 
Cale
Street suddenly becomes

Even if the GPS had been invented, I doubt it would work here.
 
You might as well try to navigate your way
through the Bermuda Triangle.

I was on an early-morning walk to Victoria and Albert museum when I took a
wrong turn and found myself heading down the Old
Brompton
Road.
 
The name rang a bell.
 
Wasn’t that the location of the theater on
the tickets Schrödinger had given me?
 
And if so, did I still have them?

I checked my pockets and there they were, crumpled but intact.
 
I looked down the street and saw the theater
whose marquee advertised a double bill featuring
The Great Train Robbery
and
Backward
Bob To The Rescue
.
 
What the hell, I
figured.
 
They couldn’t be any worse than
Freddie Got Fingered.

I had almost reached the Kinescope when a windowless black van pulled up
beside me.
 
The bowler-hatted man who had
busted me at Schrödinger’s
Esoterica
was sitting in
the passenger seat.

“Get in,’ he said, nodding toward the rear of the vehicle.

I thought briefly about making a run for it, but where was I going to
go?
 
I was soon seated in the rear of the
paddy wagon on a hard wooden bench sporting many carved initials and a drawing
of a round head with a long nose poking over a wall accompanied by the
plaintive slogan ‘
Wot
, No Char?’

My butt was crying uncle by the time we got to our destination, thanks to
the wagon’s rudimentary suspension.
 
I’d
tell you where we went, but the lack of windows made it impossible for me to
know.
 
All I can say is that I ended up
sitting on yet another hard chair in a basement room of some kind of
institutional building.

I had been waiting alone for about ten minutes when the door opened and a
man carrying a large tripod-mounted camera entered.
 
He positioned his apparatus at the other side
of the room with its bellows-mounted lens pointing towards me.
 
After making some final adjustments he asked
me to ‘look this way please.’
 
There was
an acrid burning smell followed by a flash of light that left me momentarily
blinded.
 
The man was gone by the time my
sight had returned.

A few minutes later the door re-opened to admit a thin-lipped man whose bloodless,
clean-shaven face was framed by bushy, ginger-colored sideburns.

“I am Mister Fox,” he said, “and you will now tell me everything you know
about the British League of Fascists.”

“The what?”

“Don’t play the fool with me, my
American friend.
 
The British League of
Fascists,” Fox said.

“Just the graffiti I’ve seen on the
walls.”

“What is graffiti?”

I began to explain the history of street art starting with the Lascaux cave paintings, but he cut me short and started
on a new tangent.
 
“Tell me what
connection you share with the man Schrödinger,” he said.

“If you mean the guy from the shop, I don’t know anything about him.”

Fox seemed dissatisfied with my answer and opened the door to admit my
paddy wagon friend who had discarded his bowler hat to reveal an almost-bald
scalp embroidered with a fine tracery of old scars.
 
“Perhaps some time with Mister Flowers will
refresh your memory,” Fox said, leaving the room.

‘Some time with Mister Flowers’ turned out to be the equivalent of a couple
of rounds in the UFC Octagon.
 
By the
time he was finished, everything between my neck and my ankles was throbbing.
 
I don’t know why he spared my face.
 
Wanted to leave me able to talk would be my
guess.

Fox reappeared and renewed his interrogation, pausing from time to time to
dab at his face with a monogrammed handkerchief.
 
His enquiries were fruitless since I had
nothing to tell him and after a while he seemed to lose interest.
 
Finally, he reached into a nearby filing
cabinet and retrieved two documents which he handed to me.
 
One was a hard bound book labeled United
States of America Passport, the other was a one-way ticket on something called
the USS Pride of Norfolk.

“Mister
Liddel
, you have greatly inconvenienced
Her Majesty’s Intelligence Service, and your presence in this country is no
longer welcome,” Fox said.
 
“The Pride of
Norfolk debarks at six this evening.
 
You
will be on it.”

“Do I at least get a ride to the boat?”

“Her Majesty’s government is not in
the carriage for hire business, old boy.
 
You have three hours, more than enough time to walk to the American
docks.
 
Mister Flowers will show you to
the door.”

Chapter XII:

Shank’s Pony –
A Welcome Offer – The Pride of Norfolk

O
nce
outside, I found myself on a busy street facing the Thames.
 
That was the good news; all I had to do was
follow the water and I would come to the docks eventually.
 
The bad news was that it was getting near
lunch time and I was hungry.
 
I
considered stealing an apple from one of the many costermongers along the embankment,
but the bowler-hatted Mister Flowers was still shadowing me and the last thing
I wanted was a rematch with him.

In any case, it was a beautiful day
and I was almost enjoying myself as I made my way toward the docks.
 
The air was clear for once, and I could see Tower Bridge
in the distance.
 
The slow-moving river
was crowded with everything from rowboats to paddle-wheeled steamers whose
splashing formed a kind of counterpoint to the overhead screech of seagulls.

I had been walking for about ten
minutes when I became aware of a chuffing sound behind me.
 
I turned to see a steam-powered three-wheeled
cab driven by a sallow-faced man in a flat cap.

“Wherever can you be going,” a
voice asked from the vehicle’s passenger seat.
 
I recognized my reluctant hostess, Sarah St. John.
 
“You had better get in,” she said, after I
had explained my predicament.
 
“You say
this man’s name was Fox?” she continued, once we were underway.
 
“You didn’t perhaps learn his first
name?
 
Was it Alistair?”

“Now that you mention it, his
handkerchief was monogrammed with the letter A.”

“Whatever can the fool be playing
at?” Sarah said, as much to herself as to me.

I
t didn’t
take us long to get to the docks, twenty-five minutes at most, but we had to
wait almost a half hour to get through the gates where helmeted policeman had
set up temporary barriers and were questioning everyone who entered.
 
A group of sullen looking men in cloth caps
watched the proceedings from the opposite side of the road and they in turn
were being watched by mounted policemen.
 
At one point, a khaki-colored armored car came clanking down the street,
its riveted machine gun turret traversing from left to right as though looking
for likely targets.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s the dockworkers,” Sarah St.
John said.
 
“They’ve been threatening to
strike.
 
It’s so very tiresome.”

We were greeted by a scene of near
chaos once we got inside.
 
Not one, but
two American ships had just arrived and the quay was a scene of antlike turmoil.
 
Sweating porters jostled and argued about who
would be first in the customs line.
 
Well-fed men in top hats helped women in furs down the gangplank while
keeping watch for pickpockets.

“Of course I do not have more than
half a pint of spirits,” protested a Wagnerian matron at a customs table.

“Perfumes are spirits, madam,” said
the mustachioed customs officer.
 
“You
would appear to have a full pint here.”

“What rot!
 
I can assure you I have no intention of
drinking it.”

T
he Pride of
Norfolk turned out to be square-rigged steam clipper flying a flag with red and
white stripes were surmounted by a coiled rattlesnake underscored with the
words ‘don’t tread on me.’

I climbed down from the cabriolet
and was about to offer my hand to Sarah St. John but the exasperated look on
her face changed my mind.
 
“Here,” she
said, reaching for her purse.
 
“You’d
better have some money.
 
You cannot
possibly cross the sea without funds.”

I showed my ticket to a merchant seaman standing on the dock and a moment
later I was walking up the canvas covered planks of the ship’s gangway.

Chapter XIII:

A Free Newspaper –
A Warning – A Skeptical Reception

“I
t will be
a while before we get underway sir,” the steward said, after he had shown me to
my cabin. “Perhaps you would care for something to read?
 
The Evening Herald perhaps?”

“But it isn’t evening yet.”

“The Herald is kind enough to make
copies available to us on condition that none leave the ship.”
 
He showed no outward disappointment when I
apologized for being unable to tip him, contenting himself with “a good day to
you sir,” uttered through pursed lips.

The cabin was small, little more
than a washroom with an attached bunk, but how much space did I need?
 
I wasn’t like I was overburdened with
luggage.
 

The day was less than half over and
I already felt worn out.
 
I sat down and
tried to collect my thoughts.
 
Now
what?
 
I was going back to America, but what kind of America?
 
What if they still had prohibition or maybe Hulk
Hogan was President?

More to the point, the farther I
got from this
bizarro
version of England, the
less my chances of ever finding my way home.
 
Did that even matter?
 
Let’s be
honest, it wasn’t as though my life at USW was all that great.
 
But then whose fault was that?
 
Mine.
 
I resolved that things were going to change if
I did ever get back to my ‘real’ life.
 
No more eating shit from Ross Percival, no more getting jerked around by
Hope Buchan.
 
The world would see a
decisive Bob
Liddel
, a disciplined Bob
Liddel
, a dynamic Bob
Liddel
.

I needed a break from this
alliterative overload so I spread the newspaper on the bed beside me.
 
The main article was about government
attempts to prevent a strike by coal miners.
 
Wasn’t that one of the crises during the Thatcher regime?
 
Plus
ça
change
.

And then my eye fell on a headline in the lower right hand corner that read
“
Peer’s daughter alleged to be fascist
Sympathizer
.”
 
The accompanying
story stated that Sarah St. John was believed to be an associate of Dr. Franz
Schrödinger, a known Fascist agent.
 
As a
result her father, Lord
Newford
, had been forced to
step down from his Home Office position in favor of his second in command, Alistair
Fox, pending the result of government enquiries.

My first instinct was to leave Sarah
to her fate.
 
She hadn’t exactly thrown
out the welcome mat for me, had she?
 
On
the other hand, I didn’t like the idea of leaving her at the mercy of Alistair Fox
and his henchman Flowers.
 
Finally, I got
up and went to the door.
 
What the
hell?
 
If I really was lying comatose
back in the ‘real’ world I might as well have some laughs while I waited to
wake up.

The first thing I saw when I left
the cabin was the steward talking to someone at the base of the companionway
leading to the deck.
 
As I got closer, I could
see my nemesis Mr. Flowers pressing a gold coin into the steward’s hand.
 
There was something furtive about the way the
steward pocketed the coin that made me glad I hadn’t tipped him.

Fortunately, neither person
appeared to have seen me so I took a side turning and followed a porter pushing
a wooden trolley loaded with soiled bedding.
 
We ended up at the ship’s laundry where the porter looked at me
curiously before emptying his cart and going back for another load.
 
I stepped through the laundry door as soon as
he had gone and found myself in a small, windowless space whose low ceilings
were made even more claustrophobic by a hissing network of overhead pipes. The
place was unoccupied so I walked quickly past steaming cauldrons of wet linen
and wood-framed mangle irons to a small door at the far end of the room which opened
to another companionway.
 
I soon found
myself on the ship’s rear deck where a turbaned lascar was coiling a thick hemp
rope around a steel bollard.
 
Ignoring
his protests, I ran down the gangway to the quay.

By now most of the passengers had
cleared customs and a long column of vehicles snaked toward the exit
gates.
 
I could just make out Sarah’s carriage
near the head of the queue.

I ran forward and nearly caught up
but her driver suddenly turned his cabriolet onto the main thoroughfare ahead
of a red, steam-powered omnibus.
 
I
hopped onto the rear platform of the bus and clung to its brass handrail until
a stout conductress told me to either “pay up or get the blazes off.”

Fortunately, Sarah’s vehicle had
stopped at the next intersection and I was able to grab its door handle and
pull myself onto the footplate.

Sarah’s look was less than
welcoming when I squeezed in beside her, red-faced and panting.
 
“Must you continue to torment me like a mythological
harpy?” she asked.

I explained about the article in
the Evening Herald but she was skeptical.
 
I could sense her doubts hardening into outright disbelief when I
confessed that I had forgotten the newspaper back in my cabin.

“I have no doubt your tale is a
complete fabrication,” she said, when I had finished.
 
“In any case, I was present at Schrödinger’s
squalid shop only because my father had asked me to act as his unofficial
representative and monitor the comings and goings there.
 
Driver,” she called out the window.
 
“Please take us to the Home Office.”