Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (8 page)

Chapter XX:

A
Trojan Horse – A Surprise Meeting

M
ax the cat
did his best to escape when we opened the back doors of the caravan but Sarah grabbed
him by the scruff of the neck and soothed his wounded feelings with ear
scratches and traditional feline endearments along the lines of ‘Is he a pretty
boy then?
 
Oh yes he is.’
 
A soppy look of devotion appeared on the
animal’s battle-damaged face and he began to purr so loudly I was afraid he
might give us away.

We had just gotten ourselves hidden
in the space beneath the day bed when the cab door opened and the caravan’s
primitive suspension system creaked with the weight of someone getting in.

“Just follow me and don’t try
anything funny,” we heard Flowers say.

“I wouldn’t dream of it old boy,”
Schrödinger answered.

One of the advantages of steam
power over internal combustion is that the engine has full torque right from
the get go and doesn’t need a clutch or transmission.
 
Sounds great right?
 
But believe me, those first piston strokes
can be brutal, especially when you’re stuck in a cramped space.
 
The ride finally smoothed out once we built
up speed but even so, we both breathed sighs of relief when the van came to a
stop and we heard the steam escaping from the boiler.

We waited until we thought it was
safe and crept out from beneath the daybed.
 
Sarah gave Max a last tummy scratch and we opened the back doors to find
ourselves beneath the roof of a
porte-cochère
attached to large limestone building.

Our luck held and the side door was
unlocked.
 
Once inside, we faced a long,
institutional-looking corridor leading who knows where and a set of stairs
going down to the basement level.
 
We
chose the stairs which took us to a kind of lunchroom furnished with
hard-backed chairs and a long trestle table on which sat a copper tea urn.

“What shall we do now?” Sarah said.

“You wanted to find your father so
we’re going to have to look for him,” I said.

I had just finished offering this
keen insight into the obvious when we heard footsteps in the corridor
outside.
 
The door opened and a stout man
wearing a gray frocked dressing gown and tattered brown carpet slippers entered
and shuffled slowly over to the tea urn.
 
His hair was disheveled as though he just awakened from a deep sleep and
the impression of somnambulism was heightened by the fact that he seemed not to
notice us.
 
I took him for an aged
caretaker but once again I was wrong.

“Father!” Sarah said.

“Oh hello Sadie,” the man
said.
 
“I wasn’t expecting you.”

Chapter XXI:

Lord
Newford’s
Story

“W
as it wise
of you to come here?” he continued.
 
“They are looking for you, you know.”

“Yes father, I know,” Sarah
said.
 
“Is there someplace we could
talk?”

‘Someplace’ turned out to be Lord
Newford’s
private quarters at the rear of the building, in
a
 
room lined with oak bookshelves
containing row upon row of bound volumes.

I sank gratefully into a soft
leather armchair as Lord
Newford
sipped his tea and
listened to his daughter’s explanation of how we came to be there.

“It would appear you owe Mister
Liddel
a debt of gratitude,” he said, when she had
finished.
 
“He has shown great
resourcefulness.”

“Yes, I suppose he has,” Sarah
said, looking at me as though for the first time.

 
“I am grateful that you thought to rescue me
from ‘durance vile’ but, as you can see, my living conditions are more than
bearable,” he said, gesturing to his comfortably furnished surroundings. “So
the question now is not how to save me, but what you should do to save
yourselves.
 
Normally, I would say that
we should simply arrange a meeting with young Mister Fox to smooth out what,
after all, is little more than misunderstanding, but political considerations
might intrude.”

“What political considerations?” Sarah
asked.

“As you must be aware, your
continuing crusade for women’s suffrage has ruffled more than a few
feathers.
 
It would suit certain persons
very well to have your views tarred with the brush of sedition and anarchy.”

“If I am a Fascist then all
suffragettes must be Fascists?”

“Precisely.
 
The curious thing is that the Fascists enjoy
considerable support in certain government circles.
 
I sometimes wonder if the anti-Fascist
rhetoric is merely a smokescreen for some darker purpose.”

“Then why did you ask me to keep
watch on Schrödinger’s shop?”

“To see if my suspicions were
correct.
 
Unfortunately, as I recall, you
saw no sign of anything irregular.”

“Not to intrude,” I intruded, “But
if there is no Fascist conspiracy, then who has been painting the letters ‘BLF’
on walls all around London?
 
And more
important, who stole the dimensional translator and why?”

“Very pertinent questions, young
man,” Lord
Newford
said.
 
“Is there really a conspiracy?
 
Do we have a traitor in our midst?
 
Questions we had hoped to answer by setting up
Schrödinger’s shop.”

“Hang on,” I said.
 
“You set up Schrödinger’s shop?”

“It was Fox’s idea.
 
We knew that whoever had stolen the
translator would have little idea of how to use it.
 
Fox planted an article under
Schrödinger’s name
in
The Journal of Scientific Progress
which
discussed the possibility of using a communication device to contact alternate
worlds.
 
The hope was that the thief or
thieves would contact
Schrödinger to
find out more.”
 
He stopped to take
another sip of his tea and looked up suddenly.
 
Once again I was reminded of a sleepwalker who had just awakened.
 
“You must think me very rude,” he said.
 
“May I offer you anything to drink?
 
I have some excellent whisky.”

“You know I never touch spirits,” Sarah said.

“No problem,” I said.
 
“I’ll have
her share.”

Lord
Newford
poured me three generous fingers
of the best Scotch I have ever tasted and I settled back to enjoy its peaty warmth.
 
“I’m still confused,” I said, after my second
gratifying sip.
 
“Why is this Dimensional
Translator thingamajig so important?
 
As
far as I know, all it does is make bad movies.”
 
As you can tell, I was still offended at being cast as ‘Backward Bob.’

“You are quite right in saying that we use it as little more than an
electrical peephole to another world, but even that capability has its
dangers.
 
It has, in fact, caused a major
shift in the policies of Her Majesty’s Government.”

“In what way?”

“I will offer a brief history
lesson, if I may.
 
The Dimensional
Translator was invented four decades ago by a very brilliant chap named Charles
Babbage.
 
Babbage was devoutly religious
and came to believe the device was a tool of Satan.”

“So why does it still exist?
 
Why didn’t he smash it?”

“It seems he didn’t have the heart
to destroy his creation.
 
He locked it in
a vault beneath his home where it was discovered a number of years ago by his
son, Henry, who had none of his father’s scruples and used it to produce
popular entertainment such as you describe.”

“So where’s the danger?”

“At first there was none.
 
But then the phantom world in Henry’s kinescopes
began to deviate from our own.
 
Its
social order began to crumble.
 
Monarchies became republics. Empires disintegrated.
 
We began to see signs of unrest in our own
world, despite the fact that none of the new kinescopes had been released
publicly.”

“Almost as if ideas were using
dreams to spread themselves from one dimension to another,” I said, recalling
Bill Fowler’s comment when I showed him the ornament from Max’s collar.
 
What was it he thought it looked like?
 
A vacuum tube?

“Indeed.
 
And then young Babbage made the error of
releasing a film featuring a German Jew named Karl something or other.”

“Marx?”

“That’s the Johnny.
 
Marx’s prediction that the internal tensions
of the existing class structure would lead to its collapse proved to be the
final straw.
 
Her Majesty’s Intelligence
Service seized the device and brought it here to Amesbury Park.
 
Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in
retrieving Babbage’s notes, or Babbage himself, for that matter.
 
Chap vanished and hasn’t been seen since.
 
Our last information is that he is somewhere
in Devon.”

“If the Translator is so dangerous
then why didn’t you destroy it?”

“The simplest explanation would be
that the public have become partial to the entertainment it creates and it
suits the interests of Her Majesty’s Government to keep the people happy.”

“Bread and circuses?”

“Not to put too fine a point on the
matter, yes.
 
However, there are wider
concerns.”

Sarah had been fidgeting throughout
her father’s explanation, like an elementary school student who knows the
answer to the teacher’s question.
 
You
could tell she was getting ready to tell her father we had the Dimensional
Translator so I made a slight, horizontal ‘keep quiet’ gesture with my fingers.
 
I wanted to hear the rest of this story
without interruption.

“What sort of concerns?”

“When we saw the kinds of trouble
so-called scientific progress has caused in your world, we had second thoughts
about the rate of advancement in our own.”

“We fight too many wars for you?”

“We still fight wars, but ours
follow rules that have existed for centuries.
 
Yours cause the destruction of entire cities.”
  
He stopped to pour me another refill saying
“good health” as he did so. I raised my glass in thanks.
 
For an over-privileged enemy of the people,
this guy was alright
  
“That being said,
there is a school of thought that contends that progress is inevitable and that
the dimensional translator can serve as a guide to controlling its direction,”
he said.

“What school do you belong to?”

“I have mixed feelings.
 
We recently learned that before we seized the
device, Henry Babbage had engaged the services of a Serbian Engineer named
Nikola Tesla whose investigations indicated that the Translator has terrible
capabilities that were previously unknown.
 
If it were to fall into the wrong hands it might bring about the very
catastrophe we are hoping to avoid.”

“What capabilities?”

“That we cannot say.
 
Tesla has gone to America taking his notes with him
and refuses to share the results of his research.”

Sarah could contain herself no
longer.
 
“I have heard quite enough,” she
said.
 
“Father, the wretched instrument
is outside at this moment in Schrödinger’s van.
 
All we have to do is retrieve it and smash it to bits.”

“If you do that, I’ll be stuck here
forever,” I said.

“Are you so selfish you would place
your own interests over the safety of an entire world?” she said.
 
“In any case, I cannot imagine why you would
want to return to such a vile place as your own world would appear to be.”
 
With that parting shot, she lifted her skirts
and walked quickly out of the room with the look of a woman who will not be
denied.

Chapter
XXII:

A
Missed Opportunity –In Pursuit

“C
an you at
least hold off destroying the translator for a couple of days?” I asked when I
caught up with her at the base of the stairs.
 
“If it has existed this long without bringing the end of the world, a little
while longer won’t matter.”

Instead of answering, Sarah stood
at the bottom stair with her head cocked.
 
I realized there were approaching footsteps in the upstairs
corridor.
 
The side door opened a moment
later and we heard the familiar chuff-chuff of Schrödinger’s caravan followed
by the receding sound of hard wheels clattering over a cobblestone
surface.
 
The side door reopened and
familiar voices spoke at the top of the stairs.

“Do you want me to have one of the
lads follow him?” Arthur Flowers asked, his voice echoing hollowly down the
stairwell.

“I think not,” Alistair Fox answered.
 
“He may have more success if we leave him
alone.”

“What happens after he brings it
back?”

“He will be of no more use to
us.
 
I will leave it to your good
judgment as to the best method of disposing of him.”

“W
here is
the translator now?” Lord
Newford
asked, when we
returned to report the failure of our mission.

“Still under the daybed, I expect,”
I said.

“Do you think Schrödinger is likely
to see it?”

“Maybe not for a while.
 
He isn’t what you might call a tidy
housekeeper.”

“If I may summarize,” Lord
Newford
said.
 
“You Mister
Liddel
, want the translator because it offers you a
path back to your own world.
 
Sarah, you
want to destroy the infernal machine because you believe it to be
dangerous.
 
I lean towards the view that
the translator can serve a useful purpose for Her Majesty’s Government.
 
In the short term, at least, our interests
coincide.
 
All three of us want to
recover the device.”

“How are we meant to accomplish
that aim?” Sarah asked.

“By following Mister
Schrödinger and getting it back.”

“We don’t even know where he is going,” I said.

“True, but he has only just started and there are few vehicles on the
road at this time of night.”

“So we do what? Run after him?”

“No, you will need transport of course.”

“B
ehold, my hidden
vice,” Lord
Newford
said, as he opened the wooden
door of a weather-beaten shed at the rear of the Amesbury Park
grounds.
 
“Come and help me shift it out,
will you?”

Lord
Newford
stepped into the shed and removed a rubberized canvas cover from a motorized
tricycle which we proceeded to push forward with much grunting and puffing.

“Does mother know you have this thing?”
Sarah asked when the machine was out of the shed.

“No my dear, she does not and I
will thank you not to tell her,” Sarah’s father answered.
 
“An old man has a right to his secret
pleasures.”
 
He removed a handkerchief
from the pocket of his dressing gown and gently began to wipe the vehicle’s
surfaces.

I have no appreciation for steam
technology, but even I could see the tricycle was an elegant machine.
 
From its hand stitched leather seats to its
carved oak spokes, from its brass-encased gauges to its riveted boiler, it
exuded craftsmanship and power.

“T
he most
important thing is not to let the pressure rise above one thousand, five
hundred pounds per square inch,” Lord Newbury said, when he had finished going
over the machine’s controls with me.

“There isn’t a pressure relief
valve?” I asked.

“There is, but it has been known to
stick.
 
Best not to take chances,” he
said.
 
“And before I forget, there is one
other item I wish to lend to you.”
 
He
went to the rear of the shed and returned a moment later with hinged rosewood
box which he opened to reveal an octagonal-barreled top-break revolver with the
words
Adams
Patent Small Arms Co.
 stamped on its
frame
.
 
“My old service pistol,”
he said.
 
“Hopefully you will not need
it, but it is best to be prepared.”

I lifted the heavy revolver,
checked the
unfluted
cylinder and removed six fat yellow
cartridges.
 
I lifted the gun shoulder
high and sighted along the barrel.

”I see you have some experience of
firearms,” Lord Newbury said approvingly.

“Nothing as heavy as this,” I
said.
 
“What caliber is it?”

“Point four fifty Boxer,” he
said.
 
“Stop a charging water buffalo in
its tracks.”

“I’ll bring it back safely.”

“Never mind the pistol, just bring Sarah
back safely.
 
She is the only daughter I
have despite being the bane of my existence.”

“Maybe I should leave her here and
take care of things on my own.”

“Don’t be absurd old boy.
 
You would be lost without assistance.
 
I would go with you myself but alas, my years
of adventure are behind me.”

T
he guards
at the entrance didn’t try to stop us as we sped out of the compound.
 
I guess they were used to seeing the tricycle
come and go.
 
Lord
Newford
hadn’t been kidding when he said his living conditions were ‘bearable.’
 
A prisons go, this place made The Club Med
look like Alcatraz.

After a few minutes driving we came
to a crossroads at the outskirts of town.
 
We had two choices, London or Exeter.
 
Sarah made the decision for us.

“I can’t think why he would be
going to Exeter,”
she said.
 
“Take the London road.”

“I’m curious,” I said, as I
restarted the tricycle.
 
“How is it that
a rights-of-women activist like you is content to let me do the driving?”

“Just because I want the right to
vote does not mean I wish to engage in manual labor.”

 
But it was good enough for me though.
 
Some day
, God
willing, I would live to see this exasperating woman get her comeuppance.