Infernal Devices (27 page)

  I interrupted him: "And one of the devices was the Paganinicon."

  "Yeah, right. They filled you in on that, didn't they? Helluva thing, ain't it? Musta really knocked you on your ass when you saw it – I just about shit when I went back to Bendray's hunting lodge and there it was, walking around and talking."

  "It was indeed… marvellous," I agreed.

  He leaned closer to me. "Well, get this; the other device I got off the old guy, it was even wilder."

  "Indeed? What was it?"

  "To look at it," said Scape, "you wouldn't have thought it was much, of anything. I mean, compared to a whole clockwork violinist, for Christ's sake. What it was, was a box about yay big" – he held his hands a little over a foot apart – "like one of those slide projector-type things… what d'ya call 'em… magic lantern, right. With a little compartment for a paraffin lamp inside, and a lens on the front. But no place to put in slides or anything like that; most of the device was just filled up with your father's weird gears and stuff. It took me a while, but I got the thing working. And it was wild."

  "What did it do?"

  Scape gazed at me with smug complacency. "It flashed," he said simply.

  For not the first time, I was mystified. "'Flashed'?"

  "You looked into the lens, see, and it flashed at you. The clockwork controlled a shutter opening and closing in front of the light. Real fast, and with a certain rhythmic pattern." He nodded, pursing his lips for a moment. "Damnedest thing lever did see."

  "What was so wonderful about it?" Perhaps my earlier impressions of him were correct, and he was simply demented.

  "You looked into it while it was flashing, and you'd see things." His voice lowered, imparting the secret. "You'd see… the Future."

  The fervour in his voice, almost religious in nature, traced a shiver tip my spine. "The Future, you say."

  He nodded. "Yeah – I thought I was going crazy when it started to happen. But it all just went on unreeling inside my head, and I knew it was the real thing. Really the Future; a hundred years or more ahead. Seeing everything that was going to happen, through the eyes of my children and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Wild, huh?"

  "Indeed," I murmured.

  "You see, Dower," he said excitedly, "your old man – what a genius that sonuvabitch was! – he figured out a way to alter, like, brain waves and stuff – all the things that go on inside your head – through this goddamn flashing light. And he wasn't even the first, man! Ol' Bendray showed me some stuff from the Royal Anti-Society archives; Catherine de Medici, back in the sixteenth century, had a tower built for her pet prognosticator Nostradamus, and that was how he worked it. He'd sit up there looking at the sun, and fanning his fingers in front of his eyes – real quick, like flickering – and then he'd see stuff! The Future! That's how he made all those predictions; more of 'em are gonna come true, too; you just wait and see. But anyway, what ol' Nostradamus just bashed away at, your father worked out scientific how to do it right. The Paganinicon – did he tell you a buncha stuff about a sort of medium, that certain fine vibrations from the human brain travel through?"

  I nodded.

  "Okay; what the deal is – that medium's not limited by spatial dimensions, like he told you. But it's not limited by Time, either. It extends through Past, Present, Future, all together. No difference, everything simultaneous. And the flashing light – if you get the speed and the pattern just exactly right – it can alter what section of that medium you perceive. Instead of this little piece that you normally see, you can just go sliding off into the Future. It's like genetic time-travel. What you get are the perceptions what they see, what they think and know – of your own descendants, laid on top of your own. Dig it: you see the world to come through your own children's eyes."

  I hadn't understood some of the words he used, but I gathered the general import of his explanation. "So this is what you did? Used my father's device for this… Future perception?"

  "Sure did. Me and Miss McThane both. We spent so much time staring into the lens on that box, while it went flickity-flick into our eyeballs – Christ, I'm telling ya." He shook his head. "I've spent so much time in the Future… I don't really belong back in this time any more. That's why I talk like this, you know? This is the way some grandkid of mine is gonna talk some day. And I got the personality, too – a Future personality. I mean, I was pretty much of a crook before; but since I've taken on the characteristics of the way people are gonna be in the next century – jeez, I'm a real sharp dealer. I guess it's just the way everybody's gonna be some day."

  That was a daunting prospect. A world of Scapes – perhaps it was best that I was not meant to see anymore of such a dismal vista's approach.

  "Actually," continued Scape, "I think I might've looked into it a little too much. All that flashing kinda screwed up my eyes – can't take anything too bright. That's why I wear the shades all the time. I guess it's a good thing that the device finally wore out and flew to pieces; otherwise I would've gone on staring into it until I was blind."

  The subject worked a horrible fascination upon me. "What… what is the Future going to be like, then?"

  "Hey, it's gonna be a gas," Scape assured me. "If you're into machines and stuff – like I am – you'd go for it. People are gonna have all kinds of shit. Do whatever they want with it. That's why it didn't faze me when ol' Bendray first told me about wanting to blow up the world. Hey – in the Future, everybody will want to!"

  He had satisfied my curiosity; I wished to hear no further of these dreadful days to come. "This device, then, is no more?"

  "Yeah – when it went, it went like a bomb. I couldn't even begin to put it back together. So me and Miss McThane – with our new improved brains – figured maybe we could sell the other thing – the violinist we couldn't get started up – for a lotta money. We heard that sonuvabitch Sir Charles Wroth was interested in stuff like that, so we trekked down south with it to show him. To make the sale, we had to give him that line about being able to get the Paganinicon working if we went into London and got the Aetheric Regulator from you. He assumed we knew what we were talking about; actually, if I'd known that there was a regulator already inside the Paganinicon, and all it needed was to be brought close to you in order to start it ticking, I could've saved myself a lotta trouble. As it was, I only had an idea of what I was looking for when I broke into your shop because Sir Charles had recommended me to his Royal Anti-Society buddy Lord Bendray, and he told me what the Regulator he wanted for his earthsmashing machine looked like. Then when Miss McThane and I were staking out your place, we saw that dark-skinned guy bring around just the thing we needed, so we tried to get it off you. That's all."

  "So you were employed by both Sir Charles and Lord Bendray?"

  He nodded. "Yeah. I was trying to build up kind of a clientele among all those old farts in the Royal Anti-Society. You know, as sort of a consultant on the stuff that your father built for them; except I had to be careful not to let on that some of it was just a bunch of fakes, like that big contraption your old man unloaded on Bendray. No sense spoiling their fun."

  I was still puzzled. "But what about the church back in London – with all that fishing tackle? What were you doing there?"

  He laughed and shook his head. "You know – I'm still wondering about that, myself. I think it just goes to show that ol' Bendray's gone round the bend. We were there in London, me and Miss McThane, trying to get that Regulator off of you, and he shows up with that crackbrained scheme of going around to that old church and stuffing it with all that Izaak Walton stuff, and fishing rods and things. Weird. Just a weird business. Something to do with those ugly-looking people that hang out there. I didn't know there were any like that living in London until that night they showed up at the church; I had seen ones like 'em in Dampford, that village next to his estate, so I assume they're related in some way. Country and City cousins, I suppose. But what Bendray wanted to accomplish by showing 'em a church with fish-hooks and lines all over it – beats the hell out of me."

  We lapsed into silence together. I was about to put another question to him, when I heard the sound of him snoring. Lulled by the motion of the ship, and warmed by a momentary parting of the clouds, he had fallen asleep with his head tilted back against the hatchway.

  I pushed Abel's head from my own lap, and stood up. With Scape's wild expositions – what part dementia, and what part truth, I still could not determine – whirling in my head, I made my way towards my cabin below the deck.

  An ambush was sprung upon me before I reached my destination. In the dark passageway, a pair of arms encircled my neck and pulled me off my feet.

  Miss McThane's breath was warm against my face. "I heard you talking," she whispered in my ear. "I was down in the hatchway, and I could hear you two."

  "Please–" I endeavoured to free myself. The white expanse of her throat, and the soft shapes below, seemed almost luminous in the dark. "Please restrain yourself–"

  "Hey–" Something wet touched the inside of my ear, startling me further; I was just able to discern the tip of her tongue withdrawing behind her salacious smile. "Everything Scape told you – it's all true. Everything."

  "That – that may be–" The fervour of her embrace had expelled most of the air from my lungs. "But–"

  She threw her head back, the sharp points of her small teeth glinting fiercely. "I got a brain out of the Future inside my head. This is the way it's gonna be some day – no more of that ladylike crap. In the Future, women are just gonna take what they want." Her mouth swooped down upon me again, an eagle on its prey.

  "God help us." I broke free of her grasp, but was within seconds pinned against the door of my cabin.

  Her voracious gaze locked into my eyes. "Not just women," she breathed. "Women – men – everybody. It's all they'll think about – all the time." Her panting breath became even more rapid. "Not like you – you drive me crazy. You're so goddamn cold – unexcited – like a goddamn machine. You're the one that's clockwork." Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Well, all that's gonna change, right now. I can't stand it – get ready, sucker–"

  The door sprang open behind me, and I fell backwards, tearing free of Miss McThane's embrace. This sudden event so took her by surprise, that there was time for me to scramble to my knees, slam the door shut, and brace my shoulder against it to prevent her entry.

  She went away, after several minutes of repeated entreaties. I sat wearily on my bed, my head in my hands, appalled at this vision of the Future – a foreign country far from this one, where a person such as I would be as out of place as though lost in the Mongolian wastes. If what Scape had told me was true, then they would be different people, those residents of the Time to Come; different, and crueller, rending the flesh of their pleasures in their shining teeth.

  So unnerving was this vision, that for a moment I thought I had at last become deranged. I looked up at a sound of grinding wood, and saw a stalk of glistening metal rising from the floor of my cabin. A brass flower blossomed at its end, and swivelled towards me.

  A voice – familiar, unforgettable – spoke. "Dower you are there?" The Brown Leather Man's words echoed hollow, as though coming through the tube from a great distance below.

 
 

 

It was no apparition, engendered by the collapse of my reason; I had undergone enough extraordinary experiences by this time, to have some confidence in determining what was actually happening.

  A dark stain of sea-water oozed around the hole the brass stalk had bored through the cabin floor; the metal apparatus glistened damply as the flower-like terminus rotated about. "Dower–" The voice came through it again. "You are there? Approach this device, and answer me."

  It had risen to a height of a couple of feet from the floor. I knelt down and brought my mouth close to the brass flower. "Here I am."

  The device ceased its rotation, the terminus pointing towards me. "You know who is this?"

  "Yes," I whispered in reply.

  "Good." The Brown Leather Man's voice, coming through the stalk, shaded darker. "Listen most closely. I can help you. These persons – your captors – from them you can escape. You can evade their fateful intentions."

  My heart sped when I heard these words. I had resigned myself to the – seemingly unavoidable – prospect of my own death. This was, perhaps, no more than the stoicism of the lamb being readied for slaughter, seeing no point in dashing itself against the unyielding limits of its pen. But had not this enigmatic figure, appearing when least expected, helped me to escape a grisly fate twice already? Though I could not imagine how it would be possible again, given the overwhelming numbers of the Godly Army surrounding us, yet I allowed a tremor of hope to quicken my pulse.

  "Not now, but later," continued the Brown Leather Man's voice. "When dark it is, and these men are asleep. You must then meet me." He described a point on the ship's deck, unlit and out of the sight of any sentries.

  "But– but how can it be possible?" I asked, my lips nearly touching the cold, shining metal. "How can–"

  "Now, quiet," ordered the voice. "Explanations later. When we meet. Tell no one." The brass flower folded in on itself, and the stalk drew back through the floor. The only evidence remaining of its singular apparition was the round hole, no bigger than a finger's width, and a trickle of sea-water. I pulled a small rag rug that had been near the bed over the spot to conceal it.