The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels (29 page)

“The marketing strategy will be a bit awkward,” Carnegie agreed. “A machine for talking to the dead isn’t like the electric light-bulb—something that every home needs and has to buy repeatedly because of built-in obsolescence. Do you envisage it as a domestic appliance, like your phonograph, or will it be an institutional sort of thing, like the electric chair?”

“I’ve already explained that the machine isn’t amenable to mass production,” Edison said. “I envisage it as a wonder of the world, which might be placed in its own custom-built building as a modern oracle.”

And what will it actually
do
for us?” Rockefeller wanted to know. “When you get down to the nitty-gritty, what’ll the news be
worth
?”

“I think that rather depends on exactly what the dead have to say for themselves when Mr. Edison opens his channel of communication,” Quatermain interjected. “Even if spiritualist mediums are honest—not that I doubt them all, mind—their links with the world beyond seem to be tenuous and discontinuous. If Mr. Edison can open a channel capable of carrying much heavier traffic for sustained periods, the dead may become a good deal more voluble.” “That is my hope,” Edison confirmed. “At present, our forefathers can only communicate with us, if at all, in fragmentary whispers. My machine will hopefully give them the ability to speak clearly, at far greater length and in far greater detail.”

“But it might not work in the way you envisage,” Count Lugard suggested. “And even if it does...it has occurred to you, I suppose, that at least some of the dead may bear us some ill will—and that they might be at least as prone to mendacity, malice, inarticulacy, false belief and insanity as they were when they were alive.”

“Come now, Lugard,” Quatermain said. “Even aristocrats like yourself and the Duke of Buccleuch, who are heirs to centuries of feudal oppression, surely have nothing to fear from the bitter slanders of a few wretched peasants? Why, I dare say that there are hundreds of elephants, dozens of lions and not a few giraffes whose souls might harbor resentments against me, but I’d be willing to face them all as squarely now as I did when I gunned them down.”

“And what about the unspeakable
octopodes
from the Mitumba Mountains?” Carnegie asked. “Are you willing to hear what their immortal souls have to whistle in your ear?”

“Of course,” said Quatermain. That would be a small price to pay for such opportunities as the privilege of meeting up with my old friends Curtis and Good again.”

“You don’t think they might be a little envious that you walked away with all King Solomon’s treasure while they stayed behind to feed the vultures?” Hearst suggested.

“They have the treasures of Heaven now,” Quatermain said. “They were virtuous and generous men, and I cannot imagine that they would bear me any grudge.”

“They’re likely in a very small minority, then,” Hearst said. “What about the majority whose members are suffering the torments of Hell and the rigors of Purgatory? Shall we hear their screams of agony when Edison switches on his machine, do you think?”

“My machine will hopefully put an end to all such idiot superstitions,” Edison said, stiffly. “I am confident that it will demonstrate the infinite mercy of God—or His utter indifference to the condition of the dead, whose echoes beyond the grave must be natural phenomena, like electricity and X-rays, waiting to be revealed by the march of progress.”

“And exploited, of course,” Carnegie added. “After discovery comes utility.”

“Just so,” said Rockefeller. “Still can’t see exactly how you’ll make your money, though.”

Edison raised his eyes to the heaven in which he did not seem to believe, but he remained silent. Presumably, there seemed to him to be no point in correcting the millionaires’ misconceptions yet again.

“I’ll drink to that,” said Captain Rowland, although it was unclear to his eleven dinner companions exactly what he meant by “that.”

* * * *

At the writers’ table, the talk was similarly dominated by Mr. Edison’s impending demonstration.

“It will be interesting to converse with Shakespeare,” said Mr. Huneker.

“Chaucer and Malory,” Mr. Robertson speculated.

“King Arthur himself, and Sir Perceval too,” suggested Mr. Twain.

“Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus,” added Mr. Chambers.

“Charles Baudelaire and Villiers de l’Isle Adam,” M. Lorrain put in.

“Sappho and Catherine the Great,” mused Ms. Lee.

“Napoleon Bonaparte and Georges Cadoudal,” was M. Feval’s slightly mischievous suggestion.

“Horatio Nelson and the Duke of Wellington,” countered the man from the
Telegraph
.

“Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I,” supplied the man from the Mail.

“Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana,” said M. Apollinaire.

“Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan,” M. Jarry contributed.

“All mere flights of destiny’s fancy,” Mr. Vane opined. “We shall all meet the Lord, whether Mr. Edison’s machine works or not, and we shall all be judged.

“Percy Shelley and John Keats,” Mr. Huneker went on, blithely.

“Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift,” Mr. Robertson added.

“George Washington and Julius Caesar,” said Mr. Twain.

“Homer and General Custer,” added Mr. Chambers.

“Salome and Cleopatra,” was M. Lorrain’s second contribution.

“Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci,” Ms. Lee suggested.

“Fra Diavolo and Cartouche,” said M. Feval
fils
.

“Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin,” riposted the man from the
Telegraph
.

“Richard III and Henry VIII,” said the man from the
Mail
.

“Merlin and Morgana la Fee,” said M. Apollinaire.

“Gilles de Rais and Jeanne d’Arc,” said M. Jarry.

“If the lines of communication remain open, of course,” M. Feval observed. “We’ll have some stiff competition in the new century. If every home in the world acquires one of Mr. Edison’s machines, Father will want me to serve as his amanuensis, I’m sure. Now that we have the electric light-bulb and the typewriter, the transcription of the deads’ pent-up literary works could become a long and arduous task.”

“It could be worse,” said Mr. Twain. “We might be historians.”

* * * *

When the dining-room had emptied again, the gentlemen reassembled in the saloon, where they brought out their pipes and cigars, as usual—except for those who preferred a glass of absinthe, with or without a dash of ether.

Mr. Edison’s machine had already been set up, and connected to the ship’s generator. In appearance it was somewhat reminiscent of a cross between a telephone exchange and a church organ, its manifold pipes being tuned to catch and amplify the voices of the dead, while its multitudinous switches were designed to secure and facilitate connections between the mundane and astral planes.

There was a stool at the front, from which all the indicators were visible and all the controls accessible, but Edison did not take his seat immediately; he busied himself checking the various connections for a full fifteen minutes, during which interval his audience—augmented now by Edward Rocambole, a select handful of his fellow second-class passengers and an equal number of representatives of the third class—shuffled for position. Almost all of the watchers were standing up, the seating in the saloon being arranged about the walls, offering a very poor view. Thanks to the
Titan
’s stabilizers, the waiting men were only swaying gently from side to side even though the storm outside was raging as never before.

Finally, the moment of truth arrived. Mr. Edison turned to his audience, bowed, and opened his mouth to make a speech.

“Oh, get on with it, man!” said the Duke of Buccleuch, rudely. “We all know why we’re here. Let’s hear what the dead have to say, if anything.”

Edison was obviously not pleased by this demand but he scanned the faces of the crowd, as if in order to measure their opinion. What he saw there evidently disposed him against further delay, and he sat down. He reached out his right hand to take the lever that would activate the machine’s electricity supply, and pulled it down decisively.

The machine crackled and hummed. The pipes emitted eerie sounds, reminiscent of harp strings stirred by a wayward wind—but then the voices began to come through.

They were voices—no one in the saloon could have any doubt about that—but it was quite impossible to distinguish what any one of them might be saying. There were thousands, perhaps millions, all attempting to speak at the same time, in every living language and at least as many that were no longer extant.

None of the voices was shouting, at first; they were all speaking in a conversational tone, as if they did not realize how much competition there was to be heard. As the minutes went by, however, this intelligence seemed to filter back to wherever the dead were lodged. The voices were raised a little—and then more than a little. Fortunately, the volume of their clamor was limited by the power of the amplifiers that Mr. Edison had fitted to his machine, and he immediately reached out to turn the knob that would quiet the chorus—with the result that the voices of the dead became a mere murmurous blur, denied all insistency as well as all coherency.

Edison’s own voice was clearly audible over the muted hubbub when he turned to his audience to say: “If you will be patient, gentlemen, I am certain that our friends on the Other Side will begin to sort themselves out, and make arrangements to address us by turns, in order that each of them might make himself heard. It is just a matter...?”

He was interrupted then, by an unexpected event.

Allan Quatermain, who happened to be looking out of one of the portholes, observed four bolts of lightning descend simultaneously from widely disparate parts of the sky, converging upon the funnels of the
Titan
. All four struck at the same instant, each one picking out a funnel with unerring accuracy.

The cables connecting the ship’s internal telegraph system had been imperfectly repaired, but there was nevertheless a continuous circuit running from the bow to the stern, and from the crow’s nest to the keel. It ran through every bulkhead and every compartment, every cabin on every deck, every hold and locker, every davit and stanchion, every rivet and joint. The lightning surged through the hull, possessing every fiber of the vessel’s being.

The
Titan
’s wiring burnt out within a fraction of a second and Mr. Edison’s machine collapsed in a heap of slag, although it left the man himself miraculously untouched, perched upon his stool. So diffuse was the shock, in fact, that the men standing in the saloon, their womenfolk in their cabins, and even the masses huddled in steerage felt nothing more than a tingling in their nerves, more stimulant than injury.

Nobody aboard the
Titan
died as a direct result of the multiple lightning strike, but the flood of electrical energy was by no means inconsequential. Communication between the
Titan
and the world of the dead was cut off almost instantly—but
almost
instantly was still a measurable time, and the interval was enough to permit a considerable effect.

Exactly what that effect was, no one aboard the
Titan
could accurately discern, and the only man aboard with wit enough even to form a hypothesis was Jean Tenebre, who had briefly borrowed the identity of the elephant-hunter Allan Quatermain.

If the real Quatermain had made any posthumous protest, his voice went unheard.

What the Chevalier Tenebre hypothesized was that by far the greater portion of the power of the multiple lightning-strike, which had so conspicuously failed to blast the
Titan
to smithereens or strike dead its crew and passengers, had actually passed through the ship’s telegraph system and Mr. Edison’s machine
into
the realm of the dead, where it had wreaked havoc.