The Technologists (27 page)

Ellen Swallow had never waited for any person, male or female, to do anything she could do herself. In the first weeks of her time at the Institute, the students were brought on an excursion to a gun manufacturer. She was not expected to go with the class, but she had appeared that morning in her finest dress, which was nevertheless still of the plain sort. The professor’s assistant, who was escorting the class, quietly pointed out to her that it was not an appropriate setting for a member of the gentler sex because, firstly, it was a factory that produced guns, and secondly, some of the brawny men on the shop floor would be half naked and disgusting to the eyes of a woman. Ellen responded, firstly, that there were mills and factories across the country employing young women, and if they could work in factories surely she could visit one; secondly, that she was never disgusted by any labor; and, thirdly, that she would do her best not to distract the men.

The professor’s assistant wouldn’t budge. He was a young man who had graduated from Yale and resented having anything to do with Ellen, gave her either too little or too much work for her assignments as suited his mood, and, passing her in the hallways, often greeted her as “Mr. Swallow.”

“As you are apt to call me Mr. Swallow, I’m afraid I must insist you treat me as one of the men from now on,” she said, “and you will be glad to know that, like some men, I am not afraid of guns.” That was the moment the assistant became the only person in Boston to whom Ellen showed her pearl-handled revolver. When she glided by the stunned scion of Yale to join the group, it was already back in its morocco case in her pocket. Later, he complained to the faculty committee about her presence on the excursion (though his humiliation prevented him from mentioning the revolver), and they issued a resolution that her face and neck be completely covered up on visits to factories.

She complied without an objection.

After the visit of the police to the Institute, Ellen approached the matter as she approached all curiosities: with a book in hand. She researched the history of nautical wrecks and disasters and found, much to her amazement, that what had occurred at the Boston Harbor seemed unprecedented. Still, there were clues to draw from the past. An extract she found from a newspaper from 1843, for example, reported on the wreck of the vessel
Reliance
, traveling from China to England: “During the last ten days, Mr. Kent and his associates, who purchased the wreck of the
Reliance
, near Boulogne, have been busily employed in their endeavors to bring the wreck to land; they have found a chronometer, several silver and plated dishes, and a large iron tank, 46 feet long by 8 feet deep, and 6 feet wide.”

Exploring this further in several French nautical histories at the public library reading room, Ellen discovered that the iron tank mentioned in the extract had been placed approximately eighteen feet below the binnacle compass. She calculated that the tank would have exerted a magnetic pull equal to 2,208 cubic feet of malleable iron, and that whatever part of the tank was on the port side of the ship would attract the south point of the compass. The
Reliance
would have charted an east by south course by compass, yet at the time of its disaster was running through the channel west by north, eight or nine leagues off its reckoned course. Driven ashore, the ship was lost and 114 people drowned.

Using the information gleaned from this and a dozen other historical wrecks she could attribute to some presence of iron or other magnetically charged materials, Ellen arrived at a variety of calculations to estimate
the amount and placement of iron that could cause damage on the scale of what happened at the Boston Harbor. There was this difference from the other wrecks: No amount of bad fortune could have led to the Boston disaster. No amount of luck or stupidity. Nor could luck have produced
this
, thought Ellen doggedly as she read about what had happened at State Street on April the tenth. She struggled to find a starting point for her research into this next incident, but kept thinking back to demonstrations of glassblowing techniques she had seen when she was ten. She read every word of material she could find on the subject. She felt certain the key to how something like a glass window was destroyed from the outside would be to find how it was made from the inside.

When she saw Mr. Mansfield, that mechanical Johnny Appleseed, in her sphere,
her
basement, she knew it was no coincidence. She knew, for she assiduously collected every scrap of information about the Institute, its staff, and its students, that he was a charity scholar and beholden to the professors, enough so to spy on her as an agent for those elements of the faculty who did not wish her to remain.

“We have a society. It is called the Technologists,” he had mumbled unconvincingly.

He and his friends were a nuisance and a threat to her seclusion, and if she could see them shipped off for some violation, she would do so with a smile and a flick of her handkerchief. Then again, they could do the same, were they to discover her.

“A
secret
society,” that dandified, charmless, and overly handsome swell Bob Richards had added.

Secret society! That was rich. Even the mere scents of chemicals that wafted into her laboratory from theirs revealed them to her. There were no secrets in nature or man that Ellen Swallow felt she would not discover, given proper time.

She had to laugh to think how clever they believed they were, but she had decided. Worrying about them was a distraction. Instead, she would put them under her thumb.

“D
O YOU MEAN TO TELL ME
she
has been conducting her own investigation, right under our noses?” Pacing Ellen’s laboratory, a pink-faced Bob Richards, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, addressed his fellow Technologists as though the mistress of the laboratory were not standing serenely by them, in front of the compass needles and fresh chemical solutions lined up neatly on her shelves.

“The reputation of the Institute
is
at stake,” Ellen answered Bob evenly. “The reputation of everyone who teaches and works with technological arts rests on resolving this matter quickly, Mr. Richards. Anyone would be blind not to see that.”

“But how did you know what we were doing, Miss Swallow?” Marcus asked, curious rather than hostile.

“Without much difficulty at all, Mr. Mansfield. I have seen and heard you bumping and stumbling around that laboratory down here. And when neither you nor Mr. Richards could credibly explain the intent of your ‘society,’ I easily surmised what you were engaged in, though likely with far less success than I. As little as I relish a collaboration, your separate investigations must end now, I’m afraid, for I cannot have mistakes on the part of you three place my own progress in jeopardy. A little more hydrogen fluoride, gentlemen, and you would have killed us all.”

“Now what makes a stringy little thing like her believe she can solve such enigmas?” Bob demanded. “And a freshman!”

“What makes you think
you
can accomplish the same, Mr. Richards? Because you are so overfilled with good looks and charm?”

“Flattery!” Bob cried out. “Ha! I’m afraid that will not work so easily on me, young lady.”

“I believe I am several years older than you, Mr. Richards. And I see no call to defend myself, particularly if you cannot turn and look at me squarely.”

“There,” Bob said, locking on her face for a moment. “It isn’t easy, believe me!”

She did not take the bait. “I know I am seen by some at the Institute, yourselves included, I am certain, as a dangerous person. I proceed with caution at all times. Rest assured, analytical chemistry is very delicate work fitted more for ladies’ nimble hands. When I was a child on my family’s farm, my mother would not permit me to milk our cows, saying it would make my hands too large and unsightly for a woman. Well, I believe you and Mother would appreciate each other, Mr. Richards. You with the spotted hair: Mr. Hoyt.”

Edwin, who was studying the size of his hands, looked up. “Yes.”

“If I am not mistaken—and I’m not—the composition you tested earlier needs more dilution if you wish to engineer the sort of compound used on State Street. When you do something like this, Mr. Hoyt, you might as well do it to a nicety. Let us look together inside your laboratory for a moment.”

The party moved in one awkward, distrustful block to the Technologists’ laboratory next door, where Ellen stood on a stool to examine the window near the ceiling. The glass had turned brown with pink veining from exposure to the spilled gas solution, but it had not dissolved like the windows on State Street.

“Have any of you gentlemen studied glassblowing?” she asked.

“Yes,” Bob boasted. “I’ve done it a little myself, and not too poorly.”

“In that case, you’ll know that oxide of manganese is used in most glass for windows to give it a white color, but that it absorbs chemicals when it is exposed. If the fluoride from sodium were not so hard to purify, Mr. Hoyt, it would be well suited for the purpose you intended here. If you mix a dilute acid with the double fluoride of barium, aluminum, or lead we should bring the compound closer to the gas that must have caused the dissolving of the silicates in the business quarter. The seemingly simple principle that energy is not destroyed leads to metamorphoses far more astonishing than any we read about in mythology as children.”

“Of course,” Edwin agreed, nodding enthusiastically after a moment of stunned silence. “We must try it as she suggests, straightaway!”

“Wait a moment, fellows,” Bob said. “Just wait a moment! Let us take the counsel of cooler heads—my cooler head, at least. Do you suggest our helping her?”

“No. I suggest accepting her offer to help us,” Edwin said. “She is a true chemist, Bob.”

“We are working toward the same end, Bob,” Marcus said gently. “It would not be efficient to continue separately—you must admit those grounds, at least.”

“How can we trust her?”

“Because she cannot reveal what we are doing without our revealing her,” Edwin pointed out.

“I’d wager she just wishes to govern what we’re doing, to try to take charge of it all!” Bob declared.

Ellen raised an eyebrow and, without making a denial, turned her back to them as she surveyed their headquarters.

“Bob, please, be reasonable about this,” Edwin said.

Bob looked from Marcus to Edwin and back again, expecting some sudden reversal.

“I won’t allow it! Why, I would almost rather be a law student than to have a woman in our group!”

“So mysteriously God leads us, doesn’t He, Mr. Richards? Worry not, I am not one of the feminist reformers. I believe men are here to stay, and we women might as well work with them, not against them.”

“Shall we, then?” Edwin proposed, motioning Ellen toward the chemical supply shelf.

“Professor Swallow, if I may,” Bob said, easing his charming smile into place for another tactic.

“Oh, you are speaking to me now, Mr. Richards?”

“You should know we men have been working until late at night at these tasks—without the least bit of rest to speak of.”

She accepted his challenge with a small lift of her shoulder. “I was up all last night at my telescope once I finally got home. I found what I suspect are seven new star clusters and three new nebulae, before being up with the lark. My body does not need pampering.”

“You have your own telescope?” he asked with surprise.

“I spent two years with the same clothes at Vassar in order to afford the best one, Mr. Richards. I knew it would make my spirits more contented than a dozen dresses would, and luckily I have enough in my head to balance what is wanting on my back.”

Bob did not admit defeat, but the standstill quickly resolved itself into a routine of activity. Besides, now two laboratories were at their disposal, and Ellen’s was far better equipped. They were careful, however, not to enter her laboratory during school hours. Ellen’s progress, meanwhile, had been impressive. Through different calculations, she had come to the same preliminary conclusion as her new colleagues about the manipulation of the compasses, and her chemical work, combined with Edwin’s, led them to a rapid narrowing of possibilities on the State Street matter.

Her laboratory was also filled with cabinets of mold and pieces of food, which explained some of the odd smells that emanated into the hallway, as well as vials of liquids, which Ellen said she was testing. She proudly showed them twenty-four samples of water she had collected from Mystic Pond. The food and water they consumed, she said, was a minefield of chemical problems and contamination, and yet was entirely overlooked by analysts. She pointed out a canister of cinnamon that she had analyzed under a microscope, only to find far more mahogany sawdust than cinnamon.

“The world moves and science with it,” she said to Bob when he looked over the shelves of food supplies with a skeptical blankness. “Shall we not one day find a way to convert the millions of tons of carbon in our atmosphere to wholesome food? When I studied physiology as a girl of seven, there were two hundred and eight bones in the body. Now there are two hundred and thirty-eight.”