The Technologists (42 page)

“No, sir.”

“What do you think I will do with you?”

They have not found the drills, which means they have not found the other men who had become involved with their plan of escape. Marcus wants to ask where Frank is, but does not want to put him at greater risk by revealing that they are not only co-conspirators but also friends
.

When he remains silent, Denzler laughs. “You know you have the eyes of a minister I once knew back home? Yes, exactly his eyes.” He presses the thick steel toe of his boot down on Marcus’s throbbing hand. Marcus emits an inhuman scream. “You may be able to use your carving hand again—one day. Who knows?”

Denzler digs the toe into Marcus’s hand, grinding it into the dirt as he screams again. At last, Denzler turns away, instructing the guards to keep him outside in the yard for four days, with half rations only every other day. “Between you and the skinny one, whoever speaks first has a chance to live. The other will be killed,” Denzler says over his shoulder. “You will talk to me.”

Marcus is surprised at first not to be placed back in the standing stocks. He thinks they have forgotten. After a while, he regains enough freedom of movement in his neck to take in the whole yard. There he finally sees Frank, bucked, with his hands tied in front of his knees. Marcus can see
other prisoners bound to balls and chains or in other devices of torture built by Denzler. Later, maybe much later, he sees a group of well-dressed Southern merchants, so they seem to his eyes, touring through to look at the Yankee prisoners
.

Then he realizes what Denzler has done by releasing him from the stocks. His punishment was not reduced. He has given him the tantalizing choice of suicide on the dead line, to literally die by inches. He tries to lift his arm to signal a guard; he will tell Denzler everything, at least about his part in the affair, on the condition that Frank is protected, though deep down he knows that might be impossible. Whatever he does, he may not be able to prevent Frank from dying. The poison of these thoughts sends a wave of exhaustion through him and he is soon in a deep slumber. He is awakened when dragged to his feet by two guards. His eyes open on the blank expression of Captain Denzler
.

“I will tell you,” Marcus is about to try to say, but doesn’t have the chance
.

“Get him out of here,” Denzler says
.

“Where are you taking me?” He looks around and sees that Frank is no longer in the same place in the yard. His blood runs cold
.

“You are going back inside the prison,” Denzler says, as if this were a gift. “Your friend has ended this.”

Then Frank has talked? Impossible!

After being tossed back into the basement, he crawls from prisoner to prisoner until he finds one who heard something about Frank
.

“They say some Southern businessmen came here and your friend overheard one speaking of the troubles in their factories with so many of the workers away in the war. He shouted out that he would work for one of them—a shoemaker, I think—on the condition that you were both freed from further punishment. The guards began beating him, but the shoemaker, laughing at the spectacle as if it were Punch and Judy, put a stop to it and agreed to Frank’s conditions.”

Marcus tries not to believe it, but does not have the strength to investigate further. He sleeps for what seems three days straight. The next time Denzler is in the basement, he stops at Marcus’s haversack and shakes him awake. “If it had been my choice,” he says, “I would have left you both in the courtyard to die. But those were important merchants, and
they must be pleased. No fear. I will still have my satisfaction, one way or another.”

“Frank,” Marcus whispers to himself. It was true. He has turned himself into the one thing worse than being a prisoner: a slave
.

“It is just like a Yankee worm,” Denzler says
.

“What?”

“To barter for his life like a Jew, instead of dying like a man. My lame leg might keep me out of the field, but I could destroy you Yankees with my brain, if only I am ever given the chance.”

*   *   *

“T
EMPEST IN A TEAPOT?”
Bob whispered, kneeling down on the rooftop of the Harvard building, bracing himself against the strong wind.

“Yes, Richards. You will see soon enough,” Hammie said, grinning widely.

“You’re certain?” Bob asked.

“Yes!” Hammie nodded impatiently. In his lap was an iron container that looked like a skillet, and inside that several tin bottles he was removing from their paper wrappings. “I devised it with my own hands, Richards. It will work, upon the word of a Technologist! Anyway, it worked for the Constantines. Now this—this is what we should be doing more of with our little society, curse your blasted curriculum.”

After leaving the boardinghouse, Bob had sent Edwin to fetch Hammie at his family home on Beacon Hill while Bob was at Phillip’s, a few streets over. Hammie was told only that they wanted to play another grand dodge on some Harvard fellows, but he relished the interruption. Once they reached the college yard, they secured a ladder from a maintenance shed, climbed it to the top of one Harvard building, pulling it up after them, and then used it as an unsteady bridge to the next roof, where they now were crouched. Had they lowered their lantern on the far side of the roof they would have seen a wooden coffin dangling below.

“Did you say Constantines?” Edwin asked Hammie. “Do you mean to tell us that you’ve made Greek fire in those bottles?”

“I do, Hoyt.”

“What are you two gabbing on about?” Bob asked.

“It’s on my list of impossible inventions and discoveries, Bob. Like Archimedes’ mirror, it’s an ancient weapon nobody has ever been able to decipher the formula for! It is said that an angel communicated the composition for Greek fire to the first Constantine, to be used as an overpowering weapon against their foreign enemies, but threatened heavenly vengeance were they ever to reveal its secrets.”

“The angels did not count on Chauncy Hammond, Jr.,” Bob said lightly, to smooth the hint of jealousy in Edwin’s voice.

Edwin squatted closer to Bob and whispered to him as Hammie continued his preparations. “I don’t know, Bob. For Hammie, it’s just another grand dodge. But Marcus might be down there. We must think of his safety first.”

“We have to try something,” Bob said, his usual confidence noticeably lacking. “I have heard stories—more than one over the years—about persons supposedly snatched by the Med Fac having a way of disappearing, sometimes for weeks, sometimes … well, nothing was ever proven, but it’s why they were suppressed in the first place. We must not fail to act.”

“I hope your brother told you the truth,” Edwin said gravely.

“I am confident he did; he didn’t have much choice. But he could still be wrong about the building. The society moves their meetings to a new location every three or four years, so we can only hope this is still it. Hammie, are you ready? I can hardly bear the suspense.”

They moved over to the chimney. Bob held the first tin bottle over the opening and nodded to Hammie, who leaned in with a match and lit the fuse. Bob let go, listening to the bottle rattling against the chimney walls on its way down.

“Let us pray for Mansfield,” he said, bowing his head.

“Amen,” Hammie said, then added, dreamily, “How Miss Swallow’s waxy gray eyes would sparkle at my achievement!”

“Pardon me?” Bob looked at him in astonishment just as the roof began to shake.

*   *   *

A
FEW MOMENTS EARLIER
,
inside the chambers of Med Fac, the dragon and the skull together cranked the handle of the windlass. The strained rope suspended from the window began to fray.

“That’s enough!” said the skull. “It’s too much weight on the rope. Pull the coffin back up!”

“I said dowse him more!”

“It’s enough!” the skull protested vehemently. “It’s not even the fellow you wanted, Will!”

The devil rounded on him. “Use a real name in these quarters again, rebel, and you’re next inside that box!”

“Try it, Blaikie!”

A noise in the wall interrupted them, a terrific banging, growing louder by the second. Then a wave of bright orange liquid fire burst from the fireplace, washing across the entire length of the chamber, and licking the windows and walls before retracting like a jack-in-the-box. Clouds of white smoke billowed in its wake. They tore off their masks and fell to the floor coughing, the dragon and the skull relinquishing their hold on the windlass, which spun wildly.

“What in damnation was that?” one of the men asked a few seconds later as the shocked members of the society began to recover.

“The fellow,” stammered a skinny junior with uneven teeth, who was formerly the skull. “We’ve just drowned him!” He leaned out the window, where the coffin had dropped into the basin.

“By Jesus,” gasped Blaikie, “get down there right off!”

They plunged en masse out of the room and down the stairs. By the time they reached the water, only the loosely coiled rope was to be seen. They seized it, hauled the coffin out, tore off its cover, and carried the drooping, drenched body of their victim onto the grass near the water pump.

“He’s dead!”

“Untie him, quickly!”

They frantically loosened the rope around Marcus’s wrists and ankles.

“I told you we oughtn’t have kept him down there so long,” the junior shouted hysterically. He pulled and pushed. Another began slapping Marcus’s face and murmuring frantically in his ear.

Blaikie said, panting, “Why doesn’t he come to? Is he breathing?” He sounded as if on the verge of tears. “Come to, man! Don’t die! You scoundrel, you runt, you bloodsucking Technology drone!”

“Will!” the junior cried. “Are you cracked in the head? That won’t help!”

“What should I do?” Blaikie, his face bloodless, asked contritely.

“Hush, and pray.”

M
ARCUS LIFTED ONE EYE OPEN
.
He let out the long breath he’d been holding.

“You’re alive!” the young man leaning closest to him cried out with hysterical relief.

Marcus reached his arm up in a single smooth motion, grasped the handle of the water pump above the student’s shoulder, and smashed it down onto his head, eliciting a loud crack and moan.

He pushed himself to his feet and wheeled around, dripping wet, to face the five remaining startled Med Facs. “You’ve abandoned your masks. You can be sure I will not forget your faces. Now I know who you are and where to find you. Harvard isn’t a place you can hide in very well, is it?”

There were five of them, five Harvard men, five Med Facs, and Marcus was just one Tech. But they did not seem to know how to react without their usual weapons: fear, anonymity, rumor, and, most of all, legend. They stood exposed in the middle of the college yard. It took a moment to sink in that the secret society that the Harvard authorities had failed to identify and stop for forty years had just been exposed by a single outsider.

“Oh?” said Blaikie, pushing forward. “Oh? We’ll see what you remember when we’re finished with you.”

“I will fight all of you if you wish it. But I will also enjoy watching you run away. I give you the choice,” Marcus said, smiling and raising his fists.

Blaikie scowled and took a step closer, but paused as two of his followers scrambled away. Two others remained.

“That suits me,” Marcus said.

As they started toward him, a ladder clattered over the side of the building and three figures half-climbed, half-slid down into their midst.

“Mansfield! Are you all right? You are wet through. Are you hurt?” asked Bob. Edwin and Hammie were close behind him. Bob glowered at Blaikie and his two comrades.

“You wretches,” Blaikie snarled. “How dare you challenge us on our own yard? A hundred Tech boys couldn’t match us … if there ever were a hundred in existence. You’re all pathetic.”

“Indeed?” Bob asked. “Is that what you think, Blaikie?”

“Indeed! Look at yourselves! Posing as collegies at an institution that four years ago was nothing but mud in a marsh, and a year from now likely will be mud again. Do you realize what we do here? The burden we bear for the traditions and moral principles of all our forebears? We are as strong and as weathered as the elms you see around us. You insult all of it!”

“Don’t you see yet, Blaikie? You can’t win for once,” Bob said.

“Really? Watch me, Plymouth. I fight my own battles. I’ll lick all of you—mark that, old salt.”

“We’ll see—” Marcus started, but was interrupted by a war whoop as the president of the Technologists hurled himself into Blaikie, driving him to the ground. The rowing captain managed to toss Hammie over, pinning him down, even as Marcus had Hammie by the back of the collar, hauling him off from the fight.

“Let go, Mansfield!” Hammie cried.

“Mansfield,” Bob shouted, trying to pry Marcus away as a chorus of whistles erupted around them. “We have to run! Now!”