The Transference Engine (10 page)

“What do you think of this, Elise?” Lady Ada asked the moment my foot crossed the threshold of her workroom. She didn't bother looking up from a mass of gears and gyroscopes. She'd appropriated the big family parlor adjacent to the servant stair on the first floor above ground. Normally this room would make an admirable morning room, with good light from the east and south.

I watched as she pressed a spring and a thin metal sheet slid down over an opening and then slid back up into place. Upon more careful examination, I determined there were two such openings in the area that approximated the head of her machine.

“Are you trying to make the automaton blink?” I shuffled my feet so that I could see the length of the machine well enough to know what most of the parts represented, without coming close enough to actually touch, or be touched, by the artificial person. I had read too much, seen too much, to ever be truly comfortable around these machines.

When my lady was but a tiny babe, her father, the infamous Lord Byron and his physician Dr. Polidari, had invented a machine to transfer a man's soul from a damaged but living body into an undamaged but dead body. He was still out there waiting for . . . the perfect body, mechanical or real, to accept his soul, personality, and poetic genius, as well as his perfidy.

Tapping his daughter's mathematical genius to accomplish his nefarious schemes had always been a worrisome probability. Possessing her body while she still lived, so that he could share her genius bothered me more. He'd tried that once and failed. Would he try again next time she fell ill and vulnerable?

“Oh, come closer, Elise. It won't hurt you. It doesn't have its thinking cards installed,” Ada said, dismissing my misgivings. “I've been studying Henri Maillardet's theories of automation for his puppets—parlor tricks and games only; he never went beyond to something useful. Still, his work is amazing and set me to thinking what else I can do with his methods.”

“Might it be taught to harm?” I asked, still not coming closer.

A mischievous smile creased her too thin face. I hadn't seen much of that smile of late. She touched another spring, and a skeletal arm made of metal and leather, gears and hinges, jerked outward, fingers grasping toward me.

“Eeeek!” I jumped back, hand to chest, trying to still my heart that suddenly beat so hard and fast I thought it might burst through my ribs.

“You!” Ada laughed, long and loud, the delightful sound rippling up from her toes and making her eyes dance with mirth. “You are so funny.”

“Enough of your pranks, my lady,” I admonished, returning to my governess voice and tone.

“Why is 25.807 banned from usage?” she asked, her face a mask of false innocence.

“I don't know. Why?” I knew better, truly I did. But how can one resist harmless if incomprehensible jokes from the child one has raised?

“It is the root of all evil!” she chortled.

“Huh?”

“The square root! 25.807^2 equals 666.”

“The root of all evil.” I kept my face bland, not truly understanding why she nearly doubled over with laughter. Her mirth warmed my heart. That was enough.

She'd long outgrown fear of me. Her lingering respect for our former closeness made her gulp air.

Useless. She burst out with more peals of laughter. Her hand brushed another control and the machine leg, just as skeletal, jerked and kicked from the knee.

I restrained my instinct to jump farther away from that bobbing leg.

Ada turned her back and drew in several long breaths. Jaw still working to contain her mirth, she faced me once more. “So what do you think? Does the blinking eye make it appear more friendly?”

“Too much so.” I shuddered with atavistic revulsion. “I do not like the idea of machines indistinguishable from humans.” My gaze kept returning to the skull-like head in fascinated horror.

“Oh, dear. Mr. Babbage and I had hoped that making it more like a pet and less of a machine would allow people to identify with them and accept them into their households and factories.” Ada frowned at her creation. One hand hovered too close to the spring controlling the arm.

I looked elsewhere, not willing to become a victim of her pranks again. Various gears and wires, sheets of metal, and other arcane paraphernalia littered another long table to Ada's left.

A brighter patch of wallpaper in the center indicated the place her father's portrait used to hang. She'd removed it, thank heavens. One less place for him to invade.

To her right, a smaller table contained stacks of gold sheets, uniform rectangles, three inches by four, and less than one sixteenth of an inch thick—the all-important codex cards that determined mechanical actions. A punch press with thirty-two calibration dials sat in pride of place at the center of the table. It was a more complicated variation on the key cutter of my book catalog search engine. There were large sheets of paper, covered in mathematical equations that Ada, and no one else, could translate into the codes she punched into those gold cards.

“What are these?” I asked, holding up the top sheet of paper.

“Oh, factorials,” she said on a delighted exhale.

“Oh, ducklings,” I replied in the same tone.

She looked at me quizzically.

“You said that with the same delight as someone who has just come across a parade of ducklings in Regent's Park.”

“Well, they are certainly cute.” She studied the page with a cocked head and carefully returned the sheet of paper to its proper place. Then she took up the pen from the stand and made a hasty note on one of the clumps of arcane symbols.

The gold cards were still blank and the mathematics unfinished. Ada had not yet completed the internal working of the automaton on the table. The mechanical man remained inert, incapable of independent movements. Technically.

No. I would not think about the possibility that some poor soul, having lost its body, and not yet moved on to whatever fate God determined, might take up lodgings in the machine.

No. No. No.

Although, wasn't that one of the purposes of necromancy? To achieve with magic what Lord Byron had tried with machines and bodies, moving a soul from one to another. And Lord Archbishop Howley of Canterbury would not need to outlaw necromancy if someone, multiple someones, weren't already practicing it.

“Enough of your games, Lady Ada. I need information. Like how someone would contrive a cannon that shoots deadly light and mounts the weapon inside the basket of a hot air balloon?” I looked her straight in the eye, avoiding the creepy imitation person on the table.

Her gaze kept drifting downward to the place where the machine should have eyes. She'd contrived devices to make it blink. But what kind of machine would make the automaton “see?” Her face took on the slack-jawed expression common to her when in deep thought.

“Light as a weapon?” she murmured. “Electricity can set glass and copper to glowing. Light can blind. Light can illuminate. Light . . . I know of no property of light or any method to turn it into a weapon.” She shook her head to jerk herself out of her trance, just as she had at the age of twelve when she'd solved or failed to solve an advanced equation.

“Do you know of someone who perhaps has studied light more extensively than you have?”

She tapped her fingers on the table edge, one of her tricks to sort the massive amounts of information stored in her brain. She never forgot anything because she organized her thoughts as well as she did her work.

“Perhaps. There is an Oxford scholar who has tried repeatedly to work out the equation for the speed of light. He's from India originally. A convoluted name, I never bothered to learn how to pronounce it. Let me write his address for you.” She wiped her hands on her dark leather apron. The color masked any new stains she might affix there. She tore a corner off one page only partially filled with numbers and symbols, then hastily wrote the name I half expected her to—Ishwardas Chaturvedi,
Ish
the Hindu scholar who had taught me special deep breathing and relaxing exercises between lectures at Oxford—he'd been lecturing on the physical properties of solids, liquids, and gas. Could the right light agitate gas into a weapon?

Only one way to find out.

Chapter Nine

T
HE ADDRESS ADA HAD given me was not the same as I remembered. Should I write to Dr. Chaturvedi directly at the new address? Where he had lodged three years ago? Or should I apply to someone else for information? Oxford scholars were notorious for changing rooms frequently unless they had quarters within one college where they taught. As far as I knew, Dr. Chaturvedi lectured at several colleges and kept rooms separate from all.

I had to think about my plans, so I spent the next happy half hour playing with Lady Ada's children. Tiny mites as they were, simple things delighted them, like dust motes in a sunbeam, and tickles from my bonnet feathers.

“We play numbers games in the nursery,” Lady Byron said sternly, from the doorway. Heaven forbid she step any closer to her grandchildren except at a formal two-minute greeting at a designated time in the comfort of her own parlor. The children would, of course, be fresh from their bath, fed, and sleepy enough to not interfere with the lady's schedule.

“I want to thank you, my lady, for your contribution to Bedlam Hospital. They can now hire three charwomen to keep the place, and the patients, clean. A small step toward helping them, but a necessary one.”

“Next you'll be asking for better food for the poor souls, too.” She tried to sound indignant, but I knew her well enough to know that her anonymous donations gave her a source of pride.

“Better food would help. But at least they have food now. There are a number of war widows who have nothing . . .”

“Ah, yes. Always the war widows, and orphans. A never-ending supply of them. Leave a note with Little Miss Doyle. She'll see that we send something. Perhaps we should organize a jumble sale at the church . . .” Her eyes glazed over as she thought of things to donate. “Now about your being here; why must I always remind you of what games we allow in the nursery?”

“Number games. Of course,” I replied. Then I grabbed the baby's bare foot and began counting toes, complete with tickles and giggles.

And an inspection of the skin on those toes for any abrasion or puncture that could indicate tampering by someone in search of a way in.

When this little one was but a few days old, I had visited her mother. Ada did not fare well after the difficult birth. I'd told the midwife and the physician which herbs to pack into the bandages to stop the bleeding. They ignored my advice. Home remedies—especially those that originated with the Rom—were not considered clean or approved by the Church.

So I'd gone myself and taken care of the chore. Afterward, I sat beside her, holding the baby while she slept. Ada's eyes were heavy and her face pale. Her left hand lay listlessly beside her, not stirring even to stroke her baby's hair.

“Ada, what ails you?” I asked.

“Two difficult births in two years,” William King replied from the doorway. He shuffled his feet and looked up and down the hallway as if he'd rather be anywhere else, and yet could not pry himself away from his ailing wife.

Ada barely lifted her fingers, and he dashed to the other side of the bed. Deep lines of worry drew his mouth down and furrowed his brow so deeply the skin looked like a recently plowed field. He turned her hand over and kissed the palm, holding it in both of his.

“I told you we should wait,” he said. “It's all my fault. I should have made you wait, but I love you so much . . .” He dropped his head to the sheets. “Don't leave me, Ada. I couldn't go on without you.”

“Hush, Billy. Don't invite Death when I'm not ready for him yet.”

“I think, Ada, that you will live. But you do need time. And rest. I should give the baby to her wet nurse and go myself.”

“No, Elise. Stay a bit more. I . . . I want my baby close.”

I settled back into my chair and rocked the tiny child. She opened her big blue eyes and stared at me, puckering her rosebud mouth. Then she let out a wail. Probably demanding food and a change of nappy.

Ada sighed her consent. The effort of staying awake for ten minutes had exhausted her.

I rose, still cuddling the child and turned to find the wet nurse. Just then, I smelled sulfur. Rancid, hot, and the tingle of electricity, like the first second after a lightning strike.

I knew that smell. The one time I had used Lord Byron's transference engine, the process smelled like this; a soul hovering between two bodies smelled like this.

Ada had nearly bled to death. She'd need months to recover any vitality. She was vulnerable. A greedy soul that needed a new body waited for her.

I whipped off my shawl and threw it over Ada's face and upper body. William lifted his head, instantly alert, and added his own body as protection to cover his wife from invasion. The baby willingly pressed her face against my chest, rooting for the food she craved, but would not find. I held her for several long, breathless moments. I thought I saw a dark mist swirling around and around us. It sent long stabbing tendrils toward Ada, and then the baby. William and I kept our vigil. With a snap and a cold breeze that came from nowhere, the mist was gone. In the far distance, perhaps only in my mind, I heard a howl of disappointed rage.

We relaxed and checked baby and mother. Other than gasping for air, Ada seemed untouched by the invader. The baby howled for food.

Ada kept to her bed for over a year after that. The baby grew naturally with fine dark curls like her mother and a sunny disposition.

Ever after, I checked Ada's babies every time I saw them. They were both free of any blemish. Feet and hands were clean, devoid of evidence of a puncture, and deliciously ticklish.

Lady Byron sighed. “I forgot how good you are with children. Perhaps we should hire you as nanny for these two.”

“I am too old,” I said firmly.

“Did you never wish for children of your own?” A personal question from the great lady herself! Was the world coming to an end?

Thirty-eight might not be too old to bear children, but my mind and life were no longer young enough to cope with the demands of motherhood. I replied to Lady Byron, “Only occasionally and briefly. I had eight younger brothers and sisters that I helped raise. Then, at the age of sixteen, I went to work as a nurserymaid to Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley at Villa Diodati to earn enough money to send my younger brother to school. I don't need any more children of my own.”

Something pungent wafted to my nose from the region of a nappy. “One of the advantages of visiting other people's children is that I can play, delight, and be delighted. And then I can give them back when they need changing.” I rose with the child in my arms and handed her to the nurserymaid who hovered protectively just behind my shoulder. She had watched diligently all the while that I had sat in the rocking chair with children climbing over me.

“Now if you will excuse me, Lady Byron.” I bobbed a sketchy curtsy and sidled past her to the top of the stairway. “I have letters to write and a business to run. I'm training new employees and dare not leave them more than a half hour. I'll let Little Miss Doyle know where you should send your contribution to the war widows.”

“Do you have any
special
news to impart?”

“Nothing for certain. A few rumors suggesting we be wary and extra diligent throughout the coronation celebrations.”

She nodded curtly.

Without a backward glance, I departed Lovelace House, hailed a hansom cab, and returned to the Book View Café where light from the new windows brought life to an otherwise dreary hole of a building. Light, the giver of life. So how did one use it to take a life?

When in doubt, duplicate. I sent notes to Dr. Ishwardas Chaturvedi at both the new address and the old. Then I wrote to the Oxford scholar who had returned the bad translation tome, apologizing for my error in purchasing the book or offering it up in the search engine. I never offered Byron's last book of poetry, but it slid down the chute at regular intervals. Then I asked if he knew of a better translation that I might acquire on the subject, and—by the by—did he know a better address for Dr. Chaturvedi.

“Mickey!” I called from the center carousel of the library.

“Aye, Missus?” He poked his head through the open front door, a fierce grip on his broom.

When I'd returned from Lovelace House, I'd noted that the front stoop looked spotless and scrubbed.

“Mickey, I have a chore for you.” I held up my letters and a tuppence.

His eyes grew wide at the size of the coin.

My boy was growing up, equating money with success, security. Safety.

But giving employment to Toby, Violet, and Jane hadn't kept them safe. “When you have delivered the letters to the post, I need you to spread the word that Toby, Violet, and Jane must be found, alive, if at all possible.”

His chin trembled and he looked away from the enticement of the coin. But his focus came back to the shiny round of copper. I added a second tuppence to the first. “This one is yours if you spread the word that I need another girl to serve coffee and pastry and bring one back here.”

“What happens when Violet and Jane come back?” Lucy asked. She stood straight with shoulders thrown back and defiance in her level chin.

“If the new girls work out, I'll keep them on. We need the extra hands.”

Both Emily and Lucy breathed easier. They had known the tantalizing hope of permanent employment and a chance at a better life dangled in front of them, only to have it yanked out from under them, throwing them back onto the street. I'd faced that fate a time or two.

“I like to reward hard work and loyalty. Would either of you consider moving into the attic and taking on the chores of assisting me, both personally and professionally?”

Violet was hopeless in the kitchen but extremely organized and insistent upon cleanliness. I baked; she cleaned my utensils and made sure they were always close to my hand.

The girls exchanged silent glances. “Only one of us?” Lucy asked. They'd been friends and flatmates for a long time, companions and protectors of each other on the street before that.

“I can use you both if you can squeeze yourselves and your things into the attic.” They'd be safer there, neither had family to entice them to walk alone through London.

“We're paid through the end of the month at the flat,” Lucy said. “If you hire new girls and vouch for them, they can stay there.”

“Thank you. That's a good enticement to get girls off the street.” I smiled widely at them. “Mickey, spread the word. I need servers in the front of the café, a dishwasher, too.”

“If . . . if you bring in extra hands, may I learn to bake and stay in the kitchen?” Emily asked shyly. She twisted her hands into her apron and kept her eyes on the floor.

“That sounds like a marvelous idea!” I nearly crowed. “Tonight, after we close, I'll start teaching you both the fine art of baking.” And then I could send the sullen Helen back to Lady Ada's household.

“Me, too?” Mickey asked. He plastered a look of bland innocence on his face. But he couldn't hide the light sparkling in his eyes, brighter than when he'd spied the second tuppence.

“Cooking school starts tonight. I host salon tomorrow night, so we'll need both sweet and savory prepared before then. Now, back to work, all of you.” I swept upstairs to my private sitting room and the ledgers, inventories, and new book acquisitions that badly needed my attention.