Fiendish Schemes (36 page)

To myself, I supposed it was ever thus, for those imbued with both a criminal nature and a contemptuous disdain for their fellow man.

“So we’ve been using the Fex business as a front, for what we’re really doing.” Miss McThane warmed to the subject. “That’s where all those rich people come in, the ones that we’ve been servicing with all our fexual modifications. It’s not as private as we’ve led them to believe it is. That’s why we’ve got that observation platform in the back room—it’s not just for those rich morons’ amusement, you know.”

“It helps us get the word out,” said Scape. “To the coalpunks.”

“To whom?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly.

“The
coalpunks
.” He gave the word a pronounced emphasis. “They’re the latest thing. Or they will be.”

“Just a moment.” A previously unconnected thread secured an anchor in my thoughts. “Did you ever have conversations with a certain Viscount Carnomere?”

“Oh, yeah.” Scape nodded. “Buncha times. He’s a very forwardlooking guy, if you know what I mean. Other than running around in those caveman furs, that is.”

Thus one small, inconsequential puzzlement was dispelled. These strange, awkward formulations had been introduced into our formerly graceful language from that ghastly Future with which Scape claimed to somehow be in contact. It seemed but one more offense to be charged against him.

“You see, Dower”—Miss McThane picked up the interrupted exposition—“what we’ve done is associate steam power with all the wealthy and snobbish pricks in the world. The ones with all the money, the people you love to hate. I mean, you do if you’re an ordinary person. Lord Fusible and his crowd—they’re the target, right? Then you’ve got the poor people and the working people—and there’s a
lot
more of them, believe me—and you tap into their natural rebellious attitude, especially the young ones. Bam, just like that, you got the coalpunk movement.”

“They’re a lot of fun.” Scape smiled. “We’ve already had a bunch of riots, all over London. There’s nothing like throwing a brick through a shop window to get the blood pumping. No wonder it’s getting so popular. Who doesn’t like to set stuff on fire? ’Long as it’s somebody’s else stuff, that is. And it’s spreading—that’s the cool part. It’s spreading all across the country.”

“And you know what else? That’s really neat?” Running her soft hand across the back of my neck, Miss McThane leaned down to kiss me on the brow. “You get to be part of it.”

I
F
it would be all the same to you,” I said, “my preference is to be left out of whatever plans you might be concocting.”

“I told you.” Miss McThane glanced over at her accomplice, Scape. “I knew he wouldn’t want to help us.”

“Good thing for us, then, that he doesn’t have a choice about it.” Scape leaned back, arms flung expansively across the back of the couch. “You see, Dower, you’re already up to your eyeballs in it. Our plans, I mean. The only way you’re going to get
out
of them is to ride along with us for a while.”

“I think not.” I gave him as cold a gaze as possible. “That hardly worked in my benefit before. I fail to see how it would now.”

“You know, that lack of imagination is what holds you back.” Scape sadly shook his head. “No wonder things don’t work out for you.”

“Oh, I see—just as if everything has gone so swimmingly for the two of you.”

“Maybe not so much in the past,” said Scape. “But we’re definitely on top of it now. And whether you like it or not, so are you. Here’s the deal—” He laid a hand on my shoulder, bringing his face close toward mine again. “Mrs. Fletcher didn’t get to where she is by overlooking the small stuff. She makes sure every detail is covered. So it’s not enough for her to have us running a campaign against Steam, with our little coalpunks running around in the streets and making trouble. I mean, they’re cute and all, but you gotta have more than that going on. That’s why Mrs. Fletcher’s got a two-pronged attack.”

“Of that, I am not surprised. What is the second prong?”

“Nothing too big,” said Scape dismissively. “Just breaking some heads.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, come on, Dower—don’t act like you don’t know about stuff like this. You want to get something done in this world, sometimes you gotta mess a few people up. Or a lot of them—like these steam miners, with their union and all. Mrs. Fletcher needs a legal excuse to crack down on them. That’s why she set up that explosion at the Houses of Parliament—”

“She did
what
?”

“Yeah . . .” From the corner of my eye, I could see Miss McThane give a slow nod. “You probably still think those anarchists— that Walsall bunch or whatever they’re called—that they did it.” I turned and looked toward her. “Didn’t they?”

“ ’Course not,” she replied. “They just got blamed for it, that’s all. That’s what anarchists are good for—you can blame ’em for anything. Then you can crack down on whoever you want, ’long as you say they’re all hooked up together. Just standard operating procedure for the government. How they stay in business, if you know what I mean.”

“And that’s what Mrs. Fletcher is claiming? That the striking steam miners are in league with these anarchists—and together they set off the explosion at Parliament?”

“Sure,” said Scape from beside me. “A little bang goes off— enough to throw you out in the river, that is—she makes certain ahead of time that she won’t get hurt in it, then she can start bringing every police truncheon in Britain down on the heads of the steam miners. All works perfect. You get to play your part, too—since she and her bunch can also claim that it all went off while she was personally questioning some dangerous terrorist. That’d be
you,
Dower. So she also gets a bunch of personal credit for being so brave, and so forth. Big sympathy factor there. It’s all politics.”

I fell silent, my bleak musing prompted by these revelations. That I had been made a credulous fool once again, led to believe one thing when its exact opposite was the truth, was no longer any great embarrassment to me. By now, I was rather used to it. What did vex me, though, was to see Scape and Miss McThane reduced to working as behind-the-scenes string-pullers and hacks for the repressive Mrs. Fletcher. It all seemed just one more reason to consider this world as a sad, degraded place.

“What happens now?” I spoke up after a few seconds had passed. “Presumably, the Prime Minister has a free hand to change the world all she wishes, for her own personal aggrandizement. Does this indicate that lesser beings—I speak of myself, of course—can now freely go about our affairs without being subject to governmental interference?”

“All depends, Dower.” Leaning back against the couch once more, Scape folded his hands across his waistcoated stomach. “I mean, the changes never stop for somebody like Mrs. Fletcher. We’ve already heard from her about that. When I said she’d made sure she didn’t get hurt in the explosion, I meant the parts of her that are still flesh and blood. Some of the ironworks, all that steampowered stuff that makes her look like a railway engine—that apparently took a hard knock. Which is okay, actually—gives her the chance for a total retrofit.”

“Meaning exactly what?”

“Well, if she’s coming down on Steam, about how wicked and all it is, she can’t very well go around hooked up to it, can she? So she’s getting herself all tricked up—new outfit, sort of. That’s the way women are, right?”

“Yeah,” observed Miss McThane, “and you like it that way.”

“So right now,” continued Scape, “the Prime Minister’s getting herself done over, based on coal furnace technology. Wild, huh? And that’s just what’s going on over at the Fex workshops. There are whole armies of workmen over at the Houses of Parliament, ripping out the steam pipes, then shoving in more furnaces and fi r i n g t h e m u p .”

I was unable to prevent from entering into my thoughts a nightmarish vision of a smoke-belching factory upon the banks of the Thames. In short order, the skies over London would be cast even darker, with great, black clouds roiling perpetually over the populace’s heads.

“Everything you have told me, I find to be thoroughly disagreeable.” I spoke through the scowling expression fixed upon my face. “More to the point, I don’t see what any of it now has to do with me. I’ve already been used as an unwitting pawn more than once in this devious game; why can’t I simply be allowed to slink away into peaceful obscurity? Or at least as much peace as anyone can hope to have in what this world has been turned into.”

“Love to let you do that,” said Scape. “Because frankly, you’re already getting on my nerves again. But you’ve still got some value, one way or another, in some of these schemes that are going on. At least, in
our
schemes you do.”

“That’s certainly accommodating of you, I’m sure. However, if you had enquired as to whether I wished to be so, I might have declined.”

“Yeah, that’s why we didn’t ask.”

“So what exactly is it that you are hoping I’ll be able to do for you?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Scape. “It’s all got to do with those devices that your father cooked up.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Don’t worry—” He dismissed my concerns with a wave of his hand. “It’s just one that we’ve got to deal with. The one that he invented for simulating voices.”

“The
Vox Universalis
? If you expect me to locate it for you, then you will be sadly disappointed. If the agents of Mrs. Fletcher’s Department of Technography and Statistics, busily scouring the length and breadth of the British Isles for such a thing, have not been able to turn it up, I can scarcely see how you could expect me to.”

“Why would I want you to find it? I’ve already got it.”

“You do?” If true, that would present a new aspect to the situation. “Then why are Mrs. Fletcher and her agents searching for it?”

“Because I haven’t told her I’ve got it. Jeez, Dower, just because we’re working for the woman, and she trusts us and all—that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell her something like that. Especially if I’ve got a better use for it than she does.”

“Which would be?”

“
That
part,” said Scape, “you don’t need to concern yourself about. Just trust me on that one.”

“Yes, of course. Just as Mrs. Fletcher trusts you.”

“She doesn’t know me as well as you do, Dower. If she falls for any line I’ve handed her, that’s her lookout.”

“I see. That being the case, where exactly is the device under discussion?”

“You don’t need to know that, either. What is it with all the questions, all of a sudden?”

“That seems obvious to me.” I laid one of my hands flat against my chest. “The presumption I am making is that you desire me to somehow assist you in the operation of the device. In doing so, you perpetuate the same error that others have made, that because I am the son of that man who created them, that lineage in some way gives me an insight into the machines’ functions. Many is the time that I’ve protested otherwise, but nobody ever seems to listen. Very well; so be it. But if this is indeed what you seek of me, I would at the least wish to know whether I am to be conveyed to someplace here in London, or dragged off to some more remote locale where you might have hidden the device.”

“Actually,” interjected Miss McThane, “we’re pretty sure we don’t need you, just to make stuff happen with the thing. You’re forgetting how much experience we had, a while back, with that Paganinicon contraption your father built—remember it? You know, the one that could play the violin and talk and . . . a bunch of other stuff besides.”

There was no need for her to elaborate. I appreciated her delicacy, not often displayed, in not mentioning the horrid capacities for carnal activity which the device had possessed. The unleashing of the machine upon an unsuspecting world had been the most grievous reason for the disrepute into which I had been cast at that time. “Anyway,” she continued, “that thing worked on the same general principles. Or at least some of it did. Other parts . . .” She smiled. “They were a little different. But the talking bit—since we pretty much had that figured out back then, we shouldn’t have any problem getting that
Vox Universalis
thing going the way we want it to.”

“That is indeed excellent news. I congratulate you.” I straightened the lapels of my coat, preparing to stand. “It would appear that despite your earlier assertions, you would evidently not require my help in any of your schemes. That being the case, I’ll say good evening to you—and go about my own affairs.”

“Sit down.” Scape gripped my shoulder and prevented me from moving any further. “I told you that we’ve got the device—and that’s true. And we know how to run it—that’s true, also. But there’s more to it than just that.”

“What, in God’s name? If possession of the device and the ability to administer its functions do not suffice for you, then what would?”

“The key.”

He had spoken with such conviction as to indicate that I would know to what he was referring. I didn’t.

“Key? What key?”

“There’s something missing,” Scape insisted urgently. “A piece of the apparatus. We’re pretty sure it’s what controls the whole
Vox Universalis
device. There’s a socket that the piece should fit into, the way a key fits into a lock. Without that piece, we’re screwed.”

“Have you attempted to locate it?”

“Hell—why didn’t I think of that?” He grimaced in angry disgust at me. “Of course we’ve tried to find it, you frickin’ moron. If we’d found it, we wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”

“Ah. I see. You wish me to assist you in finding this . . . key. Is that it?”

“You’re the last chance we have,” said Miss McThane. “We’ve tried everything else.”

“What makes you believe that I could be of any aid to you in this regard?”

“I don’t know.” Scape spoke again. “We’re pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel.” He gripped my arm and squeezed it tight enough to cut off the circulation of blood within. “Maybe you’ve seen it. When you had that watchmaker’s shop, with the back room crammed full of your father’s stuff. Maybe you remember it from then. . . .”

“How would I know?” My shoulders lifted in an involuntary shrug. “I don’t even know what this thing looks like, which you are intent on finding.”

“Here.” He released me, so that he could rummage through the pockets of his own coat. “There were a bunch of papers with the
Vox Universalis,
when we found it. Diagrams, schematics . . . that sort of thing.” Having extracted a yellowed sheet of parchment, he quickly unfolded it. “We’re pretty sure this is the gizmo we need. Take a look.”

Scrape thrust the paper into my view. I looked down at the faded diagram inscribed upon it—

I had seen the device before—the key to the
Vox Universalis
. I had even held it in my hands.

And I knew exactly where it was.

“So . . .” I took the paper from his grasp. I nodded slowly as I gazed upon the image, feeling a remote but definite sense of possibilities unfolding within me. Of actual salvation, or at least escape from the situations in which I had become enmired. “This device, then—I am correct in assuming that it has considerable value for you?”

“What did I just tell you? Of course it does!”

“In what way?” I peered more closely at the man, attempting to discern whether he was lying—again—to me or not. “The schemes you have told me about hardly seem to rely upon some voice-simulating craft for their advancement. Your own fortunes are tied to those of Mrs. Fletcher, as she pries away the grip of Steam upon British society and substitutes coal in its stead—are they not? Those plans appear to be already well under way. Soon you will reap the benefits of the Prime Minister’s gratitude. Such being the case, why do you perturb yourselves with setting my father’s
Vox Universalis
device into operation?”

Unseen by Scape, his female companion tightly squeezed my shoulder, as though to warn me that I had managed to tread upon dangerous ground in the course of my enquiries.

“That’s nothing you need to know about.” Scape’s previous affability evaporated as he pointed to the paper in my hand. “It’s a no-questions-asked deal—I mean, no questions from
you
. Either you’re able to help us find the key for the device, or you can’t. But if you can dig it up, believe me, we’ll make it worth your while.”

“To what degree? Would you be willing, say, to have me spirited out of London, removed from all these entangling conspiracies?”

“You know . . .” His gaze narrowed as he studied me. “You actually do know where it is. Don’t you?”