Infernal Devices (33 page)

  In darkness, I passed through the gates of Bendray Hall, and rode up to the great building itself. A few signs of the siege by the Godly Army remained: a new door to replace the one that had been battered down, some scorch marks around the lower windows. I dismounted, climbed the stone steps, and brought my fist against the door's timbers.

  A hobbling step, as of a man using a crutch, was audible from inside, coming to answer my knock. The door swung open, and the grand hallway's light poured over me, its brightness momentarily blinding me after my ride through the night. Then I heard the person's voice.

  "Jesus H. Christ," said Scape. "If it isn't ol' Dower."

  I blinked, and discerned his figure. He did indeed bear a crutch under one arm; he tilted noticeably towards that side. "My God," I said. "I thought you were dead."

  His manic grin returned. "Can't keep a good man down. Come on in." He shouted to someone descending the staircase, as I stepped inside. "Hey – look who showed up."

  It was Miss McThane, her hair considerably shorter and sections of it somewhat crimped in appearance, as if singed sections had been cut off. She smiled delightedly at me. "For Christ's sake. And we all thought you'd been snuffed."

  "You – you both survived?" I said in amazement.

  "Looks like it," said Scape. "We both kinda bailed out before that damned thing hit the ground." He nodded sadly. "The dog bit it, though. Never did find the little sucker."

  "But what are you doing here?"

  He shrugged. "Where else was there to go? We figured we might as well head back here and get our old jobs back. Hey, lemme go get ol' Bendray; he'll get a kick out of seeing you again." There proved to be no need for him to fetch Lord Bendray; one of his servants had already informed him of my arrival. He tottered into the hallway. "How good of you to come, Dower." Smiling broadly, he grasped my hand in both of his. "I thought I would never see you again. But now you have returned; and all that I hoped to achieve is made possible."

  "Your Lordship–" I began, but he waved me off.

  "No time to talk now. Waited quite enough time already." He turned and walked away, one elbow supported by his servant.

  Scape studied me quizzically. "Why did you come back here, anyway?"

  "I thought… I was informed… that there was… some sort of crisis here." I looked about in confusion; all was quiet in the house. "And that I was needed here."

  "Crisis? I don't know about no crisis." Scape looked round at Miss McThane. "You know anything about a crisis?"

  She smiled at me. "Just the usual one."

  Another knock came at the door; a different servant hastened towards it. I looked round at the person stepping in, and was staggered backwards by the sight.

  "You!" cried Sir Charles Wroth, sighting me.

  "What's going on?" said Scape as I cast desperately about for some means of escape. He turned and saw the man who some weeks past had ordered his execution. "Shit!" he said in evident consternation.

  Sir Charles staggered into the hallway, his face ashen, his features contorted with an inarticulate horror. His devastated aspect rooted me to the spot. His voice dwindled to a stricken gasp: "I thought… you were… dead." He looked as if he himself were about to collapse.

  Scape assisted him in standing upright, fear dispelled by the sight of the Godly Army leader thus disarmed. "Hey, are you all right?" asked Miss McThane, bending close to him.

  At that moment, a tremor ran through the structure of the great house. It seemed to come from below, a pulsing vibration that shimmered across the walls and ceiling. The sound, at the very bottom limit of human hearing, brought a groan of anguish from Sir Charles.

  My innards suddenly felt hollow, as a grim thought seized me. I remembered words spoken to me, in a carriage racing through the dark countryside. A face that was my own, but another's words: the governing mechanism, once installed in the device it is to control, must be brought within a few miles of the adjunct brain – yours, my dear Dower – for it to pick up the subtle vibrations and begin its operations. My own face was frozen with the realisation, as I gazed at Sir Charles.

  He nodded sadly at me. "I would never have willingly done you harm, my boy. But I thought it was necessary, the only way to ensure against this dread event occurring."

  "What dread event?" demanded an impatient Scape.

  Sir Charles looked round at all of us. "The destruction of the very earth we stand upon."

  Scape looked at him incredulously. "You mean that bullshit contraption ol' Bendray's got in the basement?"

  "That very device. It is no fraud; it can – and will – do all that is claimed for it." He turned to me. "Your father was of that nature, that cares not for whatever consequences may ensue from its genius; he valued only the achievement of whatever task he was commissioned to perform. I have seen the working models he constructed, and the theoretical calculations on which he based his work. I am a servant of Her Majesty's government, and a member of a special committee of that august scientific body, the Royal Society; our function has long been to observe, and intervene in when necessary, the activities of those who style themselves as the Anti-Society. These men know much of a sinister value, and hold no creed that prevents the unscrupled use of such knowledge. I am no latter-day Puritan, though you have seen me pose as one; the Godly Army, already well familiar with the Anti-Society, served as a useful blind by which to make my own observations; for that purpose I inveigled myself into their ranks, and rose to a commanding position."

  His speech, much of it murmured almost to himself, seemed to exhaust him. He swayed against Scape's arm before continuing.

  "I knew," he said, "that once the regulating device had been given to Lord Bendray, he would set about placing it in the machine below. And that you, Dower – innocent of evil intent as you may be – your presence would be all that was necessary to set the earth-destroying machinery into motion. I knew that, if I had had the time to inform you of the dilemma, you would have gladly made the appropriate sacrifice, and laid down your own life. Thus, with a clear conscience, I ordered the siege upon this house, with your death the object. You escaped, alas, but were delivered into my hands again; your long voyage, under sentence of execution, was but to remove all possibility of your returning here. But an evil fate has frustrated all my labours; you have made your way here, back from the watery grave into which I believed I had laid you." His chin fell upon his chest; he seemed an old and broken man. "And now the earth, and all upon it, must die instead."

  "Yes!" cried another voice from the top of the staircase. We turned as one at the note of hideous triumph contained in the single word. The Brown Leather Man stood there, gazing down upon us, his arms lifted above his head.

  He had gained entrance through secret ways, and now gloated at our despairing situation. "See!" His voice was a wild howl, all resemblance to humanity removed. "Your folly is this! This you brought upon yourselves – your blood cares not for others' blood! Their death you bring about, your stupidity and greed kills, and you care not! Now has come your death!" He turned, and with one blow of his arm, shattered the window behind him. The glass shards rained about him as he leapt out into the darkness.

  The vibration emanating from beneath the Hall had mounted in pitch and volume. Scape seized one of the servants standing by the door. "Where's Bendray?" he demanded, lifting the man by his shirt-front. "Where is he?"

  With placid loyalty, the servant replied, "Lord Bendray has retired to his laboratory. He sends his regrets that he will not be able to join you for the evening's entertainment."

  Scape pitched the man away. "Let's go bust in there!" he shouted to the rest of us. "Throw a wrench in the works, or something."

  Sir Charles wearily shook his head. "I am familiar with the preparations Lord Bendray has made for this occasion. The entrance to the laboratory is well fortified; we could never gain entry in time to stop this process."

  "That sonuvabitch," muttered Scape as Miss McThane, pale and wide-eyed, took his arm. A painting fell from the quaking wall and crashed to the floor. In the next room, a suit of armour toppled and clattered into bits. "He's probably down there in that goddamn hermetic chamber of his, having champagne served to him by one of his butlers. That asshole."

  Hooked about the Hall, every inch of its walls seeming to shimmer with this destructive animation. The vibrations from the device below us – the device that my own father had created – seemed to resound dizzyingly inside my skull. Was it for this that I had struggled through so many desperate hours? I whirled upon Sir Charles.

  "Then kill me now," I said. "If this device is operating off the vibrations of my brain – then put a stop to it. Here." I struck my chest with the flat of my hand. "Silence my brain, and thus silence the machine."

  He gazed at me with regretful admiration. "It is too late for that. The regulator has already employed the fine vibrations to determine the rate of pulsations necessary to shatter the earth. It is not like the Paganinicon, which must continually vary its actions according to the various situations in which it finds itself. The earthdestroying device will continue at that same rate now, whether you are alive or dead. Those pulsations will ripple outward from this spot, until the whole world is vibrating in synchronization with them, and shakes itself to its component atoms."

  The foundations of the building groaned, as if already being torn apart. The servants cast frightened glances at each other, the nature of the peril having at last made itself clear even to them. Panicking, they ran from the room.

  Scape stepped closer to Sir Charles and myself. He gazed at me, his mouth parted, before speaking. "But what if–" His hand raised to point at me. "What if something happened to his brain? Your brain, Dower. I mean, isn't it because he's got such a… what's it… stolid nature, right?" His speech became even more rapid. "His brain just goes ticking along like clockwork – that's why the regulating device can use the vibrations he gives off, to control the device it's hooked up to – right?"

  Sir Charles nodded. "That is correct."

  "So, if something happened to his brain – something to make it un-stolid… you know, like excited, right down to the spine – then the vibrations would be off! Outta whack! That machine down there would read them, but they'd be all wrong – it'd screw up the pulsations it's beating out, and they wouldn't work. It wouldn't be able to blow up the world, because it would be picking up new vibrations that were all haywire and resetting itself to them. The goddamn thing would screw itself up! All we gotta do is –
change the
vibrations from Dower's brain
."

  Miss McThane was the first to realise his meaning. Slowly, I turned towards her. Our eyes met; then I saw the corner of her mouth twitch into a smile.

  I watched, speechless, as she grasped the neckline of her gown in both hands. She tore the bodice open, the fabric bunched into her fists. "All right, sucker!" she shouted. "England expects every man to do his duty!"

  A strange, previously unknown feeling came over me. Perhaps by then I had gone mad, driven from my senses by the many travails through which I had passed, or the imminent destruction of the earth served to put all into a new perspective. The very walls of the house seemed to recede far from me, as I gazed upon the roseate satin of her skin. I let her take my hand and lead me up the trembling staircase. The chandelier swayed loose from the ceiling as we mounted the steps, the crystal shattering upon the floor below.

 

 

 

LORD BYRON, in correspondence to R. C. Dallas, 12 August 1811

 
 
The rain has ceased, for a period. It will recommence presently, wrapping in its grey shroud the brief interval of sunlight. Through the dark hours I have written, the dog guarding my labours even as it sleeps in front of the grate's last embers; with the dawn I will append the last stop to this History.

  No great discernment is required to note that the earth was not destroyed; we stand upon its dull surface yet. Whether the failure of the attempt to render it asunder was due to Miss McThane achieving her longdesired satisfaction of me, or from a flaw in the device that my father had created, I know not. Suffice it to say that the walls of Bendray Hall still stood after the shuddering vibrations emanating from its cellar had ground to a halt.

  Lord Bendray's grasp upon his own sanity proved rather more tenuous. He emerged from his Hermetic Carriage completely mad, obsessed with the notion that the earth had been destroyed, and that he had been taken to another planet by those beings whose acquaintance he had so desired to make. Though silence has been purchased by the proceeds from the Bendray estate, the receivership of which has passed into the hands of distant cousins, rumours still circulate about the pitiable crackbrained Lord, in the hospital wherein he is restrained. He is said to believe that the attendants are in fact those wise creatures from other worlds, and is only quieted by their fabricating absurd details about life on Mars or Venus.

  No rumours, whispered or otherwise, have ever reached my ear concerning the Brown Leather Man. In my heart, I believe that dark figure to have returned to his ancestral home off the island of Groughay, there to brood and pass away with the others of his race. The brothel-keeper Mollie Maud is reported to be living in France, her carnal trade in this country having been abandoned due to the loss of most of her bullies in a pitched battle with the Dampford villagers. The simultaneous disappearance of Mrs Trabble, the noted morality crusader, remains a matter of speculation in genteel circles.