Shadow Conspiracy (36 page)

“You should have told me about the letters,” Elizabeth said. “And you certainly should not have gone to meet this person by yourself. You are very valuable to this process. What if you had been kidnapped? Or,” and here Elizabeth shuddered, “what if you had been murdered?”

Jane gave a slight smile. Elizabeth did not miss it.

“Oh, I know you believe yourself the equal of any danger you should face. But the difference between confidence and unwarranted arrogance is very slight. And I could not bear to lose you.” She dabbed at her eyes.

Jane reached over and patted her hand. “I took great care. I simply did not want to raise false hopes before I had investigated this avenue. The letters might merely have been the work of a madman.”

“But, in fact, you believe that this information is valuable.”

“It makes more sense than the balderdash we hear from the men at the Anti-Prometheus League.”

Elizabeth
wrinkled her nose. “They are singularly useless, are they not? But perhaps this is simply a ploy to lead you away from our quarry.”

“I do not think so. I would swear that the information the man gave me is correct, though whether he is truly on our side or an ally of the Prometheus, I cannot tell.”

“Nor can I, since I did not see him.” Elizabeth sighed. “If you truly wish to investigate this information, and are willing to travel to the wilds of Texas to do so, I will make it possible.”

“I would like to do so.”

“But I will not go with you. I will never willingly travel on that continent again.”

“Galveston is not Louisiana,” Jane said. “And what happened to us could have happened anywhere on Earth. It could even happen here.”

“No. It cannot happen here. Such massacres only happen in places where simple people—such as your people—live on land that more sophisticated people desire.” Elizabeth’s voice was controlled, but anger boiled just beneath the surface. “And the Americas, like Africa, have an abundance of land in the hands of people who will not know how to deal with metalmen, or even high-powered rifles. Many horrors such as we experienced have happened and will happen there. And I am unwilling to see such things again.”

“Perhaps we should devote our energies to protecting people like mine, instead of searching out the Prometheus.”

“But that is what we are doing, my dear. What else can we do but try to stop the expansion of this obscene technology?”

“We could send teachers among the native peoples,” Jane said. “And we could arm them with weapons that fight both metalmen and the evil men who would take their land.”

Elizabeth
shook her head. “How many would respond to teachers? And you know that many of the native peoples of the Americas attack harmless white settlers. How can we put modern weapons in the hands of savages?”

This time it was Jane who looked away.

“Oh, not you, my dear, and not your people. But not all the different tribes of Red Indians are like you. You are different; you are special.”

I am other
, Jane thought.
Even to Elizabeth, whom I love and who loves me, who has given me so much, without whom I would never have escaped the massacre—for I would have had no place to go—even to her I am other
. But she just nodded her head in reply.

It was a sunny day, warm for autumn. Jane sat in a lounge chair on the upper deck of the transatlantic steamer
Mermaid
, reading a history of Galveston. The book, which described the native Karankawas as savage cannibals, thankfully wiped out, annoyed her, but it did give her some insight into her destination.

One of the servants brought her a fresh cup of tea. “Do you need anything else, Miss?” it said in a flat tone.

The
Mermaid
used metalmen for all its personal care staff, and even some of its sailors. The waiter who stood waiting for a reply—showing the ultimate patience of a creature who never got tired or bored or hungry—was much smaller than the automatons who had massacred Jane’s people, and moved with almost human flexibility. Not frightening, this one, but Jane was glad Elizabeth had not come. Elizabeth, for all her perfect self control, tended to become nervy in the presence of metalmen. Jane realized that they had rarely visited homes of those who used automated servants, and avoided expeditions that put them in regular contact with the mechanical creatures. But all the ocean-going vessels used them.

The metalman was still standing there. “No, thank you,” Jane told it, her manners holding even for manmade beings.

Jane dined that evening—as she did every evening—at the captain’s table. Elizabeth, concerned that Jane might face ill-treatment without her presence, had spent money liberally to insure that Jane would be treated as an upper-class Englishwoman. Of course, with the metalmen, it was easy enough; they did not see as humans did, and gave her the service programmed into them.

Jane took constitutionals around the ship, even exploring its massive engines, which boiled seawater to produce their steam. Once, on the lower deck, her walk coincided with the daily exercise of the unfortunate people travelling in steerage. They came out, squinting in the sunshine, taking in deep breaths of sea air. Most of them had darker skin than she was accustomed to seeing among Europeans—though not as dark as her own—and few seemed to speak much English. There were many children in the group, and some of them gawked at Jane.

“Who are these people?” she asked a passing metalman.

“They are immigrants. They are poor. Many of them are Jews,” it told her. Even in the affectless metal voice, Jane understood the implication: They are other. For once, Jane was being classified as a real person and another group was being labelled as something less than human.

She was curious about the people, but it was clear to her that she—with her lady attire but non-English appearance—made the steerage passengers uncomfortable. After that, she timed her walks to avoid their exercise period.

The ship’s passage was rapid; a trip that had once required a month now took ten days. All too soon they were disembarking at the port of Galveston. The customs inspection was cursory—Texas had only been an independent republic for three years and lacked much structure—though the official muttered something under his breath about the place “not needing no more Indians.”

Soon Jane was travelling by horse-drawn cab through the streets of Galveston. After London, the place appeared more like a village than a port city. There were a scattering of houses, most of them quickly erected frame models, though a few were elaborate modern structures. Scrubby bushes grew on the sand dunes, and the only trees seemed to be those deliberately planted near a home.

The cab pulled up at a two story stone house on Market Street. The owner, a younger son of a baron of Elizabeth’s acquaintance, who had made his fortune in the Americas, was sympathetic to Elizabeth’s campaign and aware of Jane’s background. He had agreed to provide her with lodging whilst she visited Galveston.

No metalmen here, Jane observed; all of the servants were black. Slaves, she realized, though they seemed little different from the servants she knew in England. Elizabeth opposed slavery on principle, although she had never taken any action about it, and Jane had shared her opinion without giving it much thought. Now she was staying in the home of someone Elizabeth knew, who owned other people. Though she supposed the man did not consider them people. Likely he would not consider Jane people, had she not had an introduction from Elizabeth.

But such thoughts were a distraction from her mission. Immediately after breakfast on her first full day in Galveston, she set out on foot to find the home where the Prometheus was reported to live.

The streets of the city were not, for the most part, paved, and recent rain had left puddles. Jane picked her way down them, grateful for the split riding skirt she preferred in the close confines. The inhabited part of the city was small, and she soon found Church Street.

The house in question was, like the place where she was staying, a two-story affair, though it was made of red brick rather than stone. A six-foot wrought iron fence surrounded it. The front gate stood open, but Jane assumed that any who entered by that direction would be quickly seen.

She walked around to the rear of the house—an alley where people dumped garbage with little regard for who might come along—and saw a gate in the fence there as well. As she walked by, a man came out and deposited trash in a hole in the ground. So the Prometheus used human servants. Odd. She would have expected it to use metalmen.

The rear gate was likely as well observed as the front, but the fence itself was scalable—assuming Jane dressed appropriately for climbing. An oak grew close to the house. Though the tree was not large, it did sport a sturdy branch that brushed near an upstairs window. And the window stood open; in this warm climate, people did not close off their houses. It would provide an entry. Perhaps entering during the evening meal would be the best time; the residents would be downstairs.

A large shed took up much of the rear yard—likely it housed the blimp. She examined the house from every angle, and then returned to her lodging.

After nightfall, having told her host that she felt a bit unwell from travel as an excuse for missing the evening meal, she slipped out and headed for the house on Church Street. She approached it from the alley. Once there, she took Frayle’s gun from her carpet bag, then shucked off her dress and stuffed it in the bag. Under the dress she wore a loose chemise and men’s trousers. The bag was easily hidden behind a pile of trash. Slinging the gun on her back, she quickly climbed over the wall.

Sounds came from the house—people conversing over dinner. Even the downstairs windows were open. Jane considered climbing through one of those at the back of the house—the room was dark—but decided to stay with her first plan.

Climbing the tree reminded her of childhood, though that brought evil memories as well as good ones. She climbed out the bough that led to the window, which was indeed open, but filled by a metal meshwork screen meant to keep out insects. Jane soon dislodged this device with her knife, and slid into the room. She saw no one as she stepped out onto the upper landing.

From downstairs she heard the sound of people retiring from the dining room to a sitting room. “Please bring in the coffee,” a woman’s voice said.

Jane moved quietly down the stairs, testing each riser for creaks before stepping. As she reached the foot of the stairs, she heard a sound, and flattened herself against a wall as a maid came by carrying a silver tray arranged with coffee pot and cups. The woman did not see her.

Jane walked behind the maid, moving in concert with her steps so that she made no sound. The maid entered the sitting room. Jane waited by the door, and then, as she heard the maid begin to hand round the coffee, burst into the room, brandishing Frayle’s gun.

“Ah, here is Miss Freemantle at last,” said the same voice Jane had heard ask for coffee. “Please join us.”

Jane had prepared herself for a myriad of responses, from an immediate battle to a chase across the city, but she had not even considered the possibility of a polite welcome. She gripped her gun more tightly and moved completely into the room.

A woman in her early forties sat in an overstuffed armchair, coffee cup in hand. To her right, in a companion chair, sat a man perhaps a few years older. His hair was blond, though lightened with streaks of silver, and his eyes were grey. He gave her a gentle smile.

Jane looked around, but saw no one else in the room. The Prometheus must be hidden away somewhere, perhaps in a bedroom or in the servants’ quarters beyond the kitchen. Of course it would not take after dinner coffee in the drawing room with civilized people.

“Where is the Prometheus?” she asked.

“I believe it is I you seek,” the man said.

The observation startled Jane, but she kept her face impassive. This was no monster, but an ordinary man, one who still retained some of the beauty of his youth. The Prometheus was supposed to have been created out of corpses, and dreadfully altered in the process, so that he was much larger than the normal man. Surely the man was having fun at her expense.

“And you did not need to bring along Mr. Frayle’s fabulous creation to kill me; an ordinary weapon would suffice. In fact, it might be more efficacious, since I think you will find that the angle of distance between the barrels does not correspond to my own proportions.”