Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (49 page)

He was into the third tea-chest, removing more wrapped pieces of machinery, then a thick layer of straw. And now his hands were trembling. I hated to think how Bill must have sweated and agonized over this, before telling anyone. The urge to publish such a discovery had to be overwhelming; but the fear of being derided as part of the scientific lunatic fringe had to be just as strong.

If what he had produced so far was complex and mystifying, what came next was almost laughably simple—if it were genuine. Bill was lifting, with a good deal of effort, a bar, about six inches by two inches by three. It gleamed hypnotically in the light of the lantern.

“It is, you know,” he said, in answer to my shocked expression. “Twenty-four carat gold, solid. There are thirteen more of them.”

“But the Trevelyans, and the people who farmed here before that—”

“Never bothered to look. These were stowed at the bottom of a chest, underneath bits of the Analytical Engine and old sacks. I guess nobody ever got past the top layer until I came along.” He smiled at me. “Tempted? If I were twenty years younger, I’d take the money and run.”

“How much?”

“What’s gold worth these days, U.S. currency?”

“God knows. Maybe three hundred and fifty dollars an ounce?”

“You’re the calculating boy wonder, not me. So you do the arithmetic. Fourteen bars, each one weighs twenty-five pounds—I’m using avoirdupois, not troy, even though it’s gold.”

“One point nine-six million. Say two million dollars, in round numbers. How long has it been here?”

“Who knows? But since it was
under
the parts of the Analytical Engine, I’d say it’s been there as long as the rest.”

“And who owns it?”

“If you asked the government, I bet they’d say that they do. If you ask me, it’s whoever found it. Me. And now maybe me and thee.” He grinned, diabolical in the lantern light. “Ready for the next exhibit?”

I wasn’t. “For somebody to bring a fortune in gold here, and just
leave
it . . .”

Underneath his raincoat, Bill was wearing an old sports jacket and jeans. He owned, to my knowledge, three suits, none less than ten years old. His vices were beer, travel to museums, and about four cigars a year. I could not see him as the Two Million Dollar Man, and I didn’t believe he could see himself that way. His next words confirmed it.

“So far as I’m concerned,” he said, “this all belongs to the Trevelyans. But I’ll have to explain to them that gold may be the least valuable thing here.” He was back into the second tea-chest, the one that held the drawings, and his hands were trembling again.

“These are what I
really
wanted you to see,” he went on, in a husky voice. “I’ve not had the chance to have them dated yet, but my bet is that they’re all genuine. You can touch them, but be gentle.”

He was holding three slim volumes, as large as accounting ledgers. Each one was about twenty inches by ten, and bound in a shiny black material like thin, sandpapery leather. I took the top one when he held it out, and opened it.

I saw neat tables of numbers, column after column of them. They were definitely not the product of any Analytical Engine, because they were handwritten and had occasional crossings-out and corrections.

I flipped on through the pages. Numbers. Nothing else, no notes, no signature. Dates on each page. They were all in October 1855. The handwriting was that of the programming manual.

The second book had no dates at all. It was a series of exquisitely detailed machine drawings, with elaborately interlocking cogs and gears. There was writing, in the form of terse explanatory notes and dimensions, but it was in an unfamiliar hand.

“I’ll save you the effort,” said Bill as I reached for the lens. “These are definitely not by L.D. They are exact copies of some of Babbage’s own plans for his calculating engines. I’ll show you other reproductions if you like, back in Auckland, but you’ll notice that these aren’t
photographs
. I don’t know what copying process was used. My bet is that all these things were placed here at the same time—whenever that was.”

I wouldn’t take Bill’s word for it. After all, I had come to New Zealand to provide an independent check on his ideas. But five minutes were enough to make me agree, for the moment, with what he was saying.

“I’d like to take this and the other books up to the kitchen,” I said, as I handed the second ledger back to him. “I want to have a really good look at them.”

“Of course.” Bill nodded. “That’s exactly what I expected. I told the Trevelyans that we might be here in Little House for up to a week. We can cook for ourselves, or Annie says she’d be more than happy to expect us at mealtimes. I think she likes the company.”

I wasn’t so sure of that. I’m not an elitist, but my own guess was that the conversation between Bill and me in the next few days was likely to be incomprehensible to Annie Trevelyan or almost anyone else.

I held out my hand for the third book. This was all handwritten, without a single drawing. It appeared to be a series of letters, running on one after the other, with the ledger turned sideways to provide a writing area ten inches across and twenty deep. There were no paragraphs within the letters. The writing was beautiful and uniform, by a different hand than had penned the numerical tables of the first book, and an exact half-inch space separated the end of one letter from the beginning of the next.

The first was dated 12 October, 1850. It began:

My dear J.G., The native people continue to be as friendly and as kind in nature as one could wish, though they, alas, cling to their paganism. As our ability to understand them increases, we learn that their dispersion is far wider than we at first suspected. I formerly mentioned the northern islands, ranging from Taheete to Rarotonga. However, it appears that there has been a southern spread of the Maori people also, to lands far from here. I wonder if they may extend their settlements all the way to the great Southern Continent, explored by James Cook and more recently by Captain Ross. I am myself contemplating a journey to a more southerly island, with native assistance. Truly, a whole life’s work is awaiting us. We both feel that, despite the absence of well-loved friends such as yourself, Europe and finance is “a world well lost.” Louisa has recovered completely from the ailment that so worried me two years ago, and I must believe that the main reason for that improvement is a strengthening of spirit. She has begun her scientific work again, more productively, I believe, than ever before. My own efforts in the biological sciences prove ever more fascinating. When you write again tell us, I beg you, not of the transitory social or political events of London, but of the progress of science. It is in this area that L. and I are most starved of new knowledge. With affection, and with the assurance that we think of you and talk of you constantly, L.D.

The next letter was dated 14 December, 1850. Two months after the first. Was that time enough for a letter to reach England, and a reply to return? The initials at the end were again L.D.

I turned to the back of the volume. The final twenty pages or so were blank, and in the last few entries the beautiful regular handwriting had degenerated to a more hasty scribble. The latest date that I saw was October 1855.

Bill was watching me intently. “Just the one book of letters?” I said.

He nodded. “But it doesn’t mean they stopped. Only that we don’t have them.”

“If they didn’t stop, why leave the last pages blank? Let’s go back upstairs. With the books.”

I wanted to read every letter, and examine every page. But if I tried to do it in the chilly crawl space beneath the kitchen, I would have pneumonia before I finished. Already I was beginning to shiver.

“First impressions?” asked Bill, as he set the three ledgers carefully on the table and went back to close the trapdoor and replace the coconut matting. “I know you haven’t had a chance to read, but I can’t wait to hear what you’re thinking.”

I pulled a couple of the chairs over close to the fireplace. The coal fire was blazing, and the chill was already off the air in the room.

“There are
two
L.D.’s,” I said. “Husband and wife?”

“Agreed. Or maybe brother and sister.”

“One of them—the woman—wrote the programming manual for the Analytical Engine. The other one, the man—if it is a man, and we can’t be sure of that—did the animal drawings, and he wrote letters. He kept fair copies of what he sent off to Europe, in that third ledger. No sign of the replies, I suppose?”

“You’ve now seen everything that I’ve seen.” Bill leaned forward and held chilled hands out to the fire. “I knew there were two, from the letters. But I didn’t make the division of labor right away, the way you did. I bet you’re right, though. Anything else?”

“Give me a chance. I need to
read
.” I took the third book, the one of letters, from the table and returned with it to the fireside. “But they sound like missionaries.”

“Missionaries, and scientists. The old nineteenth century mixture.” Bill watched me reading for two minutes, then his urge to be up and doing something—or interrupt me with more questions—took over. His desire to talk was burning him up, while at the same time he didn’t want to stop me from working.

“I’m going back to Big House,” he said abruptly. “Shall I tell Annie we’ll be there for a late lunch?”

I thought of the old farmhouse, generation after generation of life and children. Now there were just the two old folks, and the empty future. I nodded. “If I try to talk about this to them, make me stop.”

“I will. If I can. And if I don’t start doing it myself.” He buttoned his raincoat, and paused in the doorway. “About the gold. I considered telling Jim and Annie when I first found it, because I’m sure that legally they have the best claim to it. But I’d hate for their kids to come hurrying home for all the wrong reasons. I’d appreciate your advice on timing. I hate to play God.”

“So you want me to. Tell me one thing. What reason could there be for somebody to come down here to South Island in the 1850s,
in secret
, and never tell a soul what they were doing? That’s what we are assuming.”

“I’m tempted to say, maybe they found pieces of an Analytical Engine, one that had been left untouched here for a century and a half. But that gets a shade too recursive for my taste. And they did say what they were doing. Read the letters.”

And then he was gone, and I was sitting alone in front of the warm fire. I stewed comfortably in wet pants and shoes, and read. Soon the words and the heat carried me away a hundred and forty years into the past, working my way systematically through the book’s entries.

Most of the letters concerned religious or business matters, and went to friends in England, France, and Ireland. Each person was identified only by initials. It became obvious that the female L.D. had kept up her own active correspondence, not recorded in this ledger, and casual references to the spending of large sums of money made Bill’s discovery of the gold bars much less surprising. The L.D.’s, whoever they were, had great wealth in Europe. They had not traveled to New Zealand because of financial problems back home.

But not all the correspondence was of mundane matters back in England. Scattered in among the normal chat to friends were the surprises, as sudden and as unpredictable as lightning from a clear sky. The first of them was a short note, dated January 1851:

Dear J.G., L. has heard via A.v.H. that C.B. now despairs of completing his grand design. In his own words, “There is no chance of the machine ever being executed during my own life and I am even doubtful of how to dispose of the drawings after its termination.” This is a great tragedy, and L. is beside herself at the possible loss. Can we do anything about this? If it should happen to be no more than a matter of money . . .

And then, more than two years later, in April 1853:

Dear J.G., Many thanks for the shipped materials, but apparently there was rough weather on the journey, and inadequate packing, and three of the cylinders arrived with one or more broken teeth. I am enclosing identification for these items. It is possible that repair can be done here, although our few skilled workmen are a far cry from the machinists of Bologna or Paris. However, you would do me a great favor if you could determine whether this shipment was in fact insured, as we requested. Yours etc. L.D.

Cylinders, with toothed gearwheels. It was the first hint of the Analytical Engine, but certainly not the last. I could deduce, from other letters to J.G., that three or four earlier shipments had been made to New Zealand in 1852, although apparently these had all survived the journey in good condition.

In the interests of brevity, L.D. in copying the letters had made numerous abbreviations; w. did service for both “which” and “with,” “for” was shortened to f, and so on. Most of the time it did not hinder comprehension at all, and reconstruction of the original was easy; but I cursed when people were reduced to initials. It was impossible to expand those back to discover their identity. A.v.H. was probably the great world traveler and writer, Alexander von Humboldt, whose fingerprint appears all across the natural science of Europe in the first half of the last century; and C.B. ought surely to be Charles Babbage. But who the devil was J.G.? Was it a man, or could it be a woman?

About a third of the way through the book, I learned that it was not just copies of letters sent to Europe. It probably began that way, but at some point L.D. started to use it also as a private diary. So by February 1854, after a gap of almost four months, I came across this entry:

22 February. Home at last, and thanks be to God that L. did not accompany me, for the seas to the south are more fierce than I ever dreamed, although the natives on the crew make nothing of them. They laugh in the teeth of the gale, and leap from ship to dinghy with impunity, in the highest sea. However, the prospect of a similar voyage during the winter months would deter the boldest soul, and defies my own imagination.

L. has made the most remarkable progress in her researches since my departure. She now believes that the design of the great engine is susceptible of considerable improvement, and that it could become capable of much more variation and power than even A.L. suspected. The latter, dear lady, struggles to escape the grasp of her tyrannical mother, but scarce seems destined to succeed. At her request, L. keeps her silence, and allows no word of her own efforts to be fed back to England. Were this work to become known, however, I feel sure that many throughout Europe would be astounded by such an effort
—
so ambitious, so noble, and carried through, in its entirety, by a woman!