Shadow Conspiracy (10 page)

“Yes, Mr. Babbage. They are perfect and complete.” She hesitated for a moment, and then risked a rare, truthful admission. “I wish I did not have to do this.”

“I know.” Mr. Babbage covered her hand with his. “But you must understand, Ada, the public likes to see you with the machines. Such a young woman handling the language that commands them...it makes it seem less threatening. You don’t look as if you could do anything harmful.”

“So you’ve told me.”
If only they knew what I have built in this house...
“Fear not, Mr. Babbage. I will do my part.” She arranged her face into a sunny smile for him. “After all, the play’s the thing.”

“To open the pockets of a king. Just so, my lady.”

III

“Really, Ada, you should have informed me Mr. Babbage had arrived. I thought it was only the family you kept waiting.”

Lady Byron, widow of the infamous Lord Byron, waited in the grand foyer as Ada and Mr. Babbage descended the stairs followed by one of the workroom keymen. Lady Byron was still a handsome woman, despite the thick black crepe she donned whenever she went forth in public.
As if she mourned the man she helped drive from the country.

Around Lady Byron stood her three confidantes, also dressed in fashionable but soberly coloured costumes. Mrs. Carr was fussing with the flower arrangement on the central table. Little Miss Doyle stood at Mother’s side, dabbing at her thin mouth with a handkerchief, while with needle-sharp awareness, Miss Frend simpered up at Ada’s husband, William, Earl of Lovelace, who towered over them all, thin and pale in his neat blue suit.

Whenever her mother could not hear, Ada called the women The Furies.

“It is entirely my fault that we are late, Lady Byron.” Mr. Babbage made his bow and then stepped up to shake hands with William. “I insisted on viewing the codex for the
New Britannia
once more before we left.”

“A wise decision,” said Lady Byron. Her cool eyes never left Ada’s face as the maid helped Ada on with her coat. “One cannot be too careful on such a day.”

“Of course Mr. Babbage will see to it that everything goes smoothly,” purred the plump and diminutive Mrs. Carr, first among the Furies. “He always organises events so splendidly.”

Babbage bowed, acknowledging the compliment.

“Shall we go?” William smoothed his coat sleeves and held out his arm to Ada.

“If we are all
quite
ready, that is?” added Lady Byron.

“Quite ready, Ma’am,” Ada replied. She turned to the automaton holding the codex chest. “Bastion. Take the box to Carriage Number One and load it securely onto the rack, then take your station.”

Lady Byron’s lips thinned with disapproval. “Really, Ada, I should think one of the footmen...”

“Forgive me, Lady Byron,” interrupted Mr. Babbage. “But I thought it advisable that Countess Lovelace be seen more frequently with her own automata.” He smiled conspiratorially at William. “There are still those who think they are somehow vulgar.”

Which costs us business and consequently money.
Ada watched the calculation flicker behind her mother’s hard eyes, as Mr. Babbage had known it would.

“An excellent thought, Mr. Babbage,” said Mother promptly.

Ada mentally set aside the sting from her mother’s disdain as she took her husband’s arm to walk out to the carriage. Lady Byron was a spectator today, nothing more. This day would prove to the world that Ada Lovelace, who could make bronze men walk and fight and sing, could make the greatest of machines dance to her command.

This is my day. Mine.

By the time their party reached the London Docks, Ada almost believed it.

IV

The launch of the
New Britannia
was a grand celebration, and the whole of the city turned out for it. The great blue dirigibles, the Flying Bobbies, floated in neat formation overhead while the personal fliers darted between them, their wings flapping like great copper albatrosses, plumes of steam trailing behind them. A full half of the Metropolitan Police had been brought out to attempt to hold back the crush of observers that strained and surged against their linked arms, struggling to keep a lane free for the carriages from Lovelace House.

Ada
twitched the carriage curtains closed, ignoring both William’s and Mr. Babbage’s frowns. She had to endure the mob, but she did not have to let them gawk.

She wished there were a way to shut out the noise. There were cheers enough to satisfy Mr. Babbage—thankfully—but there were the other voices as well.

“Jobs for men, not machines!”

“Down with the Mathematical Witch!”

“Trust God’s Creation, not Man’s!”

Then there were the final set of voices, the ones that would never forget her paternal heritage.

“Ada! I love you, Ada!”

“Ada! I’ve a message from your father! He says not to believe her, Ada!”

“Ada!” They called as the carriage halted and William helped her out. “Darling Ada!”

It only got worse when Mother emerged from her carriage, the Furies in tight formation to create a wall of black crepe and silk at her back.

“Witch!”

“Liar!”

“You drove him to his death!”

Mr. Babbage doffed his hat to the friendly portion of the crowd, and they cheered in response. Ada wondered if he even heard the shouts of the Luddites and the Byron acolytes.

Ada
called on her well-honed powers of concentration to shut out the noise and fix her face into the serene and smiling mask that was expected in public situations. Ahead waited the new viewing platform built on the bank of the Thames. Flags and bunting draped the stage. Men in high hats and perfectly cut coats crowded together at the banister. Their wives stood with them, adorned in the latest fashions, parasols held high in case the sun should chance to peek through the grey clouds.

But none of them really mattered, either. What mattered was the smooth, black sides of the
New Britannia
towering over them all.

“Lady Lovelace!” Lord Normanby, the Home Secretary, stepped forward eagerly. “So elegant, as ever. We are greatly looking forward to your amazing us afresh with your new accomplishment.”

“Thank you, Lord Normanby.” Ada took his hand briefly. Then, she turned to greet the Prime Minister, and her jaw nearly dropped.

Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s Prime Minister, was a tall, serious, conservative man. But beside him—wearing a dress of a cut that would have been difficult for a woman twenty years her junior to carry off—stood his wife, Lady Melbourne, Caroline Lamb, who also had been Lord Byron’s second most infamous lover.

“Good Morning, Prime Minister,” Ada made herself say. “Thank you so much for coming to our demonstration.”

“Good morning, Lady Lovelace,” Lord Melbourne replied. “Lord Lovelace. Mr. Babbage.” And with only the barest hint of a pause he added “Lady Byron.”

“Lord Melbourne,” said her mother. There followed a heartbeat of hesitation, the barest flicker of an eye. “Lady Melbourne.”

Of all her father’s affairs, the longest lasting and most public had been Caroline Lamb. She was the one who declared Byron “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” She had tried to prevent Lord Byron’s marriage to Lady Byron, but once that marriage was accomplished, she had thrown other women into Byron’s path in an attempt to break it.

Caroline Lamb hardly ever appeared in public any more, let alone in situations where a stray word might embarrass her husband, the Queen’s Prime Minister.
Why on earth has he brought her here?
It was beyond comprehension. But then, it was beyond Ada’s comprehension why Lord Melbourne remained married to the woman who had so publicly cuckolded him when he was merely William Lamb.

Ada
glanced toward Mr. Babbage, trying to catch his eye, but he, of course, was already deep in conversation with the Home Secretary.

“....But do you really believe you will be able to create sympathetic action without a sympathetic form?” the Home Secretary asked.

“The automatic sciences are not black magic, Home Secretary,” Ada said, boldly stepping into one of the few areas of conversation where her mother and the Furies could not follow. “Mr. Babbage’s analytic engine will respond to pre-designed commands given in the correct order, no matter what shape houses them.”

“Just so.” Babbage puffed out his chest ever so slightly. Indeed, it had been easier to create a working codex for the ship than for a human shaped automaton, but since they first entered into partnership, Charles had insisted they begin with what he called ‘the golems.’
“They are so like the toys people are used to, no one will object to them,”
he had said.
“Once they have been accepted, we can move on to the truly useful engines.”

“And what of the question of the soul, Lady Byron?” asked a man she didn’t recognise. He wore a bowler hat and a badly-tailored brown suit.

“I beg your pardon?” She looked down her nose at him, an expression she had learned from her mother.

But the man did not flinch, nor did he offer to introduce himself. “The soul. You’ve heard the reports, I’m sure—automata falling in love with their owners, or the mechanical valet running off into the woods in Scotland. People are saying your thinking machines are growing souls of their own. What sort of soul could a steamship house?”

“People say all manner of ridiculous things,” snapped Ada. “But no transference of soul from natural to mechanical form has ever been reliably recorded.”

“Then you don’t believe it?”

“I believe people mistake form for function.” Her voice was growing warmer than she intended. “They see a face and believe they see a human being, and ignorantly attribute a broken codex to voluntary control.”

“Well, I know I very much look forward to the demonstration,” interrupted the Home Secretary, drawing Ada’s attention from the bowler-hatted stranger.

“As do I,” said Lady Melbourne. Her voice was low and husky, with a velvet quality to it. “It is so wonderful to see what form your father’s gifts have taken in you, Lady Lovelace.”

“Are we ready to begin?” inquired Lord Melbourne, a little too hastily.

Mr. Babbage took Ada’s arm and positively hustled her down the quay with its red carpet and row of solemn, blue-coated sailors, away from Mother and her rival, toward the waiting ship.

Tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of steel, brass and teakwood had gone into the
New Britannia’s
construction. Her high-efficiency boilers could stand pressures higher than any ship on the Thames. Her steel prow was sharp, and her stern broad enough to hold the three enormous paddles, freshly improved on the basic design of America’s Mr. Fulton. The deck was wide and flat as a barge, but where an ordinary barge would have had a pilot house, there waited an enormous metal and glass enclosure for the analytic engine and its command console. There was a wheel and speaking tubes, in case of emergency, and hand-brakes for the paddles. Captain Wedderburn had insisted on them.

“It is not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Babbage,” he’d said brusquely. “But you’ll not find a sailor willing to take command of a ship he can’t turn should he have a need.”

Which was the truth. Babbage had looked for such a man and come up empty-handed.

On a working ship, the analytic engine would be housed more practically below decks. But
New Britannia
was the showpiece, and Mr. Babbage insisted it be grand and beautiful. So the columns and gears and bearings that were the brain of the ship gleamed beneath crystal windows for the world to see.

“All correct, George?” Mr. Babbage asked the engine foreman as they and the keyman entered the pilot house.

“As you left it last night, sir.” George nodded to the line of men and boys with their bare feet and stained clothing. “I’ve had them up with the sun, running the checks. She’s sound and she’s ready.”

The
New Britannia
was not the largest of what people were coming to call ‘Babbage engines’—not like the great Westminster Engine or the Defence Engine in Dover—but it was the most complex and delicate. As Mr. Babbage gazed upon the gleaming construct, Ada watched the rest of the world fall away from him. Here was the work of his hands, here was his heart, his fortune, his future.

At last, Mr. Babbage blinked and moved to the codex console, a brass and teakwood cabinet beside the ship’s wheel and, like the rest of the ship, larger and gaudier than it needed to be. “Lady Lovelace, if you please?”

Ada
drew a small key from her reticule and handed it to Mr. Babbage, who opened the chest Bastion held. He folded back the white linen to reveal the first of the golden command cards. Ada lifted out the card. It was more like a piece of gilded lace than an important piece of a steam engine. She inspected the carefully aligned holes in their complex patterns, so familiar to her eye.

Ada
slotted the first card into its rack in the console, then the second and the third, through to number ten. She closed the housing and stepped back. The crowd on the dock saw her motion and set up a cheer that reverberated through the windowpanes.

Captain Wedderburn drew a deep breath. “Are you certain you will not return to the dock, Lady Lovelace?”

Ada
faced the weathered man and mustered her best smile. “Captain, this is a test of confidence as much as of the mechanism. If the engines fail, at worst we will have to be towed back to shore.” She raised her brows. “Or are you expecting a more dramatic situation?”