The Explosionist (18 page)

W
ALKING THROUGH THE
streets, Sophie’s feet felt light, like in the kind of dream where one speeds effortlessly forward, four or five inches off the ground. For a moment she wondered whether she might be getting assistance from the spirit world, then felt silly when she realized it was just the effect of having emptied the schoolbooks from her satchel.

It was a great relief to find the shop still open. Sophie had never been inside before, having felt more aversion than attraction to the mysterious notices in the window (“Lady psychometrist seeks spiritualist gentleman, smokers need not apply”; “Train your powers of psychic communication in SIX EASY LESSONS”).

It was a cramped room stuffed almost to bursting, the wall to the left dominated by a reproduction of Daguerre’s famous photograph of the Champs Elysées. The picture made Paris look like a ghost town, the presence of the thousands of people who must have passed across the camera’s field of view during the plate’s exposure marked only by fleeting streaks of light.

Sophie heard someone clearing his throat. She turned to find a very young man with slicked-back hair, a spotty face, and a painfully prominent Adam’s apple, who smiled and asked how he could help her in a pleasant but nasal voice.

Great-aunt Tabitha loathed and despised what she called jumped-up shop assistants, but Sophie thought this boy sounded nice. She decided to tell him the truth about what she needed.

“I want to buy a packet of photographic paper,” she said, digging the coins out of her satchel and tipping them in a heap on the counter. “Whatever kind’s best for capturing images from the spirit world.”

“Hmm,” the boy said, his fingers stroking a pitiful fringe of chin hair that only a dyed-in-the-wool optimist could have called a beard. “Tell me more. What kinds of spirit? Do you mean to use a camera, or do you prefer direct exposure? If I know exactly what you’re wanting to do, I’ll be better able to help you choose the right materials.”

He had a good forceful way of speaking, and Sophie thought he’d be better off selling things over the telephone than in person, where extreme youth cut into his authority.

“I’m not exactly sure,” she confessed, leaning her elbows on the counter and resting her chin in her hands. “I’ve been conducting an investigation, asking spirits quite practical questions and getting answers that are vague to the point of being actively unhelpful. What I want now is to get something more precise. I thought that photographs might make things clearer.”

“So you’d like to use photography to persuade your spirits to narrow things down,” said the shop assistant. “You’ll not be wanting to take pictures of the spirits themselves, then?”

“Oh, no,” said Sophie, a little shocked. “Why would I want to do that?”

“You’d be surprised what people want,” said the boy. “You do see the difference between the two kinds of photography, don’t you? I’m Keith, by the way.”

“I’m Sophie,” Sophie said.

They shook hands solemnly, Sophie revising her estimate of his age downward from nineteen or twenty to sixteen or at the very most seventeen.

“Yes, I know I look awfully young,” said Keith, disconcerting Sophie by seeming to read her thoughts, “but I turned eighteen last week and I’ve been subbing for my older brother
in the shop for years. He’s off north to cover the Highland Games for the
Courant
—it might not sound like much, but the paper will put him on staff if he does a good job. He’s not like me; he goes mad if he has to spend every day in the shop, so we’re all crossing our fingers it’ll work out.”

Sophie promised to add her own positive finger-crossing powers in aid of Keith’s brother’s advancement, and Keith thanked her before turning over a flyer for an amateur photography competition and beginning to sketch a diagram on the back.

“Back to what I was saying,” he said, “if you’re simply trying to capture spirit presences, you don’t need anything fancy. Think of Becquerel proving the existence of radioactivity by wrapping a photographic plate in black paper. All he did was lay a sample of uranium on top, and it emitted rays that fogged the plate. In the same way a spirit will often leave traces on film, so long as the room’s really dark. Very often what people display as spirit photography, of course, really just shows they haven’t sealed the room properly.”

Sophie thought of Great-aunt Tabitha’s latest effort and nodded.

“What you’re wanting to do is something rather more interesting,” Keith said, scribbling another diagram beside the first. “There used to be a superstition that the eyes of a murdered man could actually trap an image of the murderer. I
don’t know about that, but I do know that the police have been experimenting with a device that does something rather similar. They’ve mostly given up on it, though, because it won’t work unless you’ve got a good psychic scientist on staff, and all they’ve got is a handful of crackpot spiritualist types. No offense,” he added.

“None taken,” said Sophie. Keith was
exactly
Sophie’s kind of person.

“The basic idea,” Keith said, so earnestly it was almost comical, “is that many serious crimes—murder’s an obvious example—leave no witnesses aside from the perpetrator. So you want to get the dead to testify, but their words are often so vague as to be useless, not to mention that the 1921 decision in
Scotland v. Blavatsky
affirmed that recordings of the voices of the dead are inadmissible in court. They’re simply too easy to fake.”

“You really know your stuff, don’t you?” Sophie said, impressed.

Keith nodded. “Yep, this is something I’m specially interested in,” he said. “The legal aspects are fascinating—you should see the judge’s opinion in—”

Sophie interrupted him by tapping the face of her watch with her index finger.

“Oh. Yes. Well, most of the same objections don’t apply to images. Trickery’s far from unknown in spirit photography,
but it’s relatively easy to prevent fraud if you know what you’re doing. What you want is a setup capable of recording the last visual memories of the dead person. You get that by creating an arrangement that mimics the workings of the human eye—cornea, iris, lens, and so on—and using photographic paper as an artificial retina for recording patterns of light, which are organized by the psychic scientist and the dead person’s spirit.”

“Do you mean to say that ordinary spirit photography doesn’t even require a camera, just a simple mechanism for recording images,” Sophie asked, not sure she’d understood him, “but that what I want to do needs a very special kind of camera?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” Keith said.

“Would it be very expensive to get one?” she asked.

“I think there’s a way around that,” said Keith. “Sophie, it’s funny you came in today. It’s almost as if it was
meant
.”

Sophie didn’t like it when people suggested that perfectly ordinary minor coincidences signaled some deep pattern in the universe, but it was true she’d felt an instant connection with Keith.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“I’ve been building cameras like that for years,” he said. “It happens that I’ve got a new prototype I’m anxious to test. And though I’m far from being a medium myself, I’ve got a
strong feeling—oh, call it a psychic premonition—that you’re exactly the partner I’ve been looking for. What do you think? Are you willing to serve as medium?”

Then, when Sophie said nothing: “I haven’t offended you, have I? You are a medium, I’m sure of it. Oh, I’ve got it all wrong as usual, haven’t I? I’m sorry, Sophie, I didn’t—”

“Be quiet,” Sophie said. “I’m thinking.”

What did it mean, that someone she’d only just met would guess that Sophie was a medium? She hated the very sound of the word. She wasn’t any such thing. Or was she?

The struggle showed in her face, and Keith sighed.

“All right, let me guess,” he said. “You’re worried about whether you can trust me. I’m going to lay out all the advantages. First: you may not realize it, but you’re talking about something technically quite difficult. Second: it’s not a good idea to do this kind of work on your own. You need safeguards to make sure you’re not simply capturing images from your own memory; you need someone to operate the camera, so that you can concentrate on the mental aspects; and you need someone to observe and certify the results.”

“Maybe it isn’t such a good idea,” Sophie said, discouraged.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Keith said, more cheerful than ever. “Third: I’m betting you don’t have a license. But I’ve got my certification from the Glasgow Society for Psychical Research, Spirit Photography Division. Look!”

He whipped out his wallet, withdrew a card, and slapped it down on the counter between them.

Sophie picked it up and examined it. Printed on the back was the Dodgson Compact, a version of the Hippocratic Oath adapted for spirit photographers by one of the first scientists to enter the field. The text below identified Keith as a fully licensed psycho-photographic consultant, with authority to testify as an expert witness in courts throughout the Hanseatic states as well as to supervise spiritualist investigations by unlicensed practitioners.

“Aren’t you going to tell me how young I am to have got this?” Keith asked.

“Certainly not!” Sophie answered. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s bad manners to fish for compliments?”

Keith started laughing. “I think I’m still allowed to gloat,” he said. “The card only came in yesterday’s post!”

“Anyway, telling a person how young he is sounds more like an insult than a compliment, doesn’t it?” said Sophie. “I think young people should be treated exactly like older ones.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Keith, contemplating the document with great satisfaction before putting it away in his wallet. “But seriously, Sophie, I’m not fooling around when I say you’ll get much better results this way. You don’t think I’m trying to pull one over on you, do you? I won’t charge you a penny; I’ll even pay for the materials.”

“No, I’m paying for the materials,” Sophie protested, only realizing this meant she’d agreed to work with him when he whooped with delight.

He seemed so pleased, she dismissed the remaining scruples from her mind. She would make sure he didn’t end up out of pocket, and she wouldn’t tell him anything that would put him in a difficult or dangerous position.

“Ordinarily, my brother helps with the technical part,” he said, “but since he’s away, have you a friend you trust to stand in as our assistant?”

Sophie’s thoughts went at once to Mikael.

“Yes, I’ve got someone,” she said. “When shall we do it?”

“Tomorrow’s good,” said Keith. “I close up the shop around six, so we’d be able to get started soon after. Does that sound all right?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sophie, amazed and grateful at how smoothly it was all working out. “Do you need me to bring anything?”

“No, nothing at all,” said Keith.

“Thank you so much,” Sophie said impulsively. “I can’t tell you how little I was looking forward to this. I’m fine with machines—radios and such—but I’ve no affinity for pictures. And it’s creepy dipping into the spirit world all by yourself!”

“Yes, that’s something best done in the company of others,” Keith said.

Then, as Sophie turned to leave: “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he said.

“What?”

“Your money,” he said, waving a hand at the pile of cash.

“Won’t you take it toward the supplies for tomorrow?” Sophie asked, feeling magnanimous and rich.

Keith brushed away her offer, which he seemed ready to take as a reflection on his social standing, so Sophie scooped the money back into her satchel, where it jangled ridiculously loudly during her walk home.

For supper Peggy gave her a ham sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup heated up out of a tin. Afterward Sophie took a book and went to read on the window seat in the sitting room. It was so private there, it was almost like being in her own little house. The cushions and the curtains completely concealed her from the rest of the room.

Her eyelids kept drooping, and she jerked herself awake several times before deciding there was no reason not to give in and sleep.

She woke with a start.

“Minister of public safety, indeed!” said a familiar voice. It took Sophie a minute to realize it belonged to Miss Grant, Great-aunt Tabitha’s ally from the Scottish Society for Psychical Research. She sounded absolutely furious. “It’s a
perversion of the language to suggest the wretched woman will bring Scotland to anything other than calamity and mass destruction.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, Ruth, but we must put our minds to the problem and work out what to do next,” said Sophie’s great-aunt. “What do you think?”

“I’ve assigned several operatives to see if they can dig up anything to use against Murchison,” said the younger woman. “I’m confident they’ll find dirt, but it’s a question of timing. If she goes public about Europe and the Brothers of the Northern Liberties before we come up with anything substantial, it’s going to be difficult to stop things from moving inexorably toward war.”

“I’m currently looking into the situation with the Brothers,” said Great-aunt Tabitha. “I don’t think she’s told us the whole story, and it may prove a weak point in the defenses.”

“What about Nicko Mood?” asked Miss Grant.

“I don’t think he’s capable of doing much on his own,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, “but he may well have become an effective instrument. The real pity is that Joanna’s come down so hard on the side of war. When we were younger, I worried about her politics, but I never thought it would come to
this
. On almost every other issue she’s completely sound: she’s the only member of the cabinet who agrees with me about the
importance of higher education for women, for instance, and she’s admirably tough-minded on the Highland fisheries.”

“Why do you think she’s come on so strong for war, then?”

“I’m not sure, though I suppose that if I were the only woman in the cabinet, I too might grow weary of having all the men roll their eyes whenever I spoke about peace. It is awfully tiresome when one’s pacifist side is attributed solely to the fact of one’s being a woman.”