The Forever Engine (7 page)

EIGHT

October 1, 1888, Essex, England

Less than week later I felt like a proper Londoner. I had my own respirator and goggles, even if they were tucked away in a leather shoulder bag. I also had a hat.

I was forced to agree to the practicality of a hat in this environment—that or comb dust and cinders out of my hair every time I came in from outdoors. I never liked wearing hats and I had avoided them altogether after leaving the army, but now I had a closet-full of the damned things.

That was only a slight exaggeration; I had a hat for everyday “walking out” wear, one for formal occasions, a sporting hat, a shooting hat, a hunting hat, and a riding hat. I had a hard time telling the everyday, formal, and riding hats apart, since all three were black silk top hats, but the tailor assured me they were all necessary and Thomson agreed. Since the British government was paying the bill, who was I to argue? After all, the British government got me into this mess. Maybe not
this
British government, but what the hell—this one was handy.

I wore my formal hat and formal evening wear today, wore it for the first time since it was delivered yesterday afternoon. I always thought I’d look good in white tie and tails, and I was right. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help remembering what Thoreau said on the subject:
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

“It looks tight across your midsection,” Thomson said. “You should have let the tailor cut it more generously.”

“I’m about to lose some weight,” I answered. “It would have ended up looking baggy.”

“If I had a shilling for every gentleman who’s told his tailor that, I’d be a rich man.”

“You
are
a rich man,” Buller put in, his first words since climbing into the horse-drawn carriage at the train station. He was resplendent in his own dress uniform, which looked unlike any British Army uniform I could remember seeing—all black with shining black silk tapes across the front and looping around the sleeves, and topped by a fur cap with a tall, slender black and red plume. The coat was heavy with decorations across the chest, including a couple of big multipointed silver stars.

The carriage lurched in the rutted road and turned into a long, shaded drive. As we rounded a bend I saw what I took to be our destination—Larchmont Hall, stately and serene, perched on a low hill and surrounded by painfully disciplined formal gardens.

Buller, Thomson, and I had taken the train from London out to a place called South Woodham Ferrers-on-Crouch. Its name was almost longer than the village main drag. The large and ornate four-horse carriage waited for us at the station and carried us to the hall where Lord Chillingham would receive us.

“So, let me make sure I’ve got this right. We are going on a critical mission but we couldn’t leave yet because first we had to meet this Lord Chillingham, and before we could do that I needed the right
clothes
. Is that about it?”

“Don’t be an ass about this, Fargo,” Buller growled. “Keep your mouth shut in there unless you’re spoken to directly. If asked for your view, either agree with his Lordship or say you don’t have an opinion.”

“And for heaven’s sake,” Thomson added, “don’t be sarcastic, much as I am sure that will pain you. This is no joking matter, laddie. Chillingham is an Iron Lord, makes a fortune from industry instead of agriculture, although God knows he has land enough for that as well. That makes him dangerous—he actually
does
things for his money, instead of just owning land and paying someone to collect the rents.”

“Their Lordships don’t usually take to money with the scent of sulfur on it,” Buller said. “I suppose if you’ve got enough of it, they make an exception.”

“That and the fact that Lord Chillingham is from one of the oldest noble families in the British Isles,” Thomson added. “Thomas St. John Curnoble, twenty-eighth earl of Chillingham and Adderstone. He was rich
before
he bought the Manchester Iron Works.”

“They’ve been rich ever since King Harold stopped a Norman arrow with his eyeball at Hastings,” Buller muttered.

It didn’t sound as if I was going to like this Chillingham guy much. On the other hand, if he was some new breed of noble, a “get your hands dirty” take-charge guy, maybe I could find some common ground.

The carriage stopped at a side entrance where a butler waited for us.

“Follow me,” he ordered and then turned and entered the house.

“Servants and tradesmen’s entrance,” Buller said quietly, almost to himself. “Been some time since I’ve had to go in one of those.”

He heaved his bulk up from the seat, squared his shoulders, and walked through the door with the quiet resignation of a man marching to the gallows. Thomson fidgeted with his gloves as we followed, but in we went.

Quiet. That’s what Larchmont Hall was like inside: quiet and bright. Light flooded in through windows and French doors while white lace sheers floated in the soft breeze that carried the scent of flowers in from the garden. I breathed in slowly. Rose. Gardenia. Jasmine. Hyacinth.

Quiet, bright, and clean-smelling: anyone fresh from the noise and gloom and stench of London would instantly recognize this as Heaven. There was both irony and symmetry in that: first render the cities hellish, then construct a refuge from your own handiwork.

The long halls and open rooms seemed to stretch on endlessly. Mirrors everywhere accentuated the effect. Here and there I caught sight of a servant moving silently and gracefully from room to room. The butler led us, his velvet-slippered feet silent on polished hardwood floors. Our own shoes clumped and banged incongruously, no matter how carefully we trod. The sound echoed in the halls of light, somehow seeming to defile this sacred oasis of calm.

Three grown men tried to tiptoe down the hall like schoolboys following a teacher to the principal’s office, trying to keep up but not draw attention to themselves, to their guilt and awkward inadequacy. Buller, a brave soldier—even if he was an overbearing asshole—walked gingerly on the balls of his feet, almost stumbled from the effort in his tall riding boots, and looked foolish doing it. That brave old soldier looked foolish, and I think that’s what finally got me.

I stopped walking lightly.

Clump, clump, clump.

After a half-dozen steps the butler turned and scowled at me.

“Bite me, pal,” I told him

“
Fargo!
” Buller hissed. “Mind your tongue.”

“Give it a rest, General. If Chillingham wanted it quiet, he’d either put in rugs or have us leave our boots at the door. This is just a head game.”

“Aye, that may be,” Thomson said softly at my side. “But in his castle, he chooses the game.”

Maybe so, but I noticed both Buller and Thomson walked more easily after that.

The butler took us to a sitting room with large glass doors facing the garden. It caught the early afternoon sun perfectly, and I had the feeling there must be different rooms in different parts of the hall used at different times of the day just for the way they caught the light. And of course the light changed at different times of the year. I always wondered what the deal was with all those rooms in old manor houses. I guess if you wanted to have rooms that always got the light
just right
, you probably needed a house this big.

Chillingham looked younger than I expected, early forties probably. His brown wavy hair grayed at the temples so perfectly I wondered if he dyed it. He had the physique of an active man but not too active—someone who rode but did not shovel out the barn afterwards. I saw no glint of humor in his eyes at all; that’s always a bad sign.

He sat in a large wingback chair with a small dog in his lap—a black Scottish terrier. The terrier was alert and interested in the three of us, but not inclined to bark. We did not alarm him, because he knew that nothing threatening ever entered this house. Lucky little dog.

“Lord Chillingham,” Buller and Thomson said together and bowed from the waist. I took Buller’s advice and kept my mouth shut. I nodded with enough energy I’m sure someone might have mistaken it for a bow. Chillingham didn’t seem inclined to take offense.

Instead, he sighed.

“Yes, very well, General. Let’s hear it.”

Buller launched into a detailed outline of the mission. I wasn’t sure our host was even listening. He was more interested in his little dog. But then the door opened, and the butler crossed to Chillingham’s side. Buller stopped speaking, but Chillingham motioned him to continue. He did so, but with less assurance as the butler leaned forward and whispered in the lord’s ear.

Chillingham frowned, and for the first time looked alert and mentally engaged. The butler straightened, and Chillingham’s gaze wandered to the French doors, swept the garden, and then lost focus in the afternoon clouds as his mind grappled with the new problem. Buller stopped speaking again, and this time Chillingham did not notice. For several seconds the only sound was the caress of the sheer drapes against the doorframe in the light breeze.

Chillingham’s mouth hardened, his attention returned to the room, and I knew he had made a decision.

“Very well then,” he said to the butler. “We’ll follow the fish course with a claret. It’s too early in the meal, but there’s nothing for it.”

The butler nodded and glided from the room. Chillingham’s eyes wandered back to us, he seemed to remember we were there, and the look of intent concentration flickered away, replaced by bored irritation. He waved for Buller to continue.

“We—ah—where was I?”

“Somewhere in Bavaria,” I volunteered.

Chillingham glanced at me, and one eyebrow went up slightly before he looked back at Buller.

Buller resumed his narration of our plan, such as it was. From this point on it was all wishes and dreams as far as I was concerned. We had no clue what we were getting into and would be making things up as we went. Operations like this work when you know exactly what’s going to happen at every step and rehearse it a couple times. This sort of “Go in there and see what you chaps can accomplish” approach almost always ends in disaster, but it was my only ticket to the Old Man.

While Buller droned on, I had time to think about Chillingham. He wasn’t at all what I had expected. Any thoughts I’d had of winning him over were long gone; he wasn’t interested enough in this mission, or me, to even listen to my pitch. His mind was more on tonight’s dinner than this operation, and, despite the contempt that initially made me feel, the more I thought about it, the less certainty I had on the subject. I didn’t know who was coming to this dinner or what would be decided there, but Chillingham did not strike me as a stupid man. For him the dinner was more important. Maybe he knew something I didn’t.

And maybe he had about as much faith in this “mission” producing positive results as I did.

Buller finished, and Chillingham turned to look me over, noticed me studying him, but showed no reaction to that one way or another.

“And why are you helping us in this enterprise, Mr. Fargo?”

“To get back to my time,” I lied.

“I see. I read enough of that long report of Captain Gordon’s to make me wonder why you would want to. Considering the enthusiasm with which your society embraces its lowest, least-cultured elements, it’s small wonder your world is in such a frightful state.”

“As opposed to how peachy things are here,” I said.

He looked at me through eyes incapable of registering either respect or contempt. He looked at me through the eyes of a farmer inspecting his livestock, but his eyes narrowed as he did, and I saw measurement and calculation and an inhuman coldness unlike any I’d ever experienced.

“Precisely,” he said.

NINE

October 2, 1888, Aboard Her Majesty’s Aerial Ship
Intrepid
,

Aloft Over the English Channel

“Lift-
wood
?” I asked. “You mean to tell me this thing is held up by
wood
?”

“I assure you, laddie, I was as surprised your time does not have it as you are that ours does,” Thomson answered.

We stood inside the massive lower hull of the flyer, looking down at row upon row of broad, thin wooden slats, arranged like louvers in a door.

“Go ahead and touch them,” he told me. “They’re real enough. Only touch the top surfaces, though, unless you want the skin stripped off your fingers.”

I knelt on the catwalk, reached out, and ran my fingers lightly along an upper edge.

“Are they always so hot?”

“No. As we ascend, their temperature increases. We don’t know why the temperature rises when they climb and drops as they descend, but my theory is it has to do with potential energy. A good trimsman keeps the climb shallow enough to avoid thermal distortion. The angle of the plane of the wood with respect to the center of mass of the world determines the amplitude of lift.”

I sat on the catwalk, leaned my back against one of the steel ribs of the hull, and looked at the rows of louvers, their positions controlled by an elaborate array of brass and steel gears and thin control cables running up to and through the overhead. As I watched, the louvers adjusted slightly, two here, five over there, keeping the flyer in trim.

Thomson and the others had figured out I was from a different future right away, but they’d done a good job of keeping it to themselves. It had been obvious to them once I talked about our “amazing” space-exploration program, which had finally put an unmanned rover on Mars in the twenty-first century. That’s why he hadn’t wanted me to tell Tesla about our space program—it would have let him in on the secret as well. Men from this world had been visiting Mars since
1870!

And they had liftwood. It grew on Mars.

“Back at the hospital I felt a downdraft when one of these things went over. I thought maybe it had big fans inside or something. Instead it’s got these wood slats, but when we took off I noticed a lot of wind underneath. So how do these things work?”

“There is some controversy over that. The panels clearly do not block the effects of gravity. Since there are lifting panels between us and the ground, we would not feel the gravitational pull of the Earth below us, or would feel it with reduced effect. Nevertheless, we clearly do feel it.

“The accepted explanation is that the louvers exert a repulsive force on whatever they come in contact with, but only do so parallel to the axis of strongest proximate gravitational attraction. The mechanism of this repulsion, and the source of the energy which produces it, remains a mystery, but it is one to which I believe you may have provided the answer.”

“Me?” I said. “What does time travel have to do with it?”

“Not time travel,” he answered, “but rather your explanation of matter in terms of small particles, particularly those—what are they called? Bosons? Those bosons which carry force and are exchanged.

“The difficulty with the standard explanation of liftwood’s function is that it seems to allow for violation of conservation of matter, energy, and momentum. If you float something heavy and then drop it, you generate a good deal of kinetic energy at the impact point, and appear to do so for free.”

“Nothing’s free,” I said.

“Quite right, and there is some historical evidence from Mars’s past that in fact the entire momentum of the system is preserved. I now believe that liftwood does not actually repel matter which comes in contact with it, but rather exchanges momentum with it.”

“What momentum? The air isn’t moving.”

“Of course it is,” he said. “It is spinning around the Earth’s axis and hurtling through space as the Earth revolves around the sun. Each particle of air has enormous momentum. What remains a puzzle is why, or how, liftwood is able to selectively borrow the momentum parallel to the pull of gravity, but organic constructs are extraordinarily sophisticated. We cannot even begin to explain how a chameleon’s skin can so quickly react to its surroundings and duplicate them as a form of visual camouflage. Your time has extraordinarily advanced computing machines. Do you have one as quick, sophisticated, and compact as the brain of a seagull?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered.

“No, and mind you a seagull is not a particularly intelligent bird.”

I looked back at the rows of louvers. They vibrated softly, in tension between gravity and the restraints of the gears holding them in position.

No, not gravity—
momentum
?

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “This place gives me the willies.”

We made our way through the doorway, back out into the rhythmic clatter and bustle of the engine room, and I felt better right away. I was tired of complicated men and impossible science. I paused and took a good long look, breathed in the steamy smell of oil and hot metal. Here were men dirty and sweaty from work, real work—lubricating the big reciprocating engines, fine-tuning a dozen different-sized valves on the steam lines, shoveling coal into the hungry boilers, shouting to be heard over the pounding beat of the flyer’s heart. They worked with confidence and economy of motion—a well-practiced team. I was nearly overcome by a desire to be part of that team, to take off my shirt and just start shoveling coal.

“Do you mind, lad? I’m starting to melt,” Thomson said.

Her Majesty’s Aerial Ship
Intrepid
was damned impressive. I’d been on the old cruiser
Olympia
, Dewey’s flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay, and
Intrepid
reminded me of her. She had a broad, shallow hull. A narrow superstructure, topped by the wheelhouse, ran most of the way along the upper surface, all dark iron, steel, and polished brass, along with bleached white wooden decks and rich varnished interior woodwork. The flyer bristled with guns. One large steel turret dominated the main deck forward and another crowned the stern superstructure. More guns were mounted to fire broadside from the superstructure, and a sort of sideways turret on each side of the deck mounted another gun each. They called those
sponsons
. They could fire up and down as well as to the sides.

A small housing below the hull held the ship’s compass. It had to be below the hull because the liftwood interfered with it. It didn’t stop it from working, it just made it slow to change, like a gyroscope. Later, as we leaned on the brass railing and watched the distant clouds drift by, I asked Thomson how that squared with his new theory of how liftwood worked.

“I’m not certain,” Thomson said, “and if I know anything, I should know that. I designed that compass, the one in use in every Royal Navy vessel. It is not simply a navigational aid, it is also a precision scientific instrument. The navy has ships all over the world and they’ve been mapping the magnetosphere since—well, the 1830s, as I recall. Still are. This cruiser’s taking magnetic readings all along its course.”

“Since the 1830s? And you’re not done yet?”

“The magnetosphere is not absolutely stable, you know, laddie. The north and south magnetic poles drift over time, and there are other anomalies worth mapping. For the last year we’ve noticed a very slight weakening in the electromagnetic field. That’s the main reason the Royal Navy adopted my compass; it’s the most accurate and sensitive navigational instrument the service has ever had.”

“If you do say so yourself,” I said.

He smiled but I saw sadness there as well.

“Yes, you’re right. It is a very good compass, but still—just a compass. As I grow older, most of my work seems little more than tinkering: the transatlantic cable, the adjustable compass—simply toys by your day, I imagine. I wonder if I’ve done anything which will be remembered once I’m gone. Tell the truth—you’ve never heard my name, have you?”

“Nineteenth century science isn’t my field,” I said.

“Yet you knew of Edison.”

“He’s American—hometown boy makes good.”

“And Hertz?”

“They named radio waves after him. A car rental company, too.”

But the truth was, I knew a half-dozen or more scientists from about this time: Edison, Hertz, Faraday, Marconi, Kelvin, Babbage, Darwin, Planck, Tesla, of course—but not Thomson.

“Now Tyndall—there’s a scientist who’s left his mark on the world,” Thomson said.

I’d never heard of Tyndall, either, but I didn’t think that would make Thomson feel any better about his life. Besides, I had problems of my own.

I’d found out how the South won its independence: Lincoln had died in 1862 from typhoid fever. It made my heart ache again just standing there thinking about it. Everyone thinks strategy is all about generals, but it’s more about the men who stand behind them. Hamlin, his vice president, apparently just didn’t have what it took to get the job done, so the war effort faltered. McClellan won the election in ‘64 and made peace. That’s how the South won—not anything they’d done, just some microscopic organism.

Typhoid fever.
Son of a bitch.

In the midst of the post-war malaise which gripped the North, a young inventor named Edison heard a lecture on the luminiferous aether and decided America needed a new challenge, a new frontier to re-spark its spirit of purpose and adventure. A year of obsessive-compulsive experimentation later and he had a working aether propeller. So far so good. The problem was, when he got to Mars, there was a breathable atmosphere and life.

“Yes, there’s a troubling difference,” Thomson had said when he told me all this other stuff. “Mars has very small polar caps, but they are slowly growing, have been for several centuries as near as we can tell. I actually believe that is at the root of the collapse of the great civilizations there, the gradual cooling and drying of the world. It’s not just its seas which have disappeared. It’s also losing its cloud cover. I suspect that kept the world warm, rather like a greenhouse.”

That was about the first scientific thing I’d heard here which made much sense. I knew a little about our own Mars expedition plans. They included some long-term terraforming involving melting the polar caps, which were mostly CO2, to release the greenhouse gases, get the planet warming, and cook an atmosphere from Mars’s own frozen gases and the moisture locked in the soil. I wondered what it would have taken to do that naturally a couple billion years earlier, long enough for life to have evolved. A really big meteor strike at the pole? Sure, that would probably do it.

The problem was, now I was not looking at “fixing” a change in history as recent as the Roman emperor Galba. Now I had to figure out how to rearrange the solar system. Well, somebody apparently did it, so somebody could undo it. Maybe I was that somebody.

Yeah, maybe.

The sky stretched before us seemingly to infinity, dusted with a handful of clouds ahead and above us, and a wispy, uneven floor below. Through breaks in the clouds I could still see the blue-gray water of the English Channel and the approaching green outline of the Belgian coast. By then the sun was low in the sky behind us, the deck dark in the shadow of the hull, the clouds below us turned from white to pale orange, with dark, well-defined shadows and pink highlights.

This was real. I could never dream this sunset, and I felt tears run down my face.

“What is it, lad?”

For a moment I couldn’t even find my voice. Thomson put his hand on my shoulder.

“My daughter doesn’t even
exist
here,” I whispered. “How can it be this beautiful?”