The Technologists (2 page)

S
UBMERGED
.
As the waves soothed his naked body, his athletic strokes worked in concert with the rhythm of the current. The first week in April had not yet promised any warmth, the water still rather icy. But he willingly endured the chill ripping through his body for the better feeling swimming afforded him. It was a feeling of being alone but not lonely, a sense of freedom from all restrictions and control. Floating, kicking, somersaulting—try as he could to make noise, the water rendered him irrelevant.

Throughout his boyhood in a port town, he’d heard so many people spoken of as “lost at sea.” Now it seemed to him the strangest turn of phrase. As long as he was in the water, he could not be lost. He could bask, bathe, disappear, and the water sheltered him as much in Boston as it had back home. Not that he ever felt homesick, as some of the other Institute students did who had come from outside Boston. He still traveled the forty miles back and forth to Newburyport by train every day to keep down living expenses, although it cost him more than an hour each way.

To his mother and stepfather, the Institute remained a strange detour from his good position at the machine shop, and a daily interruption to his help at home. His stepfather, James, had always been unhappy, plagued by a partial deafness in his left ear that made him shun all society and friends. He worked as a night watchman for a jeweler because he preferred the solitude and uneventful nature of the position. He assumed people were speaking ill of him because he could not hear what they said, which led him to the further conclusion that city life, being loud, was an evil cacophony of deceit. As for his mother, she was a religious
zealot of the old Puritan kind who saw danger in urban life and no value to the son’s studies in Boston.

Even now, when he was a senior, graduation a mere two and a half months away, they did not accept that he—Marcus Mansfield, of all people!—was a student at a college.

*   *   *

M
ARCUS PLUNGED
his head back into the cool water, ears tingling as he surveyed the river—a tranquil and forgiving lane that ran between Boston and Cambridge, lined by a gentle, sloping green sward that would shade swimmers and oarsmen from the hot days to come. Unseen behind the thick weather, above the riverbank and the fields and marshes skirting it, there lurked the crowded brick and iron and gold-domed city, propelling Marcus forward with the powerful thrust of a gigantic engine.

At the shallow bend of the river Marcus took another big breath and sank, closing his eyes and relishing the drop. Down below, pieces of debris and lumber had lodged in the muddy riverbed. As he brushed against the foreign articles, he heard a voice beckon, distant, as though issued from the sky:

“Mansfield! Mansfield! We need you!”

Marcus bobbed up from under the water and then grabbed onto the side of a boat.

“Mansfield! There you are! You’re late.”

“How did you know I was swimming?”

“How did we—? Ha! Because I saw a pile of clothes back there on the shore, and who else would dare plunge into this freezing Styx!” The tall, blond oarsman dangled a suit of clothes above Marcus’s head. “Actually, it was Eddy who recognized your clothes.”

“Morning, Marcus,” said the second, smaller oarsman with his usual open smile.

“And since Eddy and I were both ready,” continued Bob, “we pushed out to find you.”

“Then
you
were early,” said Marcus, treading water toward the bank, “before I was late.”

“Ha! I’ll take that. Get dressed—we need our third oar.”

He shook himself dry on the bank and climbed into his gray trousers and light shirt. His two companions presented a study in opposites as they helped him into their boat: Bob, with the quintessential New Englander’s clear skin and crown of handsome curls, standing carelessly at the edge of the shell; Edwin Hoyt, slight and frail-looking, throwing the little weight he possessed to the other side in anticipation of a tragic drowning.

Despite knowing the water and boats pretty well, Marcus had not grown up indulging in such impractical pursuits as rowing for pleasure, with its arbitrary rules and catchwords. Some weeks before, Bob had announced one morning, “This is the day, fellows!” to Marcus and Edwin, their fellow Institute of Technology senior, as he bounded ahead of them on the way to a lecture.

“Which day?”

“Spring is here, Mansfield, and since it’s our last one at the college it’s time I showed you rowing just as I promised. Why, I hardly knew one end of the oar from the other until I was nine years old. A scrawny boy I was, the smallest Richards ever!” This served to emphasize what a commanding twenty-two-year-old Bob had become. Marcus could not actually recall Bob promising to teach them, but let that pass, given Bob’s enthusiasm.

To his surprise, Marcus found rowing not to be the wasted time he expected, and it took his mind away from worrying about the looming future away from the Institute. It was at once calming and exciting, a thrill when the shell launched across the surface of the water as though alive. They tried to recruit more oars among their classmates to join them, but the few willing candidates never did find time.

As their small vessel pushed steadily along, Bob began laughing to himself. “I was just thinking of my brothers,” he explained. “They used to warn me about the sea serpent of the Charles. Nearly one hundred feet long, they said, with humps like a camel and a cry like a braying donkey crossed with an elephant’s trumpeting. You know how I have to take it upon myself to investigate anything in nature. Well, for three months I searched out old Charley, until I determined that the water wouldn’t sustain a sea serpent’s diet.”

“But how did you know what a sea serpent ate?” Edwin asked seriously.

“Bob, would you mind rowing farther east today?” Marcus proposed.

“A quest! Where to?”

“I haven’t seen the harbor since …” Marcus did not finish his sentence.

“Better not to, Marcus,” Edwin said quickly. “I caught sight of it this morning after it was all over. The whole harbor was up in smoke. It was like looking into the face of a bad omen.”

“Eager to see the destruction?”

“Actually, Bob, I was hoping to learn something from seeing how they begin the repairs,” Marcus corrected him. “There is already some debris on the riverbed that must have drifted on the current.” He stopped when he saw Bob’s face narrow as he looked out on the water behind them. “What is it?”

“Just my luck,” Bob said. “Faster, fellows! Go! Come on, Mansfield, faster! Well rowed, Hoyt! All clear, come on!”

A forty-nine-foot shell had shot out of the trees sheltering a narrow adjoining channel with the speed of a lightning bolt. Six flashing oars creased the surface of the river in synchronized strokes, throwing off white streaks behind them. The rowers were bare from the waist up, with crimson handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads, and their flexing muscles glistened in the strengthening sun. As Marcus peered back at them, they looked like highly educable pirates, and he knew it would be a lost cause to attempt to elude whatever this boat was.

“Who are they?” he marveled.

“Blaikie,” Bob explained as the three of them pulled as hard as they could. “His is the best Harvard six there ever was, they say. Will Blaikie—he’s the stroke oar. I’d rather stare into the mouth of the serpent.”

Edwin wheezed between strokes, “Blaikie … was … at Exeter … with Bob and me.”

The other vessel came on with a spurt too powerful to shake, now just a length behind.

“Plymouth!” cried the lantern-jawed lead rower on the lightning
bolt. The boat went by theirs and then reversed and ranged alongside of them.

“Why, it
is
you, Plymouth!” said the stroke oar, Blaikie, to Bob with a gleaming smile. Even seated in his shell, he presented the particular mincing swagger of a Harvard senior. “It’s been ages. You’re not forming a randan team, are you?”

“We’ve been borrowing a shell from the boat club,” said Bob, motioning for his friends to stop rowing. Marcus could not remember seeing his classmate so deflated.

“Don’t tell me you’re still dragging your heels over at that embryo of a college, Plymouth?” Blaikie asked.

“We are seniors now, like you.”

“Tant pis pour vous,”
interjected one of the Harvard boys, eliciting chuckles from the others.

“I fear civilizing your classmates into respectable gentlemen will take more than teaching them to grip an oar,” Blaikie went on cheerfully. “Science cannot substitute for culture, old salt. I used to agonize, Plymouth, what I would most rather be, stroke of the Harvard, president of the Christian Brethren, or First Scholar of the class. Now I know what it is to be all three.” He was reminded by one of his oarsmen not to forget president of one of the best college societies. “Yes, Smithy! But it is best not to speak of the societies to outsiders.”

“We are doing things far more important—things you wouldn’t begin to understand, Blaikie.”

“Just how many of you Technology boys are there?”

Throwing out his chest, Bob answered, “Fifteen men in the Class of ’68. About thirty-five in the other three classes, and we expect more than ever in the next freshman group.”

“Fifty. Fifty men and it is called a college! I call that cheek!”

“Mock if you like. When we are graduated on that glorious day of June the fifteenth, you can follow us in the newspaper columns as pathfinders.”

Marcus was moved to see Bob align himself with his classmates instead of the fellows whom he’d grown up alongside in the snug parlors of Beacon Hill.

“
If
you’re to be graduated,” Blaikie said.

“What do you mean by ‘if,’ Blaikie?” Edwin asked.

“You hold your tongue, grayhead. You had your chance with us.”

Edwin slouched in the boat, his hand reflexively moving to touch the light spot in his hair.

“You might want to hold your tongue now and then yourself, friend,” Marcus said.

“What did he say to me?” Blaikie turned to his team, then to Marcus, as if noticing him only now. When their eyes met, Blaikie’s shoulders tightened and he subtly recoiled. Marcus had that effect. His muscular frame was well built and solid. His thick brown hair and old-fashioned crescent mustache made his intense green eyes stand out. Most of all, the poise of an engineer clung to him, made him seem in control of any circumstance. “Who is this?” Blaikie asked.

“My name is Marcus Mansfield.”

“Marcus … Mansfield …” Blaikie repeated speculatively, shrugging. He looked back at his men, who returned his shrug. “Sorry to disappoint. Never heard the name. Well, my men have much actual rowing to do, Plymouth. Some of the other sixes are too afraid to take their shells out because of the turn of events overnight at the harbor. They say there was a flash of fire, then ten, fifteen ships were crashing, and burning, sinking. Can you imagine what in the deuce those superstitious fools think of it? Black magic, perhaps.”

“The city is in a panic about the whole thing, the industries scrambling to prevent losses. I’ve never heard of so many ships wrecking at once—the number of arrivals must have been too great in the fog,” speculated Edwin.

“Too great!” Bob said. “There are more than two hundred wharves and docks in our harbor that would add up to more than five miles if placed end to end, Eddy. Even in much worse fog than that, our capacity for commerce—”

“Oh, who cares a fig!” broke in the Harvard captain. “It is not my business. But whatever it was, I’m not about to let it stop us from our practice, if we are to whip Oxford like we did Yale. Give me your hand, Plymouth. Godspeed to you Technology fellows.”

“Godspeed, Harvard.” Bob reached out to shake.

On Blaikie’s nod, his team rammed their shell into the side of the
Tech boat. As Marcus grabbed their shell’s sides to steady it, Bob went headfirst into the ice-cold water with a splash. Edwin, flailing to stop Bob’s fall, followed him overboard.

“Cold day for bathing, Plymouth!” Blaikie shouted, as he and the Crimson pirates exploded with laughter.

Marcus grabbed his oar like a bat, ready to defend their boat from further indignity. Blaikie glared at Marcus, daring him to strike.

After another moment Marcus loosened his grip and let his instincts go quiet.

“Wise fellow,” Blaikie said with an approving nod. “Being a gentleman isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, is it, old salt?” Then, to his men: “Three cheers and a tiger for Harvard Class of 1868! Sixty-eight forever!” A trio of “rahs” were followed by a guttural whoop before their oars swept through the water again. Marcus watched the perfect unison of the other team as the shell took the curve of the river ahead.

“Bob’s right—those scrubs will see; we’ll be the true pathfinders!” Edwin yelled, knocking water out from his ear.

“Oh, damn what I say, Eddy,” Bob said. He shook out his hair as he floated back to their boat. “Come on, Mansfield, stop your gaping and fish us out!”