The Technologists (49 page)

“We will not get past Agassiz’s hatred of the Institute!” Bob cried. “This is the police chief in you talking, Mansfield, not the Technologist.”

“We’ve done everything so far as a group,” Edwin said, getting in between them. “You vote for one, you vote for the ticket. We must keep it that way, above all else. Let us decide together.” He waited until the others nodded their agreement. “Very well. All those in favor of what Marcus proposes, say, ‘Aye.’ Shall we yield our efforts to the police?”

“Nay!”

“One vote nay,” Edwin said, acknowledging Bob’s selection with a businesslike air. “Marcus, I believe we know what you wish, as well.”

“Aye,” Marcus said calmly, and with no pleasure.

“So one vote against, one vote for. Miss Swallow?”

“Miss Swallow, Eddy,” Bob urged. “I know this isn’t an easy decision. Think of all those people who have told you that a school of technology was a waste of your time. This is the chance to prove ourselves, to show the world once and for all why we’re here!”

Bob directed an imploring glance at Ellen. Her expression was downcast, and she closed her eyes as she said, “I’m afraid Mr. Mansfield is right, Mr. Richards. Without examining additional clues, there are an infinite number of variations as to the use of that experiment. This is why I have always wished I were triplets! There simply isn’t
time
.”

“You are an ‘aye,’ then?” Edwin asked.

“Aye,” she answered.

“ ‘Where anyone else has not gone, there I will go.’ Wasn’t that your motto, Professor? Where did it fly to when I needed it?” Bob said bitterly, then turned to Edwin before she could answer. “If we tell the police now, our hands will be tied going forward! Eddy, I beg you! Make the right choice!”

Edwin shook his head. “I cannot find a choice, Bob. Let us gather the
evidence we have, all of our materials and whatever papers the Med Fac did not burn. I vote ‘aye,’ also.”

Bob threw up his hands. “Very well. Vote the ticket. I shall not resist.”

Marcus stood from his stool and turned to the others. “I wonder if you can speak to the police without me. I have a friend—someone important to me—whose trust I have sacrificed. I wish to try to recover it.”

“I think that is wise, Mr. Mansfield,” Ellen said.

They agreed to return to their respective lodgings to recover their energy for a few hours, then Bob, Ellen, and Edwin would go to the central police station while Marcus attended to his personal business. The next time they all came together they would reunite as collegians, just like any of the others at the Institute.

“Wait—before we leave.” Edwin removed his pocket Bible, and placed it on the table. “Let us pray together that we are doing the right thing for Boston, my friends. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in humility of mind let each esteem others better than himself.”

They each repeated Edwin’s prayer, said amen, then contemplated silently; though no one said anything further, they prayed for the safety of strangers across the city; but each also pictured one or two faces in particular.

W
HEN IT WAS ALL OVER
,
the faint perfume of white roses remained with him. As soon as the group divided, he had left a note for Agnes at her father’s house, and then he had gone to the Public Garden. There he circled the pond, went up and down the brick walks, along the flower beds and between monuments and fountains, looking everywhere he could in the twenty-four-acre park.

Tired, he sat down on the edge of a fountain near a bed of milk-white roses. Two children, a boy and a girl, maybe brother and sister though they looked nothing alike, reveling in the light rain, waded up to their ankles in the fountain, laughing and kicking water at each other to see who splashed higher. He heard bells toll in the distance. If she were coming, she’d be here by now. He wished he could slow the clock or stop it altogether, before all hope of her appearing had vanished, as it inevitably would in a few minutes. He had lost her forever; she had retreated into her closed-off world where he was not welcome.

This hour would also mark another ending. Bob, Edwin, and Ellen would be starting on their way to the police station house without him, in order to hand over all records of their efforts.
Failed efforts
.

The city will be safer once we share our knowledge with the police
, he thought, nearly convincing himself.
The police, Agassiz, they’ll put a stop to all of it once they see what we’ve found
.

He thought about beautiful Agnes going to confession since she was a little girl. There must have been something uplifting about being obliged to leave behind your mistakes and wash them away in holy tears.

If he could, what would he say to her? He would say to her, “Miss Turner, I’m here to ask for forgiveness. My hat might have been on too
tight, because you helped us, and I only thought of myself.” That part about the hat sounded a bit like Bob might say it, and he smiled at the turn of phrase, repeating it aloud to try it out. That was one way he knew he and Bob and Edwin and Ellen had grown close: They had begun to unthinkingly use one another’s distinctive phrases.

“I am very pleased to hear that.”

Marcus looked up. And there was Agnes, sheltered from the scattered showers by a bright, parti-colored parasol. No longer in her servant’s costume, she wore a light dress of yellow trimmed with pink.

“Miss Turner! You got my note.”

Agnes looked away for a moment, watching the children and laughing at their happy antics. Her smile remained as she sat down next to Marcus. “I did get your note. Luckily my sister Josie found it before Lucy, who is a do-gooder through and through and would have brought it right to Papa. I did debate with myself whether I would come. I will offer a bargain, if you please. I will tell you when you are obliged to call me ‘Miss Turner’ again,” she said primly, “and until then you will not do it.”

“Agreed. Have you found another position?”

“Not yet. Papa wants me to enter the convent, and if he found us here together, you know he would want you to enter the catacomb under our church.”

“Aggie.” He took one of her hands in his. “When you came to me after what happened with your father, I acted as a proper collegey gentleman, but not like a man. I treated you as an outsider, when you had proven yourself a keystone to what we were doing from the very moment Rogers collapsed. You were a Technologist all along.”

“Though I don’t know what it means, you are sweet to say it,” she said, offering him her other hand.

“When we did not find what we needed, even after we redoubled our efforts, last night, in the middle of the night, I could only think of this—I must wait until Monday, when your papa would be at work again, to look into the blue of your eyes. I begin to think I know myself best when you are looking at me.”

She smiled and leaned in to him for a kiss. Just then, water splashed over them.

“Well, look at that!” she laughed, standing up and rounding on the triumphant children. “Imps!” She splashed them back.

Marcus stood up to shake himself dry, also laughing, but stopped suddenly. With the shadow of Agnes’s disfavor lifted, his flimsy delusion about the police also dissolved. Edwin’s voice sounded in his mind:
Why wait? Why would the wretch not just use it yesterday or the day before?

“Because the casualties would be greater on a workday than on the Sabbath,” Marcus answered under his breath. “The experimenter seeks the greatest spectacle and injury.” He spun around. “It’s Monday. It’s Monday morning. All of Boston is stepping foot into the streets now.”

“What did you say about Monday?”

In the garden and Charles Street beyond, Boston was coming alive, embarking on its day—businessmen striding to their offices from the horsecar platform, women moving along more daintily, covered from the weather by bonnets and parasols, children and dogs running wherever they pleased amid the growing crush of horses, carriages, and carts. He leaned one hand on a streetlight, one of those now linked to the Institute’s electric circuit-breaker system.

Who were they, really? Just a handful of students styling themselves Technologists, grandly thinking they could rescue their college and defend Boston against an invisible enemy. Knowledge of scientific arts did not give them the power of clairvoyance. Yet, if there was a chance they were right … Torn, Marcus gave the lamppost a swift kick as Agnes, her eyes now wide with concern, took his arm.

There was a rumbling noise before the ground trembled beneath them. It was as though the earth held in its laughter. Then, a low hissing. It all came together in his mind now, the secret experiment, the frozen mercury, Monday morning.…

As sophomores, they had made a study in metallurgy about metals expanding unequally. One of the basic causes of such an expansion was a contrast in temperatures—which could be caused most quickly by the introduction of cold water to a hot metal.

The first things to start in the commercial metropolis of Boston on a Monday morning would be the boilers in the mills, the foundries, all the places of industry that had arisen across the city in the last twenty years.

“Boilers!” he cried.

If the feed water were too cold, with the steam heat pumping in at the same time, the metal would expand at different rates in different parts. Every apparatus in that condition could explode.

Right underneath where they stood in the Public Garden and Commons were the main water pumps connected throughout the city—the danger, once introduced into the pipes from the reservoirs, would be on its way, rumbling past them.

“Out with it, Marcus!” she demanded.

“I have to warn them,” Marcus said. “Frank … Mr. Hammond … the locomotive works. Everyone, everywhere. I have to get to them.” He took her by the shoulders. “Stay here, Aggie, in the garden, away from the buildings, do you understand?”

“No, I don’t!”

“Forget the garden, actually. Find the middle of the Common—stay along the center mall, as far from the streets and buildings as you can. You’ll be safe! I’ll find you when it’s over!”

“What’s happening, Marcus? Where are you going?”

“Remember, stay in the middle,” he said, guiding her quickly onto the lawn. “It’s not too late for me to do something.”

*   *   *

“D
ID YOU WITNESS
the incidents when they occurred?”

“Well, not exactly,” said Edwin.

“Do you know who perpetrated the incidents? This … ‘experimenter,’ as you say.”

“No, not by name. As to being witnesses, we did visit State Street after we heard what had happened. And we saw the laboratory building in South Boston collapse up close—why, we were almost crushed by it,” Edwin pointed out. He was sitting across the desk from a patrolman in the public area of the police station. Bob tapped his fingers against the wall and his foot against the floor. He was standing behind his friend, bursting with impatience.

The patrolman gave a long-winded sigh. “Tell me again why you are here?”

“Because we know more than you do,” Bob said. “The whole city is in danger, and you sit on your hands!”

“We have the finest experts studying these strange phenomena, I assure you—”

“Ha! Agassiz and his shell collectors? You’re not listening!” Bob interrupted. “There must be some relative of mine in a superior position to you somewhere here.”

“Bob, please,” Edwin admonished him, then turned back to the irritated patrolman. “Sir, if I may—”

“What profession did you say you were in?” the patrolman said, screwing his face into a skeptical expression.

“We’re only college students.”

“College students!”

“Yes, but you see, we’ve made a thorough study, and—”

“College students!” the patrolman interrupted Edwin. “Do you see all those people you pushed past on your way to my desk?” He indicated the churning mass of people who crowded the central police station. “Each one is here to try to tell us that they saw a mysterious man practicing black magic that caused all the ships to lose their way in the harbor, or that all the engines and machines have come alive and are in rebellion against us. Every day more fairy tales. Now, the two of you come in here acting as if you possess some vital secret, waving about schoolboy essays you wrote on the subject as if this were one of your classrooms—”

“Two of us?” Edwin asked. He and Bob turned around.

“I can’t count, is that it?” the patrolman said.

“Where’s the professor, Eddy?” Bob said.

“She was standing behind you,” Edwin said.

“Next, please!” the patrolman called to two women with heavily feathered hats addressing each other in hushed tones.

Bob looked on in disgust before turning away. “Professor!” he called. “There she is.” She was standing at the threshold to the station house.

“Miss Swallow, they simply won’t listen to a word we say,” Edwin said as they joined her. “Perhaps you can convince them.”

“I heard something,” she said to them, staring out into the street. “Like an explosion.”