The Technologists (64 page)

Marcus examined the outstretched hand for a moment, then looked back at Frank’s face, a face that had brought him so much comfort over the years. His teeth were showing in an excited grin and he was nodding. Marcus took a step back.

“You didn’t leave the prison camp as a shoemaker, did you?” he asked.

“Indeed I did,” Frank corrected him calmly. “And Captain Denzler was in a fury about my release. That monster found some value in me. He came to me at the shoemaker’s and said I must assist him as an engineer or be executed right there, and be responsible for others to be executed, too. For you and the other men in Smith to be executed. I did it, Marcus. I used my abilities to make better bullets for the Rebels. To explode mines and collapse bridges underneath our soldiers’ feet.”

“You betrayed your army.”

“Betrayal, did you say? Look at the fate they left me to, Marcus! Then to offer to exchange us like we were worthless cows at the market. Do
you know how many ‘simple soldiers’ like you and me they counted as worth one officer? Ten … twenty, sometimes even more.

“Chauncy Hammond had heard what I had done in the war from a man he had hired to design an engine part, an engineer from the South who recognized me from when he had visited Denzler’s office during the war. Hammond chose me, recruited me, just as Denzler did, this time to craft demonstrations to shape the public mind against technology and force Tech into selling their inventions. But I did what Hammond couldn’t dare imagine. I finally taught Boston the superiority of technology over all else! I’ve done that myself, my friend, not anyone at your Institute, not any of your brilliant companions from your classes! Those who can’t recognize and reward our special knowledge and accept our power over them, I say damn them all. Damn Hammond, too. He was too weak-kneed to understand the scope of his own mission and that’s why I had to turn the tables on him. And damn Hammie more than all of ’em.”

“Shame on you, Frank.”

Frank fidgeted, his hand slipping back into his pocket. “He never deserved to be the heir to a man of innovation—that is why his father chose me to wear the uniform in his place!”

“You even let Hammond’s locomotive works be damaged, and knew where to be to avoid serious injury from the boiler explosions. You murdered Joseph Cheshire. You’ve hurt innocent people. You’ve hurt Runkle, and …” Marcus paused, his back teeth clenched on his next phrase.

Frank bowed his head. “You know she was an accidental casualty. I wept for her. And for you. That scoundrel Cheshire, well, he nearly nabbed me removing evidence from the yacht Boss Hammond gave me use of, and when I realized he had also found you, he had to be finished. Then I couldn’t risk the superintendent at the private laboratory becoming suspicious after your friend Bob showed up. Runkle was getting too close, as well. I had agreed to come to the Institute for Inspection Day; I heard when Hammie told you what Runkle said to him.”

“You might have killed me with that explosion, instead of injuring Runkle.”

“I didn’t know you’d go to Runkle’s office, Marcus!”

Marcus shuddered with a new thought. “And you lifted him from my arms—you would have finished him in cold blood. Was that your plan?”

Frank shrugged. “If that Negro janitor had not scooped him up, I would have had my chance. But you’d admit the blast safely removed Runkle from being any trouble, anyway.”

“Bob and Ellen. Where are they? If you’ve harmed them—”

“I don’t know where your new friends are! I suppose they might have been at the Decoration Day festivals, with the rest of Boston, poisoned into a daze as they gorged themselves on the memory of real soldiers. Always trying to control his friends, trying to protect them—that’s Marcus Mansfield. Marcus Mansfield, who thinks he is the chief of police for the world, the arm and hand of God. Well, if you can’t see this is the right way, then damn you for it, too!”

“Frank, this isn’t you! Hammond tried to use the Institute and he used you, to make up for his own greed and his mistakes during the war.”

“No. Hammond pointed the way, gave me a sip of true power. I found I liked the taste of it very much, Marcus, and I drank deeply.”

“You could have left me when your laboratory building collapsed. You should have let me be crushed.”

“You still don’t understand! I have looked forward to this moment, Marcus, more than anything. For you to come to finally understand that running away to Tech did not make you the better man, did not make you my superior, that I am just as good as you. That I could be the one to make the world finally give the Institute its due!”

“I never said I was superior!”

“You asked me to serve you, to bring you iron bars, but you didn’t ask for the help of my mind!”

“That’s not it, Frank—” Marcus protested.

Frank did not let him finish. “Four years ago, you left me behind quickly enough! You thought going to Tech made you special—improved—that you’d left your previous life behind. Left behind the machine shop, the twelve-hour days, Smith Prison, me. You heard what your friend Albert said, that Tech no longer could help charity scholars—you got lucky, as usual, to join while you could, and I would still have been trapped on the
machines. Now you see the truth. You cannot escape the station you are born to, but we can prove to the world how we are better and stronger than any Boston gentlemen. It’s too late, far too late to stop this. This had to come to pass, whether by me or someone else. This is the future. You do understand that now?” Frank held out a pocket watch where Marcus could see it. “The circuit will be completed by the train just two minutes from now. I saved your life at Smith, Marcus, but it was still
you
people respected,
you
who they thought had brass. I’ll save you again. Come with me, we’ll be safe inside the Institute. I would not stand outside when that train completes the circuit, it will be Judgment Day in Boston.”

Marcus looked behind him at the Institute. The building was a battered shade of its magnificent former self, a relic of empty classrooms behind shattered windows. Frank’s vision of bringing it to life again by tearing apart Boston chilled him to the bone because Marcus knew it could work. There could reach a moment where Boston had no other choice but to turn to the Institute for protection.

“This is over. Your circuit will not work, Frank. You’ll have to answer for what you’ve done, even if I have to drag you all the way to the police station. Hammond is there telling them everything.”

“Come now!” Frank laughed joyously, throwing his head back. He had never looked so pleased, so strong and so free in his body. “You shouldn’t have tried so hard, not with that weak hand of yours. Did you know how much worse it was getting, and that you wouldn’t have a choice but to leave the machine shop sooner or later? You weren’t the brave one I believed for going to Tech—you just couldn’t admit even a little weakness, even admit it to yourself. Tell me. What would you have done with your diploma, once your hand was fully lame? Even an engineer needs both hands, I’d venture. Well, do not blame yourself. Nobody could cut the circuit the way I’ve managed to arrange it—not in twenty minutes, not in ten hours. Nobody. That includes you.”

“You’re wrong, Frank. A Tech man could and has. I’ve done it already. Hammie and my friends are going to stop the train once it gets to the first bridge. I’ve stopped your circuit. There was one thing you failed to realize in all this, Frank. One better way to bring the Institute into a new light than all the horrors you concocted.”

“What is that, exactly?” Frank asked.

“To show the world that a group of Tech students could stop your destruction.”

“I don’t believe you,” Frank said, his eyes narrowing. “You were always willing to die for a cause.”

“Believe what you want. Don’t touch that box, Frank. I warn you. Stop right now!”

Frank took his place at the circuit box.

Marcus launched himself at his former comrade.

To Frank’s own apparent surprise, he was able to fend Marcus off with one hard push, which dropped him to the ground. As though finally overcome with exhaustion years in the making, Marcus got back on his feet slowly, brushing the dust off his tattered, bloody uniform.

“You took it all upon your shoulders. To save a city that cares nothing for you. Look at you. You haven’t slept, you’ve barely eaten. Now you’re too weak to do anything, Marcus.” Frank examined the contents of the circuit box for a few moments and then laughed. “Why, I knew it. So much for the genius of a Tech boy. You weren’t able to cut the circuit!”

“You’re right. You engineered it in there too well to cut,” Marcus admitted, then began to back away. “You engineered it too well to stop the circuit, because you thought someone—maybe the police, maybe Hammond, maybe me or my friends—might find out the truth about you and try to cut it. But you never thought of stopping someone from reversing the electric current.”

“What do you mean?” Then he realized. He dug his nimble fingers into the wiring and went to work with remarkable speed.

“Get away, Frank! Right now!”

“No, you can’t!” Marcus’s old friend delivered an awful scream, then his eyes went wide. Far across the city, the fiery train was making its passage over a portion of track where, with its wheels hitting the first and last rails, it connected the incomplete portion of the circuit. But instead of blowing half of Boston to shreds, a massive jolt of electricity shot in one direction back through the cables to the origin point and into the sculptor’s fingertips. With an awful buzzing sound, his eyes bulged and his body flew ten feet into the air.

To Marcus’s surprise, as he fell to the ground aflame, he struggled to get back to his feet, gurgling blood, every inch of visible skin charred.
Marcus stood transfixed, as Frank seemed to reach out, to move toward him with open arms. Marcus thought of running, but knew Frank was gone already even as he gasped for a final breath of air, then folded into Marcus’s arms.

*   *   *

T
HE TRAIN GREW LARGER AND LARGER
within the circle as it pushed toward the outskirts of the city, throwing off flames along its wobbly path.

“It’s coming,” whispered Edwin to himself, lowering the spyglass. Then, to the others, “It’s gone past the end of the circuit and it’s still coming! Marcus did it! He stopped the detonation!”

Cheers rose up from the four young men. They were at the railroad bridge where the train would have to cross over the Charles River. After the moment of joy for their classmate’s success passed, a flurry of urgent activity resumed. Now it would fall to Edwin and the others. This bridge between Boston and Cambridge was the place of last hope to stop the freight before it could reach another train, or the terminal station, and end in a massive, possibly deadly, explosion.

Whitney Conant had split off from the group near the police station so he could escort Chauncy Hammond inside to confess his story. The remaining four had divided themselves up once they had reached the bridge. Edwin and Sloucher George worked together on the Boston side. Across the river on the Cambridge end, there were Hammie and Albert Hall.

Both teams successfully drilled holes into the main braces at both ends of the bridge. They had to study the structure of the trusses meticulously, since, by their calculations, destroying the counterbraces would fail to bring the bridge down. The respective teams were now fitting the holes with the powder-infused cylinders they’d hastily put together. Hammie and Hall finished on their end first, laying out the fuse across the bridge.

“Are you finished yet?” Albert called out. “We’re ready to light it!”

“Not yet, Albert!” Edwin called back. He fitted the device into the hole in the brace, then passed the fuse line to his partner. They rushed off the bridge to the safety of the Boston side of the river. “We’re off!” he yelled to their collaborators.

George took out his cigar lighter and positioned himself flat on the ground with the end of the fuse in his other hand. “All right,” he said quietly, steadying his hand.

“All right,” Edwin called to the other duo. “George is ready to light it, fellows!”

“So are we. On my count,” Hammie said. “Three … two … one … go!”

The fuses on both ends of the bridge were lit and the small flames ate through them. On the Cambridge side of the river, the cylinder gave off a loud pop, the brace immediately fractured, and the whole bridge shook. Hammie laughed nervously. But on Edwin’s side, when the burning fuse reached the cylinder, there was a muted fizzle. Then nothing. The bridge, shaking in an unstable fashion, still remained intact.

“What happened, Hoyt?” Hammie shouted to them.

“Something’s wrong with our fuse!”

“Can we light the cylinder up close?” George asked.

“No. We wouldn’t be able to get off the bridge in time if it worked,” Edwin said. “The whole thing would come down under our feet.”

“Stay here—I’m going to try!” George said stoutly.

“No, George—I won’t allow it!” Edwin cried, physically restraining the larger man.

“What do you care about it? I was going to lick you an hour ago.”

“Listen to him, George!” Hammie called out from across the river. “It’s too dangerous to light by hand. The bridge
might
still come down from the weight of the train alone, even without it.”

“But it might not, Hammie,” Albert objected. “And if we allow the train to pass over the bridge, there’s nowhere else to stop it for miles. We have to find another way to take this bridge down
now
.”

“How much longer do we have?” asked George.

“Five minutes, maybe four,” replied Edwin grimly.

Everyone spoke over one another, offering conflicting and desperate ideas about how to complete the task in the allotted time.

“Greek fire,” Edwin shouted across the river. “Hammie, do you have enough materials in Albert’s case to make your Greek fire, like we used against the Med Fac?”

“More fire?” Albert asked. “There’s a train filled with flaming petroleum bearing down on us. Fire is the whole problem, Hoyt!”

“Listen to me! Forget bringing the bridge down—we’ve run out of time—but if we derail the train right here, it will land in the water and be rendered harmless,” Edwin explained.