The Technologists (8 page)

“Who?”

“The aristocrat dandies and dolts—collegies.” Marcus grinned.

Frank abruptly turned his back to Marcus and moved off a bit, whispering into his shoulder, “Just keep walking.”

Hammond was approaching, and Marcus understood. Frank would not want the owner of the works to see him taking too long away from the machine. The businessman was short but not slim, his expressions seemingly fixed by the deep creases around his eyes and mouth. He walked past the rest of the group, who were intently watching the manufacture of the pistons.

“Mr. Mansfield.”

Marcus tried to hide his surprise at Hammond personally addressing him.

“Have you yet to come upon an invention that will make your first fortune?” Hammond asked brightly. He must have thought he was smiling, but it was a Boston business smile, which to anyone else looked like a sneer.

“Not yet, sir.”

“Well, when you do, you just bring it to us and we’ll manufacture it.” Hammond nodded distractedly in the direction of Frank. “A loyal and determined young man, that Brewer, a man born to be part of a grand shop like this. And what an honor for me to have you and my own Junior return here in this fashion, soon to be graduated from the Institute. From what I hear at the meetings of the financial committee of the Institute, your President Rogers has been highly pleased with the progress of your studies.”

“I am glad of it, and thank you for your assistance.”

“Perhaps your natural pluck and humility can inspire Junior a little.” The magnate made no effort to speak discreetly. Hammie, close enough to hear, glowered and turned his back on his father. “I understand you managed to remove the trade-union scum from the Institute’s demonstration last night. You know what I think of those fools.”

When Marcus was working in the machine shop, reformers infiltrated several departments and persuaded the foremen to demand a higher wage or stop working. Hammond was overwhelmed with orders and could not afford a minute of slowed work. Despite the shop supervisor’s furious protests, Hammond called the agitators into his office, asked them to write out their demands, and granted everything without argument. “Today is their day,” Hammond was heard saying after the agitators exited. “Tomorrow will be ours.” As soon as the contracted orders had been met, Hammond discharged all the foremen.

“Actually, it was Hammie who confronted them at the demonstration,” Marcus said to his former employer. “I merely assisted.”

“Is that so?” Hammond appeared to enjoy the image of Hammie’s bravery, but only for a moment. “Junior seems to find the world a very shallow place, and I fear wants to do nothing but beat the devil’s tattoo on it. He must come to accept that one can no longer pass success down to the next generation with a few signatures on a piece of paper. Why, property that used to remain under the same family name for generations is no more fixed than an ocean wave, now that the fortunes of a magnate and a pauper can exchange overnight. Do you know what you will do after June?”

“Not yet.”

“My advice? … Remember, no smoking around the machine, gentlemen!” Hammond called out. “Treat machines like they are your children, and they will obey. Returning to my advice, Mr. Mansfield, which I humor myself is good for something, it is to worry not what the other fellows do. When I built the first Hammond engine by modifying the usual design, I was called reckless. It took two months to find a railroad to purchase it, but after it was in place I could not meet the number of orders that flooded in. Last year we built five hundred locomotives! These machines on the floor, every year they grow more and more powerful. A race of giants, each one with the ability of a hundred men—a
thousand—yet they ask for neither food nor shelter from us. And we all may profit from it, down to the lowest apprentice, if the almighty trade unions will not prevent it. Why, look at those poor souls who were hurt in Boston Harbor last week. I have been able to donate something toward their expenses from the profits allowed by these modern machines.”

“That’s generous, sir.”

“Money is good, but it is not all about a man. You will have many successes and reversals, my boy, but remember it is your reaction to each of them that counts for your character.”

“Mansfield!” Bob charged over to his side. “There you are. Apologies for interrupting, Mr. Hammond. Mansfield, you must come outside at once! Something has happened!”

*   *   *

L
EADING
M
ARCUS BY THE ARM
down the steps of the locomotive works, Bob, in his usual fashion, began a long story that started somewhere in his childhood, when he first was taken to visit the business quarter of the city.

As Bob’s meandering tale unspooled, Marcus overheard Albert Hall holding court with two of the sophomore architecture students with a more direct account. “People trampled. Quite terrible—quite unprecedented.”

“What are you talking about, Hall? About what happened in the harbor?” Marcus asked.

“That’s old news! Something happened in the financial quarter, just this morning. Conny heard all about it.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Bob insisted to Marcus.

“Who told you, Conny?” Marcus asked, walking up behind Whitney Conant and tapping his arm.

“The old organ grinder passed by while I was out here having my smoke and blabbed to me,” responded Conant.

“What happened precisely, Conny?” Marcus asked the southern student. “They had another fire down there?”

“No, no, this was no fire, nothing so ordinary. Maurice said he didn’t see it, but that he heard the windows of the buildings suddenly came
alive. That the most common piece of glass in the area became a deadly weapon. Well,” Conant added with a dry chuckle, probably realizing how his tale must have sounded when several classmates broke out into dismissive laughter, “you know these Papist organ grinders don’t have the finest command of the English language, and dwell on their superstitions.”

“Can we make it to State Street on the way back, before physics laboratory?” Bob asked Marcus. “It’s almost one and a half o’clock now.”

Marcus thought about it and agreed that they might.

“Wait, fellows, I wouldn’t,” Conant interjected. “You know what President Rogers always says about being seen to be associated with anything harmful to the welfare of Boston.”

Conny was right. Every time there was the occasional incident inside the Institute, when an exploding chemical or some other loud boom was overheard by some outsider, the newspapers printed a column about a “dangerous accident.” Then there had been the brief public outcry over Hammie’s infamous idea for a Steam Man. Since then, the authorities at the Institute had never failed to remind the students that when it came to scientific investigations, quiet and smart was better than clever and loud.

“Perhaps it’s not the wisest idea at that,” Edwin stammered, then changed tactics when he saw Bob was unmoved. “Bob, you haven’t even had your dinner.”

“Eddy, didn’t you hear Conny? The windows came alive!” Bob said with a chuckle. “Surely we cannot be deprived of seeing such a sight for ourselves, dinner or no dinner. I’m certain President Rogers would agree. No more old-womanish twaddle—we’re off!” When Bob Richards led you by the shoulder, there was no resisting.

Bob, Marcus, and Edwin had no trouble finding the location of the incident. A mass of people crowded at the busy intersection of Court, Washington, and State streets. The police and two or three fire companies formed a barricade to keep people out. From the back of the crowd, they could hardly see a thing, a fact pointed out with satisfaction by Edwin. Unswayed, Bob kept pushing through the dense sea of onlookers, clearing a path as he went for Marcus and Edwin.

Marcus tried asking a few of the spectators whether anyone had been
injured, but they all seemed too busy trying to see over and around the nearest heads, tall hats, flowers, and bonnets to answer him.

“I ’ear there were some kind of thick fumes in the air and then hundreds hurt in the blink of one eye!” one woman finally said to him.

“First the harbor, now the very streets we walk on,” shouted someone in the crowd.

At every turn, they were blocked from moving closer. Any available spot to stand was filled immediately, as if they were on the sideline of a parade. There were men, women, and children who were weeping, asking whether their relatives or friends who worked nearby were safe.

“We better go back,” Edwin said. “This is all for naught, Bob, and a drearier scene I’ve never seen in Boston. We can’t get close enough to even see!”

“Give a fellow a boost, will you, Mansfield,” Bob said, jumping up to reach the railing of a balcony jutting out from one of the older three-story brick buildings. Marcus stooped and let Bob push up with his heels against his strong shoulders. Then Bob heaved Marcus up with him. Edwin waved away their offer to join them. A sharp, acrid smell like rotted eggs and oranges floated on the breeze.

Their vantage point revealed an immediate mystery. Almost every window in the buildings on both sides of the streets was missing.

“What in the devil could shatter all those windows?” Bob asked. “Some kind of earthquake?”

Marcus took off his hat for an unobstructed view. “You have your opera glass?” Bob fished it out of his coat pocket and handed it to him. “Look closer, Bob. They weren’t shattered. The windows in the buildings and the carriages and all the glass everywhere on the street somehow has been … liquefied and … dissolved, erased. The glass didn’t shatter—it disappeared.”

“There’s no sign of any fire or flame that could have melted them.”

“Do you smell that? Some kind of acid or chemical is still in the air.” Marcus paused, watching those who had been trampled in the panic and confusion as they were lifted from the ground or supported on the shoulders of rescuers.

Bob’s face turned ashen gray. He took a few steps back and let Marcus stand in front of him on the balcony, watching a seemingly rigid object
being lifted by two policemen out from the planks of a broken wagon. Marcus leaned forward as far as he dared and felt a quiver down his spine as he realized it was a woman, wrapped as though with another layer of skin in a weave of cracked glass. The college students exchanged glances but were speechless.

The dead girl’s eyes remained wide open in her transparent tomb. It seemed, as they watched her lifted, that her stare implored them.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Mansfield, give me back the glass.” Bob muttered something to himself as he peered through the lens.

“What is it?”

“That girl—I think. Yes, I’ve seen her before. Heavens! Chrissy, I think she’s called.”

“How?”

“You know sometimes I find myself in the theater, and wander my way to the third circle of seats, where, well, the friendlier sort of actresses and other young swans congregate to make fast acquaintances and a few extra pennies, sometimes selling apples or pencils, sometimes keeping a visitor from a lonely evening.”

“She was one of them?”

“I only knew her to give a greeting by name, but she seemed cheery enough company. Not pretty, really, something far better. Bless her! What kind of fate for a dewy-cheeked girl! What’s happening?”

“What’s wrong?”

Bob lowered the opera glass, then took a breath. “Nothing, Mansfield. I thought … My nerves are out of tune. I don’t know—it was as though everything blurred together for a moment.”

“Let me see that again.” Bob handed Marcus the small binoculars. “There!” The top of one of the lenses had become discolored. “Whatever caused this, there’s residue still in the air.”

When Bob and Marcus had climbed down to the street, they found a change in the spectators. General curiosity and annoyance had been overtaken by quick boiling anger, fast turning the crowd into a mob.

“Stay back,” Marcus said, holding Edwin’s arm so he wouldn’t be trampled. “Edwin, what do you make of this?” He passed him the opera glass.

Edwin studied the lens, bringing it close to his face, then looking
through it from the other side. “Nothing, Marcus. I can make nothing of it! Our age has an engine but no engineer,” he said, dropping into a whisper.

“What?”

“Emerson,” explained Edwin, closing his eyes tightly. “In a lecture I heard, he said our age has an engine but no engineer. What if he’s right, Marcus? What if it’s all unraveling around us? The crowd will tear us apart.”

“They don’t want us, Edwin,” Marcus said. “Look.”

The mob was heading for the policemen who blocked the way to the devastation. People began to throw bricks and rocks and to light fires in the middle of the street.

“This is Sergeant Lemuel Carlton speaking,” shouted a flustered man on horseback, who moved out in front with a speaking trumpet. “You must move away immediately, or my men will be forced to make arrests! You needn’t be afraid. Boston is still as safe a place as any the world over!”

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
,
across the river, at Number 18, Stoughton Hall, William Blaikie sipped his tea, puckered his lips, then tapped on the table for the college waiter.