The Difference Engine

“You’re a ’prentice adventuress, don’t forget. You can expect to be called on to play many roles, Sybil. A political speech can always benefit from a bit of sweetening.”

  “Sweetening?”

  “Never mind.” He seemed to lose interest in his lamb, and pushed his plate aside. “Plenty of time for rehearsal tomorrow. I’ve something to show you now.” He rose from the table, crossed to the door, and bolted it securely. Returning, he lifted the proofed canvas portmanteau from the carpet beside his chair and placed it before her on the Argyll’s clean but much mended linen.

  She’d been curious about the portmanteau. Not curious that he’d carried it with him, from the Garrick’s pit, first to the printers, to examine the handbills for Houston’s lecture, then on to the Argyll Rooms, but because it was of such cheap stuff, nothing at all like the gear he so obviously prided himself on. Why should Dandy Mick choose to carry about a bag of that sort, when he could afford some flash confection from Aaron’s, nickel clasps and silk woven in Ada checkers? And she knew that the black bag no longer contained the kino cards for the lecture, because he’d wrapped those carefully in sheets of The Times and hidden them again behind the stage-mirror.

  Mick undid the wretched tin clasps, opened the bag, and lifted out a long narrow case of polished rosewood, its corners trimmed with bright brass. Sybil wondered if it mightn’t contain a telescope, for she’d seen boxes of this sort in the window of a firm of Oxford Street instrument-makers. Mick handled it with a caution that was very nearly comical, like some Papist called upon to move the dust of a dead Pope. Caught up in a sudden mood of childlike anticipation, she forgot the man called Corny and Mick’s worrying talk about playing opposite him at the Garrick. There was something of the magician about Mick now, as he placed the gleaming rosewood case on the tablecloth. She almost expected him to furl back his cuffs: nothing here, you see, nothing here.

  His thumbs swung tiny brass hooks from a pair of miniature eyelets. He paused for effect.

  Sybil found that she was holding her breath. Had he brought a gift for her? Some token of her new status? Something to secretly mark her as his ’prentice adventuress?

  Mick lifted the rosewood lid, with its sharp brass corners.

  It was filled with playing cards. Stuffed end to end with them, a score of decks at the least. Sybil’s heart fell.

  “You’ve seen nothing like this before,” he said. “I can assure you of that.”

  Mick pinched out the card nearest his right hand and displayed it for her. No, not a playing card, though near enough in size. It was made of some strange milky substance that was neither paper nor glass, very thin and glossy. Mick flexed it lightly between thumb and forefinger. It bent easily, but sprang rigid again as he released it.

  It was perforated with perhaps three dozen tightly spaced rows of circular holes, holes no larger than those in a good pearl button. Three of its corners were slightly rounded, while the fourth was trimmed off at an angle. Near the trimmed corner, someone had written “#I” in faint mauve ink.

  “Camphorated cellulose,” Mick declared, “the devil’s own stuff, should it touch fire, but naught else will serve the finer functions of the Napoleon.”

  Napoleon? Sybil was lost. “Is it a sort of kino card, Mick?”

  He beamed at her, delighted. She seemed to have said the right thing.

  “Have you never heard of the Great Napoleon ordinateur, the mightiest Engine of the French Academy? The London police Engines are mere toys beside it.”

  Sybil pretended to study the contents of the box, knowing it would please Mick. But it was merely a wooden box, quite handsomely made, lined with the green baize that covered billiard tables. It contained a very large quantity of the slick milky cards, perhaps several hundred.

  “Tell me what this is about, Mick.”

  He laughed, quite happily it seemed, and bent suddenly to kiss her mouth.

  “In time, in time.” He straightened, reinserted the card, lowered the lid, clicked the brass hooks into place. “Every brotherhood has its mysteries. Dandy Mick’s best guess is that nobody knows quite what it would mean to run this little stack. It would demonstrate a certain matter, prove a certain nested series of mathematical hypotheses.… All matters quite arcane. And, by the by, it would make the name of Michael Radley shine like the very heavens in the clacking confraternity.” He winked. “The French clackers have their own brotherhoods, you know. Les Fils de Vaucanson, they call themselves. The Jacquardine Society. We’ll be showing those onion-eaters a thing or two.”

  He seemed drunk to her, now, though she knew he’d only had those two bottled ales. No, he was intoxicated by the idea of the cards in the box, whatever they might be.

  “This box and its contents are quite extraordinarily dear, Sybil.” He seated himself again and rummaged in the cheap black bag. It yielded a folded sheet of stout brown paper, an ordinary pair of stationery-shears, a roll of strong green twine. As Mick spoke, he unfolded the paper and began to wrap the box in it. “Very dear. Traveling with the General exposes a man to certain dangers. We’re off to Paris after the lecture, but tomorrow morning you’ll be taking this round to the Post Office in Great Portland Street.” Done with wrapping, he wound twine about the paper. “Nip this for me with the shears.” She did as he asked. “Now put your finger here.” He executed a perfect knot. “You’ll be posting our parcel to Paris. Poste restante. Do you know what that means?”

  “It means the parcel is held for the addressee.”

  Mick nodded, took a stick of scarlet sealing-wax from one trouser-pocket, his repeating match from the other. The match struck on the first try. “Yes, held there in Paris for us, safe as houses.” The wax darkened and slid in the oily flame. Scarlet droplets spattered the green knot, the brown paper. He tossed the shears and the roll of twine back into the portmanteau, pocketed the wax and the match, withdrew his reservoir-pen, and began to address the parcel.

  “But what is it, Mick? How can you know its value if you’ve no idea what it does?”

  “Now I didn’t say that, did I? I’ve my ideas, don’t I? Dandy Mick always has his ideas. I’d enough of an idea to take the original up to Manchester with me, on the General’s business. I’d enough of an idea to pump the canniest clackers for their latest compression techniques, and enough of the General’s capital to commission the result on Napoleon-gauge cellulose!”

  It might have been Greek, for all it meant to her.

  A knock came. An evil-looking servant boy, cropheaded and snuffling, wheeled in a trolley and cleared the plates. He made a botch of it, lingering as if expecting a gratuity, but Mick ignored him, and stared coolly into space, now and then grinning to himself like a cat.

  The boy left with a sneer. At length there came the rap of a cane against the door. A second of Mick’s friends had arrived.

  This was a heavyset man of quite astonishing ugliness, pop-eyed and blue-jowled, his squat sloping forehead fringed in an oiled parody of the elegant spit-curls the Prime Minister favored. The stranger wore new and well-cut evening dress, with cloak, cane, and top-hat, a fancy pearl in his cravat and a gold Masonic ring on one finger. His face and neck were deeply sunburnt.

  Mick rose at once from his chair, shook the ringed hand, offered a seat.

  “You keep late hours, Mr. Radley,” the stranger said.

  “We do what we can to accommodate your special needs, Professor Rudwick.”

  The ugly gentleman settled in his chair with a sharp wooden squeak. His bulging eyes shot Sybil a speculative look then, and for one heart-leaping moment she feared the worst, that it had all been a gull and she was about to become part of some dreadful transaction between them.

  But Rudwick looked away, to Mick. “I won’t conceal from you, sir, my eagerness to resume my activities in Texas.” He pursed his lips. He had small, grayish, pebble-like teeth in a great slash of a mouth. “This business of playing the London social lion is a deuced bore.”

  “President Houston will grant y
ou an audience tomorrow at two, if that’s agreeable.”

  Rudwick grunted. “Perfectly.”

  Mick nodded. “The fame of your Texian discovery seems to grow by the day, sir. I understand that Lord Babbage himself has taken an interest.”

  “We have worked together at the Institute at Cambridge,” Rudwick admitted, unable to hide a smirk of satisfaction. “The theory of pneumo-dynamics …”

  “As it happens,” Mick remarked, “I find myself in possession of a clacking sequence that may amuse His Lordship.”

  Rudwick seemed nettled by this news. “Amuse him, sir? Lord Babbage is a most … irascible man.”

  “Lady Ada was kind enough to favor me in my initial efforts …”

  “Favor you?” said Rudwick, with a sudden ugly laugh. “Is it some gambling-system, then? It had best be, if you hope to catch her eye.”

  “Not at all,” Mick said shortly.

  “Her Ladyship chooses odd friends,” Rudwick opined, with a long sullen look at Mick. “Do you know a man named Collins, a so-called oddsmaker?”

  “Haven’t had the pleasure,” Mick said.

  “The fellow’s on her like a louse in a bitch’s ear,” Rudwick said, his sunburnt face flushing. “Fellow made me the most astounding proposition …”

  “And?” Mick said delicately.

  Rudwick frowned. “I did fancy you might know him, he seems the sort that might well run in your circles.…”

  “No, sir.”

  Rudwick leaned forward. “And what of another certain gent, Mr. Radley, very long of limb and cold of eye, who I fancy has been dogging my movements of late? Would he, perhaps, be an agent of your President Houston? Seemed to have a Texian air about him.”

  “My President is fortunate in the quality of his agents.”

  Rudwick stood, his face dark. “You’ll be so kind, I’m sure, as to request the bastard to cease and desist.”

  Mick rose as well, smiling sweetly. “I’ll certainly convey your sentiments to my employer, Professor. But I fear I keep you from your night’s amusements.…” He walked to the door, opened it, shut it on Rudwick’s broad, well-tailored back.

  Mick turned, winked at Sybil. “He’s off to the ratting-pits! A very low-sporting gentleman, our learned Professor Rudwick. Speaks his bloody mind, though, don’t he?” He paused. “The General will like him.”

  Hours later, she woke in Grand’s, in bed beside him, to the click of his match and the sweet reek of his cigar. He’d had her twice on the chaise behind their table in the Argyll Rooms, and once again in Grand’s. She’d not known him to be so ardent before. She’d found it encouraging, though the third go had made her sore, down there.

  The room was dark, save for the spill of gaslight past the curtains.

  She moved a bit closer to him.

  “Where would you like to go, Sybil, after France?”

  She’d never considered the question. “With you, Mick.…”

  He chuckled, and slid his hand beneath the bedclothes, his fingers closing around the mound of her womanhood.

  “Where shall we go then, Mick?”

  “Go with me and you’ll go first to Mexico. Then north, for the liberation of Texas, with a Franco-Mexican army under the command of General Houston.”

  “But … but isn’t Texas a frightfully queer place?”

  “Quit thinking like a Whitechapel drab. All the world’s queer, seen from Piccadilly. Sam Houston had himself a bloody palace, in Texas. Before the Texians threw him into exile, he was Britain’s greatest ally in the American west. You and I, why, we could live like grandees in Texas, build a manor by some river.…”

  “Would they truly let us do that, Mick?”

  “Her Majesty’s Government, you mean? Perfidious Albion?” Mick chuckled. “Well, that largely depends on British public opinion toward General Houston! We’re doing all we can to sweeten his reputation here in Britain. That’s why he’s on this lecture tour, isn’t it?”

  “I see,” Sybil said. “You’re very clever, Mick.”

  “Deep matters, Sybil! Balance of power. It worked for Britain in Europe for five hundred years, and it works even better in America. Union, Confederacy, Republics of Texas and California—they all take a turn in British favor, until they get too bold, a bit too independent, and then they’re taken down a peg. Divide and rule, dear.” The coal-end of Mick’s cigar glowed in the darkness. “If it weren’t for British diplomacy, British power, America might be all one huge nation.”

  “What about your friend the General? Will he truly help us?”

  “That’s the beauty of it!” Mick declared. “The diplomats thought Sam Houston was a bit stiff-necked, didn’t care for some of his actions and policies, didn’t back him as strongly as they should have. But the Texian junta that replaced him is far worse. They’re openly hostile to British interests! Their days are numbered. The General has had to cool his heels a bit in exile here in England, but now he’s on his way back to Texas, for what’s his by right.” He shrugged. “Should have happened years ago. Our trouble is that Her Majesty’s Government don’t know their own mind! There’s factions among ’em. Some don’t trust Sam Houston—but the French will help us anyhow! Their Mexican clients have a border war with the Texians. They need the General!”

  “You’re going to war, then, Mick?” She found it difficult to imagine Dandy Mick leading a cavalry charge.

  “Coup d’état, more like,” he assured her. “We won’t see much bloodshed. I’m Houston’s political man, you see, and his man I’ll stay, for I’m the one’s arranged this London speaking-tour, and on to France, and I’m the one’s made certain approaches as resulted in him being granted his audience with the French Emperor.…” But could that be true, really? “And I’m the one as runs Manchester’s newest and best through the kino for him, sweetens the press and British public opinion, hires the bill-stickers.…” He drew on his cigar, his fingers kneading her there, and she heard him puff out a great satisfied cloud of cherry smoke.

  But he mustn’t have felt like doing it again, not then, because she was soon asleep and dreaming, dreaming of Texas, a Texas of rolling downs, contented sheep, the windows of gray manors glinting in late-afternoon sunlight.

  Sybil sat in an aisle seat, third row back in the Garrick, thinking unhappily that General Sam Houston, late of Texas, was not drawing much of a crowd. People were filtering in as the five-man orchestra squeaked and sawed and honked. A family party was settling in the row before her, two boys, in blue jackets and trousers, with laid-down shirt-collars, a little girl in a shawl and a braided frock, then two more little girls, ushered in by their governess, a thin-looking sort with a hooked nose and watery eyes, sniffling into her handkerchief. Then the oldest boy, sauntering in, a sneer on his face. Then papa with dress-coat and cane and whiskers, and fat mama with long ringlets and a big nasty hat and three gold rings on her plump soft fingers. Finally all were seated, amid a shuffling of coats and shawls and a munching of candied orange-peel, quite patently well-behaved and expecting improvement. Clean and soaped and prosperous, in their snug machine-made clothes.

  A clerky fellow with spectacles took the next seat to Sybil’s, an inch-wide blue strip showing at his hairline, where he’d shaved his forehead to suggest intellect. He was reading Mick’s program and sucking an acidulated lemon-drop. And past him a trio of officers, on furlough from the Crimea, looking very pleased with themselves, come to hear about an old-fashioned war in Texas, fought the old-fashioned way. There were other soldiers speckled through the crowd, bright in their red coats, the respectable sort, who didn’t go for drabs and gin, but would take the Queen’s pay, and learn gunnery arithmetic, and come back to work in the railroads and shipyards, and better themselves.

  The place was full of bettering-blokes, really: shopkeepers and store-clerks and druggists, with their tidy wives and broods. In her father’s day, such people, Whitechapel people, had been angry and lean and shabby, with sticks in their hands, and dirks in their
belts. But times had changed under the Rads, and now even Whitechapel had its tight-laced scrubfaced women and its cakey clock-watching men, who read the Dictionary of Useful Knowledge and the Journal of Moral Improvement, and looked to get ahead.

  Then the gas-lights guttered in their copper rings, and the orchestra swung into a flat rendition of “Come to the Bower.” With a huff, the limelight flared, the curtain drew back before the kinotrope screen, the music covering the clicking of kino-bits spinning themselves into place. Broken frills and furbelows grew like black frost on the edges of the screen. They framed tall letters, in a fancy alphabet of sharp-edged Engine-Gothic, black against white:

  Editions

  Panoptique

  Presents

  And below the kinotrope, Houston entered stage-left, a bulky, shabby figure, limping toward the podium at the center of the stage. He was drowned in dimness for the moment, below the raw and focused glare of Mick’s limelight.

  Sybil watched him closely, curious about him, wary—her first glimpse of Mick’s employer. She’d seen enough American refugees in London to have ideas about them. The Unionists dressed much like normal Britons, if they had the money for it, while Confederates tended to dress rather gaudy and flash, but peculiar, not quite proper; to judge by Houston, the Texians were an even queerer and madder lot. He was a big man, red-faced and beefy, over six feet tall in his heavy boots, his broad shoulders draped in a long coarse-woven blanket rather like a mantelet, but barbarically striped. Red and black and umber, it swept the Garrick’s stage like a tragedian’s toga. He had a thick mahogany cane in his right hand, and he swung it lightly now, as if he didn’t need it, but his legs shook, Sybil saw, and the gold fringe trembled on the fancy seams of his trousers.

  Now he mounted to the darkened podium, wiped his nose, sipped at a glass of something that plainly wasn’t water. Above his head the kinotrope shuffled into a colored image, the lion of Great Britain and a sort of long-horned bull. The animals fraternized beneath small crossed banners, the Union Jack and the single-starred flag of Texas, both bright in red and white and blue. Houston was adjusting something behind his podium; a small stage-mirror, Sybil guessed, so he could check the kinotrope behind him as he spoke, and not lose his place.