The Difference Engine

  “I must admit my curiosity, Laurence, as to what it is you are currently about.” Arslau made a steeple of his fingers and peered over them, raising his eyebrows. “The nature of your request would hardly seem to warrant the precautions you deem necessary.…”

  “On the contrary, Lucien, you must know that I would not presume in this way upon our acquaintance for any but the most pressing of reasons.”

  “But no, my friend,” Arslau said, with a dismissive little wave of his hands, “you have asked the merest of favors. Among colleagues, men such as ourselves, it is nothing. I am simply curious; it is one of my many vices. You convey to me a letter by Imperial diplomatic pouch—no mean feat in itself, for an Englishman, though I know that you are familiar with our friend Bayard. Your letter requires my help in locating a certain English adventuress, no more. You believe she may be resident in France. Yet you stress the need for very great secrecy; you warn me particularly against communicating with you either by telegraph or by the regular post. You instruct me to await your arrival. What am I to make of this? Have you succumbed at last to the wiles of some woman?”

  “Alas, I have not.”

  “Given the current model of English womanhood, my friend, I find that entirely understandable. Far too many of your gentlewomen aspire to be elevated to the level of masculine intellectuality—superior to crinoline, superior to pearl-powder, above taking the pains to be pretty, above making themselves agreeable in any way! What a dreary, utilitarian, entirely ugly life an Englishman shall eventually lead, if this trend continues! So why then, I ask, have you crossed the Channel to find an English adventuress? Not that we haven’t our share of them. They’re rather thick upon the ground, actually, not to mention the origin”—Arslau smiled—“of our own Empress.”

  “You yourself have never married, Lucien,” Oliphant remarked, attempting to deflect Arslau from his purpose.

  “But look at matrimony! Who is to say which shall be the one judicious selection out of the nine hundred and ninety-nine mistakes? Which is to be the one eel out of the barrel of snakes? The girl on the kerbstone may be the one woman out of every female creature in this universe capable of making me a happy man, my friend, yet I pass her by, and bespatter her with the mud from my wheels, in my utter ignorance!” Arslau laughed. “No, I have not married, and your mission is a political one.”

  “Of course.”

  “Things are not well with Britain. I don’t need my British sources to tell me that, Oliphant. The papers suffice. The death of Byron …”

  “Great Britain’s political direction, Lucien—indeed, her ultimate stability as a nation—may even now be at stake. I need not remind you of the paramount importance of our two nations’ continued mutual recognition and support.”

  “And the matter of this Miss Gerard, Oliphant? Shall I take it you suggest she is somehow pivotal in the situation?”

  Oliphant took out his cigar-case and selected one of Beadon’s habanas. His fingers brushed the folded text of Sybil Gerard’s telegram. He closed the case. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Please do.”

  “Thank you. The matters which hinge upon Sybil Gerard are entirely British, entirely domestic. They may stand, ultimately, to affect France, but in a most indirect way.” Oliphant clipped and pierced his cigar.

  “Are you entirely sure of that?”

  “I am.”

  “I am not.” Arslau rose to bring Oliphant a copper ashtray atop a walnut stand. He returned to his desk but remained standing. “What do you know of the Jacquardine Society?”

  “They are the approximate equivalent of our Steam Intellect Society, are they not?”

  “Yes and no. There is another, a secret society, within the Jacquardines. They style themselves Les Fils de Vaucanson. Certain of them are anarchists, others in league with the Marianne, others with the Universal Fraternity, others with any sort of rabble. Class-war conspirators, you understand? Others are simply criminals. But you know this, Laurence.”

  Oliphant took a lucifer from a box emblazoned with a stippled image of the Bessemer, and struck it. He lit his cigar.

  “You tell me that the woman you know as Sybil Gerard is of no concern to France,” Arslau said.

  “You think otherwise?”

  “Perhaps. Tell me what you know of our difficulties with the Great Napoleon.”

  “Very little. Wakefield of Central Statistics mentioned it to me. The Engine is no longer functioning accurately?”

  “Ordinateurs, thank the good God, are not my specialty. The Napoleon performs with its accustomed speed and accuracy in most instances, I am informed, but an outré element of inconstancy presently haunts the machine’s higher functions.…” Arslau sighed. “Those higher functions being deemed a matter of considerable national pride, I have myself been forced to peruse reams of the most abstruse technical prose in the Empire. To no ultimate avail, it now seems, as we’ve had the culprit in hand.”

  “The culprit?”

  “An avowed member of Les Fils de Vaucanson. His name is of no importance. He was arrested in Lyons in connection with an ordinary case of civil fraud involving a municipal ordinateur. Elements of his subsequent confession brought him to the attention of the Commission of Special Services, and hence to ours. During interrogation, he revealed his responsibility for the current lamentable state of our Great Napoleon.”

  “He confessed to le sabotage, then?”

  “No. He would not confess to that. He refused, until the end. With regard to the Napoleon, he would admit only to having run a certain sequence of punch-cards, a mathematical formula.”

  Oliphant watched the smoke from his cigar spiral toward the high ceiling’s ornate plaster rosette.

  “The formula came from London,” Arslau continued. “He obtained it from an Englishwoman. Her name was Sybil Gerard.”

  “Have you attempted analysis of this formula?”

  “No. It was stolen, our Jacquardine claimed, spirited away by a woman he knew as Flora Bartelle, apparently an American.”

  “I see.”

  “Then tell me what you see, my friend, for I myself am very much in the dark.”

  The Eye. All-seeing, the sublime weight of its perception pressing in upon him from every direction.

  Oliphant hesitated. Ash from his cigar fell unnoticed to Arslau’s rich carpet. “I have yet to meet Sybil Gerard,” he said, “but I may be able to offer you information regarding this formula you’ve mentioned. It may even be possible to obtain a copy. I can promise nothing, however, until I myself am allowed to interview the lady in question, privately and at some length.”

  Arslau fell silent. He seemed to look through Oliphant. At last he nodded. “We can arrange that.”

  “She is not, I take it, in custody?”

  “Let us say that we are aware of her movements.”

  “You allow her apparent freedom, yet observe her closely?”

  “Precisely that. If we take her now, and she reveals nothing, the trail goes cold.”

  “As ever, Arslau, your technique is impeccable. And when might it be arranged for me to meet with her?”

  The Eye, the pressure, the pounding of his heart.

  “This evening, if you so desire,” said Monsieur Arslau of the Police des Châteaux, adjusting his gold-embroidered cravat.

  The walls of the Café de l’Univers were hung with paintings, etched mirrors, and enamel plaques advertising the ubiquitous product of Pernod Fils. The pictures, if one could call them that, were either grotesque daubs, seemingly executed in a messy imitation of Engine-stippling, or queer geometric formulations suggesting the restless motion of kinotrope-bits. In some cases, Oliphant supposed, the painters themselves were present—or such he took them to be, these long-haired fellows in velvet caps, their corduroy trousers smeared with pigment and tobacco-ash. But the majority of the clientele—according to his companion, one Jean Beraud—consisted of kinotropistes. These gentlemen of the Latin Quarter sat and drank with their b
lack-clad grisettes at the round marble tables, or held forth on theoretical matters before small groups of their peers.

  Beraud, in an unseasonable boater and a brown suit of intensely Gallic cut, was one of Arslau’s mouchards, a professional informer who referred to the kinotropists as members of “le milieu.” He was fresh and rosy as a young pig, he drank Vittel and peppermint, and Oliphant had taken an immediate dislike to him. The kinotropists seemed to favor the absinthe of Pernod Fils; Oliphant, sipping a glass of red wine, watched the ritual of glass and water-decanter, of sugarlump and trowel-shaped spoon.

  “Absinthe is the bed of tuberculosis,” Beraud said.

  “Why do you suppose that Madame Tournachon would choose to appear tonight in this café, Beraud?”

  The mouchard shrugged. “She is a familiar of le milieu, monsieur. She goes to Madelon’s, also to Batiffol’s, but it is here, in l’Univers, that she most nearly finds companionship.”

  “And why is that, do you think?”

  “Because she was Gautier’s mistress, of course. He was a kind of prince here, monsieur, it must be understood. Her relationship with Gautier has necessarily limited her contacts with ordinary society. He taught her French, or such French as she has.”

  “What sort of woman, exactly, do you take her to be?”

  Beraud smirked. “She is perhaps attractive, but cold. Unsympathetic. In the manner of Englishwomen, you understand.”

  “When she arrives, Beraud—if she arrives, I should say—you are to take your leave immediately.”

  Beraud raised his eyebrows. “On the contrary, monsieur—”

  “You are to go, Beraud. Take your leave.” A measured pause. “Vanish.”

  The sharply padded shoulders of Beraud’s brown suit rose at the word.

  “You will instruct the cab to wait, and the stenographer as well. The stenographer, Beraud—his English is adequate? My friend—my very good friend, Monsieur Arslau—has assured me that this is the case.…”

  “Entirely adequate, yes! And monsieur”—getting up so quickly that he nearly overturned his bentwood chair—“it is she.…”

  The woman now entering l’Univers might easily have been mistaken for a modish Parisienne of more than common means. Slender and blond, she wore a somber merino crinoline with matching cloak and bonnet, narrowly trimmed in mink.

  As Beraud continued his hasty retreat into the depths of the café, Oliphant rose. Her eyes, very alert, very blue, met his. He approached her, hat in hand, and bowed. “Forgive me,” he said in English. “We have not been introduced, but I must speak with you regarding a matter of great urgency.”

  Recognition dawned in the wide blue eyes, and fear.

  “Sir, you mistake me for another.”

  “You are Sybil Gerard.”

  Her lower-lip was trembling now, and Oliphant experienced an abrupt, powerful, and entirely unexpected sympathy. “I am Laurence Oliphant, Miss Gerard. You are presently in terrible danger. I wish to help you.”

  “That is not my name, sir. Pray let me pass. My friends are waiting.”

  “I know that Egremont betrayed you. I understand the nature of his betrayal.”

  She started at the name, Oliphant in terror of her swooning on the spot, but then she gave a little shudder and seemed to study him quietly for a moment. “I saw you in Grand’s, that night,” she said. “You were in the smoker with Houston and … Mick. You had a gammy arm, up in a sling.”

  “Please,” he said, “join me.”

  Seated opposite her at his table, Oliphant listened as she ordered absinthe de vidangeur in quite passable French.

  “Do you know Lamartine, the singer?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “He invented it, ‘scavenger’s absinthe.’ I can’t drink it otherwise.”

  The waiter arrived with the drink, a mixture of absinthe and red wine.

  “Theo taught me to order it,” she said, “before he … went away.” She drank, the wine red against her painted lips. “I know you’ve come to take me back. Don’t gull me otherwise. I know a copper when I meet one.”

  “I have no desire to see you return to England, Miss Gerard—”

  “Tournachon. I’m Sybil Tournachon. French by marriage.”

  “Your husband is here in Paris?”

  “No,” she said, lifting an oval locket of cut-steel on its black ribbon. She snapped it open, displaying a daguerreotyped miniature of a handsome young man. “Aristide. He fell at Philadelphia, in the great inferno. He volunteered, to fight on the Union side. He was real, you know; I mean, he actually existed, and wasn’t just one of them the clackers make up.…” She gazed at the little image with a look of mingled longing and sadness, though Oliphant understood that she had never in her life set eyes upon Aristide Tournachon.

  “It was a marriage of convenience, I take it.”

  “Yes. And you’ve come to take me back.”

  “Not at all, Miss … Tournachon.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You must. A great deal depends upon it, not least your own safety. Since you departed London, Charles Egremont has become a very powerful, a very dangerous man. As dangerous to the well-being of Great Britain as he is no doubt dangerous to you.”

  “Charles? Dangerous?” She seemed suddenly on the verge of laughter. “You’re gulling me.”

  “I need your help. Desperately. As desperately as you need mine.”

  “Do I, then?”

  “Egremont has powerful resources at his command, branches of Government easily capable of reaching you here.”

  “You mean the Specials, and that lot?”

  “More to the point, I must inform you that your activities are even now monitored by at least one secret agency of Imperial France.…”

  “Because Theophile chose to help me?”

  “Indeed, that seems to be the case.…”

  She drank off the last of the vile-looking concoction in her glass. “Dear Theophile. What a lovely, silly sort of cove he was. Always in his scarlet waistcoat, and madly clever at clacking. I gave him Mick’s set of fancy cards, and he was terribly kind to me then. Spun me up a marriage-license and a French citizen-number rat-tat-tat. Then, one afternoon, I was to meet him here …”

  “Yes?”

  “He never came.” She lowered her eyes. “He used to boast of having a ‘gambling modus.’ They ail do, but he talked as if he meant it. Someone might have believed him. It was foolish of him.…”

  “Did he ever speak with you about his interest in the Engine known as the Great Napoleon?”

  “Their monster, you mean? Your Paris clacker speaks of little else, sir! They’re mad for the thing!”

  “The French authorities believe that Theophile Gautier damaged the Great Napoleon with Radley’s cards.”

  “Is he dead, then, Theo?”

  Oliphant hesitated. “Alas, I believe so, yes.”

  “That’s so vicious bloody cruel,” she said, “to spirit a man away like a rabbit in a conjuring trick, and leave his loved-ones ever to wonder, and worry, and never rest! It’s vile.”

  Oliphant found that he could not meet her eyes.

  “There’s a deal of that about in this Paris, there is,” she said. “The things I’ve heard their clackers jest about … And London, they say, is no better, really, to them as know. Do you know they say the Rads murdered Wellington? They say the sappers, the sand-hogs, hand-in-glove with the Rads, cut a tunnel beneath that restaurant, and the master sapper himself tamped the powder and set the fuses.… Then the Rads lay the blame on men like …”

  “Your father. Yes. I know.”

  “And knowing that, you’d ask me to trust you?” There was defiance in her eyes, and perhaps a pride long-buried.

  “Knowing that Charles Egremont betrayed your father, Walter Gerard, unto his destruction; that he betrayed you as well, bringing about your ruin in the eyes of society; yes, I must ask that you trust me. In exchange, I offer you the complete,
utter, and virtually instantaneous negation of your betrayer’s political career.”

  She lowered her eyes again, and seemed to consider. “Could you do that, really?” she asked.

  “Your testament alone will serve. I shall be merely the instrument of its delivery.”

  “No,” she said at last, “if I were to denounce him publicly, then I would expose myself as well. Charles isn’t the only one I need to fear, as you yourself have said. Remember, I was there that night, in Grand’s; I know how long an arm revenge can have.”

  “I’ve not suggested denouncing him publicly. Blackmail will suffice.”

  Now her eyes were far away, as if she walked the distant pavements of memory. “They were so close, Charles and my father, or so it seemed.… Perhaps if things had taken a different turn …”

  “Egremont lives daily with that betrayal. It is the crucial grain of constant irritation around which his depraved politics have been allowed to form. Your telegram galvanized his guilt—his terror of those early Luddite sympathies being revealed. Now he would tame the beast, make political terror his constant ally. But you and I stand in his way.”

  The blue eyes were strangely calm. “I find I wish to believe you, Mr. Oliphant.”

  “I will keep you safe,” Oliphant said, quite startled by his own intensity. “So long as you choose to remain in France, you shall do so under the protection of powerful friends, colleagues of mine, agents of the Imperial court. A cab awaits us, and a stenographer, to take down the details of your testimony.”

  With a tortured, flatulent wheeze of compressed air, a small panmelodium was activated at the rear of the café. Oliphant, turning, caught the eye of the mouchard Beraud, who was smoking a Dutch clay pipe amid a cluster of chattering kinotropistes.

  “Madame Tournachon,” Oliphant said, rising, “may I offer you my arm?”

  “It’s healed, has it?” She rose in a rustle of crinoline.

  “Entirely,” Oliphant said, remembering the lightning-stroke of the samurai’s sword, in Edo, amid the shadows. He had been attempting to hold the fellow off with a riding-crop.

  As the Engine-driven music of the grand panmelodium brought the grisettes from their chairs, she took his arm.