The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age

  Colonel Katterfelto had words with the gatekeeper and was directed to the sales office.

  The sales office was a triumph of decorative metalwork. Panels depicting the dignity of labour were elaborately crafted in various metals. Gilded steel columns supported a ceiling on which a fresco, dedicated to commerce, was colourfully featured. At the very centre of this, the smiling face of Mark Rowland Ferris, Fifth Earl of Hove, beamed down blessings upon all and sundry. Behind a desk of trellised copper sat a gentleman wearing a brass top hat with fitted goggle attachments. He bowed with his head and gestured with an artificial arm towards a vacant aluminium chair.

  The colonel sat down upon it.

  ‘The Ferris Engineering Works of Alperton welcomes you,’ said the gentleman in the brass top hat. ‘And what might we do to add pleasure to your day?’

  ‘I wish to place an order for something,’ said the colonel. ‘It is a private project and must be handled with discretion.’

  ‘Absolutely no problem at all, sir.’ The brass top—hatter spoke in a confidential tone. ‘It is a fate that awaits us all when we reach a certain age.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said the colonel.

  ‘Down below.’ The brass-hatter gestured with his artificial arm to an area just below his waist. ‘We can fit you out with a pneumatic prosthesis so lifelike in appearance that your lady wife won’t know the difference.’

  ‘How dare you!’ cried the colonel. ‘And I have no lady wife.’

  ‘Ah.’ The brass-hatter now added a lewd wink to go with his artificial arm gesturings. ‘All is in complete confidentiality here, sir. Should Mr Oscar Wilde himself come in for a fitting, we would not turn him away.’

  Colonel Katterfelto reached towards his ray gun. ‘I’ll shoot you dead, you scoundrel,’ he declared.

  ‘But not in the heart, I’ll wager, sir.’ The sitter at the desk opened his shirt to reveal a large metal plate apparently bolted into the flesh of his chest. ‘Lost both heart and arm in the Martian campaign,’ said he.

  ‘You were in the service of Her Majesty?’ asked the colonel. Slightly less furious now.

  ‘Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers,’ said the fellow with the artificial parts. ‘And you a colonel in the same by your uniform.’ He saluted with his ersatz limb, nearly putting his eye out.

  ‘At ease,’ said the colonel. ‘And enough of this nonsense. Don’t need any private parts refurbishing. Need a piece of construction work done. A metal figure. Clockwork minstrel kind of jobbie.’

  ‘Well, certainly, sir. We specialise in that sort of thing. Stage magicians’ illusions. Clockwork marionettes.’

  ‘Know you do,’ said the colonel. ‘That’s why I’m here. Need a job doing and doing well. Know you’re the chaps to do it.’

  ‘Do you have the plans with you, sir?’

  ‘Certainly do.’ The colonel drew Herr Döktor’s book from a jacket pocket. Hesitated a moment. ‘Complete confidentiality?’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely, sir. Discretion our watchword. Customer satisfaction our rule of law.’

  ‘There then, take the thing. Don’t have time to mess about having a bit made here and a bit made there. Need you to make the lot. Plans in the back. Think you’re up to the job?’

  The brass-hatted fellow took the book from the colonel. It was all but falling to pieces now, but the plans for the construction of the Mechanical Messiah were still clear enough.

  ‘Ah,’ said the brass-hatted sales manager. ‘We haven’t had an order for one of these in a while.’

  ‘What?’ puffed the colonel. ‘What?’

  ‘I understand they were quite the rage when the book first came out. Before my time, though. Back in the days when old Mr Ferris the Fourth Earl ran the company. Sort of went out of fashion, you know. Used to come with a companion piece. The Automated Mary, that was the more popular model.’

  ‘Wellington’s boots!’ went the colonel. ‘So I’m not the first at this?’

  ‘Heavens no, sir. If you want a Mechanical Messiah making, you come to us.’ The fellow now affected a smirk. ‘You will never guess what,’ he said. ‘I had word, on the old engineering jungle drums, as it were, that not so long ago a chap in America had one run up. Employed various engineering works in Wormcast, Arizona. They made a right pig’s ear out of it and the fellow concerned was run out of town. Makes you wonder what it’s all about, doesn’t it?’

  The colonel ground his teeth together. ‘It certainly does,’ said he.

  ‘But anyway. Absolutely no problem at all. We cam have this all assembled for you in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘All assembled?’ The colonel gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Thought I would have to do the assembling.’

  ‘We provide a complete service, sir.’

  ‘And the cost?’ asked the colonel. ‘What about the cost?’

  ‘Seven hundred and fifty pounds, sir. Which would include packing and delivery. Within the London area, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed the colonel. ‘And I have the money with me.

  And he did because he had got the advance from Corporal Mingus Larkspur.

  ‘I will give you the address it is to be delivered to and the key to the premises. I will be away for a while. I will pick the key up from you when 1 return.’

  ‘Absolutely splendid,’ said the man in the brass top hat. ‘But there is one thing that we must get altogether straight. Because it is our policy to please the customer. And we would not have you get all disappointed later and demand your money back.’

  ‘Make yourself clear,’ said the colonel.

  ‘Well, sir must understand that the Mechanical Messiah will not actually work. It is a purely decorative item. An inspirational item. It cannot be imbued with life. It will not do anything at all.’

  ‘Well,’ said the colonel. But he said no more.

  ‘You see,’ the sales manager tapped his artificial fingers onto his metallic desktop, creating a kind of xylophone effect, ‘and please do not think that I am an expert in such matters. It is only that I heard all about it from my predecessor, when the Mechanical Messiahs were all the rage. But folk tried to energise them and when they could not, they came here demanding their money back.’

  ‘I won’t be doing that,’ said the colonel.

  ‘Splendid, splendid. You could say it’s a basic design flaw really, but without the missing component the Mechanical Messiah could never be energised.’

  ‘Missing component?’ The colonel was intrigued.

  ‘Again, don’t quote me on this, sir, but it is something to do with magic and magic not functioning upon this world. That Earthly metals cannot carry magic. You will note that the plans for the Messiah figure show an empty compartment in the chest.’

  The colonel nodded at this. He was aware of the empty compartment. Although up until now he had not discussed it with anyone.

  ‘The component has to go into the empty compartment, sir.’ The artificial hand tapped at the artificial heart.

  ‘A mechanism, do you mean?’ asked Colonel Katterfelto.

  ‘No, merely a piece of metal, or more rightly a piece of mineral matter. To carry the magic, as it were.’

  ‘And cam you supply that?’ asked the colonel.

  ‘Oh no dear no, sir.’ Laughter was now to be heard. ‘We deal here in purely Earthly metals. The component is not of this world. It carried magic because where it is to be found, magic would appear to be commonplace. The mineral in question is called Magoniam. But as no human being has ever seen a piece, let alone touched a piece, it is neither here nor there.’

  The colonel’s face now suddenly shone. As if he had just received Enlightenment which in fact he had.

  ‘So I will have to ask you to sign a disclaimer,’ said the sales manager, ‘stating that you are aware that the item we will construct for you will be absolutely non-functional.’

  The colonel rose as one who had reached apotheosis. This was all fate. It had to be. Him coming here and hearing this. It had to
be the very Will of God. A Divine Purpose lay at the very heart of it. There could be no other explanation. ‘This mineral,’ he said in a still, small voice. ‘This energising agent, as it were, that will carry magic—’

  ‘Magoniam, yes?’ said the chap in the brass top hat. ‘I understand, but again do not quote me, that it literally lies all over the ground, there for the picking up, as it were. Not that any human being ever will pick it up.’ And he laughed again. ‘Not unless they fly to Venus. And that’s not very likely, is it, now?’

  26

  eautifully reconstructed, from the ground up, after its complete destruction during Worlds War Two, the Crystal Palace did what it was good at and dazzled in the English summer sun.

  Proud atop Sydenham Hill, it gazed down upon the rolling lawns, ornamental fountains, floral clocks and flower gardens that led a leisurely way towards the spaceport.

  The Royal London Spaceport.

  The spaceport of the British Empire, the only spaceport on Earth. Here craft from Venus and Jupiter rested. Bloated Jupiterian packets with swollen hulls and bulbous parts lolled upon the cobbled landing strip. Whilst fey Venusian aether ships, rising like ghostly galleons, seemed tethered, as though a gentle breeze might waft them all away.

  And then there were the flagships of the Empire. Some restored, remodelled Martian craft, put to service for the Crown. Their hulls made colourful with painted Union Jacks. Others new, the pleasure vessels of wealthy folk. Manufactured, under licence and using the technology of Mars, by entrepreneurs who knew where the future lay.

  In the colonisation of distant worlds. And in their exploitation, too.

  These pleasure craft were marvellous affairs. Part Crystal Palace, part airship, part grand hotel. Sleek and silver, tattooed with the flag of Empire. Her Majesty’s Ships of Space.

  The largest of these, and indeed the most luxuriously appointed, was HMSS Enterprise. The very first spaceship built upon Earth, the one against which all future spacecraft would be judged.

  A triumph of British engineering, it truly was a marvel of the modern age.

  It was not, however, the craft that Corporal Mingus Larkspur had chartered for the space-treaty-breaking journey to the planet Venus.

  This was a slightly more basic affair, lacking the dining halls, ballrooms and Wif-Waf courts of HMSS Enterprise. This was one of the original Martian ships of war. Back-engineered by Lord Nikola Tesla and Sir Charles Babbage and then employed in the top-secret transportation of terminally ill victims of disease. Dispatched to Mars, under the authority of Mr Winston Churchill, to infect the population of the Red Planet and ensure that no more attacks would be made upon Earth. A shameful episode (although, it might be argued, a shrewd one) that would never be recorded in any annals of the British Empire.

  The ship had subsequently been fumigated and then served for a while as a military vehicle, transporting battalions of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers to Mars. These stalwarts were sent to engage in ‘mopping-up operations’, but as they found the Martians dead to a Martian-man, they spent their time behaving badly and laying waste to indigenous wildlife. And thus the big-game hunt on Mars was born. And thus was the history of this particular craft, from that day to this. A sturdy basic model with no frills for roughty-toughty fellows of a sporting disposition who sought exotic trophies for their study walls.

  And so the Crystal Palace glittered in the sun, the trim lawns twinkled, sweet flowers bloomed, fountains tossed rainbows to the sky and spacecraft sprawled upon the landing strips. Another summer’s day in Sydenham.

  The horse broke wind and Cameron Bell was forced to cover his nose for the umpteenth time. Alice Lovell tittered behind him; her kiwi birds in their travelling cage made rebellious sounds.

  Cameron Bell was not a natural driver of a horse and he knew full well he should never have allowed himself to be talked into hiring the horse and trap to take Alice Lovell on a day trip to Sydenham to become acquainted with the environs and acquire suitable lodgings for herself and her avian charges. It was afternoon now, and although they had enjoyed a charming lunch at the Crystal Palace, at Cameron’s expense, and a later tea in a Sydenham tea room, also, of course, at his expense, and done an awful lot of walking about and looking at flowers, no theatrical diggings of a suitable nature had presented themselves.

  Cameron Bell was not too saddened by this, as it meant that the lovely Alice Lovell might well end up staying a few more days at his house. On the proviso, naturally, that her outrageous birds would not.

  But for Cameron Bell, the private detective, the day had been utterly wasted. There were numerous lines of inquiry he wished to follow up. And certain theories were forming in his marvellous mind.

  Cameron Bell smiled painfully back at Alice Lovell.

  ‘I do not think you should have fed this horse that chocolate at lunchtime,’ he said.

  Alice giggled prettily and Cameron, gazing at her, looked with love.

  But just what was he to make of Alice? She had been in his company long enough for him to draw many conclusions, not all of them complimentary, but none that drastically affected his feelings for her. He had looked long and hard upon her shoes and apparel and drawn from these the better part of her life’s history. Where she had been brought up and schooled and with whom she had lived. There were curious depths, too, that the detective could not fathom. Missing areas of time, when it might have appeared that Alice had simply vanished from this world to enter some other. Cameron Bell could divine this from the lace cuffs of her childhood nightdress.

  ‘What are you dreaming about?’ asked Alice.

  ‘Only you,’ the smitten man replied. And then, gathering himself, he said, ‘I have an idea. I suggest we return to the village.’

  Alice twirled her parasol. ‘Whatever you say, kind sir,’ said she.

  The village of Sydenham owned to a single hotel. The Adequate. And upon arrival there, Cameron was hardly surprised to see a number of theatrical artistes checking in. The Travelling Formbys. Peter Pinkerton. Colonel Katterfelto and his monkey. Word had been passed by messenger from Lord Andrew that the artistes must take themselves immediately to Sydenham for tonight’s first night at the Crystal Palace.

  The logistics of moving an entire Music Hall troupe, complete with scenery and props, to a new location all in a single day, might to an outsider, one not of the theatrical persuasion, have seemed an impossibility. But the theatre owed much to its predecessor, the travelling show or circus. And up-sticking and moving on at the hurry-up was simply something it did. When needs must and the Devil drove and all that kind of business.

  Cameron Bell spied out the colonel and recalled that he meant to have words with this gentleman regarding the mysterious crystal that Mr Bell had recovered from the body of the enigmatic creature he had shot. Before it, in turn, was recovered by the gentlemen in black.

  ‘You will take a room here,’ the private detective told Alice.

  ‘But we already came here,’ replied the lovely girl, ‘and they made it more than plain that they would not take my kiwi birds.’

  ‘Your kiwi birds will take lodgings elsewhere.’

  ‘At your house?’

  ‘Not at my house, but across the street.’ Mr Bell pointed and Alice followed the direction of this pointing.

  ‘It is a pet shop,’ she said. ‘I have no wish to sell my kiwi birds.’ And this was mostly true, although Alice was beginning to find caring for the kiwi birds a trying experience. Not that she did not love them. But …

  ‘I am not suggesting that you sell them,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Merely that you offer them to the proprietor to exhibit in his front window during the day.’ And here Cameron Bell was suddenly struck by a thought. ‘Are not kiwi birds nocturnal?’ he asked. ‘Yours seem to keep the most unnatural hours.’

  ‘Time is twelve hours different in New Zealand,’ said Alice, and that was all the explanation Cameron Bell was getting. And so he continued:

  ‘You will inform the
pet shop proprietor that these birds are the star turn at the Crystal Palace.’ Cameron Bell ground his teeth somewhat at this. He and Alice had arrived in Sydenham to find the posters advertising ALICE AT THE PALACE already up. And whilst Alice herself had engaged in some kind of female convulsive expression of joy at this, Cameron Bell had seen in his mind’s eye a dire headline which read

  ANOTHER MUSIC HALL HORROR

  ALICE LOVELL

  THIRD IN HIDEOUS DEATH TOLL

  Cameron Bell continued, ‘You will tell the proprietor that you are willing to rent the birds to him during the day on the condition that he looks after them during the night.’

  ‘How very clever of you,’ said Alice, folding her parasol. ‘What a very clever man you are, dear Cameron.’

  Not as clever in matters of love as I truly wish I was, thought the love-struck Mr Bell. ‘Go now,’ he said to Alice, ‘whilst I arrange a room for you at the Adequate.

  ‘A room with a view,’ said Colonel Katterfelto to the clerk at the reception of the Adequate. It was a reception not without interest, although not one of particular interests. The furnishings were sufficient. Things looked as if they would do. For now. ‘Best you have in the building,’ the colonel continued. ‘And only for the one night. Off tomorrow into space. Ship sails at midnight and all that cosmic caper.’

  The clerk looked suspiciously down at Darwin. ‘Regrettably,’ he said, ‘as I informed a lady earlier, we do not take pets.’

  ‘Pets?’ roared the colonel, making motions towards his ray-gun holster. ‘That’s me hairy nephew, Humphrey.

  P’haps a tad fuzzy in the facial featurings. But pet? How dare you, sir!’

  ‘Humphrey?’ went the clerk. ‘Humphrey the nephew is it, sir?’

  ‘It is,’ said the colonel. ‘It is.’

  ‘And very well dressed, too, is Humphrey.’

  ‘Somewhat better dressed than you are,’ said the colonel.

  The clerk now affected a very smug face indeed. ‘Well, ‘he said, ‘if Humphrey is indeed your nephew, and not a pet monkey—’ he laid great emphasis upon that word ‘—he will have no objection to signing his own name on the register.’