Anti-Ice Page 21

  Surely, I reflected, this present war in Europe was ample evidence for Proudhon’s thesis, and I regretted Holden’s disloyalty.

  In any event, thanks to Holden’s account, I became briefly famous.

  I returned to the comfort of my parents’ home in Sussex; my family were quite inordinately glad to see me whole and healthy. I suffered a moving reunion with my brother Hedley; his scarred face crumpled with pleasure as I described Josiah Traveller, who had become something of a fascination for Hedley since their one-sided acquaintance in the Crimea. My London friends, several of whom came to visit, urged me to make a dramatic re-entrance into society, the more to capitalize on my heroic status. I looked on their faces, which seemed astonishingly young and fresh, and declined their various invitations—not from any uncharacteristic burst of modesty, for I should quite have enjoyed the admiring attention of the season’s belles as I described how it hadn’t been as bad as all that, really—but more from a lingering feeling of isolation. And besides, my confused feelings about Françoise were a turmoil inside me, incapable of resolution.

  I went for long, solitary walks in the woods near my parents’ home, exploring these odd feelings. It was almost as if, having once shaken the dust of Earth from my boots, I felt unfit to return with whole heart to human society. And I found I missed the company of my erstwhile companions more and more.

  I watched the colors of autumn spread through the trees, and wondered how such a sight would look from space.

  I promised myself that I should immerse myself into the world of men as soon as my moment of fame had faded; and sure enough, fade it did—though not for reasons I would have welcomed. For as the nights of autumn drew in, so the plight of the French grew steadily more desperate.

  The Prussians maintained their walls of men and guns around both Paris and Metz. In the Manchester press there were constant tales of famine stalking the streets of the French capital, and some rather more reliable accounts of how the armies of Marshal Bazaine, in Metz, were languishing in the mud, and were growing steadily more incapable even of defending themselves, let alone liberating Paris.

  I perused the papers with endless, and morbid, fascination, as the leader writers discussed the choices and dangers facing Gladstone and his government. No civilized man, it was commonly agreed, would again wish to see anti-ice used as a weapon of war. But the Balance of Power was undoubtedly under its severest test, and there seemed a growing mood for some intervention before this precious and venerable guarantor of peace in Europe should be lost for ever.

  Against this there were those who, remembering Bonaparte, had no desire to intercede in favor of the beleaguered French. And at the other extreme the Sons of Gascony and their like became ever more vocal in their demands that Britain should exert her evident power, not just to restore peace, but to impose order on the warring factions of Europe. The influence of these stern-minded gentlemen on the debate seemed to be growing; it was even rumored that the King himself sympathized with such views.

  Reading this depressing stuff I was reminded of my conversations on the Phaeton with Bourne. No longer did I feel bound into such arguments, as I may have before my adventure; now I saw with a new aloofness how this national debate paralleled the internal ramblings of a deranged mind, which seeks to impose its inward fears and daemons on those around it.

  At last, at the end of October, came the news that Bazaine’s forces in Metz—wet, starved and demoralized—had capitulated; this time the rampant Prussians took away 1,400 guns and more than 170,000 men. Although French forces fought on in various parts of the country, it was generally agreed in Manchester that the decisive moment of the war had come; that the Prussians, victorious in the field of combat, would soon be riding through the battered streets of Paris—and that if Britain were ever to intercede in this struggle for the future of Europe, now was the moment.

  The clamor of newsprint, demanding action from Gladstone, grew until it seemed a silent shout all around me, and I felt I could bear the tension no longer.

  I knew of only one way to resolve these feelings; and I packed a bag, bade a hasty goodbye to my parents, and made my way by Light and steam train to the home of Josiah Traveller.

  * * *

  I walked the last few miles to Traveller’s home. Not far from Farnham, the place was based around a small converted farmhouse, and it would not have attracted the eye—save for a brooding giant some thirty feet high which stood defiant at the rear of the house, its great aluminum shoulders covered by sewn-together tarpaulins. This was of course the Phaeton; and as that magical carriage loomed out of the dull landscape, I felt my heart lift.

  I came around a hedgerow to Traveller’s house—and there, standing before his front door, was a rather splendid brougham of rich, polished wood. I realized immediately that I was not Sir Josiah’s only visitor of the day.

  Pocket greeted my unheralded arrival with tremendous enthusiasm; he even begged my permission to pump my hand on his own behalf. The manservant was spry and secure now he was on firm ground, and he said, “I am sure that Sir Josiah will be delighted to see you, but at the moment he’s with a visitor. In the meantime, may I offer you tea; and perhaps you would care for a glance around the premises, sir?”

  He did not volunteer the identity of this “visitor” and I did not press him.

  As I sipped tea I said, “I’ll be honest with you, Pocket. I’m not entirely clear why I’ve come…”

  He smiled with surprising wisdom, and said, “You don’t need to explain, sir. In these troubled times, I’m sure I can speak for Sir Josiah in stating that this house is a home to you. Just as the Phaeton was.”

  I found myself coloring. “Do you know, Pocket, you’ve hit the nail exactly on the head… Thank you.”

  Scarcely trusting myself to speak further I drew on my tea.

  The house itself was surprisingly small and dingy. Its main feature was a large conservatory to the south-facing rear which had been converted by Traveller into an extensive laboratory. There was also a barn used for larger-scale construction. Several acres of land surrounded the buildings. Nothing grew in these rough fields, and in several places one could see dramatic scorched scars, where rocket engine tests, launches—and even explosions—had taken place.

  The conservatory was quite a grand affair, with a framework of slender, white-painted wrought iron which gave the place a sense of lightness; various tools and machines lay in that gentle light like strange plants. The laboratory was laid out something like a milling shop; a steam lathe attached to the ceiling powered various metal-turning machines by means of leather bands, and fixed to benches around the floor were small lathes, a sheet-metal stamp, presses, acetylene welding sets and vices. The fruits of these tools lay all around, some familiar from my time on the Phaeton. Pocket pointed out a rocket nozzle, for example, which shone in the light of the weak autumn sun, its mouth upturned like the muzzle of some unlikely flower.

  “And what of Phaeton herself?” I asked Pocket.

  “We had the very devil of a time getting the old girl home from that farmer’s field in Kent. We had to take a steam crane out there to shift her, would you believe; and all the time that wretched man Lubbock protested at the ruts we were planting in his precious fields.”

  I laughed. “You can’t blame the poor chap. After all, he didn’t ask to have us drop in on him in that extraordinary fashion.”

  “And as for the old girl, Sir Josiah says she’s fared remarkably well, considering the ordeal through which we put her: an ordeal for which she was scarcely designed, of course.”

  “Which of us was?” I asked with feeling.

  “In the end she suffered surprisingly little damage. A collapsing support leg, a bashed nozzle, a hatful of scars and scorch marks, an overstrained airpump or two—I might say, largely thanks to your own efforts there, sir.”

  Now we left the conservatory and walked out into the fresh air, and so started to make our way to the front of the house once
more.

  “So she could fly again?” I asked.

  “Could, but won’t, I think, sir. Sir Josiah has refuelled her, in order to test the workings of the motors, and has spent a deal of time on fixing her up, but I think he feels she’s done her bit. He has a headful of ideas for a second Phaeton, brighter and still more powerful than the first; I think he plans to turn the original into a sort of monument to herself.”

  “And so he should,” I said.

  Now Pocket drew to a halt and stared straight ahead. “Well,” he went on more quietly, “it’s only to be hoped that he’s allowed to put those ideas into practice.”

  Puzzled by his tone, I turned to follow his gaze. Before the front door I saw the familiar figure of Traveller, his stovepipe hat screwed as incongruously and defiantly to his head as ever. He was, I saw, taking leave of his earlier visitor. The other man, now climbing into his brougham, was a wide- framed gentleman of about sixty, whose features were naggingly familiar; I studied the gray hair swept across his head, the rich white sidewhiskers, the rather lifeless eyes, the grim, downturned mouth set in a Moon of a face—

  “Dear God,” I whispered to Pocket. “That’s Gladstone himself!”

  The Prime Minister took his leave of Traveller; with a snick of the driver’s whip the brougham pulled away. Traveller walked slowly along the side of his home, absently studying the ivy which clung to the brickwork. I would have gone to him, but Pocket held my sleeve firmly, indicating no; and we waited for Sir Josiah to reach us in his own time.

  At last he stood before us. He straightened his shoulders, fixed his hat more correctly at the center of his cranium, and held his hands behind his back; his platinum nose glinted in the weak November sunlight. “Well, Ned,” he said, his voice as pale as the Sun. “I heard you arrive. I apologize for my—preoccupation.”

  I demanded without preamble: “That was the Prime Minister, wasn’t it?”

  “You must drop this habit of restating the obvious, Ned,” he admonished; but his tone was abstracted.

  “I have heard of the fall of Bazaine, at Metz.”

  “Yes.” He looked at me carefully. “Such was in the journals. But there is also news of the Albert.”

  Suddenly my head was filled with thoughts of Françoise; and I shouted, “What news? You must tell me.”

  “Ned—” He took my arms. “The Albert has been converted into a vehicle of war. The French saboteurs, the…” He groped for the phrase.

  “The franc-tireurs.”

  “They have taken it over, installed cannon, and so have converted it into a gigantic mobile castle. And they are driving it toward Paris, where they plan to engage the besieging Prussians. Ned, it is quite insane. The Albert is a passenger ship, not a man-of-war. One accurate shell and it would be done for…”

  The images conjured by his words were so fantastic that I found it almost impossible to grasp their thread of meaning. “And the passengers? What of them?”

  “There is no word.”

  I said, a little harshly, “And what is the import of all this? The Prime Minister of Great Britain does not call in person to deliver news, however dramatic, Sir Josiah.”

  “No, of course not.” His eyes slid away from mine, and he adopted that strained, hunted look I had observed in the Lubbocks’ farmhouse. “The news about the Albert was Glad Eyes’ way into my sympathy. I believe he hoped to link, in my mind, the European war with my own endeavors.

  “The government have reached their point of decision, you see. Metz has collapsed, yes; but Paris holds out, against all reason, even at the cost of starving its own citizens. Meanwhile the Prussians sound ever more bellicose and grandiose. There seems little prospect of a just settlement to this war; and the government rather regret that the Europeans no longer find it possible to conduct a war like good chaps, finishing according to the rules.” He shook his head. “Gladstone says Europe may collapse into terminal chaos for a generation, if Britain does not intervene. He says that, but of course he believes no such thing. Britain as usual is pursuing its own aims, and Gladstone would say anything to have me cooperate. And yet—and yet, what if there is truth in what he says? What right have I to resist the tide of history?” He clapped his hand to his forehead, shoving back his hat, and shook his head.

  I took his arm. “Sir Josiah, has he asked you to bring back your anti-ice weapons of the Crimean campaign?”

  “No. No, Ned; they want new weapons… They have such ideas as you would not believe. How can human beings, men like you and me, walk around with their heads full of such thoughts?… And they say that if I do not cooperate, they will withdraw their investment.” He laughed bitterly. “Which was precarious enough anyway. They will turf me out of my home, destroy my access to anti-ice; and a team of lesser men will be set to do their bidding in my place.”

  I stared into his long, tortured face, and recalled Holden’s analysis of the man’s poor financial acumen. Was this to be the great engineer’s Achilles’ heel, the flaw that would bring his work at last to ruin—just as it had destroyed, in the end, the plans of his hero Brunel?

  I hoped that Traveller would have none of the government’s obscene plan, but there was uncertainty in his face, and his next words discouraged me.

  “Gladstone is a fool and a philanderer, no doubt; but he is also a politician, Ned; and he has planted doubts in my mind! For if I construct these devices, perhaps I can indeed make them, as he says, ‘scientific’ in their effectiveness. Whereas if lesser men begin to meddle with this we could face a disaster on a scale never before witnessed.” His face was quite open now and full of pain. “Tell me, Ned. What am I to do?… I fear I must cooperate with them, for fear of the alternative—”

  “In God’s name, Traveller, what do they want you to build?”

  He dropped his head as if in shame. “Rocket boats. Like smaller versions of the Phaeton. But these would not be driven by a human pilot; instead an adaptation of my navigation table, with its gyroscopic guidance system, could serve to guide the rocket to its landing point.”

  I was mystified. “But what would be the purpose of these manless Phaetons? What would emerge after they landed?” I wondered vaguely if they would carry ammunition or food in to the beleaguered Parisians, but Traveller was shaking his head.

  “No, Ned; you don’t see it yet. And I don’t blame you, for it takes an imagination of a particular devilishness.

  “The rocket boat does not land. It is allowed to crash into the earth, in the manner of artillery shells. When it does so a Dewar of anti-ice shatters; the anti-ice spills out into the heat of the earth, and a monstrous explosion ensues.”

  He spread his arms wide and turned about, as if drunk. “You have to admit there is a certain grandeur in the concept,” he said. “From my own garden, here, I would be able to launch a shell which would reach across the Channel, all the way to Paris, and fell the pride of Prussia with one hammer blow—”

  “No!”

  Traveller and Pocket stared at me.

  A thousand emotions coursed through my poor heart. The conflicting images of Françoise warred in me: the sweet face which had become, during our perilous voyage around the Moon, a talisman to me, a symbol of hope and the future, of all to which I would return; but underlying it, as the skull underlies the fairest visage, was the specter of the franc-tireur, a totem of all those who would unleash war and death on the fragile bowl of Earth I had watched from above the air.

  How my mind reeled with these perceptions! And how far I’d come from the simple lad who had boarded the Phaeton barely three months earlier!

  My course of action, I found, was decided.

  Scarcely a second had passed since my single syllable of protest. Without thinking further I turned on my heels and ran toward the covered form of the Phaeton. I heard Traveller’s call after me and his slow footsteps in pursuit, but the craft filled my attention.

  I had to reach Paris—I had to confront Françoise, to save her if I could, to defle
ct the British bombs—and to do that I would travel there by the fastest means possible—at the controls of the Phaeton!

  13

  THE BALLOON PILOT

  The Smoking Cabin had been lovingly restored. The various scuffs and rents left in the upholstered walls by our weeks of incarceration had all been invisibly repaired, and I offered up a quick, silent prayer that the craft’s motive systems were in as pristine a condition.

  I scrambled up a rope ladder to the Bridge. For a moment I stood there returning the gaze of the serried ranks of instrument dials, as unsure as some barbarian entering a religious shrine.

  But I shook away this mood and clambered without further delay into Traveller’s couch.

  As the soft upholstery took my weight some hidden switch was activated, and the electric lamps within each instrument sparked to life. I fancied I heard a hissing, as pipes bore the increasing pressure of the ship’s various hydraulic systems.

  Like some huge animal the craft was coming alive to my touch.

  I lay in that couch and surveyed the instrument constellation with dismay. But I had seen Traveller fly this craft from the Moon to the Earth, and it had looked simple enough; surely I would have no trouble with a minor jaunt across the English Channel!

  With renewed determination I turned to the control levers beside the couch. The levers terminated in handles of molded rubber which were a little too large for my hands. Fixed on the handles were light levers of steel; these, I recalled, controlled the ignition and force of the Phaeton’s rocket motors.

  As my hands closed around the handles I felt sweat pool in my palms.

  I squeezed at the steel levers.

  The rockets shouted their awakening. A huge shuddering beset the craft.