Changeless

do me particular favor, as I know you prefer male drones. But I am happily situated and of independent means, with no wish to bid for immortality.”

Lady Maccon followed this interchange with interest. So Lord Akeldama thought Madame Lefoux had excess soul, did he? Well, if her aunt had turned into a ghost, excess soul might run in the family. She was about to ask an impolitic question when Lord Akeldama rose, rubbing his long white hands together.

“Well, my little buttercups.”

Uh-oh, Alexia winced in sympathy. Madame Lefoux had achieved Akeldama- appellative status. They would now have to suffer together.

“Would you charming blossoms like to see my newest acquisition? Quite the beauty!”

Alexia and Madame Lefoux exchanged a look, put down their teacups, and rose to follow him with no argument.

Lord Akeldama led them out into the arched and gilded hallway and up several sets of increasingly elaborate staircases. Eventually they attained the top of the town house, entering what should have been the attic. It proved, instead, to have been made over into an elaborate room hung with medieval tapestries and filled with an enormous box, large enough to house two horses. It was raised up off the floor via a complex system of springs and was quilted in a thick fabric to prevent ambient noise from reaching its interior. The box, itself, comprised two small rooms filled with machinery. The first, Lord Akeldama described as the transmitting room, and the second the receiving room.

Alexia had never seen such a thing before.

Madame Lefoux had. “Why, Lord Akeldama, such an expense! You have purchased an aethographic transmitter!” She looked about the crowded interior of the first room with enthusiastic appreciation. Her dimples were in danger of reappearing. “She’s beautiful.” The inventor ran reverent hands over the many dials and switches that controlled the transmitting room’s tangled gadgetry.

Lady Maccon frowned. “The queen is reputed to own one. I understand she was urged to acquire it as a replacement for the telegraph, shortly after the telegraph proved itself an entirely unviable method of communication.”

Lord Akeldama shook his blond head sadly. “I was vastly disappointed to read of the report of that failure. I had such hopes for the telegraph.” There’d been a noted gap in long-distance communication ever since, with the scientific community scrabbling to invent something that was more compatible with highly magnetic aetheromagnetic gasses.

“The aethographor is a wireless communication apparatus, so it does not suffer from such severe disruption to the electromagnetic currents as the telegraph,” Lord Akeldama explained.

Lady Maccon narrowed her eyes at him. “I have read of the new technology. I simply had not thought to see it so soon.” As a matter of course, Alexia had been angling for an invitation to see the queen’s aethographor for over a fortnight, with little success. There was some delicacy to its function that would not allow it to be interrupted during operation. She had also tried, unsuccessfully, to visit BUR’s aethographor. She knew that they had one at the London offices, because she saw rolls of etched metal lying about. Her husband had been utterly impossible about it. “Wife,” he had finally stated in abject frustration, “I canna interrupt business simply to satisfy your curiosity.” Unfortunately for Alexia, since they had come into government possession, both aethographors had been in constant operation.

Lord Akeldama picked up an etched metal roll, flattened it out, and slotted it into a special frame. “You put the message for transfer, so, and activate the aetheric convector.”

Madame Lefoux, looking about with avid interest, interrupted him mid-explanation. “You would, of course, first have to input an outgoing crystalline valve frequensor, just here.” She pointed to the control board, then started. “Where is the resonator cradle?”

“Aha!” crowed the vampire, apparently thrilled she had noticed this flaw. “This is the latest and greatest design, squash blossom. It does not operate via crystalline compatibility protocol!”

Madame Lefoux looked to Lady Maccon. “Squash blossom,” she mouthed silently, her expression half offended, half amused.

Alexia shrugged.

“Usually,” explained Lord Akeldama to Alexia, misinterpreting the shrug, “the transmitting component of the aethographor requires the installation of a specific valve, depending on the message’s intended destination. You see, a companion valve must also be installed in the other party’s receiving room. Only with both in place can a message transfer from point A to point B. The problem is, of course, that exact times must be agreed upon beforehand by both parties, and each must possess the appropriate valve. The queen has an entire library of valves linked to different aethographors dotted all about the empire.”

Madame Lefoux was frowning. “And yet your device has none? It is not very useful, Lord Akeldama, to transmit a message into the aether with no one at the other end to receive it.”

“Aha!” The vampire pranced about the tiny room in his ridiculous shoes, looking far too pleased with himself. “My aetheric transponder does not need one! I have had it installed with the latest in frequency transmitters so that I can tune to whatever aetheromagnetic setting is desired. All I need is to know the crystalline valve’s orientation on the receiving end. And to receive all I need is the right time, a good scan, and someone who has my codes. Sometimes I can even pick up messages intended for other aethographors.” He frowned a moment. “Story of my life, if you think about it.”

“Good Lord.” Madame Lefoux was obviously impressed. “I had no idea such technology even existed. I knew they were working on it, of course, but not that it had finally been built. Impressive. May we witness it in action?”

The vampire shook his head. “I have no messages to go out at the present time and am not expecting any incoming.”

Madame Lefoux looked crestfallen.

“So what happens, exactly?” asked Lady Maccon, who was still looking closely at the equipment.

Lord Akeldama was all too delighted to explain. “Ever notice that the metal paper has a faint grid on it?”

Alexia switched her attention to a scroll of metal Lord Akeldama handed her. The surface was, indeed, divided into a standardized grid. “One letter per square?” she hypothesized.

Lord Akeldama nodded and explained further. “The metal is exposed to a chemical wash that causes the etched letters to burn through. Then two needles pass over each grid square, one on top and the other on the bottom. They spark whenever they are exposed to one another through the letters. This causes an aether wave that is bounced off the upper aethersphere and, in the absence of solar interference, transmits globally.” His gesturing throughout became wilder and wilder, and on the last phrase, he did a little pirouette.

“Astounding.” Lady Maccon was impressed, both with the technology and Lord Akeldama’s ebullience.

He paused, recovering his equanimity, then continued with the explanation. “Only a receiving room tuned to the appropriate frequency will be able to pick up the message. Come with me.”

He led them into the receiving room section of the aethographor.

“Receivers, mounted on the roof directly above us, pick up the signals. A skilled operator is required to tune out ambient noise and amplify the signal. The message then displays there”—he gestured, hands waving about like flippers, at two pieces of glass with black particulate sandwiched between and a magnet mounted to a small hydraulic arm hovering above—“one letter at a time.”

“So someone must be in residence to read and record each letter?”

“And they must do so utterly silently,” added Madame Lefoux, examining the delicacy of the mounts.

“And they must be ready in an instant, for the message destroys itself as it goes,” Lord Akeldama added.

“Now I comprehend the reason for the noise-proof room and the attic location. This is clearly a most delicate device.” Lady Maccon wondered if she could operate such an apparatus. “You have, indeed, made an impressive acquisition.”

Lord Akeldama grinned.

Alexia gave him a sly look. “So what precisely is your compatibility protocol, Lord