exactly?’
“And then he asked me if I was happy. Happy there in Pakistan. Using outhouses and riding horses everywhere and having to learn a new damn language every ten miles, he said. Asked me if I’d like to take up a job here, at Evesden Central Control. In the Nail itself.
“Well, I was stunned. I’d only been here once for a geology conference. Put on a presentation for a bunch of keen, clever young men who tore me apart. I asked him what I would do. And he said all I had to do was take care of their new man. The man downstairs. They didn’t really even know his name or how old he was. Said I had to learn that and then it was up to me to control him. To be his better. To make him useful for Willie and the company.
“And so I went downstairs. And he introduced himself for the first time. And that’s how I met Hayes. We talked some more and he signed on and laughed like it was all some grand joke. Maybe it was. I’m not sure.”
Evans sat in silence for a great while. Then he sighed and adjusted his glasses. “I’m not stupid. I know Brightly handpicked me as a go-between. Between himself and Hayes. Brightly doesn’t want anything in his head to get into Hayes’s, that’s for sure. Hayes was and is his star pupil, his big find. How he found him in Nalpur is beyond me, but he engineered it and he got us both from there to here, me dragging this mad dog by the leash. I suppose you’re wondering why I’m telling you this silly story,” he said, smiling weakly again.
“Well, I’m not sure, no.”
“My point is, I was a tool to them. To the higher-ups. As Hayes is. As you are. And I knew it. I did, I knew it. When I bought in I knew what they wanted me to be, and I still know now. Now that I’ve paid. But, you see, I know that it’s been worth something. In these past four years, well, we’ve made marvels. Things you wouldn’t believe. Things that may…” He paused, smiled, and said, “Well, I shouldn’t tell you this. We’re working to make things that may one day leave here and land in Europe in only a few hours. And more. They say these same devices may one day touch the sun and the moon and maybe beyond. The very stars, Miss Fairbanks. We’d reach the stars themselves. It’s very primitive right now, very primitive stages, as, well, I think we’ve made apparent through some recent mishaps, but it’s growing. And there’s more than that, child. I don’t know all the mechanics, but there’s one thing…” He trailed off, then shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “You know the Earth turns, Miss Fairbanks?” he asked.
Samantha nodded.
“Turns like a top, in space?”
“Yes.”
“What if you could somehow harness that power? Develop something that was sensitive to that turning… and began to turn the other way as a reaction? What sort of power would that generate?”
She thought about it. It seemed like a simple enough suggestion but then as she put more thought into it she realized the enormity of the idea.
Evans chuckled. “Yes,” he said. “Everyone thinks of, oh, the trolleys and the phones and trains and airships. The conduits and the cranes. But there’s more. The bigger things are still being developed. How they come up with them, I don’t know. It’s like they pull these ideas from another world entirely. But we’re making a new age, Miss Fairbanks, right now. And we are but a part. Hayes is a part. I am a part. You. This city, even those in the slums and those in Newton and, yes, those in the Bridgedale neighborhood. We are all parts in a greater mechanism. Hayes alone has done more to protect the development of these ideas than he could ever know. The men he’s turned and bought and sold… He didn’t even care what he was doing it for. He just thought it was great sport. But he’s changed this company. One man has changed this company. And we will change the world in turn, in ways it can’t even expect.”
The car came to a stop. She and Evans looked around, surprised. Samantha found they were in front of a large, unmarked warehouse. “Oh, dear,” said Evans. “We’re here. I forgot to tell Wilford to drop you off. We’ll have to cut our conversation short, I’m afraid.”
“No, no,” she said. “No, please. Go on, if you have a bit more time.”
He considered it, then smiled. “Here. Come. Walk with me. You’ll accompany me inside and then Wilford can drop you off.”
“What meeting do you have to go to?”
“Oh, it’s a demonstration,” he said. He stepped out of the car and unfolded his umbrella. “This is one of our test facilities. It’s a basic meeting, I have them once every few months. About what’s next on the regional agenda.”
He gave instructions to Wilford and offered Samantha his arm. They walked together, past the barbed wire fence and the guards out front, to whom Evans explained that Samantha was only there to help him in. The guards grudgingly let her pass and they crossed the lot together.
“Tell me,” said Evans. “Why should I allow you and Mr. Hayes to continue on this tangent?”
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“Why should I let you go on running amok in the Porter neighborhoods? Instead of chastising you, I mean. Humor me, please.”
“We have a chance of finding out who’s behind the Bridgedale trolley and the Newton murders,” she said. “We can tell everyone the truth. That it’s not our company. That it’s someone else.”
“Hm. Yes. That’s a goal, yes. But why do you want to do it?”
“To do it?”
“Yes. You worked quite a bit when it was just you, preparing the day for Hayes. But now you work overnight, and never even mention overtime. It’s not business, then. It seems personal now. Why is that?”
She thought as they walked to the front doors. More guards nodded and let them by, twirling their truncheons.
“There’s a boy,” she said quietly. “A little boy. Skiller was his father. He was the canal man they found with his throat cut.”
Evans’s walk slowed. He nodded. “I see,” he said faintly.
“We don’t know where he is. There was a letter his father wrote to him. A goodbye.”
“Yes,” said Evans.
“And there’s more. There’s more and, and… I don’t know,” she said. She found she was suddenly fighting back tears. “I don’t know. I stood in that little boy’s room and I looked through their things and they won’t ever be the same again. Won’t ever be touched. It won’t ever be a home again. And there’s Garvey. And Hayes. And this, this means something to them. I don’t know what it is but it gives them something I haven’t ever seen before. Something real. And I want it. I want it to do the same to me as it does to them.”
“Here, here,” Evans said softly. “Here. Calm down. Calm down. We can’t go in with you upset.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m usually not like this. It’s just, I saw their home and there was this little girl with flies all over her head and she was crying, she was crying and waiting for someone to come, and what Garvey and Hayes are doing… It’s like they think if they fix this one thing it’ll fix everything else. Even Hayes seems to think so, in some perverted way. And maybe it will. Maybe it will.”
“Yes,” Evans said. “Maybe it will.” He sighed and wiped the rain off his glasses. “I just wanted to see if there would be a good reason for me to explain all this to Brightly,” he said. “That’s all. And there is. Now come,” he said, offering her his arm again. “Come and see me in safely.”
She sniffed and dried her eyes. Then she took up his arm again and they walked in the front door. Inside was a long, low cement hallway with closed metal doors at the end.
“Do you think Mr. Hayes is of sound mind, sir?” she asked quietly as they walked.
“Oh, I’d say Mr. Hayes is of exceptionally sound mind, considering the things he’s seen,” said Evans, and pushed open the other set of doors.
Samantha nearly gasped. Before them was the largest room she had ever seen, or maybe it seemed that way because it was completely empty. The walls were gray and blank and made of enormous cement slabs so well put together that the seams were mere hairlines. The opposite wall had no markings at all except for a small door, beside which was a guard posted in a chair, reading a book.
“This is where you’re having your meeting?” asked Samantha, awed.
“Yes,” said Evans delightedly. “I told you, we’re making things here.”
They crossed to the small doorway. It took nearly a minute. She was reminded of Hayes’s warehouse, which was no more than a third of the size of this place. Then she realized it and this place and the common McNaughton
