The Chemickal Marriage

‘I did not allow a thing. She killed two of your men, neat as a snap! Besides, you – well, decency forbids me to say more.’

Bronque took a pull from a silver flask and exhaled. ‘It was never the time.’

‘You were her lover?’ blurted Doctor Svenson. ‘I thought it was Pont-Joule.’

Schoepfil blew air through his lips. ‘The Colonel, Pont-Joule, Matthew Harcourt –’

‘Not Harcourt,’ Bronque cut in. ‘There she only teased.’

‘You see! He defends! O her hooks are in!’ Schoepfil snorted at Svenson. ‘I wonder she has not added you to their number!’

Bronque laughed and took another drink. Svenson felt his face redden. ‘She may be beautiful, but her heart is black.’

‘Spoken like a man never asked,’ said Bronque. He tucked the flask away. ‘Shall we?’

‘I would prefer to be in motion,’ replied Schoepfil.

‘Why? You’ll need to rest. And I’m getting out before you.’

‘O very well.’ Schoepfil sniffed, almost girlishly. ‘Doctor, we take you into our confidence.’

‘I have not agreed to anything.’

‘But you will agree. Because my uncle, as my colleague says, must fall.’

‘You forget Chang. You forget Miss Temple.’

‘One cannot forget what one has never considered in the first place. The former is doomed through my uncle’s science; the latter insignificant altogether.’

Svenson found the red tin and selected another cigarette.

‘My Lord, Doctor,’ sighed Schoepfil. Bronque laughed and held out a hand. Svenson offered him the box and struck a match for them both. The smoke touched his lungs like a perfume of nettles.

‘If you need me, your disapproval can go hang. Now take off your gloves and show me what you’ve done, then tell me how you did it, and what madness I’m to help you do next.’

‘Power, of course, comes from the engine. We sacrifice speed, but the duration is brief – has to be, or the same mistakes are made. No one understands the degree to which the Comte’s achievement was determined by aesthetics. Three women turned to glass.’ Schoepfil tugged at his goatee. ‘Beautiful – no doubt of it –’

‘An abomination,’ said Svenson.

‘An opinion –’

‘I knew the women.’

‘The point is that complete transformation is neither necessary nor useful.’ Schoepfil raised one bright blue hand, then rapped it hard on the table top. ‘As you can see, still flesh, still mine to command. And yet …’

Schoepfil closed with Doctor Svenson and, showing the same preternatural speed as before, stabbed his hands in half a dozen places about the Doctor’s body, well ahead of any attempt to block him. The blows became mere touches at the last instant, but the potential damage was unpleasantly clear. Red-faced again, Svenson raised his arms and stepped away.

‘I have experienced your skill.’

‘You did not know the cause.’

‘But I knew there was one. You are no athlete. You have acquired only speed.’

‘More than that, Doctor, speed is but the scent off the dish. The advance is in the mind.’ Schoepfil grinned. ‘Everything my uncle has acquired, I have plundered – he is betrayed by his own people, who already cleave to my inheritance.’

Svenson turned to Bronque. ‘And were you a part of this? He can’t have done it by himself.’

‘But I did, Doctor! One hand at a time – the left is a touch less sensitive, but one learns!’

‘We became partners after the fact.’ Bronque clapped his hands. ‘Drusus. There is not time. And Doctor Svenson is not our friend.’

‘No, he is not!’ Schoepfil returned to the jumble of machines. ‘I cannot tell you how much I wanted to throttle him at the Therm?.’ He peered at Svenson over his spectacles. ‘The Kraft woman’s cure is a miracle. You must dedicate the same knowledge and skill to our interests. Only then will you survive.’

‘And if I told you I know nothing, that I merely followed instructions?’

Schoepfil laughed. ‘The Colonel would dangle you from this train until your head met the wheels.’

After examining the paths through which the power flowed, how it was held and released in the different brass and glass chambers, the Doctor had to admit, and the admission frightened him, that Schoepfil was right. The Comte’s alchemical creed had driven his discoveries to extreme forms, such as Lydia Vandaariff’s pregnancy and the three glass women. With the exception of the glass books, the Comte had largely eschewed practical applications. Schoepfil’s moderation – unburdened by ideology or belief – exposed a vaster and more terrifying danger.

‘The speed of thought.’ Schoepfil wiggled the fingers of both hands to mimic the energy coursing through the wires. ‘The property of blue glass that touches the mind – that speaks in thought’s chemical tongue. By lengthening time of exposure and lessening its intensity, the transformational effects are diminished – and, since I do not desire to be made of glass, there is no penalty. And, at the sacrifice of discoloration, what I do acquire is sensitivity. While Mrs Marchmoor could sift the thoughts of others, I am content to sense their impulses – their energy. And then respond with all of thought’s speed.’

‘Imagine an army,’ said Bronque. ‘Untouchable swordsmen. Accuracy of fire.’

‘I do not know how much of the Comte’s lore my uncle has digested, though it seems he feeds at the same alchemical trough, that he believes. If he’s wrapped around visions of triple-souled births and exaltations of new flesh, we are halfway home!’

‘Do not discount his practicality,’ said Svenson. ‘The explosions in the city, the spurs.’

Schoepfil pursed his lips. ‘Well. Perhaps.’

Svenson nodded at the machines, the tin-lined tubs of water. ‘And now?’

‘My legs! I shall move like a ghost! The perfect provocateur.’

Schoepfil undressed to cotton underwear whose legs had been removed, so that he might undergo the procedure and retain his modesty. On the table lay what looked like an oversized bandolier. Each loop of leather was padded with orange felt and held a bolt of blue glass, larger than a shell for an elephant gun. Several loops were empty, but in one the charge of blue glass had been replaced with the flask of bloodstone Svenson had brought from the Institute. He fished out a handkerchief and prised loose a bolt of glass.

‘This fits in the first chamber?’

‘It does.’ Schoepfil settled himself on a padded stool with each foot in a tub and flicked his toes in the water.

Svenson slotted the glass in place and fastened the chamber’s hatch. He began to gather the black hoses. ‘The Comte did attempt something like this, you know …’

‘Well, his mind was exceedingly fertile. One entire notebook dedicated to hair –’

‘Angelique, from Mrs Kraft’s brothel. I was called in to consult, after the fact.’

Schoepfil shrugged, having no interest in a whore.

‘The experiment went wrong. It was as if she were drowned, without ever going underwater.’ Svenson strapped the hoses to Schoepfil’s bare legs and fitted his feet with webbed leather slippers. ‘His inability to reverse the effects led to her being substituted as the third glass woman, instead of Caroline Stearne.’

‘What exactly went wrong?’ asked Bronque.

‘I never learnt.’

‘Doesn’t help us, then,’ said Schoepfil.

The whistle sounded. The train began to slow. Bronque consulted his watch.

‘Crampton Place. Once the train starts again we’ll throw the switch.’

Through the next stations, from Packington to St Porte, every time the Colonel stepped from the carriage, two grenadiers entered to make sure Doctor Svenson did nothing to Mr Schoepfil, asleep on a straw pallet. Bronque had drawn a blanket around Schoepfil to his neck, as the last thing soldiers going into battle needed was to see a