The Hidden Family

Durant raised an eyebrow. “Gin and tonic for me,” he said slowly—or was it melancholia? He likes people to think he drives from the back seat, Miriam noted. Watch this one.

“A sweet Martini for me,” Bates added. Next to Sir Durant he was short, plump, and somewhat overeager.

“Certainly.” Miriam relaxed slightly. “A sherry, please,” she added. “If you’d like to come in, I believe our table is waiting…?”

The scandalous overtones of a single woman entertaining two gentlemen to dinner in a closed room were mildly defused by her black dress and rumored widowhood. Bates had confirmed that there were no unsalubrious rumors about Sir Durant’s personal life—or at least none she need worry about. Miriam concentrated on being a perfect hostess while pumping Durant for information about himself, and keeping Bates from either drying up or running off at the mouth. Durant was not the most forthcoming of interview subjects, but after the soup she found a worthwhile button to press, and triggered a ten-minute monologue on the topic of car-racing. “It is without doubt the wooden track that makes it so exciting,” Durant droned over the salmon steak—expensively imported by airship from the north—“for with the embankment of the course, and the addition of pneumonic wheels, they get up to the most exhausting speeds. There was the time old Timmy Watson’s brakes failed on the inside straight toward the finish line at Yeovilton—”

After the best part of two hours, both Bates and Sir Durant were reclining in their chairs. Miriam felt bloated and silently cursed the etiquette that prevented her from leaving the table for a minute, but the last-minute addition of an excellent glass of vintage port seemed to have helped loosen Alfred up. Especially after Miriam had asked a couple of leading questions about brake shoe manufacture, which veered dangerously close to discussing business.

“You seem to me to be unusually interested in brakes,” Sir Durant said, cupping his glass in one hand and staring at her across the table with the expression of a well-fed and somewhat cynical vulture. “If you’ll pardon me for saying this, it’s a somewhat singular interest in one of the fairer sex.”

“I like to think I have lots of singular interests.” Miriam smiled. Patronizing old bastard. “I have spent much of my time traveling to far places and I’m afraid my education in the more feminine arts may be a little lacking. Business, however, is another matter.”

“Ah, business.” Bates nodded knowingly, and Miriam had to actively resist the temptation to kick him under the table.

“Business.” Durant, too, nodded. “I noticed your purchase of a company—was it by any chance Dalkeith, Sidney and Fleming?—with interest. A fine engineering venture, once upon a time.”

Miriam nodded. “I like to get my hands dirty. By proxy,” she added, glancing at Bates. “It’s something of a hobby. My father taught me never to take anything for granted, and I extended the lesson to the tools in his workshop.”

“I see.” Durant nodded. “I found the, ah, samples you sent me most interesting.”

“Good.” When she smiled this widely, Miriam’s cheeks dimpled: She hated to be reminded of it, but there was no escaping the huge gilt-framed mirror hanging above the sideboard opposite. Is that rouged harpy in the evening dress really me? “That was the idea.”

“My men applied one of the samples to a test brake engine. The results were precisely as your letter promised.”

“Indeed.” Miriam put her glass down. “I wouldn’t waste your time, Alfred. I don’t like to mince words. I’m a woman in a hurry, and I wanted to get your attention.”

“Can you provide more samples?” His stare was penetrating.

“Yes. It will take about a month to provide them in significant quantities, though. And the special assembly for applying them.” It had taken a week to get the chrysotile samples in the first place, and longer to set up the workshop, have them ground to powder, and set into the appropriate resin matrix. Epoxide resins were available here, but not widely used outside the furniture trade. Likewise, asbestos and rock wool—chrysotile—could be imported from Canada, but were only really used in insulating furnaces. The young industrial chemist Miriam had hired through Bates’s offices, and the other three workers in her makeshift research laboratory, were initially startled by her proposal, but went along with it. The resulting grayish lumps didn’t look very impressive, and could certainly do with much refinement, but the principle was sound. And she wouldn’t be stopping with asbestos brakes—she intended to obsolesce it as rapidly as she’d introduced it, within a very few years, once she got her research and development department used to a steady drip feed of advanced materials from the other world. “The patents are also progressing nicely, both on the brake material and on the refinements we intend to apply to its use.” She smiled, and this time let her teeth show. “The band brake and the wheel brake will be ancient history within two years.”

“I’d like to know how you propose to produce the material in sufficient volume to achieve that,” said Sir Durant. “There’s a big difference between a laboratory experiment and—”

“I’m not going to,” Miriam butted in. “You are.” She stopped smiling.

“That’s what this meeting is about.”

“If I disagree?” He raised his glass. Miriam caught Bates shrinking back in his chair out of the corner of her eye.

“You’re not the only big fish in the pond.” Miriam leaned back and stifled a yawn. “Excuse me, please, I find it rather hot in here.” She met Sir Durant’s gaze. “Alfred, if man is to travel faster, he will have to learn to stop more efficiently first, lest he meet with an unfortunate accident. You made your fortune by selling pneumonic wheels—” tires, she mentally translated.

“If you pause to consider the matter, I’m sure you’ll agree that cars that travel faster and stop harder will need more and better pneumonics, too. I’m prepared to offer you a limited monopoly on the new brake material and a system that will use it more efficiently than wheel brakes or band brakes—in return for a share in the profits. I’m going to plow back those profits into research in ways to improve automotive transport. Here and now—” she laid a fingertip on the table for emphasis—“there is one car for every thirty- two people in New Britain. If we can make motoring more popular, to the point where there is one car for every two people—” she broke off.

“Not very ambitious, are you?” Sir Durant asked lightly, eyes gleaming. At the other side of the table Bates was gaping at her, utterly at a loss for words.

Many thoughts collided in Miriam’s mind at that moment, a multivehicle pileup of possible responses. But the one that found its way to her lips was, “not hardly!” She picked up her glass, seeing that it was nearly empty, and raised it. “I’d like to propose a toast to the future of the automobile: a car for every home!”

Miriam was able to rent premises for her company in a former engineering shop on the far side of town. She commuted to it by cab from the hotel while she waited for Bates to process the paperwork for her house purchase. She was acutely aware of how fast the luxury accommodation was gobbling her funds, but there didn’t seem to be a sensible alternative—not if she wanted to keep up the front of being a rich widow, able to entertain possible investors and business partners in style. Eventually she figured she’d have to buy a steam car—but not this year’s model.

The next morning she had a quick shower, dressed in her black suit and heavy overcoat, then hailed a cab outside without lingering for breakfast. The air was icy cold but thankfully clear of smog. As the cab clattered across tram rails and turned toward New Highgate, she closed her eyes, trying to get her thoughts in order.

“Two weeks,” she told herself, making a curse of it. She’d been here for six nights already and it felt like an eternity. Living out of suitcases grew old fast and she’d shed any lingering ideas of the romance of travel back when she was covering trade shows and haunting the frequent flyer lounges. Now it was just wearying, and even an expensive hotel suite didn’t help much. It lacked certain essential comforts—privacy, security, the sensation of not being in public the whole time. She was getting used to the odd clothing and weird manners but doubted she’d ever be comfortable with it. And besides, she was missing Roland, waking sometimes from vague sensual dreams to find herself alone in a foreign city. “Seven more days and I can go home!” Home, to her own damn house, if she could just lean on Angbard a bit harder—failing that, to the office, where she could lock the door, turn on the TV, and at least understand everything she was seeing.

The cab arrived. Miriam paid the driver and stepped out. The door to the shop was already unlocked, so she