Anti-Ice

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 Francoise; 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