We made our way across an Exhibition floor that was alive with the talk of war.
2
A CHANNEL CROSSING
The
I returned to the Exhibition, but I did not meet Francoise again. Nor did I find any trace of her in the society columns, assiduously though I searched.
Thus was I foolishly infatuated after our briefest of encounters…
But I was twenty-three years old, and doubt that I will ever regard my younger self with anything other than a mildly embarrassed affection.
At last, on the first of August, I threw together a small carpet-bag and made my way to Dover International Station. Mist still lingered around the docks as I emerged, bleary-eyed, from the mail Light from Waterloo—but there was George Holden, round and bright as a button; he shook my hand and offered me a celebratory nip of brandy from a silver hipflask. At first I demurred; but the hot liquid quickly worked its fiery magic. Our train gleamed on its elevated rail like some aerial fish of wood and brass, and as I stared up at it my prospects seemed tinged with adventure, excitement, and—perhaps—romance.
…But we were delayed.
The sun crossed the sky, hot and white. Holden and I drank endless cups of tea and nibbled candied orange peel, and, as that early-morning brandy turned sour in my stomach, we stalked around the confines of the station.
The trouble was centered around one of the pylons which soared out of the tarmacadam platform to support the Light Rail a hundred feet above our heads. This pylon was cordoned off by a length of greasy rope while police officers inspected every accessible inch. These unfortunate constables, sweating in their thick serge tunics, looked rather comical as they crawled up precarious ladders. One of them thumped his head on a cross- beam and his helmet went flying to the macadam, to a great cheer from watching members of the public. The officer rubbed his balding head and uttered something most unworthy.
A stout, aging Peeler had been posted to maintain the cordon; his face was a round pool of sweat and his voice was stained with the thick burr of rural Kent. “We suspect the presence of an explosive device,” he said in response to our questions.
“Do you mean a bomb?” I asked, incredulous. “But a bomb of sufficient strength could wreck the Rail. Dozens—hundreds could die!”
The policeman looked somber.
“Who would do such a thing?”
“Ah.” He tipped his helmet back. “The world is full of Anarchists, Socialists and other lunatics, sir; not everyone is as sensible as you or I.”
Holden touched my sleeve and drew me away. “Maybe,” he murmured, “your hay-covered friend is right. But I fear there are plenty of other suspects for such an atrocity, any one of whom might seem quite as rational as you or I—or even as Constable Corn-dolly over there.”
I laughed. “But who?”
Holden shrugged. “The Rail is a beautiful artifact, is it not? But there are many who will regard it as a threat. Anything new is a danger to the Old Order, you see, my young friend. Anything new demands new ways of seeing things, new ways of thinking—and, in some parts of our Continent—such revolutions simply will not do.”
I rubbed my chin and peered up; the gleaming arc of the Rail swept out over the Channel, oblivious of my confusion.
It was after nine of the evening when at last we boarded the Mechanical Staircase which drew us high into the air and to our train. I looked out over the harbor. The sun was close to the water now and the Moon hung high in the sky, a perfect crescent; the Little Moon was a potato-shaped blur that climbed like a cloud into the darkling sky.
From the Staircase we queued to cross a short bridge. I glanced up the length of the train to the locomotive. The great device lay along its single rail like some great iron panther, its gleaming linkage arms wreathed in condensation. The locomotive was generally cylindrical in layout, like the older coal-fueled designs—although its stack was a mere sketch, a ring of iron barely two inches high. I understood that this locomotive would not expel great volumes of coal smoke; indeed, the mist I saw was not smoke or steam, but condensation gathering around the great Dewar flask which lay at the heart of the locomotive, maintaining its few precious ounces of anti-ice at Arctic temperatures.
A brass plate riveted to the cylinder bore the engine’s number and a name:
I handed my carpet-bag to a porter, who carried it along a terrifyingly narrow footpath to a baggage car, and then I followed Holden into our carriage. The carriage itself was more than comfortable, with broad, well- cushioned couches upholstered with leather dyed the rich purple color of the International Light Rail Company. A steward, a small chap with a face rather like a monkey’s perched incongruously above his clean white coat, brought us drinks—I had a scotch and water, Holden a brandy—and, as we waited for the rest of the passengers to board, we settled into a couch by a broad picture window in order to smoke and talk.
I remarked to Holden how taken I had been with the quaintness of our locomotive’s design, contrasting it unfavorably with the new bullet-profiled devices on display at the Exhibition. Perhaps, I reflected, the advances wrought by anti-ice were not without their cost. At some comfortable length we debated this point, and our talk broadened out into the role and impact of anti-ice technology in general; and finally Holden, becoming more expansive as he relaxed, settled down to relate to me the intriguing tale of the discovery of anti-ice itself…
The story of anti-ice (Holden said) began with obscure legends of the aboriginal Australians. According to these savage fellows, at the time the Little Moon first appeared in the European heavens (around 1720), “fire locked in ice” fell from the Australian sky. This ice was tinged with yellow and red, and any man who cupped his hands around the ice would liberate the daemonic fire, to his ultimate doom.
The British explorer Ross, en route to the Antarctic, was intrigued by these legends, overheard in a low bar. He resolved to track them to their source.
His quest brought him to Cape Adare, an Antarctic peninsula south of the Australian continent. Ross and his party spent some days scouting the ice-locked plains. At length they approached a range of low, toothlike mountains and unexpectedly came across a plain strewn with massive boulders. As his dog team threaded its way between these jagged, ice-coated fragments, Ross reflected (he reported in his journal) that it was as if a mountain had exploded and now lay strewn in pieces across the ice. And, oddly enough, there was a gap in the mountain range; it was rather as if a tooth were missing from an otherwise healthy jaw.
As Ross neared the heart of this strange plain he found that the size of the boulders diminished, until the runners of his sled crunched over gravel-like pebbles. The ice hereabouts was also very strange; it was glassy- smooth and, if the top couple of inches were brushed away, quite clear; and there were pebbles and boulders embedded within, as if in amber.
“It seemed to Ross,” said Holden, “as if a great explosion had taken place here. A mountain had been
