Ghosts of Engines Past Read online

  “How long have we been aloft?” he asked me.

  “One hour and thirty minutes.”

  “And what endurance have we?”

  “Very little. The seal of the bag is imperfect, some hole that my crew missed, so hot air slowly leaks out. I balance that by stoking up the furnace and working the bellows, but the air is cold and thin up here, and it is using too much lamp oil.”

  Gainsley scowled, but did not argue. This was a ship, after a fashion, and I was the captain. He returned to his questioning of Angelica. The wind swung around and began to blow us back towards London. There was little for me to do, other than feed in hot air to maintain height. I watched as Angelica became even more alert. She examined the magnetic compass, Gainsley's pocket watch, and even the furnace. After studying the last-mentioned for some minutes and watching me at work, she gently pushed me aside, bled in some lamp oil and applied herself to the bellows.

  “Astounding,” I gasped. “She deduced its operation, merely from watching.”

  “Very high intelligence,” said Gainsley.

  “And an understanding of machines.”

  Now Angelica scrutinized the barometer, where the mercury indicated that we had risen another quarter mile. To my complete astonishment she touched her finger to the new level of mercury.

  “She understands the operation of this balloon as well as the altitude barometer,” I said. “Very few of my passengers could claim that.”

  “Up here, in rarefied air, she is transformed,” Gainsley observed.

  “How can this be?”

  “Remember my theory, adaptive morphology? I think she comes from a civilization in very high mountains. Ascending into cool, thin air frees her mind from the effects of the sludge that we breathe.”

  Finally I declared that we would have to descend. By then Angelica had not spoken a single word, but she had demonstrated awesome intelligence. My balloon was one of the most advanced vehicles of the time, yet she understood its workings and instruments.

  “Only four hours of exposure to the thin air, yet her brain cleared,” said Gainsley in triumph.

  “She did not speak.”

  “Yet she understood the balloon's workings.”

  “Her werefox race must have its own language,” I suggested.

  It was at this point, just as we began our descent, that Angelica began tapping at the altitude barometer and making upwards movements with her other hand. The part of the scale that she was indicating was for eight miles. This part of the scale was where I had marked uncalibrated altitude projections. She looked to me, her eyes alive and full of pleading. I held up the empty lamp oil barrel and shook my head. She seemed to comprehend, for she now sat quietly on the car's wicker floor and closed her eyes, resigned to the oblivion of sea level.

  Using the varying directions of the wind at different altitudes, I managed to steer us back over Gainsley's estate, then bring us to earth just a mile from where we had ascended. Kelly and Feldman presently arrived with the wagon, then Gainsley's groom brought a light carriage. He was quick to get Angelica into the carriage and away from sight, but with this done he returned to speak with me as I helped my men pack the balloon away.

  “How high may we ascend?” he asked, “and how long may we stay there?”

  “Hot air has its limitations,” I explained. “My balloon must carry its own fuel. Going higher means using more fuel. Using more fuel means less is left over to sustain the hot air and maintain our height.”

  “Could you build a balloon to reach eight miles?”

  I almost choked on my own gasp. The question was akin to asking whether a new type of gun could shoot a duck even more dead than dead.

  “There is no point,” I replied. “Above five miles the air is so rarefied that one may not breathe.”

  “But could you build a balloon to do it?”

  “Using hydrogen, yes, but to what end? It would be our dead bodies that achieve the feat.”

  “Then how high may we go?”

  “I think you mean how high in safety. Four miles is my answer.”

  “Why four?”

  “Remember, the air thins as we ascend. I have ascended three and one half miles. It was distressing, but endurable. My lips and those of my companion turned blue, and fatigue set in very quickly. Four miles is double what we achieved today.”

  “Have others gone higher?”

  “Yes. Some months ago the aeronauts Charles Green and Spencer Rush reached five miles. They found it near to impossible to breathe, however, and consider themselves lucky to have survived.”

  “Five miles. The height is comparable to the highest of mountains to the north of India.”

  “So I have read.”

  “So we too could do it?”

  “Yes, but it would be appallingly dangerous.”

  “I fought Napoleon, just a quarter century ago. How can this be more dangerous than trading volleys with his soldiers?”

  “Death is death, whatever the cause. Why ascend five miles in search of it?”

  “Because at four or five miles we may well clear Angelica's mind to a greater degree. She may even be able to speak. Begin planning for another hot air flight tomorrow, but also draw up plans for a balloon filled with hydrogen.”

  “Do you realize that hydrogen is even more volatile than gunpowder?”

  “Of course, Mr Parkes, I am a man of science. Send the bills for whatever you need to me.”

  “So am I to be kept in your employment?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, board and lodging for you and your men, plus double our agreed rates for the flights because of the increased danger.”

  That night I dreamed, and my dreams were lurid. My mind was filled with visions of vast, gleaming things that glided through blackness, and blossoms of fire that became twinkling clouds of glitter. I awoke, not so much distraught as puzzled. The dreams had become part of my memory. What was more confusing was that I had other memories that were not part of the dreams. There were splendid cities full of graceful crystalline towers and wide promenades, yet all of them were strewn with dead creatures. At first I thought that the bodies were of vermin, but many of them were wearing straps and belts, gold braid, ceremonial swords and even helmets. Perhaps they had built the cities, these creatures that wore no clothes but fur. They closely resembled Angelica.

  We made another dozen hot air ascents while the hydrogen bag was being fabricated. We did not manage much more in communicating with Angelica, but the visions continued to pour into my head every time we ascended. I said nothing, because practical men are not meant to have visions and I wanted to keep Gainsley's trust. Would you travel on a ship whose captain said that he could see water sprites, mermaids and harpies? I can only compare my visions to leafing through randomly chosen books in a library. I saw nothing of the whole picture, just snatches of fragments.

  A gas works at the edge of London provided the hydrogen, which saved the cost of buying a hydrogen reactor, and chemicals to fuel it. The first hydrogen flight saw us ascend from the city in the half-light before dawn. We remained at four miles for only a quarter hour, because Gainsley quickly weakened, then lost consciousness. I descended rapidly, and when he revived he confessed that his lungs had been weakened by some childhood disease. On the other hand Angelica had been vastly improved by even the brief exposure to the thin air, and had even scrawled some characters and diagrams on a notepad. Alas, we could make no sense of them.

  On the way down I had a number of ideas. Gainsley had been complaining about his lungs preventing him from staying at four miles. I offered to take Angelica to five miles without him and report what she did, but he would not hear of it. Whatever she did, he wanted to be there to see it.

  “If only I could make the ascent myself,” he sighed.

  “Impossible. Even at four miles we are on borrowed time. You especially.”

  “Green and Rush did it.”

  “Only briefly. They were on borrowed time too.”
r />   “Yet they lived.”

  “They lived because they descended in haste. People must acclimatize slowly to very high altitudes. Mountaineers I have spoken to say that it takes weeks.”

  “Find a way. Two hundred pounds, and I will pay for whatever you need.”

  “Two hundred pounds, you say?” I exclaimed, both amazed and puzzled by his generosity.

  “I do pledge that.”

  “Then there may be a way. I have been reading about the nature of air, my lord. You may have heard of the experiments with glass jars and candles. Burn a candle in one, and it will go out when the oxygen is exhausted. Introduce a mouse to that depleted air, and it soon suffocates.”

  “Explain further.”

  “Suffocation interests me, being a balloonist. I performed this experiment, then I piped some pure oxygen into that depleted air. The mouse revived.”

  Gainsley thought about this for some time, smiling and nodding every so often.

  “How heavy is the mechanism for supplying oxygen?” he asked at last.

  “I need a bigger reactor to supply enough oxygen for humans, but it need not be very heavy. Just a tank, some pipes, spigots, and a sealable chute.”

  “Then build it, build it! I shall pay for the materials and labor.”

  “And the two hundred pound bounty?”

  “It is yours.”

  The problem of staying alive at extreme altitudes occupied my mind a great deal in the days that followed. Oxygen is the essential ingredient of air that gives us life, yet it comprises only one part in five of air's volume. Provide air that is five parts in five oxygen, and one might well survive in much thinner air. I paid a visit to Darkington and Sons, Pneumatic Systems and Valves of Sheffield. Jeremy Darkington was about Gainsley's age, but he was dressed as a tradesman and spoke with a hybrid Yorkshire-Cockney accent. He was a skilled metalworker who had made good by supplying valves for steam trains.

  While he sat behind his desk, I unpacked my chemicals. I uncorked a bottle and poured a little solution into a glass, then opened a jar of dark purple crystals. I dropped one into the glass, where it began to bubble with great vigor.

  “Permanganate of potash added to peroxide of hydrogen will release oxygen,” I explained as we watched the reaction turn the liquid to a greenish purple froth.

  “I know t'reaction,” he replied.

  I now laid out drawings before him.

  “I wish to have a reactor built. Peroxide will be fed in here, potash here. Oxygen will be released into this pipe as they react, and when they are spent, the solution will be vented through this tap before fresh materials are introduced to give off more oxygen.”

  He examined the drawings, scratching his head from time to time, but generally nodding. At last he looked up.

  “Can be built, but what end for it? There's oxygen all about.”

  “I have an application that calls for pure oxygen. An industrial application.”

  “Ah.”

  “How much to build it, and how long?”

  “Summat busy for present... thirty pounds. Just now there's batches of valves for Mister Stevenson's new engine fleet... a fortnight?”

  “Done! Put my contract on your books.”

  My reactor looked viable in principle, but the only way to test it was by means of a flight. That was risky. Still, it was worth the risk.

  My father had two sayings that I lived by. Luck is opportunity recognized, was sensible enough, except that opportunity generally eluded me. That which is too good to be true is never true, was a little less positive, yet it had kept me out of trouble on many occasions. Gainsley and his schemes seemed too good to be true, yet he paid generously enough.

  I was returning from Sheffield, and was within ten miles of Gainsley's manor house when a rain storm swept over the countryside. Because it was late in the afternoon, I decided to spend the night at a small inn on the edge of a hamlet. I was dining on a pork pie when a bearded man approached me. He was dressed as an itinerant laborer, but that illusion vanished as soon as he began to speak.

  “So, you are Gainsley's latest balloonist,” he said in a soft, almost conspiratorial voice with a French accent.

  “I do not know you, sir,” I responded warily.

  “My name is Norvin, and I know you to be Harold Parkes.”

  Clearly he had something serious to discuss. I gestured to a chair.

  “You said I was Lord Gainsley's latest balloonist, yet the baron never flew before I took him aloft.”

  “He has had four balloonists. Routley, he died in a mysterious duel in 1831. Sanderson died of food poisoning, two years later. Elders fell from the carriage of a train in 1837, and was found beside the tracks with his neck broken. I would wager my last pound that it was broken before he fell.”

  I felt a stab of alarm, but the stranger showed not a trace of hostility.

  “You said four balloonists,” I prompted.

  “I was on a fishing boat, supposedly being taken back to France. One mile out to sea, I was padlocked to a length of iron rail and heaved over the side.”

  “Yet here you are, alive.”

  “When on hard times I supplemented my income by liberating goods guarded by padlocks. Thus my pickwire is always upon my person. It was a near thing, picking a lock in darkness, under water.”

  I was aware that those balloonists he had named had died, for we are a small fraternity. Now I speculated.

  “The balloonist Edward Norvin was French, and a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. He vanished in 1836.”

  “So I did, Monsieur Parkes. The seventeenth day of July at one hour before midnight. One does not forget days like that in a hurry. I grew a beard and developed a new identity.”

  “Can you prove that Gainsley was involved?”

  “Can you prove that Gainsley and yourself have had any business dealings?” he asked in turn.

  I raised my finger and opened my mouth to reply... but said nothing. All of our dealings had been in cash. My men Kelly and Feldman now lived on the Gainsley estate, as did I. Nobody knew. The color quite probably drained from my face. Norvin smiled and took a sip from his tankard.

  “You are having dreams and visions, Monsieur Parkes,” he continued. “The visions begin to tumble through your mind when ascending with Gainsley and Angelica. They begin at about ten thousand feet, the altitude at which the fox woman's mind becomes more clear. It is as if she were emerging from a drunken stupor, raving randomly.”

  “But she has never said a thing.”

  “She is not like us. She speaks with her mind, her words are images of thoughts. I would say that you have said nothing of this to Gainsley as yet.”

  “Why?”

  “You are still alive.”

  I did not want to hear any of this, yet it seemed true.

  “I saw landscapes that were all red and green under a violet sky,” Norvin continued. “There were cities of silver crystal, their streets strewn with bodies although the buildings were intact. It looked like a scene of plague. My perspective was odd. It was as if I were being dragged about, being made to look at the bodies. The only moving figures were wearing helmets and coveralls that resembled a Seibe diving suit—except that the helmets were made of glass and had no air hoses.”

  Now I began to feel really frightened. Norvin was describing precisely what I had seen, both in the ascent visions and in my dreams. I decided to be honest, in order to gain his trust.

  “I have also had dreams filled with vast, gleaming things that floated in blackness against constellations of unfamiliar stars,” I confessed.

  Norvin nodded. “I have had similar dreams and visions. Tell me more.”

  “I—I cannot describe the gleaming things because they are like nothing in my experience, yet they moved with the stateliness of huge ships. They blossomed into white fire that yellowed, then became twinkling, gleaming clouds of fragments.”

  “Warships of the air, perhaps, fighting at night. I saw great crowds cheering
Angelica. There had been a battle. She was a hero. She was their leader.”

  “A woman as leader? Preposterous.”

  “Why so? The young Queen Victoria is currently monarch of your vast empire. In the Sixteenth Century Queen Elizabeth ruled you, and she was indeed a warrior queen. In France we had Joan of Arc.”

  Again we sat in silence. By now I was in a cold sweat, in spite of the fire roaring in the hearth.

  “It is my opinion that Angelica came from somewhere very, very high,” Norvin speculated. “Perhaps from Tibet, in regions that have never been explored. Regions that cannot be explored, because we cannot breathe there. I have studied maps, such as they exist. I have read accounts by the explorers Celebrooke and Webb. They reported mountains five miles high. I think that our visions are of cities high in those mountains. It is a region the size of France of which we know nothing. What of the bodies in the visions? What is your thought on them?”

  “A plague. Angelica fled for her life. Down, out of the cool, pure air. Down into the thick, warm, soporific atmosphere of humans. For her it would have been like lying in a bath of warm whiskey. Her brain is permanently addled by the dense air. Back in the mountains she would be restored, but in my balloon, four miles above this tavern, her mind also begins to clear in the thin air.”

  “No plague,” said Norvin. “I have had four years to think about the content of my visions. Angelica was not fleeing a plague, she was exiled. There was a war. She was their Napoleon, and she lost.”

  “That is just too fantastic—” I began.

  “Gainsley hopes to learn the secrets of her people's weapons and crafts by listening to the babblings of her mind. As her mind clears, she speaks delirious visions in the minds of all those nearby. That is why he employs you. He wants to learn secrets that could change the world. He has sketched machines and weapons that he does not yet understand, and each flight allows him to gather more fragments from her mind. His problem is that he must always have a balloonist with him, because he is prone to faint in thin air. That is why he killed the others. He does not want anyone to accumulate as many of Angelica's visions as he has. You told him nothing about the visions, so perhaps he assumes you have a deafness of the mind.”