Changeless

Page 30

Kingair’s aethographic transmitter was raised up on little legs above the stone floor of the castle. It looked somewhat like two attached privy houses with footstool feet. Everything was brightly lit with gas lamps, as the pack had clearly spared no expense on this room. It was also clean.
Lady Maccon craned her neck to see into the darkened interior of the chamber that Madame Lefoux worked under. It appeared that the transmitting mechanicals were the ones being problematical. The Frenchwoman had with her a hatbox that appeared to be no hatbox at all but a cleverly disguised toolkit. Lady Maccon instantly coveted one herself—so much less obvious than a dispatch case.
The bespectacled claviger, with the ever-present expression of panic, crouched nearby, passing the inventor, one after another, a string of exciting-looking tools.
“The magnetomotor modulating adjustor, if you please,” Madame Lefoux would say, and a long, sticklike object with a corkscrew of copper at one end and a glass tube full of an illuminated liquid at the other was passed over. Shortly after, there would emit another curse, the tool would be passed back to the claviger, and a new one called for.
“Goodness gracious,” exclaimed Alexia. “What are you doing?”
There came the sound of a thump, Madame Lefoux’s legs jerked, and further cursing ensued. Moments later, the Frenchwoman wormed her way out and stood up, rubbing her head. The action only added to a vast collection of grease smudges covering her pretty face.
“Ah, Lady Maccon, how lovely. I did wonder when you would track us down.”
“I was unavoidably delayed by husbands and Ivys,” explained Alexia.
“These things, regrettably, are bound to occur when one is married and befriended.” Madame Lefoux was sympathetic.
Lady Maccon leaned forward and, using her parasol as a prop, tried to see underneath the contraption. Her corset made this action mostly impossible, so she turned back to the Frenchwoman. “Have you determined the nature of the problem?”
“Well, it is definitely the transmitting chamber that is malfunctioning. The receiving room seems fully operational. It is hard to tell without an actual transmission of some kind.”
Alexia looked to the claviger for confirmation, and the young man nodded. He did not appear to have much to say for himself, but he was eager to help. The best kind of person, felt Alexia.
“Well,” said Lady Maccon, “what time is it?”
The young gentleman took out a small pocket watch and flipped it open. “Half past ten.”
Lady Maccon turned to Madame Lefoux. “If you can get it ready by eleven, we can try to raise Lord Akeldama on his aethographor. Remember, he gave me the codes, a valve frequensor, and an eleven o’clock time slot for open-scan transmission.”
“But if he doesna have our resonance, what good is that? He willna be able to receive.” The claviger snapped his watch closed and stashed it once more in his waistcoat pocket.
“Ah,” Madame Lefoux jumped in, “he has a multiadaptive model that does not operate using crystalline compatibility protocol. All he need do is scan for a transmission to his frequency during the allotted time. We can receive back because Lady Maccon does have the appropriate valve component.”
The claviger looked even more surprised than usual.
“I understand they are dear friends.” Madame Lefoux appeared to feel this would explain everything.
Alexia smiled. “On the evening of my wedding, I held his hand so he could watch the sunset.”
The claviger looked confused. Again, more confused than usual (his was a difficult face for expressing the full range of human emotion).
Madame Lefoux explained, “Lord Akeldama is a vampire.”
The young man gasped. “He trusted you with his life?”
Lady Maccon nodded. “So trusting me with a crystalline valve, however technologically vital, is no very great thing by comparison.”
Madame Lefoux shrugged. “I do not know about that, my lady. I mean to say, one’s life is one thing; one’s technology is an entirely different matter.”
“Nevertheless, I can provide you the means to test this aethographor’s effectiveness, once it has been repaired.”
The claviger gave her a look of burgeoning respect. “Efficient female, aren’t you, Lady Maccon?”
Alexia was not certain whether she should be pleased or offended by the statement, so she chose to ignore it.
“So, I had better get to it, hadn’t I?” Madame Lefoux turned and crawled back under the transmitter, returning to her tinkering.
Muffled words emanated a few moments later.
“What was that?”
Madame Lefoux’s head reappeared. “I said, would you like to inscribe a message to Lord Akeldama while you are waiting?”
“Superb idea.” Lady Maccon turned to the claviger. “Would you mind finding me a blank scroll, a stylus, and some acid?”
The young man jumped to oblige. While she waited for the supplies, Alexia poked about looking for the pack’s valve frequensor library. Who did Kingair communicate with? Why had they bothered to invest in the aethographor at all? She found the crystalline valves in a small set of unlocked drawers off to one side. There were only three, but they were all entirely unlabeled and without any other identification.
“What are you doing, Lady Maccon?” The claviger came up behind her, looking suspicious (an expression entirely unsuited to his face).
“Just pondering why a Scottish pack would need an aethographor,” replied Alexia. She was never one to dissemble when forthrightness could keep others off guard.
“Mmm,” the young man replied, noncommittal. He handed her a metal scroll, a small vial of acid, and a stylus.
Lady Maccon set herself up in one corner of the room, tongue sticking out slightly as she attempted to be as neat as possible inscribing one letter into each grid square on the scroll. Her penmanship had never won her any school awards, and she wanted to make it as clear as possible.
The message read, “Testing Scots. Please reply.”
She removed Lord Akeldama’s crystalline valve from the secret pocket of her parasol, carefully using her copious skirts to shroud her movements so the claviger could not see where it was hidden.
Madame Lefoux was still puttering, so Lady Maccon entertained herself by exploring the receiving room, the part of the aethographor on which Madame Lefoux was not working. She tested her own memory on the parts. They were, in general, larger and less streamlined than on Lord Akeldama’s transmitter, but they were in the same place: filter to eliminate ambient noise, dial for amplifying incoming signals, and two pieces of glass with black particulate between.
Madame Lefoux surprised Alexia with a gentle touch on her arm.
“We are almost ready. It is five minutes until eleven. Shall we set the machine to transmit?”
“Will I be allowed to watch?”
“Of course.”
The three of them crammed into the tiny transmitting room, which, like the receiving room, was packed with machinery that looked like Lord Akeldama’s—except that the gadgetry was more tangled, something Alexia had not thought possible, and the dials and switches were more numerous.
Madame Lefoux smoothed out and slotted Alexia’s metal scroll into the special frame. Alexia placed Lord Akeldama’s valve into the resonator cradle. After confirming the time, Madame Lefoux pulled down on a large knob-ended switch and engaged the aetheric convector, activating the chemical wash. The etched letters began to phosphoresce. The two small hydrodine engines spun to life, generating opposing aetheroelectric impulses, and the two needles raced across the slate. Sparking brightly whenever they were exposed to one another through the letters, transmission commenced. Alexia worried about the rain causing delay, but she had faith that Lord Akeldama’s improved technology was capable of greater sensitivity and could cut though climatic interference.
“Testing… Scots… please… reply” sped invisibly outward.
And leagues to the south, at the top of a posh town house, a well-trained vampire drone, dressed like a candied orange peel, who looked as though his gravest concern was whether winter cravats permitted paisley or not, sat up straight and began recording an incoming transmission. The source was unknown, but he had been told to sweep on broad receiving at eleven o’clock for several nights straight. He took down the message and then noted the transmission coordination frequency and the time before dashing off to find his master.
“It is hard to know for certain, but I believe everything went smoothly.” Madame Lefoux switched off the transmitter, the little hydrodine engines spinning quietly down. “Of course, we will not know if communication has been established until we receive an answering transmission.”
The claviger said, “Your contact will have to determine the correct frequency from the incoming message so that he can dial it in from his end, without a companion valve frequensor. How long will such an endeavor take?”
“No way to know,” replied the Frenchwoman. “Could be quite rapid. We had best go turn the receiving room on.”
So they let themselves into the other chamber and lit the silent little steam engine located under the instrument board. Then came a long quarter of an hour simply sitting, as quietly as possible, waiting.
“I think we will give it just a few more minutes,” Madame Lefoux whispered. Even her whisper caused the magnetic resonator coils to shake slightly.
The claviger frowned at her and went to retune the ambient noise filtration component.
Then, with no warning at all, Lord Akeldama’s message slowly began to appear between the two pieces of glass on the receiver. The small hydraulic arm with its mounted magnet began painstakingly moving back and forth, shifting the magnetic particulate one letter at a time.
The claviger, whose name Alexia still did not know, began carefully and quietly copying down the incoming letters on a soft piece of washed canvas using a stylographic pen. Lady Maccon and Madame Lefoux held their collective breaths and tried not to move. Silence was vital. After each letter was complete, the arm reset itself and the glass shook softly, erasing the previous letter and preparing for the next.
Eventually, the arm stopped moving. They waited a few more minutes, and when Alexia went to speak, the claviger held up his hand autocratically. Only when he had switched everything off did he nod, allowing them to talk. Lady Maccon realized why he had charge of the aethographor. The Scots were a silent, dour lot, but he seemed to have the least to say of any of them.
“Well? Read out the message,” she demanded.
He cleared his throat and, blushing slightly, read out, “ ‘Got you. Scots taste good?’ ”
Lady Maccon laughed. Lord Akeldama must have misread her message. Instead of “testing Scots,” he had read “tasting Scots.” “Regardless of the reply, we know that this transmitter is working. And I can gossip with Lord Akeldama.”
The claviger looked offended. “An aethographor isna intended for gossip, Lady Maccon!”
“Tell that to Lord Akeldama.”
Madame Lefoux’s dimples appeared.
“Could we send him one more message to be certain as to the efficaciousness of the transmitting room?” Lady Maccon asked hopefully.
The claviger sighed. He was reluctant to agree but was apparently also unwilling to resist the request of a guest. He wandered off and returned with another metal scroll.
Alexia inscribed, “Spy here?”
From what she could recall, Lord Akeldama’s newer model had the ability to overhear other transmissions, if it knew where to look.
Minutes later in the other room, the reply came. “Not mine. Probably chatty bats.”
While the other two looked confused, Alexia only nodded. Lord Akeldama thought that any spy would belong to the vampires. Knowing her friend, he would now take it upon himself to start monitoring the Westminster Hive and nearby roves. She could just imagine him rubbing pink-gloved hands together, thrilled with the challenge. With a smile, she removed Lord Akeldama’s valve and, when the claviger was not looking, stashed it back in her trusty parasol.
Lady Maccon was exhausted by the time she sought her bed. It was not a small bed by any means, yet her husband seemed to be occupying the entirety of it. He was sprawled, snoring softly, wrapped every which way in a ragged and much-abused (clearly throughout its long and not very successful life) coverlet.
Alexia climbed in and applied a tried-and-true technique she had developed over the last few months. She braced herself against the headboard and used her legs to push him as much to one side as possible, clearing sufficient space for her to worm her way down before he took to sprawling once more. She supposed he had spent decades, even centuries, sleeping alone; it would take some time to retrain him. In the meantime, she was developing some decent thigh muscles from her nightly ritual. The earl was no lightweight.