Clementine

Page 26

Nurse Anne nodded hard and said, “Yes, good. Yes, I’d love to see it—and not only for myself, or for the Southern cause, or for any grand ethical pursuit.”
“Then why?”
“Because Steen is a wicked bastard. A fiend, and worse—but stronger language I’d shudder to deploy in front of the cat. He’s cruel and vile, and…”
Maria suggested, “Revolting? I understand he’s creating a weapon, applying his scientific prowess to ungodly research, and to the creation of a solar cannon that he intends to fire on our capital.”
“That’s true,” Anne said, “Though I think you’ve got him a bit confused, or doubled up. Steen isn’t a scientist, himself. He’s a bully and a thug, and a manipulator.”
“I don’t understand…?”
Anne hopped to her feet. “I’ll show you. Come with me. But don’t touch anything, and if any of the patients try to touch you, do your best to prevent them. They aren’t allowed to take liberties, though the prohibition doesn’t do much to stop them, sometimes.”
The nurse hastily led Maria down another hallway littered with medical detritus—bedpans, medicine trays, and assorted straps or other restraints. As they walked, Maria sought to clarify, “This is a hospital for the mentally afflicted, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” Anne said. “We’ve only been open for a year or two.”
“I thought perhaps this was only a cover for a weapons laboratory. Or so the intelligence I’d received implied as much.”
“That’s funny,” Anne said without any humor. “Down here.” She indicated a set of stairs leading down to the basement, and with a gentle lift of her skirts, she skipped down the steps to a door, which she opened.
She called out, “Doctor Smeeks? Doctor Smeeks, I’ve brought you a visitor.”
From within, they were answered by a thin voice stretched thinner still by exhaustion. It asked, “A visitor?”
“Yes, Doctor Smeeks. It’s me, Anne.” She motioned at Maria, drawing her down into the basement. “And this is Maria. She’s…she’s…” Unable to think of anything better or more concise, she finished, “She’s here to help.”
“Help?”
“Yes sir,” Maria said before she even saw the speaker. “Please, could I…” she looked to Anne for approval, and received it. “Could I speak with you?”
The nurse squeezed Maria’s elbow and whispered, “I beg you, be gentle.”
He crept around a table like a nervous rodent, eyeing Maria and Anne both with open suspicion. Doctor Smeeks was a white-haired man of an age past seventy, with loose-fitting clothes, a frazzled expression, and a pair of jeweler’s lenses strapped across his forehead. He said, “Hello?” and wrung his hands together. “Oh, Anne. You’re alone. Or rather, you’re not alone, but you’re not…you haven’t brought Steen. Or, or. Or the boy,” he added sadly.
“Sir,” Anne came forward to take his arm, leading him forward to meet Maria. “Sir, I’m so very sorry, but no. However, this is Maria—”
“And she’s here to help?”
“She’s here to help. Would you show her your work? She’s very interested in what you’re doing down here, and I promise you,” she added into his ear. “She is no friend of Steen’s.”
“No friend of…that man. What was his name again? Anne, I can’t remember his name.”
“Steen, sir. And it’s all right, don’t worry yourself. Just, could you show us your work?”
“My work?”
“Yes sir, your work. Will you give us a tour of your most recent piece? Remember it, sir? The one you’re building in order to bring back Edwin.” She patted his forearm and he nodded.
“For Edwin.” He glared up at Maria. “The army man. He took my assistant,” his lip trembled. “A fine assistant, and a nice boy. He took him away from me, and I do believe he intends to harm the child if I can’t…if I don’t…”
He twisted his fingers into knots.
“Please, come this way.” He led the women deeper into his laboratory—a dark place brightened by lanterns, lamps, and the few thin windows that ran the length of the wall’s eastern rim. Glass containers of a thousand shapes, sizes, and purposes were stacked and piled from table to table, and tubes made of copper, tin, and steel were bundled like sticks for a fire. The floor was coated with papers covered in tiny, scratchy handwritten notes; and from the ceiling hung models of projects that had been, and projects that were yet to come.
But in the back corner, underneath the longest stretch of skinny window with watery gray afternoon light spilling down into the basement, sat a device almost as massive as the Valkyrie’s primary engine. It had been constructed of pipes, pans, and a vast array of complicated lenses, and it looked like a cross between a microscope and a telescope, melded with the steel-framed corpse of a suspension bridge.
The lenses varied in size from thumbnail-small to windowpane-large, with the biggest mounted before a seat and a console covered with complicated buttons and levers. Maria thought the airship looked like a wind-up toy in comparison to this astonishing machine—all the more astonishing because she had only the vaguest idea of what it was meant to do.
She asked, “Doctor Smeeks, is this…is this a solar cannon?”
“A solar cannon?” he removed the lenses that were strapped to his forehead, and pulled a pair of spectacles out of his front breast pocket. “Something like that. You mean the German doctor’s patent? The gentleman from the Washington Territories?”
“I believe so.”
“Can’t recall his name,” the doctor muttered. “He designed a solar cannon. It was made to be held in the hand, by a large man with exceptional motor skill control, I assume; it was a magnificent prototype, that’s to be sure. But it was no more harmful than a powerful gun, or perhaps a high-capacity cannon. At that size,” he began to say more, but lost his train of thought. “At that size, it was, it was only. A weapon for one man, to kill one man. Not a weapon designed to dash the masses. Not like…this.”
“What do you call it?” Maria asked. She ran her fingertips across the most benign-looking bits of metal frame.
“I don’t call it anything. Until this ship arrives with the final piece, and then I can call it finished, and…” There were tears in his eyes when he said the rest. “And that animal can give me back poor Edwin, and he’d best return the lad to me unharmed!”
He turned away and fiddled with one of the smaller lenses, poking his hand into the spot where a metal plate was cut to hold an object the size of a child’s fist. He picked at it with his nail and hummed something unhappy before looking up again, gazing at Anne with something like wonder.
He asked, “Nurse Anne! What are you doing down here? I hope you haven’t been standing there long; you ought to announce yourself! It’s good to see you of course, as always. It’s a wonder Edwin didn’t say something. Where is that dear boy, anyway? Have you seen him? I thought he was supposed to bring me supper.”
Anne gave Maria a look that asked for compassion, and she took Maria’s arm to lead her away. But first she said, “I’m very sorry to bother you, Doctor Smeeks. We didn’t mean to intrude, but this is Maria, and she’s visiting the facility. You’ve showed us a wonderful array, and we’ll leave you to your work now. Thank you again for your time.”
On the way back up the stairs, Anne said softly, “You see? He’s as harmless as a lamb. He only works when he remembers he must; and when he forgets…”
“Who’s Edwin?” Maria asked.
“Edwin is an orphan, the child of a resident who died here. He lives down in the basement with the doctor, who has taken him as an apprentice. The boy is patient and sweet, and he is a great help and comfort to the doctor, whose mind, as you can plainly tell, has slipped. It’s a true pity. He was once a great inventor, with a keen brain and a warm heart. Now he spends most of his days befuddled and unhappy, except for how he loves the boy.”
Maria said, “And this Ossian Steen—he’s taken the boy away? This is how he manipulates the poor doctor?”
“Correct. He locks the little fellow up with himself, in one of the outbuildings, where he pretends to be a doctor himself. Obviously we don’t let him anywhere near the patients; or rather, it’s just as well he has no interest in them, for he could only do them harm, and he wouldn’t care in the slightest. Missus…” the nurse hesitated, uncertain of what to call the spy. She settled on, “Boyd. I want you to understand that even if I had no lingering loyalties of my own to any nation or side in the long-running unpleasantness, I would wish to see an end to this awful lieutenant colonel. I can’t abide such cruelty—much less to a gentle old man and an innocent child.”
Maria steeled herself against what might come and she de-manded quietly, “Take me to Ossian Steen. We’ll settle this now.”
11
Simeon squinted at the sky and drew a quick, hard sip from his cigarette before tossing it aside. He asked, “You see that?” and he cocked his head towards a corner of the sky where a fistful of puffy clouds were parting to make way for something heavy, high, and dark.
The captain’s scarred face widened with delight. “Men,” he said, “Watch for it. Look—let it land. You see where it’s going?”
The craft swayed as it sought a place to settle; it moved drunkenly and slow, too loaded down to fly swift or straight. It hummed and hovered over the Waverly Hills compound. Atop the low central mound where the sanatorium hulked, the Free Crow slipped and jerked through the air as if it threatened to land on the roof, but it did not rest there. It swung over to the side and behind the main building, into the trees beyond it—where there must have been another clearing, or perhaps a landing dock designed for just such a purpose.