Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [185]
‘Combustion,’ snapped Foley. ‘Not explosion.’
‘I crave your pardon, Foley,’ said Massingham. ‘Infernal combustion.’
Foley’s written proposals were often passed round the under-managers for humorous relief.
‘Internal,’ squeaked Gerald, an eleven-year-old always so thickly greased and blackened that it was impossible to tell what the colour of his hair or complexion might be. ‘Internal combustion, not infernal.’
‘I believe my initial choice of word was apt.’
‘That’s as may be, Massingham, but look...’
The device that had exploded was shaking now, emitting a grumble of noise and spurts of noxious smoke. A crank was turning a belt, which was turning a wheel. Massingham had seen such toys before.
‘Five times more efficient than steam,’ Foley said. ‘Maybe ten, a dozen...’
‘And five times more likely to kill you.’
‘In the early days of steam, many were killed,’ said the Count. He gazed into Foley’s engine, admiring the way the moving parts meshed. It was a satisfyingly complicated toy, with oiled pistons and levers and cogs. A child’s idea of a wonderful machine.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Foley, ‘and you are...’
‘This is the Count de Ville,’ explained Massingham. ‘An important connection of the firm, from overseas. He is interested in railways.’
‘Travel,’ said the Count. ‘I am interested in travel. In the transport of the future.’
‘You have then chanced upon the right place, Count,’ said Foley. He did not offer a dirty hand, but nodded a greeting, almost clicking his heels. ‘For in this workshop is being sounded the death-knell of the whole of the rest of the factory. My transport, my horseless carriage, will make the steam engine as obsolete as the train made the stagecoach.’
‘Horseless carriage?’ said the Count, drawing out the words, rolling the idea around his mind.
‘It’s a wonder, sir,’ said Gerald, eyes shining. Foley tousled the boy’s already-greasy bird’s nest of hair, proud of his loyal lackey.
Massingham suppressed a bitter laugh.
Foley led them past the still-shaking engine on its fixed trestle, to a dust-sheeted object about the size of a small hay-cart. The inventor and the nimble Gerald lifted off the canvas sheet and threw it aside.
‘This is my combustion carriage,’ said Foley, with pride. ‘I shall have to change the name, of course. It might be called a petroleum caleche, or an auto-mobile.’
The invention sat squarely on four thick-rimmed wheels, with a small carriage-seat suspended above them to the rear of one of Foley’s combustion engines.
‘There will be a housing on the finished model, to keep the elements out of the engine and cut down the noise. The smoke will be discharged through these pipes.’
‘The flat wheel-rims suggest this will not run on rails,’ said the Count.
‘Rails,’ Foley fairly spat. ‘No, sir. Indeed not. This will run on roads. Or, if there are no roads, on any reasonably level surface. Trains are limited, as you know. They cannot venture where rail-layers have not been first, at great expense. My carriage will be free, eventually, to go everywhere.’
‘Always in a straight line?’
‘By means of a steering apparatus, the front wheels can be turned like a ship’s rudder.’
Massingham was impatient with such foolishness.
‘My dear Count,’ said Foley, ‘I foresee that this device, of which Mr Massingham is so leery, will change the world as we know it, and greatly for the better. The streets of our cities will no longer be clogged with the excrement of horses. No more fatalities or injuries will be caused by animals bolting or throwing their riders. And there will be no more great collisions, for these carriages are steerable and can thus avoid each other. Unlike horses, they do not panic; and, unlike trains, they do not run on fixed courses. Derailments, obviously, are out of the question. The first and foremost attribute of the combustion carriage is its safety.’
The Count walked round the carriage, eyeing its every detail, smiling with his sharp teeth.