Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [112]
I pulled on socks and shoes, and an overcoat over the top of my nightshirt. My room was on the first storey, and I had to pass by my parents’ room on the way to the stairs. They had left their door a little ajar—as always, since my screams in the night had become a regular occurrence. They were still awake and talking, and the intensity of Mother’s voice made me stop and listen.
“It will work, Charles, I know it will.”
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t.”
“But you don’t really believe. If Anthony picks up on your cynicism . . .”
“Not cynicism. Scepticism. I have doubts about the science of it, that’s all.”
“Oh, science, science! Sometimes, Charles, you could do with a bit less science and a bit more faith.”
“Now I hear religion talking.”
“Yes, and why not? I was brought up in the Christian faith, and unlike you I haven’t lost it.”
“But this isn’t a matter of faith. Dr. Kessel’s mechanism is a machine.”
“So?”
“So he’s claiming it can locate bad thoughts and draw them off. That’s not physics, it’s superstition. He talks about brain waves and electrical waves, but there’s no science for what he’s claiming to do.”
“Maybe the world is a more spiritual place than you allow. You didn’t always think in this way, Charles.”
“I believe in science to explain the physical world. Copper and steel are only copper and steel. There are laws about what they can and can’t do.”
“Oh, you know all about laws, I’m sure. But you don’t know what it’s like . . .” Mother broke off with a sound like a sob.
When she resumed, her voice was low and muffled. “You don’t know what it’s like to sit by his bedside in the nights. When he’s tormented by those dreams and I can’t do a single thing to help. He needs me and I can’t reach him. I feel so useless, so utterly, utterly useless. My heart just breaks inside of me.”
Father uttered soothing noises, but spoke no words that I could hear.
“There has to be a way, Charles. I need you to believe with me. For his sake. Please.”
I moved on down the corridor. Father would agree, of course—how could he not? It was a side of Mother’s nature I hardly knew. She was normally so very determined and severe. But perhaps severity could come from love . . . I descended the staircase at the end of the corridor, crossed the lobby, and went out into the night.
A strangely agitated night it was—a night to fit my mood. My heart was beating fast as I crossed the lawn. Chill flurries of wind blew this way and that, sending leaves and twigs darting in unpredictable movements around my feet. Overhead, long streamers of cloud raced past in front of the face of the moon. I focused on the mechanical rhythm of thuds and clanks and traced it to the institute’s central building—the building with two tall chimneys, where Dr. Kessel had his rooms.
On this side, a screen of yew trees hid the walls of the building. I remember a sudden lull and calm in the space behind the trees, and the louder reverberation of the mechanism. Long, narrow windows were set just a few inches above the ground. It was as though the whole building had sunk down and buried itself in the earth.
That impression was confirmed when I knelt and peered inside the first window. The floor of the gloomy interior was a good seven feet below my own level. I observed steel tanks and boilers; an organlike array of pipes; cylinders shooting out steam; wheels, gears, and rotating shafts. There were furnaces, too, distinguishable only by the lines of fiery orange that marked the rims of their doors. The place was like an industrial workshop.
Following the rotating shafts with my eye, I saw where they passed through a hole in a side wall. Obviously, there had to be an adjoining room with connected machinery. I drew back, looked along to the next low-set window, and resolved to investigate.
In the adjoining room, the shafts fed into a succession of enormous humped machines, curiously rounded, with protruding ribs and ridges. Nothing appeared to move, yet all was throbbing as if alive. The dominant sound was a deep low hum, which I could feel through the ground