Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [112]
"Your Lordship–" I began, but he waved me off.
"No time to talk now. Waited quite enough time already." He turned and walked away, one elbow supported by his servant.
Scape studied me quizzically. "Why did you come back here, anyway?"
"I thought… I was informed… that there was… some sort of crisis here." I looked about in confusion; all was quiet in the house. "And that I was needed here."
"Crisis? I don't know about no crisis." Scape looked round at Miss McThane. "You know anything about a crisis?"
She smiled at me. "Just the usual one."
Another knock came at the door; a different servant hastened towards it. I looked round at the person stepping in, and was staggered backwards by the sight.
"You!" cried Sir Charles Wroth, sighting me.
"What's going on?" said Scape as I cast desperately about for some means of escape. He turned and saw the man who some weeks past had ordered his execution. "Shit!" he said in evident consternation.
Sir Charles staggered into the hallway, his face ashen, his features contorted with an inarticulate horror. His devastated aspect rooted me to the spot. His voice dwindled to a stricken gasp: "I thought… you were… dead." He looked as if he himself were about to collapse.
Scape assisted him in standing upright, fear dispelled by the sight of the Godly Army leader thus disarmed. "Hey, are you all right?" asked Miss McThane, bending close to him.
At that moment, a tremor ran through the structure of the great house. It seemed to come from below, a pulsing vibration that shimmered across the walls and ceiling. The sound, at the very bottom limit of human hearing, brought a groan of anguish from Sir Charles.
My innards suddenly felt hollow, as a grim thought seized me. I remembered words spoken to me, in a carriage racing through the dark countryside. A face that was my own, but another's words: the governing mechanism, once installed in the device it is to control, must be brought within a few miles of the adjunct brain – yours, my dear Dower – for it to pick up the subtle vibrations and begin its operations. My own face was frozen with the realisation, as I gazed at Sir Charles.
He nodded sadly at me. "I would never have willingly done you harm, my boy. But I thought it was necessary, the only way to ensure against this dread event occurring."
"What dread event?" demanded an impatient Scape.
Sir Charles looked round at all of us. "The destruction of the very earth we stand upon."
Scape looked at him incredulously. "You mean that bullshit contraption ol' Bendray's got in the basement?"
"That very device. It is no fraud; it can – and will – do all that is claimed for it." He turned to me. "Your father was of that nature, that cares not for whatever consequences may ensue from its genius; he valued only the achievement of whatever task he was commissioned to perform. I have seen the working models he constructed, and the theoretical calculations on which he based his work. I am a servant of Her Majesty's government, and a member of a special committee of that august scientific body, the Royal Society; our function has long been to observe, and intervene in when necessary, the activities of those who style themselves as the Anti-Society. These men know much of a sinister value, and hold no creed that prevents the unscrupled use of such knowledge. I am no latter-day Puritan, though you have seen me pose as one; the Godly Army, already well familiar with the Anti-Society, served as a useful blind by which to make my own observations; for that purpose I inveigled myself into their ranks, and rose to a commanding position."
His speech, much of it murmured almost to himself, seemed to exhaust him. He swayed against Scape's arm before continuing.
"I knew," he said, "that once the regulating