Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [114]
Scape stepped closer to Sir Charles and myself. He gazed at me, his mouth parted, before speaking. "But what if–" His hand raised to point at me. "What if something happened to his brain? Your brain, Dower. I mean, isn't it because he's got such a… what's it… stolid nature, right?" His speech became even more rapid. "His brain just goes ticking along like clockwork – that's why the regulating device can use the vibrations he gives off, to control the device it's hooked up to – right?"
Sir Charles nodded. "That is correct."
"So, if something happened to his brain – something to make it un-stolid… you know, like excited, right down to the spine – then the vibrations would be off! Outta whack! That machine down there would read them, but they'd be all wrong – it'd screw up the pulsations it's beating out, and they wouldn't work. It wouldn't be able to blow up the world, because it would be picking up new vibrations that were all haywire and resetting itself to them. The goddamn thing would screw itself up! All we gotta do is – change the vibrations from Dower's brain."
Miss McThane was the first to realise his meaning. Slowly, I turned towards her. Our eyes met; then I saw the corner of her mouth twitch into a smile.
I watched, speechless, as she grasped the neckline of her gown in both hands. She tore the bodice open, the fabric bunched into her fists. "All right, sucker!" she shouted. "England expects every man to do his duty!"
A strange, previously unknown feeling came over me. Perhaps by then I had gone mad, driven from my senses by the many travails through which I had passed, or the imminent destruction of the earth served to put all into a new perspective. The very walls of the house seemed to recede far from me, as I gazed upon the roseate satin of her skin. I let her take my hand and lead me up the trembling staircase. The chandelier swayed loose from the ceiling as we mounted the steps, the crystal shattering upon the floor below.
EPILOGUE
"With a sigh to the departed, let us resume the dull business of life, in the certainty that we also shall have our repose."
LORD BYRON, in correspondence to R. C. Dallas, 12 August 1811
The rain has ceased, for a period. It will recommence presently, wrapping in its grey shroud the brief interval of sunlight. Through the dark hours I have written, the dog guarding my labours even as it sleeps in front of the grate's last embers; with the dawn I will append the last stop to this History.
No great discernment is required to note that the earth was not destroyed; we stand upon its dull surface yet. Whether the failure of the attempt to render it asunder was due to Miss McThane achieving her longdesired satisfaction of me, or from a flaw in the device that my father had created, I know not. Suffice it to say that the walls of Bendray Hall still stood after the shuddering vibrations emanating from its cellar had ground to a halt.
Lord Bendray's grasp upon his own sanity proved rather more tenuous. He emerged from his Hermetic Carriage completely mad, obsessed with the notion that the earth had been destroyed, and that he had been taken to another planet by those beings whose acquaintance he had so desired to make. Though silence has been purchased by the proceeds from the Bendray estate, the receivership of which has passed into the hands of distant cousins, rumours still circulate about the pitiable crackbrained Lord, in the hospital wherein he is restrained. He is said to believe that the attendants are in fact those wise creatures from other worlds, and is only quieted by their fabricating absurd details about life on Mars or Venus.
No rumours, whispered or otherwise, have ever reached my ear concerning the Brown Leather Man. In my heart, I believe that dark figure to have returned to his ancestral home off the island of Groughay, there to brood and pass away with the others of his race. The brothel-keeper Mollie Maud is reported to be living in France, her carnal trade in this country having been abandoned