Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [95]
(This history related by the Brown Leather Man brought back to mind Lord Bendray's rambling words in his cellar laboratory beneath Bendray Hall. I had then dismissed his talks of seaweed as nothing more than the wild ravings of a disordered mind; but I did recall that he had made passing reference to his first commission to my father having something to do with the substance.)
It was while on Groughay (so the Brown Leather Man's exposition continued), while my father was installing this seaweed gathering device, that he came into contact with the aquatic race of selkies. Perhaps there was some attraction between minds of similar brilliance: the selkies, being of a philosophical and inquiring breed, possessed much advanced theoretical knowledge pertaining to matters little investigated by human scientists. It was from them that my father learned those arcane principles of sympathetic vibrations in rarefied media, that he subsequently employed in his later inventions such as the Paganinicon. The Brown Leather Man related that my father made several journeys to the island of Groughay, long after the price of seaweed fertilizer had plummeted in 1811, the gathering device been abandoned, and the island depopulated, for the express purpose of consulting with the learned selkie elders on scientific issues.
Or, at least, my father had done so while the selkies still survived as a race. He had, all unwittingly, unleashed the machinery of their doom upon them. The seaweed gathering device so disrupted the cycles of their lives and breeding, that the race began to die out. This fatal process accelerated at a geometric progression, the lifespan of those already born being shortened as well, perhaps through a collective grief. No rancour had ever entered into the relationship with my father; even now, only forgiveness existed in the heart of the Brown Leather Man, the last of his people. Their gentle wisdom had seen that such an outcome had never been intended.
The Brown Leather Man, however, had determined that there was yet some hope. The seaweed beds of the coast of Groughay, unmolested for so long a time, had re-established themselves to their original extent. Even more heartening was his discovery that a number of selkie embryos, in a spore-like state, had survived the process of converting the seaweed to fertilizer. In one spot where the fertilizer had been used, the fens around the village of Dampford, the embryos had matured, come of age, and even managed to mate with the inbred and somewhat devolved natives of that sorry region. The Brown Leather Man was not the first to discover this: Lord Bendray himself had made his decision to buy up the district and establish his residence there, prompted by his recognition of the Dampford villagers for what they were – a cross between humans and the selkies he had been aware of from his youth on the island of Groughay. Being remarkably dull-witted, the cross-bred Dampford villagers were easily victimised by another of Lord Bendray's moneymaking schemes, in which the village girls – their unlovely visages matched by corresponding alterations to their anatomies (I did not press him for elaboration on the subject) were lured into Mollie Maud's service in London to satisfy the jaded passions of her wealthy and bored clientele. So successful had