Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [63]
“Why,” she exclaimed sweetly, “it gives me great happiness to hear you say so.” Then, with a cadence as of a forest rill dropping plaintively into some rocky pool: “You must know that nothing can come of this. Dear Gerald Bemis, it is hopeless. I am pledged; I am bound to someone else. I am what they call a ‘Child of the State’ and the Government has promised me to another man.”
“Who is he?” I asked, thrilled with a sudden fierce defiance of the State and of the man.
As I spoke. Hammerfleet came up behind us, over the crest of Auditorium Hill. Electra moved one hand, indicating him silently.
“You?” I exclaimed, turning savagely to Hammerfleet.
“He is the man,” Electra whispered.
“I have heard your conversation unwillingly,” Hammerfleet observed to me, unmoved. “But we will not discuss it. I came up here to look for you, and to say that it has been arranged that you and I shall start tonight by train for New York, and make some little side excursions on the way — so that you may see more of the country.”
This announcement I recognized as a challenge and a threat, united; but I was resolved to meet whatever it might imply unflinchingly.
“Very well,” I answered. “If Graemantle approves I will accept his decision.”
We three then went down the hillside, not speaking further, and joined the rest of our party. Whether Graemantle suspected anything sinister in Hammerfleet’s plan or not, I could not guess; but I was reassured by his approving it; since it was certain that he could not wish me any ill.
I set out that night with Hammerfleet as a sort of advance guard. Our first stop, early in the morning, was somewhere near Buffalo, when we got out and walked for a while along the highways. Here I noticed the method of getting on and off trains. The cars never stopped. A spring platform bounced passengers from the station on to the end platform of the cars, where they were received on spring cushions. In the case of quick express trains, a parallel train was run at a swifter rate along a neighboring track for a short distance, and the passengers were hurled from this lightly, and upright into the express.
Bicycles, I found, were no longer a fad or a nuisance. Separate paths were provided for them, and, on these, electric bicycles, tricycles, and carriages were run, with power supplied from stations at regular intervals, and at all hotels, by recharging the storage batteries. Horses were but little used for travel, and existed mainly as a form of preserved life, like deer, in parks, or for racing purposes; although, even in racing, their speed was so greatly surpassed by that of flotation sails and rubber-oared boats, and various mechanical four-legged machines for running, that they were now not much more than domestic pets, like cats and dogs. However, although mowing was done chiefly by electric trolley mowers, we saw some draught-horses and carriage-horses in use on farms or on the road we were traveling afoot. In sandy regions, the wheels of horse-wagons had outward curving flanges, which prevented the sinking of sand into the wheel-ruts, and did away with friction and the loss of power by displacement of the sand. Many wagon wheels also were coated with naphthalene, to counteract the friction and the retarding effect of mud in the roads.
Part of the way we traveled in horseless electric carriages after we grew tired of walking. Then again we took to our feet and after a time halted before a vast expanse of machinery installed under an illimitable shed. It looked like an enormous jungle of metal mechanism.
“What is this?” I asked of Hammerfleet. “It resembles a forest, but a forest of iron and steel.”
“That’s precisely what it is,” he answered. “And we’re now going to stroll through it.”
We passed’ in, and were soon lost in the shadows of this wilderness, where the mighty trunks and the waving branches of huge trees were represented by the uprights, beams, levers, cranks,