Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [9]
“Pooh,” said Lord Baxter contemptuously. “I’m afraid you overrate your influence. I’ve just glanced at one of your books in the village inn, and it seems to me that it is you who ought to have your liberty curtailed. A man who pours out such balderdash at the rate I understand you do is either a public nuisance or a public danger. I have a notion you are both. But I have no time to waste with triflers. My train goes in half-an-hour. Permit me.” Without waiting for permission, he strode through the open window of my work-room.
I followed. The Faun had evidently heard his voice. It now stood there behind the typewriter, quivering from head to foot, its long ears twitching with fright.
“Ah, here is our little friend,” said Baxter sarcastically — “prettily dressed, too, and ready for travel. Get your coat and cap — my coat and cap, I believe, and come along. Billiter has a nice dish of phosphates waiting for you.”
“I’m not coming,” clicked the Faun shrilly. “I’m going to stay with Mr. Broadbent. You won’t let him take me away,” it pleaded piteously to me.
“Certainly not,” I replied. “I ask you to leave my premises instantly, Lord Baxter.”
“I am going — with my automaton,” he answered.
“It’s not an automaton,” I said. “It is a sentient being, and as such — ”
“He’s simply an experiment,” interrupted Baxter, “and not a particular success at that. I ought to punish him for running away, but if he comes back with me we shall continue,to live in harmony as before.”
“I’m not coming back,” said the Faun sullenly.
“In that case,” said Baxter, thrusting his hand into his pocket, and producing a box, “I’m afraid I shall have to put an end to your existence. I’m experimenting for the good of mankind, and have no time to argue with one of my failures.”
He opened the box, showing an electric battery, and projecting wires with antennae.
“This may interest you, Broadbent,” he said. “You could introduce it into your absurd tales, and make them up-to-date for once. This is a little electric arrangement on the principle of the Marconi apparatus. It sends messages to bodies in harmony with it, and in this case, I regret to say, the message is going to be a little unfriendly. Each living organism has its own peculiar rate of vibration, and I can regulate my instrument into exact correspondence. I happen to know the particular rate of vibration of our friend with the snout and ears, and can make him dance to any tune I like. I press the button here, and you observe that our friend does the rest.”
As he spoke the Faun gave a hideous shriek, and doubled up in agony.
“A neat contrivance, isn’t it?” Continued Baxter in his bantering voice. “Your own rate of vibration, Broadbent, is slightly higher. If you have any curiosity to feel the same symptoms I can easily arrange the experiment. I presume your affairs are in order. If you have any messages to leave behind you might write them down while I am finishing off our friend here. Shall I press the next button?” He said to the Faun. “It would mean a somewhat painful death.”
The wretched animal had fallen to the floor. Tears were streaming from its eyes.
“No” it now sobbed. “I’ll go with you.”
“I thought so,” said Baxter. “I should have been disappointed with that brain of yours if you’d said anything else. Get your topcoat.”
He turned to me and produced a cigarette case, which he offered me. “No? Well, permit me, please. I must have my smoke after an interesting experiment,” he remarked as he struck a match.
The man’s callousness was as appalling as was his power. But I could at any rate impress upon him that his proceedings were no longer unknown to the outer world.
“Lord Baxter,” I said, “we may as well understand one another. You are carrying on experiments that would not be sanctioned by the Government of the country.”
“On the contrary,” he replied, “I am working at my automata expressly for the benefit of the country.”
“And what about your Tetrazzini frog and your calculating ferret?