The endless vessel, p.20
The Endless Vessel, page 20
He pointed to a glass jar with a cork in it, coated halfway up its sides with a shiny metal, and a thin iron spike piercing the cork and entering the jar. At its end, a thin metal chain was attached and hanging down, touching the jar’s interior, also covered in the same shiny metal as the exterior.
The chain’s other end culminated in an iron ring like those touching the deer. Attached to it was more of the linen-wrapped cable, running to a single round plate affixed to the deer’s chest.
“The containment device is called a Leyden jar,” Anne Beaton said. “It can accumulate electrical charge and store it. About ten years ago, an Italian, Luigi Galvani, discovered that electricity runs through living tissue. He thought it was a unique phenomenon, some special sort of energy. He called this energy ‘galvanic,’ after himself; he was vain, like every Italian I ever met. But Ben Franklin believed Luigi was wrong . . . at least in part. He thought the energy Luigi discovered was no different from ordinary electricity. Old Ben thought electricity was the motivating energy for all life—that it animates us, allows us to think and be. I believe the same.”
She pointed at the lightning engine, then gestured with her finger, running it along the cable until it reached the deer.
“We’ll run a negative charge from the engine into the deer, which should push what we believe is the positively charged remains of its spirit into this plate here”—she pointed at the round metal disk on the deer’s chest—“and then into the Leyden jar. We can measure the amount of current in the jar, and if we’ve set this experiment up properly, we might find ourselves in possession of the captured spirit of a deer.”
Molly’s eyes narrowed.
“And how will that return my husband to me?”
“It will not, madam,” said Aarvan, his tone soothing, “not directly. But in much the same way as a single step brings one closer to a destination, this experiment today will offer us insight that will, in time, lead to your desired result.”
“How much time?” Molly said.
The mystic spread his arms, palms up.
“Who can say? We must only continue the journey.”
She shook her head. Paul had warned her to manage her expectations in terms of how long the effort to conquer death might take. It was an unprecedented area of scientific inquiry, after all. Despite the wisdom of this suggestion, Molly couldn’t help herself. She was burning through her fortune, and every day Apollo felt farther away.
“I understand. I know you’re all working very hard,” she said. “I am grateful, and I am sure Apollo is as well.”
“Step back, Mrs. Calder,” Paul said. “We might need to move quickly. Wouldn’t want to jostle you against any of the equipment.”
Anne, Aarvan, and Paul took up positions around the room. Anne was at the Leyden jar, a short pair of tongs in her hand, having donned a thick leather glove. Paul was at the lightning engine’s controls, and Aarvan was next to the deer with his eyes closed, taking deep breaths and holding his hands, fingers interlaced, above the metal plate on the beast’s heart.
“On three,” Paul said. “One . . . two . . .”
He flipped the main switch on the lightning engine, and with a sizzling crack the deer convulsed. Its entire body arced up off the table, bending its spine into a horrible comma. One of its delicate legs whipped out, striking Aarvan in the face. He cried out and fell back.
Molly felt as if the light had dimmed in the little room, though the sun outside was as bright as ever.
The deer’s jaw was moving, its tongue lolling out, its teeth closing on it with a muffled, horrible snap.
“Stop this!” Molly cried.
“Just a little . . . more . . . ,” said Anne, busy at the Leyden jar.
She was using her tongs to manipulate the spike in the jar, trying to keep the connection to the deer steady despite the creature’s seizure-like movements.
In a corner of the room, Aarvan Bir was curled up on the floor, hands to his face, offering a low moan to the overarching chaos.
Molly could smell an odor—familiar, not entirely unpleasant, cooking meat with an edge of burned hair to it—and she realized the deer was being roasted.
This was no different than venison being cooked for a meal, but somehow it was. Molly felt her gorge rise.
The deer jerked again, and this time it snapped the restraints holding it to the table and rolled off, which in turn pulled the cable attached to the Leyden jar, yanking it off the stool upon which it rested. The jar fell to the ground and smashed, producing a sizzling snap and a tiny flash of light.
Was that its soul? Molly wondered.
The tiniest flicker of hope bloomed in her chest.
Paul flipped a switch on the lightning engine. The device went dark. The room was silent but for the slow creak of the mill shaft turning in its mounts. One could not turn off the river, after all.
Aarvan cautiously sat up. Blood soaked his beard, streaming down from a gash on his cheek.
“Go see Evgeny,” Molly ordered. “A wound from an animal’s hoof can carry corruption. Best have it seen to immediately.”
“I’ll take him,” Paul said. “Fellow seems unsteady.”
He helped Aarvan up, sliding his arm across the other man’s back in support. They exited, slipping out without a word, the Hindu clearly in significant pain.
That left Molly, Anne, and the deer, which had mercifully gone still. The other woman was down on her haunches, poking at the remains of the Leyden jar with her tongs.
“Before the jar broke,” Molly said, “did you get it? Did you see the creature’s soul?”
Anne stood. She placed the tongs and her leather glove on the table and then looked Molly in the eye.
“I don’t want to tell you something that isn’t true, Mrs. Calder,” she said. “I have no idea what was in that jar before it broke. If we’d gotten a charge, I would have done more experiments to measure it, see how it might differ from an ordinary bit of current accumulated via an electrostatic generator. That’s how science works. Perhaps the fact that we are working with electricity led you to believe this problem would be solved all at once, like a bolt of lightning. That will not be the case.”
Her face went softer, more sympathetic.
“But everything we do brings us closer. We learned things today we did not previously know. I might not agree with, or even understand, much of what Aarvan Bir talks about, but on this one point we are fully united.”
She smiled.
“This will happen one step at a time.”
II. Five: The Calder Mill.
SEPTEMBER 1790.
42°28'13.9"N, 71°21'08.9"W
“THINGS HAVE CHANGED HERE SINCE MY LAST VISIT, WIDOW Calder,” said the minister.
Molly considered this statement and all its veiled import. She glanced out through the fine glass panes of her sitting room window, only slightly marred by ripples and tiny bubbles. She and Apollo had chosen each pane together, cut from disks of crown glass before being set in the nine-panel grid of the window frames. A huge expense, and a risky one, considering the strength of winters in the Northeast, but thick exterior shutters had proven successful in protecting both the glass and the home’s warmth during the colder months.
Through these windows one could see the Calder Mill, now unable to be viewed as anything other than the extensive forum for exploring odd ideas it had become. Piles of raw materials, strange contraptions belching smoke, the waterwheel’s crankshafts running through the property, dividing and branching like cracks on a thawing sheet of spring ice. (These shafts were now sealed in protective housings rather than exposed to the elements, allowing them to remain lubricated for much longer periods. Another innovation of Eugenia Greaves.)
Linen-wrapped cabling connected many of the buildings, hanging from poles set at regular intervals, creating the impression of the web of a gigantic spider. These cables could all be traced back to the Charge House, which had been expanded significantly and now contained a large electrostatic generator. Enough of the Mill’s experiments used electricity now that it had been deemed prudent to ensure current was available to the laboratories at all times.
The new Mill was constructed with an eye toward quick solutions and efficiency rather than any attempt at symmetry or beauty. And yet it all felt natural. Grown rather than built. Which, Molly thought, was exactly how it had all happened. The better part of a year had passed since Apollo’s death, and it was astonishing what had been accomplished in that time.
The whole compound thrummed. Everywhere, men and women worked, intent on their tasks, moving supplies, building and deconstructing odd mechanisms, taking part in lectures in the open-air symposiums at which knowledge and theories were passed along and debated. Long tables were set in a cleared meadow for workers to eat and drink and, always, talk, think, exchange ideas.
There was even a makeshift tavern, named the Far Border. An outsider might suspect the name referred to its location near the low stone wall at the compound’s northernmost edge. But Molly’s people knew the tavern’s name suggested another dividing line, between this life and the destination from which no one ever returned.
Yet.
She pulled her mind back to the clergyman sitting before her.
“This place has indeed seen many changes, Pastor Black,” she said. “My aims have shifted from the prior business of the Mill to a new venture.”
“That is what we understand as well, Widow Calder, and why we have come,” replied the minister, a tall, thin man dressed all in black but for a broad white linen collar, who exuded an air of great calm and certainty of purpose.
Molly, the minister, and one other visitor were seated in her parlor around a round table covered by a pristine white linen cloth and a silver tea service. They had arrived unannounced, riding up the river road on a wagon pulled by two workhorses. Pastor Black she knew well—he had presided over Apollo’s burial and had overseen Sunday services for them both for many years at the Old South Church in Boston. The other man was unfamiliar to her. He had the air of a mildly successful tradesman who had worked hard at a profession requiring intense physical labor—building or sailing or warehouse work—eventually saving enough to start his own business. His body was broad but in the manner of an oak tree, not from overindulgence.
This man’s name was Jonathan Franck. Pastor Black had introduced him but offered no explanation as to the reason for his presence at the meeting. Franck had a dark air to him, like a thundercloud preparing to unleash itself upon the landscape.
“There have been suggestions,” Pastor Black said, clearly choosing his words with delicacy, “that you are embarking upon scientific explorations here that are . . . troubling.”
“Troubling?” Molly said. “It is true that I have created a workshop here, dedicated to innovation and the creation of new technology, but this is hardly novel. The Calder Mill has been known for using advanced machinery and techniques since its founding. It was part of my husband’s philosophy for this place, and a great signifier of our success in the manufacture of textiles. I am merely carrying on with work Apollo himself supported. I see nothing troubling about that.”
“Your husband ran a fabric mill, Molly,” Pastor Black said, his tone softening, “but even a cursory glance around your property indicates that no linen or broadcloth is being made here. What are you doing?”
“As I said . . . ,” Molly began, but was almost interrupted by Jonathan Franck.
“Stop dancing with the woman, Pastor,” he said. “We know what she’s doing. She is trying to raise the dead. She lost her husband and then she lost her bloody mind.”
Franck sat back, folded his arms, and glared.
“This is indeed what we have heard, Molly,” the pastor said. “Please tell me these are simply malicious rumors.”
“Of course,” Molly said. “That is nonsense. This place is dedicated to the principles of natural philosophy and how they might be marshaled in the form of machinery and advanced processes that might themselves be used to generate income. It is still a factory, Pastor, but where once we produced thread and rugs and sailcloth, now we produce ideas.”
She lifted her tea and took a sip.
“I believe that, in time, the ideas will prove to be more profitable than the textiles ever were.”
“So you are truly not working in areas that might be considered unnatural? Against the will of God?”
“Upon my honor and the love I held in my heart for my husband,” Molly said.
God puts challenges before us, Molly thought, and everything we do is his will. If he does not want me to pursue the goals I have set myself, why, he’s more than welcome to strike me dead and let me rejoin my husband.
“That is a relief to hear,” Pastor Black said. “Scripture is extremely clear upon this point. Leviticus, chapter twenty, verse twenty-seven; Deuteronomy, chapter eighteen, verse ten; and others besides. Necromancy, sorcery, attempts to speak with the dead . . . all are expressly forbidden.”
“Oh, yes, Pastor Black,” Molly said. “I am well aware.”
And I stopped caring about the Bible’s restrictions the moment the light went out of Apollo’s eyes, she thought. If a way exists to bring someone back, well, God created that path too. If we find it, it will be science, not sorcery.
“Everything here is well within the bounds of what God deems acceptable,” Molly said. “I promise you.”
The image of Aarvan Bir floated up in Molly’s mind, as if in rebuttal to her words. Some of what the mystic had attempted in the past few months did seem to be rooted in something like . . . well, magic. But it didn’t matter. None of it worked. She thought Bir’s time at the Mill was drawing to an end. Even Paul Brooks’s patience for him seemed to be running out, which might be for the best.
After all, not far up the coast was a town called Salem, and memories of what had occurred there a century before had scarcely faded.
A scream rose into the air from somewhere outside the house. All eyes turned toward the window. It grew in volume, stretched and wavered and became ragged, turning into a screech . . . before it was abruptly cut off. The minister and the tradesman turned to look back at Molly.
“A hog,” she said, waving off their stares. “Slaughtered for butchering. I feed my people well. It is important to me that they are well cared for. That has always been the case at the Calder Mill, even in my husband’s time.”
She wondered what the noise actually was. Perhaps another deer falling prey to the un-tender ministrations of Anne Beaton. Or maybe one of Swami Bir’s experiments had actually succeeded and something had appeared in his little corner of the Mill that engendered utter terror in whoever saw it. Or possibly—though she dearly hoped not—someone had gotten caught in one of Eugenia’s gearing experiments, and Molly and her guests had just heard someone’s life being crushed from their body. All were possible.
“Whatever you’re doing here, how well you treat your people, I don’t care,” Jonathan Franck said. “I am here for my daughter. Produce her so the reverend and I might be on our way. It is several hours’ journey back to Boston, and I do not wish to be traveling after nightfall.”
Ah, Molly thought, the man’s intentions becoming clear. You want your property back, to place her somewhere else you think might earn you more coin, or to marry her off in some profitable union.
“What is your daughter’s name?” she asked. “We had many unmarried women working at the Mill, back when it produced textiles. A good number of them decided to stay on when we adjusted our output. Work, after all, is work.”
“Is it?” said Mr. Franck. “At any rate, my daughter is Nellie Franck. You might have her in your books as Penelope. That is her given name.”
“A beautiful name,” Pastor Black said, seeming nervous at what felt like a storm gathering in the room. “From the classics.”
“Yes, I know Nellie,” Molly said. “A charming girl, and a very hard worker.”
“I am aware of my daughter’s good qualities,” Jonathan said. “That is why I want her back.”
“Then I will have her fetched,” Molly said.
She raised her voice.
“Edward?” she called, and moments later her house steward presented himself, a lean man with a majestically maintained mustache.
Edward Albright was the man’s name, and he ensured that the Calder house, and indeed the entirety of the Calder Mill, were kept in good order and security.
“Yes, Mrs. Calder?” he said.
“Please send for Milton and have Nellie Franck brought up here. I believe she’s working with Eugenia’s group in the gear house.”
“Ah, of course,” Edward said. “Should I have her . . . clean up?”
“No,” she answered. “Let her not take the time. It is, after all, several hours’ journey back to Boston.”
In short order, a knock came at the door. Penelope Franck was admitted to the house, then brought to the sitting room. She was a plain girl of about sixteen years, hair in a sensible bun beneath a grey cotton bonnet, wearing a long skirt. Molly knew it had been donned just minutes before: no one worked the Gearworks while wearing anything that might be caught in the endlessly spinning, churning teeth. A few gruesome accidents early on had proven the folly of that idea. Those who maintained the Gearworks wore the most sensible choice for their surroundings: men’s trousers. And since that part of the Mill’s operations was exclusively the domain of Eugenia and her girls, it mattered not at all.
At Penelope Franck’s side was Milton Tenenbaum, a man who had been in the Mill’s employ for over five years. He had first worked for the Calders on an ad hoc basis, but the Mill’s business had become so fruitful that in time they became his only clients. Milton was quick to laugh and quick to finish his meal and ask for more, and maintained an impeccable sense of dress—not easy in a wilderness enclave twenty-five miles from the nearest real civilization.
“Father?” Penelope said, more alarmed than surprised.
