The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World

Chapter 12

"Mayerd!" I said as I tripped over the uneven footing on the bridge. I did not know what it meant, but it was the most common word the French soldiers used and seemed to fit the occasion. With this I stumbled into the soldier next to me, and my musket caught him a painful blow on the side of the head. He yelped with pain and pushed me away. I staggered backward, hit my legs against the low railing—and fell over into the river.

Very neatly done. The current was swift, and I went beneath the surface and clamped the musket between my knees so I wouldn't lose it. After that I surfaced just once, splashing at the water and screaming wordlessly. The soldiers on the bridge milled about, shouting and pointing, and when I was sure I had made the desired impression, I let my wet clothes and the weight of the gun pull me under again. The oxygen mask was in an inside pocket, and it took only seconds to work it out and pull the strap over my head. Then I cleared the water from it by exhaling strongly and breathed in pure oxygen. After that it was just a matter of a slow, easy swim across the river. The tide was on the ebb so the current would carry me well downstream from the bridge before I landed. So I had escaped detection, lived to regather my forces and fight again, and was totally depressed by my complete failure to get past the wall. I swam in the murky twilight and tried to think of another plan, but it was not exactly the best place for cogitation. Nor was the water that warm. Thoughts of a roaring fire in my room and a mug of hot rum drove me on for what seemed an exceedingly long time. Eventually I saw a dark form in the water ahead which resolved into the hull of a small ship tied up at a dock; I could see the pilings beyond. I stopped under the keel and worked my tube of instruments out of the musket and also took everything out of my coat. The gun stuffed into the jacket sleeve made a good weight, and both vanished toward the river bottom. After some deep breathing I took off the oxygen mask and stowed that away as well, then surfaced as quietly as I could next to the ship.

To look up at the coattails and patched trousers of a French soldier sitting on the rail above me. He was industriously involved polishing the blue-black barrel of a singularly deadly looking cannon that projected next to him. It was far more efficient looking than any of the nineteenth-century weapons I had seen, which was undoubtedly caused by the fact that it did not belong to this period at all. Out of more than casual interest I had made a study of weapons available in the era I had recently left, so I recognized this as a 75-millimeter recoilless cannon. An ideal weapon to mount on a light wooden ship, since it could be fired without jarring the vessel to pieces. It could also accurately blow any other wooden ship out of the water long before the other's muzzle-loading cannon were within range. Not to mention destroying armies in the field. A few hundred of these weapons brought back through time could alter history. And they had. The soldier above turned and spat into the river, and I sank beneath the surface again and vanished among the pilings.

There were boat steps farther downriver out of sight of the French ship, and I surfaced there; no one was in sight. Dripping, cold, depressed, I climbed out of the water and hurried toward the dark mouth of the lane between the buildings. There was someone standing there, and I scuttled by—but then decided to stop.

Because he put the muzzle of a great ugly pistol into my side.

"Walk ahead of me," he said. "I will take you to a comfortable place where you can get dry clothing."

Only he did not say clothing, it sounded more like cloth-eeng. My captor very positively had a French accent.

All I could do was follow instructions, prodded on by the primitive hand cannon. Primitive or not, it could still blow a nice hole in me. At the far end of the lane a coach had been pulled up, blocking the lane completely, the door gaping open in unappreciated welcome.

"Get in," my captor said, "I am right behind you. I saw that unfortunate soldier fall from the bridge and drown and I thought to myself, what if he had been on the surface? What if he were a good swimmer and could cross the river, where would he land when moved along by the current? A neat mathematical problem which I solved, and voila! there you were coming out of the water."

The door slammed, the coach started forward, and we were alone. I fell forward, dropped, turned, lunged, grabbed out for the pistol—and seized it by the butt because my captor now had it by the barrel and was holding it out to me.

"By all means you hold the gun, Mr. Brown, if it pleases you; it is no longer needed." He smiled as I gaped and scowled and leveled the pistol at him. "It seemed the simplest way to convince you to join me in the carriage. I have been watching you for some days now and am convinced that you do not like the French invaders."

"But—you are French?"

"But of course! A follower of the late king, a refugee now from the land of my birth. I learned to hate this pipsqueak Corsican while people here were still laughing at him. But no one laughs any longer, and we are united in one cause. But, please, let me introduce myself. The Count d'Hesion, but you may call me Charles since titles are now a thing of the past."

"Pleased to meet you, Charley." We shook on it. "Just call me John."

The coach clattered and groaned to a stop then, before this interesting conversation could be carried any further. We were in the courtyard of a large house and, still carrying the pistol, I followed the count inside. I was still suspicious, but there seemed little to be suspicious of. The servants were all ancient and tottered about muttering French to one another. Knees creaking, one aged retainer poured a bath for me and helped me to strip, completely ignoring the fact that I still held the pistol while he soaped my back. Warm clothes were provided, and good boots, and when I was alone, I transferred my armory and devices to my new clothing. The count was waiting in the library when I came down, sipping from a crystal glass filled with interesting drink, a brimming container of the same close by him. I handed him the pistol, and he handed me a glass of the beverage in return. It glided down my throat like warm music and sent a cloud of delicate vapor into my nostrils the like of which I had never inhaled before.

"Forty years old, from my own estate, which as you can tell instantly is in the Cognac."

I sipped again and looked at him. Nobody's fool. Tall and thin with graying hair, a wide forehead, lean, almost ascetic features.

"Why did you bring me here?" I asked.

"So we could join forces. I am a student of natural philosophy, and I see much that is unnatural. The armies of Napoleon have weapons that were made nowhere in Europe. Some say they come from far Cathay, but I think not. These weapons are served by men who speak very bad French, strange and evil men. There is talk of even stranger and more evil men at the Corsican's elbow. Unusual things are happening in this world. I have been watching for other unusual things and am on the lockout for strangers. Strangers who are not English, such as yourself. Tell me—how can a man swim across a river under water?"

"By using a machine." There was no point in silence; the count knew very well what he was asking. With those dark cannon out there there was no point in secrecy about the nature of the enemy. His eyes widened as I said this, and he finished his drink.

"I thought so. And I think you know more about these strange men and their weapons. They are not of the world as we know it, are they? You have knowledge of them, and you are here to fight them?"

"They are from a place of evil and madness, and they have brought their crimes with them. And I am fighting them. I cannot tell you everything about them because I don't know the entire story myself. But I am here to destroy them and everything they have done."

"I was sure of it! We must join forces, and I will give you whatever help I can."

"You can begin by teaching me French. I have to get into London, and it appears I will need to speak it."

"But—is there time?"

"An hour or two will do. Another machine."

"I am beginning to understand. But I am not sure that I like all these machines."

"Machines cannot be liked or disliked; they are immune to emotion. We can use them or misuse them, so the problem of machines is a human problem like all others."

"I bow to your wisdom; you are, of course, right. When do we begin?"

I returned to the Boar and Bustard for my things, then moved into a room in the count's house. A head-splitting evening with the memorygram—headache is a mild word for the side effects of using this memory-cramming machine—taught me conversational French, and to the count's pleasure, we now conversed in that language.

"And the next step?" he asked. We had dined, and dined well indeed, and were now back to the cognac.

"I need to take a closer look at one of those pseudo Frenchmen who seem to be running things. Do they ever appear alone on this side of the river or, if not alone, in small groups?"

"They do, but their movements follow no set pattern. Therefore I shall obtain the most recent information." He rang the silver bell that stood next to the decanter. "Would you like one of these individuals rendered unconscious or dead and brought to you?"

"You are too kind," I said, holding out my glass so that the servant who had soundlessly appeared could refill it. "I'll handle that end of the business myself. Just point him out and I'll take over from there."

The count issued instructions; the servant slipped away; I worked on my drink.

"It will not take long," the count said. "And when you have the information, do you have a plan of action?"

"Roughly. I must enter London. Find He, the top demon in this particular corner of hell, then kill him, I imagine. And demolish certain machinery."

"The upstart Corsican—you will remove him, too?"

"Only if he gets in the way. I am no common murderer and find it difficult to kill at any time. But my actions should change the entire operation. The new weapons will no longer be supplied and will soon run out of ammunition. In fact, the interlopers may vanish altogether."

The count raised one eyebrow but was kind enough not to comment.

"The situation is complex; in fact, I do not really understand it myself. It has to do with the nature of time, about which I know very little. But it seems that this past, the time we are living in now, does not exist in the future. The history books to come tell us that Napoleon was beaten, his empire wiped out, that Britain was never invaded."

"It should only be!"

"It may be—if I can get to He. But if history is changed again, brought back to what it should have been, this entire world, as we know it now, may vanish."

"A certain risk must be taken in all hazardous enterprises." The count remained cool and composed, moving one hand in a slight gesture of dismissal as he talked. An admirable man. "If this world disappears, it must mean that a happier one will come into existence?"

"That's roughly it."

"Then we must press on. In that better world some other I will be returning to my estates, my family will live again, there will be flowers in the spring and happiness in the land. Giving up this life here will mean little; it is a miserable existence. Though I would prefer that knowledge of this possibility stay locked in this room. I am not sure that all our assistants will accept such a philosophical viewpoint."

"I agree heartily. I wish it could be some other way."

"Do not concern yourself, my dear friend. We will talk of it no longer."

We didn't. We discussed art and viniculture and the hazards inherent in the manufacture of distilled beverages. Time moved quickly—as did the count's men—and even before we started on a second decanter, he was called out to receive a report.

"Admirable," he said upon his return, rubbing his hands together with pleasure. "A small party of the men we seek are even now disporting themselves in a knocking shop in Mermaid Court. There are guards about, but I presume that offers no barrier to your operation?"

"None," I said, rising. "If you will be kind enough to provide some transportation and a guide, I promise to return within the hour."

This was done as asked, and I performed as promised. A morose individual with a shaved head and badly scarred face took me in the carriage and pointed out the correct establishment. I entered the building next to it, an office of some kind, now shuttered and locked with a monstrous piece of hardware most difficult to open. Not that the lock mechanisms were beyond me—never!—but they were so big that my lockpick couldn't reach the tumblers! My knife did, though, and I went through and up to the roof and crossed over to the roof of the next building, where I attached the end of my spider web to the most solid of the collection of chimneys. The strand of the web was a fine, almost invisible and practically unbreakable strand made up of a single long-chain molecule. It ran slowly off the reel that was fastened by a harness to my chest, and I dropped down toward the dark windows below. Dark to others. But the dual beams of ultraviolet light from the projectors on my UV sensitive goggles turned all light as day for me wherever I looked. I entered the window silently, caught my man with his pants down, rendered him and his companion unconscious with a dose of gas, and had him dozing in my arms and back up to the roof as quickly as the fiercely whirring spider web reel could lift us. Minutes later my prize was snoring on a table in the count's cellar while I spread out my equipment. The count looked on with interest.

"You wish to obtain information from this species of pig? I do not normally condone torture, but this seems to be an occasion for hot pokers and sharp blades. The crimes these creatures have committed! It is said the New World aborigines can flay a person completely without killing him."

"Sounds jolly, but there will be no need." I lined up the instruments and hooked up the contacts. "Machines again. I shall keep him unconscious and walk through his mind with spiked boots, even a worse torture in many ways. He will tell us what we need to know without ever knowing he has spoken. Afterward he is yours."

"Thank you, no." The count raised disgusted hands. "Whenever one of them is killed, the civilians suffer from many reprisals and killings. We will knock this one about a bit, rob him of clothing and everything, then dump him in an alley. It will resemble a crime of robbery, nothing else."

"The best idea yet. Now I begin."

It was like swimming in a sewer, going through that mind. Insanity is one thing, and he was certifiably insane like all of them, but outright evil is inexcusable. There was no problem in exacting information, just in sorting it out. He wanted to speak his own language but finally settled for French and English. I plumbed and picked and probed and eventually discovered all that I needed to know. Jules, my companion of the shaved head, was called in for the pleasurable sport of roughing up the subject and dumping him—stripped of his uniform—while the count and I returned gratefully to the unfinished carafe.

"Their headquarters appears to be in a place called St. Paul's. You know of it?"

"Sacrilege, they halt at nothing! The cathedral, the masterpiece of the great Sir Christopher Wren, it is here on the map."

"The one named He is there, and apparently all the machinery and instruments as well. But to reach it, I must enter London. There is a good possibility that I might be able to pass the wall in his uniform since his body has the same radioactivity count as mine, a test they use to detect strangers. But there may be passwords, other means of identification, perhaps speaking in their own language. What is needed is a diversion. Do you have anyone with a knowledge of gunnery among your followers?"

"Certainly. Rene Dupont is a former major of artillery, a most knowledgeable soldier. And he is in London."

"Just the man. I am sure he will enjoy operating one of those high-powered guns. We shall capture a gun ship before dawn. At first light when the gates are opened the bombardment will start. A certain number of shells through the gate, guardhouse and guard should be disconcerting. Then the boat will be abandoned, and the gunners will escape on foot. This will be the responsibility of your men."

"It will be a pleasurable task that I shall personally supervise. But where will you be?"

"Marching into the city with the troops, as I tried to once before."

"Most hazardous! If you are too early, you will be apprehended as you appear or perhaps destroyed in the bombardment. Too late and the gate will be sealed against entry."

"Therefore we must time things exceedingly well."

"I will send for the finest chronometers obtainable!"