The Calorium Wars Page 5

  “A table of ranks, begorrah!” McPherson exclaimed, slipping back into a brogue in his uneasiness. “D’ye mean like the Tsar of Roossia, yer Honor?”

  Stanton rolled his eyes: “I trust the public will be more go-ahead than you two stick-in-the-muds. Look here!”

  He levered his corpulent body up out of the armchair with an involuntary grunt and crossed to a roll top desk which he unlocked with a small brass key. Rolling back the tambour of linked wooden slats he pulled out a long scroll and unfurled it in front of his subordinates.

  “Have a look at that!” said Stanton proudly. He gestured at three densely-packed columns of print spread across a sheet of white oilcloth the size of a folded-out newspaper. “And count yourselves privileged to be among the first witnesses to the Magna Carta of a new America.”

  Trying in vain to make sense of the thing, Pilkington nervously dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. “It’s ah … amazing!” he said.

  McPherson was leaning forward in his chair, peering intently at the scroll as he chewed on his lower lip: “There’s to be civil ranks?” he said dubiously. “Plus military ranks and Federal Government Ranks? Mr. Secretary, sorr!” he exclaimed. “Ye mean to say we’re all to be assigned ranks starting from Warrant Officer and Collegiate Assessor and ending with Privy Councilor and Field Marshal? It’s pure Roossia, sorr, no American’s going to stand for it!”

  Glaring at Pilkington and McPherson with eloquent disgust, Stanton rolled up the scroll and put it back in the desk.

  “Stand for it or not, it will be the law of the land beginning on the first of December!”

  Stanton dropped back into his armchair with a protesting squeal of springs and finished off his bourbon as the others hastily followed suit, gulping down the liquor as if it might be their last earthly comfort. Stanton shook his head, watching them with a bleak eye:

  “The Russian Tsar may be an enemy, gentlemen, but that shouldn’t stop us from taking good ideas where we find them. We are entering a time of great unrest, of war and sedition and economic uncertainty. If our manufacturing and commerce are to flourish and triumph over our competitors in the world market-place Americans must act together, without pulling in different directions, and that’s the beauty of the Table of Ranks. Every single white male citizen will have a rank within the body politic, with all the corresponding duties and rewards. Everybody will have his place in society and keep to it on pain of death, so that everyone will know whom they must obey and—with the exception of the lowest rank, who must obey them. Not to mention,” he added with a self-satisfied smirk, “the assignment of fixed addresses for men of every rank, to be changed only by application to the proper authorities!”

  Pilkington cleared his throat desperately: “But what if some refuse to comply, sir, what if they’re happy not having a rank and a fixed address, what if they’d rather just be …” he waved his hand helplessly … “you know, private citizens?”

  Stanton sat back in his armchair, his eyebrows arched in disbelief: “Private citizens in a time of national emergency? Are you serious, Willie? There are no such creatures—in a time of emergency everyone must serve the common good! As to what you should do if someone refuses to obey a lawful Government order, you’ll shoot them, of course! Pour encourager les autres!”

  Pilkington nodded distractedly and looked towards the ceiling as if he were hoping for it to melt away and let the winds sweep him up to heaven, like Elijah.

  “Right,” he muttered weakly, “of course.”

  Stanton looked back and forth from Pilkington to McPherson and rolled his eyes. “If only I could get Tesla to wire your heads together perhaps you two might have one good brain between you! It’s all about timing, gentlemen! Our success will depend on perfect timing, with no room for slip-ups or trying again! That’s why we need the Table of Ranks: we must have order and discipline if we are to end up being the ones holding the knife when the time comes to carve up the world’s wealth!”

  As he spoke the last word a bell rang in the front of the bus and a window opened in the partition behind the driver, who sang out:

  “We’re at Tenth and Boorman, Mister Secretary!”

  Wreathed in smiles, Stanton pulled himself to his feet again, gesturing to the others to follow him.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” he said, “having this factory in production is going to be the keystone of our future plans!”

  The Johnnies snapped to attention and executed a smart “Present arms!” as Stanton moved past them to the open door of the bus, followed—with somewhat less enthusiasm—by Pilkington and McPherson. As Stanton stepped down onto the street ahead of them, Willie turned to McPherson and muttered urgently:

  “What the devil is this place, do you know?”

  McPherson, his ruddy complexion noticeably paler than usual, crossed himself and spat over his shoulder for luck: “Sure, yer Honor, whatever it is I’m startin’ to wish I’d never left County Kerry.”

  Outside, the hazy Indian summer sun illuminated a huge red-brick Gothic building with mock battlements, conical spires with slate roofs topped with greenish brass lightning rods and weather vanes, and innumerable rows of small windows suggesting a colony of monastic scribes in dusty brown robes. Previously, the rambling structure had in fact been a Catholic priory but Stanton had disestablished it and transferred all the monks to an engineer battalion engaged in building defensive earthworks around Washington, D.C.

  Now, as the Secretary of National Security and his henchmen approached the entrance, a tall, soberly-dressed man with a military bearing and a pronounced limp appeared from a dimly-lit archway and hobbled towards them.

  “Mr. Secretary!” he called out. “Welcome to Federal Calorium-Engine Works #1!”

  “Sergeant Longfellow! Or perhaps I should say Engineer Longfellow.” Stanton said as he took the man’s hand and shook it warmly. “It’s a pleasure to see you again!” He gestured towards the others: “These gentlemen are my assistants, Mr. Pilkington of the Secret Service and Mr. McPherson of Pilkington’s International Detective Agency.”

  “Welcome, gentlemen,” Longfellow said with a half-bow towards the others. Pilkington murmured something noncommittal while McPherson nodded curtly, observing the man’s red nose and rivers of sweat with the sharp eye of a fellow tippler, and the suspiciously heavy lump in his right jacket pocket with the equally sharp eye of a seasoned street fighter.

  None of this seemed to bother Stanton, who clapped Longfellow on the shoulder and gave him a benevolent smile. “Longfellow lost his leg at First Manassas when he was accompanying me on a reconnaissance of the Rebel positions, and we have stayed in touch ever since he returned to NYU to become a mechanical engineer. A brave man and a loyal soldier! Well, Mr. Longfellow, is the factory ready for our inspection?”

  “We have put our backs into it, sir,” Longfellow said, “both my staff and the laborers, and though there may be a rough spot or two, I judge we’re ready for you! If you gentlemen will just follow me, I’ll be glad to give you a guided tour.” With that, he turned and hobbled towards the entrance, flanked by Stanton and followed grudgingly by Willie and McPherson.

  As they walked through the arch and approached a substantial gate of brass-bound oak, a smartly-attired black doorman saluted them and pulled it open to reveal an astonishing vista: walls had been knocked down to make one vast space out of the sanctuary, the refectory where the monks had once dined, and the library, so that as Stanton’s party stood at one end they could barely make out the far end despite bright carbon-arc lamps hanging from the rafters fifty feet above them.

  In the open space itself, hundreds of men—all of them black, and all of them wearing identical denim uniforms, each with an identification number stenciled front and back—labored next to what looked like three miniature copies of an elevated railway, the rails set at waist height and approximately two feet apart. But instead of miniature railroad cars, what moved between the rails was a tambour
of metallic slats similar to the wooden slats on Stanton’s roll top desk. And the tambours were kept rolling endlessly forward by a steam engine at the end of each line that turned a roller at a steady, deliberate speed as its gears engaged the gears on the slats of the moving belt.

  The purpose of the stately speed of the belt became obvious as Stanton’s party watched: a sort of metal shell, roughly the size of an Acme’s torso and split open to reveal its interior, was progressing in front of the workers, each of whom performed a single, repeated operation with screwdriver or wrench or hammer, adding one more part to what was destined to be the power plant of a finished Acme before the shell moved on to the next worker. And despite the fact that each of the men was working in deliberate, sullen silence, staring down at his work without looking from side to side, the clamor of the steam engines and the clatter of the moving tambours and the clanking and banging of the men’s tools on the metal shells created such an uproar that it was almost literally impossible to think.

  Beaming like a proud parent, Stanton turned to his old comrade-in-arms: “Excellent, Longfellow, excellent! How many finished units do you reckon you can turn out in a twenty-four hour period?”

  “At present, sir, working in two 12-hour shifts per day, we can produce around 400 torsos completely ready to be fitted with heads and limbs and put to work. But …”

  The engineer’s face darkened and his lips tightened angrily as he hesitated.

  “What is it, man?” Stanton broke in impatiently. “Speak up, I can’t read your mind!”

  “Just this, sir,” Longfellow blurted, trying not to let his frustration turn to fury as he vented a long-standing grievance. “I improved on your original specifications weeks ago and we could have been producing twice as many units if I didn’t have to work with this rabble. If you had seen fit to leave me with the experienced white workers who were originally assigned to me instead of drafting them all into the Army and saddling me with a gang of ignorant niggers …”

  Stanton gave Longfellow a warning look and answered sharply: “Now, Longfellow, you know better than to let your personal feelings interfere with your duty! These decisions were made for strategic reasons and are not subject to discussion.”

  Then, as he saw the hurt look in Longfellow’s eyes, Stanton softened his tone: “However, since you are an old comrade, I will point out that without an army big enough to seize from Little Russia (which is an enemy determined to deny us so much as a teaspoonful of this precious substance) the raw calorium that we need to power these new Acmes, all your work on these automatons will be for naught. So, Longfellow, I advise you to take care of your assignment and let us take care of strategic questions. If all goes as I intend it to, by a year from now all of your present laborers will be replaced by tirelessly efficient calorium-powered robots which won’t require the draining expense of wages, food, lodging, medical attention and the myriad other vexing burdens imposed by human workers.”

  But before Longfellow could answer, one of those anonymous figures suddenly turned away from the belt and stepped directly in front of Secretary Stanton.

  “Sir!” the worker said in a resonant, cultured voice. “Are you Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of National Security?” Despite an ill-fitting denim uniform stenciled front and back with the number 47, he was clearly no laborer, but an educated, self-confident middle-aged man used to being treated with respect. Stanton, however, was so taken aback by having this faceless laborer come to life and confront him that he licked his lips nervously and backed away a couple of steps.

  “What’s it to you?” he asked in a harsh tone.

  “Just this, sir,” the man said patiently, “if you are indeed the director, pro tempore, of our nation’s destiny, I should like to lodge a protest with you.”

  Stanton, totally unable to deal with any of this, cleared his throat desperately, which the man took for a reply.

  “The reason is not far to seek,” the worker said with painful self-control. “I am Dr. Leander Stubbs of the Harvard University School of Medicine, and I have been shanghaied—kidnapped in broad daylight and imprisoned at forced labor—while on my way to deliver a lecture at Columbia University!”

  “Well … ah … Number 47,” Stanton replied, grating the words out with obvious effort, “I am very sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m afraid that emergency conditions dictate …”

  “Dammit, Eddie,” roared Longfellow, “don’t make excuses to this black bastard!” He turned on Stubbs and bellowed even louder: “I fought to free you worthless trash and took a rebel Minié ball for my pains, so don’t you sass me!”

  Stubbs gave him a disgusted look and addressed his answer to Stanton: “Tell me, sir, do your ‘emergency conditions’ stipulate that one of this country’s leading cardiac surgeons must endure the ravings of a creature like this drunken buffoon?”

  “BUFFOON?” screamed Longfellow, and before anybody could react he snatched a short blued-steel pistol out of his pocket and shot Stubbs six times, as fast as he could pull the trigger, BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM!!!, the impact of the bullets lifting the hapless surgeon off his feet and hurling him backwards into the nearest production line. The workers dove for the nearest cover, yelling hysterically, while the broken belt snapped back into the steam engine with a clatter and tossed Acme parts in every direction, the empty steel torsos clanging and banging like a truckload of washtubs.

  McPherson, who had fallen into a wary crouch the moment Longfellow reached for his gun, muttered distractedly:

  “Huh. Must be that new double-action Colt …”

  … While Pilkington, who had thrown himself flat on the ground, wriggled towards the exit with desperate speed, totally oblivious to Stanton’s shouted commands to stand up and come back.

  Exasperated almost beyond endurance, Stanton turned on Longfellow: “I am very disappointed in you, Longfellow, I had no idea you were such a fool! Just tell me this, how much production will we lose while you repair the belt and find somebody to take that fellow’s place on the line?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” muttered Longfellow sulkily, “I’ll get the doormen to take the body away and clean up. One of them can stand in for him till we get a replacement.”

  “Well, see that you do,” snapped Stanton, “and be quick about it. We have deadlines to meet! And just in case you should find yourself tempted to harm any more of our precious labor resources, please remember that you were not wounded in a war to free the slaves, you were in fact wounded in a war to break the Southern planters’ death grip on American business and free it to lead the world in production and profits. Keep this up and you’ll be helping the planters to claw their way back to power!”

  With that, he turned on his heel and strode towards the door, fuming, pausing only long enough to deliver a mighty kick into Pilkington’s plump backside, which elicited a heart-rending shriek that made Stanton draw a deep, bracing breath and smile.

  He bent over and yelled into Pilkington’s ear, “Get up, you brainless hippopotamus, before I have Longfellow shoot you as well!” Humming to himself, he headed for the exit feeling better than he had all morning. Sometimes all it took was a bit of excitement to get a man’s juices flowing and brighten his outlook …

  As Stanton headed for the black omnibus followed by a limping Pilkington and a severely stressed McPherson, a Johnny jumped down to the street and ran towards Stanton waving a piece of paper and shouting:

  “Wireless voicewire, sir, sent on from the office urgent!”

  Stanton snatched it out of his hand without comment and read it, glaring at first, then slowly smiling and finally breaking into a delighted chuckle. He turned back towards Pilkington and McPherson, waving the message triumphantly:

  “I told you, by George! I said the man would finally see his duty and step forward!”

  “Sir?” queried McPherson uneasily, ready for anything by now.

  “Mr. Secretary?” croaked Pilkington, making sure to lag behind a little so that McPherson
stood between him and Stanton.

  “It’s the Informer!” chortled Stanton. “He’s ready to give away the whereabouts of the Freedom Party and Liam McCool as long as we can agree on terms, and he’ll be calling us again at 5 p.m. for a little chat!”

  Chapter Five

  Mike had finally gotten tired of the howling wind and the freezing spray and gone below for a couple of fingers of Old Bushmills and a lie-down, but Liam was a long way from getting his fill of the outdoors. Then too, the closer he got to seeing Becky again the more his mind kept going over and over their last day together on Shelter Island, the carefree innocence of the hours before he set out for the city to carry out what felt like a suicide mission—cracking a crib at the personal request of President Lincoln.

  The day had started so happily, waking up with Becky in his arms in the big, sunny room overlooking the lawn that swept down to the sea wall and the sparkling whitecaps of the Bay, making happy love and daydreaming about endless long, sunny days together …

  And then heading downhill so fast after they brought him Lincoln’s gentle summons: could Liam possibly join the President for breakfast? If it had been anybody else but President Lincoln, he would have said no the minute he learned the reason why. For one thing, the crib Lincoln wanted Liam to crack was a government archive, which meant armies of guards. And for another, Liam hadn’t even the glimmer of a chance to case the target first. He had only done that once before in his whole working life, a job to help Mike’s Uncle Tolya, and it had ended with Liam being thrown into the Tombs and sprung only to find himself in the clutches of Old Man Pilkington, forced to spy on other Irish workingmen in the Pennsylvania coal fields. Not the best of precedents.

  But he was stuck: how could he say no to his former Commander-in-Chief? Between his memories of the desperate battle on Little Round Top and the day a few months later when he and a bunch of other convalescing soldiers had heard the President give that unforgettable address at Gettysburg, Liam would follow the man anywhere, whether his voice came out of the custom Acme in which the scheming Dr. Lukas had installed his brain or out of a burning bush.