Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection Read Online Free PDF

of folders and walls of filing cabinets. After a few minutes he returned, laden with leather-bound folios. "These are the class pictures of the men in the Academy clockworks program between 1840 and 1860. I don't know if they'll help, but this is the best I can do."
    I thanked the clerk and set about looking through the materials he'd offered me. Class sizes over the last century weren't very large-- even in my own graduating class of 1894 we only numbered fifteen-- but that still gave me over one hundred poorly lithographed clockwork engineers to sift through. Trying to match those almost identical small portraits to the old man I'd met earlier was a daunting task. Bartleby had a better eye for this sort of thing, but the records were for the perusal of alumni alone.
    After a few hours work I'd narrowed the likely engineers down to three possibilities, and Gerald was all too happy to lend me their files. Truth be told, most of those permitted to look through the records--- Guild-members--- didn't have the drive, desire, or need to. I think that the old man was just pleased to be able to at least partially justify the pay he'd been receiving all these years.
     
    ***
     
    "Our most likely candidate," I told Bartleby over dinner, "is one Hector Whitney, class of 1853. In 1870, his masterwork was accepted egregia cum laude by the council of Masters, though he never completed the administrative paperwork for advancement."
    "As with your journey-work advancement?"
    "Yes. It's fairly common that we forget the small details. Advancement isn't really the point, you understand? It's all about the work."
    "But in your case they basically took care of all that for you."
    "Yes, and my work was simply maxima cum laude. For a man with this talent-"
    "That makes little sense."
    "No, it does not. Oh, a bit of luck. One of his classmates is still alive. He might have some insight into Whitney."
    "We're running out of time, James." Bartleby reminded me.
    I wasn't concerned. Just one more constraint under which to solve this puzzle, as surmountable as any other.
     
    ***
     
    "Hector was the best of us, the poor fellow." Bonner had been a civil engineer at the Nash Conservatory for the last decade, and had worked for the Royal Gardens since graduation. He was kind enough to meet with us in the Conservatory visitor's centre.
    He was a small, wizened man with a surprisingly soft and wheezing voice. "Not only was he brilliant engineer, but a good man. Had the soul of a toymaker. His first inventions were military, yes, but after the birth of his grandson all he made were toys. He took a lot of scorn for that from a lot of short-sighted people, but they shut up when they saw his masterwork. So much talent. So much tragedy."
    "Tragedy?" Bartleby asked.
    "Oh yes. This was just after he'd finished his masterwork-- a man-sized doll with a functional circulatory system. Stunned the lot of us. Nothing compared with what you lads are doing now, of course, but this was back in the seventies."
    "What happened?" I asked.
    "Geopolitics happened. The Franco-Prussian war happened. Hector's daughter and grandson were in Paris when Wilhelm and Bismark's airships lay siege to the city. Killed in the bombing. I think that was what broke Hector's spirit, at last-- he said he was done with the work of men and generals, cleared out his workshop, and disappeared."
    "That's terrible," Bartleby said.
    "His critics called him a toymaker, but he was so much more. Skilled in a dozen fields from medicine to chemistry to mechanics... the world is worse off without him."
    "The Home Office believes he's still alive," Bartleby said. "We're trying to find him. There's a matter of import he can help the Crown with."
    "The Queen?"
    "Precisely."
    "Well. If anyone could come up with a fantastic Platinum Jubilee gift it would be Hector." Bonner seemed ignorant of the irony coming out of his mouth. "I wish I could help you, but I haven't heard from him in over thirty years."
    "If