The Forever Engine Read Online Free PDF Page A

demon, London enveloped me in sulfurous tendrils of mist and smoke that smelled of hot metal, burning coal, and rotting garbage. The open air train platform stood at least twenty feet above street level, held up by iron girders. It reminded me of the Chicago Loop’s “El,”—the elevated train—or what it might have looked like a century ago. My gaze swept across the faint powdering of dirt and coal dust blowing across the platform’s walkway, the rust-streaked metal uprights and railings with their damp, grimy look, and then the city.
    Brick and stone buildings rose into the sky, taller than seemed right for the period. Many larger ones sported an iron girder tower on top, with dirigibles docked to several of those. Two large flying machines droned slowly through the smoke and haze, but I couldn’t tell if they were also dirigibles or more of those flying ironclads.
    The people on the platform around me wore ankle-length coats in dark colors—browns and grays and dusty blacks. They conversed with muffled voices, hair hidden under hats, faces behind goggles and dark fabric masks. Many women wore elaborate dark veils tucked into the collars of their coats. They reminded me of Afghan women in burkas, at least in their impersonal anonymity. But instead of hiding their shape, their coats exaggerated the female figure, accenting ample bosoms, flaring from narrow waists out over bustled skirts. The women glided across the platform with a deliberate grace I found seductive and creepy at the same time.
    This wasn’t the London I had expected, but I had already abandoned my attachment to expectations.
    “This way, Fargo,” Gordon grunted from under a rubberized mask that included both goggles and air filter. Two different Bobbies now accompanied us, having taken over from the rural constabulary at Paddington Station, our port of entry to Greater London. The Wessex men had, in retrospect, been easy-going compared to these two. Like Gordon they both wore goggles and masks. Their uniforms seemed darker and were augmented by thick gauntlets and taller helmets. They had a lean, tough look compared to their more portly country cousins, and black varnished wooden truncheons dangled from wrist thongs. One of them poked me in the back for encouragement. I’d put on the long coat they gave me, but no face protection was offered. My eyes burned already.
    Ten minutes on a metro train brought us to a smaller station deeper in the city—St. John’s Square, the sign told me. Two flights of wrought-iron steps took us down to ground level, where horse-drawn cabs clip-clopped along crowded, litter-strewn streets, side by side with worn-looking freight wagons and one smoking steam-powered autocarriage. Most of the people here didn’t have elaborate masks and goggles. Instead, men in threadbare coats with collars turned up wore handkerchiefs tied over nose and mouth, and watched the Bobbies warily through red-rimmed eyes. They knew more about this world than I did, and they were afraid of the uniforms. Point taken.
    We walked briskly for two blocks, then up the stone steps of a brownstone house, a knock, a few exchanged words between Gordon and a doorman, and we moved from the gloom of the streets into the gaslit twilight of the interior.
    Heavy furniture, that was my first impression: big wardrobes, massive dark wood tables with legs carved to look like lion paws, overstuffed chairs, leather couches, and heavy brocade curtains hanging from near the high ceiling, puddling on the floor. Thick oriental carpets, bunches of them, carpets on top of carpets. Big oil paintings in heavy gilt frames covering whatever wall space was left—landscapes, seascapes, pictures of the moors or heaths or whatever, and one portrait of an angry old man whose eyes seemed to follow me as we marched through the front room.
    “Who’s your decorator?” I asked. “Count Dracula?”
    But it was just bravado, just whistling past the graveyard. The place had me