Anno Dracula

DEAD TRAVEL FAST

First published in Unforgivable Stories (2000)

In the great shed, a waterfall of molten iron poured into a long mould. Today, the undercarriage of a new engine was being cast, for the Great Western Railway, the Plymouth-to-Penzance line.

Massingham was confused for moments by the infernal glow, the terrific roar and the insufferable heat. No matter how many times he might be brought to the foundry, it was not an environment a man could become accustomed to. Those who worked here often ended up deaf or blind or prostrate with nervous disorder.

He looked around for the Count de Ville, and saw the foreign visitor standing much too close to the mould, in danger of being struck by spatters of liquid metal. The soft red drops were like acid bullets. They would eat through a man’s chest or head in a second. In twenty years’ service with the firm, Massingham had seen too many such accidents.

Whoever had let the visitor venture so close would answer for it. It was bad enough when one of the workers got careless and was maimed or killed, but to let an outsider, who had pulled strings to get a tour of the works, suffer such a fate would bring unpleasant publicity. The Board of Directors would most certainly hold Massingham responsible for such a catastrophe.

De Ville was a black silhouette, fringed with bitter crimson. He seemed to look directly at the white hot iron, unaffected by the harsh glow that ruined others’ eyes. All Massingham knew about the Count was that he was a foreign gentleman, with a great interest in railways. The Board scented an opportunity, assuming this toff was well enough connected in his own country to put in a word when it came to the purchase of rolling-stock. Two-thirds of the world ran on rails cast in this shed, riding in carriages made in the factory, pulled by engines manufactured by the firm.

‘Count de Ville,’ Massingham coughed.

He had spoken too softly, above the tinkle of teacups in a drawing-room not the roaring din of the casting shed, but the Count’s ears were as sharp as his eyes were hardy. He turned round, eyes reflecting the burning red of the furnaces, and bowed slightly from the waist.

‘I’m Henry Massingham, the under-manager. I’m to show you round.’

‘Excellent,’ said the Count. ‘I am certain to find the tour most enlightening. My own country is sadly backward by comparison with your great empire. I am anxious to be introduced to all the marvels of the age.’

He made no especial effort to raise his voice over the racket, but was heard clearly. His elongated vowels gave him away as someone whose first language was not English, but he had no trouble with his consonants save perhaps for a little hiss in his sibilants.

With no little relief, Massingham left the casting shed, followed by the tall, thin foreigner. The noise resounded in his ears for a few moments after they were out in the open. Though it was a breezy day, he could still feel the intense heat of the foundry on his cheeks.

Out in daylight, under thick clouds that obscured the sun, the Count was a less infernal figure. He was dressed entirely in black, like a Roman Catholic priest, with a long coat over tight swathes of material that bespoke no London tailoring, and heavy boots suitable for harsh mountains. Oddly, he topped off his ensemble with a cheap straw hat of the type one buys at the sea-side to use for a day and lose by nightfall. Massingham had an idea the Count was inordinately and strangely fond of the hat; his first English-bought item of clothing.

It occurred to Massingham that he didn’t know which country the Count was from. The name de Ville sounded French, but a rasp in his voice suggested somewhere in Central Europe, deep in that ever-changing patch of the map caught between the Russias and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Running rails up and down mountains was an expensive business, and a solid contract to provide a railway system for such an area could be a long-term high-earner for the firm.

Massingham escorted the Count about the factory, following the creation of an engine by visiting all the stages of the manufacture, from the primal business of casting through to the fine detail-work on the boilerplate and the polishing of the brass finishings. The Count was especially delighted, like a little boy, with the steam whistle. The foreman fired up an engine on the test-bed, purely so de Ville might have the childish joy of pulling the chain and making the shrill toot-toot that would announce the coming of an iron giant to some out-of-the-way halt.

The Count de Ville was a railway enthusiast of great passion, who had from afar memorised his Bradshaw’s guide to time-tables and was merely seeing for the first time processes he had read of and imagined for many years. He probably knew more about trains than did Massingham, whose responsibilities were mostly in overseeing the book-keeping, and wound up delivering more lectures than he received.

‘What a world it shall be, when the globe is encircled round about by steel rails,’ enthused the Count. ‘Men and matériel shall be transported in darkness, in sealed carriages, while the world sleeps. Borders shall become meaningless, distances will be an irrelevance and a new civilisation rise to the sound of the train whistle.’

‘Ahem,’ said Massingham, ‘indeed.’

‘I came to this land by sea,’ de Ville said sadly. ‘I am irretrievably a creature of the past. But I shall conquer this new world, Mr Massingham. It is my dearest ambition to become a railwayman.’

There was something strange in his conviction.

The tour concluded, Massingham hoped to steer de Ville to the board-room, where several directors would be waiting, hiding behind genial offers of port and biscuits, ready to make casual suggestions as to possible business arrangements and privately determined not to let the Count escape without signing up for a substantial commitment. Massingham’s presence would not be required at the meeting, but if a contract were signed, his part in it would be remembered.

‘What is that building?’ de Ville asked, indicating a barn-like structure he had not been shown. It stood in a neglected corner of the works, beyond a pile of rejected, rusting rails.

‘Nothing important, Count,’ said Massingham. ‘It’s for tinkering, not real work.’

The word ‘tinkering’ appealed to de Ville.

‘It sounds most fascinating, Mr Massingham. I should be most interested to be allowed inside.’

There was the question of secrecy. It was unlikely that the Count was a spy from another company, but nevertheless it was not wise to let it be known what the firm was working on. Massingham chewed his moustache for a moment, unsure. Then he recalled that the only tinkerer in residence at the moment was George Foley, of the improbable contraption. There was no real harm in showing the Count that white elephant, though he feared a potential customer might conclude the firm was foolhardy indeed to throw away money on such an obvious non-starter and might take his business elsewhere.

‘We have been allowing space to an inventor,’ said Massingham. ‘I fear we have become a safe harbour for an arrant crackpot, but you might find some amusement at the bizarre results of his efforts.’

He led the Count through the double doors.

Several shots sounded, rattling the tin roof of the shed. Bursts of fire lit the gloom.

Immediately, Massingham was afraid that de Ville was the victim of an assassination plot. Everyone knew these Balkan nobs were pursued by anarchists eager to pot them with revolvers in revenge for injustices committed down through the centuries by barbarous ancestors.

A stench of sulphur stung his nostrils. Clouds of foul smoke were wafting up to the roof. There was a slosh and a hiss as a bucket of water was emptied on a small fire.

The reports had been not shots but small explosions. It was just Foley’s folly, again. Massingham was relieved, but then annoyed when he wiped his brow with his cuff to find his face coated with a gritty, oily discharge.

Through smoke and steam, he saw Foley and his familiar, the boy Gerald, fussing about a machine, faces and hands black as Zulus’, overalls ragged as tramps’. George Foley was a young man, whose undeniable technical skills were tragically allied to a butterfly mind that constantly alighted upon the most impractical and useless concepts.

‘My apologies, Count,’ said Massingham. ‘I am afraid that this is what one must expect when one devotes oneself to the fantastic idea of an engine worked by explosion. Things will inevitably blow up.’

‘Combustion,’ snapped Foley. ‘Not explosion.’

‘I crave your pardon, Foley,’ said Massingham. ‘Infernal combustion.’

Foley’s written proposals were often passed round the under-managers for humorous relief.

‘Internal,’ squeaked Gerald, an eleven-year-old always so thickly greased and blackened that it was impossible to tell what the colour of his hair or complexion might be. ‘Internal combustion, not infernal.’

‘I believe my initial choice of word was apt.’

‘That’s as may be, Massingham, but look...’

The device that had exploded was shaking now, emitting a grumble of noise and spurts of noxious smoke. A crank was turning a belt, which was turning a wheel. Massingham had seen such toys before.

‘Five times more efficient than steam,’ Foley said. ‘Maybe ten, a dozen...’

‘And five times more likely to kill you.’

‘In the early days of steam, many were killed,’ said the Count. He gazed into Foley’s engine, admiring the way the moving parts meshed. It was a satisfyingly complicated toy, with oiled pistons and levers and cogs. A child’s idea of a wonderful machine.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Foley, ‘and you are...’

‘This is the Count de Ville,’ explained Massingham. ‘An important connection of the firm, from overseas. He is interested in railways.’

‘Travel,’ said the Count. ‘I am interested in travel. In the transport of the future.’

‘You have then chanced upon the right place, Count,’ said Foley. He did not offer a dirty hand, but nodded a greeting, almost clicking his heels. ‘For in this workshop is being sounded the death-knell of the whole of the rest of the factory. My transport, my horseless carriage, will make the steam engine as obsolete as the train made the stagecoach.’

‘Horseless carriage?’ said the Count, drawing out the words, rolling the idea around his mind.

‘It’s a wonder, sir,’ said Gerald, eyes shining. Foley tousled the boy’s already-greasy bird’s nest of hair, proud of his loyal lackey.

Massingham suppressed a bitter laugh.

Foley led them past the still-shaking engine on its fixed trestle, to a dust-sheeted object about the size of a small hay-cart. The inventor and the nimble Gerald lifted off the canvas sheet and threw it aside.

‘This is my combustion carriage,’ said Foley, with pride. ‘I shall have to change the name, of course. It might be called a petroleum caleche, or an auto-mobile.’

The invention sat squarely on four thick-rimmed wheels, with a small carriage-seat suspended above them to the rear of one of Foley’s combustion engines.

‘There will be a housing on the finished model, to keep the elements out of the engine and cut down the noise. The smoke will be discharged through these pipes.’

‘The flat wheel-rims suggest this will not run on rails,’ said the Count.

‘Rails,’ Foley fairly spat. ‘No, sir. Indeed not. This will run on roads. Or, if there are no roads, on any reasonably level surface. Trains are limited, as you know. They cannot venture where rail-layers have not been first, at great expense. My carriage will be free, eventually, to go everywhere.’

‘Always in a straight line?’

‘By means of a steering apparatus, the front wheels can be turned like a ship’s rudder.’

Massingham was impatient with such foolishness.

‘My dear Count,’ said Foley, ‘I foresee that this device, of which Mr Massingham is so leery, will change the world as we know it, and greatly for the better. The streets of our cities will no longer be clogged with the excrement of horses. No more fatalities or injuries will be caused by animals bolting or throwing their riders. And there will be no more great collisions, for these carriages are steerable and can thus avoid each other. Unlike horses, they do not panic; and, unlike trains, they do not run on fixed courses. Derailments, obviously, are out of the question. The first and foremost attribute of the combustion carriage is its safety.’

The Count walked round the carriage, eyeing its every detail, smiling with his sharp teeth. There was something animal-like about de Ville, a single-mindedness at once childish and frightening.

‘May I?’ The Count indicated the seat.

Foley hesitated but, sensing a potential sponsor, shrugged.

De Ville climbed up into the seat. The carriage settled under his weight. The axles were on suspension springs, like a hansom cab. The Count ran his hands around the great steering-wheel, which was as unwieldy and stiff as those that worked the locks on a canal. There were levers to the side of the seat, the purpose of which was unknown to Massingham, though he assumed one must be a braking-mechanism.

Beside the wheel was a rubber-bulbed horn. The Count squeezed it experimentally.

Poop-poop!

‘To alert pedestrians,’ explained Foley. ‘The engine runs so quietly that the horn will be necessary.’

The Count smiled, eyes rimmed with red delight. He poop-pooped again, evidently in love. His craze for trains was quite forgotten. Poop-poop had trumped toot-toot.

Foreigners were a lot like children.

‘How does it start?’

‘With a crank.’

‘Show me,’ de Ville ordered.

Foley nodded to Gerald, who darted to the front of the contraption with a lever and fitted it into the engine. He gave it a turn, and nothing happened. Massingham had seen this before. Usually, the dignitaries summoned to witness the great breakthrough had retreated by the time the engine caught. Then it would only sputter a few moments, allowing the carriage to lurch forward a yard or two before at best stalling and at worst exploding.

If Foley’s folly blew up and killed the Count, Massingham would have to answer for it. The man clearly had an impulse towards death.

Gerald cranked the engine again, and again, and...

... nipped out of the way sharpish. Small flames burst in the guts of the machine, and the pistons began to pump.

The carriage moved forward, and the Count poop-pooped the blasted horn again. He would have been as happy with the noise-maker alone as the whole vehicle.

Slowly, the carriage trundled towards the open doors of the workshop. Foley looked alarmed, but didn’t protest. Picking up more speed than usual, the carriage disappeared out of the doors. The Count’s straw hat blew off and was wafted up towards the roof by the black smoke that poured thickly from the pipes at the rear of the machine.

Massingham, Foley and Gerald followed the carriage to the doorway. Astonished, they saw the Count piloting the machine, with growing expertise, yanking hard on the steering-wheel and turning in ever tighter circles, circumnavigating the pile of rails, weaving in and out between sheds and buildings.

A cat shot out of the way, its tail flat. Workmen passing by stopped to stare. A small crowd gathered, of idle hands distracted from their appointed tasks. Some of the directors poked their heads out, silk hats held to their heads.

It was a ridiculous sight, but somehow stirring. The Count was very intent, very serious. But the machine just looked silly, not majestic like a steam engine. Still, Massingham had a glimpse of what Foley saw in the thing.

The Count poop-pooped the horn. Someone cheered.

Gerald, delighted, danced in the wake of the carriage.

The Count made a hard turn and suddenly the boy’s legs were under the front wheels. Bright blood spurted up into the oily engine, as if it were Moloch demanding sacrifice.

Foley shouted. Massingham felt a hammer-blow to his heart.

The Count seemed not to have realised what he had done, and drove on, grinding the boy under the carriage, merrily poop-pooping the damnable horn. The wheel-rims were reddened, and left twin tracks of blood for twenty feet in the rutted earth. Workmen rushed to help the boy, who was yelling in pain, legs quite crushed, face white under the dirt.

De Ville found the brake and brought the carriage to a halt.

Foley was too shocked to speak.

The Count stepped down, exhilarated.

‘What a marvellous transport,’ he declared. ‘It will indeed be the machine of the future. I share your vision, Mr Foley. You will make the world a swifter, purer place. These vehicles will be armoured, making each driver a warrior apart from others, a knight whose mind is one with that of his steed. You have invented a movable castle, one which can be equipped for assault and defence. The carriage can serve as refuge, land-ironclad, vehicle of exploration and finally casket or tomb. I shall be among the first purchasers of your wonderful carriage. You may number me as a sponsor of its manufacture. I shall not rest until the whole world runs on infernal combustion.’

He reached up into the air, and his straw hat was returned to his long fingers by the swirling smoke. The quality of Gerald’s screaming changed, to a low, whimpering sob. The Count appeared not to notice the noise, though Massingham remembered the sharpness of his ears.

The Count de Ville tapped his hat on to his head at a jaunty angle, gave the bulb-horn a final, fond poop-poop and walked into the black clouds of smoke, which seemed to part for him and then closed around him like a cloak.

Massingham thought about the future. There was probably money in it.

NOTE

‘Dead Travel Fast’ was solicited for – but not used in – an anthology of stories which set out to fill in the gaps in Stoker’s Dracula by showing what the Count was doing on his trip to London when he is only glimpsed by the novel’s many narrators. A risk of theme anthologies is that everyone has the same idea and you get a clutch of stories which read similarly: so I resolved to do a Dracula story in which he didn’t bite anyone, focusing on another aspect of the character Stoker gave him (his fascination with modern transport). Though the primary purpose was to fit in with Stoker’s text, nothing here contradicts the timeline of Anno Dracula. So, in the world of the series, this could well have happened.