The vault was most certainly empty. They didn’t need to invite me here to tell them this. I examined the thick steel door and the elaborate locking mechanism whose gears are more complicated than the Prague Clock. The floor had not even a trace of the black dust covering the city above. Everything was in its place.
“Lady Kettlebrew. As you can see there is no sign of break-in.” the vault manager, Mr. Ambrose Veren extended his arm to showcase the unplastered thick brick walls.
“I did not take the fastest airship from Calcutta to London to be told the obvious. What here is not obvious? Did the Sentinels not trigger an alarm?” I pointed to the two metal dogs sitting outside the vault. These dogs were not automatons, but sensitive detectors of vibrations through the careful alignment of prisms and mirrors catching microscopic changes in the density of the aether.
“No, ma’am. No observations.”
“Have they been recently maintained?”
Mr. Veren raised his voice and tugged at his vest, “Do not question my management of this vault. It has indeed been maintained and my technicians could replay our discussion now from the telegraphic signal being transmitted back to the guard station.”
“Could they hear us if we were inside the closed vault? Or would they only hear you?”
Mr. Veren remembered his position. “My apologies Lady Kettlebrew .” He clears his throat. “I am simply proud of our work.”
“Then answer the question. Could they hear us inside the vault?”
Mr. Veren considered it. His mustache twitched as his lips mouthed through a silent calculation. “I do not believe so due to the thickness of the wall and the quality of the steel, but I will have my men test it immediately upon your departure.”
I nodded and began the painstaking work of checking the mortar joints of the bricks for any looseness. The Romans brought the brick to these Isles to build walls and monuments and now we use them to build chimneys to cover ourselves with ash. At least in an airship, one could escape the soot, even if only temporarily. The bricks were solid and clean and the joints old but strong. The vault was incredibly clean, not a trace of coal dust anywhere.
“Mr. Veren. I will return to the Golden Hind hotel. Please have your men send their test data and also have a photographer take a photo of each wall. I know the walls are plain brick, but I will need this for my report to the Crown. We would hate to disappoint Her Majesty with an incomplete report, wouldn’t we?”
The Golden Hind was located near Kensington Gardens, and I always booked a room on the western side overlooking the “Colosseum”. Her Majesty had apportioned part of the Gardens for mechanical artificers to battle with their tin gladiators under the sponsorship of Prince Albert. The noise was horrendous during the day, but the sport was soothing to me. It was far better to see machines pummel each other in London than to see men pummel each other in India.
The valet arrived with tea and an envelope of documents. I motioned to the rosewood table near the window as neither of us could hear each other over the gears of one gladiator grinding to a halt on the diamond-tipped spines of another. The Empire could use these mechanical warriors in India, and it was a shame that the Queen forbade it. I suspected Prince Albert had other plans; plans that might have been stored in his vault.
The envelope included a sound test showing the Sentinels were unable to detect a yelling person inside the vault. The photos showed three well-photographed, exceptional brick walls and one poorly photographed brick wall with dark spots covering the image. A note of apology from Mr. Veren explained he would retake this photograph tomorrow and dock the pay of the photographer until he returned a proper photo.
I shook my head. I had seen this before. An inventor had collected a large quantity of pitchblende and hoped to work it into a new type of glass that would allow one to see in the dark. Something horrible went wrong and although she created many vibrant bright spectacles, her final set burnt into her face. Her neighbors heard her yelling, but by the time they reached her it was too late. The Crown quickly covered up the case due to the relation of the inventor to the Duke of Cardiff, but I can remember the same black-marked photographs of her face. I asked the photographer to take her picture multiple times, but they always had the same random spots. The black spots on the photoplates remained one of the mysteries that I could not solve, and I was horrified to find that they had returned.
I contacted a number of mining companies and was surprised to learn that Harrigon Importers had recently sold a large quantity of pitchblende to one Professor Christopher Wrenster. Only last year Professor Wrenster was removed from the Royal Academy for doubting the existence of aether. Others said it was actually due to his politics regarding India. I decided to look up Professor Wrenster at his private estate, Ducksberry, that he had inherited from his late father Lord James Wrenster. The estate was in poor repair and only a single servant, Gregor, met my carriage at the gate. At least it was far enough outside of London that the air was clean.
“My Lady. The Professor is honored for you to join us. He has a high opinion of you after you recovered the Emerald Jaguar for the Princess.” Gregor hobbled up the path and I followed. “The Professor has also lost something. Perhaps you can help him find it.”
“As long as it is not his mind, I am sure that I can help your Professor and perhaps he can help me.”
Gregor chuckled. “I shouldn’t say it, but it might be his mind. He has not been the same since his assistant Kishore left him.”
I pocketed that information and reluctantly followed Gregor not into the mansion but into the cellar below.
The cellar was dimly illuminated. Sitting beside a shelf of green glowing vases was an old man wrapped in his academic robe. His beard brushed the crumbs of cake off his table as he turned to look towards the daylight coming through the cellar door. I adjusted my eyes.
“Professor Wrenster. Lady Kettlebrew.” Gregor announced. “Should I prepare some tea, M’Lord?”
“No Gregor. If Kettlebrew’s reputation is true, this will be a short visit. Leave us Gregor.” The Professor’s voice was calm. He motioned for me to sit with him at the table on a plain wooden stool.
“Lady Kettlebrew. I heard that you have been asking about pitchblende. Are you planning to retire to make vases?” He eyed me narrowly.
“Perhaps. You seem to have taken to the art in your retirement?” I queried and was taken aback as the Professor rises to his full height and knocks one of the vases off the top shelf. It shattered forming an inverted sky of fluorescent shards on the floor.
“Who said I was retired? Was it that scamp Tyerson? I will go back to the College now and lay him low myself!,” he yelled. His booming voice shook the surviving vases.
“My apologies Professor Wrenster. I was hoping you could help me solve this puzzle.” I removed the photograph of the brick wall and handed it to him.
“It seems you need a better camera Lady Kettlebrew.” He folded himself back into the chair and lit an extra lantern to get a better look.
“You know it is not the camera. What is it?”
“You will never believe me. No one in the Academy believes me,” he muttered.
“In a world of airships and fighting automata, what could be unbelievable.”
“Lady Kettlebrew, I have determined that all we know, all we are, is a collection of vibrations. Some of us the harmonious melody of strings, some of us the violent ocean crashing onto our beloved Isles, but waves nonetheless. This photograph is proof of those waves.”
“There was a rumor you didn’t believe in aether.”
“No. I don’t believe in their aether. I believe in a true aether where the rays of God have a singular aspect that we call light and a tripartite aspect that is unknown to men and only known to atoms. I have seen that the world is indeed atoms and void, but the atoms do not stand still. They vibrate, they sing, they tell us what is true.”
I had learned all I could from this old man. The Professor had confirmed to me that the blurring was a side effect of some alchemical transformation of pitchblende. I was beginning to suspect that this also caused one to go mad.
“Professor Wrenster. Thank you for your time and inviting me into your home. I hope the atoms sing in harmony, but I should be returning to London to do an alchemical analysis of these bricks.” As I stood to leave, he reached out and his right hand grasped my arm. The Professor was far stronger than me and with my free hand I slowly reached into my jacket pocket for my blade.
“Listen Kettlebrew, if you remove the bricks, I am sure that you will find they all have the same stamps and are from the same quarries. Yet the chemistry can change, especially when a man walks through a wall.” He released my arm and his voice dropped.
“Walks through a wall?”
“Yes. The wave passes through. The wave passes through,” he chanted. “I used to think it passed through all the void, but it is more subtle. I have devised a cloak that allows one to pass through any object. My assistant Kishore called it sliding through the cracks between worlds. I called it tunneling through the void. The cloak is imperfect, and a few atoms of the traveler and a few atoms of the object mix in unwanted ways.”
“Where is Kishore?”
“I don’t know. He absconded with the cloak and the detailed notes he made of my discovery. I found the charred remains of my own notes in the fireplace in his quarters. Lady Kettlebrew, I beg of you to use your powers of deduction to find Kishore and return me my cloak.”
I knew at that point we had lost India. That the Empire would end. You cannot protect yourself from a foe that can move through walls. I booked the first airship back to India to try and find Kishore, but it was already too late.
Long Live the Queen and Long Live the British Empire.