Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

The four assailants—James had no delusions that they could be anything else and whether they worked for Moriarty or not was academic and irrelevant to everything now (he’d never know)—had fanned out and were less than ten feet from him when a voice boomed from a dark alley to his left.

“YOU THERE! STOP! DON’T MOVE!!”

The shield was raised on a powerful dark lantern and a beam of light stabbed out from the distant alley to illuminate Henry James—his cane held at port-arms across his chest—and four thugs in patched and filthy stockyard clothing. What James had imagined were truncheons were truncheons . . . knobbed, stained, deadly.

“FREEZE!” bellowed the God-voice again. James had already obeyed and did not move a muscle, while his four assailants exploded into motion, two vaulting over the corral fence to shove their way into the dark mass of cattle, the other two loping back along the fence into the darkness from whence they’d come.

The light shifted away from them to hold on the squinting James as the figure with the God-voice came closer. Then the beam lowered.

A Chicago policeman. Not one of Burnham’s flashy Columbian Guardsmen for the Fair, but a real Chicago policeman. James took in the double row of brass buttons, the soft cap, the oversized star on the short but burly man’s left chest, the narrowed eyes, and the luxurious mustache.

James felt some relief that the policeman had shown up when he did, but he’d not been frightened. James had not been frightened , even as the four thugs closed on him. He did not understand it. Nor did he understand himself at the moment.

No matter. He realized that he was giving the suspicious police officer a silly smile. James composed himself as best he could.

The now half-shielded beam from the dark lantern moved up and down James, from his soft, expensive black Italian-made shoes and dusty spats to his expensive jacket, waistcoat, collar, cravat, and stickpin.

“What are you doing out here at the stockyards, sir?” said the policeman in a human-leveled voice. “Those men would have robbed you of everything . . . most probably including your life, sir.”

James fought down the strange impulse to grin at the wonderful policeman with his wonderful Irish accent and his wonderful waxed mustache and even at his wonderful short, black, heavy wooden truncheon, which Holmes had told him was called a “billy club” in America.

James tried to reply, but the master of the modern endless sentence could manage only ragged fragments. “I was . . . I wanted . . . to see Chicago . . . got off the elevated train . . . then the trolleys . . . got out to walk . . . suddenly it was all . . . darkness.”

The police officer realized that he was dealing with an idiot and spoke now in a slow, reassuring, nursery-teacher’s voice. “Yes, sir. But this . . . is no place . . . for you . . . sir.”

James nodded his agreement and he realized, to his horror, that he was grinning now. He’d not been afraid .

“Where are you staying, sir?”

It took a few seconds for the meaning of the officer’s question to sink in. “Oh, at the . . . no, not the Great Northern this time . . . no . . . on Cameron’s . . . on Senator Don Cameron’s . . . yacht.”

The police officer squinted at him. James realized that the Irishman was handsome enough, save for a nose that looked like a squashed red potato. He bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing.

“Where is this yacht, sir?”

“Anchored off the Grand Pier of the White City,” said James. He was in charge of his nouns, verbs, and syntax again. (In truth, he hadn’t missed them much. He realized that he’d trade the whole lot for just more of what he was feeling right now.)

“May I ask your name, sir?

“Henry James, Jr.,” James said at once. Then, wondering at his reply, he hurried to correct it. “Just Henry James now. My father—Henry James, Sr.—died about eleven years ago.”

“How did you get ashore from this senator’s yacht, Mr. James?” “The City Pier. There’s a boatman from the yacht in a steam launch. I told him to wait for me.”

The policeman turned his lantern on an inexpensive watch in his palm. “It’s after midnight, sir.”

James did not know what to say to this revelation. He suddenly doubted if his boatman had waited all these hours. Perhaps all his friends presumed him lost. Or dead.

“Come, Mr. James,” said the policeman, putting a gentle arm on James’s shoulder and turning them back toward the dark alley from which he’d so magically emerged. “I’ll see you back to the right trolley stop, sir. The trolleys and the new “L” quit running in less than an hour, now. Even on a Saturday night. You’ll need to go straight back to the pier with no more sightseeing.”

Not minding at all the friendly arm on his shoulders, James walked with the Irishman back toward the lighted parts of the city.

On the Sunday before Monday’s May-first official Opening Day of the Fair, Henry Cabot Lodge’s guests had broken into various groups to find their day’s entertainment. During the time Henry James was with anyone exploring the quiescent but soon-to-erupt fairgrounds, he stayed with Henry Adams who was staying close to Lizzie and Don Cameron. But sometime in the afternoon, Adams had wandered off alone again. He’d spent most of the previous day alone as well. Everyone had agreed to meet back on the pier at seven to take the large motor launch back to the yacht. They were going up the lake to be guests at a gala given by the 68-year-old re-elected Mayor Carter Henry Harrison. Even young Helen Hay had been seduced by the old populist’s energy, candor, and charm upon first meeting him earlier that day.

But when everyone gathered on the pier, Adams was missing.

“I believe I know where he is,” said Holmes. “He tends to lose track of time there. You all go ahead but send the boat back . . . I shall be on the pier with Mr. Adams within twenty minutes.”

Senator Don Cameron said, “Lizzie and I shall wait here for you and Adams and ride out to the yacht with you.”

The rest of the happy party boarded and Holmes watched the powered boat churn out to where a cluster of yachts, including the noble Albatross , and even the iron warship U.S.S. Michigan were anchored.

Holmes had been with Adams when they discovered the Machinery Hall, and the older historian’s fascination with the dynamos and other machines producing electricity suddenly became insatiable. Technically, none of the Columbian Exposition’s thousands of electricity-driven machines were supposed to be turned on until noon the next day when President Cleveland would depress a solid gold telegraph key—set on a red velvet pillow—which would, besides causing a thousand flags and banners to unfurl, close a circuit that would start up the gigantic 3,000-horsepower Allis-made steam engine in the Machinery Building.

But Adams had poked around and inquired until he found the real dynamo that was already providing power to the White City’s lights and the electrical railroad bringing yellow cars to the Fair. It was the world’s greatest dynamo and it was all but hidden away in the Intramural Railroad Company building set at the far southern end of the grounds, sunken behind trees and grander buildings. Usually the building was empty save for the dynamo’s constant attendants. The curved metal sheath of the actual dynamo was larger than the arched entrance to Henry Adams’s mansion, but the various wheels—at least fifteen feet tall even with half of each wheel disappearing into its groove in the cement floor—dwarfed men and dynamo. Holmes had helped him search it out on Saturday, admired the machinery for a minute, listened long enough to hear one of the technicians shout to Henry Adams above the roar that even at that moment the dynamo was powering six and a half miles of railroad with sixteen cars in motion all at once, and then he left Adams alone in the noise and ozone. He knew that the historian was spending most of his hours on shore in this remote, almost windowless building staring at and experiencing the power of this new source of energy for the human race.