Stephen Baxter: Anti-Ice

A stranger, a short man with a round, mocking face, now leaned close to me. “Interesting juxtaposition, don’t you think?”

“Excuse me?”

“Here, before the fruits of modern, Anglo-Saxon inventiveness, we have the aging generals of the Old World; and even as their armies maneuver toward France they no doubt speculate about how this great American plowshare could be beaten into some mechanical sword.”

I laughed. “Having got to know these Prussians, I suspect you are right, sir.”

He held out his hand; I shook it. “My name is George Holden,” he said. He studied me, looking up into my face with a frank, clear stare; I judged him to be about forty, with ruddy, rather coarse features set out beneath a shock of black hair. An Albert watch-chain like a rope crossed an ample belly.

I introduced myself.

Holden said, “I am pleased to meet you. I feel fortunate to mingle with such company; I am a mere journalist, reporting on these festivities for the Manchester Guardian.”

The Prussians had now strolled to the Canadian exhibit. Bismarck picked up a Swiss knife the size of a small book which, a sign proclaimed proudly, bore no less than five hundred blades. A look of wonder on his face, the Iron Chancellor pulled out one outlandish blade after another. “Look at that,” said Holden sourly. “Like blessed children, aren’t they?”

Actually I thought Bismarck’s boyish enjoyment rather endearing; but I said nothing.

The party moved on at length to the largest stand—the British. My pulse quickened with anticipation as we approached; but the Germans, no doubt keen to score some obscure point, stalked past the spectacular exhibits quite rapidly, their graying military heads held erect. However, I saw more than one rheumy eye flicker involuntarily sideways; and as for myself, I stared hungrily, anxious to drink in every detail of these marvels.

The exhibit was dominated by large, gleaming machines which, with their brooding pistons and tall stacks, looked like caged animals in this delicate Cathedral. There was a new form of Light Rail train, with the locomotive shaped rather like a bullet with its stack mouth set flush with its hull. The locomotive looked light and graceful enough to fly, and was mounted on a length of the narrow single rail characteristic of the Light Rail. The novel bullet shape, my new acquaintance Holden told me, was designed to allow the air to slip past the bulk of the locomotive more easily, and so to enable the Light Rail to attain higher speeds. “But,” he explained, “it is the enormous concentration of heat energy provided by anti-ice—and the consequently high mechanical efficiency—which enables the construction of compact marvels like this.”

A single coach was attached to the locomotive (though a caption informed us that as many as fifty coaches could be hauled safely by this model). Through large picture windows I inspected comfortable couches upholstered in a rich velvet, and the gleam of brass and polished leather made the coach seem as inviting as the finest club lounge.

Another device which caught my eye was a novel form of digging machine. An enclosed carriage no larger than a gurney was fronted by a disc of hardened steel. This disc was some ten feet across and its face glittered with blades and scoops of all sizes. “This will revolutionize our extraction of coal and other minerals,” Holden said. “Here is another invention impossible without anti-ice; without the compact, clean boilers made feasible by anti-ice a machine like this would require a boiler and stack the size of a railway locomotive, and within the confines of a mine would choke on its own emissions in half an hour.”

We went on past models of new designs of steam presses and cotton mills. My boy’s imagination was caught by a model of the new King Edward Dock at Liverpool, complete with a shallow pool of water to represent the Mersey, and toy clippers and hauliers which actually floated!

Now the party paused; and, peering past the Prussians’ ramrod-stiff backs, I could see Bismarck being introduced to a tall, spare man of about seventy. This gentleman wore a battered stovepipe hat of the style of some thirty or forty years previously, and his face, framed by handsome, gray- speckled muttonchops, was a wrinkled mask of scars and burn marks, at the center of which rested an artificial nose sculpted from platinum.

Blue eyes glittered down at Bismarck, and the Chancellor’s hand was held as if it were month-dead meat.

I turned to Holden, agitated. “That’s—that’s—”

He was amused at my excitement. “Sir Josiah Traveller; the great engineer, and the inheritor of the mantle of Brunel—in person.”

“I didn’t know Traveller was to attend. He is rumored to be something of a recluse.”

“Perhaps the lure of Presidents and Chancellors has coaxed the great man out of his shyness.”

I studied Holden briefly; although his tone was world-weary and dismissive, I saw how his eyes were fixed on Traveller with a kind of hunger. Teasing him, I said, “Of course, you journalists tell us that Sir Josiah is overestimated. It is only his virtually exclusive access to that marvelous substance anti-ice which has provided his fame.”

Holden snorted. “You won’t find this journalist spouting such nonsense. Traveller is a genius, my boy. Yes, anti-ice has made his visions into reality; but those visions could have been conceived by no other man. Traveller’s, anti-ice devices thread silver paths over and under the skin of the globe. Josiah Traveller is the Leonardo of our age…” He rubbed his round jaw speculatively. “That’s not to say, of course, that he is a genius in all fields. Financial and commercial affairs do seem to baffle him; much as they did his famous mentor, Brunel. You’re aware that the launch of the land liner, the Prince Albert, is in doubt?”

I shook my head.

“Its fitting-out is virtually complete, but capital to support its operating costs has yet to be obtained by Traveller’s company. I hear a new share issue is planned; and Traveller has also, I understand, approached the Cabinet.” Holden sniffed and tugged at his watch-chain. “Perhaps that explains his presence here. Are you to attend the launch, Mr. Vicars?”

“I fear I cannot,” I replied gloomily. “Much as I would enjoy it… for several reasons,” I said, thinking of Françoise.

Holden looked at me quizzically, but did not inquire further.

I studied the distaste in Traveller’s battered, rather noble face, and imagined his impatience to be done with this and return to his workshops and drafting-tables. “How unfortunate it is,” I remarked to Holden, “that we expect our engineers to be diplomats as well.”

Holden grinned. “Perhaps it is just as well that we do not also require our diplomats to be engineers.”

Now the Prussians, ever eager to show how unimpressed they were, turned languidly to a further exhibit, a stand of photographs. Traveller stood alone, his gaunt face blank; and I, on an impulse, approached the engineer. “Sir Josiah,” I said—and then lapsed in confusion, for the gaze which swiveled down from beyond that beak of platinum was at once scornful and searching. “Forgive me, sir,” I went on, and introduced myself.

He nodded curtly. “So, sir diplomat,” he said, “and what is the diplomatic view of these toys I have presented?” His voice was like the rumble of some vast steam engine, and I wondered if his throat and lungs had been as scorched as his face in the accidents which had left him so marked.

“Toys, sir?” I indicated the graceful lines of the Light Rail machine, which lay bathed in the blue light of the Cathedral. “But these are achievements of modern rational mechanics, coupled with the potentialities of anti-ice—”