William Gibson - The Difference Engine

"No name!" Tally insisted, looking back at his lost hat with a leer of despair. "A Yankee, inne?"

"What sort of Yankee, then?" asked Fraser, scenting deceit. "Confederate? Unionist? Texian? Californian?"

" 'E's from New York," Tally said.

"What," Fraser said in disbelief, "you'd tell me he was a Manhattan Communard!" He glanced back once at the dying man as they walked on, then recovered himself swiftly and spoke with tepid skepticism. "He didn't talk like any New York Yankee."

"I don't know nothing 'bout any commoners. Swing liked 'im, is all!"

Fraser led them down an alleyway crossed with rusty elevated cat-walks, its towering brick walls glistening with greasy damp. "Are there more like that one, in Swing's counsel? More men from Manhattan?"

"Swing's got a deal of friends," Tally said, seeming to recover himself, "and he'll do for you, he will, you trifle wi' him!"

"Tom," said Fraser, turning his attention to Mallory's brother, "can you handle a pistol?"

"A pistol?"

"Take this one," said Fraser, handing over Tally's derringer. "There's but one shot left. You musn't use it lest your man is close enough to touch."

Having rid himself of the derringer, Fraser then reached, without pause, into his coat-pocket, pulled out a small leather blackjack, and commenced, while still walking steadily, to batter Tally Thompson, with numbing accuracy, on the thick meat of his arms and shoulders.

The man flinched and grunted under the blows, and finally began to howl, his flat nose running snot.

Fraser stopped, pocketed his truncheon. "Damn ye for a fool, Tally Thompson," he said, with a queer kind of affection. "Know you nothing of coppers? I've come for your precious Swing all by meself, and brought these three jolly lads just to see the fun! Now where's he lurking?"

"A big warehouse in the docks," Tally sniveled. "Full of loot—wonders! And guns, whole cases of fancy barkers—"

"Which warehouse, then?"

"I dunno," Tally wailed, "I never been inside the bloody gates before! I don't know the bloody names of all them fancy go-downs!"

"What's the name on the door? The owner!"

"I can't read, Sergeant, you know that!"

"Where is it, then?" Fraser asked relentlessly. "Import docks or export?"

"Import… "

"South side? North side?"

"South, about middle-ways…" From the street behind them came distant shouts, a frenzied shattering of glass, and drum-like echoed booms of battered sheet-metal. Tally fell silent, his head cocked to listen. His lips quirked. "Why, that's your kerridge!" he said, the whine gone from his voice. "Swing's lads a-come back hotfoot, and found yer kerridge, Sergeant!"

"How many men in this warehouse?"

"Listen to 'em breaking 'er up!" said Tally. A queer variety of child-like wonder had chased all fear from his sullen features.

"How many men?" Fraser barked, boxing Tally's ear.

"They're knocking 'er to smithers!" Tally declared cheerily, shrugging from the blow. "Ludd's work on your pretty gurney!"

"Shut yer trap, ye bastard!" young Tom burst out, his voice high with rage and pain.

Startled, Tally regarded Tom's masked face with a dawning leer of satisfaction. "What's that, young mister?"

"Shut up, I told ye!" Tom cried.

Tally Thompson leered like an ape. "It ain't me hurting your precious gurney! Yell at them, boy! Tell 'em to stop, then!" Tally lurched backward suddenly, snatching his manacled hands from Fraser's grip. The policeman staggered, almost knocking Brian from his feet.

Tally turned and screeched through his cupped hands. "Stop that fun, my hearties!" His howl echoed down the brick-work canyon. "Ye're hurtin' private property!"

Tom pounced on the man like lightning, with a wild spinning swing of his fist. Tally's head snapped back, and the breath left him in a ragged gasp. He tottered a step, then dropped to the cobbled floor of the alley like a sack of meal.

There was a sudden silence.

"Damme, Tom!" said Brian. "Ye knocked his lights out!"

Fraser, his truncheon drawn now, stepped across the supine ruffian, and peeled one eyelid back with his thumb. Then he glanced up at Tom, mildly. "You've a temper, lad… "

Tom tugged his mask free, breathing shakily. "I could have shot him!" he blurted, his voice thin. He looked to Mallory, with a strange confused appeal. "I could ha', Ned! Shot him down dead!"

Mallory nodded shortly. "Easy, lad…"

Fraser fumbled to unlock the handcuffs; they were slick with blood from Tally's lacerated wrists.

"That was mortal strange, what the rascal just did!" Brian marveled, in a hushed Sussex drawl. "Are they bedlam crazy here, Ned? Have they all gone ellynge, these London folk?"

Mallory nodded soberly. Then he raised his voice. "But nowt that a good right arm don't cure!" He whacked Tom's shoulder with an open palm. "Ye're a boxer. Tommy lad! Ye blowed him down like a slaughtered ox!"

Brian snorted laughter. Tom smiled shyly, rubbing his knuckles.

Fraser rose, pocketing truncheon and cuffs, and set off up the alley, at a half-trot. The brothers followed him. "It warn't so much," Tom said, his voice giddy.

"What," Mallory objected, "a mere lad of nineteen, layin' out that brassy-boots brawler? It's a marvel surely!"

"It warn't any fair fight, with his hands bound," Tom said.

"One punch!" Brian gloated. "Ye stretched him flat as an oaken plank. Tommy!"

"Stow it!" Fraser hissed.

They fell silent. The alley ended by the vacant ground of a demolished building, its cracked foundation strewn with bits of red brick and greying spars of splintered lumber. Fraser picked his way forward. The sky rolled yellow-grey overhead, the haze breaking here and there to reveal thick greenish clouds like rotting curd.

"Hell's bells," Tom declared, in a tone of thin jollity. "They can't a-heard us talking, Mr. Fraser! Not with that almighty rucket they were making on my gurney!"

"It isn't that lot worries me now, lad," Fraser said, not unkindly. "But we might meet more pickets."

"Where are we?" Brian asked, then stumbled to a halt. "God in heaven! What is that smell?"

"The Thames," Fraser told him.

A thick wall of low brick stood at the end of the vacant plot. Mallory hoisted himself up and stood, breathing very shallowly, his mask pressed hard to his bearded lips. The far side of the brick wall—it was part of the Thames embankment—sloped down ten feet to the river-bed. The tide was out, and the shrunken Thames was a sluggish gleam between long plazas of cracked muddy shore.

Across the river stood the steel navigation-tower of Cuckold's Point, adorned with nautical warning-flags. Mallory could not recognize the signals. Quarantine, perhaps? Blockade? The river seemed nigh deserted.

Fraser looked up and down the mud-flats at the foot of the embankment. Mallory followed his gaze. Small boats were embedded in the grey-black mud as if set in cement. Here and there along the bend of the Limehouse Reach, rivulets of viridian slime reached up through the gouged tracks of channel-dredgers.

Something like a river-breeze—not a breeze at all, but a soft liquid ooze of gelatinous Stink—rose from the Thames and spilled over them where they stood. "Dear God!" Brian cried in weak amazement, and knelt quickly behind the wall. With a sympathetic ripple of queasiness. Mallory heard his brother retch violently.

With a stern effort, Mallory mastered the sensation. It was not easy. Clearly, the raw Thames surpassed even the fabled stench in the holds of Royal Artillery transports.

Young Thomas, though he'd also gone quite pale, seemed of tougher stuff than Brian—inured, perhaps, by the chugging exhaust of steam-gurneys. "Why, look at this nasty business!" Tom suddenly declared, in a muffled, dreamy voice. "I knew we'd a drought upon the land, but I never dreamt of this!" He looked to Mallory with astonished, reddened eyes. "Why, Ned—the air, the water—there's never been such a dreadfulness, surely!"