William Gibson - The Difference Engine

It was the work of a moment to shove him behind a massive terra-cotta urn.

The shock of action had left Mallory dry. His throat felt like bloodied sandpaper. There was nothing to drink—except of course that silver flask of quack potion. Mallory dragged it by feel from the Marquess's jacket-pocket, and wet his throat. It left a numbing tingle at the back of his palate, like dry champagne. It was vile, but it seemed to be bracing him, somehow. He helped himself to a number of swallows.

Mallory returned to the lecture-area and took a seat beside Fraser. The policeman lifted one brow in silent query. Mallory patted the butt of the Marquess's pistol, lodged within his waistband opposite the Ballester-Molina. Fraser nodded, by a fraction.

Florence Russell Bartlett was continuing her harangue, her stage-manner seeming to afflict her audience with an occult paralysis. Mallory saw to his shock and disgust that Mrs. Bartlett was displaying quack devices intended to avert pregnancy. A disk of flexible rubber, a wad of sponge with a thread attached. Mallory could not avoid the dark imagining of coitus involving these queer objects. The thought made his gut lurch.

"She killed a rabbit a moment ago," Fraser hissed from the corner of his mouth. "Dipped its nose in essence of cigar."

"I didn't kill the boy, " Mallory whispered in return. "Concussed, I think… " He watched Bartlett as her rant drifted into queer plans for selective breeding to improve the stock of humanity. In her futurity, it seemed, proper marriage would be abolished. "Universal free love" would replace chastity. Reproduction would be a matter for experts. The concepts swam like dark shadows at the shore of Mallory's mind. It struck him then, for no seeming reason, that this day—this very afternoon in fact—was the time specified for his own triumphant lecture on the Brontosaurus, with kinotrope accompaniment by Mr. Keats. The fearful coincidence sent a queer shiver through him.

Brian leaned suddenly across Fraser, seizing Mallory's bare wrist in a grip of iron. "Ned!" he hissed. "Let's get out of this damned place!"

"Not yet," Mallory said. But he was shaken. A mesmeric flow of sheer panic seemed to jolt into him, through Brian's grip. "We don't know yet where Swing is hiding; he could be anywhere in this warren—"

"Comrades!" Bartlett sang out, in a voice like an iced razor. "Yes, you four, in the back! If you must disturb us—if you have news of such pressing interest—then surely you should share it with the other comrades in the Chautauqua!"

The four of them froze.

Bartlett raked them with a Medusa glare. The other listeners, freed somehow from their queer bondage, turned to glare backward with bloodthirsty glee. The eyes of the crowd glowed with a nasty pleasure, the relief of wretches who find their own destined punishment falling elsewhere—

Tom and Brian spoke both at once, in frenzied whispers.

"Does she mean us?"

"My God, what do we do?"

Mallory felt trapped in nightmare. A word would break it, he thought. "She's just a woman," he said, quite loudly and calmly.

"Knife it!" Fraser hissed. "Be still!"

"Nothing to tell us?" Bartlett taunted. "I thought not—"

Mallory rose to his feet. "I do have something to say!"

With the speed of jack-in-the-boxes, three men rose from within the audience, their hands raised. "Dr. Barton! Dr. Barton?"

Bartlett nodded graciously, gestured with the chalk-wand. "Comrade Pye has the floor."

"Dr. Barton," cried Pye, "I do not recognize these comrades. They are behaving regressively, and I—I think they should be criticized!"

A fierce silence wrapped the crowd.

Fraser yanked at Mallory's trouser-leg. "Sit down, you fool! Have you lost your mind?"

"I do have news!" Mallory shouted, through his gingham mask. "News for Captain Swing!"

Bartlett seemed shocked; her eyes darted back and forth. "Tell it to all of us, then," she commanded. "We're all of one mind here!"

"I know where the Modus is, Mrs. Bartlett!" Mallory shouted. "Do you want me to tell that to all these dupes and slaveys?"

Chairs clattered as men leapt to their feet. Bartlett shrieked something lost in the noise.

"I want Swing! I must speak to him alone!" As chaos rose, Mallory kicked the empty chair before him into skidding flight, and yanked both pistols from his belt. "Sit down, you bastards!" He leveled his pistols at the audience. "I'll blow daylight through the first coward that stirs!"

His answer was a fusillade of shots.

"Run!" Brian screeched. He, Tom, and Fraser fled at once.

Chairs splintered, toppling, on either side of Mallory. The audience was shooting at him, ragged popping shots. Mallory leveled both his pistols at Bartlett at her podium, and squeezed the triggers.

Neither gun fired. He had neglected to cock the hammers. The Marquess's gun seemed to have some kind of nickeled safety-switch.

Someone nearby threw a chair at Mallory; he fended it off, absently, but then something struck him hard in the foot. The blow was sharp enough to numb his leg, and knock him from his stance; he took the opportunity to retreat.

He could not seem to run properly. Perhaps he had been crippled. Bullets sang past him with a nostalgic drone from far Wyoming.

Fraser beckoned at him from the mouth of a side-alley. Mallory ran to him, turned, skidded.

Fraser stepped coolly into the open, raising his copper's pepperbox in a dueling stance, right arm extended, body turned to present a narrow target, head held keen-eyed and level. He fired twice, and there were screams.

Fraser took Mallory's arm. "This way!" Mallory's heart was jumping like a rabbit, and he could not get his foot to work.

He limped down the alley. It ended abruptly. Fraser searched frantically for a crawl-way. Tom was boosting Brian atop a great unsteady heap of cartons.

Mallory stopped beside his brothers, turned, raised both pistols. He glanced down swiftly at his foot. A stray bullet had knocked the heel from his shoe. He looked up an instant later to see half-a-dozen screaming bandits approaching in hot pursuit.

A vast concussion shook the building. Heaps of tinned goods clattered to the floor in a billow of powder-smoke. Mallory gaped.

All six of the wretches lay sprawled and blasted in the alley, as if lightning-struck.

"Ned!" shouted Brian, from atop his heap of cartons. "Get their weapons!" He crouched there on one knee, the Russian pistol gushing smoke from its opened loading-chamber. He loaded a second cartridge of brass and red waxed-paper, as thick as a copper's baton.

Mallory, ears ringing, lunged forward, then slipped and almost fell headlong in the spreading blood. He grabbed right-handed for support and the Ballester-Molina went off, its bullet whanging from an iron beam overhead. Mallory paused, uncocked it carefully, uncocked the Marquess's pistol as well, stuck them both into his belt, precious seconds ticking as he dithered.

The alley was awash with blood. The blunderbuss blast of the Russian hand-cannon had lacerated the men hideously. One poor devil was still gurgling as Mallory pried a Victoria carbine from beneath him, its stock dripping red. He struggled with the fellow's bandolier, but gave that up for another's wooden-handled Yankee revolver. Something stung his palm as he snatched up the pistol. Mallory looked stupidly at his wounded hand, then at the pistol-butt. There was a corkscrewed bit of hot shrapnel embedded in the wood, a razored thing like a big metal-shaving.

Rifles began to crack from a distance, slugs plowing into the bounty around them with odd crunches and a musical tinkling of glass. "Mallory! This way," Fraser shouted.

Fraser had uncovered a crevice along the warehouse wall. Mallory turned to sling the carbine and look for Brian, seeing the young artilleryman leap across the alley for another vantage-point.