The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age Read online

  The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age

  Robert Rankin FVSS*

  *Fellow of the Victorian Steampunk Society

  with illustrations by the author

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

  YVETTE AND VERITY

  AND TO THE MEMORY OF

  JAMES STUART CAMPBELL

  1965—2010

  The universe is a machine

  In which everything happens

  By figure and motion.

  René Descartes

  I’d like to be a machine.

  Wouldn’t you?

  Andy Warhol

  1897

  1

  he foyer of the Electric Alhambra was lit to a pretty perfection.

  One thousand vacuum bulbs, brought to brilliance by Lord Tesla’s latest innovation, the wireless transmission of electricity, illuminated a scene of lavish enchantment. Just so.

  The foyer was crafted to the Moorish style, with a high central dome and surrounding arches. And all throughout and around and about, mosaics of turquoise and gold sparkled in the dazzling luminescence. These mosaics were wrought with cunning arabesques and details of intricate geometry. Here a hexagram, picked out in oriental amethyst and lapis lazuli. There a pentacle, in heliotrope and aquamarine. So rich and complex were these ornamentations as to baffle the eye and stagger the senses. To inspire both wonder and awe.

  The foyer was furnished with settles and settees, copious couches and diverse divans. These were upholstered with sumptuous swan’s down, moleskin and marmot and pale astrakhans. Towering torchères with filigreed finials, tables of pewter and copper and brass. Inlaid and overlaid, fiddled and diddled, fantastic fittings and glittering glass.

  But all of these wonders — and wonders they were —served only as an architectural hors d’oeuvre to the great banquet of gilded glory that was the auditorium. For beyond tall doors of embellished enamel, which rose like hymns in praise of pleasure, were Xanadu and Shangri-La made flesh in wood and stone. In bronze and in ormolu, travertine and tourmaline, crystal and silver and glittering gold.

  The auditorium boasted seating for three thousand people in the most exquisite surroundings imaginable. Electrically lit and lavishly appointed, it was truly a marvel of the modern age.

  But— There were certain folk who expressed certain doubts.

  The Society columnist of The Times newspaper, for instance. He had coined a new term to describe the interior of the Electric Alhambra: ‘Architectural Sesquipedalianism’. Words such as ‘grandiloquent’, ‘overblown’, ‘ostentatious’ and, indeed, ‘intemperate’, flowed from his steam-powered fountain pen and figured large in his repertoire of damnation for this ‘Monstrous Testament to Bad Taste’.

  For ‘The Thunderer’s’ columnist was a titled toff of the esoteric persuasion and the Electric Alhambra, a Music Hall!

  Now this was not to say that the gentry did not frequent the Music Hall. Not one diddly bit of it. But even those adventurous aristocrats who favoured titillation above temperance entered the portals of such establishments furtively and in heavy disguise, thereby perpetuating the belief that the Music Hall was really just for commoners — the hoi polloi and not the hoity-toity.

  Upon this particular evening, a warm summer’s evening in early July, the hoi polloi held sway. Certain swank events here in the British Empire’s capital had drawn most of high social standing to the company of their own and the Electric Alhambra was the almost exclusive preserve of the downtrodden masses. Or at least those members of the lumpen-proletariat as could scrape together the price of admission: three fine, bright copper pennies.

  But there were others present upon this summer’s evening. Others whose undeniable otherness distinguished them. Marked them out as different. Other men from other worlds were these. Beings from the bloated planet of Jupiter, or the cloud-girt world of Venus.

  It was now twelve years since the Martian invasion of Earth, as recalled in that historical memoir of Mr H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, and two since Worlds War Two. Happily the Martians had been mercilessly destroyed and happier still the British Empire now extended to Mars. But the alliance and state of peace that existed between Earth, Venus and Jupiter was an uneasy one. There was a singular lack of trust and at times acts of open hostility were directed towards off-worlders who walked the streets of London.

  But not here. Not here in the Music Hall. Whatever happened outside remained outside. Within, the Music Hall justly considered itself to be the very exemplar of egalitarianism. All were welcome and all were treated equally. Al-though those with more than three pennies to spend could occupy the better seats.

  So, what of the Alhambra’s patrons this evening? What of their looks and their manners and styles? Mr Cameron Bell, that most private of private detectives, was known (by those in the know) to be capable of discerning a man’s occupation merely by the study of his boots.

  The boots of those who now shuffled about upon the mosaic floor of the foyer spoke of many occupations. As indeed did their distinctive attire.

  Here were the piemen and those who offered for sale upon the thoroughfares of the great metropolis such toothsome viands as mock-plum duff, straw muffins, mud pies, sawdust puddings and cardboard cakes. Shirts, once white, found favour with them, as did long, pale smocks of antique design, as worn by bakers in bygone days. When bread was oft-times made out of bread and rarely, as now, out of chalk.

  Mingling amongst these fellows were to be seen the cockney street sellers of flypapers, beetle wafers and wasp traps, cockroach castles and sea-monkey sanctuaries. These were men of the ‘pattering class’, who plied their wares with silken tongues and honeyed words. Displaying a tamed spider or two, with which to garner interest from Samaritans. They sported suits of rough-cut plaid with patterns in beige and taupe, echoing those of Lord Burberry.

  Many and various were the trades of London’s working class. Trades that had persisted since the dawn of recorded history and would no doubt prevail for ever, resisting all future trends. Crossing sweepers conversed with rat-catchers, bone-grubbers and those who gathered the Pure.[1] Mole—stranglers and ferret—stretchers shared jokes with horse-sniffers and donkey-punchers, the men who point at poultry and those who untwist dogs into the shape of balloons.

  The owners of dancing ducks and industrious insects exchanged banter with characters who bruised peaches for public entertainment and others prepared to scrape tortoises in private, once a proper price had been agreed upon.

  And here also were the folk of London’s underworld. The men ‘who would not be blamed for nothing’. The coiners and card sharps. The purloiners of parrots. Burglars of bunnies and budgerigars. Kidnappers of kittens. Procurers of poodles. Pimps of Pomeranians. Loudly dressed and loudly spoken were they, and in the company of women.

  Women of easy virtue these and of boisterous disposition. Brightly frocked, given to the downing of gin and the employment of fisticuffs and foul language. And such immoderate laughter as to rattle light bulbs and set upon edge whatever teeth any possessed.

  But not all women here were such as they. Others were decent working girls. Those ingénues, poor but honest, clean and well turned out. Girls in service to the houses of the great and the good. Parlour maids and linen-folders. Respectable spinsters who laundered lavender bags, pampered pillows and fluffed up the muffs of their mistresses. In comets and bustles, best gloves and bonnets, out for a night at the Music Hall.

  And what a night this would prove to be for those who thronged the foyer upon this summer’s evening. Cooled by conditioned air that wafted
from the patent ice grotto, yet warmed by anticipation for all that lay ahead.

  Tonight they would thrill to the best that Music Hall had to offer. The topmost of all top turns. The greatest comics and songsters, dancers and novelty acts of this or any other age. And topping the topmost of the bill, none other than England’s best-loved entertainer, Mr Harry ‘Hurty-Finger ‘Hamilton. Four billings up from the now legendary Travelling Formbys and three above the remarkable Lovell’s Acrobatic Kiwis, Harry bestrode the London stage as a colossus, admired by men, adored by women. A smile, a song and a damaged digit — how could it get better than that?

  Tonight, Harry, all dapper in tailcoat and topper, would sing his heart out and raise the crowd to a standing ovation. And having done so, he would return to his six-star dressing room to toast his triumph with champagne and sherbet. In the company of ladies skilled in those arts which amuse men.

  Or at least such was his intention.

  But even the best of intentions can occasionally come to naught. And tonight things would not go quite as Harry had hoped that they would. Tonight an event would occur at the Electric Alhambra. An event that was definitely not listed upon the playbill. It would prove to be a tragic and terrible event. The first in a series of tragic and terrible events. Tragic and terrible events that would threaten not only the Music Hall, but London, the Empire and all of the Solar System.

  Tragically.

  And terribly.

  They would involve, amongst others, a man and a monkey, as can sometimes be the case.

  2

  n a crowded communal dressing room, which owned to no stars upon its door but an abundance of kiwi birds flopping foolishly about, a man and a monkey sat and scowled.

  Neither was speaking to the other.

  That a man might have nothing to say would appear reasonable enough. Most ordinary men have the choice of speaking words when they wish to and withholding them when they do not. But not so monkeys, which are generally assumed to be wordless, at least in human terms. This, however, was no ordinary man and certainly no ordinary monkey.

  The gentleman’s name was Colonel Katteffelto. The monkey’s name was Darwin.

  Now Colonel Katterfelto had a tragic tale to tell and would tell it at the dropping of a sixpence. Late of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers, he had distinguished himself in the Martian campaign and been awarded several medals for valorous deeds above and beyond the call of duty. Sadly the colonel no longer sported these medals, for he had been forced to pawn them. He did, however, cling to his dignity, though this was oft-times perilous.

  Although age had brought a bow to his back, Colonel Katterfelto still retained his military bearing. The greying whiskers of his mustachios were tinted a steely blue and twisted into martial spikes. His pale grey eyes were clear and alert, though in them sadness showed.

  For the colonel had fallen upon hard times and been reduced to the status of Music Hall bill-bottomer. A precarious position at best and one to be dreaded at worst. The worst being the volatile crowd’s aptness to greet those first up on the evening’s bill via the medium of hurled rotten fruit and vegetables.

  It was a tradition, or an old charter, or something.

  But the colonel would give of his best this evening, for he knew of no other way. Had he not laid down fire upon Martian tripods? Rescued wounded comrades-in-arms? Marched across the dusty landscape of the red planet, letting loose at anything that moved with his back-engineered service ray-gun revolver (which now sadly lay in the pawnshop next to his medals of honour)? Yes he had, he most certainly had.

  A rough crowd held no fear for Colonel Katterfelto, though he fretted for the staining of his uniform. It had been for him a sad and sudden decline into penury and it had not been of his own making. The colonel knew just where the blame for it lay.

  The blame lay with Darwin the monkey.

  Darwin the monkey’s tale was equal in sadness to that of the colonel’s. Perhaps more than equal, in fact, because it involved the loss of not one but two fortunes. And Darwin the monkey had no one to blame but himself.

  He had once been employed as monkey butler to Lord Brentford. When his lordship came to a sorry end aboard the ill-fated airship the Empress of Mars, Darwin inherited the Brentford fortune. The Great House at Sion Park, along with extensive grounds, which Darwin soon converted into England’s biggest banana plantation, and a good many golden guineas besides. Some of these guineas Darwin had invested most wisely; others most surely he had not.

  Upon a May morning in the year of eighteen ninety-six, a gentleman caller at Sion Park had presented his card. Known only as Herr Döktor, he had a unique proposition to put to England’s most moneyed monkey.

  It was Herr Döktor’s conviction that it was possible to teach monkeys to read, write and speak the Queen’s English. This, he considered, would advance their evolutionary progress, enabling them eventually to catch up with our own. This was not, he was careful to stress, in any way a heretical idea. On the contrary. Herr Döktor was doing God’s work. His goal was to bring enlightenment and understanding to Man’s hairy cousins, that they might save their souls through knowledge and worship of the Almighty.

  Naturally it was difficult to put a price upon the benefits of such an offer. The benefits that would present themselves to the world’s first talking ape. But Herr Döktor was nonetheless willing to name a sum, which although on the face of it sounded over-excessive to the point of whimsy, he considered suitable. A labourer being worthy of his hire, as the scriptures so aptly put it.

  Darwin, who had a basic understanding of English — for how otherwise might he have served as a monkey butler? —warmed immediately to the prospect of articulating human speech. He forked out the most considerable sum, in cash (for render unto Caesar those things which are Caesar’s) and engaged in a six-month programme of intense tutorage.

  It was not, however, without incident and Darwin, who had yet to eschew the basic ways of monkeydom, had not been above the occasional flinging of dung to enforce a point when he felt it necessary.

  But he met with success and half a year later had mastered the basic rudiments of the Queen’s English. He then shook hands with Herr Döktor and in all but perfect ‘Man’ thanked him for his lessons and bade him farewell.

  Herr Döktor bowed and turned away, struggling down the drive, bow-legged beneath the weight of golden guineas.

  Three days later, cleanly shaven of face and presenting himself as an English country gentleman, Darwin settled down before a gaming table at Monte Carlo and within several hours had gambled away his entire remaining inheritance. Big house, banana plantation, a spaceship and all.

  Very sad.

  There was probably a moral to be learned there, but whatever it was, it was lost upon Darwin. Who now found himself gifted with speech, though quite without funds.

  He could of course have chosen to exhibit himself before a paying public, but this he had no wish to do. Knowing something of the showman’s life, he harboured no longings to be presented as a freak of nature. Rather he wished for comfort and stability and so chose once more to accept the position of monkey butler. But not, it must be said, without a slight degree of bitterness towards humankind.

  Colonel Katterfelto had, like most gentlemen of his time, always yearned for a monkey butler. A servant who would work for bananas, be ever obedient and not answer back. He had lately come into am inheritance of his own and this coupled with his army pension, which he chose to take as a cash sum, would, he felt, enable him to achieve his life’s ambition. To build a certain something, with the aid of a monkey butler.

  The certain something that the colonel had in mind was a something of almost infinite magnitude. Its genesis had come about with a book the colonel had read when still a child. A book of considerable age entitled Treatise upon the Establishment of a New World Order, through the Construction of the New Messiah. As curiosity might have it, and here it might be said that curiosity was piled upon curiosity to form an
all-encompassing coincidence, the author of this ancient tome was one Herr Döktor.

  The gist of this treatise was that the New Messiah would not come down in glory from the skies, as was popularly touted about in scripture. The New Messiah would be a modern messiah, behaving in the ways of modernity. The New Messiah would require a little help from his friends to manifest himself. He would in fact need to be constructed from modern materials. The author argued convincingly that human anatomy was far too complicated, and that a good engineer could create a man of greater simplicity and greater efficiency. A man that would last far longer than three score years and ten. A man who might be as a God. Included in the treatise were the plans for such a man. A mechanical man that would be designed as ‘a magical magnet used to attract divine energies’. A Mechanical Messiah to be imbued with the presence of God. Heaven’s last and best gift to Mankind.

  And all it required was finance.

  In the communal dressing room, Colonel Katterfelto tapped distractedly upon his ray-gun holster, wherein lay the ancient tome. Somewhat scuffed and charred about its edges. Where had it all gone wrong? he wondered, and then he recalled well enough.

  He had engaged the services of his monkey butler. He had drawn out his fortune from the bank. He had purchased tickets to America, where a family property had been bequeathed to him, and had sailed upon The Great Eastern[2] in the company of Darwin, striking port in New York and heading off to Wormcast, Arizona.

  Here, in a simple shack on the edge of town, the colonel had set up his Spiritual Laboratory and begun his Great Work. Things had gone well. Up to a point. The actual construction of the Mechanical Messiah had been reasonably straightforward. A local blacksmith shop, a light engineering company and an airship construction works had shared in the manufacture of parts. Each working upon separate, seemingly unrelated items and no one but the colonel knowing of the intended whole. Secrecy, the colonel considered, would be for the best, until the Great Day dawneth. The parts had been expensive, but how could one place a monetary value upon the salvation of Mankind? It was beyond price.