Swiftly: A Novel (GollanczF.) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ONE - BATES

  TWO - ELEANOR

  THREE - THE DEAN

  FOUR - GUGGLERUM AND LITTLEBIG

  FIVE - THE GIFT

  AFTERWORD

  SWIFTLY

  A NOVEL

  ‘The blade of wisdom is turned against the wise.

  Wisdom is a crime against nature.’

  Nietzche

  Also by Adam Roberts from Gollancz:

  Salt

  Stone

  On

  The Snow

  Poystom

  Gradisil

  Land of the Headless

  Swiftly

  ADAM ROBERTS

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Adam Roberts 2008

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Adam Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 0 5750 8783 5

  This eBook produced by Jouve, France

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.adamroberts.com

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  ONE

  BATES

  [1]

  5 November 1848

  Swiftly, expertly, the tiny hand worked, ticked up and down, moved over the face of the miniature pallet. The worker was wearing yellow silk trousers, a close-woven blue waistcoat. It (for Bates could not see whether it was a he or a she) had on spectacles that shone like dewdrops in the light. Its hair was black, its skin a golden cream. Bates could even make out the creases of concentration on its brow, the tip of its tiny tongue just visible through its teeth.

  Bates stood upright. ‘It hurts my back,’ he said, ‘to lean over so.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Pannell. ‘Might I fetch you a chair?’

  ‘No need, thank you,’ said Bates. ‘I think I have seen all I desire. It is, indeed, fascinating.’

  Pannell seemed agitated, shifting weight from one foot to another. ‘I never tire of watching them work,’ he agreed. ‘Pixies. Fairies! Creatures from childhood story.’ He beamed. You smile sir, thought Bates. You smile, but there is sweat on your lip. Perhaps you are not altogether lost to shame. Nerves, sir, nerves.

  ‘What is it, eh, making exactly?’

  ‘A mechanism for controlling the angle, pitch and yaw, in flight you know. I could give you its technical name, although it is Mister Nicholson who is the expert in these matters.’

  ‘Is it a sir or a madam?’

  ‘It?’

  ‘The creature. The workman.’

  ‘A female.’ Pannell touched Bates’s elbow, herding him gently towards the staircase at the far end of the workshop. ‘We find they have better hands for weaving the finest wire-strands.’

  Bates paused at the foot of the wooden stairs, taking one last look around the workshop. ‘And these are Lilliputians?’

  ‘These,’ replied Pannell, ‘are from the neighbouring island, Blefuscu. We believe Blefuscans, sir, to be better workers. They are less prone to disaffection, sir. They work harder and are more loyal.’

  ‘All of which is,’ said Bates, ‘very interesting.’

  Up the stairs and through the glass door, Bates was led into Pannell’s office. Pannell guided him to a chair, and offered him brandy. ‘When my superior heard of the terms you were offering,’ he gushed, wiping the palms of his hands alternately against the opposite sleeves of his coat as Bates sat down, ‘he was nothing less than overwhelmed. Mr Burton is not an excitable man, sir, but he was impressed, very impressed, more,’ Pannell went on, hopping to the drinks cabinet in the corner of the room, ‘more than impressed. Very generous terms, sir ! Very favourable on both sides!’

  ‘I am pleased you think so,’ said Bates.

  From where he was sitting the view was clear through the quartered window of Pannell’s office. Grime marked the bottom right-hand corners of each pane like brown lichen. Each patch of dirt was delineated from clean glass by a hyperbolic line running from bottom left to top right, as, Bates thought, x equals y squared. The pattern on the glass further hemmed in the pinched view out upon which the window gave: the dingy street, the grey-brick buildings.

  He shifted his weight in the chair. It complained, squeaking like a querulous baby. I too am nervous, he thought.

  ‘Brandy?’ Pannell asked for the second time.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Mr Burton expressed his desire to meet you himself.’

  ‘I would be honoured.’

  ‘Indeed...’

  A bell tinkled, as tiny a sound as ice-glass breaking. A Lilliputian sound. Bates looked to the patch of wall above the door. The bell was mounted on a brass plate. It shivered again. Some more silver sound sprinkled free. Faery.

  Pannell stood, staring at the bell like a fool, a glass of brandy in his hands. ‘That means that Mr Burton is coming here directly. It rings when Mr Burton is on his way here directly. But I was to bring you to Mr Burton’s office, not he to come here . . .’

  And almost at once the door shuddered, as with cold, and snapped open. Burton was a tall man who carried a spherical belly before him like an O of exclamation. His jowls were turfed with black beard, but his forehead was bald, as pink and curved as a rose petal. He moved with the burly energy of the moneyed. As Bates got up from his chair he tipped his glance down with a respectful nod of the head: Burton’s shoes were very well made, tapering to a point, the uppers made of some variety of stippled leather. Standing to his full height brought Bates’s glance up along the fine cloth of Burton’s trousers, past the taut expanse of dark waistcoat and frock, to the single colourful item of clothing on the man: a turquoise and scarlet and vulgar bow tie, into which actual jewels had been fitted.

  He faced the proprietor with a smile, extending his hand. But the first thing Burton said was: ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Mr Burton,’ gabbled Pannell, ‘may I introduce to you Mr Bates, who has come in person to negotiate the contract. I was just telling him how generous we considered the terms he offered . . .’

  ‘No, sir,’ repeated Burton. ‘I’ll not stand it.’

  ‘Not stand it, sir?’ said Bates.

  ‘I know who you are, sir,’ fumed Burton. He stomped to the far side of the office, and turned to face them again. Bates noticed the bone-coloured walking stick, capped at each tip with red gold. ‘I know who you are!’

  ‘I am Abraham Bates, sir,’ replied Bates.

  ‘No, sir!’ Burton raised the cane, and brought it down on the flat of Pannell’s desk. It reported like a rifle discharge. Pannell flinched. Bates found sweat pricking out of his forehead again.

  ‘No, sir,’ bellowed Burto
n. ‘You’ll not weasel your way here! I know your type, and you’ll not come here with your false names and false heart.’

  ‘Mr Burton,’ said Bates, trying to keep his voice level. ‘I assure you that Bates is indeed my name.’

  ‘You are a liar, sir! I give you the lie, sir.’ The cane flourished in the air, inadvertently knocking a picture on the wall and tipping a stretch of the South Seas through forty degrees.

  ‘I am not, sir,’ retorted Bates, his heart dancing.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ whimpered Pannell. ‘I beg of you both . . .’

  ‘Pannell, you’ll hold your tongue,’ declared Burton, emphasising the last word with another flourish of the cane. ‘If you value your continued employment at this place. Do you deny, sir,’ he added, pointing the cane directly at Bates, ‘do you deny that you came here to infiltrate? To weasel your way in?’

  ‘I came to discuss certain matters,’ insisted Bates. ‘That is all. Sir, do you refuse even to talk with me?’

  ‘And if I do?’ said Burton, his voice dropping a little. ‘Then? You’ll have your members of Parliament, your newspaper editors, your friends, and with them you’ll turn on me? A pack of dogs, sir! A pack of dogs!’

  ‘I admire your cane,’ said Bates, lowering himself back into his chair in what he hoped was a cool-headed manner. ‘Is it bone, sir?’

  This took the wind from Burton’s sails. ‘We’ll not discuss my cane, sir.’

  ‘Is it Brobdingnagian bone? From which part of the body? A bone from the inner-ear, perhaps?’

  ‘There is nothing illegal,’ Burton began, but then seemed to change his mind. The sentence silently completed itself in Bates’s mind. ‘Very well,’ Burton said, finally, somewhat deflated. ‘You have come to talk, sir. We will talk, sir. Pannell, you will stay in this room. Pour me a brandy, in fact, whilst I and this . . . gentleman discuss the affairs of the day. Then, Mr Bates, I’d be obliged if you left this manufactory and did not return.’

  ‘One conversation will satisfy me, sir,’ said Bates, rounding the sentence off with a small sigh, like a full-stop given breath.

  Burton settled into a chair by the window, and Pannell poured another glass of brandy with visibly trembling fingers. ‘This gentleman,’ Burton told his employee, ‘is an agitator, sir. A radical, I daresay. Are you a radical ?’

  ‘I am one of Mr Martineau’s party.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Burton, with egregious sarcasm. ‘A party man!’

  ‘I am honoured to be so styled.’

  ‘And no patriot, I’ll lay any money.’

  ‘I love my country, sir,’ replied Bates, ‘love her enough to wish her better managed.’

  ‘Faction and party,’ Burton muttered grimly, raising the brandy glass to his face like a glass muzzle over his bulbous nose. ‘Party and faction.’ He drank. ‘They’ll sunder the country, I declare it.’ He put the empty glass down on the table with a ploc.

  Pannell was hovering, unhappy-looking, by the door.

  ‘We can agree to differ on that topic, sir,’ said Bates, a little stiffly.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Burton. ‘What conversation is it you wish to have with me? I own this manufactory, sir. Yes, we employ a cohort of Blefuscans.’

  ‘Employ, sir?’

  ‘They cost me,’ said Burton, bridling, ‘a fortune. Regular food does not sit in their stomachs, so they must be fed only the daintiest and most expensive. Regular cloth is too coarse for their clothing, so they must be given the finest silks. The expense is very much greater than a regular salary would be. True, I own them outright, and this makes them slaves. The Ancients kept slaves sir! Plato, Caesar kept slaves. But mine are well treated, and they cost me more as slaves than employees ever could. I suppose Mr Bates here,’ Burton added, addressing Pannell in a raised voice that aimed for sarcasm, but achieved only petulance, ‘would see them free. Mr Bates considers slavery an evil. Is it not so, Mr Bates?’

  Bates shifted in his chair. It squeaked again underneath him. ‘Since you ask, I do consider such slavery as you practise here an evil. How many of your employees die?’

  ‘I lose money with each fatality, sir,’ said Burton. ‘I’ve no desire to see a single one die.’

  ‘And your cane, sir ? How many Brobdingnagians are left alive in the world?’

  ‘I have nothing to do with those monsters. Indeed not. One of their kind could hardly fit inside my building.’

  ‘Yet you carry a cane made out of their murdered bodies, sir. Do you not consider that a wickedness? A contribution to their pitiable state?’

  ‘Some people, Pannell,’ said Burton, addressing his employee again, ‘some people have leisure and predisposition to be sympathetic towards animals. Others are too busy with the work they have at hand.’

  ‘Your Lilliputians . . .’

  ‘Blefuscans, sir.’

  ‘Your little people, sir - and the giant people also - are hardly animals.’

  ‘No? No? Have you worked with them, Mr Bates?’

  ‘I have devoted many years now to their cause.’

  ‘Actually worked with them? But of course not. The midgets are mischievous, and their wickedness is in the bone. And the giants - they are a clear and present danger to the public good.’

  ‘The Brobdingnagians have endured homicide on an appalling scale.’

  ‘Homicide? But that implies man, don’t it? Homo implies killing men, don’t it?’

  ‘Are not the Brobdingnagians made in God’s image, sir? As are you and I? As are the Lilliputians?’

  ‘So,’ said Burton, smiling broadly. ‘It ’s God, at the heart of your disaffection, is it?’

  ‘Our nation would be stronger,’ said Bates, struggling to keep the primness out of his voice, ‘if we followed God’s precepts more, sir. Or are you an atheist?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Let me ask you a question, Mr Burton: are your Blefuscan workers - are they white-skinned, or black?’

  ‘What manner of question is this, sir? You’ve just examined my workers out there. You know the answer to your own question.’

  ‘Their skins are as white as mine,’ said Bates. ‘The Bible is clear on this matter. God has allotted slavery to one portion of his creation, and marked that portion by blackening their skins - Ham’s sons, sir. There are enough Blacks in the world to fill the places of slaves. But it mocks God to take some of his most marvellous creations and enslave them, or kill them.’

  ‘I do not kill my workers, sir,’ insisted Burton.

  ‘But they are killed, sir. Worldwide, only a few thousand are left. And the Brobdingnagians - how many of them remain alive? After the affair with the Endeavour and the Triumph?’

  ‘I have met the captain of the Triumph, sir,’ said Burton, bridling again. ‘At a dinner party of a friend of mine. An honourable man, sir. Honourable. He followed the orders he was given. What naval gentleman could do otherwise? And,’ he continued, warming to his theme, ‘was it so great a crime? These giants are twelve times our size. Had they organised, had they known cannon, and ordnance, and gunpowder, they could have trampled us to pieces. Not only England neither, but the whole of Europe - they would have come over here and trampled us to pieces. Who’d have been the slaves then? You may answer me that question, if you please. With an army of monstrous giants trampling England’s green fields, who’d have been the slaves then?’

  ‘The Brobdingnagians are a peace-loving people,’ said Bates, feeling the colour strengthen in his face. ‘If you read the account of the mariner who discovered their land . . .’

  Burton laughed aloud. ‘That fellow? Who’d believe a word he wrote? Riding the nipple of a gentlewoman like a hobby-horse, by all pardon - it was nonsense. And the reality? A race of beings big enough to squash us like horseflies, and destroy our nation. Our nation, sir! Yours and mine! We had but one advantage over them, and that was that we possessed gunpowder and they did not. The King did well to destroy the majority of that population and seize their land. Our people are the bes
t fed in the world, now, sir. Perhaps you do not remember how things were before the gigantic cattle were brought here, but I do. How many starved in the streets. Now there’s not a pauper but eats roast beef every day. Our army is the strongest and manliest on the Continent. Would we have had our successes invading France and Holland without them?’