The Steam Mole (13 page)

“Oh, she's all right. Big Max's daughter,” said the guard. “Too hot out here.”

The attitude of the military here was so different from the soldiers of the Empire, Mary reflected. But by “Big Max,” she assumed he must mean Mr. Darlington. He was big, had once been a mining engineer, and seemed popular with the ordinary people. And yes, Mary had taken Clara to meet the girl the night she was poisoned.

Mary wasn't prepared for the sniffly misery that the wait had turned the girl into. And she was, if anything, not much older than her daughter. Dressed in high Westralian fashion—which was about five
years behind the women of London—and looking as if she hadn't had any sleep since Clara left, she twisted her hands and looked wretched.

“Mrs. Calland,” she burst out. “I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone. But you're her mother. I've been…tearing myself apart. I told Nicky and he said…He said I mustn't tell anyone. But Father says you've been so worried. Clara…Clara's run away to Queensland. To her father.”

“Are you saying she has not been kidnapped?” asked Mary, gently. This was no time to point out that she liked to be called Dr. Calland.

“I don't think so. See, she tried to go last Wednesday night. Only she had a nasty experience with some drunk hobo. She lost one bandbox. Then…she came back. She'd left me a note saying she was going to Queensland. To her dad.

“I…I understand. My parents are divorced, too. I've thought about running away. Going to my mother in Adelaide. And she thought…she thought you were never going to be conscious again,” explained Linda.

“It was close. Being unconscious probably saved my life, though. Now, why don't you sit down and tell me the whole story.”

She did, and it plainly gave her a great deal of relief.

“Well, my dear, you've taken some care off my mind. We were terribly worried about the bandbox, and now it turns out that the hobo concerned was telling something close to the truth. I have to assume that Clara had some kind of assignation with the spy who brought her the letter from my husband Jack, which was how she thought she'd get to see him in Queensland. They didn't think I'd do anything for Jack, but they knew I would cooperate for the sake of my daughter. Thank you so much for coming to talk to me.”

“I did promise her I wouldn't tell. But she didn't think she could tell you,” said the girl.

“Under the circumstances, Clara would want you to tell me. You've done what was best for her.”

It was a relief to know that the matter of the bandbox had been a false lead. But it got Mary no closer to finding her daughter. And now she had to produce synthetic ammonia from the air. She said so. She was surprised by Linda Darlington's reply. “Please. Please can I help you? I'll…I'll ask my father. I want so to do something to help Clara. And I know quite a lot about where things are in Westralia…if you need supplies, or someone you can trust to run messages. I can even cook,” she said humbly. “I won't be as useful as Clara, but I really want to help.”

Mary Calland reflected that Clara would probably never admit to being able to cook. And, unless she'd learned on the submarine, she couldn't.

Linda wondered if Clara had any idea how much like her mother she was. Clara's mother was plainly the kind who gave orders…and who was rather too used to dealing with her own daughter to let Linda do the acquiring of permission to be there. Linda could imagine Clara sliding out of that, just like she'd never quite promised not to go. “I will call your parents. I'd be happy to have the company. I miss my daughter.”

Linda had to hope the call didn't include a mention of Nicky. It didn't, and it wasn't on the telephone to her father anyway. He turned up while Dr. Calland was speaking to the operator.

“I thought I said you weren't to pester Dr. Calland,” he said in the sort of voice that suggested real trouble, soon.

“Mr. Darlington,” said Clara's mother. “She hasn't pestered me. She's been a blessing. Actually, I was just trying to call you on the telephone to ask if she could assist me. I'm used to girls of this age, and she knows Ceduna: where the local businesses are, where local suppliers are, and more importantly where to go and not to go. It would…help me cope with Clara's…absence.”

“Please, Father. Clara was my friend. I…I haven't been able to do anything much and I've really wanted to. And you were saying how Dr. Calland proved that women could do anything they set their mind to. She'd…she'd be a good role model,” said Linda, digging deep.

And in the next few hours she found out that she was expected to know things that no lady educated at Ceduna's finest ladies seminary did, things that would have shocked her teachers rigid. Women were not expected to deal with that sort of thing, after all…She could almost hear the headmistress, Miss Caldwaller, saying that. Clara's mother, however, could see no reason why she didn't know the periodic table, let alone by heart; the symbols for the elements; how to calculate pressure; or what the Boyle-Mariotte Law was. And, when she didn't know, she was either told or handed an elderly encyclopedia, which she was supposed to read really fast when she wasn't running to carry this, fetch that, accompany a soldier to a manufactory to collect tubing, or get the operator to call yet another supplier in the search for gas and burners.

It was, once she got over the shock, absolutely what she wanted to do. And it would give her stepmother hives, and probably please her father.

Mr. Darlington dropped in a little later, as they were getting ready for the first test run. When he arrived, Linda was connecting pipes, something her smaller fingers and hands were more useful at than Captain Malkis's in the maze of them that linked the various pumps.

“I'd come to relieve you of my daughter,” said Darlington, “but she does appear to be making herself busy.”

“Oh, Father, please can I stay?” asked Linda. She wanted to see if it worked.

Dr. Calland intervened, looking up from her careful soldering. “She's been very useful, and I hope she'll stay a little longer. She's deft and practical. We're working flat out to get the equipment up and running. Luckily things have moved on since my grandmother's time and there are powerful mining pumps available.”

Her father looked surprised. “I had no idea Linda had any interest in science, let alone being, well, any good at mechanical things.”

“Do you object, sir?” There was a certain brittleness in Clara's mother's voice.

“Goodness, no,” said her father, looking thoughtfully at his daughter, almost as if he'd just seen something he hadn't noticed before. “Pleased as punch, actually, now that I think about it. Well, then, I'll leave her to it. I've arranged for some food to be sent up. I'll just tell them to add one more. And no, ma'am, it won't be poisoned. We've taken steps.”

“Good, but I don't think we'll have much of a chance to eat. We'll be doing our first test run in ten minutes.

“I think I'll just stay then.”

“No, you won't,” said the man Linda had learned was the submarine captain. He was wrestling an enormous keg of coal gas into place with cheerful firmness. “You'll see to them getting that food to Dr. Calland quickly, Darlington. She's pale and not well. You can see the demonstration with all the other officials.” The captain was plainly used to giving orders and having them obeyed, and the attitude seemed to work on her father, too.

The next phase of the work involved starting the pumps and the heating. Linda's job was to watch the pressure gauge and sing out at each ten-bar mark. It crept upward as the pumps thumped away. And then there was a high-pitched whistle and the pressure dropped. So it was back to fixing piping again. That was definitely the weakest part of the entire hodge-podge, cobbled-together machine.

On the next try they got the pressure right up to two hundred atmospheres. And then a pipe joint burst, so they had to start again. This time a pump caught fire. So they ate, and started again.

And finally, as the nitrogen and hydrogen flowed in, a drop of some fluid fell out into a flask. Then half of a second drop formed. It took a long time.

Dr. Calland held her hand up, and they all went to their jobs of powering the ammonia-making contraption down. Dr. Calland sniffed the flask. “It's ammonia. But at that rate of output, I don't think it's going to change the world. Or convince anyone of its viability.”

“You have proved it could be done,” said Captain Malkis.

“Not sufficiently. We'll need a different catalyst.”

“What?” Linda meant, “What is a catalyst?”

“Uranium, I think.”

“Er. I think I'll ask my father,” said Linda, who didn't want to have to refer to the encyclopedia again, and did remember uranium being mentioned when he'd spoken about mining.

“We won't need a lot of it. It doesn't get used up.”

So Linda got on the telephone.

The request was met with some surprise. “Uranium? You mean there's something useful that can be done with it? Besides as a source of radium? We used to use it in glass, but it's dangerous stuff, you know. We get some out of the copper ores from Roxby.”

“Dr. Calland wants some as a…a catalyst.”

“There is some at the geological institute. How much does she want?”

“I'll ask.”

The problem was not so much in getting the uranium, but in getting such a small quantity.

And this time it worked.

They shut down at three drops.

“We need witnesses, and heaven knows if this Heath Robinson contraption will survive long this time.”

Linda realized that the earlier success wouldn't be the part that history remembered. The next part would. It was rather neat to think that she'd be able to say “I was there.” It of course wasn't anything like the image she'd had, before getting involved, of a scientific laboratory. She'd have thought that it would be quiet, rather
like a church, with everyone reverently waiting for the first drop of ammonia into the receiving flask. Of course, it wasn't like that. There was the steady
thump-thump-thump
of the multiple compressors, the roar of the gas burners playing on the reaction chamber, and the hubbub from the watchers.

But that noise at least was silenced when the droplet formed on the condenser spout and began to grow. Then the watchers were still, even if the machinery continued to make its noises. That was good, Linda knew. If they were making noises, they were still working.

The drop was followed by more, forming and falling steadily. Linda realized she'd been holding her breath, and exhaled before she fell over. She smiled for the first time since Clara had vanished. She knew, then, that this was what she wanted to do. Make things, make them work, make people amazed.

Dr. Calland swallowed, wishing her mouth wasn't so impossibly dry. Time to stop it now, before something failed. She knew how fragile it all was, even if they didn't. She signaled to the tense technicians to start the process of switching off the machines and the gas for the burners. It took a few minutes, but in the meanwhile she took the flask now containing a few fluid ounces of liquid across to where Professor Henderson stood with Darlington and Nathan Geldray, the finance minister.

“It will obviously have to be tested properly, but if you care to unstopper this flask and smell it, I think you will find we have the key to solving Westralia's nitrate problems in our hands.”

They sniffed the liquid. “I think,” said Henderson, grudgingly, “that we'll have to accept that you can produce synthetic ammonia, ma'am. But I still don't think it can be done on a commercial scale.”

“As you claimed it couldn't be done at all,” said Darlington, “I think I'd bet on Dr. Calland. What do you say, Geldray?”

“If we don't believe her, I can bet she'll be getting a hundred offers for the process by this afternoon,” said the finance minister. “I looked through those calculations you sent me, Darlington. You've erred…on the side of caution, I think. Dr. Calland, I am, on behalf of the Westralian government, authorized to accept your terms for the invention. I will arrange for you to have drawing capacity to the full sum from the Barraclough Bank.”