The Sunken (4 page)

Born a tenth-generation Stoker, Isambard Kingdom Brunel should never have invented anything. After they hunted the swamp-dragons to extinction and had no means of sustaining themselves, King George had allowed the Stokers into the city to work in his newly formed Engine Ward, but the Stokers would never be accepted as part of the engineering elite. They did not mix with folk who weren’t their own, nor were they invited to join the Royal Society or speak in the great churches. They had one purpose, and one purpose only — to keep the Engine Ward operational; to oil the great industrial machine of London.

So for Brunel to design and build a new locomotive and create his own church was doubly impressive. Aaron had seen it coming, of course: only a few years before he’d been helping Isambard spy on the lessons of the other engineering schools. He’d stolen books for his friend from the nearby churches of Grandfather Clock and Meticus, he’d pored over Isambard’s technical drawings, and marvelled at the intricate designs. Aaron had always known Isambard wouldn’t be content to shovel coal in the engine rooms, and nor did he long to return to the swamps — he had none of Aaron’s affinity for animals.

After selling his first steam engine to a wealthy industrialist (who used it as a garden ornament), Brunel purchased a scrapped furnace chimney from the Metics and converted it into a functional, albeit modest, church. Soon, he would complete his second and third locomotives.

London society buzzed with news of this “upstart mechanic” who dared to take the name of “engineer” and create locomotives. Brunel had supporters, too: engineers who sought a change from the strict religious confines of the Royal Society, and they glorified Brunel and his locomotive design as the future of British engineering.

And though Aaron stood by Isambard’s side and rejoiced in his success, he could sense the attention was affecting Isambard. His ambitions — once grounded by his poverty and standing — reached ever wider as his influence grew within the Engine Ward. Even as they drank together after the workday had finished, Aaron could sense Isambard’s mind ticking away like a Dirigire clock, whirring and churning over future possibilities.

Above Aaron’s head, steam hissed through a pipe, blowing a shrill whistle. He shut the last furnace, checked the oil in the pistons, and hung up his shovel for the night.

With his concentration broken, the voices flooded in. It should have been quiet on the lower levels, but of course
they
got into the pipes and travelled as they pleased.
They
were compies — the small, lizard-like dragons that had beaten down the rat population to become London’s most prolific vermin. Their minds sang like a choir in harmony, for they moved and thought as one. Aaron had become so accustomed to their chorus he could sometimes send out a thought and have them pick up on it, forcing them to change direction or stop in their tracks.

I wonder if Nicholas can do that,
Aaron wondered.

Isambard was working on installing steam-driven elevators on every level of the Ward, but he’d been distracted with his locomotives, and the elevator down on the sixth level remained unfinished. Aaron clambered up the stairs, listening to the clang of his boots against the steel grating as it echoed through the machinery.

Bootsteps clanged towards him. He tipped his hat at Quartz, who came to replace him. His grandfather’s closest friend since before Aaron was born, Quartz had cared for Aaron after both his parents died. A swamp man from way back, even his years in the city hadn’t tamed Quartz’s feral spirit. His weathered, greying features suggested an age and wisdom far beyond his years, but from behind his yellowed teeth often burst the most blasphemous profanities. If Aaron was unsure of the gods, Quartz was downright malevolent.

“His Eminence wishes to see you.” Quartz’s wild eyes glimmered as he clapped his hand on Aaron’s back. Aaron staggered forward, but managed to keep his balance.

“Did he say why?”

Quartz shrugged. “He wouldn’t presume to tell me, a mere mortal, now would he? He should be finished at the pulpit within the hour if you felt like skinning your knees in his presence.”

Like all the engineers of the Ward, Brunel delivered nightly sermons from his church, mostly on matters of locomotion, mathematics and the science of machinery. Tonight, he was speaking on his favourite topic: the advantages of his broad gauge railway design. With Brunel’s name gaining notoriety, there would be a crowd for sure. Aaron slapped Quartz on the shoulder as he passed, and clambered up to level two.

Aaron took a shortcut through the tunnels and emerged on a staircase, which he ascended into the shadows at the rear of the Chimney. Brunel had extended the shell of the old chimney into a high circular nave, and had incorporated some of the Stoker workshops into wings that stuck from the structure like the legs of an insect. The rest of the workshops — and the shacks and tenements the Stokers inhabited — were hidden behind the complex. From the street the building was dwarfed by the majestic churches surrounding it, but Brunel had already extended many of the Stoker tunnels deep underground. If the Royal Society ever found out …

Lit by strings of flickering Argand lamps cascading from the vaulted ceiling, and enclosed by the comforting sounds of shuffling feet and subdued coughing, the space seemed homely, a place of solace and learning. As Aaron had suspected, every pew was full. He recognised the faces of many prominent engineers — influential men who wanted to see this upstart Stoker for themselves — and in the far corner, nearly concealed by the shadows, Aaron recognized the gaunt face of Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society.

What’s he doing here? He has done nothing but denounce Isambard to the other sects.
If Banks was listening to Isambard’s sermon, it meant he must consider the Stoker “engineer” a real threat.

As Isambard spoke — his tone rising and falling with vehemence as he explained why broad gauge railway would be the future of England — Aaron felt the tension in the room rising; a palpable film of outrage and antagonism clung to the air. While Isambard was popular among the workers of Engine Ward, here among the elite, among his true peers, he had few real supporters.

At just twenty-five years of age, Isambard was an imposing presence, even to his childhood friend. Despite his short stature, he carried himself with an air of quiet confidence, his work in the Engine Ward keeping him thin and muscular. His eyes — wide and sparkling — betrayed his boyish enthusiasm. He didn’t rest his arms or elbows on the pulpit, as other preachers did, but kept them at his sides, occasionally raising or lowering them to emphasise a point. His voice, clear and animated and tinged with a rasping edge from his time by the furnaces, soared through the vaulted metal nave, so every soul present heard every word, though they would not understand them all. Aaron barely understood anything Isambard said these days.

When the sermon finished, Aaron watched as Banks got up to leave, slipping quietly into the retreating crowd so no one would notice him. A Messiah could not be seen in the church of another sect without arousing suspicion, as the fear of plagiarism was rife. Wealth, status, and prestige followed the men who invented the most useful and brilliant machines, and everyone wanted a part of that. It was not unknown for men to become mercenaries of scientific information, trading ideas and designs between competing engineers, but it was a dangerous profession — one wrongly recounted fact and an experiment could literally destroy an engineer. If Banks was here himself, it meant understanding Brunel’s innovation must be worth the risk.

Aaron waited ’till the church had emptied before approaching the pulpit. Above the altar, a dusty skylight cast a shaft of light down on Isambard’s crouched form. He leaned over his notes, furrowing his brow and rubbing his temples, as he always did when he was stressed.

“I took these numbers from a book of algorithms, but I think they’re incorrect,” he mumbled, scribbling notes in the margin of his page. “It will take me days to correctly compute these sums.”

“Charles Babbage is creating a machine that will calculate the equations itself, eliminating the problem of human error,” said Aaron, who’d heard gossip about it from Quartz.

“I know, and I wish he’d damn well hurry up about it. I heard he’s been charged with blasphemy — not much hope for a counting machine now. Come down to the workshop.”

Isambard’s workshop mimicked the secret basement room they had used in their youth. He’d built it several storeys below the church, accessible only by a steam-powered lift or a winding staircase guarded by several booby traps. He pushed Aaron inside the tiny lift shaft, and cranked the handle to send them on their way.

“I want to show you something,” he said. “You’re the first to see it, and I want your honest opinion.”

“Is this your entry to the King’s competition?”

“Ah, so you saw the article in the
Times.
” He mimicked Joseph Banks’ refined voice. “‘If the Stokers hadn’t killed all the tricorns, the dragons would never come to London and eat all our bonny bangtails.’ And how many times can the man say the word ‘engineer’ in one sentence? He would do anything to sour public opinion against me.”

“He hardly needs to worry. I don’t know why you’re bothering, Isambard. They will never vote for a Stoker design, even if it is brilliant.”

“And yet, I have made all this,” Brunel swept his hand through the air, indicating the clanging elevator, and the Chimney, high above. “The King believes in broad gauge, Aaron. That’s why he allowed me to build all this. That’s why he sent Banks here tonight to spy on me.”

“So you saw him, then?”

Brunel ignored Aaron’s question. “King George created the gods and the churches and the Royal Society, so he can bend them as he wishes. And if I
could
win—”

“You hope for too much.”

But Brunel wasn’t listening. “Presbyter!” his eyes danced. “Imagine one of the Dirty Folk being able to jump to the rank of Presbyter! The winner will sit on the Council of the Royal Society — imagine that! The result of this competition could alter the course of Stoker history.”

The elevator creaked to a halt, and Brunel pulled the grating open. Aaron followed him across the tiny landing to the heavy iron door, which stood open most of the time (being rather difficult to move) but was now shut and bolted.

“I didn’t want any prying eyes to steal my idea,” he said. He unlocked the door, slipped off the bolts, and he and Aaron each leaned a shoulder against the door and pushed.

The door creaked open to reveal the high, airy chamber, at odds with its underground location. Ventilation shafts carried fresh air from the city (if any air in London could be defined as
fresh
), and a system of pipes discharged waste and fumes into rubbish pits behind Engine Ward. Long workbenches lined every wall and stretched across the centre of the room, covered in every manner of contraption imaginable. In the far corner, a furnace flared, sending flickering shadows across the room.

Aaron had visited many times before, but still he found himself in awe of the expansive space. Isambard seemed utterly at home here, as though he had become part of the machinery himself.

Brunel strode across the workshop and pointed to a model spread across the central workspace. “Look!” he cried, his eyes dancing with excitement.

Aaron bent over the model, seeing immediately it represented an exquisite miniature cityscape of London, perfectly rendered in clay and metal. Around the entire boundary of the city proper, a great wall towered, the smooth sides high and imposing even on such a small scale.

“It’s a
wall
,” he breathed, at once grasping the simplicity of Brunel’s plan. “A wall to keep out the dragons.”

“Not just any wall. One-hundred foot high, made of iron, and powered by steam. With controlled entry and exit points, not only will she protect London from further dragon attacks, but she’ll help with crowd control and the checking of goods coming in and out of the city. And when the French finally get up the balls to invade, she’ll help our army to protect and defend the city. And the best news of all, she’ll be wide enough to run a rail line around the city. A broad gauge line.”

He showed Aaron the working model of a locomotive and two carriages, which he placed on the rails on top of the wall. Aaron watched in awe as the train wound its way around the model, passing tiny stations in each district.

A wall — so simple, yet so ingenious. A solution employed by cities for thousands of years. Aaron smiled at his friend and said, “You’re sure to impress the King with this design, Isambard.”

“I pray you speak the truth, friend.”

“Do you have any idea what Stephenson plans?”

Isambard spat. The very mention of Stephenson’s name induced a deep fury within him. While Brunel toiled in the Engine Ward, building his first locomotive engine from stolen plans and snippets of overheard lectures by the eminent locomotive engineer and Messiah, Richard Trevethick, Stephenson, son of a wealthy civil engineer, had built his locomotives using his “standard gauge” of four feet, eight and a half inches, and had laid down track for a line between Stockton and Darlington in the north of England. With money at his disposal and a ten-year head start, Stephenson was poised to be the man to accomplish Isambard’s greatest dream — to build a cohesive, functioning train line between every city in England.

After Trevethick died, Stephenson’s work had earned him — or, as Isambard claimed,
bought
him — the honour of being declared the Messiah of the Church of Great Conductor, the God of steam machinery whom the Stokers — along with Stephenson’s Navvies and some other, smaller churches — worshipped. As Great Conductor’s representative on earth, Stephenson had complete power over England’s expanding rail network, and he constantly blocked the proposals of smaller engineers and bought up the choice plots of land. Besides this, Stephenson was responsible — in Isambard’s mind, at least — for his father’s deportation. It was no wonder Isambard grew ever more hateful of the man he deemed his greatest rival.