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[1/14/03 11:24:13 PM]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt to stroke it with a
gloved forefinger, as if assuring herself of its physical existence. Something
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about it seemed to sting her into a dawning recognition of her own distress.
"Will you hold it for me, sir?" she asked Mallory at last, her quiet voice
trembling with a strange, piteous appeal.
"Will you hold it for me in safe-keeping?"
"Of course!" Mallory said, touched despite himself. "Of course I will hold it
for you; as long as you like, madame."
They worked their way slowly up the stands to the carpeted stairs that led to
the Royal
Enclosure. Mallory's leg smarted sharply, and his trouser was sticky with
blood. He was dizzier than he felt he should have been from such a minor
wound; something about the woman's queer speech and odder demeanor had turned
his head. Or perhaps -- the dark thought occurred to him -- there had been
some sort of venom coating the tout's stiletto. He was sorry now that he had
not snatched up the stiletto for a later analysis. Perhaps the mad-woman too
had been somehow narcotized;
likely he had foiled some dark plot of abduction . . .
Below them, the track had been cleared for the coming gurney-race. Five
massive gurneys -- and the tiny, bauble-like Zephyr -- were taking their
places. Mallory paused a moment, torn, contemplating the frail craft upon
which his fortunes now so absurdly hinged. The woman took that moment to
release his arm and hasten toward the white-washed walls of the Royal Box.
Mallory, surprised, hurried after her, limping. She paused for a moment beside
a pair of guards at the door -- plain-clothes policemen, it seemed, very tall
and fit. The woman brushed aside her veil, with a swift gesture of habit, and
Mallory caught his first proper glimpse of her face.
She was Ada Byron, the daughter of the Prime Minister. Lady Ada Byron, the
Queen of Engines.
She slipped through the door, beyond the guards, without so much as a glance
behind her, or a single word of thanks. Mallory, lugging the rosewood box,
hurried after her at once. "Wait!" he cried. "Your Ladyship!"
"Just a moment, sir!" the larger policeman said, quite politely. He held up a
beefy hand, looked Mallory up and down, noting the wooden case, the dampened
trouser-leg. His mustached mouth quirked. "Are you a guest in the Royal
Enclosure, sir?"
"No," Mallory said. "But you must have seen Lady Ada step through here a
moment ago. Something quite dreadful has happened to her; I'm afraid she's in
some distress. I was able to be of some assistance --"
"Your name, sir?" barked the second policeman.
"Edward . . . Miller," Mallory blurted, a sudden chill of protective suspicion
striking him at the last instant.
"May I see your citizen-card, Mr. Miller?" said the first policeman. "What's
in that box you carry? May I look inside it, please?"
Mallory swung the box away, took a step back. The policeman stared at him with
a volatile mix of disdain and suspicion.
There was a loud report from the track below. Steam whistled from a ruptured
seam in the
Italian gurney, fogging out across the stands like a geyser. There was some
small panic in the stands. Mallory seized this opportunity to hobble off; the
policemen, worried perhaps about the safety of their post, did not choose to
pursue him.
He hurried, limping, down the stands, losing himself as soon as possible amid
the crowd. Some notion of self-preservation caused him to snatch his striped
engineer's cap from his head and shove it in the pocket of his coat.
He found a place in the stands, many yards from the Royal Enclosure. He
balanced the brass-
bound box across his knees. There was a trifling rip in his trouser-leg, but
the wound beneath it was still oozing. Mallory grimaced in confusion as he
sat, and pressed the palm of his hand against the aching wound.
"Damme," said a man on the bench behind him, his voice thick with
self-assurance and drink.
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"This false start will take the pressure down. Simple matter of specific heat.
It means the biggest boiler wins surely."
"Which one's that, then?" said the man's companion, perhaps his son.
The man ruffled through a racing tip-sheet. "That'll be the Goliath. Lord
Hansell's racer. Her sister-craft won last year . . . "
Mallory looked down upon the hoof-beaten track. The driver of the Italian
racer was being carried off on a stretcher, having been extricated with some
difficulty from the cramped confines of his pilot's station. A column of dirty
steam still rose from the rent in the Italian boiler.
Racing-attendants hitched a team of horses to the disabled hulk.
Tall white gouts rose briskly from the stacks of the other racers. The
crenellations of polished brass crowning the stack of the Goliath were
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