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bore a tinkling tray to the desk. The vials it contained were like smaller
versions of the pots that I had seen the women using in the paintshop at
Mawdingly & Clawtson, but their wyreglow was much
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sharper; barely a glow at all, more a shriek of light which blurred into the
other senses. The long room flared and grew dark as he placed them down. Each
vial, I saw, peering closely at his elbow, bore a small seal.
`Aether, Robert! Of course, I have to work with it every day to earn the
pleasures of this house. I have to pretend to the shareholders that I
know enough about its behaviour to maintain Mawdingly & Clawtson's
unparalleled reputation for aether of the highest charm. But I
don't know, Robert. And don't use it uses me. Give me electricity and
I
it light any day pure, simple math. But we all must live with aether. It
pervades this land. We all dance to its tune . . . And perhaps that's always
true even though I have striven these years for the simple and untrammelled
logic of physics and engineering ...'
He went on like this at even longer and more breathless length than was usual
for him. To me, born in Bracebridge to the pounding of the aether engines, the
distinction he was making between the supposed logic of electricity and the
illogic of aether was obtuse in the extreme. To me, if anything, it was the
other way around. Aether had allowed us to tame the elements: to make iron
harder, steel more resilient and copper more supple, to build bigger and wider
bridges, even channel messages across great distances from the mind of one
telegrapher to another. Without aether, we would still be like the warring
painted savages of Thule. I understood, though, that I was witnessing a
climactic moment in Grandmaster Harrat's many struggles with the medium which
both drew and taunted him an experiment in both aether and electricity which
he had enacted so often in his thoughts that the actual performance of it now
had the heavy air of predictability that such matters long brooded over can
assume, as each moment clicks into the next. Me, I simply gazed at the shining
vials which he had plainly striven for so long to avoid using in his
experiments. SHOOM
BOOM
SHOOM
BOOM.
My heart was thundering. I'd never been close to aether of anything like this
purity before, not even on my Day of Testing.
`At the end of the day, aether is simple, Robert like the simplest fairy
tale. We make a wish, and aether gives us what we want, although, just as in a
tale, not always quite in the way that we want it. But a better engine, a
sharper tool, a cheaply made boiler which can sustain pressures far beyond
those it should, undeniable economic prosperity, half-mythic brutes like the
balehounds and pitbeasts to do our bidding. It gives us all these things. Or
now shall we see if it works?'
Then he was busy again, snipping wires, tweezering out a fresh filament and
clipping it into place between the connectors. But for a final bridge between
the things he called anodes in their chemical vats a raised copper gate
which I'd grown used to watching him close with a dramatic plunge but often
little other effect the whole circuit was complete. Muttering something I
couldn't catch, Grandmaster Harrat broke open one of the aether vials and
squeezed the bulb of a pipette until a glowing line ascended the tube. The
pipette then hovered over the space of air where the filament floated. A
dazzling bead formed at the tip, a trembling fragment which broke and fell
with a slow ease that had nothing to do with gravity. Every distance seemed to
extend, and time with it, before the elements were joined. The aether touched
the surface of the filament and seemed to vanish.
`Of course, it knows what I want from it already. The perfect circuit
. . .' Grandmaster Harrat chuckled but he sounded grim. He re-sealed the vial,
removed his leather glove. His hand, as it moved towards the gate of that
final switch, was trembling. So was I. I'd never felt such anticipation . . .
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And aether of such power, purity, charm it knew what
I wanted too, even if I didn't. I didn't doubt that I was about to witness
something thrilling and new as, with a long final exhalation, a sigh more of
imminent defeat than of victory, Grandmaster Harrat closed the final bridge on
the circuit he had created.
It worked.
The filament was humming, glowing.
It was a triumph.
In fact, the filament was incredibly bright, like the sun out of a clear sky
when everything else seems to darken . . . I heard myself gasp as the light
intensified. The whole world quivered and spun about me.
The foaming rivers, the pounding factories, the shops groaning with produce,
the hissing telegraphs and the endless, endless, shiftdays. And for some
reason, in one of those actions you understand perfectly when you perform them
but lose all logic afterwards, I reached out towards that blazing light. The
motion of my hand was slow and I could see the bones of my flesh through the
brightness but I wanted it more than anything.
There was an incredible flash. Then smoke, and a wild angry hissing, and a
stench of burning. I fell back and saw Grandmaster
Harrat's slow reaction as he attempted to catch me, the slack shape of his
mouth, and heard a dull slap as my head struck the floor. But all of this
seemed to be happening at a distance. I was drawing up and back.
The ceiling billowed out. The air rushed up and I was looking down on
Bracebridge, hovering with the stars.
Then the night began to churn. The moon swept over the sky.
The trains were streaks of light. The sky blazed, light dark light
as the sun fled backwards. Snow flickered across the slopes of
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