[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt (39 of 178)
[1/14/03 11:24:14 PM]
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt the slender,
peculiarly delicate stack of Godwin's Zephyr, braced with guy-wires, which
repeated in cross-section the teardrop formula of line-streaming.
"A terrible business!" opined the younger man. "I do believe the burst took
that poor foreigner's head clean off, quite."
"Not a bit of it," said the older man. "Fellow had a fancy helmet."
"He's not moving, sir."
"If the Italians can't compete properly in the technical arena, they've no
business here," the older man said sternly.
A roar of appreciation came from the crowd as the disabled steamer was hauled
free by the laboring horses. "We'll see some proper sport now!" said the older
man.
Mallory, waiting tensely, found himself opening the rosewood box, his thumbs
moving on the little brass catches as if by their own volition. The interior,
lined with green baize, held a long stack of milky-white cards. He plucked one
free from the middle of the stack. It was an
Engine punch-card, cut to a French specialty-gauge, and made of some
bafflingly smooth artificial material. One corner bore the handwritten
annotation "#154," faint mauve ink.
Mallory tucked the card carefully back into place and shut the box.
A flag was waved and the gurneys were off.
The Goliath and the French Vulcan lurched at once into the lead. The
unaccustomed delay -- the fatal delay. Mallory thought, his heart crushed
within him -- had cooled the tiny boiler of the
Zephyr, leading no doubt to a vital loss of impetus. The Zephyr rolled in the
wake of the greater machines, bumping half-comically in their deep-gouged
tracks. It could not seem to get a proper traction.
Mallory did not find himself surprised. He was full of fatal resignation.
Vulcan and Goliath began to jostle for position at the first turn. The three
other gurneys fell into file behind them. The Zephyr, quite absurdly, took the
widest possible turn, far outside the tracks of the other craft. Master
second-degree Henry Chesterton, at the wheel of the tiny craft, seemed to have
gone quite mad. Mallory watched with the numb calm of a ruined man.
The Zephyr lurched into an impossible burst of speed. It slipped past the
other gurneys with absurd, buttery ease, like a slimy pumpkin-seed squeezed
between thumb and forefinger. At the half-
mile turn, its velocity quite astonishing, it teetered visibly onto two
wheels; at the final lap, it struck a slight rise, the entire vehicle becoming
visibly airborne. The great driving-wheels rebounded from earth with a gout of
dust and a metallic screech; it was only at that moment that
Mallory realized that the great crowd in the stands had fallen into deathly
silence.
Not a peep rose from them as the Zephyr whizzed across the finish-line. It
Page 54
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
slithered to a halt then, bumping violently across the gouged tracks left by
the competition.
A full four seconds passed before the stunned track-man managed to wave his
flag. The other gurneys were still rounding a distant bend a full hundred
yards behind.
The crowd suddenly burst into astonished outcry -- not joy so much as utter
disbelief, and even a queer sort of anger.
Henry Chesterton stepped from the Zephyr. He tossed back a neck-scarf, leaned
at his ease against the shining hull of his craft, and watched with cool
insolence as the other gurneys labored painfully across the finish line. By
the time they arrived, they seemed to have aged centuries. They were, Mallory
realized, relics.
Mallory reached into his pocket. The blue slips of betting-paper were utterly
safe. Their material nature had not changed in the slightest, but now these
little blue slips infallibly signified the winning of four hundred pounds. No,
five hundred pounds in all -- fifty of that to be given to the utterly
victorious Mr. Michael Godwin.
Mallory heard a voice ring in his ears, amid the growing tumult of the crowd.
"I'm rich," the voice remarked calmly. It was his own voice.
He was rich.
This image is a formal daguerreotype of the sort distributed by the British
aristocracy among narrow circles of friendship and acquaintance. The
photographer may have been Albert, the Prince
Consort, a man whose much-publicized interest in scientific matters had made
him an apparently genuine intimate of Britain's Radical elite. The dimensions
of the room, and the rich drapery of its back-drop, strongly suggest the
photographing salon that Prince Albert maintained at Windsor
Palace.
The women depicted are Lady Ada Byron and her companion and soi-disant
chaperone. Lady Mary
Somerville. Lady Somerville, the authoress of 'On the Connection of the
Physical Sciences' and the translator of Laplace's 'Celestial Mechanics', has
the resigned look of a woman accustomed to the vagaries of her younger
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]