William Gibson & Bruce Sterling The Difference Engine

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They seemed possessed with an angry yapping energy, like farm-dogs pursuing a
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file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Difference%20Engine,%20The.txt carriage. Brian
rose to one knee, untoggled his holster-flap, set his hand to the large queer
pistol-butt within it --
He was almost flung from the wain as Thomas hit the Zephyr's throttle. Mallory
grabbed his brother's belt and hauled him back to sprawling safety. The Zephyr
racketed smoothly up the street, a small cascade of coal pattering out the
back with the shock of acceleration. Behind them the pursuers stopped short in
disbelief, then stooped like idiots to pick at the fallen coals, as if they
were emeralds.
"How did you know they would do that?" Mallory asked.
Brian knocked coal-dust from his trouser-knees with a pocket-kerchief. "I knew
it."
"But why?"
" 'Cause we're here, and they're there, I suppose! 'Cause we ride and they
walk!" He looked at
Mallory red-faced, as if the question were more trouble to him than a
gun-fight.
Mallory sat back, looking away. "Take the mask," he said mildly, holding it
out. "I brought it just for you."
Brian smiled then, sheepish, and knotted the little thing about his neck.
There were soldiers with bayoneted rifles on the street-corners in Piccadilly,
in modern speckled drab and slouch hats. They were eating porridge from
mess-kits of stamped tin. Mallory waved cheerily at these minions of order,
but they glared back at the Zephyr with such militant suspicion that he
quickly stopped. Some blocks on, at the corner of Longacre and Drury Lane, the
soldiers were actively bullying a small squad of bewildered London police. The
coppers milled about like scolded children, feebly clutching their inadequate
billy-clubs. Several had lost their helmets, and many bore rude bandages on
hands and scalps and shins.
Tom stopped the Zephyr for coaling, while Fraser, followed by Mallory, sought
intelligence from the London coppers. They were told that the situation south
of the river was quite out of control. Pitched battles with brickbats and
pistols were raging in Lambeth. Many streets were barricaded by pillaging
mobs. Reports had it that the Bedlam Hospital had been thrown open, its
unchained lunatics capering the streets in frenzy.
The police were sooty-faced, coughing, exhausted. Every able-bodied man in the
force was on the streets, the Army had been called in by an emergency
committee, and a general curfew declared.
Volunteers of the respectable classes were being deputized in the West End,
and equipped with batons and rifles. At least, Mallory thought, this litany of
disaster crushed any further doubts about the propriety of their own venture.
Fraser made no comment; but he returned to the Zephyr with a look of grim
resolution.
Tom piloted on. Beyond authority's battered boundary, things grew swiftly more
grim. It was noonday now, with a ghastly amber glow at the filthy zenith, and
crowds were clustering like flies in the crossroads of the city. Clumps of
masked Londoners shuffled along, curious, restless, hungry, or desperate --
unhurried, and conspiring. The Zephyr, with merry toots of its whistle, passed
through the amorphous crowd; they parted for it reflexively.
A pair of commandeered omnibuses patrolled Cheapside, crammed with hard-faced
bruisers. Men waving pistols hung from the running-boards, and the roofs of
both steamers were piled high and bristling with stolen furniture. Thomas
easily skirted the wallowing 'buses, glass crunching beneath the Zephyr's
wheels.
In Whitechapel there were dirty, shoeless children clambering like monkeys,
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four stories in the air, on the red-painted arm of a great construction-crane.
Spies of a sort, Brian opined, for some were waving colored rags and
screeching down at people in the street. Mallory thought it more likely that
the urchins had clambered up there in hope of fresher air.
Four dead and bloating horses, a team of massive Percherons, lay swollen in
Stepney. The stiffened carcasses, shot to death, were still in their harness.
A few yards on, the dray itself appeared, sacked, its wheels missing. Its
dozen great beer-casks had been rolled down the street, then battered open,
each site of rapturous looting now surrounded by a pungent, fly-blown
stickiness of spillage. There were no revelers left now, their only evidence
being shattered pitchers, dirty rags of women's clothing, single shoes.
Mallory spotted a leprous plague of bills, slapped-up at the site of this
drunken orgy. He hit the top of the Zephyr with a flung lump of coal, and Tom
stopped.
Tom decamped from the gurney, Fraser following him, stretching cramps from his
shoulders and favoring his wounded ribs. "What is it?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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