Penny Dreadful and the Machines

"Erm, Miss Dreadful," he said, his voice soft but firm, his timbre vibrating most interestingly, "I regret that nobody informed me to expect you."

He stood for a moment, still, before remembering to extend his hand, stopping himself at the last moment and wiping his hands clean on a rag. Penny seemed not to notice as she took his hand gently in hers and they shook without breaking their gaze.

"Charmed," murmured Penny, and she was.

"I'm afraid that I have nothing prepared for a demonstration," and here Freddie looked around at the cavernous laboratory that filled the entire space beneath 39 Cornhill.

For the first time since she walked into the room, a lifetime ago, Penny tore her eyes from Freddie and gazed around. The laboratory was indeed vast, with parts of it lost in distant shadow, and suggestions of huge machines beneath canvas sheets, and all around were a series of long benches under powerful electric lamps, piled high with components and works in progress.

"Perhaps you could talk me through what you do," said Penny, and as much as Freddie was definitely interesting, the pieces that Penny could see were beginning to claim a smidgeon of her attention.

"Err, well, you are aware that we make robotic mining equipment?"

"I believe the clue is in the name," said Penny as she wandered to the closest desk and peered at a series of cogwheels of descending size, bolted together inside a casing enclosed on all sides bar one.

"Oh, sorry! Please don't touch that," said Freddie, taking a long pace to stand next to her and reaching out his hand to stop hers. The touch, their second, was more electric than the first.

"Oh, will it hurt me?"

"No, no, it's just filthy, that's all," smiled Freddie.

"What's it for?" said Penny, and Freddie couldn't quite believe that she seemed genuinely interested. His sister's friends never were, and though they always appeared eager to say hello, their attention had a disturbing habit of wandering.

"Oh, it's, err, experimental. For this," said Freddie, and he ran over to something the size of a small room obscured by canvas, and began hauling off the giant sheet, revealing a large machine.

It was like nothing more than a huge metallic insect. A rivetted body, of blued steel, was suspended seven feet in the air on six spider legs, each leg articulated. At the front of the 'beast' was a drill, and two scoops on arms, articulated like the legs, and beneath the front of the body was a heavy basket.

"Isn't it magnificent?" Freddie smiled as he gazed at his invention, "it runs on kerosene."

"Yes," said Penny, walking closer, reaching up and brushing her fingertips over the steel body, "what do you call it?"

"It's our mainstay, the Version Three Drill-Scoop. But privately, I call it the Worker Ant, though Mr Lister doesn't like that so very much. The part you were examining goes under here... you'll need to slide under..."

Penny looked under the Worker Ant, but beneath it the floor was a mess of metal shavings and steel dust and spots of oil. Her suit, meanwhile, had cost three times what she paid Martin Proudstaff in a week. Fortunately, Freddie wasn't quite so unaware as he appeared.

"I'm sorry," he smiled, and dashed to a coat stand by the door where several lab coats hung. He grabbed one and brought it back, holding it out for Penny to put it on over her clothes. Penny took off her jacket and hat, and slipped one arm into the coat, and as Freddie continued to hold the coat she slipped her other arm into it, stopping momentarily halfway through -- she could relax back, and he would be there, ready to put his arms around her, to hold her. The prospect was intoxicating.

"So, as I was saying, it goes under here," and Freddie lay on the floor and slid himself under the body of the Worker Ant, Penny following. Looking up Penny could see that the belly of the beast was open, laying bare a mess of sprockets and crankshafts leading to the legs, and a great axle like an under-spine running the length of the robot. Freddie described the parts and their purpose, and Penny lay next to him, looking up, and she couldn't remember when she'd last had so much fun.

"It's autonomous, is it not?" said Penny.

Freddie nodded and immediately Penny wanted to know how its intelligence worked.

"Ah, yes," said Freddie, "I'm rather pleased with that. It's the heart of the whole thing, really, but we'll need to slide out again..."

Once out from under the machine they got to their feet and Freddie smiled when he looked at Penny.

"Sorry, but you've got...on your face... oil spot," he said, and reached for a rag, "with your permission?"

Penny nodded and tilted her chin up to him, her eyes sparkling, as he gently rubbed off a tiny speck of oil that had landed on her cheek. Unseen by either of them Ambrose Lister and Sir Bernard Appleby were staring at them from the open doorway to the laboratory.

"Well, Lister," said Sir Bernard with a half-suppressed chuckle, "that's your plans for the evening neatly torpedoed, I think."

"The bloody traitor," Ambrose muttered.

"Come now," said Sir Bernard, "he wasn't to know. You'll just have to restrict yourself to chorus girls, for Miss Dreadful is, I think, out of reach. Lucky Patterson, eh? Unexpected turn, mind you..."

As the two men turned and walked away Freddie lowered the cloth and found himself looking into Penny's bewitching eyes. For a moment all was still, his mind blank and then, with a smile, he remembered.

"You wanted to know about the intelligence," he said, and Penny refocussed.

"Here, here, and here," Freddie said, pointing at slits in the body of the Worker Ant, "are the eyes of the machine. When it's operating, a light shines out and reflects off the nearest surface. Now, you'll have to forgive me, but it gets a bit theoretical now, but when the light reflects back it has changed colour, only a fraction but enough, due to what we call the 'chemical signature' of the rock that it has been shining on, and inside the machine is a receptor which matches the light to a card using..."

"Annie Jump Cannon's application of spectroscopic chemical analysis!" Penny broke in with a smile.

"How do you know about that?" said Freddie, even more impressed with Penny than he was before.

"And I presume that the machine is geared to drill and scoop the resultant slabs of ore-bearing rock into the basket when the correct spectroscopic signature is recognised," Penny went on excitedly, "it's brilliant."

"You're brilliant," breathed Freddie, surprising himself that he'd said it aloud, but Penny didn't hear as she gazed anew at the machine and ran her hands over it again.

"How many of these have been made?" Penny said, after a moment.

"Oh, they're quite expensive, so only a few. We're in the process of shipping three to DeBeers, with the machines geared for gold ore, but the order that surprised me a little was for two ungeared Ants to Hertfordshire, of all places."

"Hertfordshire? There are no mines there," said Penny, equally confused.

Freddie shrugged, the concept of sales beyond him. He then rushed to show Penny the other inventions in his laboratory, pulling canvas sheets off machines to reveal a mechanised conveyor belt that could be attached to the Worker Ant and walk behind it, another machine for placing explosives and retreating, paying out the fuse as it went, and a miniaturised Ant, for working narrow seams.

"And this," he said, pulling the canvas from the last machine, "is my newest."

In front of them was a something akin to a tractor, resting on caterpillar tracks and with the entire front end taken up by a large drill, and behind it a compartment for a person to sit under a glass canopy, with controls to operate it.

"It is for boring tunnels," said Freddie, "and indeed, I suggested to Sir Bernard that we might set up an entire new concern for tunnelling under cities, for water pipes, and gas, and such like. He is enthusiastic, and wants to call it The Smooth-Boring Company, but I think that's a rather poor joke."

"Oh yes, terrible. Who would do that?" Penny agreed, "but the machine... may I sit inside?"

"But, of course," said Freddie, offering her his hand so she could step up on the caterpillar track, then step into the driving compartment. She sat and looked at the controls, and then looked forward to see the view was obscured by the massive drill -- the only way to steer was to lean one's head out of either side to see where one was going, or to rely on the compass fitted between the driving controls.

"Might you not consider a mirror here," said Penny, pointing to the top of the canopy directly in front of her, "and a mirror above and behind the driver's head, here, angled to reflect into the first one? The reflection from the second mirror would enable the driver to see their route in the first."

"The same principle as a periscope," said Freddie, thinking, "yes, I think that might work. I will experiment with that this evening. I'm sure it will make our first customer happy."

"You already have a customer?"

"Indeed, we do," said Freddie, "funnily enough, it's this same customer in Hertfordshire. Some retired Swedish general or other. Still, mine not to reason why. Sorry, silly joke."

Penny looked down at Freddie again, a stupid smile across her face. She could stay there quite happily, perhaps forever. She glanced down at her watch, pinned to her shirtwaist, and immediately regretted doing so -- for it was approaching four in the afternoon, and as much as she didn't want to, she really had to depart or Roxanne and Martin would start to worry about her.

"I would love to hear more about your work," she said to Freddie, extending an obvious opening.

Being a man he was, of course, oblivious, and he merely nodded, a similar stupid smile on his face. But Penny wasn't a New Woman for nothing, and Frau Aufguss had been most particular on the need for a woman to take control of her destiny.

"I believe I am free tomorrow afternoon for tea. Shall we say four, in the Ritz?" Penny said sweetly.

"Erm," said Freddie, his grin youthful, "yes, that would be marvellous. Tomorrow at four. I shall count the hours."

With that Penny floated back to Berkeley Square on a cloud of first infatuation.

Roxanne Poule and Martin Proudstaff, on the other hand, if they had ever felt infatuation rather than merely unbridled lust, had long since left that behind. Now, they simply pulled the clothes off one another the minute Penny closed the apartment door behind her and left about her business. On that day they had spent a most enjoyable hour investigating the possibilities inherent in a camel-backed sofa, Martin first bending Roxanne over the arm of it and plunging into her most energetically, before Roxanne in turn pushed him down and straddled him, letting his manhood take her breath away as she sank down upon him.

They had finished and then dallied, joking and murmuring and Roxanne thinking that he wasn't so bad, after all, taken as a whole. Not ten minutes before, though, Roxanne had decided that Penny was sure to be back soon and, prescient as she was, they had just that second finished buttoning up their attire and engaging in a last embrace when Penny's key turned in the lock of the apartment door.

It might have been an illusion, a distortion of Einsteinian time, but had Penny been observant rather that encased in her own private cumulonimbus, she might have noticed that Martin and Penny appeared to have just separated in an instantaneous moment, spacetime expanding between them such that where once they were together there was now three metres between them, no movement having taken place. They were standing either side of the parlour window, apparently absorbed by something below in Berkeley Square.

"Ah, there," said Roxanne, as if continuing a conversation, "you see, it is Lady Elspeth. I think, Martin Proudstaff, you might take the basket of delicacies across to her, for the General has had one of his turns again."

"Oh, right," said Martin, and he turned and slipped out of the room, taking his guilty conscience with him and leaving Penny to Roxanne, who had no such similar scruples.

Roxanne took one look at Penny and suspected love, and when her young mistress took one of the long-stemmed roses from the vase on the pianoforte and smelt it, her eyes drifting off as she clasped the flower to her breast, she knew. Well, now! This was a most interesting development, and Roxanne was going to get to the bottom of it.

"Was it a profitable meeting, may I ask," she fished.

"Oh, yes," said Penny distantly, "it was... wonderful. The best meeting I have ever been to."

"And were the directors pleasant men?"

"Hmm?" said Penny, "oh, they were merely mildly rude middle-aged chauvinists. I could dance a polka around them, and Martin could out-general them on his day off."

There was no hint there, then. Miss Burlington would probably want to know, and not only from a professional point of view. Poor Violetta, of course, knew that any hope she had in Penny's direction was utterly in vain, but one can dream, can't one? It appeared, now, that her dreams were just fantasies. Still, Roxanne knew more than one way to console her...

"I shall be going out tomorrow afternoon," said Penny, "tea at the Ritz. I will be... meeting someone there."

At this Roxanne knew she would also be at the Ritz, discreetly, and she had better present as one with the right to be there, not a domestic.

"I wonder," she lied, "but the Commodore and Miss Burlington have requested I attend upon them tomorrow. You can do without me?"

Penny nodded, and she retreated to her study, distracted, barely able to concentrate on a single thing, while Roxanne set aside her best clothes to wear on the morrow, with the few jewels she possessed that would stand service in such an august location.

* * *

There are optimistic days in the early summer in London when everything is right with the world, when the sky is at its bluest and the sun warms without burning. Then, the trees are in blossom across Green Park and St James's, and the promenaders wear uplifted smiles without side or guile at the beauty that has burst forth around them. Penny, in lavender dress and with her hair a la Gibsonne, shared their smiles as she walked with eager steps along Berkeley Street towards the Ritz Hotel on the other side of Piccadilly.

Roxanne, meanwhile, in a green jacket and skirt, and with her red hair artfully styled, and her hat pinned at a jaunty angle, approached from Piccadilly Circus, attracting many an admiring glance (as always happened when Penny wasn't there to draw the eye). She arrived first and took up station on a sofa in the foyer, ordering a cordial and flicking through a copy of The Lady. From her vantage point she could observe both the entrance and the tea room, and upon scanning the latter she identified a potential young gentleman, tall and thoughtful, with unruly blond hair. She nodded to herself, for he was precisely the type she would choose for Penny, if she positively had to be with a man. And then the lady herself appeared.

Penny walked straight past Roxanne without seeing her, thus confirming one of Roxanne's favourite pieces of field craft -- a mark will not see an observer they do not expect. Roxanne could have stripped naked and painted herself blue, and still Penny wouldn't have noticed her, her attention being all on the tea room and, yes, the tall, blond gentleman who stood as she entered, his face animated with a genuine, tender emotion.

Roxanne watched with a little flutter inside as the romance burgeoned before her eyes. Penny and the young man were at once deep in a conversation that, to an outsider, would have been largely unintelligible, but to an observer of body language shouted aloud their mutual admiration. Roxanne studied the man more closely that she did Penny, knowing her mistress of old, and she could see that he was perhaps more physical than his intellectual appearance suggested, with his shoulders broad and with a suggestion of bicep against the fabric of his herringbone jacket.

For herself, though, she preferred a more 'man of action' type, however much she could see the attraction of the blond man, and as the conversation flowed for near an hour with the teacups and the cakes untouched Roxanne found herself pulled into the growing emotion between the two. Already she thought forward to that time when Penny would wish to talk about him, to describe their meeting and what they found to discuss with such reciprocal animation.

An hour being passed, however, the man seemed to remember something of a sudden, and flustered he drew out his pocket watch. His apologies were effusive as he hurriedly bid Penny farewell, dashing from the tea room and forgetting his straw boating hat and rushing back to collect it, Penny giggling, and then they stopped for a second and just gazed at each other, the world happening around them. After that brief, yet deep connection the man turned and was out of the tea room in a trice, and across the foyer and gone, whilst Penny slowly collected herself and picked up a paper on which the man had jotted something, Penny collaborating.

Penny stood and left the tea room, unhurriedly walking into the foyer, and it was then that Roxanne's sixth sense began a siren call. She looked about and saw two heavy-set men in dark suits apparently in conversation by a potted palm on a column. One of the men looked up and across the foyer to the door, where stood another man in a derby hat and brown overcoat, one with the air of an officer, whilst the other two stood like sergeants. This man caught the eye of the first, and seeing Penny he gave a barely perceptible nod. The two bruisers peeled away from the palm and came up behind Penny as she walked, unawares, one on either side of her.

Roxanne looked back to the leader, and beyond him she saw, waiting on Piccadilly, a closed carriage with the blinds drawn on the window and a third ruffian holding the door, ready to open it when needed. Her instincts took over. The two men had now sandwiched Penny between them, and one grabbed for her arm as she registered that they were there.

"Hey!" Penny said, startled. At that, Roxanne leapt.

The first man to fall, groaning, was the one who had taken hold of Penny. He lay, a second later, his arm at an obscure angle and his face rapidly assuming a greasy shade of opal. His colleague barely had time to register the avenging flame-haired beauty bearing down on him before, with a sickening click, her foot connected hard with his kneecap. His leg gave way and he listed to starboard. Unable to right himself he went down by the bow, his nose rearranging itself across his left cheek as he struck the tiled floor. Roxanne spun, simultaneously drawing out her hatpin with her right hand and slipping into an oriental fighting stance as she faced the leader by the door, her heel coming down with a crunch on the crotch of the first man, who near fainted away.

Standing not on ceremony, however, the leader was through the door and flying into the carriage. His last associate leapt up onto the box and whipped the horses up, and they were away at speed along Piccadilly heading west. Roxanne exhaled heavily then turned back to Penny who stood, nonplussed, in the midst of the devastation. She looked down at the two whimpering assailants, poised to deliver more ruination, but neither of them seemed inclined to continue their mission, being more than content to lie and wait for it all to be over.

"Come with me, Penny," said Roxanne, grasping Penny's hand and pulling her past the assembled, stupefied audience of uniformed porters and ladies in plumed hats who took tea, and out past the restaurant, and then through the kitchens and on to Bennet Street. From there it was but a short step along Jermyn Street to Fortnum and Mason's, Penny too confused to say anything meaningful.