Atlantis And Other Places Part 28

"This is a museum, not a zoological garden," Dr. Walton said reasonably. "You can hardly expect a live slug here. Suppose it crawled off to the other side of the trunk, where no one but its keeper could see it?" Helms only grunted, which went some way toward showing the cogency of Walton's point.

Helms could not lean close to examine the poisonous plants; gla.s.s separated them from overzealous observers. The detective nodded approvingly, saying, "That is as it should be. It protects not only the plants but those who scrutinize them-a.s.suming they are real. With mushrooms of the genus Amanita Amanita, even inhaling their spores is toxic."

A folded piece of foolscap was wedged in the narrow gap between a pane of gla.s.s and the wooden framing that held it in place. "What's that, Helms?" Dr. Walton asked, pointing to it.

"Probably nothing." But Athelstan Helms plucked it away with long, slim fingers-a violist's fingers, sure enough-and opened it. "I say!" he murmured.

"What?"

Wordlessly, Helms held the paper out to Walton. The doctor donned his reading gla.s.ses. "'Be on the 4:27 train to Thetford tomorrow afternoon. It would be unfortunate for all concerned if you were to inform Inspector La Strada of your intentions.'" He read slowly; the script, though precise, was quite small. Refolding the sheet of foolscap, he glanced over to Helms. "Extraordinary! What do you make of it?"

"I would say you were probably observed on your previous visit here. Someone familiar with your habits-and with mine; and with mine!-must have deduced that we would return here together, and that I was likely, on coming to the museum, to repair to the section of most interest to me," Helms replied. "Thus . . . the note, and its placement."

Dr. Walton slowly nodded. "Interesting. Persuasive. It does seem to account for the facts as we know them."

"As we know them, yes. As we are intended to know them." Athelstan Helms took the note from his companion and reread it. "Interesting, indeed. And anyone capable of deducing our probable future actions from those just past is an opponent who bears watching."

"I should say so." Walton took off the spectacles and replaced them in their leather case. "I wonder what we shall find upon arriving in Thetford. The town is, I believe, a stronghold of the House of Universal Devotion."

"I wonder if we shall find anything there," Helms said. Walton raised a bushy eyebrow in surprise. The detective explained: "The missive instructs us to board the train. It does not say we shall be enlightened after disembarking. For all we know now, the Preacher may greet us in the uniform of a porter as soon as we take our seats."

"Why, so he may!" Walton exclaimed gaily. "I'd pay good money to see it if he did, though, devil take me if I wouldn't. The porters on these Atlantean trains are just about all of them colored fellows."

"Well, you're right about that." Helms seemed to yield the point, but then returned to it, saying, "He might black his face for the occasion." He shook his head, arguing more with himself than with Dr. Walton. "But no; that would not do. The Atlantean pa.s.sengers would notice the imposture, being more casually familiar with Negroes than we are. And the dialect these blacks employ is easier for a white man to burlesque than to imitate with precision. I therefore agree with you: whatever disguise the Preacher should choose-if he should choose any-he is unlikely to appear in forma porteris in forma porteris."

"Er-quite," the doctor said. "You intend to follow the strictures of the note, then?"

"In every particular, as if it were Holy Writ," Helms replied. "And in the reckoning of the chap who placed it here, so it may be."

Above the entrance to Radcliff Station was the inscription THE CLAN, NOT THE MAN. Radcliffs (in early days, the name was sometimes spelled with a final e e) were among the first English settlers of Atlantis. That meant those earliest Radcliff(e)s were nothing but fishermen blown astray, an unfortunate fact the family did its best to forget over the next four centuries. Its subsequent successes excused, if they did not altogether justify, such convenient amnesia.

The station smelled of coal smoke, fried food, tobacco, and people-people in swarms almost uncountable. Dr. Watson's clinically trained nose detected at least one case of imminent liver failure and two pelvic infections, but in those shoals of humanity he could not discern which faces belonged to the sufferers.

He and Athelstan Helms bought their tickets to Thetford and back (round trips, they called them here, rather than return tickets) from a green-visored clerk with enough ennui on his wizened face to make even the most jaded Londoner look to his laurels. "Go to Platform Nine," the clerk said. "Have a pleasant trip." His tone implied that he wouldn't care if they fell over dead before they got to the platform. And why should he? He already had their eagles in his cashbox.

Carpetbags in hand, they made their way to the waiting area. "Better signposts here than there would be in an English station," Helms remarked-and, indeed, only a blind man would have had trouble finding the proper platform.

Once there, Helms and Walton had a wait of half an hour before their train was scheduled to depart. A few pa.s.sengers already stood on the platform when they arrived. More and more came after them, till the waiting area grew unpleasantly crowded. Dr. Walton stuck his free hand in his left front trouser pocket, where his wallet resided, to thwart pickpockets and sneak thieves. He would not have been a bit surprised if the throng contained several. It seemed a typical Atlantean cross section: a large number of people who would not have been out of place in London leavened by the sc.r.a.pings of every corner of Europe and Terranova and even Asia. Bearded Jews in baggy trousers gabbled in their corrupt German dialect. Two Italian families screamed at each other with almost operatic intensity. A young Mexican man avidly eyed a statuesque blonde from Sweden or Denmark. Walton frowned at the thought of such miscegenation, but Atlantis did not forbid it. A Chinese man in a flowing robe read-he was intrigued to see-the Bible.

Boys selling sausages on sticks and fried potatoes and coffee and beer elbowed through the crowd, loudly shouting their wares. A sausage proved as spicy and greasy as Walton would have expected. He washed it down with a mug of beer, which was surprisingly good. Athelstan Helms, of more ascetic temperament, refrained from partaking of refreshments.

The train bound for Thetford came in half an hour late. Dr. Walton called down curses on the heads of the Atlantean schedulers. "No doubt you have never known an English train to be tardy," Helms said, which elicited a somewhat shamefaced laugh from his traveling companion.

Instead of seating pa.s.sengers in small compartments, Atlantean cars put them all in what amounted to a common room, with row after row of paired seats on either side of a long central aisle. Dr. Walton also grumbled about that, more because it was different from what he was used to than out of any inherent inferiority in the arrangement.

NO SMOKING! signs declared, and FINE FOR SMOKING, E10! and SMOKING CAR AT REAR OF TRAIN. The good doctor returned his cigar case to his waistcoat. "I wish they'd collect fines for eating garlic, too," he growled; several people in the car were consuming or had recently consumed that odorous, most un-English comestible.

Athelstan Helms pointed to several open windows in the car, which did little to mitigate the raw heat pouring from stoves at either end. "Never fear, Doctor," he said. "I suspect we shall have our fair share of smoke and more in short order."

Sure enough, as soon as the train started out, coal smoke and cinders poured in through those windows. Pa.s.sengers sitting next to them forced them closed-all but one, which jammed in its track. The conductor, a personage of some importance on an Atlantean train, lent his a.s.sistance to the commercial traveler trying to set it right, but in vain. "Guess you're stuck with it," he said. The commercial traveler's reply, while heartfelt, held little literary merit.

Dr. Walton closely eyed the conductor, wondering if he was the mysterious and elusive Preacher in disguise. Reluctantly, he decided it was improbable; the Preacher's career spanned half a century, while the gent in blue serge and gleaming bra.s.s b.u.t.tons could not have been much above forty.

For his part, Helms stared out the window with more interest than the utterly mundane countryside seemed to Walton to warrant. "What's so ruddy fascinating?" the doctor asked when curiosity got the better of him at last.

"Remnants of the old Atlantis amidst the new," his colleague replied. Walton made a questioning noise. Helms condescended to explain: "Stands of Atlantean pines and redwoods and cycads and ginkgoes, with ferns growing around and beneath them. The unique flora that supported your unique avifauna, but is now being supplanted by Eurasian and Terranovan varieties imported for the comfort and convenience of mankind."

"Curious, what, that Atlantis, lying as it does between Europe and the Terranovan mainland, should have native to it plants and creatures so different to those of either," Dr. Walton said.

"Quite." Athelstan Helms nodded. "The most economical explanation, as William of Occam would have used the term, seems to me to be positing some early separation of Atlantis from northeastern Terranova, to which geography argues it must at one time have adhered, thereby allowing-indeed, compelling-Darwinian selection to proceed here from those forms present then, which would not have included the ancestors of what are now Terranova's commonplace varieties. You do do reckon yourself a Darwinist, Doctor, do you not?" reckon yourself a Darwinist, Doctor, do you not?"

"Well, I don't know," Walton said uncomfortably. "His logic is compelling, I must admit, but it flies dead in the face of every religious principle inculcated in me since childhood days."

"Oh, my dear fellow!" Helms exclaimed. "Where reason and childish phantasms collide, which will you choose? In what sort of state would mankind be if it rejected reason?"

"In what sort of state is mankind now?" the good doctor returned.

Helms began to answer, then checked himself; the question held an unpleasant and poignant cogency. At last, he said, "Is mankind in that parlous state because of reason or in despite of it?"

"I don't know," Walton said. "Perhaps you might do better to inquire of Professor Nietzsche, who has published provocative works upon the subject."

Again, Helms found no quick response. This time, a man sitting behind him spoke up before he could say anything at all: "Pardon me, gents, but I couldn't help overhearing you, like. You ask me, Darwin is going straight to h.e.l.l, and everybody who believes his lies'll end up there, too. The Good Book says it, I believe it, and by G.o.d that settles it." He spoke in Atlantean accents, and in particularly self-satisfied ones, too.

"Did G.o.d tell you this personally, Mr. . . .?" Helms inquired.

"My name is Primrose, sir, Henry David Primrose," the man said, ignoring Helms' irony. "G.o.d gave me my head to think with and the Bible to think from, and I don't need anything more. Neither does anyone else, I say, and that goes double for your precious Darwin."

Dr. Walton was at first inclined to listen to Henry David Primrose with unusual attention, being struck by the matching initial consonants of his last name and the word preacher preacher. He did not need long to conclude, however, that Mr. Primrose was not, in fact, their mysterious and elusive quarry. Mr. Primrose was a crazy man, or, in the Atlantean idiom, a nut. He wasn't even a follower of the House of Universal Devotion-he was a Methodist, which, to the Englishmen, made him a boring nut. The way he used the Bible to justify the ignorant views he already held would have converted the Pope to Darwinism. And he would not shut up.

"I will write a check for a million eagles to either one of you gentlemen if you can show me a single place where the Good Book is mistaken-even a single place, mind you," he said, much too loudly.

Athelstan Helms stirred. He and Walton had had this discussion; both men knew there were such places. Walton, however, was seized by the strong conviction that this was not the occasion to enumerate them. "What say we visit the smoking car, eh, Helms?" he said with patently false joviality.

"Very well," Helms replied. "I am sure Mr. Primrose does not indulge, tobacco being unmentioned in the Holy Scriptures-if not an actual error, surely a grievous omission."

That set Mr. Primrose spluttering anew, but he did not pursue the two Englishmen as they rose and walked down the central aisle. Dr. Walton had accomplished his purpose. "I dread our return," Walton said. "He'll serenade us some more."

"Ah, well," Helms said. "Perhaps he will leave us at peace if we avoid topics zoological and theological."

"And if he doesn't, we can always kill him." Dr. Walton was not inclined to feel charitable.

Despite the thickness of the atmosphere, the smoking car proved more salubrious than the ordinary pa.s.senger coach. It boasted couches bolted to the floor rather than the row upon row of hard seats in the other car. Walton lit a cigar, while Athelstan Helms puffed on his pipe. They improved the aroma of the smoke in the car, as most of the gentlemen there smoked harsh, nasty cigarettes.

A stag and a doe watched the train rattle past. They must have been used to the noisy mechanical monsters, for they did not bound off in terror. "More immigrants," Helms remarked.

"I beg your pardon?" his traveling companion said.

"The deer," Helms replied. "But for a few bats-many of them peculiar even by the standards of the Chiroptera-Atlantis was devoid of mammalia before those fishermen chanced upon its sh.o.r.es. In the absence of predators other than men with rifles, the deer have flourished mightily."

"Not an unhandsome country, even if it is foreign," Dr. Walton said-as much praise as any non-English locale this side of heaven was likely to get from him.

"Hard winters on this side of the Green Ridge Mountains, I'm given to understand," Helms said. "We would notice it more if the majority of the trees were deciduous rather than coniferous-bare branches do speak to the seasons of the year."

"That's so," Walton agreed. "I suppose most of the ancestors of the deciduous plants had not yet, ah, evolved when some geological catastrophe first caused Atlantis to separate from Terranova."

"It seems very likely," Helms said. "Mr. Primrose might tell us it was Noah's flood."

Dr. Walton expressed an opinion of Mr. Primrose's intimate personal habits on which he was unlikely to have any exact knowledge from such a brief acquaintance. Athelstan Helms' pipe sent up a couple of unusually large plumes of smoke. Had the great detective not been smoking it, one could almost suspect that he might have chuckled.

Day faded fast. A conductor came through and lit the lamps in the car. Walton's eyes began to sting; his lungs felt as if he were inhaling s.h.a.green or emery paper. Nevertheless, he said, "I don't really care to go back."

"Shall we repair to the dining car, then?" Helms suggested.

"Capital idea," Walton said, and so they did.

Eating an excellent-or at least a tolerable-supper whilst rolling along at upwards of twenty miles an hour was not the least of train travel's attractions. Dr. Walton chose a capon, while Helms ordered beefsteak: both simple repasts unlikely to be spoiled by the vagaries of cooking on wheels. The wines from the west coast of Atlantis they ordered to accompany their suppers were a pleasant surprise, easily matching their French equivalents in quality while costing only half as much.

Halfway through the meal, the train shunted onto a siding and stopped: a less pleasant surprise. When Helms asked a waiter what had happened, the man only shrugged. "I do not know, sir," he replied in a gluey Teutonic accent, "but I would guess an accident is in front of us."

"d.a.m.nation!" Walton said. "We shall be late to Thetford."

"We are already late to Thetford. We shall be later," Helms corrected. To the waiter, he added, "Another bottle of this admirable red, if you would be so kind."

They sat on the siding most of the night. Word filtered through the train that there had been a derailment ahead. Mr. Primrose was snoring when Helms and Walton returned to their seats. Both Englishmen soon joined him in slumber; sleep came easier when the train stood still. Dr. Walton might have wished for the comfort of a Throckmorton car, with a sofa that made up into a bed and another bunk that swung down from the wall above it, but he did not stay awake to wish for long.

Morning twilight had begun edging night's black certainty with the ambiguity of gray when the train jerked into motion once more. Athelstan Helms' eyes opened at once, and with reason in them. He seemed as refreshed as if he had had pa.s.sed the night in a Throckmorton car-or, for that matter, in his hotel room back in Hanover. Walton seemed confused when he first woke. At last realizing his circ.u.mstances and surroundings, he sent Helms a faintly accusing stare. " pa.s.sed the night in a Throckmorton car-or, for that matter, in his hotel room back in Hanover. Walton seemed confused when he first woke. At last realizing his circ.u.mstances and surroundings, he sent Helms a faintly accusing stare. "You're not a beautiful woman," he said. not a beautiful woman," he said.

"I can scarcely deny it," Helms replied equably. "Why you should think I might be is, perhaps, a more interesting question."

If it was, it was one that his friend, now fully returned to the mundane world, had no intention of answering.

Behind them, Mr. Primrose might have been an apprentice sawmill. They took care not to wake him when they went back to the dining car for breakfast. Walton would have preferred bloaters or bangers, but Atlantean cuisine did not run to such English delicacies. He had to make do with fried eggs and a small beefsteak, as he had back in the capital. Helms' choice matched his. They both drank coffee; Atlantean tea had proved shockingly bad even when available.

They were still eating when the train rolled past the scene of the crash that had delayed it. Pa.s.senger and freight cars and a locomotive lay on their side not far from the track. Workmen swarmed over them, salvaging what they could. "A bad accident, very bad," Walton murmured.

"Do you know how an Atlantean sage once defined an accident?" Helms inquired. When the good doctor shook his head, Helms continued with obvious relish: "As 'an inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.' Mr. Bierce, I believe his name is, is a clear-sighted man."

"Quite," Walton said. "Could you pa.s.s me another roll, Helms? I find I'm a peckish man myself this morning."

Little by little, the terrain grew steeper. Stands of forest became more frequent in the distance, though most trees had been cut down closer to the railroad line. Being primarily composed of evergreen conifers, the woods bore a more somber aspect than those of England. Their timbers helped bridge several rivers rushing east out of the Green Ridge Mountains. Other rivers, the larger ones, were spanned with iron and even steel.

"Those streams helped power Atlantis' early factories, even before she was initiated into the mysteries of the steam engine," Helms remarked.

"Helped make her into a compet.i.tor, you mean," Dr. Walton said. "The old-time mercantilists weren't such fools as people make them out to be, seems to me."

"As their policies are as dead as they are, it's rather too late to make a fuss over either," Helms said, a sentiment with which his colleague could scarcely quarrel regardless of his personal inclinations.

When Helms and Walton returned to their seats in the pa.s.senger car, they pa.s.sed Henry David Primrose heading for the diner. "Ah, we get a bit more peace and quiet, anyhow," Walton said, and Helms nodded.

By the time Mr. Primrose came back, the train was well up into the mountains. The peaks of the Green Ridge were neither inordinately tall nor inordinately steep, but had formed a considerable barrier to westward expansion across Atlantis because of the thick forest that had cloaked them. Even now, the slopes remained shrouded in dark, mournful green. Only the pa.s.s through which the railroad line went had been logged off.

The locomotive labored and wheezed, hauling its cars up after it to what the Atlanteans called the Great Divide. Then, descending once more, it picked up speed. Ferns and shrubs seemed more abundant on the western side of the mountains, and the weather, though still cool, no longer reminded the Englishmen of November in their homeland-or, worse, of November on the Continent.

"I have read that the Bay Stream, flowing up along Atlantis' western coast, has a remarkable moderating effect on the climate on this side of the mountains," Helms said. "That does indeed appear to be the case."

A couple of hours later, the train pulled into Thetford, which had something of the look of an industrial town in the English Midlands. After a sigh of disappointment, Dr. Walton displayed his own reading: "Forty years ago, Audubon says, this was a bucolic village. No more."

"Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Helms replied. Helms replied.

As he and Walton rose to disembark, Henry David Primrose said, "Enjoyed chatting with you gents, that I did." Helms let the remark pa.s.s in dignified, even chilly, silence; the good doctor muttered a polite unpleasantry and went on his way.

A few other people got out with them. Friends and relatives waited on the platform for some of them. Others went off to the baggage office to reclaim their chattels. A gray-bearded sweeper in overalls pottered about, pushing bits of dust about with his broom. A stalwart policeman came up to the Englishmen. Tipping his cap, he said, "You will be Dr. Helms and Mr. Walton. Hanover wired me to expect you, though I didn't know your train would be so very late. I am Sergeant Karpinski; I am instructed to render you every possible a.s.sistance."

"Very kind of you," Walton said, and proceeded to enlighten the sergeant as to which t.i.tle went with which man.

Athelstan Helms, meanwhile, walked over to the sweeper and extended his right hand. "Good day, sir," he said. "Unless I am very much in error, you will be the gentleman who has attained a certain amount of worldly fame under the sobriquet of the Preacher."

"Oh, good heavens!" Dr. Walton exclaimed to Sergeant Karpinski. "Please excuse me. Helms doesn't make mistakes very often, but when he does he doesn't make small ones." He hurried over to his friend. "For G.o.d's sake, Helms, can't you see he's nothing but a cleaning man?"

The sweeper turned his mild gray eyes on Walton, who suddenly realized that if anyone had made a mistake, it was he. "I am am a cleaning man, sir," he said, and his voice put the good doctor in mind of an organ played very softly: not only was it musical in the extreme, but it also gave the strong impression of having much more power behind it than was presently being used. The man continued, "While cleaning train-station platforms is a worthy enough occupation, in my small way I also seek to cleanse men's souls. For your friend is correct: I am sometimes called the Preacher." He eyed Athelstan Helms with a lively curiosity. "How did you deduce my ident.i.ty, sir?" a cleaning man, sir," he said, and his voice put the good doctor in mind of an organ played very softly: not only was it musical in the extreme, but it also gave the strong impression of having much more power behind it than was presently being used. The man continued, "While cleaning train-station platforms is a worthy enough occupation, in my small way I also seek to cleanse men's souls. For your friend is correct: I am sometimes called the Preacher." He eyed Athelstan Helms with a lively curiosity. "How did you deduce my ident.i.ty, sir?"

"In the police station in Hanover, I got a look at your photograph," the detective replied. "Armed with a knowledge of your physiognomy, it was not difficult."

"Well done! Well done!" The Preacher had a merry laugh. "And here is Sergeant Karpinski," he went on as the policeman trudged over. "Will you clap me in irons for what you call my crimes, Sergeant?"

"Not today, thanks," Karpinski said in stolid tones. "I don't much fancy touching off a new round of riots here, like. But your day will come, and you can mark my words on that."

"Every man's day will come," the Preacher said, almost gaily, "but I do not think mine is destined to come at your large and capable hands." He turned back to Helms and Walton. "You will want to recover your baggage. After that, shall we repair to someplace rather more comfortable than this drafty platform? You can tell me what brought you to the wilds of Atlantis in pursuit of a desperate character like me."

"Murder is a good start," Walton said.

"No, murder is a bad stop," the Preacher said. "I shall pray for you. I shall ask that your soul be baptized in the spirit of devotion to the universal Lord, that you may be reborn a G.o.d."

"I've already been baptized, thank you very much," the doctor said stiffly.

"That is only the baptism of the body," the Preacher replied with an indifferent wave. "The baptism of the spirit is a different and highly superior manifestation."

"Why don't you see to our trunks, Walton?" Helms said. "Their contents will clothe only our bodies, but without them Sergeant Karpinksi would be compelled to take a dim view of us in his professional capacity."