Chemistry of a Disowned Son

POV: Felix

There were, by Felix Whitcomb's count, eleven separate things in the laboratory that could kill him, and the one currently smoking was not among the top five.

"Don't panic," he told the flask.

The flask, a fat round-bottomed thing clamped over a spirit lamp, did not seem to be listening. It gave a long wet gurgle. A thread of gray vapor rose from the neck, hesitated, curled once on itself like a cat considering a cushion, and began to turn a delicate shade of lavender. Felix leaned in until his spectacles fogged. He pushed them up with one stained knuckle and breathed in through his mouth, very carefully, the way one does at the edge of a cliff.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, you beauty."

It was supposed to be white. The theory was perfectly sound. If the second reagent was introduced at the right temperature, the cloud should have been white, dense, and long-lasting, rolling out of the flask in a soft heavy mass that would hug the floor. Instead it was lavender, which was wrong, and lovely, which was worse, and it was spreading across the ceiling of the little room in a lazy violet bloom that smelled of cold pennies and violets and something faintly like burned toast.

He had a notebook open. He had a pencil behind his ear. He reached for it, remembered he had put it there, and found it with the wrong hand, and by the time he'd found the right one the bloom had touched the curtain.

The curtain was linen. It had been white, once. It was a very old curtain, over a window that looked down on the steam and slop of Lindqvist's Laundry, two floors below, and it had hung there for fourteen years without incident.

It took three seconds to catch.

"Oh," said Felix. "Oh, that's not—no, no, no—"

…

He put it out with a bucket of sudsy gray wash-water, which he kept for this purpose by the door, and a wet towel, and a certain amount of language. When it was done he stood in the middle of the attic in his stocking feet, soaked to the knees, with soot on his chin and the ruin of the curtain steaming gently on the floor. His spectacles were smeared. His hair, which was the color of weak tea and tended to stand up on its own in the best of times, had taken on the look of a startled hedgehog.

He took off the spectacles, polished them on his shirt, and put them back on. This produced no improvement. Then he looked about him, and sighed, and for the fourth time that week took stock of his home.

It was one long room under the eaves of the laundry, with slanted ceilings and a smell of lye. It had a cot. A washstand. A stove. And, down its whole length, on trestles made of planks and flour barrels, the kingdom of Felix Whitcomb: three hundred bottles, flasks, retorts, funnels, jars, beakers, tongs, crucibles; a brass balance; a shelf of mineral specimens in egg cartons; a rack of test tubes full of colors that did not occur in nature. A chart of the elements was pinned to the wall, with the new ones he had added himself in pencil. Beside it hung a small, framed, yellowed rectangle of newsprint.

He did not look at that one.

He looked, instead, at the window, and the soft drip of the laundry steam on the glass. Lavender, he thought. With an oxidizer. What if I reduced the temperature of the first stage, and brought the flask off the flame at the moment of color change, rather than a moment after? He found the pencil. He wrote, in a rapid scrawl: Lav. cloud! Not white. Why? Check for trace Cu in the glass?

It was a good question. He underlined it twice.

Then, because he was twenty-one and no one was watching, he looked at the frame.

…

It had been cut from the Courier, the morning paper. It was a small square notice, boxed in black, in the dignified type reserved for the announcement of deaths. He knew the text by heart.

NOTICE. The Meridian Trust Company hereby declares that, as of this date, it has no connection whatsoever, financial, familial, or otherwise, with Mr. Felix A. Whitcomb, late of Crown Hill, and will not be responsible for any debt, obligation, or act of the said individual. —A. Whitcomb, Chairman.

The said individual.

He had framed it on the second day. He did not entirely know why. It had been that or throw it in the fire, and he had stood with the page in his fist for a long time, shaking, and then he had gone out to the ironmonger's and bought a plain black frame for a quarter. It hung there now between the periodic table and a poster for a magic lantern show, where he could not avoid seeing it.

His father had not even used his Christian name.

I refused to sign, he thought, for perhaps the thousandth time. That was all. They brought a paper. A foreclosure notice for forty houses in Ash Docks, for the dock extension, and a pen on a silver tray. I read it. I said I'd rather not. I said, politely, it seemed to me that people were living in them.

He remembered his father's face. It had been quite calm. Of course, his father had said. Of course, Felix. A tender heart. Your mother would have been proud. And he had gone out, and the next morning the notice was in the paper.

He turned away.

It's fine, he told the lavender-stained ceiling. Chemistry doesn't care who your father is. Chemistry is the one honest thing.

He put on his shoes.

…

The knock was at half past nine.

It was a soft, deliberate knock. Three raps, evenly spaced, as if someone were measuring them. Felix, who was on his knees at the stove, picking charred linen out of the grate, said "Come in!" without looking up, and heard the door open, and a slow, rhythmic sound on the boards: thump, step, drag. Thump, step, drag.

"You've burned your curtain," said a dry voice.

"Oh, it's quite all right, it was only a small combustion. I've a bucket." Felix sat back on his heels. "Are you here about the laundry? Mr. Lindqvist is downstairs. He's got the, the, you know, the steam. Oh." He blinked. "You're not—"

The stranger was standing in the middle of the attic, leaning on a cane.

He was young. Perhaps a year or so younger than Felix, perhaps older; it was hard to tell. He was thin, and pale, with dark untidy hair and a very well-cut dark waistcoat that looked as though it had been bought on credit and taken in. His hands were ink-black to the knuckle. He had gray eyes, and they were moving over the room with the quick, unhurried, appraising stare of a man estimating a sale: the benches, the bottles, the burned curtain, the chart of the elements, and last, with a trace of something that was not quite surprise, the little black frame.

"Mr. Whitcomb," he said.

"Oh," said Felix. "Yes. Hello. I mean, yes. That's me." He stood up. He took off his spectacles and put them on again. "I'm so sorry. Have we—? I don't think I've the pleasure."

"Dex Hallam."

"Dex Hallam." It meant something. Felix, who knew most things about chemistry and nearly nothing about the street, had nevertheless lived two years above a laundry on Tallow Row, and had heard the name in the way one hears a good-natured rumor. The Soot Saints. The boy with the cane who fixes the papers. "The, ah. The one who forges—"

"Arranges," said Dex, "documents."

"Of course."

"I've come about a job."

"Oh, I don't do jobs," said Felix. "I do experiments." And then, because that sounded foolish, "I mean, I'd be happy to look at something. If it's a stain. I've an excellent solvent."

Dex did not smile. But some small muscle in his cheek, beside his mouth, moved.

…

It took him four minutes to explain, and Felix, who had a habit of interrupting with questions, interrupted no more than eleven times. There was to be a task. It would be dangerous. It would require "a person of unusual chemical competence." The employer wished to remain anonymous. It was an operation against the Council of Charter Houses, whose Tithe, as Mr. Whitcomb must be aware, had been quietly stripping the memories of the Ash Docks for generations.

"I knew it," said Felix.

"You did?"

"Oh, I've always suspected. There are so many people who have gaps." He was pacing, now, between the benches, waving a pair of tongs. "My landlady's husband. A man who once recited the whole of Milton, you know, from memory, to the whole street, on Christmas Eve. And one morning he woke up and couldn't remember the word table. And they said it was the drink. But he didn't drink! And the Watch men, always so calm, in the evenings. And that child at the dispensary who doesn't know her own mother. And all the houses where the, ah, the furniture is arranged for someone who's gone." He stopped. "Is that what they do? Do they take it?"

"They take it," said Dex.

"For money?"

"For law." The word was bitter. "They call it the Tithe. A tenth of what you are, to the city, for the common good. It's in the Charter of 1710. It's perfectly legal. And they don't take a tenth. They take what they like."

Felix was quiet for a moment, with the tongs in his hand. A flush had risen up his neck. "That's monstrous," he said, quite softly, in a tone of such innocent scientific outrage that Dex turned his head away.

"Yes."

"And we're going to stop it?"

"We're going to steal something that would let them do worse."

"Oh, I'm in," said Felix. "Absolutely. When do we start?"

…

"Wait."

Dex had lifted a hand. It was a thin hand, ink-stained, and there was nothing violent in it. But Felix, who had been halfway to the bench for a notebook, stopped as though he'd come up against a wall.

"Before you say yes," said Dex, "I'd like to ask a question. It's the only one I'll ask."

"Of course."

"Have you ever hurt anyone?"

Felix stared at him. Then, because it was a plain question and he was, at bottom, an exceptionally plain person, he thought about it. "No," he said. "I don't think so. Not on purpose. I once spilled hot phosphorus on a cat, but he was quite all right, and Mrs. Lindqvist said he deserved it." He swallowed. "Why?"

"Because you're going to be handed things that can." Dex's gaze was steady. "Smoke. Acid. Fire. You're very good, I think, at making them. I need you to be good at something else. I need you to be good at deciding when not to." A pause. "Keep it that way. Never having hurt anyone. If I ask you to, and I might, you have the right to say no. Understood?"

"Understood," said Felix, a little pale.

"Good."

"But I'd like to show you something. If you've time."

Dex glanced at the flask. A residue of lavender still hung in the corner of the attic like a smudge of breath. "I've gathered that."

…

It was not, strictly, a proper demonstration. Felix did it in a small tin pan, on a firebrick, with the window open and a bucket to hand, and he did not have the pan ready, and he had to hunt for the tongs. But in the end he held up between thumb and forefinger a little twist of paper, no bigger than a thimble, and set it down, and touched it with a lit spill.

There was a soft cough.

A cloud rose, dense and white and pleasantly, almost shockingly thick, a rolling blanket of it. It poured off the firebrick like cream, and fell, and spread along the floor in a heavy low wave and began to climb the wall. Within seconds the attic was a pale sea. Felix could see his own hand at arm's length, and not his feet. Dex had vanished entirely, except for the faint tap of the cane.

"It's quite harmless!" Felix called. "It doesn't burn, and the lungs don't mind, though you'd want a cloth! It lasts about four minutes, depending on the draft! The color is a compromise, I'd really prefer lavender—"

There was a crack, and a hiss, and a yelp.

"The curtain," said a dry voice from the whiteness. "Again."

"Oh, blast."

It took the bucket. It took a good deal of splashing and cursing. When the cloud had thinned and sunk and Felix could see through it, he found his visitor standing in the middle of the floor, in a fog of ash, with the end of the cane braced on a charred floorboard. His waistcoat was gray. His hair was white with powder. He was looking at the second curtain, the one over the stairs, which hung in black tatters from its rod.

"I'm very sorry," said Felix. "It's the heat from the, the primary reaction. If I'd a proper vessel—"

"Mr. Whitcomb."

"Yes?"

"I'll need you to be able to control that."

"Oh. Yes. I can. I will. I'll make it so it doesn't ignite anything." Felix was glowing. He couldn't help it. His face was streaked with soot and his hair stood straight up and there was a happy, dazzled, hopeful look in his brown eyes, like a dog who has been told he may keep the stick. "May I take that as a yes? That you're, ah, that you'll have me?"

"I'm hiring you," said Dex. "Yes."

Something very odd happened to Felix's chest.

He was used to being tolerated. He had been tolerated for years: by tutors, by his father's secretaries, by the other boys at the Academy who had called him Professor and stuffed his pockets with frogs. He had never been hired. It had a clean sound to it. It had a floor.

"I'd like to pay," Dex said. "In advance."

…

He took from his waistcoat a small, heavy object wrapped in oilcloth, and laid it on the bench. Felix unwrapped it. It was a gold ingot, about the length of his finger, dull yellow, cold, astonishingly heavy for its size. It was stamped on one face in sharp deep letters: MT.

"Good God," said Felix. "That's a thousand dollars."

"Fifteen hundred. Near enough."

"But I haven't done anything."

"You've agreed to. That's what a retainer is." The thin mouth twitched. "Is it enough?"

"It's absurd." He picked it up. It was warm from Dex's coat. "I could buy a new flask. I could buy a whole laboratory. I could buy a, a retort stand, a proper one, with a ring—"

"Then buy one."

"Thank you," said Felix, helplessly. "Thank you, Mr. Hallam. I really, genuinely—"

"Dex."

"Dex." He was grinning like a fool. "I'll make you the finest smoke in the history of the city."

"I'd settle for the quietest." Dex was already at the door, turning the cane. "Come to the Tallow Exchange tomorrow night. Bring what you need. Ask for Ma Tilly. She'll feed you."

And he was gone, with a thump, step, drag, down the stair, past the charred remains of the second curtain, into the damp and ammonia dark of the laundry below.

…

Felix stood for a long time in the ruined attic with the gold in his hand.

The night had come on. Through the window, over the rooftops, he could see the Terrace, far up on its hill, a shimmering sprawl of light, the electric light, steady and cold and white, like a bowl of jewels set on the sky. Charter Hall at the top, with its dome. And somewhere below it, in a big stone house with a green door, a gentleman with silver hair was sitting at a dinner table with a napkin in his lap.

I wonder if he reads the Courier, thought Felix.

I wonder if he's thought of me.

He looked at the ingot. He turned it to the lamp. The two letters caught the light, sharp and clean, like a signature. MT. He had seen those letters on the ledger of every bank he had ever walked into as a boy. On the doors. On the carriages. On his father's cufflinks. He had seen them on the back of his own birth certificate.

A laugh came up in him.

It started small. It was almost a cough. He tried to hold it, and it got away from him, and then he was standing in his burned attic, in his socks, hiccuping with laughter, holding a bar of gold with his father's name on it.

"Oh, that's funny," he gasped. "Oh, that's very funny. Father's money. Father's money, paying for a plot against Father's Council." He wiped his eyes. "Whoever's behind it must have an excellent sense of humor!"

He laughed until he was out of breath.

Then he sat down on the cot, and the laughter stopped, and he sat with the gold in his lap and looked at the frame on the wall.

The said individual.

"Well," he whispered. "At least I'm useful."

He did not know that it was truer than he thought, and a good deal worse.