Lost Among the Stars Read online

  “By no means!” Bran explained himself, and Lambeth resumed his cordiality.

  “Well then, know ye this. Hedley and I have remained in contact all these years, exchanging regular letters. We were always enamored of each other’s skills and insights into natural science, though I confess he long ago transcended my meager talents. His latest requests for my thoughts on his researches have been met with utter incomprehension on my part, I am humbled to report. In any case, I can tell you that he resides in the vicinity of Windsor, Vermont, at an estate called Mount Golden. He supports himself by working at the Robbins and Lawrence Company, a venture akin to your father’s setup here.”

  Bran clapped the older man spontaneously on the shoulder. “This is splendid! I can go see him immediately, and try to repair all the injustices of the past two decades.”

  “And your father will give his consent?”

  Bran grew crestfallen. That eventuality seemed dicey. He would either have to make a complete break with his father, or lie.

  As fate would have it, lying proved the much easier route, a fib practically falling into Bran’s lap.

  The month was late June, and Bran had matriculated in May from the newly established yet prestigious Thomas Parkman Cushing Academy, a boarding school some forty miles outside the city. His best friend at the school had been the affable giant Baldrick Slowey, whose family lived in Brattleboro, Vermont, and had a share in the Estey Organ Works in that burg. One day soon after his interview with Lambeth, a letter arrived from Baldrick, inviting Bran to spend part of the summer in Vermont. He promptly wrote back to Baldrick, politely declining. But the original invitation he showed to his father at the dinner table.

  Warner Gilead pondered the letter with some gravity. “You really should be studying all summer, to get a leg up at Harvard in the fall. But I suppose all work and no play makes Bran a dull boy. You may go, but only for three weeks or less.”

  “Thank you, Father,” said Bran, trying to damp down his guilt.

  Only when, days later, he had at last transferred to the carriages of the Central Vermont Railway Company, did Bran truly feel that his plan stood some chance of success. Up till then, he had expected a parental hand to clamp down at any second and drag him home.

  Payment to the affable conductor easily extended his prearranged passage north from Brattleboro to Windsor.

  The station at Windsor was situated hard by the burly yet tamed Connecticut River. And the Main Street establishment of Robbins and Lawrence, he learned, was but a short walk distant.

  As he walked through the neat, leafy little town at the base of mighty Mount Ascutney, his nerves felt afire and his stomach aboil. What would be his first words to Hedley King? He had rehearsed many, but none seemed just right.

  Bran hesitated at the door of the L&R Armory, then went in. He applied to the office manager, and learned that Hedley King was not on the premises.

  “King works but irregularly,” said the mustachioed pecksniff, whose name Bran had promptly forgotten in his nervousness. “His own endeavors keep him busy, and he comes in for a stint of labor only when he runs short of funds. Begrudges every second of his employment, too. If he weren’t so damnably talented, the bosses wouldn’t put up with his insolence and independence, you can mark my words.”

  Bran just nodded noncommittally, and obtained directions to Mount Golden, the King estate. He found the hire of a horse and carriage, and was soon on his way.

  The precincts west of Windsor grew increasingly sylvan and wild, like something out of one of Thomas Cole’s more apocalyptic paintings. Hoary giants, the densely arrayed trees radiated an immemorial sense of brooding. A swampy patch seemed the gateway to some stygian netherworld. Strange bird cries attendant upon the close of day rang out like a chorus of lost souls.

  The sun was going down, and the last house had reared its shabby form some miles back, when Bran’s driver, a young lad of Apollonian thews who smelled not unpleasantly of horses, announced, “There ’tis.”

  Bran saw no welcoming manse, only a rutted, ill-kempt drive close-hemmed by overgrown yews. He stepped down, and the lad asked, “Shall I wait, sir?”

  Bran hesitated, then said with more boldness than confidence, “No, I’m expected. You may return to town.”

  Bran retrieved his portmanteau, the lad jockeyed the horse around, and in a minute Bran stood alone in the dusk.

  He moved cautiously down the drive, as if half-expecting to encounter some ogre around the bend.

  A large, decaying house—its clapboards mossy, featuring an ill-composed assortment of turrets and gables, and flanked by several skewed outbuildings—loomed out of the darkling air. Candlelight shone from one window.

  Bran climbed to the broad granite step at the front door and knocked. No immediate response met his signal. But then the door was flung inward precipitously, and Bran stood waist-to-face with a scowling, disheveled malformed dwarf who, unprompted, shouted in a foreign accent, “And you can go straight to hell!”

  * * *

  Hedley King, Bran’s natural father, poured another glass of dark red wine for himself. Bran declined a refill, the two cups he had already quaffed leaving him muzzy-headed. How strange to be sitting here with this intimately connected stranger in a fusty candle-lit parlor, full of ancient bric-a-brac, dispassionately discussing their separate lives as if they had met by chance on a train. Although Hedley King was not the ideal father Bran might have chosen for himself, Bran had quickly discerned that the man possessed a certain intensity of purpose and engaging sharpness of intellect that offset his less delicate behaviors.

  Bran had already disburdened himself of the broad outlines of his youthful career, right down to his arrival on the step of Mount Golden (so christened by its prior owner, an eccentric named Trafton Shroud who believed without a shred of evidence in the existence of rich veins of ore upon his property). Hedley King seemed pleased that Bran had been motivated to search him out, although of course whenever mention of Warner Gilead intervened in the boy’s narrative, the older man grew resentful and irate, still plainly nursing his old grudges against the plutocrat.

  And now, having plumbed Bran’s depths and found him a receptive and sympathetic auditor, King, slightly tipsy and prone to rubbing a scarred hand across the hard-traveled landscape of his face, as if to erase or reassemble its topography, rambled on about his own past.

  “When that guardian of yours sent me packing, right after your birth, it was with the understanding that I’d not find any future employment at my chosen trade within the sphere of his considerable mercantile influence. So I was forced to move about the country, earning my keep as best I could. All I had with me as my treasure and hope were my patents on the Morphic Resonator, which existed only as a collection of scattered pieces, incomplete at that. The vril reservoirs were the bulkiest, but I couldn’t abandon them—they had been crafted at great expense, and with the essential help of one of your guardian’s associates. Lord, what a damnable inconvenience they were! But I held on to them, knowing that someday I’d have a chance to fill them, thus taking the first step to perfecting my device.”

  “But this Morphic Resonator—what is it exactly?”

  “Ah, you’ll see soon enough, first thing in the morning.” King downed another gulletful of wine. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Some years ago I ended up in Europe, in the Carpathian Mountains, to be precise, nor far from Castle Gortz and hot on the track of the vril. And that’s where I met Jellyneck.”

  Jellyneck, Bran now knew, was the foul-tempered dwarf who had greeted him at the door, under the impression that Bran was a bill-collector sent from one of the unpaid merchants in Windsor. Pavel Jelinek was the small man’s real name, but upon being introduced Bran had heard “jellyneck” and could now not think of him otherwise. As to the nature of vril, Bran had formed some conception of it as an energy-dispensing substance akin to pitchblende. And in fact, the Carpathian Mountains were a known source of that familiar element, so it made
sense they would host the mysterious vril too.

  King continued: “Jellyneck was a miner, and was instrumental in leading me to the subterranean veins of vril, where I was able to charge my essential reservoirs. Enlisting in my cause, Jellyneck returned with me to America. We settled down here, knowing I could count on the Armory for work. Quickly, I brought the completed Morphic Resonator to its first success. But it’s a limited success, I fear. And lack of funds stops me from carrying my experiments further, confound it!”

  Bran finally surrendered to an immense uncontrollable yawn. Taking the cue, King said, “I can see you’re weary. Let’s get our rest, and the morning will disclose miracles to you!”

  King summoned his dwarf comrade. Was the man servant, partner, or both? Or something even less describable?

  “Jellyneck, take Ro—I mean, Bran, up to the guest bedroom. This has been a monumental day for us all. Goodnight—son.”

  With that charged word ringing in his ears, Bran climbed to the upper story of Mount Golden, where he found a bedchamber rich with dust dragons and cobwebs, featuring a spavined mattress and a moth-eaten coverlet just sufficient for the northern June clime. Doffing his travel-grimed clothes for a cotton robe from his carryall, Bran found himself soon soundly asleep, despite all the flighty speculations and retrodden memories buzzing in his head.

  He awoke refreshed, to the smell of frying bacon, onions and potatoes and boiling coffee, most agreeable scents. Dressed and downstairs, he found Jellyneck at the stove, his crabbed motions belying an efficient handling of skillet and tools. The dwarf wordlessly served Bran a simple yet hearty breakfast, then left the room.

  His hair a haystack, Hedley King entered the kitchen with a dyspeptic, neuralgic mien, nodding grumpily in Bran’s general direction. He poured himself some coffee, lashed it with copious cream and sugar, and downed it faster than was commensurate with the beverage’s heat. But the draught did him good, and he perked up considerably.

  “Finish up, and we’ll go see the Resonator.”

  Eager to penetrate to the heart of this enigmatic engine that had driven King’s every action for twenty years, Bran complied.

  King called for Jellyneck to accompany them, and the trio went out to a time-distressed leaning barn. Using a big key, King undid the padlock on the barn’s door and they entered. Once kindled, a kerosene lamp revealed the usual agrarian furniture of such a place—save for a unique construction of brass and iron and crystal.

  Occupying about as much space as a large restaurant pie case, the device resembled the mating of three or four elaborate Russian samovars, all pressurized flasks, gauges and conical pendulum governors, their spinning fly-balls now quiescent. Electrical wires ran from the Resonator to a set of Daniell-Dancer storage cells, and thence to a hand-cranked dynamo of the latest Wheatstone design. Bran could not fathom the machine’s purpose.

  King walked over to the device and laid a proud hand on a bulbous part of it. “Here’s one of the vril canisters, obtained with Jellyneck’s invaluable help.”

  “But what does it all do?”

  King seemed happy to lecture. “Before I can answer that question, you must first know a truth not generally apprehended by the academy. All life—all organic matter—is subject to the influence of unseen and intangible shaping forces called morphic fields. I assume that you are aware through your expensively obtained education of the magnetic fields discovered by Faraday and others. Well, these morphic fields are similar, but act upon living tissues, influencing their properties. Every living organism has its unique signature field, a composite of all its lesser fields. My Resonator is able to superimpose one field upon another.”

  “But to what effect?”

  Hedley King grinned in a manner not entirely wholesome. “I believe a trial run would be the best illustration. Jellyneck, a drop of your blood, if you please.”

  The dwarf pricked his finger and, apparently well familiar with the ritual, went to the Resonator, opened one drawer out of a rank of such niches, and squeezed out a crimson drop into the tin-lined receptacle, thereafter sliding the little drawer firmly shut. King did likewise in a parallel portion of the machine.

  “My blood,” King explained, “resides in the dominant, or sending portion of the device. Jellyneck’s sample, bearing its organic signature, occupies the receiving portion. The vril mediates and modulates between them, facilitating a one-way flow of instructions. Now, Jellyneck, if you would charge the storage cells—”

  The dwarf began to crank the dynamo, working up a considerable sweat. When a sufficient quantity of electricity had been obtained, King closed a connection.

  The fly-ball governors of the Resonator began to spin, crystals glowed, and a subliminal hum emanated from the device. Bran found himself entranced by the humming and the motion till they filled his senses. He might have been some Oriental monk fascinated by a spinning prayer wheel. When he finally looked away to speak to King, his breath was halted by an impossible sight.

  Two identical Hedley Kings stood in the barn. But one wore the remnant tattered clothes of Jellyneck the dwarf.

  “You—you have imposed your physiognomy on Jellyneck!”

  “Correct. My morphic field has overlaid and subsumed his.”

  Disbelieving his eyes, Bran was forced to run his hands over the altered dwarf, who submitted with a certain regal dignity. He found Jellyneck’s new body conformable in every respect to the template of King’s.

  “This—this is not some twin brother of yours, brought out from hiding to fool me, is it?”

  “Jellyneck, what were your first words to my son?”

  Jellyneck spoke with King’s voice. “‘And you can go straight to hell!’”

  “But, this is a miracle! The implications are staggering!”

  “Yes, they would be, if my machine were perfected. But as matters stand, it’s only fit for some stage conjuror to use to increase his prestige.”

  “What are the difficulties?”

  “First, the effect is temporary, lasting only so long as a current is supplied to the machine. Jellyneck’s sharing of my clean-limbed wholeness will be frustratingly brief, unless he wishes to live his life cranking a dynamo.

  “Second, I can only impose patterns at a whole-body level. I long to be able to repair a damaged leg or arm, say, without altering the entire individual.

  “And thirdly, so far I have access only to the morphic instructions determining the brute corporal level. What I really desire is to discover the resonance of the soul! I truly believe that the patterns of our consciousness are eternally contained within the morphic fields as well.”

  Bran was stupefied. “And then?”

  “Then, death would be no more! I would be able to resurrect anyone in both spirit and form, assuming I had some organic talisman of the deceased, to use as my seed.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Hedley King spoke with blunt frankness, his eyes agleam with fanatical ambition. “I would impose the soul and shape of the worthy deceased upon some living nonentity, a condemned criminal, say. Would that not be a fair punishment for some murderer, to host his victim’s new existence?”

  Bran shivered, and instinctively clutched at the locket he wore that contained strands of his mother’s hair. The gesture did not go unnoticed by a gimlet-eyed Hedley King.

  “And all that holds me back is a paltry sum of money, and access to a cadre of savants who could aid me. But Bran—Roland, my son—with your help, I could surmount all these barriers. Together, we could create a paradise on earth!”

  Bran’s head swam. To embark upon this grand venture with his real father! How much better than some stale interim at college, swotting up more useless information, only to be forced to pick up the dry ledgers of the Warner Gilead enterprises.

  “My father will never assist you, no matter how worthy your plans.”

  “Ah, but it is not your father I seek to enlist, just his connections! Let me explain.…”

  * * * />
  The lobby of the Parker House Hotel on School Street in Boston, an ornate venue of honey-blonde wood paneling, crystal chandeliers, and thick floral carpets, teemed with the bon ton tonight. A large percentage of elite Boston society was here on this glorious late July eve to welcome the man who would assuredly be the next president of the United States: General Ulysses S. Grant. For despite a strong showing by Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour, those in the know predicted an easy win for Grant in the all-important Electoral College.

  Warner Gilead was one of the savvy sponsors of this late-campaign fund-raising venture for Grant, and accordingly had intimate access to the sturdy old warhorse. As did his son, Bran.

  Which was the entire pivot upon which Hedley King’s schemes revolved.

  Dressed in his best formal clothes, holding an untouched glass of sparkling wine in one hand, Bran looked nervously around the crowded space, with its glittering women and dapper men, reminiscent of some Newport cotillion. He quaked inside to think of what he was daring to attempt, among this influential crowd.

  King had promised to stay upstairs in his rented room, ensconced with the Morphic Resonator, which had been smuggled into the hotel in a large steamer trunk. He professed to be content to have his mundane needs attended to by the faithful Jellyneck. But Bran would not put it past the man to show his face anyhow. Over the past couple of weeks, Bran had come, disturbingly, to detect in his birth-father more than a trace of “mégalomanie,” as the French had it.

  After the first demonstration of the Morphic Resonator at Mount Golden, King and Bran had begun to conspire in earnest. Living with his birth-father for the subsequent week—“the Kings of Mount Golden,” Hedley had gaily dubbed them—Bran became enthralled with the inventor to a degree he had not anticipated. The man boasted a magnetic personality. And then too, King had shared his memories of Bran’s mother, Pella, further heightening the bonds between father and son. Bran had been so moved by King’s devotion to the dead woman as to confess to wearing a snippet of Pella’s hair about his own neck.