“Good Lord.” Madame Lefoux was obviously impressed. “I had no idea such technology even existed. I knew they were working on it, of course, but not that it had finally been built. Impressive. May we witness it in action?”
The vampire shook his head. “I have no messages to go out at the present time and am not expecting any incoming.”
Madame Lefoux looked crestfallen.
“So what happens, exactly?” asked Lady Maccon, who was still looking closely at the equipment.
Lord Akeldama was all too delighted to explain. “Ever notice that the metal paper has a faint grid on it?”
Alexia switched her attention to a scroll of metal Lord Akeldama handed her. The surface was, indeed, divided into a standardized grid. “One letter per square?” she hypothesized.
Lord Akeldama nodded and explained further. “The metal is exposed to a chemical wash that causes the etched letters to burn through. Then two needles pass over each grid square, one on top and the other on the bottom. They spark whenever they are exposed to one another through the letters. This causes an aether wave that is bounced off the upper aethersphere and, in the absence of solar interference, transmits globally.” His gesturing throughout became wilder and wilder, and on the last phrase, he did a little pirouette.
“Astounding.” Lady Maccon was impressed, both with the technology and Lord Akeldama’s ebullience.
He paused, recovering his equanimity, then continued with the explanation. “Only a receiving room tuned to the appropriate frequency will be able to pick up the message. Come with me.”
He led them into the receiving room section of the aethographor.
“Receivers, mounted on the roof directly above us, pick up the signals. A skilled operator is required to tune out ambient noise and amplify the signal. The message then displays there”—he gestured, hands waving about like flippers, at two pieces of glass with black particulate sandwiched between and a magnet mounted to a small hydraulic arm hovering above—“one letter at a time.”
“So someone must be in residence to read and record each letter?”
“And they must do so utterly silently,” added Madame Lefoux, examining the delicacy of the mounts.
“And they must be ready in an instant, for the message destroys itself as it goes,” Lord Akeldama added.
“Now I comprehend the reason for the noise-proof room and the attic location. This is clearly a most delicate device.” Lady Maccon wondered if she could operate such an apparatus. “You have, indeed, made an impressive acquisition.”
Lord Akeldama grinned.
Alexia gave him a sly look. “So what precisely is your compatibility protocol, Lord Akeldama?”
The vampire pretended offense, looking coquettishly up at the ceiling of the box. “Really, Alexia, what a thing to ask on your very first showing.”
Lady Maccon only smiled.
Lord Akeldama sidled over and slotted her a little slip of paper upon which was written a series of numbers. “I have reserved the eleven o’clock time slot especially for you, my dear, and will begin monitoring all frequencies at that time starting a week from today.” He bustled off and reappeared with a faceted crystalline valve. “And here is this, tuned to my frequency, just in case the apparatus you employ is less progressive than my own.”
Alexia tucked the little slip of paper and the crystalline valve into one of the hidden pockets of her new parasol. “Does any other private residence own one?” she wondered.
“Difficult to know,” replied Lord Akeldama. “The receiver must be mounted upon the roof, so one could conceivably hire a dirigible for air reconnaissance and float about looking for them, but I hardly think that an efficient approach. They are very dear, and there are few private individuals who could see to the expense. The Crown, of course, has two, but others? I only have the list of official compatibility protocols: that is a little under one hundred aethographors dotted about the empire.”
Reluctantly, Alexia realized that time was getting on, and if she intended to leave for Scotland, she had much to do in the space of one night. For one thing, she would have to send round to the queen to alert her to the fact that her muhjah would be missing meetings of the Shadow Council for the next few weeks.
She made her excuses to Lord Akeldama. Madame Lefoux did the same, so that the two ladies found themselves exiting his residence at the same time. They paused to take leave of one another on the stoop.
“Do you really propose to float to Scotland tomorrow?” inquired the Frenchwoman, buttoning her fine gray kid gloves.
“I think it best I go after my husband.”
“Should you travel alone?”
“Oh, I shall take Angelique.”
Madame Lefoux started slightly at the name. “A Frenchwoman? Who is that?”
“My maid, inherited from the Westminster Hive. She is a dab hand with the curling iron.”
“I am certain she is, if she was once under Countess Nadasdy,” replied the inventor with a kind of studied casualness.
Alexia felt there was some kind of double meaning to the comment.
Madame Lefoux did not give her the chance for further inquiry, as she nodded her good-bye, climbed into a waiting hackney, and was gone before Lady Maccon had time to say more than a polite good night.
Professor Randolph Lyall was impatient, but no one would ever guess it to look at him. Partly, of course, because currently he looked like a slightly seedy and very hairy dog, skulking about the bins in the alley next to Lord Akeldama’s town house.
How much time, he was wondering, could possibly be required to take tea with a vampire? A good deal, apparently, if Lord Akeldama and Lady Maccon were involved. Between the two of them, they could talk all four legs off a donkey. He had encountered them in full steam on only one memorable occasion and ever since had avoided the experience assiduously. Madame Lefoux had been a surprise addition to the party, although she probably was not adding much to the conversation. It was odd to see her out of her shop and paying a social call. He made a mental note: this was something his Alpha should know about. Not that he had orders to watch the inventor. But Madame Lefoux was a dangerous person to know.
He shifted about, nose to the wind. Some strange new scent on the air.
Then he noticed the vampires. Two of them, lurking in the shadows well away from Lord Akeldama’s house. Any closer and the effete vampire would sense their alien presence, larvae not of his line in his territory. So, what were they there for? What were they about?
Lyall lowered his tail between his legs and slunk a quick circle behind them, coming at them from downwind. Of course, vampires had nowhere near as fine a sense of smell as werewolves but they had better hearing.
He crept in close, trying to be as silent as possible.
Neither of the vampires were BUR agents, that was for certain. Unless Lyall missed his guess, these were Westminster’s get.
They did not appear to be doing anything but simply watching.
“Fangs!” said one of them finally. “How bloody long can it take to have tea? Especially if one of them ain’t drinking it?”
Professor Lyall wished he had brought his gun. Difficult to carry, though, in one’s mouth.
“Remember, he wants it done stealthy; we are simply checking. Don’t want to go at it with the werewolves over nothing. You know…”
Lyall, who did not know, wanted to very badly, but the vampire, most unhelpfully, did not continue.
“I think he’s paranoid.”