"Where's that?" Perhaps if he talked out his mania, a measure of sanity would be restored, and we could return to the Hall proper.
A bony hand waved towards some vague distance. "A little island – Outer Hebrides. Ancestral seat of the Bendrays. Godforsaken place; nothing but rock and seaweed. Nothing wrong with seaweed, mind you. A lot of money to be made from seaweed. That was the first commission I ever gave your father… seaweed."
He appeared to have drifted off into some recess of memory. Oblivious to my presence, he gazed abstractedly in front of himself.
I prodded him: "Seaweed, you say…"
"Seaweed?" He turned his fierce glare one me. "Bugger seaweed; filthy stuff. Keep your mind on the important matters. We can contact beings from another world – think of it! The things they could tell us: Science; the Secrets of the Universe… and more, perhaps! We have but to signal them. And they'll come to us."
"Who will?"
He rolled his eyes at my obtuseness. "I've told you: those beings from other worlds. Who already have observed our puny, earthbound comings and goings, in the lenses of their powerful observatories and close at hand. I tell you again: they are but waiting for our sign."
I at last perceived the general outline of his obsession. "Yes… well, your Lordship… that's really quite interesting. A sign from us, you say? Hm. I don't suppose a rather large banner would do?"
"Certainly not." He got to his feet, the dregs of port sloshing in the bottle. "Come with me, my boy. You shall see… all."
Lord Bendray led me further into the laboratory's reaches. "Steady on, there," he cautioned after a few minute's wavering progress.
"Pardon? Christ in Heaven!" I leapt back from the edge of a circular chasm; another step would have precipitated me into its inky depths. A fragment of stone fell from the stone lip; no sound came back of it reaching bottom.
Lord Bendray stationed himself before the hole. It curved round in either direction for some distance, appearing large enough to have swallowed a small village such as the loathsome Dampford beyond the Hall's gates. The far edge was hidden from view by rough stone pillars that descended into the pit, their lower ends lost to sight in the darkness. Above them, an intricate arrangement of cross-beams, great geared wheels taller than a man, chains thick enough to suspend houses by, and other machinery looped and dipped to make connection with the pillars.
My host gazed raptly at the stone. "They go down," he pronounced solemnly, "straight to bedrock. And beyond – hundreds of feet." He looked back at me. "Your father's last creation. Such a tragedy that he died before this – his masterpiece – could be set into operation."
I held myself well away from the chasm's edge. My eyes travelled across the massive beams and chains. "What is it?"
"Soldiers, my boy…" Lord Bendray's vision went straight through me and on to his private contemplations. He took a swallow directly from the mouth of the bottle. "Marching soldiers…"
Behind me, I could see the glitter of the brass devices on the distant workbenches; the supportive arches intertwined confusingly. The prospects of my finding my own way out appeared dismal.
Lord Bendray's eyes focussed on me again. "Soldiers marching across a bridge – ever see that?" I shrugged. "I suppose so, your Lordship. A military parade, or some such."
"Good." He waggled a finger at me in schoolmaster fashion. "Now, this is fairly common knowledge – I suspect you've heard of it – but very often, when a troop of soldiers is crossing a bridge, the men are ordered to break step. Not left-right, left-right, all together; but every man going along, out of step with those next to him. Until they're all safely on the other side; then it's off they merrily go again, left-right, left-right in unison. Now, then; why is that? Eh?"
"Well…" I searched my brain for some half-forgotten explanation. "It's the vibrations, isn't it? Um. Reverberations, or something. If all the men went marching across in step, the bridge might start to vibrate along to the rhythm of their pace. And – let's see – if they kept on marching over it, the bridge's vibration would be reinforced, and would grow stronger, and – possibly – the bridge would eventually shake itself to pieces beneath their feet."
"Oh, not just possibly, my boy – it's happened many times in actuality. Miliary practice is not derived from mere intellectual speculation, you know; destroying something is really the best way to learn. No, the best method of crossing a bridge is something that has been proven on the field, as it were."
Seaweed; beings from other worlds; now correct marching drill. I felt sadly perplexed by this evidence of incipient senility. "Yes, well… fascinating, I'm sure. Um… perhaps we should be getting back… rejoin the others… tea, perhaps-"
He shook his head impatiently. "You will admit, then, that through this principle, an item of considerable mass – say, a bridge – can be destroyed by the precise action of a smaller mass – such as a troop of marching soldiers?"
"Yes; I suppose so…"
"And can you conceive of any reason why that destructive principle should not hold true, regardless of the relative disparity between the larger and smaller mass?"
"Well… I've never really thought about it-"
Lord Bendray pressed on, his wrinkled face tightening with excitement: "Provided – of course! – that you can determine the exact rhythm of pulsations to apply to the larger mass… Eh? What say you to that?" he concluded triumphantly.
I shrugged. "Sounds reasonable to me." Best to go on humouring him, I supposed.
He whirled about at the edge of the precipice, raising his arms in adoration of the stone pillars. "That, my boy, is the purpose of this, your father's magnum opus!"
The hairs at the back of my neck began to stand up, as I sensed a madness even greater than I had at first suspected.
Glancing over his shoulder, Lord Bendray read the awful surmise visible in my face. "Yes – you've got it – you've got it, my boy! Exactly so! The senior Dower was a master of that Science properly known as Cataclysm Harmonics. Just as the marching soldiers transmit the vibrations that bring the bridge tumbling into bits, so this grand construction-" He gestured towards the stone pillars stretching down into the pit. "Your father's greatest creation – so it is designed to transmit equally destructive pulsations into the core of the earth itself. Pulsations that build, and reinforce themselves – marching soldiers! Hah! Yes – until this world is throbbing with them, and shakes itself to its component atoms!" The vision set him all a-tremble. "The bridge collapses; the world disintegrates… Just so, just so." He nodded happily.
I stared up at the construction, appalled by the old gentleman's fervour. Could it be? I was struck with a dread certainty that he had spoken the truth. My father's creation… Surely there could be no doubting it. If such a thing were the product of his genius, then, for good or ill, it very likely was as potent as all else that had come from his hand and mind.
"But-" I looked to him, baffled. "What would be the purpose of such a destruction?" A terrible vision centred itself in my thoughts, of mountains splitting in twain, deserts shivering as the oceans welled up in their midst, the grinding of splintered stone and the shrieking of women. "What cause would it serve?"
He gazed at me with patient benevolence. "Why, that of which we were just speaking," he said. "That of contacting those wise, advanced beings on the other worlds. What possible signal could be better? Surely, creatures that are capable of shattering the world on which they live, would be perceived by those intelligences as beings worthy of respect and attention. It stands to reason."
His calm voice, speaking in measured tones of annihilation, echoed inside my skull. "But – but if what you say is true… there won't be any contacting these beings – or anything else! We'll all be dead!"