“BERD!”
Berd blinked. Walls rose around her as she lay prone on the ground. Only they appeared to be made of wood. Oak. She was in a building of some sort. She opened her mouth to answer, but managed a croak. The odours of roasting wood and scorched metal billowed over her. Her nostrils flared. She gulped for air. She had been breathing in smoke that scorched her throat. But smoke meant fire...
Danger.
She pushed herself up. The world swirled dizzily, and she collapsed, nauseous, unable to move. Not just her throat hurt, but every inch of her. She did not remember ever aching so much. She cleared her throat in order to shout, to say where she was, but again managed only a guttural whimper.
The voice cried again, “Berd!” from somewhere outside the building, more urgently this time. James!
Help me!
Beside her a figure rose, coughing to his feet.
“Charles,” she whimpered. Please, let it be true that they were really back.
Charles turned, his blue eyes, red-rimmed, focused, then he smiled and his arms slid around her. His strength engulfed her. They were back! Back! Back in the Fotheringay stables. Gine had kept his word and returned them.
“Come on.” Charles’s voice burred; he tightened his embrace. Somehow the room appeared to float. No, it was not the room. It was the Engine in the middle of the room that created the illusion: the Engine that with its copper platters and dazzling towering carriage spires, still resembled a miniature city of steel and gold. The air around it wavered, mimicking currents in a fast-moving stream. The strong odour of burning metal emanated, thrumming from it, the heat licking the walls of the room and blackening the wood. But the scent was dissipating, each pulse weaker. The hum dimmed. The Engine was dying. Gine was dying.
Together they staggered out the door. Before they were through, hands seized her.
“Berd!”
James! She could not remember ever being so glad to see him before. She threw one arm around him, but the other remained possessively around Charles’s waist. She would never let him go... She gasped. Her right arm no longer hurt. Gine had healed it. She had a lot to be thankful to him for.
Her brother glared at Charles but made no move to impede his progress. The three of them stumbled forward. When they reached the safety of the kitchen door, they turned to observe the stables. The whole wooden building shimmered and throbbed with a strange white radiance as if a star had descended to earth. The surrounding grass shimmered as if soaked in melted glass. Scents of cinnamon toast and peach jam rippled the air.
“What happened?” James wiped his brow. He sported a black eye she assumed was courtesy of Charles. Their feud was forgotten as he handed a steel flask to Charles.
Charles hesitated, but then took it and held it up in a toast of truce. “Thank-you.”
Gruffly, James nodded before turning to her. His tone was noticeably gentler, as he said, “I’ll get you water, Berd.”
She barely heard him for she was reaching out one hand for Charles’s cheek. The cut was gone. Charles bent his head as she tilted hers upwards. Their lips had almost touched when they heard James clear his throat.
“Your water.”
They jumped back. Berd’s heart was still thumping wildly, but it was the flask of brandy she reached for.
Charles’s said nothing, only grinned as James’s mouth dropped open. He handed the flask over to Berd.
As Berd drank, she heard James snap his mouth shut. But neither of them said anything as she had her drink and then handed the flask back to James.
Even after his drink, Charles’s chest heaved as if he had run two marathons. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I take it, Lovelace, that the Engine didn’t swallow you up.” The corners of Charles’s eyes crinkled.
James replaced the flask in his pocket before speaking. His eyes bore the look of a man who had seen strange things and was still trying to work them out. He spoke as if he had been planning for a while what he was about to say, “I saw you go through into nothingness. Then I ploughed into some kind of wall. I pushed against it, but couldn’t get through. I threw sticks, anything I could lay my hands on, at it. Couldn’t believe my eyes, when the ruddy things also disappeared.” He shook himself as if he still couldn’t quite believe it. “I called, but no one answered. I walked around the stables and tried various other entrances but none would let me in so then I returned to where I saw you last and kept calling.”
“James, you didn’t, shouldn’t have tried to get in.” Berd’s voice was high. If he but knew how close he had come to being lost forever.
He kicked at the grass. “Poppycock! You were inside.” Then his shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry, Berd. You did try to tell me, and I refused to believe you. But what happened? How did you escape?”
Charles leaned back against the building. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask your sister that question.”
“Berd?” James lifted his head, eyes bright.
“The world’s first programmer. My program got stuck in an endless loop. She got us out of that loop and out of the Engine.”
At Charles’s admission, a grin spread over her face.
Berd knew she had done it. But men had somehow always downplayed her achievements, if they had ever admitted to them in the first place. But to have Charles undeniably confess to James that she had done it, well!
“Oh!” she squealed, her delight increasing when he nodded, his iridescent blue eyes shining with pride. And if Charles hadn’t caught hold of her hand, she would have danced about the grass.
She had done it!
She was the world’s first programmer!
Men would have to start taking women seriously. The computer was now a viable tool. Lives could be saved. But importantly…
Grandmother, I have vindicated you!
If Charles didn’t know before, he should know now that this was all the wedding present—
Wedding? No, he hadn’t even asked her. Well, at least not in this world.
If James wasn’t here, she would have thrown her arms around Charles. As if James knew what was in her mind, he annoyingly, played the part of the big brother to perfection. He studied her blushing face for a long moment then turned to Charles, sizing him up. “I’m glad you think so, Fotheringay, especially if you become a member of our family as you weren’t marching to that drummer a while ago.”
She gasped. She had wanted to have the issue of her marriage settled, but James had thrown her to Charles like a bone to a dog. Berd wanted to hide her head in shame.
But if there was any shame in being engaged to her, Charles didn’t appear to think so. He pressed her hand to his lips as if this was the opportunity he had craved for so long, and James had presented it to him on a silver salver. “I intend to rectify this immediately, if you will allow me? And can I offer my humble apologies for—”
James waved the apology away. “A drink at your club and we’ll call it quits. And yes. I’ll get my lawyers to call on yours tomorrow.” He narrowed his eyes meaningfully at her. “Unless you have any objections?”
Her future been settled. Just like that! But when James asked grumpily, “So how did you escape?” for the umpteenth time and both she and Charles answered, “The Engine,” together, like a newly-wedded couple, she knew it was too late to argue. She blushed furiously and delightedly as the blood rushed up her throat.
“I was going to give you a sporting chance to get away, Fotheringay. Five minutes should do the trick, but I can see it’s too late.” James chuckled, as he gazed proudly at her. “But how did you escape?” he insisted plaintively once more.
She had to put him out of his misery. Even though she had been through it all, it was hard to put into words what had happened. Gine coming alive, fighting to stay alive and then sacrificing it all…
“I reprogrammed the computer.”
It was the truth. The simple truth. And for now it would suffice.
“Do you want all the technical detail?” She arched one brow innocently.
James winced and held his palm up.
In the end, Gine had become human. That was why Gine had never wanted her to turn into an engine. He wanted her to fall freely in love with him.
Many people fell in love with their inventions: the late Charles Babbage with his Difference Engine and then later with his Analytical Engine. No doubt, the late Mr Fotheringay and Charles were also in their own way in love with their engine.
And then she, too, fell in love. She, who knew so little of romantic love, that she could not recognise it at first.
She had insisted she would love Charles when he turned totally into an engine. And that she would willingly remain in the engine with him. In the end, it was the essence of Charles she had fallen in love with, whatever vessel it was in. But if that was the case then...
“We have to go back,” she said quietly.
“Are you sure?” Charles’s voice was soft, but there was no anger in it, only acceptance. As if he had come to the same conclusion she had. Gine would always be a part of them and if they lost him, they lost a vital part of themselves.
She bit her lip then answered. “Yes. I love you, but I love him, too. Does that upset you?”
Charles’s grin only broadened. ‘No’ he mouthed then laughed.
Beside them, James was frowning, perturbed. “Berd...”
“It’s all right, James. We’ll be back. We just need to get something very important.”
“Come, if you wish,” Charles offered with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“What? I mean, what’s inside?” James coughed into his fist before staring at the green grass.
Furniture and statuary still dotted the grounds in concentric circles, the inner circle the emptiest. It wasn’t safe, but who wanted to live in a safe world.
Charles cocked his head knowingly at her, as he replied, “A world where every woman is a princess.”
“Or every man a prince.” Berd reached out and squeezed his hand.
They walked towards the stable. As if the Engine knew they were returning, the light softened, glistening gold like the morning sun on a newborn winter’s day. It was welcoming them back.
Berd’s heart beat faster, but it was with joy and anticipation. She was becoming whole once more.
As Charles reached out to grasp the door, it swung open.
A man staggered out. He was dressed in workman’s clothes. Four men followed. They took little notice of the three wide-eyed young people, and instead acted as if they were in a dream. They staggered off.
James gaped, dumbfounded. “Who, who...”
“The workmen I sent to retrieve the Engine,” muttered Charles. Then he chuckled. “Gine’s obviously found a new power source.”
“How?” she asked, but Charles could only shrug delightedly.
One couldn’t be upset with ingenuity.
And after a while Berd laughed with him, too. So the workmen were back. If she ever wanted further proof of Gine’s heart, this was it.
Only James knotted his brows, even more deeply puzzled.
Charles gripped James’s shoulder. “You ask what is in the stable. In truth, I am proud to say, a part of me.”
“Interesting bag of tricks you got in there.” James rubbed his hands.
Tricks? Berd wanted to smile. No, not now, not today. Two thousand years ago tricks may have fooled the ancients in Alexandria, but in the end, it was simply due to a man named Heron who was gifted in mechanics. He had used his inventions as tricks in the temples to pretend to the worshippers that their gods were real, but what Charles had invented was real.
The computer.
Had poor Heron realised the implication of his steam ball and invented the steam engine, perhaps the industrial revolution would have occurred then. And perhaps, the computer would also have been invented. She was glad it had not. This was her chance, her moment. And not just for her.
But for all womankind.
And especially, you, too, Grandmother.
“No, no tricks,” said Berd. She gripped Charles’s hand tightly in her right and James’s in her left. Her heart beat faster as she answered, “What’s inside is the future. Our future.”
The End