Chapter 278: Routine Machine

At twelve minutes past six the next morning, Wallace found Number Sixty-Four inside the service workshop.

He stopped in the open doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the dim lantern light.

The car looked almost identical to the evening before. Dried gray mud still caked the wheel rims and the lower ash frame. Splatters of road clay clung to the canvas weather hood, and the radiator shell was coated in a dry film of limestone dust.

Underneath the open cowl, however, a company mechanic was leaning over the engine bay, a small flat spanner working in tight quarter turns.

Wallace walked in, his boots scuffing over the floorboards. "Morning. What are you tearing apart now?"

The mechanic glanced up, his face smudged with black graphite paste. "Morning to you, Wallace. Baron Teucher sent two apprentices over on bicycles before daybreak with fresh parts."

Wallace stared at him. "Before daybreak? We pulled in from the western provinces thirteen hours ago."

"Apparently, sleep is considered a personal defect in Belfast," the mechanic grunted, pulling his wrench free and tapping the brass line. "Have a look."

Wallace leaned his chest against the scuffed fender.

The fuel filter assembly looked noticeably different. The body had doubled in size, suspended by a heavier drop-forged bracket bolted to the frame channel. A deep glass settling chamber hung beneath the main casing, ending in a neat, threaded petcock drain at the bottom.

Wallace touched the glass cylinder with his thumb. "A separate trap for the sediment."

"Settling bowl," the mechanic corrected. "Water and heavy ditch muck fall straight into the glass cup before the spirit can reach the needle valve. When you see water sitting in the bottom, you shut the main petcock, hold a tin cup beneath this spigot, and turn it three turns. Drain the slush until the liquid runs clear amber, close it, and drive on. You don’t have to pull the filter apart on the roadside with spanners anymore."

Wallace smiled slowly, feeling a deep, quiet appreciation. "Simple. I like simple."

"The Baron likes simple too," the mechanic said.

"No, he doesn’t," Wallace replied instantly. "He likes six revisions and a twelve-page manual. But this will save my knees in a downpour."

He dropped to his haunches, peering under the crankcase. "What about the oil union?"

"Double-folded brass locking tab under the nut," the mechanic said, wiping his fingers on a waste rag. "The road vibration won’t back that thread out even if you drive across a plowed field."

At twenty minutes to seven, Aldren walked into the courtyard.

He carried a thick folder bound in black ribbon. The sheaf of papers inside was nearly an inch deep.

Wallace took one look at it and took a step backward. "No."

Aldren paused on the stones, his face impassive. "I have not uttered a syllable, driver."

"You don’t need to," Wallace said, eyeing the ribbon. "That looks like an entire week’s docket."

"It is today’s schedule," Aldren replied smoothly, handing the folder across. "We accumulated four days of backlogged departmental dispatches while Sixty-Four was away in the timber districts. Central Telegraph first. Then the Government Printing House, North Station parcel dock, the Commercial Registry, and the western administrative annex."

Wallace flipped through the delivery tickets, his eyebrows climbing. "Eighty kilometers through city cobblestones? In one shift?"

"The carriage drivers took thirty dispatches yesterday while you were resting at an inn," Aldren noted, a dry gleam in his eye.

"I was not resting at an inn, Mr. Aldren. I was waist-deep in a limestone bog tightening wheel spokes."

"And today you are driving on clean granite setts," Aldren said. "Crank the machine, Wallace. The clerks at North Station are waiting."

Wallace walked to the front of the hood. He opened the brass fuel valve, set the spark lever on the dash, and gave the starting handle a firm upward pull.

Tup-tup-tup-tup-tup.

The twin cylinders caught on the first half-turn, settling into their rhythmic, muffled beat.

Wallace stood frozen, his hand still resting on the radiator cap.

The mechanic leaned against the brick doorpost, crossing his arms. "Problem?"

"It caught on the first lift," Wallace said suspiciously.

"That is what it was designed to do."

"It’s too easy. I don’t trust it."

The mechanic laughed out loud. "Get on with your route, Wallace. The carriage horses are getting jealous."

Helmarte was waking up as Sixty-Four rolled out through the palace archway.

Shopkeepers were unbolting their heavy wooden shutters. Delivery drays loaded with fresh bread and morning milk clattered over the setts. Street sweepers worked the gutters with stiff birch brooms, and two-horse omnibuses groaned down the main avenues.

Six weeks ago, the low, steady exhaust of the Model One would have stopped traffic dead. Pedestrians would have crowded the curb; children would have run after the wheels; and draymen would have yelled curses about devil wagons.

Today, hardly anyone turned their heads.

A newsboy with a bundle of broadsheets under his arm looked up as the green car rolled past, shouted his headline about the municipal wheat tariffs, and went straight back to selling papers. An elderly woman waiting at a pedestrian crossing simply took two steps back onto the curb, waited for Wallace to pass, and crossed the street without glancing at the brass radiator.

At the Highgate crossing, a driver handling a pair of handsome black carriage horses caught Wallace’s eye. The carriage driver raised his whip hand in a casual, professional greeting.

Wallace touched two fingers to his cap in return.

It was an ordinary exchange between two working drivers sharing the morning road. Wallace smiled behind his muffler.

He cleared the Central Telegraph Office at sixteen minutes past seven. He dropped three sealed satchels at the Printing House at twenty minutes to eight.

At eight-ten, he pulled into the loading dock of the Government Printing House to collect two junior clerks and four crates of census ledgers.

The first clerk—a young man with ink stains on his cuffs and spectacles perched on his nose—opened the rear tonneau door, shoved his satchel onto the floor, and climbed in without even glancing at the running gear. He pulled a sheaf of galley proofs from his coat, smoothed them over his knee, and began reading.

Wallace looked back over the seat. "Your first trip in a motor carriage, sir?"

The clerk didn’t look up from his text. "What? No. The department hired one from the Teucher depot last Thursday. Are we departing soon? I have a committee meeting at nine."

Wallace blinked, then faced forward again with a faint chuckle.

A month ago, passengers spent the first ten miles clutching their hats, asking if the boiler would scald their legs, and demanding to know where the horses had gone. Now, a twenty-year-old clerk climbed aboard, ignored the mechanical marvel under his boots, and complained that they were five minutes behind schedule.

It was progress of the most insulting kind. And Wallace found himself thoroughly enjoying it.

At twenty minutes to nine, the capital reminded them who truly ruled its streets.

King’s Avenue ground to an absolute, unmoving standstill.

Ahead of Wallace’s front bumper sat a two-horse dray piled high with beer casks. Ahead of the dray was a four-horse omnibus, two private town broughams, a coal cart, and a handbarrow tipped on its side, spilling yellow turnips across the tracks of the horse tram.

Wallace shifted into neutral and pulled the hand brake.

Tup-tup-tup-tup-tup.

The engine thumped patiently under the floorboards, idling with steady, indifferent rhythm.

The clerk in the back dropped his papers, glaring through the glass windscreen. "Why have we stopped?"

Wallace gestured toward the sea of leather harnesses, twitching tails, and wooden tailgates ahead. "Because four tons of timber and horseflesh are occupying the King’s highway, sir."

To their right, another Model One pulled up alongside in the adjacent lane.

It was a standard Brunswick green chassis, identical to Sixty-Four, but fitted with a light delivery van body carrying crates of dry goods.

The driver looked across at Wallace through the open window, resting an elbow on his walnut wheel. "Morning, mate."

"Morning," Wallace replied.

"Nasty knot ahead. Dray lost an iron tire near the fountain."

Wallace nodded toward the motionless omnibus. "Crown Square is blocked completely. No way through until the teamsters drag the barrow out of the tram rails."

The delivery driver took out a clay pipe, holding an unlit match. "What good is thirty kilometers an hour when a brewery horse decides to sit in the road?"

"None at all," Wallace said. "Unless the Baron figures out how to put wings on the front fenders."

The driver laughed, shaking his head. "Don’t give that gentleman any ideas. He’d have us flying into church steeples before Christmas."