Page 97 of By Any Means

Stairs were difficult to manage with legs turned limp with relief, but he made it. Laurie, pending and warm and considerate behind him, made it easier.

The house’s brand-new cellar partition was the most indulgent expense of its renovation, simply because of what it held: a miniature, day-tank glass furnace. Gas-fueled, steel exterior, insulated to the teeth, Chary had designed, built, and tested it himself in the glassworks warehouse basement, then moved it here, brick by brick. There was even—and Chary was extremely proud of this modernism—a heat-recovery flue pipe which, in winter, could pass hot air beneath the glass-walled greenhouse above.

Being summer, the flue blew hot, crispy air straight up to the outside. In spite of this and the cool morning, the cellar became warmer the farther down the stairs they went. It meant August had indeed fired up Chary’s furnace.

Chary said, “I’m sorry I’m so delayed. I didn’t get your telegram until Friday afternoon, when I happened to go to the townhouse.”

August had made some changes to the cellar since Chary was last there. To the steel ceiling braces he’d welded a railing that split the cellar across its widest point; from that railing hung a long, black rubber curtain that blocked off half the space. What on earth?

August himself appeared from behind the curtain, seated on a wheeled stool. He gave Laurie a nod of greeting and waved off Chary’s concern. “I needed to set up anyway.”

Set up? “Set up what?”

August ignored him, smirking, wheeling closer; another brotherly kind of taunt, holding one’s toy far above his head. “Hiram wouldn’t give me the address of your love nest. I figured it might take a couple days for you to get it.” His smile broadened at Laurie’s snort. “He got me back for answering his boss’s emergency wire.”

“H’s eye-for-an-eye sense of justice is overdeveloped.” Laurie crossed his arms. “You had the surprising sense not to show up at Mulberry Street, though. Telegram or no telegram.”

“No, I didn’t. I ran. Are you kidding? Chary was arrested! Locked up!”

Understanding light came into Laurie’s eyes. “Hiram stopped you from coming into the police station.”

“Physically. Right down onto the wet pavement. He was right, though. Best to come at Tjo with force, and by surprise.”

Laurie laughed: an odd kind of approving snicker. “Annoying when H is right, isn’t it?”

August grinned back. “Very.”

The two men had endeared themselves to the other. Chary did not understand precisely how, but had no time to be grateful for it; he was too overcome with curiosity. “What is that curtain for?” he demanded. And does it have to do with jam jars with no mark of hand-blowing? “What’d you set up? What’s the meaning of this, August?”

“It’s a working experiment. An invention. Enh, more an iteration.” He leaned back and peered up the stairs. “You shut the door?”

“Yes?” Chary looked to Laurie; he nodded.

“Good,” August said. “It’s not patented yet.”

“Hm,” Laurie said, before Chary could stomp like a child and demand, What isn’t patented? “You sure you want me here, Wright?”

“’S’nothing to me, anti-capitalist. You didn’t sell out Chary on first meeting him, you won’t now. Not even to subdue the advance of mechanization, I’d bet. You’re a goner and always have been.”

Mechanization? “August!”

“Trust me, I know the look.”

“Hmm.” Laurie didn’t deny it nor look discomfited; on the contrary. He gleamed with mischievous knowledge and gleeful revelation. “Trade secrets,” he murmured. “Raberding didn’t want you dead.”

Of course, this meant Chary felt very outside of the joke. He didn’t know. He could surmise, however. He wasn’t Lawrence Tulley, but it wasn’t hard. Consistently sealing jam jars, no pontil mark, no personal aptitude for hand-blowing—a rival of a jealous ex-lover, wanting a merger⁠—

“You built an automatic jar machine,” Chary said. “Didn’t y-you?”

“Maaaybe.” August wheeled to the edge of the curtain and, with a flourish and one smooth shove backward, sent himself rolling across the cement floor. With him came the curtain, sliding open smoothly as if moved by rigging. It was all very dramatic, which suited him.

The revealed machine—because of course it was a machine, a bottlemaker—suited him more. It was a great, spindly thing, made of hinged black iron, hydraulics, hoses, hinges, gears.

“The bottle-spider,” August said proudly. “Semiautomatic.”

“My God.”

Chary hadn’t a mechanical mind; to him, it might as well have been a big tangle of iron string. But it was impressive. After a moment of looking at it, circling, he thought he knew—vaguely—how it was supposed to function. He’d seen other schematics, read descriptions of such machines, but never one in motion.