Fieldborn

Thursday-sunset and lamps to be lit, I didn’t dawdle getting to Green Park Yard, what with my old ’16 broken down. Unless I wanted to walk around with a ladder like a window cleaner, it was a loan giraffe for Muggins, whatever they had. Of course, not wanting to find myself riding some wheezer for the next few nights, I’d followed the custom and gone round to the Sheds first thing to tip the Head Artificer with a couple of ounces of Old Navy to see me right. But still.  

While I was there, I’d asked after poor ’16. My faithful MkII Imperial Bio Mimetics giraffe was on a stand over by the big windows, cold and still. Scuffed, painted canvas skin peeled back, and malacca wood front leg bent up off the ground like he was in pain. Mr Stiles had made my present vanish into his waistcoat with a nod and tapped with the stem of his briar on the thin golden cable running down the back of the leg in a shallow, oily groove. “The knee’s gone, but this here cable’s the culprit. Braided copper’s strong but wears on the back of the joint. Weakens it summ’t cruel. IBM has tried all sorts of tricks in the twenty years since this lad was made, but it’s the material you see?” I didn’t doubt but that he was right, the deep crack in ’16’s gutta-percha joint, mute testimony to years and miles.

“It’ll take a couple of days to cast a new one, but Lord love us; it’s a beautiful design all the same. Without that tendon-cable, the leg would have to be twice as thick for the weight.” He turned and took a couple of hard puffs before jabbing his pipe towards a group of apprentices working on a steam engine the size of a top hat – some other giraffe’s heart. “But do those young shavers coming up care? No. Not a fig for elegance, nor beauty. It’s metal boxes, steel rods and wheels on everything. Mechanics, they call themselves. Ignorance, I say. Function follows form, not t’other way around. Stands to reason.” 

Of course, being in a hurry, I was buttonholed by all and sundry, and by the time I rounded the corner, Bill Scroggins on ’47 was disappearing under the arch, leaving me alone in the yard and needing to be about it. Old Stiles had seen me right though, bless him, because standing under the white 16 that marked my route was an honest-to-god brand new MK IV, steam gently rising out of the little horns on its head as if it’d just strolled the twelve miles from the works at Bristol Docks.

I quickly checked the chest glass to ensure it had coal in the hopper, pulled out the spring-loaded knee spur, got my foot on, reached up for the shoulder ring, and scrambled up into the saddle. Just that showed how new this giraffe was. Not an inch of movement, like as climbing a statue. Behind me, the clock struck the quarter, and I pulled the clipboard from my satchel and leaned down to look at the plate:

’14-213 MKIV Nubian. IBM Bristol 1887’, patting the lacquered flank with “Pleased to meet you 213″ before filling in the details. I finished the rest of the checklist as fast as possible, finding nothing amiss, and lit the six-foot staff in the socket by my knee, glancing up at the office over the gate. Sure enough, there was the gaffer and a right Tartar at the window. I shouldn’t be the first driver docked a shilling for being tardy. Well, this time, he could lump it as with barely a minute before the hour struck, I tipped my hat to him, released the handbrake and pushed down on the pedals under my feet. 

Smooth as velvet, ‘213 was, and we walked steadily away from the river up to Crescent Gardens, passed by bicycles, cabs, and a shout of “Couldn’t find a ladder then, Lofty?” from a drunken carter while his lad hung onto the tiller, red-eared above the scarf wrapped around his face. It was just about dark when I got to my first lamp. It’s an easy start. All the ones in the street are of the modern sort, with a key to turn on the gas that goes in halfway up the pole without needing to stir from the saddle. I lit the mantle from my staff with a satisfying pop and guided ‘213 onto the next, working my way up the street, lighting each lamp as I’d done hundreds of times before, my mind wandering.

Ten years ago, a Steadfast horse would have pulled that cart all day on a half-bushel of coal. Good, reliable machines, not so different from the Imperials I’d ridden back when I was soldiering. Now, most had a two-wheeled box between the shafts. Brutish, smokey things that’d give any Artificer pause. And maybe it was a bushel instead, but coal was cheap. Traction Units, they called them, a soulless name for something made all over the Empire anywhere you could scrounge up a forge and some old iron. Simple to make, simple to fix and cheap. A fraction of the price of a Steadfast and easy as pie to use. The older folk, well, they remembered live horses, didn’t they?

I turned right up Marlborough St, towards the Park, trying to remember when I’d last seen an Elephant on the road. It’s howdah packed with sightseers like sardines or some sparky lad on an Ostrich, weaving in and out of the traffic to curses and shaken fists. I lit the first of the old Georgian poles there, climbing up ‘213’s neck on the pegs to trim the wick first and that there was enough oil. I did a couple more and then stood under the soft yellow light to smoke a pipe, leaning against ‘163’s warm chest. There was no stopping Progress, nor should there be. I  couldn’t see myself behind the tiller of some wheeled box, but maybe by then, they’d have figured out how to get the lamps to light themselves. Wouldn’t that be marvellous? 

I knocked out my pipe and climbed back onto ‘163. But as I walked slowly along, I couldn’t help but wonder whether we’d find in time we’d turned down the wrong street—one where there was nothing to light our way.