Souls of Steam

By Jay Palmer

A new photographic discovery allows people to photograph escaping human souls!

Discovering a photographic solution that reveals human souls arising from the dying, Tom, an uneducated veteran raised in the backstreets of London, is thrust into the environs of Britain's wealthiest elites. Joining with opulent and proper Marcia, England's wisest, aged patroness, and her aristocratic companions, Tom must quickly overcome his bohemian lifestyle and adopt the strict, formal manners of British royal society.

Led by two preeminent scientists of England, Thaddeus and Euphorus, the companions travel the globe, taking photos of escaping souls. Triangulating their misty routes, the companions seek to locate and explore the final destination of freed human souls. Yet formal manners prove to be mortal obstacles in primeval lands.

Hunted by savage beasts, Tom must force his wealthy companions to abandon their accustomed manners. Their quest drops them into primitive societies where even Britain's best manners can't equal older social customs.

Despite objections, they continue to photograph unfortunates succumbing to mortality. As they near their goal, success seems certain ... until they arrive.

Will revelation of their discovery resolve the world's disputes or spark a religious war to destroy all civilizations? The fate of Earth's future depends on four learned companions as they face the most-unexpected SteamPunk eternal doom.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Palmer
• Release date: Apr 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781732498945

Jay Palmer

When not writing, Jay Palmer is often seen waltzing or doing the hustle upon dance floors all around Seattle. Born extreme ADHD at Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, Jay grew up on military base, moving to a new city every two years. Jay Palmer has always sought the novel and the obscure, and joined numerous fringe groups as a teenager, including Wicca in 1972, the Markland Medieval Mercenary Militia in 1974, Puget Sound Star Trekkers and the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1979 (where he fought his way to become a knight, herald, seneschal, and autocrat), and working ConCom for Norwescons 2-6. Today Jay Palmer rides a Kawasaki Vulcan and leads a quiet life working as a Technical Writer for major software firms, including Microsoft, Attachmate, and the Walt Disney Internet Group. Jay is always looking for the next party, interesting people to meet, and new places to dance.

Book preview

All Books by Jay Palmer

The VIKINGS! Trilogy :

DeathQuest

The Mourning Trail

Quest for Valhalla

The EGYPTIANS! Trilogy:

SoulQuest

Song of the Sphinx

Quest for Osiris

The Magic of Play

The Heart of Play

The Grotesquerie Games

The Grotesquerie Gambit

Souls of Steam

The Seneschal

Jeremy Wrecker – Pirate of Land and Sea

Viking Son

Viking Daughter

Dracula – Deathless Desire

Website: JayPalmerBooks.com

Cover Artist:  Jay Palmer

To my loving mother,

Margie Mose.

May this spark a few

precious memories.

Chapter 1

Behind a cluttered desk in a cramped but otherwise spotless office, a thin young man in a dapper suit sat staring at a blueprint as if his life depended on it.  His fixation displayed no awareness that I’d entered.  I stood politely for a full minute yet he seemed determined to ignore me.

Professor Evermost ...? I asked.

Speak quickly, Professor Evermost snapped; his eyes never rose off his blueprint. My time is valuable.

My name’s Corporal Thomas James ...

Professor Evermost seized a ruler, aligned it carefully, and connected two points upon his blueprint with a very short pencil.

Professor, I’ve waited six weeks for this appointment and would appreciate your full attention for at least six minutes.

Sir, if you were dying, what would you pay for six more minutes of life? Professor Evermost asked. When you ask for my time you request my most-precious commodity.  Therefore, before you attempt to beg money or sell me something, I ask you: what concern of yours is worth six minutes of my life?

I deepened my voice. My concern ... is about your death.

Eyes so dark blue they seemed almost purple rose from the blueprint to glare at me.  His deepening frown and narrowed brows exuded displeasure.

Sir, are you threatening me ...?

In response, I handed him eight photographs I’d taken in South Africa, right before the end of the war, and another ten from Southern Germany almost a year afterwards.  Each photo portrayed one badly-wounded soldier or sick person, and each had a smudged or blurry spot rising from their chest and running to the white edge of the photo.  Professor Evermost quickly flipped through them.

Identical distortions, Professor Evermost acknowledged. Water on the lens ... or a smudge?

No.

Bad photographic paper?

I’m a professional photographer.  These are eighteen of hundreds of photographs I took.  These few are the only ones that showed that mysterious defect.

I see nothing here to interest me ...

The only difference between these photos and all the others is that these men were photographed ... as they died.

Eyebrows rose and the dark blue eyes flashed at me.

If this is some improper jest ...! he warned.

The first of these photos I developed in a cave beside my army camp, I said. I didn’t know it at the time but the cave’s walls were rich with phosphorous, and had been used as a hideout by our retreating enemy; after a fierce firefight, the British forces smoked them out of the cavern with a deadly combination of chlorine bleach and ammonia ...

Chlorine gas.

Precisely.  I brought back samples of the chemicals on those cavern walls.  In Southern Germany I spent weeks experimenting with mixtures until I’d duplicated the effect of developing photographs in that cave.

Professor Evermost’s frown deepened again, his thin nose wrinkling as if assaulted by the vilest stench.

Sir, what you’re asking me to believe is utter nonsense, Professor Evermost said. I’ve dedicated my life to the investigation of science and the firm conviction that all reality is substantial and quantifiable.  This is impossible.

He looked like he wanted to hurl my photographs back at me yet his fingers clung to them.

Professor, those exact thoughts have disturbed my sleep for over a year, I replied. My military superiors scoffed at it.  Newspapers refused to print it.  A bishop threatened to excommunicate me.

With visible effort, Professor Evermost stood up to face me.  His gaze had a startlingly riveting fixation.  His face still looked youthful, in his late twenties, yet he had deep, somber eyes shadowed under prominent brows, although his black eyebrows seemed thin and unusually long.  Slowly, as if reluctantly, he thrust out his palm.

Forgive my impropriety, Corporal Thomas James, he said, and we shook hands. I am Professor Thaddeus Alexander Albert Evermost, and I’m honored to make your acquaintance.  Please describe to me the locations where these photographs were taken.

The photos of the soldiers were taken in South Africa, and the civilians were photographed in Southern Germany ...

Ah, yes: the cholera outbreak, Professor Evermost said.

Where better to photograph people dying? I asked.

Yes, but I meant: what are the coordinates of these photographs? Professor Evermost asked. North, south, east ...?  These poor soldiers, for example, all have the same background.

Yes, those photos were taken in the critical care ward, I said. It was originally an abandoned schoolhouse, I believe.  I’m not sure which compass-point the walls faced.

We may have to go there, Professor Evermost said.

Professor Evermost rolled up his blueprint, placed it aside, and then sorted my photographs upon his desk in four rows, setting the forest and trench shots in a separate stack.

See the matching backgrounds? Professor Evermost asked, pointing with one finger. Here’s one wall of the military hospital, and here’s the wall opposite it, or so I assume from these angles of sunlight.  These photos in the civilian ward are the same.  What does that tell you?

I stared at the photos I knew so well.  Suddenly something that had always been there became obvious.

The mists all go in one direction! I exclaimed.

Opposite directions, Professor Evermost corrected. Against these two walls, the mists go to the patient’s left, and on their opposite sides the mists go to the patient’s right.  In both rooms, these lines travel in the same direction.

What does it mean? I asked.

I’m sorry, Corporal Thomas James, but I’m too fixed in my philosophy to name what you appear to have photographed, Professor Evermost said.

Then I’ll say it, I said. This photographic solution is capable of capturing images of the human soul rising from its dying body.

Our eyes met ... expressions firmly resolved.

Corporal, the implications of this are staggering, Professor Evermost said. I don’t believe in souls, but as a man of science I can’t refuse an opportunity to investigate.

That’s where I’m stumped, Professor, I said. I can prove my process works, but I can’t prove these misty smudges are souls.

That is not my purpose, corporal, Professor Evermost said. As souls are supernatural, I assume these aren’t souls, which requires me to discover what they are.  If these are souls rising from their bodies then why wouldn’t they continue to rise, which would direct these smudges straight up?  All the smudges rise from their chests like smoke, then travel sideways.  As all appear to go in the same direction, the only logical conclusion is that, wherever they’re going, these smudges are pointing to the same destination.

But ... where would a soul go after its body has died? I asked.

That, corporal, is what we must investigate, Professor Evermost said.

FOR THREE DAYS PROFESSOR Evermost and I haunted the city hospital, him assisting with no less skill than any of its doctors.  Always nearby, I carried a compass and two of his cameras, each with its flash primed to shoot, since he didn’t trust my camera.  I found this insulting but said nothing; while I was poor and unknown, every newspaper delighted in printing his name.  If my discovery was ever going to see daylight then I needed someone like him.  If he accepted my discovery and announced it then everyone would listen to me.

Yet I waited nervously.  Since developing the first smudged photo in South Africa, while I was still healing from my combat wounds, I’d feared I was going mad.  No one would look at it.  No one would take my claim seriously.

Professor Evermost was my last hope of financial reward.

Unfortunately, new nightmares assailed my sleep.  In South Africa I’d been horrified by my discovery.  In Southern Germany I’d dreamed of selling my formula for unequaled riches.  I’d never considered attempting to follow the mists to see where they led ... and wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Could decent men survive learning such secrets? 

My attempts at conversation were politely spurned; in the few times he wasn’t occupied with patients, Professor Evermost pulled out his leather-bound journal and wrote in it.

On the third night an elderly woman who’d collapsed in the street was brought in barely able to breathe, and when we developed our photos of her demise, using my chemicals, her smudge was clearly visible.  With an exasperated sigh, Professor Evermost accepted that my solution worked exactly as I’d claimed.

Southeast, I’d say, Professor Evermost said. Wherever this unexplained effect leads, if we would follow it, then we must travel southeast.

How? I asked, trying to subdue my unrepentant smile.

West is our first destination, Professor Evermost said. We must visit my generous benefactress and see if this investigation interests her.

Her ...? I asked.

MRS. MARCIA JANE COURTENAY was a tall, wasp-shaped woman approaching advanced years.  Her slim, hourglass figure might’ve been the ribbing of her tight corset.  Her hair was white with age but full and attractively styled.  Her modest and immaculate day dress was olive green corded silk patterned in cut velvet and matching satin, with a fitted bodice, bustled skirt, and small train; her gown looked more expensive than my parents’ house.

She walked slowly, almost a glide, into her extravagant parlor with a poise that startled me in its mesmeric perfection.  Her every movement flowed like gentle water.  She blinked more than nodded at the professor.  Yet her light blue eyes swept across me with a direct steadiness, as if she were my old commanding officer, surveying me as an unthinking tool suited only for her purposes.

Her mansion was the most ostentatious palace I’d ever seen; on the way to her parlor we’d passed through magnificent galleries with immense stairways sided by polished banisters, antique furnishings, and portraits, all under high ceilings painted with pastel murals as imposing as the Royal Museum.  Her grandiose parlor was breathtaking.  I stared disbelieving, wondering if my discovery could ever afford such wondrous splendor.

The wealth of this woman could feed every homeless child in England.

Mrs. Courtenay, Professor Evermost effused as he bowed deeply.

Professor Evermost seemed a different man in her presence.  He’d always been tall, slight, and energetic, but stiffly controlled, as if his own will were chains he locked about himself.  He was at the peak of his prime with no trace of the heaviness or weariness that consumes older men.  His head was draped with oiled black hair and his complexion glowed of good skin, but he was of an age equal to any son of hers, if progeny she had.  He bowed before her formally yet with a looseness I’d never seen, as if relaxed only in her company.

Her gaze affixed upon him with a smile greater than intellectual interest.

His manners were perfectly proper and totally unknown to me; Professor Evermost displayed the etiquettes, airs, and dignity of a perfect English gentleman.  He waited patiently to insure she was done speaking before he replied, always with exemplary courtesy and deference to her station.  If he’d addressed her as Your Excellency I wouldn’t have been surprised; she bore herself as regally as a queen.

By contrast I was a child; at twenty-two I’d lived nowhere but in my parents’ ratty house, a South African battlefield, and a tiny, splintery apartment in Germany.  My pockets were empty and my limited education offered small hope of financial security.  My plain tweed coat and faded trousers looked out of place in her mansion.  I stood a few inches taller than Professor Evermost yet I was far more muscular, clearly a laborer, capped with blonde hair and a fair complexion like most Scandinavians.  I said nothing for fear of speaking wrong; my penniless, larcenous upbringing hadn’t prepared me for the environs of wealth and breeding.

Introductions were pleasantly brief; with manners as stiff and formal as a military court, slowly she offered her hand, tracing it through the air as if dancing, or under deep water, and I kissed it, at which her eyes widened.

That seemed to conclude the entirety of my participation.

She performed a meticulous study of my photographs in silence, and then contradicted the professor over his skepticism that the photographic distortions could be anything but human souls.

Do you think the trace sulfates reacted to the nitrates? Mrs. Courtenay asked.

I did, but the differing acidic levels of oxidation would imply the catalyst was sulfurous acid, not sulfuric acid, Professor Evermost said. Upon observation, I believe this is red, not white phosphorus.

Thomas’ chemist may have been mistaken, Mrs. Courtenay said. We should reexamine the components.

I ordered all the chemicals we’ll need. Professor Evermost said.

Introducing silver sulfates could help measure the exposure of the divine light, Mrs. Courtenay said.

Your analysis assumes the possibility of souls, Professor Evermost said, shaking his head. "Your pioneering work in Spiritual Mathematics is entirely theoretical."

"These photographs prove Spiritual Mathematics is more than theory," Mrs. Courtenay said.

I slunk down onto the thick pillows of a wingchair, embarrassed by my lack of education, completely left out of their conversation.

Dr. Glackenheimer will be returning to England in three months, on the twenty-second of December, Mrs. Courtenay finally announced. Our expedition begins the next day.

Professor Evermost bowed again and thanked her most profusely, using words like nitid and palladian, which I later looked up in a dictionary to understand his meaning.  Although never giving me a second look, Mrs. Courtenay thanked both of us for coming and slowly glided from her parlor, leaving her servants to fetch our hats and overcoats and show us out.

CORPORAL THOMAS JAMES, never do that again! Professor Evermost chastised me as soon as we were out on the street. Your behavior was abominable!

I barely said a word ...! I argued.

"Corporal, when a lady offers her hand you do not kiss it!"

You kissed her hand ...!

How dare you? Professor Evermost snapped with a pedantic mien. I most certainly did not!  Sir, a true lady is always assumed to be wearing spotless white gloves, even when her hand is bare.  A lady’s gloves are her honor; to besmirch them even in the slightest way is unthinkable.  To hold her hand toward your lips and kiss at it is the highest compliment a gentleman may make to a lady above his station ... unless she is his fiancée.  To actually touch her hand with your lips is an inexcusable offence!

"Oh, my ...!  I didn’t know ...!  Please, how can I apologize?"

Say nothing; the event never occurred, Professor Evermost said. You have three months to make a gentleman of yourself ... or your presence in her company will not endure an hour.  I shall expect you, refined and reserved, with your sparse luggage, in my office at 6:00 AM on December the twenty-third.

Without another word, Professor Evermost abandoned me on the street, striding away briskly.  Too ashamed to follow, I stood feeling like an untamed baboon; how could a former street urchin learn to be a gentleman ... in only three months?

Looking like an impeccable popinjay, at exactly 6:00 AM on December the 23rd, I reentered the tiny office of Professor Evermost and presented myself.  Two burly laborers stood just outside his door, each with a handcart, one of which held a large trunk such as one might take on an ocean liner, and both looked askance at my pretentious attire.

A second door opened onto a large but very cramped and humid laboratory from which loud bubblings, hisses, and crackles emerged.  The laboratory was filled with intricate, complex iron machines spewing steam, most with copper or brass moving parts, and Professor Evermost seemed to be turning them off.

Despite the cold of December I was wearing a new suit almost identical to the one Professor Evermost had worn in the hospital, and I carried a small but heavy suitcase packed as tightly as I could manage.  My father had thought my suit a wasteful extravagance when I explained why I needed the money, yet my mother was thrilled.  Likewise, only she was delighted by my purchase of The Proper Manners of Formal Society by Walter Oran Bowman, Jr.; I hated the book yet I’d studiously memorized every line.

The meticulousness of British ‘proper manners’ reminded me of my best friend, Basil Bevan Bonar Balfour.  Basil was unusually short with sandy hair like coarse gruel, a taste I could never stomach but which he thought made a delightful meal.  As a young boy, Basil had a round face ... which he never outgrew.  Basil was skinny as a walking stick, probably because he was an orphan and ate infrequently; usually whatever he could steal.  He wore fancy clothes which he stole off unwatched clotheslines in the Hardgrow district; mothers quickly learned to bring their wash in before dusk when Basil was around.

Basil had the basest morals and manners I’d ever known; more than once I spied him kneeling among a pack of dogs and drinking from