Black Chamber by S. M. Stirling

Author:S. M. Stirling [Stirling, S. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

Schloss Rauenstein

Kingdom of Saxony, German Reich

SEPTEMBER 9TH, 1916(B)

Ciara Whelan straightened up from where she’d been kneeling by the baseboard. “That’s the last of it,” she said. “No microphones in our bedroom.”

Luz frowned. “You’re sure?”

“This wall is solid stone,” Ciara said, and thumped it with the heel of her hand. “It’s load-bearing. So are the other three. There’s no microphone made will pick up significant sound through these oak floorboards. With a very large horn collector and one of the very latest Siemens thermionic-valve modulated signal amplifiers you might be able to pick up some by using the ceiling, if there weren’t any background noise and you could put the horn directly on the other side of the plaster. Except that directly above us is the water-closet and bathroom, and the piping is twenty-five years old and groans and rattles all through the night.”

“So, you’re sure?” Luz said; as if to emphasize the point, the plumbing did rattle and gave a wheezing choke like a grief-stricken whale with pneumonia.

“No, I’m morally certain, if you want to be persnickety,” Ciara said. “To be sure I’d need to go into all the rooms to either side and above and below. Well, not below, that was where we were this afternoon and there was nothing there.”

“You’re the expert,” Luz said. “Good, we’re reasonably safe talking here.”

I’m not an expert on electronics, but I know enough to recognize someone who really is. ¡Ay! Las paredes oyen, but not all of them.

Ciara had been standing rather belligerently with her arms crossed over the laced front of her nightgown. Now she looked doubtful.

“You’re not going to argue?” she said, as if unaccustomed to being taken at her word.

“No, that would be silly,” Luz replied. “I asked you because you have knowledge I don’t, and I’d be una boba if I didn’t listen to you when you use it, wouldn’t I?”

The room had a pleasant glow from the low coal fire. Ciara had laid it, and skillfully; half a newspaper ripped up, three sticks of kindling making a triangle to contain it, another three on top at an angle, then the larger pieces of coal around the edge of the bottom triangle. With that she’d lit it, adding the smallest pieces of coal with the tongs gradually as the kindling caught, then larger ones placed to give plenty of paths for air and fire. They’d pushed things around to open out a space around it, and the orderly who’d brought water and changed the pot for a fresh one had been perfectly willing to scrounge some fuel for a few pfennigs tip; Luz would have been surprised if some wasn’t available even in wartime, with a military-priority train station a quarter mile away. The night had grown a bit chilly, the weather on the verge of changing.

Her Vuitton trunks acted as armoires if you opened them wide, and they had a number of individually designed pockets. Luz took out a bottle that Horst had slipped to her after

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