Free Shadow Conspiracy by Phyllis Irene and Laura Anne Gilman Radford Page B

said, boldly stepping into one of the few areas of conversation where her mother and the Furies could not follow. “Mr. Babbage’s analytic engine will respond to pre-designed commands given in the correct order, no matter what shape houses them.”
    “Just so.” Babbage puffed out his chest ever so slightly. Indeed, it had been easier to create a working codex for the ship than for a human shaped automaton, but since they first entered into partnership, Charles had insisted they begin with what he called ‘the golems.’ “They are so like the toys people are used to, no one will object to them,” he had said. “Once they have been accepted, we can move on to the truly useful engines.”
    “And what of the question of the soul, Lady Byron?” asked a man she didn’t recognise. He wore a bowler hat and a badly-tailored brown suit.
    “I beg your pardon?” She looked down her nose at him, an expression she had learned from her mother.
    But the man did not flinch, nor did he offer to introduce himself. “The soul. You’ve heard the reports, I’m sure—automata falling in love with their owners, or the mechanical valet running off into the woods in Scotland. People are saying your thinking machines are growing souls of their own. What sort of soul could a steamship house?”
    “People say all manner of ridiculous things,” snapped Ada. “But no transference of soul from natural to mechanical form has ever been reliably recorded.”
    “Then you don’t believe it?”
    “I believe people mistake form for function.” Her voice was growing warmer than she intended. “They see a face and believe they see a human being, and ignorantly attribute a broken codex to voluntary control.”
    “Well, I know I very much look forward to the demonstration,” interrupted the Home Secretary, drawing Ada’s attention from the bowler-hatted stranger.
    “As do I,” said Lady Melbourne. Her voice was low and husky, with a velvet quality to it. “It is so wonderful to see what form your father’s gifts have taken in you, Lady Lovelace.”
    “Are we ready to begin?” inquired Lord Melbourne, a little too hastily.
    Mr. Babbage took Ada’s arm and positively hustled her down the quay with its red carpet and row of solemn, blue-coated sailors, away from Mother and her rival, toward the waiting ship.
    Tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of steel, brass and teakwood had gone into the New Britannia’s construction. Her high-efficiency boilers could stand pressures higher than any ship on the Thames. Her steel prow was sharp, and her stern broad enough to hold the three enormous paddles, freshly improved on the basic design of America’s Mr. Fulton. The deck was wide and flat as a barge, but where an ordinary barge would have had a pilot house, there waited an enormous metal and glass enclosure for the analytic engine and its command console. There was a wheel and speaking tubes, in case of emergency, and hand-brakes for the paddles. Captain Wedderburn had insisted on them.
    “It is not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Babbage,” he’d said brusquely. “But you’ll not find a sailor willing to take command of a ship he can’t turn should he have a need.”
    Which was the truth. Babbage had looked for such a man and come up empty-handed.
    On a working ship, the analytic engine would be housed more practically below decks. But New Britannia was the showpiece, and Mr. Babbage insisted it be grand and beautiful. So the columns and gears and bearings that were the brain of the ship gleamed beneath crystal windows for the world to see.
    “All correct, George?” Mr. Babbage asked the engine foreman as they and the keyman entered the pilot house.
    “As you left it last night, sir.” George nodded to the line of men and boys with their bare feet and stained clothing. “I’ve had them up with the sun, running the checks. She’s sound and she’s ready.”
    The New Britannia was not the largest of what people were coming to