Stewart’s slender form and pale, fine-featured face were before me, a delightfully material manifestation of Providence and her bounteous protections. In his hands was a device of remarkable complexity and evident martial purpose; an intricately wrought weapon of a type I had never before seen. It was one of the tart fruits of Stewart’s labours with the Royal Society, no doubt, with which he had cast my assailant from this mortal coil. Of said erstwhile assailant there was scant physical trace: a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke and vapours; a portion of the tip of his raised machete, now glowing red and embedded in the soil, and; a scent like unto burnt copper wiring, which filled my nostrils with a singular medicinal sharpness.
At Stewart’s side strode his ever-trusty series 8, the indefatigable Thomas, who carried a weapon of similar design and evidently equal capacity. Shouldering his weapon, Stewart rushed to my aid, and as he did so, Thomas discharged his own device once and then again for our protection, each time casting out a blinding golden beam that neatly expunged a hapless fascist from this world.
Now Ernest, too, was with us, having been separated from me in the furor at that importunate moment; with our two servants now acting as impenetrable wards against all harms that our foes might intend us, I had a moment to consider our position.
The tide of battle had now turned completely in our favour, as all around us surged more anarchists; the Caddiganites at the gate had been thoroughly routed, and our whole combined efforts were now turned to pushing back those that had breached the southern wall. I saw among them Diego, who was fearlessly leading the charge, his fierce cries rallying all of his comrades to victory.
“Rebecca,” said Stew again, his face now close to mine as he knelt before me. “Are you…are you…harmed?”
He set his weapon down, and with eyes bright and brimming gazed with a wordless longing into my own. His cheeks were blushed with a profound fervour, and as he took my hand in his own, I could not help but notice that his long and graceful fingers trembled ever so slightly when he then reached out and tenderly touched my cheek.
Stewart, as I have shared, is a man of great thoughtfulness and cerebral preference, a soul blessed with giftedness in matters of reason and precision, whose cool temperament was most ideally suited to laboratories and the arcana of subatomic coding.
The battlefield, so filled with spatter and entropy? It was not the field to which he was called, any more than he was blessed with the capacity for small talk at an informal soiree. Like so many souls who live most fully in the world of concepts, his sensibilities are by necessity quite tender, and he has spoken to me often of how thoroughly he dislikes the hubbub of the world. It troubles him, wears at him, disquiets his soul with its endless ambiguities and uncertainties. Science is his sanctuary, his place away from the din and dissonance of our frenetic rushings-about.
And yet there he was, in the very heat of a battle. For me.
“O, my dearest, I am.” I said, gazing up at him with the utmost affection. “Bruised, perhaps, but otherwise…”
But before I could finish my thought, he took my face in his trembling hands and kissed me.
I cannot, faithful reader, express the depth of my feeling in that moment.
It was, in some ways, of a like to the great stirring that rose in my person when on the verge of yielding to an indiscretion with Diego. I felt the most vital surge of wild and divergent sentiment, such that I felt I might cry out with joy and sob all at once.
But it was also so very much more. There was relief at having been snatched from the bony clutches of the Angel of Death, intermingled with the shimmering echo of mortal fear, tossed and leavened with my own losses. There was still the simmering fury of the recent battle, and my own hand within it.
But mostly, there was Stewart.
There was upon Stewart’s face a sublime relief, as complete as if the hell-cast rich man of that well-known parable had received a cup of cool spring water from the hand of Lazarus the beggar, as if Tantalus, in a moment when the gods became distracted from their sadistic torments, had felt the bright sweet burst of a grape upon his palate. His elation at finding me alive and well radiated from his face as a velveted light; I can imagine no truer proclamation of the reality of his love for me, a love that cast the whole brutish world in the joyful calm of its glow.
I should, had my will been that which governs Providence, have staunched the rushing flow of Chronos, and lingered in that blissful diuturnity for several lifetimes.
But we were, as you no doubt recall, still in the midst of a heated martial action, and the exigencies of our strivings and my contributions thereunto remained my immediate duty. Taking my Beloved’s hand, I rose again to my feet, feeling the surprising strength of Stewart’s lean arm as he drew me standing to his side.
Again his hand pressed soft to my cheek, again his large and limpid eyes brimmed with scarcely trammelled tears at having found me still gracing this mortal coil.
A bullet whined past, mere inches from my head, but my attention was only upon him. Our faces inclined towards one another, the din of battle hushed in our ears. We did not kiss, but our eyes closed, his face resting with the greatest gentleness against my cheek. For a long moment of indescribable and delicate intimacy we remained thus, though war and horror roared around us.
“Oh, my dearest Rebecca,” he sighed, finally withdrawing, his voice as soft as a wind through willows. “I suppose we must once again cast ourselves into the breach.”
To egress from such an intimacy was, I shall admit, almost physically painful, and I felt rising within me a great and implacable fury at those whose orgulous violence intruded upon our shared happiness. How dare they threaten our love? I felt my heart, so recently melted in the refining fires of Stewart’s presence, grow as hard and bright as steel.
“We must, my dearest Stewart. Again, into the breach. Might you have something with which I could contribute to the swift conclusion of this sordid assault upon our persons? I seem to find myself without a weapon.”
“Of course, my love.” He turned to his servant. “Thomas?”
“Yes, Milord?”
“Would you be so kind as to give your accelerator to Lady Wexton Hughes?”
“Of course, Milord.”
With a perfect bow, Thomas offered up the intricately wrought device into my waiting hands. It was of nontrivial heft, but no more so than the crude and ancient Kalashnikov which had been my most recent implement. It thrummed potently in my grasp. Stewart then gave me a very concise primer on the particulars of its operation. After ensuring that the primary electronic (here) and secondary physical (here and here) safeties were disabled, that the pile output was stable at between eleven and fifteen megawatts, and the microsynchrocyclotron’s K-value meter was reading above four thousand, it was ready to fire. For that, there was a perfectly weighted trigger and, should one require it, a targeting reticle that could provide up to 15 magnifications.
For all of its complexity, the accelerator was, in operation, sublimely simple. One simply needed to point and shoot.
Stewart slid his own weapon back into his delicate hands. “Are you ready to put an end to this, my love?”
“I am, my dearest.”
And so, with all diligence, we did.
Chapter Thirty Two: (forthcoming)
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