The Sunken by S. C. Green

Learned men clung to the same values that has seen civilisation through thousands of years of history — ignorance, and fear, and intolerance.
    The Society continued its weekly meetings, but they had become nothing more than a church service — the forced attendance of hundreds of clever men, going through the motions of religiosity before they could get their hands on the brandy. Placing several gods in a room in the hope that they would jointly think up new and innovative ideas seemed sound in theory, but in practice it led only to competition, suspicion, and, ultimately, outright hostility. Faraday wouldn’t talk to Herschel, and Turner secretly had popular artists killed in their sleep. Charles Babbage raised a quantitative error in one of Sir Humphry Davy’s calculations and, combined with his scathing rebuke of the Society’s excesses, managed to displease every member of the Council at once. The man who had once been a shoo-in for Presbyter of the Metic Sect was tonight going to be sentenced for treason.
    I pushed the door ajar, tapped my stick on the oak-panelled floor, and listened. Voices rose into the vaulted ceiling, and I caught snippets of hundreds of conversations — half understood mathematical principles, fragments of engineering genius, the first inklings of original thought.
    “Marvellous,” Nicholas breathed, pushing past me to step into the room.
    “Terrifying,” I corrected him, thinking of the power wielded by the men present.
    To my right I heard the unmistakably fake cough of William Buckland: Oxford biology professor, fossil collector, and longtime friend. Renowned for his work with swamp-dragons, Buckland first discovered the connections between modern creatures and the skeletons of giant ancient reptiles he called “dinosaurs”. I moved along the wall toward him, hoping my late entry hadn’t caught the attention of any of the Council members.
    “You’re conveniently late,” Buckland whispered in my ear, placing a glass of brandy in my hand.
    “Pesky omnibuses. They’re so damn unreliable.” I sipped my drink. “Has my absence been noted?”
    “I informed Prime Minister Banks you were outside getting some air, but I think he’s becoming suspicious,” Buckland observed. “Perhaps we both ought to show up on time next week.”
    “Or come up with a different excuse.”
    Buckland and I had been amusing ourselves by turning up later and later to the regular Royal Society meetings. We’d even established a rotating roster. Every second meeting one of us would be late, and the other would cover for him. We devised a giddy, schoolboyish joy from cheating the Messiahs of our attention.
    “I see you’ve brought another unfortunate along to witness this farce.”
    “Buckland, this is Nicholas Rose. He and I were in the Navy together. Nicholas is an industrial engineer just arrived in London from his studies in France.”
    I felt Nicholas’ body tense up with my casual mention of his illegal crossing, but Buckland just laughed. “France, eh? How’d you get back across the border?”
    “I had help,” Nicholas replied evasively. The men shook hands, and I noted that Nicholas quickly shifted the subject to Buckland’s work. Buckland, who loved to talk about himself, acquiesced with pleasure, but I wondered — not for the first time — how Nicholas had indeed managed to return to England at all. Our borders have been tightly patrolled ever since Christian Europe united in opposition to our new pantheon of industrial gods, and one cannot simply row across the Channel. If Nicholas had come to England from France, he had come illegally — probably by way of an illicit air crossing. I listened to my friend talk, wondering what had happened to him since I’d left him at Portsmouth.
    Nicholas had come to the Society meeting as my guest. He’d been nervous about coming under the public eye, if it was indeed true the prize was being awarded to Isambard (giving further credence to my