The Difference Engine by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling Page A

Government; outraged society had bounded him from office, and Sybil wondered why Houston had dared to mention such an ugly scandal. It was as if he expected his London audience to morally approve of a divorced man. Still, she noticed, the ladies seemed intrigued, and not entirely without sympathy perhaps. Even the fat mama fluttered at her double-chins with a fan.
    General Houston was a foreigner, after all, half a savage by his own account; but when he spoke of his wife it was tenderly, as of a true love, a love slain by some cruel mysterious truth. His bellowing voice broke with unashamed emotion; he mopped at his forehead a bit, with a fancy handkerchief from his leopard-skin vest.
    In truth, he wasn’t a bad-looking cove, over sixty but that sort could be kinder to a girl. His confession seemed bold and manly, for he himself had brought the matter up: the divorce scandal and the secret letter from Mrs. Houston. He wouldn’t stop talking about it, but neither would he tell them the secret; he’d pricked the curiosity of his audience — and Sybil herself was simply dying to know.
    She chided herself, for being so cakey, for it was likely something stupid and simple, not half so deep and mysterious as he feigned. Likely his gentry-girl wasn’t half so angelic as she’d looked. Likely she’d had her maiden virtue stolen from her by some good-looking Tennessee beau-trap, long before Raven Houston came along. Men had hard rules for their brides, if never for themselves.
    Likely Houston had brought it all on himself. Perhaps he had beastly vile ideas about married life, come from living with savages. Or perhaps he’d milled his wife about with his fists — for Sybil fancied he’d be a right bully-rock, in his cups.
    The kino came alive with harpies, meant to symbolize Houston’s slanderers, those who’d smeared his precious honor with the ink of a gutter press. Nasty crooky-back things, crowding the screen in devilish black and red. As the screen whirred steadily, they twitched their cloven hooves. Never had she seen the like, some Manchester punch-card artist having gotten the gin-horrors sure . . . Now Houston was ranting about challenges and honor, by which he meant dueling, Americans being most famous duelists, who loved guns and shot each other at the drop of a hat . . . He’d have killed some of those newspaper rascals, Houston insisted loudly, if he hadn’t been Governor, and on his dignity. So instead he’d thrown in his cards, and gone back to live with his precious Cherokees . . . He had a real head of steam up, now; he’d stoked himself so, it was almost frightening to watch. The audience was entertained, their reserve broken by his bulging eyes and veiny Texian neck, but none too far from disgust.
    Maybe it had been something really dreadful that he’d done, Sybil thought, rubbing her hands together inside her rabbit-skin muff. Maybe it was lady’s-fever, that he’d given his own wife a case of the glue. Some types of glue were horrible, and could make you mad, or blind, or crippled. Maybe that was the secret. Mick might know. Very likely Mick knew all about it.
    Houston explained that he had left the United States in disgust, and gone to Texas, and at the word a map appeared, a sprawl of land in the middle of the continent. Houston claimed he’d gone there seeking land for his poor suffering Cherokee Indians, but it was all a bit confusing.
    Sybil asked the clerky fellow next to her for the time. Only an hour had passed. The speech was a third gone. Her moment was coming.
    “You must envision a nation many times the size of your home islands,” said Houston, “with no roads greater than the grassy tracks of Indians. Without, at that time, a single mile of British railroad, and lacking the telegraph, or, indeed, Engine resources of any kind. As commander-in-chief of the Texian national forces, my orders had no courier more swift or more reliable than the mounted scout, his way menaced by the