A Comprehensive Guide to the Acquisition of Research Grants

                Although suit jackets were no longer required at Northumberland Polytechnic University, Professor Mordecai Absolon Davenport insisted upon wearing tails every day. He was a gentleman, and as such would dress the part even when his peers thought it acceptable to come to work looking like common laborers. He carried a silver-tipped cane, and had long ago switched from white gloves to black so that the spot left on his palm by the silver polish would not show. His spectacles, which rested halfway down his nose, were silver to match, and so was his watch. His watch chain was a double Albert, thick and strong, and it dangled with a pleasant weight just above each thigh. In his buttonhole, Professor Davenport wore a pink carnation – always pink; he thought red was too brash. He also wore a black beaver skin hat while he walked between his home on Lanchester Street and his classroom in Brimagam Hall; naturally he removed it once he stepped inside, and throughout the day it perched atop the coat rack he had purchased for the room himself. When the weather was foul, which was much of the time, the hat was joined in its corner by one of Professor Davenport's many coats. Today, it was his thick wool riding coat. The professor didn't do much riding, but the coat was very warm and he liked the look of it. He was not a large man, tall but not particularly strapping, but the coat added a good several inches to the width of his shoulders.
        After hanging up his coat and hat, the professor pulled a handkerchief from his left inside jacket pocket (he had another handkerchief, meant for more dainty work, in his right inside jacket pocket) and used it to wipe clean the tops of his shoes, which were splashed and spotted from walking through the filthy, slushy streets. He could do nothing for his pant legs, which were damp up to about three inches from the bottom; they would just have to dry on their own. After carefully folding the handkerchief and replacing it in his pocket, the professor moved over to his desk, where he sat in his fine leather upholstered chair (which he had also purchased himself), set his attaché case atop the desk, and opened one of the compartments to take out the papers he'd graded the night before.
        By day, Mordecai Absolon Davenport was the only professor of advanced theoretical physics in the entire region. He'd once had grand aspirations of molding his eager young students into accomplished men of science, and he'd expected that the scarcity of teachers of theoretical physics would attract the most gifted, the most promising young minds. Perhaps the university was too far north. Perhaps the chronic cold seeped into the minds of even the most ardent scholars, until every ounce of brilliance was frozen into something as dull and sluggish as they grey water that trickled through the ditches along the street. Then again, the furnace in Brimagam Hall was in more than perfect working order. The professor leafed through the stack of papers once again and sighed. Not one student had written anything worthwhile. Nearly half of them had chosen to write about simple airships. Why, by their age, he could turn gold into lead, dismantle an automaton and rebuild it completely, and explain the principles of time travel, although he was never able to construct a successful machine. Once, he had managed to send a rat back an entire minute, but the creature had promptly died once the minute was up.
        Most evenings, the professor retired to the nearby restaurant to eat, then returned to spend long hours on his research. Tonight, however, he had a dinner engagement with a colleague, Miss Daphne Eudora Stanbury. She was a young woman, barely out of university herself, and Professor Davenport had taken to calling her "Professoressa" in the Italian fashion, not because she was Italian (she was clearly an Englishwoman) but because she had studied at Padua and because he felt that the Latinate gender differentiation helped to keep her in her place. Miss Stanbury was something of an oddity, the only female professor at Northumberland Polytechnic University. In spite of that, her lectures were always full, and Professor Davenport found portions of her work to be somewhat compelling. He wished that she would say she found his work to be brilliant, but none of his discoveries or inventions seemed to impress the woman. She had scoffed at his automatic analog comptometer. Instead of appreciating how quickly one could input numbers and receive the solution to any problem, she had asked if the machine did anything else. Besides that, she, along with the rest of the faculty of Brimagam Hall, had never forgiven him for the improvements he'd made to the furnace. She brought that bit of history up once again when she met him outside his classroom. "Mordecai," she greeted. "I see you're overdressed, as usual."
        "My dear Professoressa," he said, with some condescension, "I have no intention of putting aside my dignity because of a little heat." He looked her over, but was unable to summon a proper amount of disapproval. She was wearing a mauve dress that not only left her arms bare but also had a rather daring neckline. His eyes lingered there a moment before he continued. "Besides, there have been plenty of positive effects. Did you know Professor Clyburne's parsnip production has increased nearly sixty percent?"
        "But how long is this going to last?" she asked. "If I have to go through another summer..."
        "Well," Mordecai said, "No one has been able to calculate the half-life of the plasma... I believe there's a Russian who's been observing a sample for... twelve years now?" He stroked his chin and wished he was able to grow a proper goatee. The woman's expression kept him from dwelling on that. She didn't look pleased at all, so he quickly changed the subject. "But enough of that. I have something much more exciting to show you after dinner. Shall we?" He put out his arm, and, although she sighed and rolled her eyes, she accepted it.
        During the meal, they didn't speak much. Mordecai was happiest in his laboratory, where he was not only ruler but creator. He did not wield quite the same power in the outside world – yet – so he mostly stared at his soup and remained quiet while Miss Stanbury told him about her day and described a problem in which her students always arrived for her lectures and appeared to be attentive, but then never seemed to remember what she taught. "You're distracting, Professoressa," Mordecai commented, without thinking. He knew why the young men of Northumberland Polytechnic clamored to attend her lectures; it had more to do with her black hair than her blackboard. She immediately went quiet and glared at him. Mordecai looked up from his soup, realizing his error too late.
        "Because I'm a woman?" Miss Stanbury asked accusingly.
        "No," Mordecai said, quickly, "That's not what I... Oh, bollox." He was saved by the appearance of the waiter, whom he waved over. After paying for their meal, Mordecai looked back to Miss Stanbury, who still did not look amused. "It's getting late," he said. "I'm sure you're wanting to get home... I won't keep you. But just a quick look at my invention?"
        One corner of the woman's mouth pulled back, and her eyes remained dangerously narrow. "You're impossible, Mordecai."
        "Yes, I know," he said, and he recalled a description she'd given him almost the moment they met. "A narcissistic fop. But at least I'm a brilliant one, yes?" He was relieved when she cracked a smile, and she agreed to see whatever it was that had him so excited.
        Her humor changed once again, a complete contrast, once she saw it. "What in God's name is that?" she asked.
        Mordecai, who was holding up the metal contraption before her and awaiting her approval, frowned, but did not lose hope. Surely she would realize his genius once he explained it. "I call it a multi-dexterous articulated corset," he said. He stepped over to one of his workbenches, scooted a few flasks and loose gears aside, and spread the device over it. The concept was simple, really. Essentially, it was a leather corset with steel boning for support. Four thin metal arms protruded from the back, looking something like skeletal dragonfly wings. Several brass cylinders spaced along the front and connected with copper tubing were designed to contain the steam that powered the device and to cycle the water through so that nothing was lost and the machine could run indefinitely. A larger cylinder held the plasma heat source. "Certainly you've experienced this problem," Mordecai went on. "One never has enough hands for all the things one must do. Humans are fundamentally flawed, you know. But this could change the world as we know it! Think of all the experiments you could perform without an assistant."
        Mordecai had once invited one of his students into the laboratory to provide a second set of hands; the young man had made off with three of the gold bars Mordecai planned to turn into lead. He was convinced that the theft had cost him a research grant. He had tried to explain the process to the chancellor, and he'd even done his best to put it in small words a non-scientist could understand. "Lead is denser than gold, and it's easy enough to add stuff to gold to make it lead. It is more difficult to remove stuff, but I'm sure that problem can be solved. As of now, I'm very close to discovering just what the difference of stuff in lead and gold is, so if I could only perform a few more experiments..." The chancellor would have none of it, though; he told Mordecai that his attempts at alchemy were a foolish waste of university funds and ordered him to cease immediately. Not only that, but Mordecai was to "stop begging for grant money on a weekly basis" if he valued his position at the university.
        Mordecai realized that he was staring, and that Miss Stanbury had raised an eyebrow at him. He cleared his throat. "Will you try it on?" he asked.
        "What?" Miss Stanbury asked.
        "I haven't gotten to test it," Mordecai explained.
        "Why don't you try it on yourself?"
        Mordecai was thoroughly insulted. "There are no patterns for male corsets, Professoressa," he replied. "Perhaps I can adapt the design for a waistcoat or some such, but not until I have sufficient funds, and I can't get sufficient funds without the chancellor's approval."
        "Mordecai..." she said slowly, "this is ridiculous."
        "It is absolutely not ridiculous," he retorted. "Those 'hands' are nimble enough to handle even the smallest objects; they can pick up a chess piece without upsetting the rest of the board. They're gentle enough for glassware, too. Actually, if you'd care to try that later, I have some very fine wine, laid down by my great grandfather, I believe..."
        "Are you trying to entice me into your home, Professor Davenport?" Miss Stanbury asked.
        "Only if you'll try on the corset," he replied. "And after we demonstrate it to the chancellor, we can toast my success."
        "You're not going to let me alone until I do it, are you?" she asked.
        "Persistence runs in my family," Mordecai replied. "My father was at the Battle of Warwickshire, you know."
        "Oh, for heaven's sake," she said. "How is one supposed to get it on, anyway?"
Mordecai smiled gleefully, picked up his invention, and led the woman to a corner he had converted into a small changing area. There were hooks for each of the four metal arms. "We just hang this here," he explained, and he showed her a lever. "You can raise or lower it as you need with this. Once it's buckled on, the sensors will react to your muscle movements, and you'll be able to control the arms."
        "Fine," Miss Stanbury said. "Get out, then."
She emerged several minutes later wearing the contraption over her dress, and she did indeed seem to be able to control the mechanical arms. "This feels... rather queer," she said.
        "Aha!" Mordecai gave a triumphant laugh. "You – it looks amazing. Can you try picking something up?" She nodded, stepped over to the workbench, and, with the top right mechanical arm, managed to pick up one of the flasks.                   
        "Wonderful!" Mordecai exclaimed. With another arm, she pulled over a beaker half-full of some red liquid. She lifted the flask as if to pour its contents into the beaker. "Not that!" Mordecai protested.
        Miss Stanbury laughed at him. "Not in the mood for a little explosion?" she asked. Mordecai thought her eyes twinkled rather merrily.
        "Not at the moment, no," he said. "Although I am in the mood to celebrate... The wine...?" He looked at her hopefully.
        "Mordecai..." Miss Stanbury put down the chemicals and turned to face him.       "You realize, I respect you as a colleague, but..."
        "So come and have some wine, as a colleague." He didn't mean to sound so desperate, but there was something about that confounded woman.
        "Mordecai, your invention is very nice, but I should probably be getting home. Come and help me have it off?"
        Normally, the prospect of helping undress her (even partially) might have excited him, but now Mordecai just frowned at her, stubbornly. "One glass," he insisted. "It's very good wine."
        Miss Stanbury crossed her arms; all four of the mechanical ones followed suit. "I'm sure it is, Professor Davenport, but I am not one to be impressed by mere..." She stopped abruptly, and her expression changed. Her eyebrows knit with concern, and she spent a moment looking down at the mechanical arms, apparently concentrating, before unfolding her own arms and trying to pull the metal ones apart. "Mordecai, I... I can't breathe."
        "Well uncross the arms, woman," he replied..
        "I've tried, you idiot; they won't budge. Something's wrong with them!"
        "Don't be daft; I designed them myself." He stepped forward and took a turn at trying to pry the arms apart. When that failed, he stepped back and scratched his head. "I'll have to make the arms removable in the next version," he mused.
        "Mordecai!" Miss Stanbury's face was turning red, and she sounded panicked. "Get this thing off!"
        Finally, Modecai realized the severity of the situation; she wasn't exaggerating, as women were prone to do. "Stay here," he commanded. "I need tools." He ran toward one of his tool chests, but he had barely begun to rummage through it when there was a crash behind him. Miss Stanbury swooned and collapsed on the floor. "Oh bugger." Mordecai ran back to her and patted her face, trying to wake her up, but she wasn't breathing at all. He ran to the tool chest again, then returned to the prone woman with an assortment of screwdrivers, a couple small saws, and a very large wrench. He tore off his suit jacket and went to work, first prying, then cutting, then hacking at the mechanical arms, cursing like a madman and sweating like a peasant in the field. Many minutes later – it felt like days – the multi-dexterous articulated corset was a mangled, unrecognizable heap of scrap on the floor, but it was too late. Miss Stanbury was gone. No one else was present to see him weep, but Mordecai wouldn't have cared.
        Professor Mordecai Absolon Davenport was not in the habit of carrying home apparently unconscious women thrown over his shoulder (and he groaned and struggled with the effort of it) but although some of his neighbors gave him odd looks, it was the English way to mind one's own business. The professor did not appear for any of his lectures that week, nor did he so much as leave his home. He arranged for a neighbor woman to bring him food, and when people asked about the professor, she reported that he looked very ill, with sunken eyes and a worrisome pallor. Many who knew the professor assumed that he had finally gone quite insane. Any casual observer could tell that the professor was not confined to his bed; throughout the days and even nights strange sounds came from his home, the sounds of hammering, screeching metal, whistling steam, and, most distressingly, occasional sobbing.
        It came as a total surprise to everyone when, upon finally emerging from his house, the professor declared his intention to marry Miss Daphne Eudora Stanbury. The announcement caused much raising of eyebrows and whispered speculation. The professor's attraction to the woman had been fairly obvious, at least to his colleagues, but they had assumed that the lady professor did not share his interest. Still, she had not arrived to teach all that week, either, and she appeared pleased enough when she was seen strolling with Professor Davenport, hand in hand.
        They were wed at once, and Mordecai carried his bride over the threshold into his home. Later, he would need a hot bath with salts and perhaps some port to soothe his aching back, but for the time being, he was very content. He set his wife down on the daybed, sat down behind her, and began slowly undoing the laces of her dress. He kissed her neck, then opened the panel between her shoulder blades. After oiling her gears, he inserted a silver key and gave it a few cranks. He closed her up, and they retired to the bedroom. After they made love, Mordecai smiled at his wife and said, "I believe I've figured out how to convince the chancellor to grant my funding."