On a dark stretch of street, the lamplights stared out empty of flame, no merry dance of light behind their glass. So many times had the lamplighter’s efforts been snuffed out on this street, he finally gave up and avoided the pointless endeavor.

Down the darkened street, two Infiltrators walked in perfect disguise. Twig and Chance not only looked the part, they smelled it as well.

“Phew, I’m ripe,” Chance murmured in a very low voice only Twig could hear. “Quite malodorous, I am.”

“You’ll fit right in, yeah? Now stuff it, we’re near to the place.”

The pair walked another hundred feet to the door of a ramshackle shop, the windows boarded over in planks rather than plywood.

Twig stopped and rapped slowly three times, and quickly three more. Then he stood aside to wait, winking at Chance in the dim light.

The door opened a crack, and thin light from a candle inside stretched out to the street, barely illuminating the men.

“Checkers, it’s me, Lars. This is me mate I was telling you about.”

The man behind the door was short, pudgy, and completely bald. He glanced at Twig and acknowledged him by twitching his two eyebrows up. They looked like thick fuzzy caterpillars on top of his eyes.

He turned his attention to Chance, and took him in all at once, including the shabby clothes, the odiferous scent wafting from him, and the three-day beard.

Checkers nodded once, his caterpillar eyebrows twitching, and he opened the door wide, letting more candlelight spill out on the street.

“Come in, then,” he said, his voice a surprisingly high pitch for such a squat fellow.

Both men followed him inside. A dusty table dominated the room, with old wooden chairs before it. Behind the table, another wooden chair faced out, and a bookcase held ledgers and leather-bound novels, many over a century old.

Checkers evidently had been reading by candlelight, as evidenced by an ancient book lying open on the table. He ignored it and made his way to the ledgers, waddling as he walked to the shelf. He pulled out the most recent one and placing it on the desk beside the open book. Then he sat down, facing the other men from behind the table.

“I gots to warn youse two before we get started, things have changed with the Luddites. We’re more prone to do somethin’ about the technology, if you knows what I means.”

Twig said, “We’ve talked about this, Checkers. You know we have. I’m fine by that. I say it’s high time we do more.”

“Well now, that’s just it. Some of the stuff you’ve been on with us in the past, Carson, it’s changed. We’ve sabotaged some factories, even burned down a place or two. Shot up some industrialists, things like that. But that was like tossin’ pebbles in a pond. Did we ever make any lastin’ change, Lars?”

“For me, it’s the principle of the thing more than ought else,” Twig said. “Maybe it didn’t make a dung’s hill worth of difference. But we showed them industrialists a thing or two. We put some potholes in their road to progress.”

“That’s just it, Lars. Potholes in a road can be filled in. But the Luddites are startin’ to make real changes. Our new leader will see to that.”

“I don’t know much about her,” Twig said in a quieter tone.

“We don’t see you around much. You’ll meet her, though, sure enough. Beaterus is changin’ things for the better, you ask me. We’ll soon be making real differences.”

Checkers turned his face toward Chance and his bushy eyebrows rose higher.

“So, here’s the deal. You want to be one of us, you gots to take the oath. Foreswear technology, and pledge against its use, fight those who would foist it on us, thwart those who would be changin’ our way our life. Be willin’ to put your life on the line for it. You good with all that?”

Twig nodded and said, “I am. I’m ready to toss an innovator over the proverbial rail. Let’s get on with it.”

“Oh, I like his spunk, Lars. Beaterus will like that, too. We need more men like you.”

“Well I hope she don’t sell our souls in the process of changing the organization too much,” Twig said, quietly.

Checkers’s brows furrowed, forming a solid line on top of his face.

“Don’t second guess Beaterus, Lars. You don’t want Biggin to hear about it. Beaterus has her reasons, that’s all you need to know.”

“That’s fine and dandy, mate. But these new weapons, I’m just sayin’. Before long she’ll have us using gas instead of candles, and then what? Driving a steam truck? It’s all just sounding a mite hypocritical to me, that’s all. It’s bad enough we used gunpowder.”

Checkers’ brows remained creased.

“Marco Polo brought back gunpowder from China. It’s not exactly new, even when he brought it back.”

“I know, but . . . machine guns? Even semi-auto? Really, Checkers?”

The squat man grew visibly upset. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Just . . . keep that sentiment quiet. Not a word of it goes outside this room, see? Enough of that.”

With a smooth cutting gesture of his hand, he ended the conversation.

Turning to Chance again, he dipped his quill into a jar of ink, hand hovering over the ledger.

“What’s your name, friend? I’ll have you repeat the oath and you’ll become one of us.”

“Bunter Robinson.”

“Right. Now, Bunter, repeat after me . . .”

Twig smiled. So far as he was concerned, any oath made under a false name was non-binding.

He repeated the words back to Checkers, who then inscribed his alias in the Luddites’ register.