Brasswitch and Bot

by Gareth Ward

  “You’re an aberration, so you either work for Cabal Thirteen, in which case I can protect you, or you take your chances with Flemington. I thought you understood that?”

  “I didn’t know I’d be a regulator.”

  “We’re not all bad people. Heck, we’re not even all people.”

  “But you do bad things.”

  Bot moved beside her and stared over the rail at the disappearing twelve fifty-three powering into the distance. “We do terrible things. The public don’t know the half of it. However, the consequences of not doing them would be catastrophic.”

  Wrench’s grip on the rail tightened. Everyone had heard horror stories of the regulators, and if what Bot was saying was true, the reality was worse than the rumours. In the under-crypt, she’d sensed the mechanoid’s fear, not for himself but for what would happen if he failed. She’d seen the Rupture and the odic capacitor and had been introduced to the world as the regulators saw it, a world where the fortunes of the country, and possibly the world, could be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

  Could their iron-fisted reign of terror be justified? Was it necessary? She’d learned in school that the sea prevented the creatures that came through the Rupture from spreading beyond the English isles, but the history books also told what a close-run race it had been. In 1620 a ship called the Mayheim Flower had set out for the new world with three NIAs aboard. Only the might of the Royal Navy, and their resolve to sink the Mayheim Flower despite the loss of innocent lives had stopped the spread. It was from the Navy’s Regulatory Branch that the initial regulators had been recruited, men who would punish and kill without question to put a halt to the threat of aberrations.

  “Come on. You’ll like our train,” said Bot.

  “The train that you don’t . . .” Something Bot had said earlier caught up with Wrench. “What do you mean, you’re not all people?”

  Bot drew to a halt alongside the train “stabled” in the siding of platform thirteen. The carriages were double decked, two tall rows of smoked-glass windows set into the angled armoured sides. He pressed a panel on the carriage’s door and with a whoosh of steam it slid open. “Here, I’ll introduce you to the team.”

  The carriage was set out like a lecture theatre, admittedly a long narrow one. Bot pulled a vocal annunciator tube from the wall. “Code Dead, cabal briefing now.” He let go of the conical mouthpiece and the VA tube retracted. After a short pause his words repeated through a rosette of flared trumpets attached to the ceiling. He dragged a chair to the front of the carriage and turned it around to face the rows of seats. “Please, sit.”

  Wrench lowered herself into the chair. Her stomach churned. At least this chair wasn’t electric. She was a regulator, or it seemed she was going to be. One of the people she’d spent her whole life avoiding. Could she do that? Join the enemy? Cause others to cower in fear and worse? It felt wrong, but she had no choice, not for the moment at least. She glanced out of the smoked-glass window. York station was the hub of the railway network from where trains traversed the length and breadth of the country. She could escape to one of the big cities. London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and many more were all but a ticket away. Lost among the crowds of such a teeming metropolis, not even the regulators could find her. She’d be alone, but since the death of her parents she’d always felt alone.

  After the accident, Horace Grimthorpe, her father’s chief engineer, had taken her in and looked after her. He’d got her the apprenticeship at the engineering works and his wife, Elsie, had mothered her as best she could, but she wasn’t Wrench’s mother and it was never going to be the same. Despite all their kindness, nothing could fill the emptiness deep inside of her.

  Wrench straightened her shoulders, determined to hide the unease that twisted her stomach. The rows of chairs began to fill with a mixture of red-suited regulators, and more traditionally attired personnel. Unlike apprentice meetings at the engineering works, where the air would be thick with banter, nobody talked. Even Bot stood motionless, ignoring the arrival of the staff. Wrench wondered if the sombre quiet was something to do with the strange message he’d delivered over the vocal annunciator: Code Dead.

  A delicate tip-tapping of high-heels on metal grew louder from further down the train and then a sylphlike lady, dressed in a silk cheongsam and teal sequined turban drifted into the carriage. Her skin appeared to be of the darkest black until she walked beneath the carriage’s lamps where it glistened with a sheen of midnight blue. “I’m the last,” said the lady, her melodic tones soothing the knot in Wrench’s stomach.

  The lady flowed onto a seat and with a whirr of gears Bot straightened.

  “Master Regulator Leech and apprentice Chattox have left Cabal Thirteen,” said Bot. “We will hold a retirement party in due course, but we have more pressing needs. Leech was tracking a possible Non-Indigenous Aberration, which I now believe to be in the wild. Get your desks clear because this is our priority. I will allocate tasks after the meeting but first I would like to introduce our new Brasswitch.”

  Wrench waited, expecting Bot to say more, but he simply motioned towards her with his chunky arm. The silence lengthened. Wrench stood. She’d spent three years at the engineering works battling to be accepted just because she was a girl. If she was to start a new apprenticeship here, she was going to set her stall out from the start. In a voice made strong by anger she said, “I have a name actually.” She waited a moment; Bot didn’t respond to the prompt. “My name is Wren, although everyone calls me Wrench. Well, everyone apart from him,” she said, pointing towards the mechanoid.

  The sylphlike lady stood. “Delighted to have you on the team. I’m Octavia.” From beneath her turban slithered a dark glossy tentacle. It waved at Wrench.

  Bot left Wrench in Octavia’s charge while he organised the hunt for the NIA and assigned tasks to the regulators. Octavia radiated a calm confidence that dulled Wrench’s unease. They walked in companionable silence along a wood-panelled corridor running down one side of the carriage’s upper deck. Wrench had never met anyone like Octavia before and her mind was full of questions but something about the woman’s soothing presence quelled her urge to ask them.

  Octavia stopped at a polished cedar door and pushed it open. “This will be your cabin.”

  The room was small but well appointed. Opposite the door, beneath a large tinted window stood a chunky desk. A high, brass-framed bed ran the length of the cabin, and a bookcase and chest of drawers fitted snugly below.

  “This is the bathroom,” said Octavia, pushing open an adjoining door. “And this is your wardrobe and weapons cabinet.”

  Wrench wrapped her knuckles against the steel plating of the wardrobe. “Why do I need a weapons cabinet?”

  “You probably don’t, but for most of the regulators the only thing that stands between them and a horrible death are their BBGs.”

  “BBGs?”

  “Bloody Big Guns.” Octavia checked her reflection in a mirror screwed to the wall and preened an eyebrow. “It will take a while, but you’ll get used to the TLAs in time.”

  “TLAs?”

  “Three Letter Abbreviations. The regulators sprinkle them about like salt at a summoning.”

  The wardrobe was cavernous and empty. Back at her bedroom in the Grimthorpes’ house Wrench had one frock for Sunday best and three sets of overalls. The size of the steel cabinet was somewhat excessive for her needs.

  Octavia closed the wardrobe door. “Among my many talents, I’m Thirteen’s outfitter. I’ll get you measured and run up some garments fit for a queen.”

  “I’m not a queen,” said Wrench, bristling.

  “No. You’re not.” Octavia took Wrench’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re far more important.”

  Octavia’s cabin was considerably larger than Wrench’s and decorated with a flamboyant confidence. An industrial steam-powered sewing machine was bolted to a large workbench on which were draped swathes of fabric. There was no sign of a bed and W
rench guessed one of the three doors that led from the room provided access to Octavia’s private quarters.

  Her arms held outstretched, Wrench waited awkwardly. Tentacles emerged from concealed slits in Octavia’s cheongsam and she began taking measurements.

  “You’re obviously . . . different,” said Wrench.

  “You mean I’m an aberration.”

  “No. I hate that word. Why can’t different be good? Look at you. You’re magnificent.”

  Octavia’s tentacles gave a delighted ripple. “I sensed I was going to like you.”

  A warmness filled Wrench’s chest. For the first time since this terrible day had begun she felt comfortable, even welcome. She wanted to know more about Octavia. She wanted to be friends.

  “I can’t imagine Bot recruited you for your tailoring talents. So what is it that you do in the cabal?”

  “You mean bringing some much-needed sartorial style and a sense of panache isn’t enough?” A tentacle uncurled from Octavia’s head and formed a circle in front of her face. She stared at Wrench through the impromptu eyepiece. “Much as I appreciate the practicality of shapeless overalls, I think tartan dungarees and a double-buttoned blouse would do wonders for your appearance.”

  “Clothes aren’t important. It’s what’s up here that counts.” Wrench tapped a finger against her temple.

  Octavia’s elegant eyes widened. “Dressing correctly is oh so important.”

  “Not to me.” Much to her foster-mother’s dismay, Wrench had never been concerned about appearance. What mattered to Wrench was mechanics. The way a worm drive changed torque, that was something to get excited about, not having matching gloves and hat.

  “You’re not doing it for you. You’re doing it for the job. There will be times when you have to bluff, times when people are looking for sanity in the madness, times when you have to convince an angry mob to follow you rather than lynch you, and at those times looking the part and feeling the part goes a long way towards playing the part.”

  Wrench shrugged.

  A tentacle curled into a question mark over Octavia’s head. “If a Stephenson RP class locomotive was painted dull grey instead of Caledonian blue and the shiny brass fittings were replaced with iron, would it still go as fast?”

  “Obviously.”

  “And if you put the grey train next to the blue train which one would the passengers choose?”

  Wrench didn’t answer. She wanted to disagree, but Octavia was right. Deep down, Wrench knew she’d always been the grey train.

  Octavia rested a tentacle on Wrench’s shoulder. “My mother was pregnant with twins when she was attacked by a NIA that had punched through one of the secondary Rupture sites. I survived but not without my ‘peculiarities’. My sister’s aberrations were too great and she died. Some would say she was the lucky one. I’ve had to try harder than most to be the blue train. You will be a gleaming golden express locomotive, my dear Brasswitch.”

  Wrench took a step back. She’d warmed to Octavia – she hadn’t expected to be called a Brasswitch.

  “Don’t be ashamed of what you are,” said Octavia. “You asked me what I do here. Well, I’m a sensitive. I feel aberrations. I could walk down any street in York and fill a prison-wagon before I’d taken more than twenty steps. Most don’t even know they’re tainted; they’re not victims of an attack like my mother, so why should they think they’re anything other than normal? The prevalence of these minor aberrations is a mystery; perhaps as Gregor Mendel suggests they’ve inherited them from their parents, who inherited them from their parents and so on, all the way back to the time of the original Rupture. What we do know is they’ll never be able to do anything special. You, on the other hand, have been given a gift, and a powerful one at that.”

  Wrench didn’t consider it a gift. She’d always had a fascination with machines, which her talents encouraged, but at the age of ten her world had changed. A boy at school had told their teacher about a strange dream he’d had and the next day, when the bell rang, the regulators were waiting. The boy had tried to run, and without hesitation the regulators had shot him down. After that Wrench knew she had to keep her talent secret. It wasn’t a gift; it was a noose.

  “You know what I can do?” asked Wrench.

  “I can only sense the power, not how it manifests.” Octavia uncurled a couple of tentacles towards Wrench’s head. “May I touch your face?”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “I promise not to sting.”

  Wrench bit her lip and nodded. She fought the urge to pull away, expecting the tentacles to be slimy. Soft like velvet, they caressed her face, leaving only a pleasant warmth behind. A pang of guilt swept over her that she’d made such a prejudiced assumption.

  “It’s fine – everyone always expects the worst,” said Octavia. She closed her eyes and her forehead furrowed. “I haven’t sensed power like this in a long time and there’s something else. Strange.”

  “What’s strange?”

  The warmth left Wrench’s face. Octavia’s tentacles recoiled and her eyes snapped open. “People, my dear. People are strange. I can see why Bot likes you.”

  “He doesn’t like me. He threatened to crush my head and he won’t even use my name.”

  “Cabal Thirteen staff tend to ‘retire’ early. Bot was close to Pippa.” Octavia swallowed. “Sorry, Regulator Chattox. She was more than his Brasswitch, she was his friend. He doesn’t use your name, like he never used Pippa’s, because it makes the potential loss easier. Under all that armour he really is quite sensitive.”

  “Brasswitch!” boomed Bot’s voice outside in the corridor. “Come hither. It’s time to say goodbye to life as you know it. Then we have things to kill.”

  Wrench raised her eyebrows at Octavia. “Sensitive, huh?”

  Wrench looked around the small box room that had been her home for the last eight years. She wouldn’t miss the floral wallpaper or the horsehair mattress, which no matter how she lay had always been uncomfortable. No, what she would miss were the things that made it hers, the things that marked out her history. The gash in the dresser where a mechanical broom she’d been building had malfunctioned. The brass gas lamp she’d modified with a re-burner to produce more light. The scratches on the window ledge she’d used to track the path of the moon. Those were hers, and she couldn’t take them with her.

  “Might as well pack everything,” she said to the walkomobile driver who waited with a trunk on the narrow landing.

  “Very good, Brasswitch,” she said.

  Wrench squeezed past her and headed to the polished wood stairs. Pictures of locomotives lined the wall on the stairway down, all creations of her father. The Elmsworth Flyer, the Sheffield Stallion, and last of all the Drake. Elsie Grimthorpe had wanted to take it down, but Wrench had insisted it stayed. After all, it was a part of her father’s legacy.

  For the last time, she walked along the hallway that smelled of carbolic soap. She purposefully avoided the black tiles in the chequered floor, although no longer quite able to convince herself they would activate traps of ingenious horror, a game she had played as a child. Her eyes picked out the repaired rip in the wallpaper behind the hatstand, hers and Horace Grimthorpe’s little secret, the result of another mechanical misdemeanour. The oak front door opened with a familiar judder and a squeak. Without looking back, she stepped outside.

  Tears rolled down Elsie Grimthorpe’s cheeks. She hugged Wrench to her chest with an embrace like a steam clamp. Warmth radiated from Elsie’s considerable presence, as did the stale reek of sweat. A nauseous claustrophobia gripped Wrench; it was like being smothered by an unsavoury sofa.

  “We really must be going now,” said Octavia. Bot had sent the seamstress to chaperone Wrench, wanting to avoid any emotional goodbyes. For her part Wrench felt little sadness. Elsie had been kind to her, perhaps too kind, trying to be something she never could. Trying to be Wrench’s mother.

  “Excuse me, luv,” shouted the driver of the walkomobile.
She stood trapped in the compact terraced house’s doorway. In her arms rested a single small trunk containing the sum total of Wrench’s possessions.

  Elsie reluctantly released Wrench and stepped into the street.

  The driver stowed the luggage and slammed the cargo compartment shut. With a wounded wail, Elsie grasped Wrench again.

  Octavia placed a hand on the distraught woman’s temple. “Shush. Shush. Everything’s good. Be happy now.”

  A stillness overcame Elsie. Her tears stopped then a smile brightened her face.

  “Come,” said Octavia to Wrench. “Time to go.”

  Elsie waved at the departing walkomobile, her demeanour now one of happy optimism. Rows of identical railway cottages that made up Rosary Terrace flashed past the windows. Wrench sat back in her seat and eyed Octavia suspiciously. “What did you do?”

  “I made her happy.”

  “How?” Throughout Wrench’s childhood Mrs Grimthorpe had been many things, but as a rule, happy wasn’t one of them.

  “Deep down we all want to be happy. It’s just a case of finding that one special thing that will let it happen,” said Octavia, folding her hands in her lap.

  “And what did you find?”

  “She wants a puppy. I told her she could have one.”

  Mr Grimthorpe hated dogs. In fact, he hated all animals, but dogs most of all. He’d once told Wrench that as a boy a feral stray had taken a chunk out of his calf. Wrench gripped the edge of the seat. “She can’t have a puppy. Mr Grimthorpe won’t allow it.”

  Octavia winked. “Fortunately, I believe we’re seeing Mr Grimthorpe next.”

  Mr Grimthorpe’s office stood on a raised gantry overlooking the coachworks. Down below, giant steam cranes manoeuvred heavy axles, boilers and chassis into place. Bright sparks from welders illuminated the gangs of fitters who laboured, turning metal into majesty.

  “And I have no choice in the matter?” said Grimthorpe. He folded his arms across his chest. A gesture of annoyance Wrench knew well.