Time's Mistress

by Steven Savile

  The fear of God, Josiah thought, that was an apt way of putting it.

  Balthazar moved to the centre of the stage and raised his hands, commanding the attention of the gathering. “Imagine a world where we are liberated from the chores of servitude. Think about it, no brothers or husbands forced beneath the ground to mine coal or metal ores, no wives or sisters forced to scrub and clean for the arrogant rich. This is a world to aspire to, is it not?”

  There were murmurs of yes, and nodding heads. Josiah tried to imagine it in its almost Marxist purity. He shuddered. There was something distinctly disturbing about this sort of utopian claptrap.

  Balthazar took a number of metal disks from his pocket and held them up for inspection. Josiah saw that irregularly shaped holes had been cut into the metal.

  “The notion is simple,” Balthazar explained, “Each disk is coded with instructions the brain of the clockwork man interprets, allowing him to act just as we would in given circumstances. The machine can reproduce even the most complicated of movements based upon a number of servos and valves that work in tandem with the gears. You want him to prepare food, the coding is here,” he held up one of the metal disks, “all one needs to do is adapt each encoding for the environment in question, as each house is different and each dish is different, but once the disk is fashioned it will never wear out and you’ll have Bubble and Squeak to your heart’s content. And of course, there are a world of unpleasant tasks that can be taken out of our lives. The mechanisms can function beneath the filth of the Thames as happily as they can in the old tunnels beneath the city. And when they fail, all you need to do is wind up the mechanisms and they will work again, just as tirelessly as before. Bad air will never claim another life. No more will the miners need their Davey lamps and their canaries to tell them it is safe to dig on. No more will ship builders risk life and limb scrambling over rigging to weld in place some rivet. Steeplejacks will be grounded and labourers saved their back breaking work. Indeed, thanks to the Mechanicum we shall become a city of the fat and the drunk, because there will be nothing left for us to do save eat, drink and make merry!”

  There was a ripple of laughter at this.

  Josiah’s mind raced, grappling with the possibilities … but it wasn’t merely the clockwork construct that interested him, though he could see the benefit to everyone if some lump of brass could be put to use instead of people being forced to risk life and limb. No, there was a second aspect to the design that rekindled something he had thought long dead: hope.

  He saw a possibility within the pretend flesh that had fooled them all.

  He watched the rest of the demonstration avidly, and was on his feet by the end, applauding the genius of the men who had finally dethroned God and created this artificial life. A man born of brass and grease and the mind that would not wear out and die. It was the ultimate in reincarnation, simply wind him up and he would live again and again and again.

  Others around him were in uproar, the good Christians shouting down Balthazar, decrying the arrogance of man as he stood before them with his arms spread wide in the parody of supplication, mirroring the classic crucifixion pose.

  The last twist to the reveal came when the last man walked to centre stage; they all knew him, one of the Queen’s Artists, John William Waterhouse, famed for his portraits, and for his recreations of great literature … by his side walked ghosts. There was no mistaking the dead Prince Consort, Albert, nor the very much alive but inconceivably young Queen Victoria. Of course it could not have been Her Majesty any more than Albert could have been raised from the grave. Dead was still dead. Loved ones could not simply rise up.

  Josiah peered toward the three of them, captivated by the odd scene. This, this was the genius of the Mechanicum, not some orreries and flapping brass birds. The Queen seemed to have regressed some thirty years or more, to the rather plain young woman she had been, whereas Albert looked hail, if not hearty, and certainly not thirty years dead. They moved with a curious almost staccato courtesy as they walked across the stage.

  “My Lords, Ladies, and of course Gentlemen, you see here the culmination of years of study and the perfection of art—and more, a marriage between the Aesthetics and the Mechanicum to prove that there is beauty in lies,” he gestured toward the dead Prince Consort, who on cue inclined his head. The illusion was breathtakingly perfect. He was, to all intents and purposes, Victoria’s beloved Albert, just as the woman beside him was his Victoria as she had been all those years ago. The crowded auditorium was being treated to the spectre of love these royal ghosts famously shared. Josiah felt something stir within him and realised it was jealousy.

  Only a man who had studied the brittle Prince could have rendered him so perfectly in … what? What did he use to recreate the flesh? Wax? Makeup?

  “I give you the risen Prince Consort! This is our gift to the British People! All hail Victoria and Albert! All hail the Magisters of the Mechanicum and the Artisans of the Aesthetics!”

  The shocked silence was broken by rapturous applause as people rose to their feet. It filled the glass auditorium, amplified by the acoustics of the chamber until the glass itself resonated with the harmonics of the clapping.

  The Palace of Illusion.

  The Glass House of Lies.

  It all fell into place. It was the answer to all of his prayers.

  He saw Balthazar looking at him, his smile warm. He nodded at the silent message that passed between them. The Magister was right; the unveiling had been of particular interest to him. He was shaking as he stood up, his applause every bit as awed and heartfelt as the applause from anyone else in the room, but more urgent.

  He wanted to ask: “Why? Why have you done this?”

  But he knew in science there was no why, no because, beyond the straightforward: “Because we can. Because it is there. Because we must. Because all flesh is dust, and to dust returns and we none of us dream of death.”

  When all of the Pandemonium had died down and the good people had filed away back to their lives abuzz with the miracle of this mechanical resurrection, Josiah sought out the Magister. He stood beside his clockwork creations, greasing the mechanisms and preparing to box them away for shipping to the next show on their tour schedule, up North. The boxes were disturbingly similar to coffins, he thought, watching them crate up the false Queen.

  “Did you enjoy our little performance, brother? A silly question, of course you did. We owe it all to you, of course,” Balthazar said. “It was your loss that set us to thinking: why must we always lose what we love? Why must we grieve? Science cannot grant immortality, the flesh is weak after all, the valves and pumps of the machine we inhabit are weak, fashioned to fail, but …” he let it hang there between them, unsaid. Imagine a world where the dead could walk on, every day, at our sides, in our lives as more than memory. All the talk had been of farming out the thankless chores to the automata, but the truth of it was far more sentimental.

  “I must have one,” Josiah said simply.

  “Of course, brother. She is yours, she always was and now, thanks to us, she always will be.”

  O O O

  Josiah Bloome provided the Queen’s artist with fifty sepia-tinged photographs of Annabel Leigh, catching her likeness from every angle. In some she was beautiful, in others plain. It depended upon the light and the skill of the photographer and, of course, her mood when the lens had been directed her way. He took the man on a guided tour of the places she loved, explaining what made each special to her in the hope that the man could add her essence to her beauty. It was a curious thing to do, of course, but he asked himself one simple question: what is a woman but the sum of her memories?

  A system of gears and cogs and valves?

  A system of organs and blood vessels, muscle and tendon?

  Organic or inorganic, a machine was a machine.

  He shuddered at the thought, needing to believe that there was some way the artist, in many ways one of the very greatest the Aesthetic Mo
vement had to offer, could imbue his new Annabel Leigh with all that had been, all he knew and all they had shared.

  It was a gift and a curse.

  He visited the artist in his studio, surrounded by the oils and watercolours that would make him famous.

  “You must tell no one of this,” he urged Waterhouse.

  The artist, nodded, working his peculiar magic with the mixture.

  “I am in earnest, man. You must never record in a journal or diary what you do for me now. There is something ungodly about it. I fear posterity would not look kindly upon us.”

  “And yet you have me raise the dead,” the artist said.

  “I miss her with all of my heart,” Josiah Bloome said. There was no other explanation he could offer.

  The man worked in his house of wax, fashioning her skin for the mechanical frame to wear. The place had a smell to it that Bloome came to think of as life. The recreation was perfect in every way. The man was a genius. In his hands she was born again. He watched as her nose and her eyes, her lips and her smile were reborn. He wept to see her familiar features laid flat across the glass-topped work surface, and then rejoiced to see it shaped around the glass cranium of the machine. He held her hands as they were crafted, remembering each and every blemish and beauty mark and insisting they were rendered precisely, such were the perfection of the Art.

  At nights, Josiah sat with Balthazar learning the secret of the metal disks and how to create commands that would complete the illusion of Annabel Leigh’s return to him.

  He was hungry to learn, his mind healed for the first time in forever, focussed, driven. He slaved away, wracking his brain to remember each and every movement and gesture she possessed in life, so that he could give them to her in death. The tilt of her head, the curl of her lip, the impish delight in her eyes, he tortured himself with all of it, needing to believe that the machine could be more than that; needing to believe that the machine could be his Annabel Leigh.

  And alone, as he always had to be when the day disappeared, he began to remember so many other things he thought lost forever. He curled up on the cold mattress, pulling the blanket up to his chin, aware that soon the emptiness that marked the other side of the bed would be gone. It was every bit as chilling as it was thrilling.

  O O O

  And then they brought her back to him, in a wooden box just as those others had taken her away from him. It was part of the ritual he had insisted upon. The return. It had to be the same as the departure. Instead of mourners he had the men of the Mechanicum walk at her side, celebrants bringing her back to him.

  They carried the casket into the front room and laid it respectfully on the table, handing him the crowbar to break open the seals. He slipped it into the crack between lid and frame, and worked it open.

  Looking down on her his heart broke.

  She was perfect in every way.

  But she appeared so utterly cold and dead in the casket, just lying there. They had placed a white rose on her chest. They had stuffed her coffin full of the most fragrant flowers when they buried her, to mask the corruption of the disease. This single flower on her return was meant to be a token of rebirth, the delicate white petals life, the denuded thorns their mastery over the bite of death.

  The experience so horribly mirrored the last time he had gazed down upon her lifeless face. “Help me get her out of there,” Josiah begged, reaching in to cradle the clockwork woman in his arms. She was heavy, far heavier than she had been in life. They lifted Annabel Leigh out of the casket and stood her in the centre of the room, encouraging Josiah to inspect their craft, to be sure he was happy. “We can make adjustments,” they assured him, like Savile Row tailors.

  He couldn’t bear to look at her.

  “We have fashioned a number of disks according to your instructions, all you need to do is wind the mechanism for the first time and insert the option of your choice.”

  “I just want the company,” he said, standing beside the window out into the world. His fingernails dug into the wainscoting of the sill. “You can leave us now, please. How much do I owe you?”

  “This is our gift to you,” Balthazar assured him. “There should be no money between friends. If we can bring you happiness that is reward enough.”

  “Thank you,” Josiah said, though what they called a gift already felt like a curse. Still he could not bear to look at her in the middle of the room. It was a blessing that she was mute. To hear her would have been too much. It was enough to feel her behind him, that almost but not quite familiar presence.

  The Magisters left him alone with his new Annabel Leigh. “The mechanism will last for twelve hours,” Balthazar explained, “before it will need to be wound again.”

  She had a life of only twelve hours.

  When the front door closed behind them Josiah Bloome finally turned away from the window.

  He looked at her, marvelling at Waterhouse’s skill. She was exactly as he remembered, though of course when he talked to her and fussed around her she could not answer him. The only words were in his memory, but better that than all of her living there.

  He slipped one of the disks into the slot at the back of her neck and slowly, tenderly, wound the mechanism. It was almost erotic. There was something heady and powerful about his touch bringing life. She walked away from him and sat in the chair beside the window, the failing light adding a golden aspect to her wax flesh as she simply sat, content to soak up the heat. Josiah had seen Annabel Leigh in the same seat more times than he could remember. Sometimes she would knit, other times she would read one of those Penny Dreadfuls and gasp at something on the page, but most often she would simply sit, tilt her head back and savour the sun’s kiss.

  For a moment it was as though she had never gone.

  He sat down beside her and told his Annabel Leigh everything she had missed over the six years she had been lost to him.

  He changed the disk so that she might walk through to the kitchen to make tea, her favourite porcelain laid out precisely so, so that every movement she made was inch perfect. There wasn’t a rattle as she filled the tea pot and carried the tray through to library. They sat together a while in silence, Josiah pretending to drink, Annabel Leigh not. He thought about taking her outside, it had been so long since they had gone for a long stroll through Hyde Park in the rain, and there was nothing more romantic than that; walking side by side, looking up to catch the fat raindrops with their open mouths and laughing.

  Tomorrow, perhaps. After all, they had a new life time to share together. There was no hurry to do it all again in a single day.

  He lost all track of time, revelling in having her back. An hour before dawn he noticed her beginning to slow, her movements becoming jerky and imprecise as the mechanism at her heart wore down. It was like watching her die, slowly and painfully.

  Twelve hours.

  It brought it all back to him, the ravages of the Cholera, the dread he had felt knowing death would come to steal her away from him. All of it, brought back to him in the twelfth hour as he sat alone in the front room.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” he told the wax face of his love, his heart breaking. There was no distance this time, no shock or protection. She was there, in front of him, and he could see the gears losing their tension and the half-life draining out of her.

  He sat alone because he couldn’t bear to watch the final hour.

  He picked up his precious Annabel Leigh and carried her to the cupboard beneath the stairs, hiding her away so that he could grieve alone. Death was not something he wanted to share with her. He could not face the grief of losing her again and again and again. It did not matter that this time all Josiah Bloome had to do was wind the mechanism to bring her back. All that meant was that he could re-experience the pain of losing her all over again.

  He thought of lying beside her in bed, sleeping only to wake to her cold body, the life wound down to nothing. It chilled him to the core. Having to lean over and wind lif
e back into her stiff limbs, to bring her back again and again from beyond the mortal coil. Who could have known that gears and cogs could so easily become the mechanisms of grief?

  There was no beauty in lies, he thought, looking at the face of the woman he loved, at the ghost he had brought so hungrily into his own house, and slowly losing his mind as day after day he lost the one thing he had truly loved in life. To lose her once was tragic, to lose her every day, torture. No, there was no beauty, there was only pain. All the horrors of war paled beside the repeated grief he felt watching his wife die every day, like clockwork.

  ***

  Ashes

  When I was twenty-seven I tried to imagine what it would be like to be fifty, to have lived through the best part of my life, and the worst, and made it out on the other side. What single piece of advice would this hypothetical time traveling me impart if he could? It’s a tough question to ask given that you’ve not actually lived your life yet, but I decided on two words: be brave. They felt right. I had them tattooed over my heart.

  I like to think it made all the difference.

  Life up until then had been pretty much a little bit of this, a little bit of that, same as it is for most people. I’d had my share of missed opportunities, of course, hence the “be brave” motto. There was Sasha, who sat beside me from the autumn of 1980 until the summer of 1983, for one. Miss Bennett’s grand scheme had been no more complicated than boy-girl-boy-girl to keep the class quiet. She hadn’t banked on the poet in twelve-year-old-me’s soul, or my inability to let him out. Then there was Rachel. I fell for her. Down a flight of stairs in a guest house in Scarborough. It wasn’t graceful. I have no idea if it hurt, fear at the sight of this beautiful girl smiling at the top of the staircase wiped out all memory of pain.