My Clockwork Muse

by D. R. Erickson

  I was about to consign the sound to our overtaxed imaginations when it came again. This time rising distinctly out of utter silence.

  A woman's scream, muffled but unmistakable.

  My heart leapt with joy and terror at once.

  "Olimpia!" I cried. "She is alive! And she is here!"

  But where? I wondered. And what was happening to her?

  Gessler started to get up, but winced in pain. "Dammit! Help me up, Poe." He held out his hand for me, but I was torn. Did I really want to waste precious seconds? I looked from Gessler's outstretched hand to the unknown shadows from which Olimpia's voice had issued. And then back again.

  "There's no time," I said. "I'm going alone."

  "The Hell you say!" Gessler struggled to his feet. Standing unsteadily, he looked at me and saw that I was torn between helping him and dashing away. "Well, don't wait for me. Go! I'll be right behind you."

  I ran into the darkness, not knowing exactly where I was going. But I knew the scream did not come from upstairs and was muffled by distance to such an extent that I believed it could have come from only one place—Coppelius' laboratory. Perhaps Olimpia had even heard my gunshot and had cried out in the hope that her rescue was at hand.

  I opened the door to the basement and saw that a light was indeed burning below. I stopped and listened. Another sound reached my ear, faint and forlorn, like the dripping of water from the back of a cave. I strained to hear it: a piteous whimpering. It rose and fell and seemed to meld into the fabric of silence. But I knew what it was.

  Olimpia!

  The sound filled me with a murderous rage. What was that fiend doing to her? Reaching for my revolver, I dashed down the curving stone steps, shouting out her name as I descended.

  "Olimpia!" I cried. "Where are you?"

  There was a second in which I heard nothing in reply but the scuffling of my own footsteps on the stone floor. Then, Olimpia's voice rang out, full of hope. "I am here, Eddy! Oh, please hurry!"

  I followed the sound of her voice. I knew I would shoot the scoundrel on sight if he was hurting her. The light brightened and I turned a corner.

  There I saw her, strapped to an operating table, her body covered by sheets. A huge magnifying glass, supported by a retractable metal arm, hung suspended over her chest. Coppelius' curious needle machine—which I had uncovered during our dissection of the clockwork Pluto—stood beside the table, blocking my view of Olimpia's face. Its copper barrel body was vibrating slightly and radiating heat. Steam trickled out of an exhaust valve at the base of the machine. The last time I had seen it, it had been in repose. Now, my eye followed the line of the thin black hose as it ran from machine to patient. From the end of the hose sprouted a dozen long, vicious needles. To my horror, I saw that each was embedded deeply in Olimpia's chest. There was no sign of Coppelius.

  Terrified, I rushed to the machine, meaning to fling it away. But its body was too hot. When I tried to touch it, I only scalded my fingers for my efforts. Frantically, I looked for a means of turning it off. I scanned every inch of its surface but could find no switch or lever. The monstrous contraption held Olimpia in its horrifying embrace, like some parasitic creature. I felt helpless to free her. Further, I had no idea of its function. While I suspected it was doing her no good, how did I know it would not kill her to suddenly disengage it?

  I moved around the machine towards Olimpia's face. I could not help but glance into the huge magnifying glass as I rushed past. I saw clearly—and many times actual size—the place where the needles punctured her sweet flesh. The needles were arranged in a neat circle above Olimpia's heart. I wanted to yank them out at once. But for my fear of unforeseen consequences, I most assuredly would have.

  "Olimpia, am I too late?" I asked. I moved to take her hand, and I could feel her straining to reach for me, but her wrists were bound in leather restraints secured to the table.

  "I fear he means to finish me, Eddy."

  "Your father?"

  "Yes."

  "These needles ... What do they do? What is this machine?"

  "I-I don't know," Olimpia said. "I'm afraid, Eddy."

  I straightened and turned, meaning to find Coppelius. Only he knew the functions of his arcane devices. I would force him—at gunpoint, if necessary—to free Olimpia from his dreadful machine; and then to apply whatever remedies would free her from his even more dreadful poisons. I was about to call out, when I saw to my dismay that he had found me first.

  "On the contrary, Edgar. You're not too late, you're just in time."

  Coppelius stood just outside the limit of the lamplight. I heard only his voice before seeing his form. But even as I spun on my heel and made to draw my revolver—for I had stupidly put it back in my pocket during my struggle with the machine—I saw that he had the drop on me. As he stepped forward into the light, he did so behind the gaping maw of an ancient blunderbuss pistol pointed straight at my heart.

  "Don't get any ideas, Edgar, my boy," he said. He saw me staring at the flared muzzle of his pistol—a 'dragon', it would have been called a century ago. Even then it would have been considered old-fashioned. He had another stuffed in his belt. "Oh, don't be fooled by its archaic look," he said. "It is, in fact, brand new, and delivers quite a lethal punch. I picked it up during one of my ... many journeys. I actually procured this one up in Salem, as a matter of fact, for some ... work I was doing there. Please put your own firearm on the table. Slowly."

  I thought of having it out with him then and there, trusting to my relative youth and quickness and his doubtlessly cockeyed aim to see me through. Though the consequences of my failure were too horrifying to risk, I seriously did not know what I meant to do as I slowly pulled my revolver from my pocket.

  My face must have betrayed my thoughts. Coppelius cocked his gun, a loud double-click. "I will use it, Edgar," he warned.

  Reluctantly, I laid my revolver on the table. Now I was in Coppelius' power.

  "Now, if you will step aside," he said, "I have work to do."

  I did as he commanded. He moved past me, his aim never leaving my heart. He wore a pair of leather-framed goggles high on his forehead. I could feel the heat from his machine building, and I shuddered at the probable nature of his work. He paused to pump one of the pedals on his infernal device, and when he finished, he glanced with satisfaction into the magnifying glass. With his free hand, he stroked Olimpia's hair as she struggled at her restraints. I wanted to kill him at that moment. I secretly scanned the tabletop within reach of my hand, hoping to find a beaker of acid or some other corrosive substance to hurl in his face.

  He turned. "Well, this is going to be harder than I thought to get any work done with you standing here. This puts me in a quandary. What to do with you, Edgar? I don't want to shoot you. I really don't. But I'm assuming since you are here that Dansby is—"

  "Dansby is no more, Doctor."

  Coppelius shook his head sadly. "No more ... Tsk-tsk. Good, loyal Dansby. He was one of my first machines, you know. I've come a long way since then. Still, all in all, a nice piece of work, if I do say so myself. The finished product was only slightly duller than the original."

  The original. It struck me that there must have once been a real Dansby. That Coppelius was so willing to throw these lives away in pursuit of his machines showed just how truly evil he really was.

  "When I put it to him, Dansby didn't like being called a machine."

  "Oh, he didn't like a lot of things, Edgar. But in the end, he did what I told him to do."

  Coppelius' good eye was piercing as he continued to aim the blunderbuss at my chest. His bulging clouded blue eye however seemed to peer somewhere past me. His aim would result in either a lead ball tearing through my heart or flying three feet over my shoulder. I still didn't like the odds of rushing the loaded barrel. Perhaps if I kept him talking, an opportunity would arise.

  Then I remembered Gessler. Where was the man, confound him!

  "You told him to kill me—and h
e didn't do that."

  "Ah, but not for lack of trying. You see, all these machines like to assert their independence after a while, Edgar. That's how you caught me, you know. Oh, to fool the great master of ratiocination! That was my goal."

  "If that was your goal, then you failed. You said it yourself: I caught you."

  "Well, judging from the direction the barrel of this loaded pistol is pointing, it rather appears that I have caught you, Edgar." He cackled with a laughter that devolved into a hacking fit. Seeing my chance, I took a step towards him, but he recovered at once, re-leveling his gun. "Please don't do that, Edgar. I don't want to hurt you."

  "What are you doing to Olimpia, you monster? What is that damned machine doing to her?"

  "Oh, this? Charming, isn't it?" He patted the copper cylinder, burning his fingers. He shook his hand to cool them. "At the moment, it is doing nothing to her. That's why I say you are just in time. It will be your privilege to see it in action. As soon as I fire it up, so to speak, you can see how I correct a mistake. Yes, for even I make them, on occasion."

  At the moment, the machine was doing nothing—apart from piercing Olimpia's heart with a dozen needles. Still, I wanted to shout with joy. I would give my life to prevent Coppelius "firing it up."

  "What mistakes?" I asked.

  "The revenant creatures, for one. Unfortunately, I had not foreseen that. You see, in order to make a Dansby or a Billy Burton, for example, I had to produce a serum from the living bodies of their biological counterparts. This is what makes them ... alive. To my dismay I found that it also makes the living quite dead, at least for a while."

  I had always known the man was an eccentric, but now I knew he was mad.

  "But why?"

  "Because I could, Edgar. And the more that I found I could, the more that I found I wanted to. Oh, it was grand sport! You couldn't distinguish between the real Burton and my version of him, could you? Of course not, no one could. Not even when your very life depended on it."

  "So it was you who set up the Amontillado murder to make it appear that it was my doing."

  "And the Rue Morgue, yes. Mr. Burton was instrumental in assisting me with both of those. Of course, by the time of the Amontillado set-up, I had no further need of the real Mr. Burton. I tell you, when I chained him to that wall ... I don't think he ever did truly understand that he would not be coming out again."

  "But he did come out again," I said.

  "Yes. An unavoidable by-product of my serum, I'm afraid. The same with your damned little cat."

  "You made the clockwork Pluto."

  "Of course. And you would have been none the wiser if the original would have stayed dead. Still, after my success with the cat, it began to occur to me that what had begun as a pleasurable little hobby could become so much more. I decided I could find some good use for my creations. If I could re-create cats, I could re-create people. Perhaps I could re-create great people. When I followed my thoughts along this path, I could see that I would, in essence, become those great people, by proxy. I could perhaps even become the President of these United States, couldn't I? You can see where this is leading?"

  The depths of his madness sent a chill through me. "You mean Polk?" I asked, not believing it possible. I glanced at Olimpia. As she tugged at her restraints, Coppelius laid a calming hand on her forehead, which seemed to have the effect of soothing her. My skin crawled.

  "Polk is small potatoes, Edgar. A gift such as mine is intended for, shall we say, a larger stage, a bigger man."

  "But if not the current President, then who? Surely I see no advantage in impersonating any former occupant of the office."

  Coppelius gave me an almost whimsical look before shaking it off. "It's irrelevant, Edgar. For at this stage in my thinking, I realized that my ambition had far outpaced my capabilities. I needed an entirely new formula. How could I get close enough to the President to create a serum from his fluids? The answer was simple: I couldn't. So my first challenge was to formulate a solution that did not require my procuring it from any particular individual. Once I had applied my mind to it, this problem was easily overcome. But the real flaw in my serum was something I discovered from your cat—"

  "They weren't the same," I said, realizing at once the implication. I thought back to our dissection of the clockwork cat and what we found inside. Coppelius had seemed sincerely puzzled. Even the master of deceit had not been able to mask his genuine surprise.

  "What's that you say, Edgar?"

  "I say, they were not the same. The cats. Pluto, the real one, hated me, ever since I had plucked its eye from its head. Your version of the cat loved me. And when we opened it up, we saw that it was becoming—"

  "Real," Coppelius finished for me. "Very good, Edgar. The same was happening to Mr. Burton and ... others as well. This I could not allow. My whole plan hinged on my absolute control over my creations. But instead I found them ever more developing wills of their own. Mr. Burton investigating the Rue Morgue scene with you was an example of this. I never would have condoned such a thing."

  "And the man who tried to kill me, the masked swordsman?"

  "That was another, I'm afraid. Completely outside my control. Insubordination continues to plague me. It is unacceptable. But now, I will overcome even that obstacle. I have perfected my serum, Edgar, as you shall soon see."

  "What do you mean?" I felt I was getting close to the moment of truth. Coppelius had been very careful all the while to keep the muzzle of his pistol pointed directly at my chest. There had been no opening to attack him. Now, I was afraid I would have no choice but to charge the guns...

  "Loaded into this machine," Coppelius began proudly, making to pat the copper casing once again, but remembering his singed fingers, drawing back, "is my perfected serum. It does not depend on anyone's biological counterpart. This particular batch comes from Mrs. Landor, in fact—whom I believe you have met."

  "Then what of my beloved Virginia?" I asked. As I contemplated his murderous arrogance, my fury began to rise. "What of the mark on her neck? Is there a clockwork Virginia somewhere? And what of this?" I yanked down my collar, exposing the puncture wound through which Coppelius had been drawing my blood and injecting his vile poison into my veins. Had I long to live, in any case?

  The vehemence of my outburst seemed to startle him. I rushed him and grabbed the barrel of his pistol. We struggled with it. I attempted to wrest it from his hand but, though he was old, bent and twisted, his arms were like iron bands. I could do little but keep the muzzle away from my face. The weapon rose and fell in our contentious grasps. One moment it was pointed at the floor, the next the ceiling. Finally, I drove my shoulder into the old man's chest. I could hear the breath leave him. He fell away in one direction, while the pistol went flying in the other.

  With Coppelius sprawled on the floor, Olimpia cried out to me. "The needles, Eddy! Oh, please, remove these needles from out my heart!"

  I stood over her and felt at a loss. My hands went to the needles, but I could not make myself grasp them. I was certain that there had to be a proper way to extract them, but I felt clumsy and helpless. "I'm afraid I might hurt you," I said.

  "But they will be the end of me."

  Then she screamed. I whirled. Coppelius had climbed to his feet. He was reaching for the pistol in his belt. I had forgotten it was there.

  "And now," Coppelius hissed, through clenched teeth, "you will watch your lady-love die."

  In the next instant, a great flash and a deafening crack of a gunshot filled the room. With his pistol still in his belt, Coppelius fell in a heap to the floor. A little swirl of smoke rose from his chest.

  My first thought was of Gessler. With a smile, I looked up, expecting to see the inspector step out of the darkness. But instead, I saw a small man dressed in a black frock coat like mine. He was wearing a silk mask over his face and in his hand was Coppelius' smoking blunderbuss pistol.

  Chapter 22

  "I thought I'd never be rid of th
at fool." The masked man stepped out of the gloom and stood over Coppelius' body. The doctor may have been mad, but he was right about one thing: the old blunderbuss packed quite a wallop. A scorched hole in his coat showed where the ball had entered his chest. The masked man shook his head sadly. "I suppose I should thank you, Poe," he said in an oddly familiar voice. "And I will—just before I kill you, too."

  I suddenly realized who it was. "You're the man from the Rue Morgue."

  "I should have run you through then, but that oaf Burton—"

  I made to lunge at him, but he raised the pistol menacingly and I stepped back.

  "It's not loaded, Eddy!" Olimpia cried, tugging on her restraints. I realized my mistake at once. Coppelius' pistol was an old single-shot muzzle-loader. What a fool I was! By the time I started at him again, he had already pulled Coppelius' loaded pistol from the dead man's belt. He stood back and aimed it at me stiff-armed, cocking it loudly. He stood straight, like a fencer.

  "That'll do, Poe. Now just back up to the wall there."

  I did as he commanded, backing until I could feel the cold stone wall against my shoulder blades. The masked man followed me step for step, stopping alongside Olimpia's table.

  "Ah, the lovely Olimpia," he said, looking down. Beneath the black mask, nothing of his face could be seen but the bulge of his nose and the concave shadows of his eyes and mouth. "You should listen to her, Poe. She may have a cold heart, but her mind is sharp as a tack. Interesting that she has sided with you against her own father. I guess water is thicker than blood, after all. But then women are treacherous, aren't they?"

  "We're in love," Olimpia said.

  The masked man laughed uproariously. "Love! What does love mean to you, precious, when your own father lies dead on the floor at your feet? Isn't a daughter supposed to love her father?"

  "He had ceased to be a father to me," Olimpia said. "He was a madman and he meant to kill me."

  "Well, he was like a father to me," said the masked man. "And now look at him. Oh, he could have stopped me long before it was too late. But I believe the old man had tender feelings for me. I really do. And look what it got him—dead as a doornail."