The Clockwork God

by Jamie Sedgwick

  “Cut short?” said Kale. “What happened to him?”

  Socrates locked gazes with Kale. “I killed him.”

  Commander Toolume appeared in the square. He climbed onto the wagon and raised his arms high. A murmur went up in the crowd, and some began to cheer and whistle.

  “Quiet, everyone!” the commander shouted. “It is time for the ceremony to begin.” The townsfolk cheered as the commander stepped to the side, and the Keeper climbed up next to him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the prisoners before you stand accused of the worst kind of sacrilege. We are an open and forthright people, but when we invited these strangers into our town they turned against us like vipers. They have disregarded our customs and broken our laws. Worst of all, they have committed sacrilege against our ancestors and our god. Let there be no doubt that we are an honest and just people. On this night, justice shall be done!”

  The crowd roared with approval and the Keeper cast a wicked glance over his shoulder at the prisoners. When the noise had died down a bit, he continued:

  “Let us hasten now towards resolution. Commander, ready your men to light the pyre. I will waken our sleeping god, so that he may look upon his judgment with satisfaction.”

  The crowd cheered as the Keeper climbed off the wagon and made his way across the square to the front of the keep. His black and red robes melted into the shadows there, but even from that distance, River heard the squeaking noise of a door opening as the Keeper crawled inside the steamscout. She rolled her eyes.

  “How can they not understand what he’s doing?” she said. “Why can’t they see?”

  Socrates twisted his head to stare at her. “They see what they choose,” he said. “Or rather, they don’t see what they choose not to. Men are fickle creatures. They will happily believe a lie that promises what they want, rather than see a truth that doesn’t.”

  “Who can live like that?” River said. “You can’t fix anything if you won’t even admit something’s wrong.”

  “It’s tempting to blame ignorance,” said Socrates, “to believe they don’t know any better. But when a wrong is committed and men turn away, it is most often not out of ignorance but pride. Of all mankind’s emotions, it is pride that most often leads to their downfall.”

  “What about you?” said River. “Do you have emotions, Socrates? Do you feel?”

  He raised his gaze to the distant stars. “Sometimes.”

  “And what about the rest of the time?”

  “I try not to. But it usually doesn’t work.” He drew his gaze back to meet hers. “Have I disappointed you?”

  “No… I know exactly what you mean. I try not to let my emotions get in the way, but they always seem to get the better of me. Sometimes, I think it would be nice not to feel.”

  “You mean like Burk over there?” Kale said, snarling. “Even Socrates is more human than him. When we get out of here-”

  “Leave him be,” Socrates said. “When it’s time to deal with Burk, I’ll handle it.”

  “Are you sure?” said Kale. “I’ve sliced bigger men than him in two.”

  Socrates shook his head. “We won’t deal with our problems like that. Leave it to me. My train, my rules.”

  Kale sighed but didn’t argue further.

  At that moment, the steamscout’s lights came on, illumining the crowd in the square. They gasped and cheered as the clockwork god was roused from its sleep. River heard the familiar sounds of clicking gears and whirring springs, and she shook her head.

  “My good people, I have awakened!” the Keeper’s voice announced from inside the steamscout. “I have risen from my sleep to see justice done!”

  The crowd roared, and the commander silently ordered his men to bring their torches to the pyre. River gave Socrates a worried look, but the gorilla’s eyes were fixed on the clockwork god.

  “At my command,” the Keeper shouted, raising one of the steamscout’s arms. As it moved, something happened inside the machine. River distinctly heard the sound of grinding gears, followed by a loud whirring noise. At the same time, the steamscout’s second arm dropped. It hit the stairs with a crash and continued to push, shaking as it lifted the machine sideways into the air.

  Gasps and fearful shouts went up from the crowd as the whirring sound rose in pitch. The entire machine began shaking out of control, and the sound of grinding metal became almost intolerable. The steamscout lurched towards the stairs, and the crowd scattered fearfully. As their panic spread, the terrified citizens began to stampede out of the square. The guards saw the crowd rushing towards them and broke ranks. They threw their torches to the ground and ran down the street, fleeing from their furious god.

  Across the square, the clockwork god tumbled forward. It rolled awkwardly down the stairs, clanging and banging all the way to the street. As it came to rest, the boiler overflowed, releasing the built up steam pressure with a loud hissing sound. Clouds of vapor rolled into the air. Inside the machine, the Keeper let out a scream.

  “It worked,” River said excitedly. “Socrates, it worked!”

  “Too well, I’m afraid,” he said, glancing at the pyre behind them. River craned her neck around and gasped as she saw flames licking up behind her. One of the discarded torches had fallen too close to the dry branches, and had set the pyre alight. The flames were already climbing quickly up the stacked branches.

  “Wait!” River called out at the people racing by. “Stop! We’ll be burned alive.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Thane said bitterly. “That is what they came here to see.”

  River bit her lip. She bent forward, struggling against her bonds, but they held fast. Socrates flexed his massive biceps and pulled against the chains. The heavy posts bent slightly inward, but a few yards down Micah let out a yelp.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “You’re going to rip my arms off!”

  Socrates released the pressure. He grimaced and shook his head. “It’s no good. I can’t pull these down without hurting someone.”

  “Then hurt him!” Kale said. “Better a broken arm than all of us burned alive!”

  Socrates considered his options carefully as he watched the flames lick ever closer. Based on his calculations, he had approximately one minute to act before the fire reached them. His choices were limited. The only way he could break the chains was to risk injuring one of his companions. Sadly, Micah was at the end of the line where pressure would be the greatest. He was also the smallest of the group, and therefore the most likely to be harmed. Socrates was relatively sure Micah would sustain permanent damage.

  What other choice did he have? Socrates didn’t want to hurt even one of his companions, but wasn’t the safety of the many more important than the well-being of just one? A frustrated roar erupted from his chest and a few yards away, Micah let out a horrified scream.

  Chapter 21

  Commander Toolume appeared before them. In his hand, he held the large metal ring with the key to their shackles.

  “Let us go!” Shayla shouted. “Devils, get us out of here!”

  The commander glanced over the group and then fixed his gaze on Socrates. “Before I let you go, promise me one thing: You won’t hold me or my people accountable for the Keeper’s actions.”

  “Done,” Socrates said. He threw his head back and forth so the others could hear him. “No action is to be taken against the people of this town!”

  “Agreed,” said Thane.

  “Sure, whatever,” Kale said. “Get us out of here!”

  The commander leapt into action. He started by releasing River and Socrates, who were closest to the flames. He moved his way up and down the line, unlocking their shackles as quickly as he could manage. As he freed them, the captives leapt away from the flames and gathered in the safety of the square a few yards back, where the air was fresh and cool and the well conveniently accessible.

  In less than a minute, Commander Toolume had released the entire group. As they stood watching, the pyre
erupted into a massive inferno, engulfing the posts where their shackles still hung suspended in the air.

  “That could’ve been us,” Micah said, gulping loudly.

  “We wouldn’t be the first,” Thane said ominously. “These people have been handling their problems this way for a long time.”

  They heard a scream and hurried around the flames just in time to see the Keeper struggling to get out of the collapsed steamscout. Clouds of steam floated around him and occasional sparks lit up his face. The commander hurried over to help his cousin, and the rest of the group followed. The Keeper fell over and sprawled out across the ground. He lay there panting as the group arrived. He glanced up at them, and then averted his eyes shamefully.

  “Help me up,” he said, reaching for the commander. “Get me into the keep!”

  The commander glared down at him with a baleful stare. “You have some explaining to do, Blaise.”

  “Do you forget who you’re talking to?” the Keeper shouted. “I’m the Keeper of the Word! I am the prophet of god!”

  “This god?” the commander said, kicking the steamscout. A broken gear came tumbling out and clattered to the ground. “I’ve put up with your arrogance and your intrigues for all my life, Blaise Toolume. I’m done with it. Guards!”

  Two guards who had been hovering near the entrance of the keep came rushing forward. “Commander?” one of them said.

  “Escort the Keeper to the city gates. Lock him out. If he tries to come back in, kill him.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The guards latched onto the Keeper and dragged him howling and screaming across the square and down the street, toward the gates. Along the way, the townsfolk closed in to watch. A few insulted the Keeper, and a few hurled rocks and sticks. Most stood silently by, wondering what this change would mean for them. They’d never had the strength or courage to fight the Keeper. They didn’t have it for his cousin, either.

  “I never did like him,” the commander said as the Keeper vanished through the portcullis.

  “Did you know about the god all along?” said River, gesturing at the broken machine.

  The commander turned to face the steamscout. He reached out to touch it, feeling the warm metal under his hands. “I wanted to believe,” he said. “My people… my father and his father before him… we all put our faith in this thing, and in the Keepers who controlled it. I always knew, though, at a certain level. Looking at the thing, I knew that it was made out of parts. I could see them. But somehow, I still feared that there was more to it… that somewhere inside all of that metal was truly a god.”

  “Your god was the Keeper,” Socrates said. “A man, and nothing more.”

  “I see that now. I suspected it sometimes. I think most of us did. We couldn’t risk saying anything, though. We were afraid of what might happen. Not just to us, but to our world. This is all we’ve ever known. I don’t know what we’ll do now.”

  “You’ll see to your people,” said Socrates. “Just as you always have.”

  The commander drew his gaze to the pyre and stared into the licking flames. Some of the townsfolk had closed in around them, and they stood watching him intently, waiting for his next command.

  “We can’t do this anymore,” he said. “If we keep living like this, we’ll all die.”

  “You don’t need to,” said Socrates. “We can teach you a better way.”

  The commander drew his shoulders back proudly and turned his gaze over the crowd that surrounded them. “Show me,” he said to Socrates. “Explain everything.”

  The conversation lasted all night. The commander invited Socrates and his companions into the keep, where they gathered round the table and took turns telling Maru and the other townsfolk all about the world. Socrates and his crew explained steam engines and metallurgy to the commander. They told him about Starfall. They described the great city of Sanctuary and the strange and wonderful things in the world beyond the walls of the castle. They also told him about the Tal’mar and Vangars, and the trolls, the giants, and all the other aberrations of humanity they had encountered.

  While they conversed, the guards and townspeople filled the room, listening intently to the strangers’ stories, asking questions here and there, begging for more when it seemed that their visitors had finally run out of words. At some point, Micah appeared and begged the commander for his satchel. The commander immediately ordered the guards to return all of their personal possessions, and then graciously apologized for not doing so sooner. Micah thanked him profusely and then vanished back to his private attic in the train to sketch the memories that were still fresh in his mind.

  As for the others, their conversation continued late into the night, until at last the light of dawn began creeping across the sky. Most of the townsfolk had long since returned to their homes and families, but a dozen or so remained, still intent and full of questions. In the end, it all came back to the commander’s original question: “What will happen to us now?”

  The citizens were confused and frightened. Some were even angry. No one could deny that they had all been fooled by the Keeper and his “god,” and therefore they were cautious to speak out against the newcomers for fear of looking foolish again. The people had seen their god fall to the ground and break. Some had expected the clockwork god to rise up again, to cause fire to rain down from heaven and to cause men to fall down dead in their tracks. Instead, they had seen their Keeper come crawling out of the god’s iron belly, injured and afraid.

  With the collapse of their god, hundreds of years of reverence and tradition had come tumbling down. The people were uncertain. Their god had abandoned them, and they were frightened. Socrates knew it would not be easy to overcome all of that.

  “I will see to the well first,” Socrates announced as servants came in with breakfast. The room had slowly begun to fill with people, and as dawn broke, he once again found himself entertaining a full room. “I have devised a filtration system that will remove the Starfall from your water supply. This will prevent any more of you from becoming Ancients. It will also provide an energy source that you may use to heat your homes and to power machines.

  “But we don’t know how to do those things,” the commander said. “We are simple, uneducated people.”

  “I will teach you what I can, and I will leave books to show you what I don’t have time to explain. You must be patient. You must educate yourselves. You are capable of great things, but you must always have a thirst for knowledge. That is the only way to move forward. Do not simply replace your fallen god with another. You must always seek the truth.”

  “What of the Ancients?” someone in the crowd shouted. “What’ll we do about them?”

  “The Ancients will die, eventually. As distasteful as it sounds, you may be better off tackling the situation proactively.”

  “You mean killing them?” said the commander. He put an emphasis on the word killing, and he gave Socrates a meaningful look, reminding the simian of the delicate nature of the situation. The people of Blackstone had revered and worshipped the corpses of their ancestors for generations. Convincing them that it was now acceptable to kill the creatures would not be easy.

  “Let’s not be hasty,” Socrates said wisely. “We must consider every avenue available to us.”

  Chapter 22

  River, Socrates, and a few other crewmen joined forces that morning to build the town’s new water filtration system. They were able to reclaim many useable parts from the steamscout, some of which they used to build the filter, the rest of which they loaded onto the train.

  In the meanwhile, Burk and the rest of the crew who had abandoned Socrates very quietly returned to their duties. Socrates and River both noted this, but kept silent on the matter for the time being. They were focused on getting their job done, and had neither the energy nor the desire to stir the pot. Later, with the work done and the town of Blackstone safely behind them, would be the time for that confrontation.

  Though she ha
dn’t had any real sleep in two days, River threw herself into her work. She persisted at a frantic pace for the whole day, and her hard work paid off. By nightfall, the new filtration system was in place and it had already cleared several gallons of drinking water. A glass vial at the heart of the machine had slowly begun to capture the reclaimed Starfall, one drop at a time.

  Later that night, over dinner, they finally discussed the future of Blackstone. It started when Kale asked how the commander would manage the city, now that the Keeper was gone.

  “We’ll have to elect a leader,” the commander said.

  “Better still, a council,” Socrates advised. “Too much power should never rest in one man’s hands.”

  “Sound advice. So it shall be done. I’ll begin preparations tomorrow. By the end of the week, we should have new leadership in place. I hope that by then, we’ll have a better idea of how to manage the situation with the Ancients.”

  That last statement sounded more like a question, and it seemed to be directed at Socrates. The automaton leaned back in his chair, the nearly silent clicking and whirring sounds drifting from his body like the sound of distant crickets.

  “I’m afraid no answer I can give you would suffice,” he said. “I don’t know how long it will take for the Ancients to die off… at the moment I can’t even guess how many there are. The one thing I know for sure is that your people can’t go on the way they have been. They need nutrition that only the forest can provide. They need to build their strength back up if they’re to survive.”

  “I understand,” said the commander, “but I think you’re overestimating these people. They have realized that they were tricked by the Keeper, but asking them to do this, to slay their own kin… they will not accept it.”

  “It isn’t their kin,” River said. “Don’t they understand those people are dead already?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that easy to dismiss a lifetime of belief,” said the commander. “I’ve heard stories of your world. I can only imagine what it must be like. You grew up surrounded by different cultures; by people with beliefs and traditions very different from your own. You knew from childhood that there were many ways to view the world. It is not so with my people. Their ways are so ingrained into them that I fear they may not be able to change.”