“You blame McNaughton.”
“Of course. Of course I do. Who would profit most from their deaths? McNaughton, and those in their pay.” He nodded, as though satisfied with his claim.
“You would profit as well, Mr. Tazz,” said Hayes.
“Me? How would I profit?”
“You get a dozen martyrs. A dozen proud deaths for your cause. And you lose some undesirables. You see, I know what the men in the Bridgedale trolley had been doing. I know about the sabotage. About the murders they did in their own right. We never made it public. But I know they were killing in your name.”
“I know nothing of this,” Tazz said, his voice still even. “And besides, I cannot control what men do. I cannot influence every decision they make. But I do not kill, either. I do not wantonly murder, nor do I condone it. I am not like McNaughton. I would harm no man unless he planned to harm me.”
“And your current residence?” asked Hayes, gesturing to the room around him. “This has nothing to do with it?”
“The trolley lines, you mean?” said Tazz. He laughed. “You think I may have somehow planned the murders myself, through these tunnels? You don’t know much about the Dockland trolley, then. It was never connected to any of the other lines. It’s a mere fragment. Another project started by the rich and halted by the deaths of the working poor. It is an interesting place to hide, though, isn’t it? But it’s the smartest one. The last place the union trolley killer would look for me would be in the trolley lines themselves.”
“Maybe so,” said Hayes. “Unless Naylor and the rest were killed for other reasons. So you say you have no more knowledge of them? You claim no kinship with them at all?”
“Only in their fates. They were men who suffered needlessly, all their lives. They were drawn to my vision of a new city, perhaps. They may have come to my rallies, but they did not have my approval. In anything they did.”
“So they were never close to you. Never close to your organization. Your movement.”
“You make us sound like a cult,” he said. He waved a hand at the plainly dressed men standing around him. “We are just men. Men of a city. And we are dying. Surely you cannot criticize us for merely wanting to survive. And I do not speak in metaphors here, Mr. Hayes. Our lives are at stake, and each day lives are lost. You have seen it. I am certain of it, you have seen it out in the veins of the city. You have seen the dead and the dying.”
“I’ve seen it in this city, and the next, and the next,” said Hayes. “In cities older than this country.”
“Perhaps so, but on this scale?” Tazz walked to the wall of the room and ran one gloved hand along its smooth side. “Do you know how many people have died here?”
“Here?”
“Yes. Here in this place? Underneath this city? Do you know? No one can say. Not for sure. No one counts a corpse if its life was a poor one. But below the factories, here in the tunnels and the machinery down below… I would say over fifty thousand men have died here since the beginning of the new century. From accidents and overwork and ignorance. That’s not just workplace hazard. That’s a war. It’s a real war.”
“And you plan no violence for this war?”
“Would you say we need any?” Tazz said, walking back into the light. “Look around you. This city is dying. Even as it grows, it dies. It ripens to the point where it is sure to rot. And the people above, the people who live their quaint little lives, they live without ever thinking of what goes down below. But us down here, who can’t avoid it, we watch. And we count. Someone must watch. Now I ask you, what if we showed them? What if we showed the people this world below? What if we showed them the bones of the men this city is built on, piled down here in heaps, trapped in the gears?”
“You think they would care?” Hayes asked.
Tazz was quiet for a bit, kneading the flesh at his chin with one thumb. Then he said, “They have to. They must.”
“I think they would prefer not to look at all, Mr. Tazz.”
“Then we will make them.”
“And you will do this all without a single blow?”
Tazz shook his head. “We do not need violence. We just need people to see.”
“So you’re a peaceful revolutionary. And there was nothing between you and the saboteurs. Between Naylor and his men.”
“No.”
“Nothing you know about Huffy and Denton?”
“I didn’t even know who those men-”
“And nothing about Skiller?”
Tazz stopped where he was. Shoulders slightly bent, hands clasped behind his back. His head swiveled to look down the tunnel. “Who?”
“John Skiller. One of the Third Ring men. Or did you forget him as well?”
“I’ve never heard of that man in my life.”
“He died before the trolley murders. Found floating in a canal. A Construct canal not unlike this place.”
“I have never heard of that man,” Tazz said again.
“Are you sure he wasn’t one of yours? Weeded out, or culled?”
“None of us do anything like that. The strength of what we do here rests upon recognizing our suffering. Our purpose would founder if we caused more.”
“Really?” Hayes turned to one of the nearby guards. “What about you?” he asked. “You ever kill a man for Tazz? Ever beat him till he stopped breathing?”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Tazz quickly.
“Why not?” Hayes asked the guard. “Why wouldn’t you answer?”
“He wants to infuriate you,” Tazz called. “Wants you to hurt him. To prove you’re like him.”
Hayes and the guard stared at one another. He was a huge man, thick and bearded with eyes set far apart. He swayed slightly as though drunk and the wrench in his hand tapped softly against his thigh. “I never killed a man,” he said softly. “But I sure would like to sometimes.”
“You’re lying,” said Hayes. “Have you ever even worked in a factory? Or was your employment down on the street?”
“I don’t need to work in a factory to know it ain’t right,” said the guard.
“No factory? No factory, is that right?” Hayes called to Tazz, stepping away.
Tazz’s thumb returned to his chin. He thought for a long time before saying, “Would you say that all the poor in this city suffer just because they have no spot on a line, Mr. Hayes?”
“No. But I know a soldier when I see one. These men around me, they aren’t organizers. They aren’t the defenseless poor. And they aren’t missionaries.” Hayes tapped the side of his head. “Trust me. I know. These men you lead, they don’t want a peaceful revolution. They just want what they’ve been denied, and then some.”
“Even if they did fight, it would be a cleaner fight than the one your owners wage now,” Tazz said. In the distance Samantha thought she could see a faint line of sweat around his brow, and he licked his lips after each sentence. “With their monster roaming the streets, killing at their bidding.”
“McNaughton doesn’t have a fucking monster,” said Hayes, supremely condescending.
“Really? Do you honestly think you’re the only scientific oddity they have at their disposal? How could you seriously think such a thing?”
Hayes merely shrugged. But Tazz stopped and thought for a moment, and then stooped to the lantern at his feet. “Would you like to see?”
“See what?” said Hayes.
“See what they’re really making. See what’s really going on down here in the dark.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there are things hidden down here you can’t imagine. Things the city above has never dreamed of. I can show you, if you like.” He began turning up the light on the lantern.
“If you want.”
“Oh, I very much do,” said Tazz. He picked up the lantern and strode to the railing at the side of the pathway and stopped. “You may find this a little shocking,” he said softly, and held the lantern out.
It took their
eyes a moment to adjust to the light filtering through the darkness, but then they saw it. It took Samantha a moment to understand what she was seeing, as if her mind was unable to translate the reality before her, but then her jaw dropped and she heard herself gasp.
To say it was a machine would be wrong, because that would mean that the enormous thing in the room with them had once been made, and she was unable to accept such an idea. It was too enormous, too intricate, too fantastic to have ever been designed and constructed by men. Huge, arcing pistons like cathedral buttresses stood frozen in the shadows, their long, slender arms reaching halfway from ceiling to floor. Turbines huddled behind them, silver shining through coke and grease, each one the size of cars. Exhaust lines curled out from somewhere in the machine’s innards and slid along the wall before disappearing into the cement. In between gaps in the thing’s plating she could see bundles of copper wiring thin as moss that linked one section to another, and upon what she thought of as the machine’s boiler the wiring gathered to a brassy forest. The boiler itself was a strange and curious thing, a mass of sloping iron and brass piping and thick blue glass that clutched to the machine’s belly like an offspring to its mother. It was so thickly armored and well hidden that whatever heat it bore in its belly had to be immense. And yet even though she could identify each part of the mammoth construction as some piece of machinery she’d seen before, only magnified to huge sizes, when she looked at the whole she could not comprehend it. It seemed wondrous and terrifying and somehow alive, alive and ancient. This thing could not have been made, she thought. It must have always been. It must have sat down here, waiting for them for so long.
Hayes did not seem as affected as she was. Instead, she saw he was staring at one distinct part of the machine: a large lamp-like structure set in the top corner, with what looked like a twinkling glass chimney set in the center. “Won’t be out for a year, my fucking arse,” he whispered to himself. Then he seemed to remember himself, and asked, “What is it?”
“You don’t know?” asked Tazz.
“You very well know I don’t.”
“Hm,” said Tazz, pleased. “I don’t know, exactly. I doubt if it’s one of Kulahee’s originals, though. But I have my suspicions. Have either of you heard of the Spinners?”
Hayes made a small hmph of surprise and turned to look at Samantha. “I have. I doubt you have.”
“What?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“The Spinners, Miss Fairbanks,” said Tazz. “One of the latest big projects. Though it’s been a very private one. They’re power generators, you see. But ones built deep under the ocean.”
“Under the ocean?” she said. “Why?”
“To catch the ocean currents. They’re like giant windmills, planted around ocean trenches and all along the bottom of the sea. They’re unmanned, just blind devices spinning silently down there, but they generate enormous power. McNaughton has been in the testing phases of the devices for some time, or that was the word among the other workers. They’ve managed a way to draw power from the sea for their factories, and their factories alone.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Hayes, staring out at the machine. “I’ve only seen how their maintenance alert works. Whenever one is in need of repair it sends up a little tethered buoy that flashes white. I’ve heard stories of strings of flashing lights out on the waves, waiting for someone to come service them. Nearby sailors thought they were the souls of the dead.” Hayes looked at Tazz. “You think this machine is part of the production of the Spinners?”
“No,” said Tazz. “I think it controls them.”
“From here?”
“Yes. And I know you must think me mad, that it must take miles and miles of cable to do that, but it’s true.”
Hayes’s eyes flicked back to the large lamp on the corner of the machine. “Is it?”
“Yes. This is the only machine of its kind that I’ve found, and I’ve been studying it for some time. It regulates them, calibrates them. I’m sure of it. Even from this far away. Or at least some of them. Maybe no more than a few.” He looked out at the machine and seemed to lose some of his spirit. “This is the least of them.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because they abandoned it. Why would they do that, unless they had more of its kind, and better ones? Or machines that perform even more important functions? I don’t know. They built this off the new trolley lines, and when those flooded they felt they could cut their losses and leave this machine lying dead or dormant with the rest of the workers.”
“How did they build it? Surely word would have gotten out about such an undertaking.”
“I can’t say,” said Tazz. “It was not built by any worker I know, and as you can suspect I know quite a few. We just stumbled across it. How it got here is beyond me. Yet I believe there are many more like it under the city.”
“That can’t be,” said Hayes. “It’s too big. You couldn’t fit more than… than ten of them down here, maybe.”
“Maybe. But I once heard that Kulahee had discovered a way to trick space. To make the small large and the large small. I heard he could fit a pachyderm into a matchbox.”
“That’s a fairy tale.”
“So were the machines. But you have a dead one at your feet, sir. After all, you’ve heard the sounds, haven’t you? The pounding? You both must have. Everyone who lives here for more than a few months has.”
Samantha nodded, but Hayes refrained.
“Yes,” said Tazz. “I think that’s how they speak to one another, maybe.”
“Speak?” said Hayes.
“Yes. How they call to one another in the dark. These invisible machines doing invisible things. They sing to one another like whales in the seas.”
“They’re machines. Machines don’t talk, and certainly not to one another.”
“Mm. Yes,” said Tazz softly. “Maybe you’re right. Perhaps everyone who spends too much time down here goes a little mad.”
Hayes and Samantha looked out at the device a moment longer. Then Hayes pointed down to where it met the lip of the wall. A variety of small tools lay scattered in front of a small hutch in the machine’s side. They seemed pathetically tiny next to the enormous mechanism. “You’ve been trying to repair it,” Hayes said.
Tazz nodded sadly. “To restart it, yes.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why not? Imagine what you could learn from it. From seeing one of the secret devices of McNaughton in action. You’d have the power of the sea itself at your fingertips. And they wouldn’t be so superior to us anymore. Cloistered away in their tower, controlling us, giving us simple toys and making millions off of it. When all along the real gifts never know the light of day.” He lowered the lantern and set it on the ground, and the machine was swallowed in darkness once more. Then he looked at Hayes, his eyes wild. “So you understand that when a man of your abilities comes before me, I wonder if you are something that happened, or something that was made.”
“I was not made,” said Hayes. “I’m me. I’m my own.”
“You don’t sound certain. You don’t even know how they make what they do already, do you? You’re like everyone else when it comes to that. Maybe it’s something holy. Maybe they have a single man appointed with the task of going up to the gods and bringing back fire.”
Hayes cocked his head. “That’s a very educated reference. Above most line workers’ heads.”
“I read. I read when I was in prison. I learned about justice and the way the world could be, if we only tried.” Tazz stepped back from the light. He became indistinguishable from the rest of the shadowed stone. “I looked around and saw men who could not go further. Who could not get out. Who knew lives of nothing more than struggle, and starvation, and hate.”
“I’m sick and tired of your fucking rhetoric,” Hayes muttered, so low that only Samantha could hear.
“I learned of how deep the corruption went,” Tazz continued, the faceless v
oice in the dark. “That it was in the heart of the very city. Every structure, every institution. It was made to keep these men down, to keep them on the lines and in the gutters and in the prisons. I learned how hard our mission would be, and how desperately it was needed.”
“I went to Savron, too, Mr. Tazz,” Hayes said loudly. “I learned a few things myself. Spoke to the boys there, and the guards. They say they don’t remember you at all.”
“What?” said Tazz’s voice sharply.
“They say they don’t remember you.”
“Well… then you’re talking to the wrong people.”
“Hm. Could you remind me what your jail cell was?”
“My what? My jail cell? Why?”
“Just for my records. Just because I’m curious. What jail cell were you interned in?”
The voice was quiet. Then he said quickly, “Cell one-forty-five. South Sector C.”
“Really?” said Hayes, interested.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Because the prison records show that you were in cell one-fifty-five. Right sector, though.”
Tazz was silent. Then he said, “That’s impossible.”
“It’s entirely possible.”
“It’s not true. You’re lying. Cell one-forty-five, South Sector C. Cell one-forty-five, South Sector C. How could I forget? It was drilled into me, every day.”
“Are you certain you were in Savron?”
“Of course I’m certain. I spent five years of my life there, five miserable years!”
“Really? I had heard six,” Hayes said.
Tazz paused. “No. No. Five years. I spent five years. Five years, three months, twenty-nine days,” he said angrily. “Five years, three months, twenty-nine days. You know that. You know that!”
“How would I know that?”
“Because you’re a monster!” Tazz shouted. He stepped back into the light. He was leaning forward, snarling like a wild animal. “I know what you are! I know what you can do! That’s why they have you working for them, isn’t it? Or did they make you? Did they make this… this thing that you are to work for them, like another one of Kulahee’s machines? That’s how they operate, you know. They make what they need. Isn’t that it?
The Company Man Page 27
