The Havoc Machine

by Steven Harper

  Sofiya ignored him. “Ringmaster Dodd, I work for a man who wishes for your circus to appear in Russia. Saint Petersburg.”

  “The capital,” Dodd said. “Why?”

  “Mr. Griffin,” Thad said, jumping in, “is a difficult traveler and needs a train to take him. He’s willing to pay quite a lot if we can get him there in the next few days.”

  Dodd shook his head. “Why doesn’t this Mr. Griffin take a passenger train?”

  “That would be unwise of him,” Sofiya said. “You have heard of the unrest, have you not? Bad economic times.” And she explained the uprisings that made train travel difficult.

  “Ah. And you think the peasants won’t bother a circus,” Dodd finished for her.

  Thad pursed his lips and glanced around for spiders. “You have it. And once we’re there, we could perform for the Russians. Perhaps even the tsar. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

  “Is it?” A hard look crossed Dodd’s face. “I remember a wonderful opportunity that took us to Kiev.”

  Uh-oh. This wasn’t going well. “Everyone loves a circus,” Thad said, but it sounded lame in his ears. “No one will bother you. Us.”

  The spider on the Tilt was back. A second one came with it. They seemed to be following the conversation. Thad had to force himself to pay attention to Dodd.

  The ringmaster shook his head. “The last time we took on passengers, the Gonta-Zalizniaks nearly killed us all.”

  “Look, you said yourself that if we don’t get more people in to see us, the circus will be stranded here in Lithuania.” Thad worked to keep the desperation out of his voice. The worst part was that he agreed with Dodd, and was arguing on behalf of something he hated. He felt like he’d been rolling in pig manure. “Do you honestly think we’ll be getting more people in ever? Today’s Saturday, and the stands aren’t even half full.” Come on, Dodd. This is quick money. An easy choice.

  “The tsar does enjoy a circus,” Sofiya said. She had seen the spiders, too.

  “We’re not much of a circus anymore.” Dodd drew his cane through his fingers. “The Gonta-Zalizniaks destroyed our mechanical elephant, and we lost all our other machines in the flood of Kiev. Even mine were wiped away. Half our performers scarpered during the attack, and we haven’t found them. Hell, Nathan’s the manager, but he’s had to go back to clowning to fill in the gaps.”

  He gestured at the ring, where a red-haired joey was scampering about the ring with a dripping white bucket.

  “We’re a shadow of what we were.” Dodd sighed. “Look, I wasn’t going to say anything until later, but Nathan and I have talked, and we’re thinking that we should cash the whole thing in. It’s time for the Kalakos to end.”

  Ice stabbed Thad’s chest. “Good Lord!” He touched the ringmaster’s striped shoulder despite himself. “I knew it was bad, but not that bad.”

  Dodd looked away. His expression drooped like a collapsing tent. “We’re not someone who can play for a tsar. There’s no point in going to Russia. Today’s our last performance.”

  “I like the clowns,” Nikolai piped up. “That one poured whitewash down his friend’s trousers.”

  “You can’t mean that!” Thad forgot about the spiders, forgot about Sofiya, forgot about Mr. Griffin. “The Kalakos is an institution. It dates back to the commedia dell’arte! This was the first circus to use automatons. Your clowns perfected the mirror gag. The Tortellis have flown here for generations. Every carny and circus runner in the world knows the name. You can’t close down!”

  “I’m sorry, Thad. Nathan felt the same way at first, but…” Dodd trailed off and Thad held his breath. The ringmaster stared at the ground for a long moment, not knowing he balanced on a knife blade. If Dodd refused, he and everyone in the circus would die today. If he accepted, they were probably only putting off their destruction until later.

  “You haven’t even heard the offer yet,” Thad said desperately.

  Dodd was still staring at the ground. “One man couldn’t possibly offer enough to—”

  Sofiya named a figure. Dodd’s head snapped back up.

  “That much?” he breathed.

  Sofiya flicked a glance at the watching spiders, then nodded.

  Dodd put a hand to his face. “Good Lord. I don’t know, Miss Ekk. That would keep us going even if we played to an empty Tilt for a month, but I’m not sure that it’s worth a trip through difficult territory. And winter’s coming. Saint Petersburg is difficult in winter.”

  Another spider had appeared, this time clinging onto the side of a passing wagon. Thad swallowed hard. Black guilt crawled over him. He was bringing a monster into the fold—a whole swarm of them. He was a traitor of the worst sort, offering to save the circus with one hand and feeding it poison with the other. His skin crawled. The words didn’t want to come, but he forced them out.

  “A circus is its people,” he said. Half a dozen spiders were now lined up along the slope of the tilt, and their claws gleamed. One of them edged forward. “A circus is art and show and performance. Not machinery.” Come on, Dodd. Swallow the poison.

  “Are all these people going to lose their lives?” Nikolai asked.

  “Jobs,” Thad said hurriedly. “They’ll lose their jobs. It’s up to Ringmaster Dodd, Nikolai. He can save the Kalakos Circus, if he wants to.”

  “Uh…” Dodd said.

  “Just take it,” Thad urged.

  “Please, mister?” Nikolai said. “We can’t let the circus die. All the elephants would be hungry.”

  There was a long pause. Sofiya started to speak, but Thad trod on her foot. At last Dodd said, “All right. Tell this Mr. Griffin it’s a deal. We’ll leave as soon as we pull down the Tilt and buy some coal.”

  “Hooray!” Nikolai clapped his hands. “I want to teach the elephants Russian.”

  Thad breathed out heavily and glanced at the Tilt. The spiders were gone.

  * * *

  Within the hour, two boxcars pulled by a team of oxen arrived at the circus grounds. Sofiya paid the drover and a roustabout supervised getting them hitched to the back of the circus train, all without opening either of them. Thad wondered what the hell was inside them. They were clearly locked against prying eyes, at any rate. Piotr Markovich, the strongman roustabout who was hitching the boxcars, appeared incurious, but Thad could see him examining them out of the corner of his eye. Rumors flew around the circus about the true nature of Mr. Griffin, and Thad had been avoiding people and their questions ever since Dodd had made the announcement. Sofiya, for her part, avoided Thad, for all that he tried to corner her for a talk, while Nikolai stuck close to Thad. It made for a strange dance.

  The boxcars, plain and brown, stood out among the brightly painted circus cars like a clump of poisoned leaves on a scarlet maple. Their arrival would have commanded rather more attention if everyone hadn’t been so busy. Already the Tilt was coming down, collapsing as gracefully as a duchess fainting in a hoopskirt, and animal cages and circus carts trundled into the train. A sprinkle of rain hurried everyone along. The horses, restless at knowing they would be confined, pranced into the stable car. The performers who lived in tents busily packed them away, and the ones who owned wagons hitched them to horses and hauled them into boxcars. Mama and Papa Berloni, who ran the grease wagons, handed out box lunches to those who wanted them. Most everyone would ride in the passenger car. Dodd had a private car, of course, and Nathan, the red-haired manager, always stayed with him. No one ever commented on that. Thad certainly didn’t.

  The spiders had all disappeared, though it seemed to Thad that he could feel their hard eyes on him anyway. He told Nikolai to stay with Sofiya at the boxcars and went back to his wagon, where he managed a quick wash and change of clothes, then set about packing. There wasn’t much to do, really. Smart travelers kept everything put away and ready to go at a moment’s notice, and Thad was tidy by nature. He emptied the stove, ran a quick inventory of weapons and tools, and was heading out to borrow a horse so he could bring h
is wagon to the train when a quiet voice behind him said, “Can I help?”

  Thad jerked around. Nikolai was there. His scarf had slipped, revealing dark hair, and the upper half of his face showed dark eyes. With his lower face still obscured, he looked perfectly human. A masterpiece indeed.

  “I don’t need help,” Thad said shortly. “And you shouldn’t be wandering around by yourself. I told you to stay with Sofiya.”

  “You’re supposed to give me something to do,” Nikolai said firmly. “Even if it’s little.”

  “Little?”

  “Unimportant. So I can learn how to do it, too. And to keep me out of trouble.”

  Thad cocked his head. “Have you been getting into trouble?”

  “You wouldn’t know,” Nikolai countered, “because you haven’t been watching. You’re supposed to watch.”

  A sting touched Thad’s heart. “How would you know that?” he said.

  But Nikolai just looked at him with relentless brown eyes. A long silence stretched between them.

  “Bless my soul,” Dante said at last.

  “I am not responsible for you,” Thad blurted out. “I’m not.”

  Nikolai still didn’t respond. He merely stood there, wrapped in accusing rags.

  A spark of anger crackled inside Thad now. “You’re a machine. You have no right, no right to look at me in that manner!”

  “You saved me from the bad man,” Nikolai said in his firm voice. “You’re supposed to take care of me now. That’s the way it is.”

  “There’s not any way—”

  “I’m hungry,” Nikolai interrupted.

  “Hungry,” Dante echoed. “I’m hungry.”

  “You aren’t hungry,” Thad said to—well, he wasn’t sure who he was speaking to. “I just fed you.”

  “Hungry,” Dante repeated. “Hungry.”

  “I’m hungry,” Nikolai said.

  Something small shifted inside Thad. For a moment he was back in the knife shop in Warsaw, with the smell of metal shavings and mineral oil and old water, with David tugging at his sleeve. But David lay beyond hunger now, beyond fear, beyond embrace. Snow lay cold on his grave in long Warsaw winters. In Thad’s quieter moments he thought perhaps Ekaterina might be holding David in some quiet, gentle place where they waited for him. Perhaps Ekaterina told David stories and sang him songs and he laughed and put his hands on her face. And then he remembered how David’s eyes had become fixed on the clockworker’s table and how his chest had stilled—an automaton shutting down. The warm, gentle place faded and the snow returned.

  “Inside.” Thad turned smartly back into the wagon, where a bit of rummaging turned up a bottle of brandy Thad mostly used for cleaning the cuts that were an occupational hazard. Nikolai accepted it and pulled down his scarf. His metal jaw and the hinge that fastened it to his skull nauseated Thad and he looked away as Nikolai raised the bottle. His initial revulsion warred with an impulse to stop a mere child from drinking heavy liquor.

  Everything should be clear. He should simply take Niko—the machine’s head off and sell his body to a smith to be melted down. Yet that thought made him sick, and he felt guilty for thinking it, and he didn’t understand why he felt guilty. The mishmash was all very odd, and he felt out of sorts. Someone else had slid a sword down his throat, and he didn’t dare move.

  He sat down on the bed, pulled a brass key from a chain around his neck, and inserted it into Dante’s back, hoping the familiar task would steady him. Silence filled the room, heavy as molten iron. Thad abruptly noticed the boy was standing with his back to the wall of dismembered souvenirs, almost as if he were one of them. An image of Nikolai’s arm nailed to the wall invaded Thad’s head.

  “Let’s go back outside,” he said abruptly, and ushered the boy down the short steps to the ground. The cloudy sky still threatened rain.

  “Hungry,” Dante said in Thad’s hands.

  “How…how often do you need to eat?” Thad asked, winding Dante’s key. Perhaps he should take a nip himself.

  Nikolai pulled his scarf back up, and he looked like a normal boy again. “It depends on how much I use. If I am quiet, I use very little. If I run or jump, I use more.”

  “What happens if you don’t get any…er, food?”

  “It’s very painful. Then I become tired. Then I just stop. I don’t like it. Do you like it when you can’t eat?”

  “I don’t think anyone does.”

  “Done,” Dante announced. “Done.”

  “You don’t like me,” Nikolai said. “Did I do something bad to make you not like me?”

  Thad kept on winding, uncomfortable. “What makes you think I don’t like you?”

  “You called me a machine and you said I don’t mean anything to you.”

  Thad wanted to say that the boy was a machine, that he didn’t mean anything. The sight of the boy’s inhuman face inevitably twisted something inside Thad’s gut and made him want to back away, or reach for a weapon, or both.

  He said, “I don’t—”

  “Done!” Dante shrieked. “Done!”

  Thad was overwinding the parrot. He pulled the key out and Dante scurried about on the crushed grass in a furious circle.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Nikolai asked.

  “Too much energy,” Thad said. “He’ll be all right in a minute.”

  “Why doesn’t he fly away?”

  “He can’t fly. He’s damaged. And anyway, I don’t think he could ever fly. He is made of brass, you know.”

  “It would be nice to fly,” Nikolai said wistfully. “Then I could go anywhere I pleased.”

  Thad gave him a strange look. “You’re an automaton. How can you want anything?”

  “I don’t know. I just do. How do you want anything?”

  “Coo coo!” Sofiya came around the corner of the wagon at that moment leading Kalvis, her brass horse. “All the other wagons are loaded on the train and the stable tent is down. You are behind, and I have come to catch you up.”

  “You.” Thad rounded on her, simultaneously angry at the woman and glad she gave him a change in subject. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Hitch up the horse while you talk. I do not want to miss the train.”

  Thad folded his arms. “You owe me information.”

  “I owe you nothing, Mr. Sharpe.”

  “Applesauce, applesauce,” blurted Dante, still scurrying about the ground. “Doom, defeat, despair. Darkness, death, destruction. Applesauce.”

  “I’m tired of dancing, Sofiya,” Thad said, deliberately switching to her first name. “You’ve sucked me into this little game without telling me why or wherefore. I don’t know why or what you’re playing at, but you’re going to tell me what’s going on or—”

  “Or what, Thad?” Sofiya replied. “You will threaten me with your knives? Point your pistols at my head? Tell your parrot to squawk in my direction?”

  “Or you’ll keep suffering the way you have been.”

  That stopped her. “I do not understand.”

  “Griffin has a hold on you, just like he has one on me,” Thad said. “His spiders watch your family, which is why you do what he says. Am I right?”

  Sofiya’s eyes strayed to the top of Thad’s wagon. No spiders. In the background, shouts and cries from the fading circus continued. Kalvis waited near Sofiya with brass patience, not even stomping a hoof. A wisp of steam curled from one nostril.

  “He watches my sister,” she said softly. “This is what he says. She lives in a village not far from here in Saint Petersburg, but always Mr. Griffin’s spiders watch her and wait for his command. Mr. Griffin pays me very well and I send the money to her so she does not need to work, but that does not make it feel much better.”

  Thad studied her. Sofiya’s face was stoic, but there was pain behind the mask. He could hear it in her voice, see it in the way she held herself. He wanted to know more, but couldn’t bring himself to pry. Later, he decided.

  “I’m sorry,” he said
instead.

  “Spaceeba. But in the meantime—”

  “In the meantime, we need to formulate a way out of this.” Thad curled a fist. “I don’t like being lied to, I don’t like being manipulated, and I definitely don’t like being enslaved to a filthy clockworker.”

  Sofiya didn’t respond.

  “He’s not like other clockworkers I know,” Thad continued. “Clockworkers don’t get along with normal people well enough to hire them. Not for long, anyway. There’s something wrong here. What do you know about him? Is he hiding in one of those boxcars or is he coming later? Tell me everything you know.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot.”

  “Sofiya.” Thad’s tone was gentle now. “We can beat him. I don’t like this any more than you do. I’ve convinced my friend to bring a monster into the circus. We can make a plan together and—”

  “I can tell you nothing more.” She smoothed her dress. “He watches my sister, and he may be watching us now.”

  “That’s how they win, Sofiya. They get inside your head and make you think they can do anything. They can’t. They’re only human.”

  Sofiya barked a small laugh. “I wish it were that simple. Nothing ever is.”

  “Exactly what does he need me for?” Thad pressed.

  “That I do not know, and it is the truth.” She sighed. “I am sorry you were pulled into this, and I am sorry your friends are in jeopardy. Truly so.”

  “I didn’t like it when the horse died,” Nikolai put in. He had edged up next to Thad. “It made me unhappy.”

  “I don’t work for clockworkers,” Thad said. “Not for money or anything else.”

  “That is why he makes threats,” Sofiya said. “No, threats is the wrong word. He will definitely hurt or kill your friends if you don’t do as he says. And he will do the same to my sister if I move against him. Those are not threats, they are facts. So for now, we must hitch my dreadful horse to your very nice wagon and bring it to the train, or the ringmaster will be very unhappy with his sword swallower and his new automaton.”

  Thad blinked. “Sorry. New automaton?”

  “Kalvis.” Sofiya patted the brass horse’s withers. “The big flood in Kiev left no automatons for the Kalakos Circus of Automatons and Other Wonders. Ringmaster Dodd was quite happy to have him.”