The Havoc Machine

by Steven Harper

  The machine had only one imperative: improve its own operation. It cared about nothing else, had no real mind or thought. It did as the Master said and carried out its orders.

  To that end, it captured another of the Master’s spiders and sent it up to a thing called an engineering library in the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which was almost directly above it on the place called Vasilyevsky Island across the River Neva and near another place called the Field of Mars and the Kalakos Circus.

  Thoughts of the circus awakened a small independent sensation in the machine. It felt a…longing. A desire. A want. The machine was indeed familiar with desire. It desired metal to build new parts so it could expand and improve itself. It desired to follow the Master’s orders as transmitted by the signal. It desired knowledge, also to improve itself. But those desires were all directed toward the machine’s directive of self-improvement. This desire was for something else, a desire the machine could not yet name.

  The machine would have to improve itself to the point where it could do so.

  Chapter Nine

  Thad pulled on fresh trousers, then looked at himself in the full-length mirror inside the door of the wardrobe in his wagon. Atop it was his bed, the one his parents used to sleep in and which he now used. Beside him on the wall hung his collection of clockwork trophies. They seemed forlorn now instead of menacing. The blank eyes of one of the automaton heads looked more reproachful than glassy. Maybe it was time to take them down. Beneath them, the fold-down shelf Sofiya had put him on was still piled up with dirty quilts. He had slept on that shelf as a very small boy, though in later years his parents had acquired a tent that draped over the front of the wagon to effectively double the living space, and Thad had slept on a camp bed out there.

  His hair was still damp from the bath, and he had even managed a shave. He was reaching for a fresh shirt when he caught his reflection in the mirror inside the wardrobe door. The brass hand gleamed at the end of his wrist. It looked strange against his bare skin. Cautiously, he held it up. In the mirror, his reflection did the same. Thad had a long, lean build, and his muscles were tightly corded, every one etched with acrobatic precision. The hand, in contrast, was spiky and uneven. The cogs spun smoothly, but they showed through, pulling on the wires that served as tendons. He ran a finger down his forearm, feeling the normal slide of his fingertip on his skin, until he met metal a few inches below where his wrist had been, and the sensation ended. He rapped on the hand with a knuckle. That he felt, more or less, though it could have just been vibrations transmitted to his wrist. Impulsively, he stuck a metal finger in the candlestick burning on the nearby table. At first he felt nothing. Then a rising heat came, and actual pain. He snatched his finger back, but the metal didn’t cool down quickly. Hissing through his teeth, he plunged the finger into the water pitcher. A faint psst rose from the liquid. The pain stopped.

  “Sharpe is sharp,” said Dante. “Bad boy, bad boy.” He was chinning himself upside down on a perch cobbled together from a pair of oaken ax handles and hung from the ceiling. The handles had deep beak marks all over them. Thad would have to build a new one soon. He was privately certain that if he left Dante alone with a block of marble, he would return to find a pile of stone chips and a cheerful parrot.

  “You are asking for trouble, birdbrain.” Thad shook the water from his hand, and the fingers clattered together like Dante’s dented feathers. There was still a delay between the time he wanted his hand to do something and the time it obeyed. He held it up one more time, turning it this way and that. It was better than losing a hand entirely, but…he had lost a hand. He couldn’t throw knives with it, swallow swords, or perform sleight of hand. He was a cripple. Half a man.

  Stop it, he told himself. Many people go through much worse. You just need practice. You’re fine.

  He didn’t feel fine.

  “Doom,” said Dante from his perch.

  “Shut it!” Thad snapped at the parrot’s reflection in the mirror. Then Thad paused. Something was off. He pulled open the other half of the wardrobe. Instead of his collection of weapons, he found more clothing. Women’s clothing—dresses and skirts and petticoats and blouses. Below them were folded a small stack of ragged shirts which looked to fit a small boy. For a terrible moment of hope, Ekaterina and David were alive again, their clothes in the wardrobe where they belonged. Then the thought fled. Sofiya must have put these here, and she had moved his weapons to do so. Annoyed, Thad flicked through the hanging articles. One of them felt heavy in the wrong place. Curious, he felt around. From the pocket of one skirt, he drew a photograph in a small frame. It was of a young woman, quite pretty, with long hair and wearing a pale dress. The family resemblance to Sofiya was unmistakable. The woman was sitting next to a spindly table that held a vase with flowers in it. It took Thad a moment to realize that the woman’s chair had wheels, and that only one shoe peeped out from under her skirts. She was missing a leg.

  Thad examined the picture more closely. Sofiya had mentioned her sister Olenka as a survivor of the clockwork plague, and the plague often crippled survivors, though as far as Thad knew, it twisted or paralyzed limbs. It didn’t cause them to fall off, except in people who became zombies. Perhaps an overeager physician had decided to amputate. In any case, it explained some of Sofiya’s reluctance to talk about her sister.

  He slipped the photograph back into its place, pulled out one of his own shirts, and shook it out. Where had she put his weapons? It bothered him a great deal that she had not only touched them, but moved them where he couldn’t find them.

  “Dammit, Sofiya!” he muttered.

  “Yes?” she said behind him.

  He dropped the shirt and spun around, automatically snapping out his hands for his knives, but the brass one fumbled, and the spring-loaded sheaths weren’t fitted to his forearms in any case. He got himself back under control.

  “That’s a good way to get killed,” he growled, pointing a metal finger at her collarbone.

  “That day will come later. You did promise,” she said. “What did you want?”

  “Where did you put my blades?”

  “In the Black Tent. Dodd gave me permission to store them there for now so Nikolai would not injure himself. You may retrieve them anytime you like.”

  “And these are yours, then.” He gestured sharply at the clothes in the wardrobe.

  She cocked her head. “Did you want to borrow something?”

  “Not my color,” he replied, refusing to be baited. “Why are they here?”

  “For three and a half days I could not leave you alone,” she pointed out. “Where else would I put my things? Nikolai needs something besides borrowed rags to wear, by the way. We are taking him shopping later.”

  “We?”

  “I have no wish to do this by myself. He is also your responsibility, so you will come to buy clothes.”

  “Nikolai is an automaton!” Thad said. “What does he need with clothes?”

  Sofiya put her hands on her hips. “He hauled us both onto the train as it was pulling away, but you begrudge him clothing? What sort of man are you?”

  He gave up. “All right, all right. We’ll buy him clothes.” Thad held up his hands. “It looks bad for the circus if he’s wandering around like a beggar anyway.”

  “Good.”

  “And then we hunt down Mr. Griffin.” Thad turned his brass hand in the light. “I won’t let him run loose after everything he’s done.”

  “Oh yes? And how do you propose to begin this hunt?”

  “Any number of ways.” Thad folded down fingers on his flesh-and-blood hand. “Make enquiries at machine shops and metal forges, search the city for his spiders and follow them, check abandoned buildings—”

  “Ah. And once he learns you search for him, he sends his army of spiders to tear the circus to pieces. Or perhaps just dismantle a few people while you watch. Very good planning. I like it.”

  Thad fell silent. Sofiya was right, t
hough he hated to admit it. There had to be a way around the problem. Griffin could not go free.

  “While you are planning this hunt,” Sofiya continued, “we should also speak with a tentmaker about adding on to this wagon like I have seen some of the other performers do. Three people can live in here, but it is crowded.”

  “Now look,” Thad began. “You can’t stay—”

  “And where else would I go? I can’t leave the circus. I am performing for the tsar in a few days, and Mr. Griffin will be looking for me—for us—eventually, so it would be awkward to move into a boardinghouse or hotel, what with spiders and things crawling after me. I will stay here.” She patted his cheek. “Do not worry, little one. Your virtue is safe. Though I have to say, you are doing a fine job of tempting me.”

  For the first time, Thad remembered he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He snatched his from the floor with a yelp and yanked it on. Sofiya covered her eyes with mock horror. “Oh me! I will go blind!”

  “Pretty boy, pretty boy!” Dante chinned himself on the perch. “Sharpe is sharp!”

  Thad turned his back to do up the buttons, but his new hand wouldn’t do the fine motions. He made a frustrated noise.

  “Let me.” Sofiya spun him around and finished the job before he could protest.

  “Thank you,” he said grudgingly. “Look, you can’t stay in my wagon. People will talk. We’ll get you a wagon or tent of your own.”

  “You think the two of us together will shock your friends?” Sofiya laughed. “Mama Berloni was divorced before she married Papa Berloni. Mordovo takes morphine when he isn’t sipping laudanum or drinking. And your ringmaster is all but married to his manager. I think everyone will find our living arrangements rather tame.”

  “Mama Berloni left her husband because he beat her and their daughter,” Thad replied sharply. “Mordovo was in an accident several years ago, so he takes the drugs to dull the pain. And Dodd and Nathan are good men who will give a beggar the last coins in their pockets.”

  “While we are flung together because of a dreadful clockworker who holds our loved ones hostage,” Sofiya added, “and because we are looking after a little automaton who fell into our laps. Honestly, no one cares what we do, Thad. Not here. You would know that if you spent more time out there instead of brooding in here.” Her tone lightened. “And there is no worry about the sleeping arrangements. Clockworkers sleep almost never and Nikolai sleeps not at all, so you may have the bed all to yourself.”

  “Yes, fine.” Feeling out of sorts, Thad gestured for her to turn her back so he could finish dressing, and she obeyed with a shrug. “So what do you do all night, if you don’t sleep?”

  “Dodd has said I can use the Black Tent.”

  Thad twisted his head to look at her, though all he could see was a waterfall of golden curls spilling over the crimson cloak. “He let you in there?”

  “Sometimes I must adjust Kalvis. His Black Tent has good tools for it, so he gave permission to use it as long as he is not there. I persuaded him.”

  “Persuaded or bullied?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  Thad adjusted his braces and reached for his jacket. He also took the precaution of pulling on a thin pair of leather gloves. No point in calling attention to his new hand if he didn’t need to. “At any rate, what exactly are you doing in there?”

  “Building.” She turned around and held out her hands. “Sometimes the madness comes on me, and I must build. The destruction of your hand brought the madness on me, fortunately for you. And it was good that Mr. Griffin had his own reasons for allowing it.”

  “Hm,” was all Thad could say. The hatred for Mr. Griffin smoldered like a crust of ash over lava. He held out his arm, and Dante hopped onto his shoulder.

  “Now that you are fully dressed,” Sofiya said, “we will shop. Bring money.”

  After some searching, they found Nikolai in the very Black Tent they had been discussing. The Black Tent wasn’t actually black, nor was it even a tent. It was instead one of the boxcars attached to the train. The main door had been slid open, and sounds of someone hammering on metal came from inside. An unlit forge sat outside next to an anvil. Thad poked his head into the car. Tools of all shapes and sizes hung on the walls. Worktables sat beneath, and they were littered with small machines and machine parts—cogs and keys and memory wheels and small axles and iron bolts and copper plating and more. Dodd was punching holes in a bit of brass. Next to him on the wooden table were two identical toy dogs, both half finished. Nikolai stood on a footstool, his eyes on Dodd’s hands.

  Originally the Black Tent had indeed been a blacksmith’s tent—hence the name—and it had always been pitched far away from the rest of the circus for fear of fire. Later, the Kalakos Circus had become successful enough to buy a boxcar for its metalworking, but the original name had stuck. Dodd was a tinker, a very good one, who could create clockwork toys and perform minor repairs. He could not, however, create anything like the machine at the end of Thad’s wrist or the rag-wrapped boy who stood by the tabletop, watching him work.

  Dodd, Thad happened to know, had once been a chimney sweep’s apprentice, which meant he was an orphan boy the sweep had bought from the church and forced into slave labor, crawling into claustrophobically narrow chimneys to scrub them clean. Eventually he had run away from his master over events he still refused to speak about. Thad suspected he had become a second-story thief; climbing boys were experts at scaling bricks and getting into small spaces. At some point, Dodd had tried to steal from Victor Kalakos, but instead of turning the boy over the to the police, Victor had taken him on as an apprentice. Several years later, when Kalakos died without an heir, it seemed perfectly natural for Dodd to step into his shoes, even though his last name wasn’t Kalakos. Indeed, Thad didn’t know if Dodd even had a last name.

  Thad had no idea how Dodd and Nathan had met, nor did he care to ask.

  Dodd finished the holes on the metal plate, fitted it onto one of the dogs, and used a squeezer to pop the rivets that held it in place.

  “There,” Dodd said. “Now you.”

  Nikolai picked up the hammer and the punch, studied them them for a moment, and looked at a second piece of brass on the worktable. Thad heard the tiny whirring sound of memory wheels. In rapid-fire succession, Nikolai punched perfectly even holes around the edge of his bit of brass. His hands moved so quickly, Thad could barely follow them. Then he popped the piece into place and squeezed every rivet into place with mechanical precision. The entire operation took only a few seconds.

  “Bless my soul!” Dante squawked.

  “Oi!” Thad said, climbing the short staircase into the Black Tent. “What are you blackguards up to, then?”

  “It’s fun!” Nikolai brandished the squeezer. His scarf had fallen away, creating a sharp contrast between his boyish demeanor and his half-mechanical face.

  “Your…automaton has an interesting function,” Dodd said. “He learns quickly. Instantaneously, really. I’m not sure how, but he does.”

  “It’s fun,” Nikolai repeated.

  “Don’t let him get in the way,” Thad said. “If he bothers you, send him away.”

  “Not at all. I enjoy his company.” Dodd picked up one of the dogs and wound it with a key. The dog strutted mechanically round the worktable, paused, sat, and sprang into a backflip. Nikolai wound his own dog, which did the same thing. “It’s nice to have the money to tinker again. I haven’t made anything in months and months. I do miss my spiders, though.”

  Sofiya was staring about the Black Tent with a haunted look on her face. “Would you like them back again?”

  Before Dodd could respond, Thad jumped in. “We’ve come to take Nikolai off. He needs clothes.”

  Nikolai whirred again. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Applesauce,” Dante muttered.

  “What?” Thad said.

  “I don’t want to go,” Nikolai repeated firmly. “I want to stay here with Dodd.”


  Confused, Thad traded looks with Sofiya. Nikolai had never refused a command before. “We could go later, I suppose,” Thad said slowly.

  “No!” Nikolai’s eyes flickered. “That’s not right.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You’re the papa. You have to make me go, even if I don’t want to. It builds character.”

  Sofiya clapped a hand over her mouth. Dodd’s expression went carefully wooden.

  “Ah,” said Thad. “And I suppose you’re going to complain the entire time we’re out.”

  He jumped down from the stool. “Yes.”

  “Doom,” said Dante.

  * * *

  They crossed the Field of Mars and the heavily trafficked street that ran along it to the long, elaborate barrack, in front of which waited a line of izvostchik, the little roofless carriages that provided for-hire transportation. At the forefront of each sat a man in a padded blue coat bound with a sash or heavy belt, and a flat-topped, black hat. All the men wore bushy beards, each combed and elaborately styled. The coats and the beards combined to make the men look big enough to haul the carriages without the help of a horse, and fierce enough to try.

  “Vanka!” Sofiya called. “I wish to shop at Peter’s Square!”

  The izvostchik drivers turned as one and began shouting in Russian.

  “My cab is the finest in the city, lady! I will take you everywhere you—”

  “He is a fool! My cab is much more comfortable, and the fastest in—”

  “My cab! My cab! No smoother ride in town!”

  “I know every merchant and seller, lady, and I can find you the best prices!”