The Havoc Machine

by Steven Harper

  “That makes as much sense as anything in my life does.” Thad sighed. “At any rate, I’m glad for it—”

  “Her.”

  “—because it means we’re on the right track. Come on.”

  They moved slowly down the tunnel, ducking their heads to avoid hitting the low ceiling. Thad kept a sharp eye out for trip wires, suspiciously clean sections of flooring, areas of wall that looked too new—or too old. Once, he found a guillotine-like device cleverly designed to drop from the ceiling. Another time, he stopped Sofiya from touching a trigger connected to a series of gas jets that would have ignited a ball of flame designed to incinerate them both. She examined the latter with interest, but Thad pulled her along. He felt in his element now, in control, the hunter going after unsuspecting prey. His senses felt heightened, and he was aware of everything around him—the rustle of Sofiya’s skirts, the grinding creak of Dante’s gears, the heat from the candle near his head, the drip of water from the stones, the dampness in the air. Every step brought him closer to Griffin, closer to finding the truth.

  Light glowed from around a bend in the tunnel ahead, and unintelligible voices echoed against the stones. Thad also heard other familiar sounds—the bloop of thick liquid and the hiss of steam and the clatter of metal on metal, the same sounds he had heard from Mr. Griffin’s boxcar. Truly excited now, Thad put a finger to his lips, and the four of them—two humans and two automatons—proceeded cautiously forward. Adrenaline zipped through Thad’s veins and he had to force himself to stay slow. He drew his pistol. Sofiya produced her one-shot energy weapon. Maddie crawled around to Sofiya’s other shoulder. Slowly, carefully, they slid around the bend.

  The tunnel ahead of them opened up and looked about fifteen feet down into a chamber that had clearly been enlarged recently to the size of a ballroom. It was lined with new stone and brass plating. Spiders of all sizes, from pocket watch to Saint Bernard, scuttled across all surfaces. But it was the center of the room that drew Thad’s attention. The hub of the enormous space was occupied by an impressive apparatus of copper, brass, and glass. Pipes and cables snaked in all directions. Closed vats sat above quiet fires tended by watchful spiders. Banks of dials and switches and levers were everywhere. In the middle of it all was a high platform, nearly on eye level with the tunnel Thad and Sofiya were spying from. On the platform was a large bell jar filled with viscous fluid. Multiple pipes and wires were connected to the glass and the base it rested on. Inside the jar floated a pink, convoluted human brain.

  A number of thoughts rushed around Thad’s mind and crashed together like explosive meteors. It couldn’t be. The idea was utterly impossible, but it wouldn’t go away. All the clues had been there from the beginning, but Thad hadn’t seen them—the boxcar filled with strange equipment, the difficulty in travel, the communication by distance, the need to have others act on his behalf, that strange ability to work with others.

  “That brain,” Sofiya breathed, echoing his thoughts, “is Mr. Griffin.”

  There were other people in the room. One section sported tables and chairs, and several men were having an animated discussion over papers and diagrams spread over a desk. Others helped the spiders tweak the machinery. A number of large alcoves ringed the room, each outfitted with laboratory equipment, though one was stuffed with plants growing under an electric light. Some of the plants moved. Both men and women worked away, one to each alcove, six in all.

  “Clockworkers,” Thad whispered, not sure whether he was shocked or disgusted. “Those are clockworkers.”

  “Are you sure?” Sofiya touched the spider on her shoulder.

  “Of course I’m sure,” Thad snapped. A large group of people was the last thing Thad had expected. No clockworker he had ever encountered operated this way. The surprise both startled and angered him. “The question is, how does he—”

  “Mr. Sharpe! Miss Ekk!” It was the chocolate-smooth voice of Mr. Griffin. “I know you’re up there. Please come down.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sofiya made a small sound. A pang of fear stabbed Thad’s chest. He tensed to grab Sofiya’s arm and run, though he was also aware that he had drawn his pistol. All the men in the room turned to look up at the mouth of the tunnel, which was about fifteen feet off the floor for them. The clockworkers, for their part, ignored the exchange.

  “Don’t bother trying to fire that weapon,” Griffin said. “It won’t break my dome. Come down, please. No one will hurt you.”

  Thad’s instincts still told him to run, but where would he go? Mr. Griffin knew where the circus was, knew Thad was here, so why bother? Carefully, he holstered his pistol and climbed down the rungs below the mouth of the tunnel, his brass hand clinking on the metal. Sofiya came next, and he helped her to the floor. The men, perhaps twenty in all, approached with serious looks on their faces. There was no consistency to them—some were young men, perhaps students, some were older, one was even elderly. Two wore well-cut suits, and others wore blousy peasant’s clothing. One had a soldier’s bearing, though he was in a plain shirt and trousers. They looked concerned, but not alarmed.

  “All right,” Thad said, “we’re here. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Sharpe, and you, Miss Ekk.” The smooth voice seemed to come from everywhere, and Thad’s eyes darted about, trying to find the speaker boxes. He finally settled on looking at the brain on its platform, but that was unsettling. “I would have had to send for you soon if you hadn’t arrived on your own. Might we offer you some tea? Or vodka, perhaps?”

  “Thank you, no.” Thad’s mind was scrambling to keep up. He was still tensed for a fight. “Who are these men? What is happening? Why are you…in a…jar?”

  One of the men, a dark-haired student in checkered trousers and a brown jacket, thrust out a hand. He was in his midtwenties, and had a mustache that didn’t begin to disguise his baby face. “My name is Zygmund Padlewski. You are Thaddeus Sharpe and Sofiya Ekk, true? Mr. Griffin has spoken well of you.” His Russian had a Polish accent.

  Thad shook his hand in confusion. “Has he?”

  “Very much. My colleagues and I were just discussing the best way to approach you, in fact, but now you are here, and will save us a great deal of time.”

  “What is going on?” Sofiya exploded.

  Silence fell across the room, broken only by the drip and bloop of liquid through the pipes.

  “Yes, of course,” Zygmund said at last, clearly embarrassed at such an outburst from a woman. “We must explain. Tea? Vodka?”

  “Just. Explain,” Thad hissed.

  Zygmund coughed and turned to the other men. “I can do this. Perhaps the rest of you could return to our work?”

  The men dispersed with reluctant looks at Sofiya. Thad shifted. He had forgotten how beautiful she was, doubly so to men who spent their days in a sewer. “Please be quick,” he said.

  “We are the Reds,” Zygmund said. “We are dedicated to making Russia a better place.”

  A minor explosion puffed from one of the clockworker alcoves, filling the air with the smell of sulfur. Thad gave it a wary look. He had been wrenched around from being in control and in his element to feeling like a lost child. This entire place, with its machines and inventors’ alcoves and a brain in a damned jar was so far beyond natural, it made a circus parade look commonplace. He could barely breathe, and he wanted nothing more than to get away. The brain in the jar had no eyes, but several of the spiders had turned their attention toward Thad. It was like being at the center of a knife thrower’s target.

  “Your goal sounds very nice,” said Thad, “and I’ll want to hear all about it, but first I need to speak with Mr. Griffin. I’m very sorry, but a brain in a jar rather snares my interest.”

  “It was an obvious choice, really,” said Mr. Griffin in English. “Once I realized I had become a clockworker and I calculated I had less than two years to live, it seemed to me the only option. I say with some immodesty that my spiders are the mos
t advanced in the world, and once I set up the proper apparatus, they were able, at my orders, to extract my cerebral tissue and suspend it in cerebrospinal fluid I extracted from a number of volunteers.”

  Thad’s skin crawled. “Volunteers?”

  “Of course. They had to be volunteers. Fear and anger taint the fluid with too much adrenaline and other hormones that give a…bad taste. Every one of them was properly persuaded.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Zygmund, “but I don’t speak—”

  Sofiya said, “Where did you find—?”

  “The main problem lies in keeping the fluids fresh,” Mr. Griffin continued as if no one had spoken. “And at the proper temperature, with nutrients and oxygen and so forth. It takes a great deal of delicate equipment, and the fluid itself must be flushed and refreshed on a regular basis, which requires more volunteers.”

  “Sharpe is sharp,” said Dante.

  “How many more?” Thad said, thoroughly nauseated by now. Just when he thought he had encountered everything he could about clockworkers, he discovered something even worse. That brain was floating in the fluids of…dozens?…hundreds?…of dead human beings.

  “Not a subject you need concern yourself with.” Griffin’s impossibly smooth voice was difficult to read. Thad couldn’t tell if he was calm or annoyed or testy. Through it all, his machines continued to pump and puff and grind while fluids rushed through the pipes. “As I predicted, the benefits were immediate. The progress of the clockwork plague slowed to a near crawl. No clockworker lives longer than three years, but I contracted the disease twelve years ago.”

  Here Thad did stare. This entire conversation was unsettling beyond measure, made worse by the fact that he was talking to a brain surrounded by a pile of machinery. There was no face, no eye contact, no body language, nothing but a voice that came from hidden speaker boxes. It was like hearing a demon in church. The news that Mr. Griffin had lived four times longer than any known clockworker only made it worse. Clockworkers were mad geniuses who could create incredibly destructive machines, but at least they died within a relatively short time. This one, this extremely dangerous one, had found a way around that. Thad cast about, trying to keep his desperation under control. He didn’t understand the machinery, and it was heavily guarded by the spiders, in any case. If he tried to damage any of it or shut it down, the spiders would be on him in moments. An explosive would take care of Mr. Griffin—and the other clockworkers—in a trice, but that assumed Thad could find the parts for one, and in any case, the room was also occupied by normal men. Thad couldn’t stomach that idea. Mr. Griffin had chosen his situation well.

  “I speak Polish and Russian and some Lithuanian,” Zygmund spoke up again. “Perhaps we could carry on in one of those languages?”

  “No!” shouted the clockworker surrounded by plants. “That can’t be wrong! I compensated for the chlorophyll transposition, but the plastids are falling apart at the microscopic level.”

  “Shut up,” snarled one another clockworkers who was scribbling equations on a blackboard. “If I hear another word about plastids, I’m going to build the maximal bombardatron pistol and blow your bloody balls off.”

  The first clockworker raised a fist, and one of his plants extended a number of thorny tendrils. “Then I’ll—”

  “Gentlemen!” A spider raised the volume on one of Mr. Griffin’s speaker boxes. “That will do!”

  “Yeah? Maybe this will do!” The equation clockworker picked up a sledgehammer with easy strength and threw it across the room. It struck Mr. Griffin’s jar and bounced off without a scratch.

  A sound burst from Mr. Griffin’s speaker boxes. It was a pair of musical notes played together, not quite minor, not quite major. Thad, who knew nothing about music, could only tell it was ugly. The clockworkers howled and clapped their hands over their ears, even though the sound lasted less than half a second. To Thad’s surprise, Sofiya did the same thing, and screamed. The sound ended.

  “Don’t make me do it twice, gentlemen,” Mr. Griffin said icily.

  Both clockworkers immediately fell silent and went back to work. Sofiya uncovered her ears. She was panting, and her eyes were wide.

  “What was that?” Thad demanded.

  “Tritone,” Mr. Griffin said. “It’s the only musical interval that has a vibration ratio of one to the square root of two, an irrational number. As a result, clockworkers find the sound…uncomfortable. I, fortunately, no longer experience this difficulty.”

  Thad had never heard of this aspect of clockworkers, and it surprised him. A bit of music that hurt clockworkers would be very handy, and he filed the fact away for later with a guilty, sideways glance at Sofiya.

  “A tritone does have its use, though as a tool it is rather blunt, which is a reason I’ve brought you here, Mr. Sharpe, and one we’ll discuss later,” Mr. Griffin continued. One of his machines gave a shrill whistle, and a trio of spiders rushed to make adjustments to the dials and switches. “But I was saying that removing my body has brought about a certain…calm. I am not sure why this is. I no longer have adrenal glands to stir up my chemistry, that is certain. I no longer feel pain, nor do I fear tritones, nor do I fall into fugues.”

  “So you are able to function in a society,” Sofiya breathed. She smoothed her hair. “This is why you are able to hire me, and bring in these men and these other clockworkers.”

  “Exactly.” Here Mr. Griffin sounded extremely pleased. “I am superior to other clockworkers in every way.”

  With those words, an analytical wheel clicked in Thad’s mind, and he had to stop the relief from crossing his face. Mr. Griffin did have a weakness, and despite his protestations to the contrary, it was the same one that plagued most other clockworkers.

  “Or even French,” Zygmund put in. “I might manage French.”

  “I’m impressed,” Thad said aloud. “I’ve never come across a clockworker as advanced as you, sir, and I know clockworkers.”

  “I must apologize, Mr. Sharpe. You were outmatched from the moment I learned of you, though I know you had to try to outmaneuver me. I bear you no ill will.”

  Thad flexed his brass hand. “Indeed. But your plan, whatever it is, couldn’t possibly be that brilliant. You can’t outwit an entire country. The tsar and his army are quite—”

  “You have no idea!” Mr. Griffin boomed, and Zygmund scurried back to the other men at their tables. “The tsar is nothing! I will have my way with Russia, and everything will change because of me!”

  There it was: the clockworker ego. Even Mr. Griffin wasn’t immune to that. Thad merely had to find a way to exploit it.

  “How are you changing Russia, exactly?” Thad asked reasonably. “Even the tsar himself is encountering opposition, and all he wants to do is free the serfs.”

  “My men—that is, my colleagues—and I are working to support the tsar in his campaign to free the serfs,” Mr. Griffin replied, more smoothly this time. “We are also working to change the way Russians treat clockworkers.”

  This statement got Sofiya’s attention. “Please explain this.”

  Another of Mr. Griffin’s machines abruptly went poot and puffed a noisome cloud of brown smoke. Instantly it was surrounded by spiders that set to work on it with quick claws.

  “Mr. Padlewski.” Griffin’s voice had a metallic note to it now. “Perhaps you could explain our plan for the serfs while I am…indisposed.”

  Zygmund bowed, looking eager as a puppy. “In Polish or Russian?”

  “I’m happy with Polish,” said Thad, trying not to be too obvious about watching the spiders repair the machine. Every scrap of information he could glean about Mr. Griffin was worth having.

  “You want to help both the serfs and the clockworkers?” Sofiya prompted, also in Polish.

  “Not all the landowners want to keep the peasants as serfs,” Zygmund said brightly. “Several of them would be happy to let the serfs go, provided the mortgages are forgiven. Others want to be paid for their loss. The ts
ar is still deciding how it will happen—assuming he is not assassinated first. We also have the support of many intellectuals. The Russian Academy of Sciences supports emancipation, as does—”

  “Yes, yes,” Thad said. “What does this have to do with clockworkers?”

  “Clockworkers are treated worse than serfs,” Zygmund said. “Surely you have seen that. They are worked to exhaustion, and then tortured to death for the amusement of the court. We have rescued a few and brought them down here. They help as best they can.”

  Again, Thad found himself split down the middle of his own sword. He had no love for clockworkers, but no one deserved to be treated the way Russia treated its clockworkers. At minimum they deserved a quick, painless death, which was what Thad worked to give them.

  “The peasants in Russia and in the Polish-Lithuanian Union are ready to revolt,” Zygmund said. “It will come very soon, probably this winter, when the army has a harder time moving about. We are working to whip them up with speeches and demonstrations. If we can overthrow the tsar—”

  “Wait!” Thad held up his hands. “Wait a moment! You want to overthrow the tsar?”

  “Of course.” Zygmund looked puzzled. “There is no other way. He wants to free the serfs, yes, but that will come through one of two ineffective methods. Alexander might free the serfs and give them their own land, in which case the landowners will simply increase taxes to make up for the loss, or he might free them but leave the land in the hands of the landowners, in which case the serfs will be forced to work for the landowners or starve just as they do now. And, of course, no matter what the tsar does with the serfs, he and the court will continue to hate and torture clockworkers. No, the only way to create lasting change is to remove the tsar and his court entirely and replace it with a new government, an elected parliament that answers to the people, not a despotic tyrant.”

  Thad was deeply shocked by this. He wasn’t a subject of Tsar Alexander, and felt no loyalty for him, but these men were talking regicide.