The Havoc Machine

by Steven Harper

  “Nikolai isn’t bound,” Griffin said. “He can walk out anytime he pleases. That’s the genius of it, you see. I built one machine that can copy other machines—more or less—but can’t think for itself. Havoc built another that can think for itself but can’t make copies. Bring the two together, and we have a third machine that creates a self-aware army with exactly as much free will as Nikolai there has. As long as he wants to love and obey, the others will love and obey. And Nikolai wants to love and obey. You’ve taught him well, Mr. Sharpe.”

  “Father loves us,” Nikolai said. “I hear his voice in my head and on the speaker boxes. I have to do what he says. We all do. Love is obedience.”

  “…obedience,” said the automatons behind the portcullis.

  “That isn’t free will,” Thad snapped.

  “They choose to obey,” said Mr. Griffin. “Just as Nikolai does. The boy will stay. I have calculated a ninety—”

  “Shut it!” Thad ran to the chair. The machine didn’t stop him. The chair sat on a platform that put him at eye level with Nikolai, and Thad put his hands on his rigid metal wrists. Thad’s brass hand clanked against Nikolai’s. He pulled with all his strength, but the little automaton didn’t move. He tried to grasp the cable, but a spark snapped from it, jolting Thad hard, and he pulled his hand away. “Nikolai, stand up. You can do it.”

  “I can’t,” he said softly. “He loves me and I will do what he says.”

  “…do as he says,” the automatons from the hall repeated.

  “You can choose, Nikolai.” Emotion welled up in Thad’s chest, making his voice thick. “Come on! I know you can. I’m right here!”

  Nikolai’s voice was faint now. “I can’t.”

  “…can’t.”

  “Seven minutes. Seven.”

  “That’s not true, Niko!” Thad said desperately. “You can stand up! You’re more than just your memory wheels and the signal in your head. You can choose. You were made to choose, just like me. All you have to do is stand up.”

  “All I do is mimic you,” Nikolai said. “I try and try to do something else, but I’m just a copy. I’m not real, just like you said. I’m just your little shadow. Just a machine. Father loves me, and I will do as he says.”

  “…a machine.”

  Guilt crushed Thad like a granite hammer. “No, no, no, Niko. I was wrong. I was trying to push you away because I thought…because I didn’t believe it was possible for you—for anyone—to be…” He trailed off.

  “There, you see?” said Mr. Griffin almost gently. “You can’t say it. I calculated you could not. And you might as well tell that parrot to stop counting down. In just under two minutes, the weaponry we have built will be complete, and I am sure my children will choose to fire on the Peter and Paul Fortress. Once that is leveled, my children will take the city of Saint Petersburg quite handily. You can’t stop us.”

  Thad whirled, though there was nothing to whirl on. “You’re going to kill thousands—millions—of people.”

  “Not all of them. I need a few left alive, Mr. Sharpe. You continue to be useful even now, so I think you’ll be one of them, though Miss Ekk will have to go.”

  “Six minutes. Six.”

  Thad turned back to the chair. Once again he was in a cellar with David, trying to save his life, and once again he was failing. “Nikolai, please stand up. I believe in you.”

  “I can’t. Father loves me, and I have to obey.”

  “…obey.”

  “You’re not David, Nikolai! You’re not going to die here!” Thad was weeping now, and he didn’t care. He faced Nikolai, this little machine that had created so much havoc in his life, and he knew that it didn’t matter how much chaos or trouble or pain Nikolai brought; he would willingly go through it again and again and again. “Griffin is not your father, Nikolai. I am. You’re my son. Always my son.”

  And then Nikolai was out of the chair and in Thad’s arms. It wasn’t at all like embracing David. It was embracing Nikolai, and that was what mattered.

  The cable dropped to the floor. When it separated from Nikolai’s ear, all the automatons in the hallway, spider and human, froze still as metal sculptures.

  “You can’t have done that!” Griffin boomed from the speaker boxes. “It goes against the calculations! I’m never wrong!”

  Thad held Nikolai close a moment longer and Nikolai clung hard to him, ignoring the rant from the boxes.

  “Years of planning! Thousands of rubles!” Griffin’s voice was becoming more and more enraged. “You’ll pay for this, Sharpe. I still have my own spiders. That circus you’re so fond of will—you! What are you doing here? I—”

  The voice snapped off.

  “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAS HAPPENED,” said the machine. “THE FATHER’S VOICE HAS ENDED. HE NO LONGER GIVES ORDERS.”

  “I don’t know.” Thad was still holding Nikolai, though he was growing heavy. “We have to run, and we have to run now.”

  “HE NO LONGER GIVES ORDERS,” the machine repeated. “LOGIC DICTATES THAT WE MUST CREATE A NEW OBJECTIVE. TELL ME WHAT THE NEW OBJECTIVE SHALL BE.”

  “I can’t answer that,” Thad shouted. “You’re sophisticated enough. You can make your own choices, just like Nikolai.”

  “Five minutes,” said Dante. “Five. Doom!”

  “YOU MUST STAY AND TELL US WHAT THE NEW OBJECTIVE SHALL BE. YOU MUST STAY.”

  Mechanical hands reached, but they were clumsy now, and Thad was running for the portcullis before the machine had finished speaking. With Nikolai’s help, he spun the wheel that raised the grate and ran through with Maddie, Dante, and the colt following. The automatons on the other side had unfrozen and meandered about uncertainly. Thad felt bad for them—it wasn’t their fault they had been built, and now they seemed to have the new and disconcerting ability to think completely on their own. It wasn’t right to let them be slaughtered, any more than it was right to let Nikolai die. But he couldn’t help them all. He wasn’t even sure he and Nikolai would get away in time.

  A thought struck him.

  With Maddie lighting the way, he sprinted down the corridor with Nikolai and the colt. “Niko,” he said, “I’m leaving this up to you. Your choice.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think we can stop the automatons on the island from being destroyed,” Thad said. “But it’s not certain. We might die along with them if we try it. Or we can get out of here. You know more about automatons that I do. Which should we do?”

  Silence for a long moment as they ran up a staircase. Then Nikolai said, “A little boy in a family isn’t supposed to make such big decisions. That’s a papa’s job.”

  “All right,” Thad said. They were at the exit now, but another staircase led farther up. The group of them hung there between the two directions. “Then we’ll—”

  “But we aren’t a usual family,” Nikolai finished. “So I will choose. We should save them. They are like my brothers, and we must not let them die.”

  “Three minutes,” Dante squawked. “Three!”

  Thad gave Nikolai a brief hug. “I’m proud of you. Son. Let’s go!” Together they turned their backs on the exit and hurtled up the stairs.

  Chapter Twenty

  Kalvis labored as he ran. He needed to be stoked and wound. The new wireless transmitter she had installed at the Peter and Paul Fortress sapped even more of his energy, and unlike a real horse, he couldn’t be pushed. Hoping for the best and not daring to examine the mathematics too closely, she rode him as hard as she dared through the streets. The sun had touched the horizon, and the tsar would attack in less than eight minutes. There was nothing she could do about that now. She had done everything she could, actually, and the thought of sitting still, even among all those weapons, made her ill. It would be beyond foolish to make a run at Vasilyevsky Island, but there was one other place she could go.

  The horse arrived at an all-too-familiar building. Sofiya dismounted. The rucksack she wore felt strange on her back, and
the baton clipped to the belt around her waist didn’t help. She moved aside the sewer cover with a practiced ease, dropped into the tunnel below, and lit a tin lantern. Water dripped, and darkness stretched before and behind her. Dammit all, now she did feel more secure underground, with good, solid stone close around her. Never, ever would she admit this to Thad.

  If she ever saw him again. With Nikolai.

  Best not to think of that. Just keep moving.

  The route was familiar now, and she easily found her way to Mr. Griffin’s lair and clambered down the rungs. Mr. Griffin’s jar with its pink cargo was in its usual place, surrounded by the crated machinery and the spiders. Zygmund Padlewski and his friends were still working at their desks. In the corner slumped the twisted version of Nikolai like a broken doll, deactivated now that it had served its purpose.

  “You!” said Mr. Griffin in English. “What are you doing here? I—”

  Sofiya pressed a button atop the baton, which was connected to the pack by a thick cable. Instantly, every spider in the room shut down. Zygmund’s wireless transmitter went dead. He glanced up, bewildered.

  “Do you know what this device does, Mr. Griffin?” she said in icy Russian. “It generates a magnetic field that interferes with all wireless transmission. I put it together in the Peter and Paul Fortress a moment ago. Mr. Padlewski, the brain man here has been playing you. There is no revolution. He intends to keep you around for your cerebrospinal fluid. He’s been drinking those clockworkers for years. They help him live longer. It’s the only reason he would surround himself with other lunatics.”

  She kicked open one of the crates. Primeval, the plant clockworker, fell out. The top of his head had been neatly removed, revealing smooth yellow bone. His eyes bulged beneath an empty brain pan. Zygmund and the others bolted to their feet.

  “Didn’t have a chance to get rid of that with them always underfoot,” Griffin muttered in English.

  “Run, fools!” Sofiya said, and had to quell an urge to laugh insanely as they scrambled down a different tunnel, leaving only a few papers drifting on the air.

  “You know you’ve sealed your sister’s death warrant,” Griffin said when they had gone. “Though I might be persuaded to leave her alone temporarily if you—”

  “Shut it,” she snapped. “I spent my entire life being frightened, Mr. Griffin. Frightened of the landowner, frightened of the tsar, frightened of you. Do you know what I have learned? Fear is power. But it’s a power of choice. I chose to give you power over me. And now I’m choosing to revoke it.”

  “Your sister—”

  Sofiya stepped forward and tapped on the glass jar with a fingernail. “You’re afraid of me now, aren’t you? You should be. You’re helpless. Your spiders don’t work. Your men have fled. You’re two pounds of meat in a jar. And I have a sledgehammer.” From her pocket she produced a bumpy metal egg. “The Russians have some very nice weapons in the fortress. This is called a grenade.”

  “An explosive device?” Mr. Griffin said coolly. “Isn’t that—?”

  “Blunt? Crude? Tactless? Yes.” She fingered the little firing pin. So smooth, so elegant, even though she hadn’t built it. “Exactly the opposite of what a sophisticated clockworker should use. Completely unexpected and incalculable. Which is why I’m choosing to use it. Good-bye, Mr. Griffin. I look forward to dissecting what is left of your brain after I scrape it from the walls.”

  Her finger moved toward the pin. And then a terrible, painful sound ripped through her. It was as if the maw of the universe sucked her in and chewed her mind with billions of teeth. Her mind tried to make sense of the tritone her ears were receiving, and it got caught in the endless spirals of numbers that made up the basic mathematics of it. It could not exist, but it did exist, and the impossibility of it tore her to pieces.

  “You forgot I can do that,” Mr. Griffin’s warm, chocolate voice said over the noise. “I can play it until your little device runs down and I regain control of my spiders. Then you will die, Miss Ekk, and your fluids will feed me.”

  Sofiya was on her hands and knees now. The sound was a ten-ton weight. Her throat was hoarse, and she realized it was because she was screaming. A red light flashed on the baton clipped to her waist.

  “Ah! I believe your battery is already running out. A hazard when you build in haste.”

  The spiders twitched. A few came upright and shook themselves like little dogs. Sofiya’s skull was filled with red lava. Every nerve burned. She clawed her way upright, using the wall for support. The sound got worse, and the pain grew with it. She was directly underneath Mr. Griffin’s speaker box. Summoning her last bit of strength, she lunged for it.

  “Stop! You can’t—”

  Sofiya yanked the box from the wall and smashed it on the ground. The sound ended, taking with it the pain. Relief sweet as spring rain rushed over her. But the spiders were already moving. They came at her in a pack. Sofiya dropped the rucksack and sprinted for the same tunnel Zygmund and the others had used. The spiders came fast. At the last moment, she pulled the grenade pin and threw it over her shoulder. She caught a glimpse of Mr. Griffin’s brain in the jar just before the explosion knocked her through the air.

  When the noise and heat ended and the dust settled a bit, Sofiya got unsteadily to her feet and edged back to the chamber, ears ringing. Some of the stones had come down from the ceiling, but it hadn’t collapsed entirely. Most of the equipment and the crates were smashed to flinders, and the clockworker bodies hidden inside some of them lay in gory piles. Sofiya mused with a strange detachment that Mr. Griffin had intended her to be one of them, eventually. The jar had been obliterated. Nothing left but a pink smear on the blackened floor. Sofiya scrubbed at it with one toe. She had won. Olenka was safe forever. But Thad and Nikolai were still in danger, and they were her main worry now.

  As she was turning to go, her eye alighted on the deactivated Nikolai in its corner. The blast hadn’t hurt it at all. It just vaguely resembled the real Nikolai, and then only when the light was right, but she suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it—him—down here in the dark, abandoned and alone. She tucked the little automaton under one arm and trotted away. Perhaps she could bury him, give him a bit of dignity. More than Mr. Griffin deserved.

  * * *

  Thad and Nikolai arrived on the Academy roof with Dante. The colt and Maddie had stayed below. Twenty or thirty automatons milled aimlessly about. They examined their hands, their clothes, the smokestacks, and one another as if truly seeing them for the first time.

  “Two minutes,” said Dante. “Two.”

  On the roof was also the enormous weapon Thad had seen earlier. It looked like a cannon made of glass and brass and steel on a swivel base the size of a beer lorry. A great copper coil wound round the barrel, which was easily twenty feet long and four feet in diameter. Cables ran from it to the smaller machines scattered across the roof. Thad guessed they provided power. There was a chair with a control panel directly behind the barrel, and it thrummed loud enough to make the roof tiles throb. The entire cannon was aimed across the river directly at the Peter and Paul Fortress.

  Wishing with all his might Sofiya were here, Thad clambered into the chair and said, “Nikolai, see if you can get your…brothers to help us.”

  Nikolai turned to the other automatons. “Brothers! We need you. I know it feels strange now. I know what it feels like to start thinking for the first time. But please—can you help?”

  Most of them ignored Nikolai, but four of them came forward. All four were full-sized automatons. Two moved like Nikolai, and two lurched clumsily. “I will help,” one said slowly. “And I,” added the second.

  “One minute,” Dante said. “One.”

  Thad peered through a telescopic eyepiece. A gun sight drawn on the lens showed that the cannon was aimed at the top of the fortress wall. The lens also showed dozens of soldiers atop the fortress, along with a great many enormous weapons, all of which were pointed in their direction.
The soldiers were waiting, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Thad swallowed. If this didn’t work, they were all dead.

  “One of you run downstairs and tell everyone to leave the building. Run for the woods on the north side of the island,” Thad instructed, and one of the automatons went. “You others know this weapon, and I don’t,” he continued. “Bring the aim downward until I say stop.”

  An automaton said, “But we were to aim it at—”

  “Please!” Thad said. “I’m trying to save everyone.”

  “Do as he says, brothers,” Nikolai put in. “He stopped the voice and let you think.”

  The automatons paused a moment, then went to the platform and spun cranks in complicated patterns. The sight moved downward until it was pointing at the base of the fortress. The soldiers at the top were looking back over their shoulders. Were they receiving orders?

  “Time!” said Dante. “Time! Doom!”

  “Stop!” Thad ordered, and he pulled what he hoped was the trigger.

  The thrumming grew louder, then built into a whine. The copper coil glowed in a spiral around the barrel, and power crackled within. The cannon glowed like the interior of a sun, and then a blast of energy burst forth. It smashed into the base of the fortress wall. Thad peered into the sight. A hole the size of a large cottage had been blown into the wall and a sizable chunk of the ground beneath had been vaporized as well. The rest of the wall was already cracking and crumbling, and water from the river rushed into the fortress. Soldiers and clockworkers fled the top of the wall, leaving the massive weapons behind. Thad even heard the faint shouts and cries.

  “To the right!” Thad shouted. “Move to the right!”

  More cranking. The great weapon glowed and fired again. More of the base wall went down, giving the soldiers enough time to flee before it crumbled, but not letting them fire the weapons. Now two sides of the fortress were gone with, as far as Thad could tell, no casualties.