Gears of Brass

by Jordan Elizabeth

Teteh laughed. “Not lately, no. I have been working too much, but a tourist said she saw it two days ago, climbing up the side of the gorge near the Bathing Temple.”

  Almost too casually, Hari picked up the rucksack. His excitement came through in his voice. “You are hunting the Jarum Jam Monkey.”

  Again Saskia had to resist the urge to tell him everything. She fought down her excitement and managed to keep her voice mostly calm. “I am hoping to see the Clockwork Monkey, yes.”

  Fortified with more than ten hours of sleep (despite waking several times to howling monkeys and a few geckos climbing her walls) and an early breakfast of green sweet leaf pancakes with a side of mini-bananas, Saskia felt more like herself. She almost jumped with surprised when she found Hari waiting for her outside the dining room wearing an outfit that could have been the same as the previous day’s except the batik shirt’s design was more green than brown, not matching his eyes as well.

  “You need ride to Monkey Forest?”

  His presence felt reassuring. It meant he wasn’t back at her PSZ stripping it for parts. She considered his offer. She wore her light gray split skirt with the tool safely in the hidden pocket. Her head was properly covered, though much more simply than the previous day. The zoom goggles dangled around her neck. The small purse had replaced her rucksack, containing her precious map of the Monkey Forest and all the rupiah she should need.

  “Yes, please take me there.” She smiled sweetly. “For the third price.”

  “For you”—he chuckled—“I make it the fourth price.”

  After a surprisingly short and inexpensive ride in Hari’s Tuk-Tuk, Saskia stood outside the entrance to the Monkey Forest.

  A warning poster outside the stone arched entrance had printed in several languages, Don’t feed the monkeys. Don’t bring food in the Monkey Forest. Don’t hide food in your pockets. Stay on the paths. Don’t touch the monkeys. Items lost, taken, or stolen by monkeys are your responsibility.

  She turned to Hari. “Do not wait. I am not sure how long I will be, and I can figure out the walk back to Pertiwi from here.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  She turned her back on him and began entering the Monkey Forest. She heard Hari say, “Good luck finding the Jarum Jam Monkey.”

  She had only taken a few steps in along the stone path when she saw her first monkey standing on the rock wall that bordered the left side of the path. She expected the Macaque monkey to be afraid of her, but it didn’t back off as she approached it. Light gray fur covered most of his body with the fur on his shoulders and head a darker reddish brown over the gray base. From his thin body, she guessed the monkey might be young enough to have been born within the year.

  Showing no fear whatsoever, the monkey studied Saskia with dark inset eyes. Its nostrils flared. Even with all the jungle noises around her she could hear the husky sound of the monkey inhaling, presumably smelling to determine if she carried any food. When it shrugged its tiny shoulders and turned its head to look down the path, it looked so much like a disappointed child Saskia almost laughed.

  She walked past the monkey, staying on the right side of the path out of its reach, but where it could easily jump toward her if it wanted to. She had read stories about how aggressive Macaque monkeys could be if they felt threatened, and gave it no reason to worry about her.

  Walking deeper and deeper into the forest, a part of Saskia felt almost overwhelmed. The wash of sounds, scents of living growing things all around her, shades of green and greener made her profoundly grateful. A part of her had never doubted she would make it here. The scared little girl part of herself that she never wanted to admit existed had been terrified.

  Screeches in the trees above and to her right got her attention. She couldn’t see right away the source of the noise, but she thought it sounded different from the monkey howls she had been hearing. She allowed herself to hope that it might be the Clockwork Monkey. She slid the zoom goggles up from where they hung around her neck.

  She adjusted the telescoping dial with one hand and the focus dial with the other. Scanning through the palm trees, she eventually spotted a monkey protecting a baby from two other monkeys. She thought at first it was a mother protecting her child, then the very obviously male Macaque displayed his genitals at the other two while screeching at them. This seemed to have the desired effect as the two aggressors skittered down the tree.

  Interesting as the little drama was, it brought her no closer to the Clockwork Monkey. She adjusted the zoom goggles again for slightly closer sight, and continued down the pathway.

  The path flowed into a circular area with bench height walls all around it. Three paths exited the circle. Saskia took the map from her purse, using it to determine which path led most directly to the Bathing Temple, and took the path furthest to the left.

  Monkeys moved through the trees all around her, sometimes moving too quickly for her to adjust the zoom glasses fast enough for her to see them.

  Twice, she thought she saw something bright and metal in the trees. The first time it turned out to be an oddly colored variety of a parrot with a gray mane of feathers. The second bird looked like a painting she had seen of a Mynah bird, though with white feathers.

  Amidst all the noises of the birds and monkeys, she heard human voices down the path in front of her. Moving closer, she saw a group of what she guessed were tourists (from their clothes and light complexions), eight of them standing in another of the circular areas. They seemed to be huddled around something, and were speaking in such hushed tones Saskia felt surprised she had heard them at all. She changed her angle a little and could see what they had huddled around. A light skinned boy of no more than twelve, probably closer to ten, stood there holding hands with a monkey. The monkey, who stood almost as tall as the boy, seemed much more comfortable than the people. With its free hand open and palm up, it gestured to those in the circle, obviously begging for food.

  Creeping closer, she overheard the people talking in a guttural language; she guessed German or possibly Russian. A square headed man said the name Rolf several times. From tone and gestures Saskia believed he was telling the boy to move away from the monkey, or let go of the monkey, or something similar.

  From her perspective on the path, Saskia clearly saw the other two monkeys sneaking up on the distracted people. The two primates looked at each other like co-conspirators in the midst of an attack. Then, at the same moment, one monkey reached into one of the men’s pants pockets, and the other reached into the outer pouch of a woman’s purse.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. “Meine brieftasche.” The man shouted as the monkey behind him began fleeing into the jungle to the left with something brown clutched in its hand while the man crashed through the forest close behind. The woman screamed something unintelligible, and fell to the stone path, almost landing on the Macaque trying to get its paw out of her purse. That monkey jumped into the forest to the right of the path.

  At the same moment, Saskia felt a tug on her purse where a third monkey (that looked huge in her zoom goggles) had removed her map before dashing into the forest itself.

  Without thinking, she ran after it. The monkey stayed along the ground for the first hundred yards, then moved the map to its mouth and scampered up a banyan tree. Swinging through the branches, it began to pull away from her.

  If Saskia hadn’t been wearing her zoom goggles, she wouldn’t have been able to keep it in sight. Her skirt tore as an unseen bramble ripped at it, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the monkey. She ran until her lungs burned and her legs ached. Then, the monkey swung through an area where sunshine broke through the canopy of the trees. The intensity of the light through the zoom goggles blinded Saskia for a moment. By the time she stopped blinking and could see again, the monkey and her map vanished into the foliage.

  Leaning against the smooth barked trunk of a huge, gray tree, Saskia got her breath and took stock. Rips and pulls in her skirt would take a lot of time to sew bac
k together, but it was salvageable. Blood from a long scratch dripped down her left leg. The cut didn’t go deep. Even without pressure, it had begun to heal now that she stopped running.

  A moment of panic overtook her and she slapped her hand over the secret pocket that held the tool. A flood of relief hit her when she felt the metal cylinder still there.

  As the ache in her lungs began to dissipate, she felt a little embarrassed. She had run after the monkey out of reflex, but the map itself was not that important. From what she remembered of the map, the stone paved paths crisscrossed throughout the forest. None of them were close enough to see from where she rested. She tried to look back the way she had come. A part of her hoped she would see Hari or even one of the foreign tourists there, moving through the underbrush. Unfortunately, she found she wasn’t even completely sure exactly what direction she had come from.

  Instead of trying to backtrack, she decided to go forward to the last place she had seen the monkey with the map. As she got closer to it, she saw why the sun broke through the canopy. A wall about ten feet high, covered in vines, protected a building of some sort. A building meant civilization. She wondered if this was one of the three temples in the Monkey Forest. She had been heading to the Bathing Temple, but there didn’t seem to be any place to bathe here.

  She began following the wall, looking both for an opening and for a path leading away from it. She found both. The tall stone archway was composed of carved monkey statues. The way the statues made up the arch reminded her of the front desk back at Pertiwi. Through the arch, she could see a single building with a sharply pitched alang-alang roof.

  Her breath caught. Her mind didn’t believe what it saw through her zoom goggles. Thirty feet away, atop the roof of the building, stood three monkeys, including the one with her map. She watched in awe as the Macaque handed her map to the monkey standing at the very top of the roof—a mechanical monkey with no fur and obvious clockwork gears.

  It looked at the map with glass bead eyes that made no sense to Saskia. It bit down hard on the map and ripped it with a wrought iron jaw. With a movement that seemed both human and simian, it handed the map back to the living monkey and nodded. The Macaque howled in what Saskia guessed was joy, ran down the roof, leapt to the vine covered wall, scampered up and over it, disappearing from sight.

  The remaining monkey held up a brown leather wallet for the Clockwork Monkey to examine. It opened the wallet removing a handful of Deutsche Marks, throwing the wallet itself aside. It bit into the banknotes, iron teeth ripping through the high quality paper with ease. Then, just as it had with the map, it handed the remaining Marks back to the living monkey. In a reaction almost identical to the first, the Macaque howled and ran away.

  Saskia examined the Clockwork Monkey through her zoom goggles. She had expected the workings to be all metal like her Opraper, but the Clockwork Monkey had gears of wood and even stone built inside a mesh frame made of a variety of metals. She observed each joint bend and flex. Springs coiled and uncoiled, pulling thin wires through tiny pulleys. It had none of the stilted motions caused by of one of her keycard movement diagrams. Even the long coiled spring it used for a tail flipping around from side to side, seemed… alive.

  The monkey was proof her father was wrong. It had the spark. She would figure out how the Clockwork Monkey functioned, how to pass on the spark. Their inventions would be the talk of the world.

  She reached into the secret pocket, pulling out the tool her father had originally intended to be an automatic wrench. She pointed the copper tube away from the building. She squeezed the scissor-like grip at the bottom of the tube five times, making all the miniature gears whirl sets of magnets around the central coil of wires. A sizzle-pop scorched the air as the artificial lightning shot five feet forward before striking the ground.

  Saskia’s attention snapped back to the monkey. She had forgotten about the sound the tool made. From atop the roof, the Clockwork Monkey stared back at her with those impossible glass eyes, somehow managing to seem curious.

  If she could get within five feet of it, she could use the artificial lightning from the tool to stun it. Without taking her gaze from the creature, she took a small step toward the building. It stepped back, but didn’t panic and run. She took another step forward and it took another step back. Saskia paused a moment, then took a step backward. The Clockwork Monkey moved toward her, but kept the distance the same. They repeated their steps several times. Saskia tried taking two steps backward, then one quick step forward. The monkey took a single step forward. The dance, interesting as she found it, wasn’t getting her anywhere.

  She moved to a position where she could put her back to the right side of the arch, slid her zoom goggles down around her neck, and sat with her legs crossed.

  When the monkey tried to imitate her, it didn’t take its tail into consideration. The long spring caught on the alang-alang roof, vaulting it forward. It lost its balance, tumbling down the roof out of control.

  Before the fear of its destruction could well up inside Saskia, the Clockwork Monkey caught hold of the edge of the roof, swung itself down to the wall, and flipped like an acrobat down to the ground barely more than twelve feet away.

  Saskia didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She resisted the urge to rush at it with the tool.

  It started to move away from her, but when she didn’t move, it stopped and seemed to be reevaluating her.

  Time extended in an odd way. From this close, she studied everything about it: the movements, the wires, even the tiny bolts in the joints. The logical, almost simple, movement mechanics made sense to her, but how it could react or seem to think eluded her.

  It took a sideways step, no closer, but no further away. It reached down to its side and began turning a key, which tightened the central power mainspring.

  Saskia gasped in spite of herself. It shouldn’t be able to turn its own spring. Eventually, it would have to lose energy.

  Ever so gradually, she edged her way along the ground toward it without standing up. Each time the monkey twitched, she thought sure it would jump away, yet eventually she got within five feet of it. She squeezed the handles once, twice, three times. Half way through the fourth squeeze, she paused. The tool had always worked to stun the toys she and her father created, but what if it destroyed whatever made this construct so unique?

  She lowered the tool.

  The Clockwork Monkey moved up to her and placed a cool metal hand on her shoulder in an extremely human gesture.

  From so close, she could see into its glass bead eyes, see the intricate web of wires, and in that moment, she began to understand.

  Eight years later, Saskia lit the engine of the first real Steamman, and the gears began to move.

  methyst exhaled as loudly as she could. The painter displaying his artwork could’ve had the decency to create exciting works. The paintings in the elaborate frames that covered the walls of the exhibition house couldn’t have been less exciting if they were straight gray.

  The one in front of her consisted of a cat’s paw on green, which might have been grass. How did that count as art?

  “How morbid. A paw. What happened to the poor kitty?”

  The girl beside her, Mary, covered her ears with her hands. “I swear I’m not listening to you. You’re going to make me laugh.”

  Amethyst sighed again. “I hope the painter at least gave the cat a proper funeral. With all the money he’s making off this exhibition, he can afford a gravestone.”

  “Am, it’s art,” her friend hissed. “He didn’t really chop up a pet.”

  “I never claimed it was anyone’s pet.” Amethyst sashayed to the next painting. Society’s best milled around her, a plethora of giggles and gasps. Did they truly find art that entertaining?

  She leaned against the velvet rope keeping her far enough from the wall to avoid touching any paintings, as if she would. Only one of them contained a likeness of her.

  “What do you think of th
is one, Mary? I think someone ate too many gears.”

  Mary grabbed her arm. “For shame. This one is beautiful.”

  Brass circles covered a black backdrop. The circles almost made the image of a man’s face. Almost, but not quite. The artist probably thought that meant more to the world.

  “What are you looking at?” Amethyst rolled her eyes.

  “Amethyst Treasure,” a male said. She turned to face the caller, smoothing her gloved hands over her gown. A photographer set up his tripod behind her, a grin splitting his youthful face.

  “Yes.” She drawled out the affirmation.

  “A picture, please?” He ducked behind his camera before she could answer.

  Amethyst laughed. “Why of course.” She slid her arm through Mary’s, pulling her friend against her side, and parted her rouged lips to give him a glimpse of her perfect teeth. Mary, wearing a simple dress suit, would complement her gown well; let everyone know Amethyst spared no worry for too much extravagance.

  “That’s the Amethyst Treasure,” an elderly woman whispered to her companion. “Did you hear about her sixteenth birthday party last month? They say she rented an elephant from the circus to give her guests rides.”

  The flash bulb went off and she blinked to clear the white stars from her eyes. That had been her best birthday yet.

  “Miss Treasure?” A hand brushed her elbow.

  “Yes?” She turned to smile at whatever adoring fan wanted her autograph next, and her breath caught in her throat. A young man stood behind her, his top hat in his hands. Black hair curled around his forehead and neck, silver spectacles propped on his nose. His suit remained crisp against him. A red velvet cravat decorated the collar of his white shirt.

  “Miss Treasure.” He bowed. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Likewise,” she breathed. His skin had a perfect tan, his teeth were even like hers, and he had to be a foot taller. Lifting her chest, she tipped her head to the side. “I’m afraid I don’t know who I’m addressing.”