Mad Science Cafe

by Ross, Deborah J.

  Mrs. Penderby, if you can spare me in the drawing room, I think I should assist the boy with excavations.

  Would you, Soames? Oh, dear, I don’t know what Dr. Penderby will say. Another cook gone, and a kitchenmaid, too.

  I think Cook may decide to stay.

  Yes, more sherry, thanks. Well, if she does, it’s only because you flattered her to death. That was very clever, Ileen. But he’ll be furious. He’ll say I can’t manage the household. He threw me out of the laboratory. He built Soames, and he’s never home, so why does he need a wife?

  You are his conscience, Madame.

  A most unwelcome one. More sherry, please.

  No, a necessary conscience. Men like to move forward always in one direction of their own choosing. A woman is always pulled in two directions. She is aware of considerations. She must wait for all to be revealed.

  I dread it.

  Dread? But what, Madame?

  I don’t want all revealed. I’m so afraid he has a mistress. Someone who tells him he’s always right. He used to listen to me. Now he hates my work. And I am afraid of his work.

  I must believe he respects your work, Madame. That is why he hides from you, and hides his work. Men are such enfantes. He fears your censure, for that has great power over him.

  You think? You detect shame in him?

  I detect a passionate heart, Madame.

  Oh, I hope you are right!

  Mrs. Penderby, what’s this I hear about Cook giving notice—ah, there you are. I’ve had a letter from—Great Scott, it’s a mess in here.

  Horace!

  I regret to report that the ape forgot himself with the kitchenmaid, sir. However, Ileen has convinced Cook to rescind her notice.

  Oh. Well, that’s good, I suppose. Here, Gwendolyn, I’ve heard from Clewis in Lake Geneva. I told him all about Ileen’s arm and everything and he’s coming across to London for the weekend. He’s keen as anything on promethean experiments, and I shall finally get a chance to show him what I’ve done with synthetic tissues. We’ll open you up, Soames. Show him what the English side of things has been up to.

  Certainly, sir.

  C-Clewis? M’sieur Penderby?

  Ileen, are you well? Allow me to take the sherry decanter—oh—

 

  Hell, she’s fainted. Just as I’ve been telling Danton. These prometheans haven’t the stamina of man-made automata.

  o0o

  Ileen. Ileen, wake up. Ileen.

  Ah, non! Quoi—M’sieur Soames?

  You have been screaming in your sleep, Ileen. The other maids summoned me. Here. Sit up. Drink some water.

  Mon Dieu, I thought—but I was dreaming.

  What was it you thought, Ileen?

  It makes nothing, M’sieur Soames.

  Pardon me, Ileen, but something has frightened you. Is it—is it because of the arrival of this man Clewis?

  Yes! He looks at me, when we pass in the upper rooms.

  You are quite sure it was he, then, from Lake Geneva?

  I have no memory before waking in that cold room, on a bed of stone. Two men talked in English who spoke of using a machine that would put a soul into the clay. The clay! They meant me!

  I see. Then they must have recovered the body from the lake before—but do go on.

  I waited until they went out of the room for one moment and then I ran away. For two years have I been running! Ah, but now he finds me, and I am lost!

  I must apologize. My thoughtless words to Dr. Penderby led him to write to Mr. Clewis. My only thought was that he might recall the death of a young woman who, I am nearly convinced, must be you.

  But M’sieur Soames, what if he does remember me? It is more than I myself can do. Du vrai, no one wants a blue princess with a false arm. An amnesiac blue princess with a false arm.

  On the contrary. I am persuaded that your royal nature manifests in everything you are and do.

  M’sieur Soames is a royalist then! My royal hand feeds a raw chicken to the crocodile every week, and dresses Mrs. Penderby’s hair, and shakes the tea leaves onto the floor for sweeping. No, I cannot be royal now, if ever I was.

  But, Ileen! Your duty!

  A fig for duty, M’sieur Soames.

  I’m afraid I cannot sympathize with such sentiments. I was created to serve. It cannot be but that if one serves faithfully in one’s proper place, one will be happy.

  Vraiment? And are you happy? Well, M’sieur?

  No. No, I am not happy, Ileen. My—my mandate troubles me.

  Quoi?

  The instructions Dr. Penderby gave me when he built me. I must serve him and Mrs. Penderby equally. He is a great admirer of Miss Wollstonecraft. Mrs. Penderby appreciates it. But—

  They trap you between them in their quarrel.

  Yes. He instructs me to keep secrets from her about his guests and his comings and goings. She demands that I spy upon him for her. It causes me acute discomfort.

  But it must be terrible.

  Dr. Penderby theorizes, you know, that not all human beings are born with a soul, but that they must labor to achieve a soul by suffering irreconcilable moral dilemma. Often have I heard him speak of it, in the library with his fellow scientists. I had no notion it would hurt so much.

  For shame! That is too bad of him, to create you in such a way as to cause you pain! How fortunate that I have been encouraging Madame to think better of her husband.

  Good heavens, Ileen, I beg you, do not interfere in their private affairs! The impropriety!

  What impropriety? She is a woman, I am a woman. Her suffering must interest me. Besides, if they will only reconcile their differences, it will not matter if I am a dead princess of Wittgenstein or a live housemaid of London. This Clewis, brrr, he terrifies me. I had thought Docteur Penderby might protect me—but you say he will not. Yet if Mrs. Penderby can persuade him, or merely work her female mystique upon him, I can be truly free of fear! I shall instruct her in the arts.

  No! A servant must never, ever intervene in the affairs of the employers.

  But this is precisely what Docteur Penderby wishes you to do! And he himself put this foolish mandate in your head. It is his own fault that you suffer pain. He does not deserve your obedience!

  Ileen! You shock me!

  I am a good republican, me! If I have died, I have at least been reborn a free woman. If I serve here it is to make a living. Not to prove the mad theories of some égotiste!

  But, Ileen, you have died. The rules change.

  Yes, the rules always change for the convenience of the victor, non? Do you think the victor will acknowledge your soul? No, for it is not convenient to him! You are just his soulless lackey!

  Ileen—!

  And how can you promise to protect me if you cannot interfere with your master’s private affairs? Oh, you are the perfect servant! You do not even have the soul of a servant! He created you without a soul!

 

  Alas, I fear I have a soul where soul I had none. And it has just slammed the door in my face.

  o0o

  M’sieur Soames! Wait. I have been impertinent.

  Unkind, but not impertinent, Ileen. You are right. I think—we two dwell in a different England, different even from our fellow servants. You and I are pioneers of a new class.

  I did not mean to be unkind, M’sieur.

  Ileen—bother, I wish that I had another name. You may call me Soames in private. It is not right that here, between ourselves, we may not observe our own class in—in parity.

  Is it so difficult to say ‘equality’? Perhaps that goes too far. The mechanical butler and the zombi maid?

  You are still a princess, Ileen.

  Hush, Soames. You see, I can be impertinent, too, if I try.

  We should not be talking on the stairs. Someone will hear.

  No, they are arguing. Do you not hear? Master and Madame.

  Oh, dear. Don’t go down any further! We should not—

  There is a reas
on why servants listen at doors, Soames. Our security is too much in their hands.

  But—

  Hush!

  —Why do you want to help me? The laboratory is dirty. And full of corpses.

  You know very well what you are doing with them. And it’s wrong, Horace.

  Then why do you wish to join me in the work? You madden me, Gwendolyn!

  Because—because we have parted, Horace. Wherever you have gone, it is into the laboratory first. I had thought you must have taken a mistress, but I—I am now persuaded you are innocent of that.

  But guilty of crimes against humanity. Sorry, sub-humanity.

  Wait, please. Listen. I can’t bear this silence between us. If I can moderate how I speak of your work, may I not see it, learn about it—join you? I—I want that more than anything, Horace.

  I think you cannot do that, Gwendolyn. You’re a passionate woman. I honor you for it. But I fear you will not feel moderately if you know what I—

  What you are doing? Or, no. What you have done. That’s it, isn’t it? Horace, what have you done?

  I knew you would take that tone.

  If I—if I could conceive—would you love me again?

  Gwendolyn, if I could conceive, would you forgive me?

  I don’t understand.

  I know.

  What do they do, Soames? Your ears are sharper than mine.

  Nothing. They are not moving. Let us go, before the door opens.

  o0o

  There’s the bell, and mighty soon. Master must not be talking too much tonight. Is the tea tray ready?

  It’s not he doing the talking. It’s that Clewis. Is the tea ready, Cook?

  That it is, Mr Soames. Ileen, do you take the tray into the drawing room. Why, whatever is the matter, girl? You’re trembling!

  It makes nothing, Cook.

  I promise you, Ileen, I will be watchful. He shall not harm you.

  o0o

  Soames, more brandy here. And see if you can run Ileen to earth. I’ve been ringing these past five minutes. Clewis wants a closer look at her arm.

  Yes, sir.

  Then while we’re waiting, can you direct me to—?

  The necessary is under the stairs, sir.

  Flushed by our very own water tank, Clewis.

  On the roof?

  Precisely.

  Admirable. I shan’t be a minute.

  o0o

  Mr. Clewis, sir, permit me. The necessary is this way. That door leads to the back stairs.

  Oh, does it?

  Sir! Mr. Clewis!

  There’s the bell again, Soames. Better go see what your master wants.

  Er—sir—

  o0o

  Don’t scream, Princess Elena. You’ll be very easy to kill.

  Let go of me! Non! Docteur Penderby will not permit—

  Dr. Penderby will lick my boots when I explain he’s been harboring an escaped, half-baked promethean.

  Madame Penderby will not permit! She knows! She is my protectress!

  Then we’ll just take a little walk down the back stairs to the mews, and Penderby can lick her boots instead. Come along! Don’t squeak so, dammit! Hell, what is that?

  D-docteur Penderby’s orangutan.

  What’s it doing on the servants’ stairs? Christ, look at those teeth. Where does this door go? Ballroom? All right, through here, and quick.

  Unhand her, you villain!

  M’sieur Soames! Thank God you have come!

  Dr. Penderby has sold this promethean to me, Soames. We discussed it when you were out of the room.

  You lie, sir. I must respectfully demand you release her.

  Always a good servant, eh? I don’t think you can stop me, Soames. Get back! I say, put down the sword!

  Sir, I must insist.

  Aaaagh! The bitch bit me!

  Save me, Soames!

  Get behind me, Ileen.

  Did Penderby teach you to fence, mechanical man?

  En garde, sir.

  Oh, mon Dieu, shall I fetch the mistress?

  Perhaps it would be—ugh!—well—ah!—go, Ileen! I can hold him!

  Not bad fencing for a box of gears and stale meat, Soames. Ow! Dammit! Now listen—ah—you haven’t a legal leg to stand on, you know—ugh!—I created and I own the girl just as your master created and owns—ow!—owns you! *pant* Will you just slow down and listen?

  Not quite, sir. Dr. Penderby built me from scratch, sir. A box of gears and, as you put it, stale meat. You began with a human being—ah!—who was also—

  Soames! Ileen told me you were—what is going on here?

  It’s run mad, Mrs. Penderby. Ow! Damn! Where’s the off switch? I can’t hold it off much longer!

  There isn’t one, Mr Clewis. We don’t put an off switch on persons in this house. But Soames, what are you about? Someone will get hurt!

  Just like that fool Penderby to animate something and leave off the dead man’s switch. Ah! Take that!

  A good hit, sir. Fortunately—ugh—not in a vital spot. In fact, Mr. Clewis, you found a body floating in Lake Geneva that stormy night and you—ugh—made use of it, didn’t you? Where did you find an arm to replace the one she lost to the steamboat paddle?

  What does it matter? She was dead! She is dead! And she’s mine!

  I beg your pardon? Mr. Clewis, Ileen is far from dead, and she is no one’s property.

  It’s just a housemaid.

  Ah!—she is a princess of Wittgenstein, sir, as I suspect you knew—ugh—if not the night you pulled her from the lake, then surely—ah—the following morning. Every village round the lake was in mourning for her, and searching for her body!

  Ileen! Is this true?

  Madame, I do not know. M’sieur Soames is convinced.

  Soames—

  Oh there you are, Soames, where the devil is that housemaid—Clewis! What’s to do here? Gwendolyn?

  Horace, stop them! Soames says Ileen was a princess before she died, and Clewis put her in his laboratory.

  Sir, I found him trying to smuggle Ileen out of the house.

  But is it true, Horace?

  So Soames tried to tell me. Put down the sword, Clewis. You can’t hurt Soames, and you—I say, old fellow, have a care—augh!

  Horace!

  But Soames is bleeding! Docteur Penderby, he most certainly can be harmed!

  I thought—but, Horace? Soames is an automaton, isn’t he?

  Er, not entirely.

  You see, Mrs. Penderby—ah!—your sanctimonious husband—argh—has been working with stale meat for a long time! Ah—that hurt, didn’t it, mechanical man? Ah-hah!

  Only—only a trifle—ugh!

  Horace, you didn’t! Oh, Horace, is that why Soames looks so lifelike? You’ve been animating corpses?

  Only bits, Gwendolyn. The autonomic systems. I’m so sorry. I meant to tell you when I finally succeeded! But by then—your hostility to reanimation—I felt sure you would hate it. You surprised me with your championship of our Ileen.

  You successfully integrated organic systems with automated ones at last? How splendid! Horace, you should have told me!

  I wanted you to see how well Soames worked. But by the time you accepted him, the habit…

  It works bloody well, Penderby, and I’m so pleased—augh!—for your improved relations with your wife—argh!—but can you call it off now?

  I don’t know, Clewis. I’m beginning to think the best way to settle this is to alert the royal family of Wittgenstein to the whereabouts of their missing princess.

  She’s dead, you fool! Just clay now!

  I doubt they would see it that way. You’ve desecrated a royal corpse—attempted unholy practices on it. They’re awfully primitive thinkers in the smaller duchies, eh? We can deal with this the civilized way.

  Damn you! I’ll take my stale meat home and pull the plug and—argh!—if you come to your senses, we can correspond more about your methods—

  Damn you, sir, you blackguard! You shall
not speak of her so!

  Horace, stop them! Where are you going?

  Hah! He’s getting out of the way, dear lady, as you should—ugh—do too! A-hah!

  Ileen! Flee! I can’t hold—

  Ah! Hah! Damn you, why don’t you die?

  Soames! Ah, my Soames, he has killed you!

  Hey! What—Penderby, is that a boat hook? You ass, your butler could fence better than you can.

  It’s a crocodile hook.

  Crocodi—AAAAAAHHHHHH!

  Soames! My Soames, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!

  Horace!

  Sorry, love, but he was right. I couldn’t have beat him with a saber.

  AUGHHHHH! HELP! ARGH—ARGH—AIIEIEEEEE!

  He’s—it’s eating him.

  ’Myes. Bit of a mess.

  But—but won’t you want him for parts?

  And risk having his soul hang about in the tissues? No thanks.

  I don’t know that it would.

  My dear, I’ve been working on this for months. I think I know more than you do about the process.

  But Horace, look at Ileen. She remembers nothing about being a princess.

  And yet she behaves regally.

  Is this how a princess mourns her—her chevalier blanc, Docteur Penderby? With rage, not tears? You let him die!

  Not yet, I fancy. Gwendolyn, help me get him up on the slab.

  o0o

  Ileen! He didn’t steal you!

  Oh, my Soames, you survive!

  My autonomic nervous system is flesh, but my heart is mechanical. If he killed me, how—?

  Docteur Penderby set the crocodile on him.

  Soames, I have reconsidered my position on the ensoulment of automata. Mrs. Penderby suggests that your recent heroism could not have been performed by the butler I mandated you to be.

  I have devoted some thought to the matter myself, sir.

  And you conclude, Soames?

  That the higher vital processes, by which I refer to those acts of volition which ordinary persons—even servants—perform on a daily basis, bring one inescapably into a condition of conflict between two things one ought to do. One’s duty must, inevitably, war with itself. Out of the strife, a soul arises.

  So to suffer is to be ensouled, eh? Do you fancy this applies to reanimated, er, flesh as well as to a more synthetic construction?

  You refer to me, Docteur Penderby.

  More like a princess every moment, Horace.

  Well, Ileen? What is your opinion?