Grim Expectations

by KW Jeter

  “But ‘course – completely unmolested.” Spivvem gave an emphatic nod. “Even the More Loving Embrace likely forget all ‘bout you; they be more pragmatic than vengeful, and nothing to be gained by killing you now. So free crawl back into hole, as you like.”

  “Then let it be over.” I stood up from the corner of the bed. “Is he here?”

  “Close by.” Spivvem pointed toward the darkness which the lamp’s yellow glow did not penetrate. “Has own little room, befitting his status – nothing grand, ‘course, but palatial compared to anything else he’s likely known.” Rising to his feet, he gestured for me to follow. “This way.”

  We walked far enough, past rows of other small beds with motionless and unbreathing figures beneath the thin blankets, until the clamour of the factory outside faded to a murmur.

  “Here go–” Spivvem pushed open a bare wooden door. “Leave you be – ‘magine it’s a private moment for both.”

  I did not know, or care, if he was mocking me, as I stood in the narrow doorway. The spartan chamber beyond was illuminated by its own flickering lantern, dangling from a hook in the ceiling. I saw there was a bed, empty; a rickety table; a stool…

  Upon that last sat a small figure, upon his knees a book almost wider than his shoulders. He looked up from the volume, and at me.

  “I knew it…” A smile showed on his face. “I knew you’d come.”

  FIFTEEN

  Mr Dower Meets His Fate

  Sitting on the floor, I was able to look the boy straight in the eye.

  “Not quite sure…” Such was his answer, when I asked him what was his name. “There was something they called me, back a long time ago – before they brought us all here – but it was same as they called everyone… and it wasn’t very nice. So no great loss, is it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  Leaning forward from where I had sat myself on the room’s small bed, I had been able to gain a closer study of the child. He appeared of indeterminate age – the way those starved of nourishment, both material and emotional, often do – with diminutive stature, bones frail as a bird’s. His eyes seemed disturbingly large and perceptive, as though they alone were of the proper size, having seen sadder things than most, and more of them – sufficiently so, that they no longer wept but only watched.

  By the simplest of reckoning, the mere counting up of years from his birth to this day, he should have been of larger and sturdier configuration – and he might well have seemed a lad about to enter upon those brief and rowdy years that precede the entry to manhood, had a due share of sunlight been allowed to fall upon him. But the lack of same had withered him like a potted houseplant left forgotten upon some unlit kitchen shelf, spindly and tenuous. So that now he was the very semblance of those ragged paupers glimpsed in London’s darkest tenements, all vigour excised, caught in some frail state between infancy and senescence.

  Even in this dim chamber, I could see that he had inherited his features from his mother. Fortunate for him, as he was rendered handsome, even beautiful, thereby – or would have been if his cheeks were not so pale and hollowed. Unfortunate for me, as this reminder of my lost Miss McThane stabbed me through the heart.

  I am certain the boy did not realize how completely he tortured me, when he laid aside the book with which he had been idling time away – I saw that it was a battered old geographical atlas, half its pages torn or missing, and the remainder filled with vast blank areas labelled Terra Incognita – then got up from the stool and wrapped his thin arms about my shoulders. Seeing him upright, and measured against myself, I could only think that he should have been so much taller than he was now; but the cruel world’s scorn, and my shameful ignorance of even his existence, had given the result which trembled against my chest for a moment.

  “Are you… treated well here?” I could think of nothing else to say; this would have been an awkward situation for anyone more emotionally facile than myself – which is to say, for virtually all of Humanity; for one as stitched-up and inexpressive as myself, it was close to impossible. “Do you receive…” I made a pointless, wavering gesture with both my hands. “Enough to eat?”

  “Ever so well, thank you.” The child had an odd grace about him, no doubt inherited from his mother as well. I had been expecting bitter accusations to be flung in my face, all the language of loss and abandonment, but instead he had returned to the stool as before, but now with his legs drawn up and matchstick arms laid across his knees, peering avidly at me as though wishing to memorize every detail of the wretched father across from him. “And a lot more than when I was in that other place–” He flung a hand out, gesturing in no particular direction, but obviously meant to indicate whatever orphanage in Glasgow from which he had been taken. “So that be one of the good things here.”

  “And the bad?” I was unable to keep from torturing myself; with every word I spoke, I felt a sharpened pang against my heart. “Do they mistreat you?”

  “Not of late,” he replied with an impassionate frankness. “And even before – I mean, before they knew who I am, and that you be my father – they weren’t so horrible. Not like the other place; they seemed very cruel, and most every day. No…” He looked up to a corner of the room, gathering his thoughts, then back to me. “The only thing… it’s been lonely. All my friends – the other children – then at least I had someone to talk with. But now–” He pointed to the door, and all the silent spaces that lay beyond it. “They be just asleep, all the time. Not dead, I know – the old man, the one with the white hair, he told me that – but they might as well be, for all the playing that’s in them now.”

  I supposed the man to whom the boy referred was the Right Reverend Jamford; no telling what other conversation might have gone on between the two of them. No doubt Jamford, with all his wiles and threats, had done everything he could to cajole the boy into doing his bidding, and by a simple act of will trigger the devices stitched into the orphans’ chests, and set them about their labours, as the Elohim wished all mankind to be bound. But the stubborn child – that quality being one more thing he had inherited from his mother – had maintained his simple wish, like a storm-wracked sailor clinging to a spar, stolid as only children can be against all the grown world’s fur…

  And he had prevailed in that – such a deal of fuss he had, unknowing, caused! – and now here I was. Just as though that great teacher had spoken truly, when he had said that unalloyed faith could impel a mountain to rise up and throw itself into the sea, if one commanded it to.

  “I am afraid…” I roused myself from the thoughts into which I had descended. “There is not much I can do for you, regarding companionship – though perhaps, when you have resurrected the other children as that old man wishes you to, one or more might be given an hour once in a while, to spend with you; it is worth asking him about. Though I do not know how much amusement you would derive from such an arrangement; I have encountered some very clever machines, who could act just like folk made of flesh and blood – I rather suspect the orphans sleeping here now, when awake would be more like things of iron and brass, ticking and whirring rather than breathing and… playing. For that is meant for them, by some powerful and determined people; and when it comes about, you should not blame yourself if the other children are no better company than a clock would be.”

  “I know.” The boy nodded, unsmiling. “Seems very hard, though.”

  “Life is often so.”

  “Feel very sorry of them – it’s not just hard, but so unfair!” He was still young enough to be outraged by Fate, despite his own experience of it. “Why be I so lucky, and go from this place, and be up in the sunlight and all – the real sunlight, not all that stuff brung here by the old man’s mirrors and things – and they have to stay here? If life was fair, then they could come with us. But I didn’t say that was what I wanted; I didn’t make it part of the deal I struck. I was afraid – and I’m ashamed to say so – that it’d be miracle enough to get what I did; I mean,
what with you coming for me, and all.”

  “Coming for you? I am not sure I understand what you mean by that.”

  “Well, it’s what you’ve done, isn’t it?” The boy brightened a bit, sitting straight upright on the stool. “You wouldn’t have made your way here – must’ve been so dangerous for you! – if you weren’t planning on taking me with you. But you are here, and I’m ready to leave now.” Eyes gleaming, he leaned toward me. “Where is it we’re going? I’ve wondered and wondered…” With his foot, he nudged the volume of maps that had slid onto the floor beside him. “There seem to be so many places it might be.”

  “Is this something you talked about with… the old man? The one with the white hair?” Within myself, I was cursing Jamford for having intimated nothing like this to me. “Did he tell you that you would be going from here, in my care?”

  “Well… no…” Apprehension flickered in the boy’s eyes. “But it’s true, isn’t it? It has to be! That’s the way it was, back there.” He flung his hand out again, as his words tumbled more rapidly in his high-pitched voice. “At the orphanage, where they found us all, and then they brought us here. But before that, there were times – not many, but often enough – when somebody else came for one of us – but just one, because they were his mother and father. Maybe they’d given him up because they couldn’t take care of him, but maybe things changed, and there was luck and money, and they came for him and he went away with them – to be in their home, just the way things are supposed to be. And he’d be so happy, happy to be leaving that place, and we all tried to be happy for him, but mostly we just cried, because it was him and not us – it wasn’t me.”

  What was I to tell him? He had imagined events, happy ones for himself and – no doubt he had thought so – for me as well. In his childish mind, he had built a castle of them, in which he had managed to live, no matter how dark the clouds mounting about him, no matter how securely riveted and bolted the iron machinery assembled outside this small chamber. Perhaps it is not only the abandoned who do so, but all of Mankind – awaiting one who will come and claim us, while every day we come that much closer to the final realization that no such saviour exists.

  Which is what I had to inform this child now, that I was not such a one, either.

  “Oh.” His disappointment was evident, after I had informed him that when I left this place, it would be by myself. The self-constructed edifice within him had been swiftly laid to ruin. For a moment, his gaze travelled down to the book lying open on the floor, and to its map of lands beyond imagination; then he looked back up at me. “Are you sure?”

  “It is not my choice to make,” I spoke quietly. I am not wilfully cruel, though I would readily admit that my heart is calloused beyond redemption; I did not relish telling him of his fate. “It is nothing given to me, to be sure or doubtful of. There are people who would not let you leave here – not the old man; you do not need to be concerned about him now. But his associates; that is who I mean – they still remain. You are of considerable value to them, but only if you remain in this place, to do that which they desire you to do. The children there?” I pointed to the door, closed upon the narrow beds beyond. “When you wake them, as you alone are able to do – that is not the end of what shall be required. There will be a great many more, and not just children; grown men and women as well. All with the same mechanical innards, all clacking away, all labouring to their deaths and then even beyond. A day might come when you are not needed to set them on their courses, when another key to those devices will be found – but that day is a long way off; I cannot see it ahead.” I nodded slowly, feeling exactly as that sort of wretch that any man feels like, when he must tell the truth to another. “If I were to try to leave here with you holding my hand, to mount up again to the sunlight with you – it would not be worth my life to try and do that. I have a bargain in place, which if honoured, allows me to remove myself; it does not include you.”

  He said nothing then. I would have preferred tears, a heart-struck wailing of grief – or better, scathing imprecations hurled at my face, a piping voice like a whiplash, the condemnation of the whole traitorous world, of which I was its chief representative. If nothing else, there would have been a certain functional economy of effect, his wrath and justified hatred sparing me the effort of loathing myself. For one might ask, What is worse than a child’s entreaty? And the answer is – one knows it already – the silence that follows, when he has realized at last, as he inevitably must, that you are the same as all the others.

  If a tear had fallen, as he looked away from me and down at the faded atlas pages, that might have allowed me an atom of pardon from my own damning regard, as it would have indicated that there was still something inside him that could hope and could be disappointed. But he remained dry-eyed; perhaps he had known all along, that my words would be the ones I had just spoken.

  “My mother…”

  Something he wanted to know, a question he wished to ask; I could imagine any number of them. Perhaps he was aware already, that it had been she who had sent someone looking for him – he could hardly imagine that it had been any initiative of mine.

  What that enquiry was – the child might have wanted to know if she was alive or dead; who would have informed of that much?, or what she looked like, or what if anything she had ever said about him – I did not discover. Before he could say anything further, the little room’s floor heaved and buckled beneath our feet, with enough sudden violence to toss the child’s slight weight from the toppled stool, and send him sprawling against the wall beside him.

  That upheaval was accompanied by a deep groaning sound from below, as of the earth’s fundaments being torn apart; at the same time, from beyond the door and the chambers outside came the raucous clatter of metal striking metal, the immense factory’s structural girders wrenched from their sockets and cast in all directions like jackstraws. The hissing of released steam advanced to a roaring bellow, as though all the furnaces and valves had cried out as one.

  “Stay here–” Having managed to precariously regain my feet, the seismic motions continuing beneath, I had bent down and grasped the child’s delicate wrist, lifted him up – his weight seemed virtually nil – and deposited him on the bed, that seeming to be the safest place at the moment. “Do not move–”

  My immediate suspicions as to the cause of the tumult were confirmed by merely pulling open the room’s door, and finding that Spivvem was not on the other side of it. When I had gone in to have this long-delayed meeting with my son, I had assumed that Spivvem would avail himself of the opportunity to eavesdrop upon whatever passed between the two of us – a person of his wiles is ever eager to obtain information that might be of future use. But his absence from that spot indicated that he had a different agenda, and one of greater urgency to him.

  I ran past the rows of unmoving orphans, many of them tossed onto the floor, limbs sprawled and pale as those of glazed china dolls. Glaring light, brighter than I had witnessed before in this subterranean environment, struck my face with so much heat that I needed to shield myself with an upraised arm.

  All was chaos when I stepped out onto the grated iron floor, and immediately perceptible as such, despite the blinding luminance. Entire sections of machinery, originally reaching far above the heads of its tending labourers, had fallen onto their sides; with supporting girders twisted and bent, the giant cogged wheels and gears had sprung from their axles, the sharp-edged teeth gouging out ragged trenches before tilting to a halt. Some of the human figures in the midst of the wreckage had managed to secure a measure of temporary safety for themselves, huddling beneath bent flanks of iron; others had not been so fortunate, lying crushed under vast weights of dislocated metal.

  These ruined forces of industry were so close to me that I might easily have reached out and lain my hand on one of the heated pillars, its loosened rivets dropping like coins near my boots. I contemplated retreat, back into whatever security might have been afforded i
n the chambers from which I had just emerged–

  “Moment, there.” Another’s hand apprehended me, grasping tight upon my arm. “Should talk a bit.”

  Startled, I turned and saw the figure that had stepped forward from the shadows cast by the mounded wreckage. Tips of fire were reflected at the centre of Spivvem’s eyes, making his off-kilter smile appear even more darkly insinuating.

  “This–” I pointed with my free hand. “This is your doing! You’ve brought all this about–”

  “If have, all for better – that’s what I’d say, and ‘spect you to agree.” He pulled me closer to himself, so that his every word could be better understood. “Int’mated as much yourself, no fondness for place, nor for what these bluidy Elohim want bring about – so if with nudge of few levers, twist of dial or two, can bring it all crashing down, would’ve thought you’d be all the happier for it.”

  “But… you are on their side!” I stared uncomprehendingly at him. “Working for them, in their pay – that was why you forced me here. The meeting between myself and my son has been completed, just as the boy had wished – and now he was to fulfil his side of the bargain that he had struck with the Elohim, to animate the orphans with those hideous devices struck into their chests. But now you thwart their ambitions – there will be nothing remaining here but steaming scrap metal. What reason do you have for turning on them in such a decisive manner?”

  “Hard turn on anyone,” said Spivvem, “if never on their side. Which never was, but wanted ‘em to think so. How else would’ve gotten their trust, and free run of this place, if they hadn’t thought I’d been bought well enow, and doing exactly what they wanted? ‘Course, meant had to actually get hold of you, drag you here and all – but now that’s taken care of, free to do what I wanted from beginning, which was to shut ‘em down good and proper, once and for all.”