The Doomsday Vault

by Steven Harper

  “All this is hypothetical,” Alice said stiffly. “I’m marrying Norbert. Gavin is—was—a passing fancy.”

  “I don’t think so,” Louisa replied. “Gavin stirs up strong feelings, even after a year. I can see it in your face. Why not walk out on Norbert and pursue him?”

  “I can’t. I even had a chance to work with”—the Third Ward’s machine froze her tongue again—“with him. At a salary. And I turned it down.”

  “What? Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Because Father owes more than I could hope to pay off on my own. Because Norbert has moved Father in here and is providing for his care. Because the banns have been published, and if I back out of the marriage now, Norbert would have the legal right to sue me for the title I had promised his firstborn child. Logic dictated I turn the offer down.”

  “You’re a woman, Alice, not an automaton.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

  “There’s more to this than mere logic,” Louisa said shrewdly. “I can tell.”

  There was, but Alice refused to think about it. “I said I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

  “You have a lot of things you don’t want to discuss,” Louisa replied. “Well, what do you propose we do?”

  “I want to clear up some of the mysteries in my life,” Alice said. “I want to know at least one thing that’s going on round here. I want to take apart one of these blasted automatons and find out why Norbert is so fascinated by these things.”

  “You’re fascinated by them.”

  “Not in the same way. Kemp, bring me my tools. And if you see Click, tell him to—oh. Here he is. How did you know I wanted your help?”

  Click, who had jumped up to the kitchen worktable, didn’t respond. In a few minutes, Kemp returned, wheeling a walnut cabinet the size of two steamer trunks. Brass fittings gleamed, and every surface was carved to show gears, pistons, rotors, and other bits of machinery. One of the rubber wheels left a small mark on the floor, and the spider rushed over to work on it with frantic movements of the scrub brush. Alice twisted the cabinet’s handles, and the doors sprang open, revealing rotating shelves of tools and dozens of tiny drawers for spare parts.

  “Well!” Louisa said. “This is a step up from your garret.”

  “An engagement present from Norbert,” Alice said. “It’s a definite improvement.”

  “If you like ostentation, Madam,” Kemp put in with disapproval.

  “Madam didn’t ask your opinion.” Alice crooked a finger at one of the motionless footmen standing against the kitchen wall. “You! Are you awake?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The automaton’s voice was flat.

  “Come.”

  The automaton obeyed. It had a female shape, and it swayed when it walked. Its black-and-white uniform clung to a curvy brass body, and its skirt swished with every step. Somehow it seemed more naked than Kemp, whose clothes were only painted on.

  “What is your function in this house?” Alice asked.

  “I serve whatever function is required of me,” the servant said.

  “Helpful,” Louisa observed. “You don’t suppose . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’ve heard about automatons that serve a certain purpose. You know the one I mean.”

  “Oh, Louisa.” But the protest was halfhearted. “Such . . . congress between men and machines is strictly illegal. Besides, Norbert wouldn’t.”

  “Really? I know this is a little harsh, but how well do you know him? Until you came along, he lived alone in this huge house. He had no social life to speak of. What do you think he was doing in here?”

  Alice was going to protest again, then decided against it. What was the point when she was thinking the same thing? A sick feeling roiled in her stomach, and she wanted to flee the room. But no—she had asked for answers, and she was going to have them. “Let’s get this over with. Help me get her—its—dress off, Louisa.”

  They did. The automaton stood for it without protesting, and Click batted at one of the sleeves. The last layer of undergarments was shed, revealing brass skin broken only by regular patterns of rivets. It looked less human this way, like a mannequin or dressmaker’s dummy. Alice quickly examined it and found only unsuspicious, smooth metal.

  “Well,” she said, straightening. “This is a bit embarrassing.”

  Louisa was holding Click. “Perhaps other methods were employed?”

  “Hm. Just how suspicious am I allowed to be?”

  The spider, which was the size of a hatbox, finished removing the scuff mark and was turning to scuttle away when Click abruptly leapt from Louisa’s arms and pounced on it. The spider squeaked, and its scrub brush skittered across the floor. The two of them rolled about, Click’s eyes reflecting phosphorescent glee.

  “Click!” Alice scolded. “Stop it! Leave it alone!”

  Click abruptly snapped free and strolled away, tail in the air. The discombobulated spider lay on its nose, its backside in the air.

  “That cat,” Alice said, leaning down to right the spider. “I don’t know what I’ll—”

  She halted and stared.

  “You’ll what?” Louisa said.

  Alice didn’t answer. Instead, she lifted the hatbox spider onto the table, spun it around, and used a screwdriver to lever open a small door mounted on the rear.

  “What are you doing?” Louisa asked.

  “This spider has two panels to access the inside instead of one,” Alice said. “Unusual. Hold still, you.”

  The door popped open. Alice and Louisa both leaned forward to look inside. There was a moment of silence. Then Alice reached inside and pulled out a device, the shape of which made its function quite clear.

  “I don’t suppose,” Louisa said, “that this object has some machine-related function not so obvious to a layman.”

  “I’m afraid not.” Alice shut the spider down. Her hands were shaking, and she felt about to throw up. She remembered Mr. Caraway and the other man she had seen leaving the house during business hours, and she remembered that Norbert had been home. “Kemp, please bring every inhuman automaton in the house to the formal dining room. And don’t let Father know.”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Louisa.

  “I’m going to see how many of these things are equipped like this one. Then I’m going to talk to my fiancé.”

  “You look upset.”

  “I am.”

  Kemp hastily threw a drop cloth over the dining room table, allowing Alice to make a lineup of automatons on it. It turned out most of the spiders and walkboxes were equipped the same as the first.

  “Do you drink?” Louisa asked from one of the high-backed chairs. “If you don’t, now might be a good time to start.”

  “Hm,” Alice said again.

  “You could install some spikes. As a little surprise.”

  Alice had to laugh at that. “Thank you for that thought. But I think talking to Norbert will do.” She glanced at the grandfather clock ticking in the corner. “And he’ll be home in an hour.”

  “Then I’d better scamper away.” She rose and kissed Alice on the cheek. “Whatever you decide to do, darling, remember I’m on your side. Though I have to say that your Gavin is sounding more attractive by the moment.”

  When Norbert arrived home an hour later with a bouquet of roses, he found on the table, instead of dinner, a number of spidery automatons with their covers off. Tools and parts lay scattered up and down the drop cloth. Alice stood among them, feeling like a black widow in a wiry web.

  “Really, Norbert,” Alice said icily. “How long did you think it would take me to find out?”

  Norbert looked at her for a moment, then set the roses down and pulled off his gloves. “I did say at breakfast that there was another task I needed you to take on.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I received a telegram from Fred Caraway at my office today. It said he’d sto
pped by on the wrong day for his appointment. He always was a little scatterbrained.”

  “What does that have to do with these ... things?” Alice tried to keep her voice neutral, but anger and humiliation burned two red spots into her cheeks.

  “A remarkably imprecise description coming from someone of your caliber.” He yanked the corner bellpull, and Kemp immediately stepped into the room. “Gin and tonic. And where’s supper?”

  “On a cart in the kitchen,” Alice said. “I’m tired of waiting for explanations, Norbert, though I’ve already figured out quite a bit.”

  “What have you figured out, then?” Norbert seemed perfectly at ease, which served only to infuriate Alice.

  She took a deep breath to get herself under control. “These machines ... entertain your friends, or business contacts, or whatever they are. In return, your contacts provide you good business deals. Mr. Caraway, for example, ensures low tin prices. You don’t keep human servants because human servants talk, and word would eventually reach the authorities. The only part I don’t understand is why none of them are interested in the more human-seeming automatons.”

  Kemp held out a glass of gin and tonic on a tray, and Norbert accepted it. “You’d be surprised at how many men are too shy even to pay for female companionship, and how many others are put off by human-shaped automatons.” He gulped from his drink. “There are men who find the idea of a small machine that doesn’t talk or even appear human quite appealing. And the man who owns the machines becomes popular.”

  “What has this to do with me?” Alice demanded.

  “I didn’t build these automatons. My uncle did. He died before I met you, leaving me with no way to repair them.”

  “And that’s where I come in? A female?”

  “Why not? The sex of the mechanic is unimportant. I had small-business dealings with your father, and through him I learned about you and your talent with automatons. I helped wrangle you an invitation to the Greenfellow ball so I could look you over. The fact that you repaired Lady Greenfellow’s cellist on the spot sealed it, as far as I was concerned.”

  “In other words, you only proposed to me so I could keep your ... toys in good working order?” Fury overwrote every word.

  “Good Lord, no!” Norbert came over and took her hand. “Alice, you’re also heir to a title. Over time we may grow to love each other, or we may not. But this”—he swept a gesture over the motionless automatons—“this is business.”

  The question popped out before she could stop it. “Have you used them?”

  “No,” he said simply, and sat back down. “At any rate, you’ve already discovered that several of them are broken. I want them repaired. We’ll set up a workroom so you needn’t clutter up the dining room, and I’ll give you the name of a shop that can be trusted if you need parts.”

  “Why don’t you have your factory make them?”

  Norbert shook his head. “My factory turns out materials in large quantities, far more than my little machines might need. Besides, the parts have to be custom-fitted. Don’t worry—I pay the metalsmith well to keep silent. And it’ll be easier now that I don’t have to worry about scheduling appointments for days when you don’t visit.” He drained his glass. “The beauty of it all, my dear, is that everything appears perfectly normal. Your father will continue to get proper care, and when we’re married, his debts will be paid. My first son will be a peer. You may work on whatever other projects you like, as long as my machines stay in good repair. Everyone comes out ahead.”

  “I see.” Alice sank into a chair of her own, barely noticing the soft velvet cushioning. She felt suddenly tired, as if she had worked a full day on her knees scrubbing floors. Norbert was right, of course. Father would be cared for. His debts would be paid. Most importantly, everything would be for the best because it would all appear normal. She would be—or seem to be—a normal, traditional woman with a normal, traditional husband, living a normal, traditional life. As long as no one knew that anything odd was happening, everything would be all right. Everything would be under control. That was the rule. Here, at least, she was on familiar ground.

  “Very well,” she said.

  The days passed into weeks, and Alice worked out a new routine. Breakfasts still belonged to Norbert, but mornings found Alice in the new workshop. She couldn’t think of it as her workshop yet, even though Norbert made it clear it was as much her domain as the kitchen was to most wives.

  The workshop lay behind an anonymous locked door at the end of an unlit hallway on the second floor. It looked perfectly normal and respectable from the outside. Inside was a place clean, spacious, and well lit by electricity, where Alice spent secret time hunched over a worktable, refitting rubber rings and lubricating little pistons. She stayed strictly away from the rooms where Norbert entertained his business contacts.

  Alice didn’t bury herself entirely in the workshop. There were wedding arrangements, but not many, since theirs was going to be so tiny. Her wedding dress arrived, and she modeled it halfheartedly for Louisa. And now that she had explored the house and taken over the household accounts, Alice took on Louisa’s help and put on afternoon teas for ladies who were fascinated with the houseful of automaton servants. The events were always highly attended, especially after she fitted one of the footmen to spout tea, milk, and hot water from his fingertips (though she told everyone she’d had it done for her). Alice remained bright and merry on the outside, but underneath she felt lost and frightened. The idea of ferreting out more secrets had lost its appeal, and although she felt flickers of curiosity about the fates of Gavin and Aunt Edwina and the grinning clockworker, she no longer felt a burning need to uncover more ugly truth and take the emotional bruises that came with it.

  “I don’t know why I did this, Father,” she whispered at his bedside one morning. “I’m wearing a shell, and it gets heavier every day.”

  Arthur Michaels shifted slightly on the silken sheets. His eyes were sunken; his white hair brittle. His hands had shrunk to sticks, and he weighed so little that Alice could lift him with ease. He slept almost all the time now and ate nearly nothing.

  Alice held his hand for a while, then pursed her lips and left the room. The automaton stationed near the bed would alert her to any change. Right now she had errands to run. Specifically, she needed to visit the special shop Norbert had mentioned. Three of Norbert’s automatons were malfunctioning beyond her ability to repair at home, and she needed to commission parts. She put on her hat, skewered it with pins, and went downstairs.

  Although Norbert preferred his mechanical carriage, Alice had persuaded him to buy for her use a more conventional vehicle, a small, boxy carriage pulled by a pair of well-matched horses. A vehicle like Norbert’s attracted a great deal of attention, and there were times when Alice didn’t want all eyes on her. Kemp drove in a cloak and hat to disguise his own identity, and when they arrived, he carried two muslin-wrapped automatons into the shop while Alice took the third.

  The shop was crowded from floor to ceiling with shelves and bins, all of them filled with a jumble up of tools and parts—cogs, wheels, levers, pistons, drill bits, spools of wire, steel sheets, rivets, bolts, screws, nuts, and more. At the back of the shop behind a counter, a wizened little man perched on a stool with his hands tucked into the pockets of his leather apron. An enormous pencil was stuck behind one ear, nearly lost in the wrinkles that covered his bald head. His name was Mr. Smeet, and he had once been a smith himself, but now his son and grandsons ran the forge out back while he ran the business out front. Nothing in the shop itself was ordered in any way that made sense to Alice, but experience had taught her that Mr. Smeet could lay his hands on anything from the shelves in seconds.

  “Ah, the young miss and her automatons,” Mr. Smeet said in a piping voice that matched his tiny body. “What do you need today?”

  Alice made herself march up to the counter and set the bundle down. She had gone through this many times, and she still hated it. Nau
sea oozed through her stomach, and her skin itched, as if dozens of accusing eyes were watching her. She had to continually remind herself that she was protected. The machines were hidden under muslin, and their true function was also hidden behind an access panel.

  “I need parts to repair these three,” she said briskly as Kemp set the other two beside the first.

  Mr. Smeet reached for one of the bundles. “Let’s have a look.”

  Alice helped him unwrap the three automatons. Two were spiders, and the third was shaped like a large vase, though the opening at the top was not used for flowers. All three had been deactivated. Mr. Smeet put on a jeweler’s loupe, got out a large sheet of foolscap, and spun the automatons toward himself with little tsk noises.

  “These’ve been abused,” he muttered.

  “Yes,” Alice said. “I’ll need—”

  A dreadful wrenching noise tore the very air, and a section of the roof came off the shop, taking a large portion of the front wall with it. Alice screamed, flung herself sideways, and went down, hampered by her skirts. Shouts and screams filtered into the shop from outside, and a hail of wood and metal pelted over Alice. In an enormous hole where the front of the shop used to be stood a two-story machine. It had a squat, round build, with heavy legs, long arms, and gleaming brass skin. A glass bubble enclosed the top, and a young man with ash-blond hair pulled levers and spun wheels inside it. He wore a high collar and an evening coat that fit him badly. Alice stared up from the floor of the shop, trying to take everything in. The man, who pulled up a speaking tube from between his ankles, somehow struck Alice as familiar, though she couldn’t say how.

  “Wonderful!” His voice crackled thin and tinny. “Don’t fight me, and I’ll remember it as a kindness when I’m ruling London. Blow me a kiss, and I’ll make you my queen.”

  The machine clanked into the shop, and its front opened like a drawbridge. It leaned down, long arms reaching. Alice scooted back, her eyes wide. She was panting in fear. Kemp lay trapped under a wooden beam, one of his eyes smashed, and Mr. Smeet had fled out a back door.