by Cat Rambo
Or had he? Was the world so random that none of this meant anything?
Either everything is random, or God’s hand moves all the pieces, including me, and Father McNeill, and the Doctor, and Jonah. A God who calculates things so precisely that when a bird falls, you see the last trace of sunlight answering you. Setting you free. A patient God waiting for something so large that Jonah and I were unimportant cogs. Maybe that God calls upon us according to our nature and doesn’t care what we are, or what we call ourselves.
Tonight I’m leaving. Rappaccini has looked for Jonah all day, calling and calling, but he hasn’t thought to search the grounds yet. Eventually he will.
I’ve packed the few supplies I have. They’ll take me over the mountains, I think, into the sun.
I have a traveling companion, an old acquaintance. He’s invisible, inaudible. I don’t know what he wants, precisely. Maybe he’s a figment. Maybe he’s not.
But if I think he’s there, it comforts me. And there is so little comfort in this world.
Afternotes:
A protagonist who is handicapped, Native American, and transgendered is not an easy pick, but this one wanted his story told. The story began in watching a crow and thinking about how we almost always portray intelligent animals as benign. What would happen, I wondered, with a sociopathic crow who happens to team up with a fellow-minded human?
Some readers will notice the reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappacini’s Daughter,” one of my favorite stories as an early reader.
Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart
Frenzies of gingerbread adorned the house’s facade, but it was splintery, paint peeling in long shaggy spirals that fuzzed the fretwork’s outlines. The left side of the house drooped like the face of a stroke victim, windows staring blindly out, cataracted with the dusty remnants of curtains.
Agent Artemus West thought that it would have given a human man the chills. He glanced back at Elspeth to see how she was taking it, but her face was chiseled and resolute as a fireman’s axe.
“You all right?”
She swabbed at her forehead with a bare forearm, leaving streaks of dark wet dirt. “Thank your lucky stars you’re mechanical and don’t feel the heat,” she rasped.
Hot indeed if enough to irritate her into mentioning that. He chose to ignore it.
The house sagged amid slumping cottonwoods, clusters of low-lying trees, their leaves ovals of green and pale brown. Three stories, and above that, two cupolas thrust upward into the sky, imploring, the left one tilted at an angle. The wind whistled through the fretwork, a shifting, hollow sound, like a jug’s mouth being blown across. There had once been a flower garden towards the back. Weeds had claimed most of it, but the papery red heads of poppies blazed among the tangle. The sky stretched high and blue and hollow overhead.
His spurs jingled as he clanked up the front steps. His eyes ratcheted over the scene for clues, but it was clear that their fugitive had entered by the front door, which hung a few inches ajar.
Wood creaked under Elspeth’s slower treads. “This was his mother’s house,” she said.
She’d gone over the files meticulously as always, then summed up the details for him as they’d ridden along. He ticked through them in his head. “The scientist?”
“Angeline Stoddard Eisenmacher, yes. She helped discover how to harness phlogiston. She was working in Seattle for the war effort. Then she retired out here when she got lungrot and lasted another two years.”
Phlogiston, the most precious material in the world, capable of fueling marvelous machines like himself. Artemus carried a scraping of it, small as a fingernail clipping, deep in his midsection. Once a year, it was replaced, but it was valuable enough that he’d had people try to kill him for it before.
So far none had succeeded. And if it seemed that someone was about to, he held, secret in another internal pocket a sliver of terra fluida, a substance that, when combined with phlogiston, would explode. He would do that rather than be taken.
“Think he knows we’re here?”
“Of course he does,” she said. “But where else will he go? We’ve hunted him through the Deadlands and then the Cascades.” She glanced back along the trampled swathe they had made coming through the sea of grass. In these plains, trees were evidence of water; this cluster of cottonwoods was an oasis in this semi-desert.
Artemus doubted the man would try to escape. No, he’d try to hide himself in the house well enough to convince them that he was no longer there, in the hopes they’d move along.
But while Eisenmacher might have some inkling of Artemus’s nature, he didn’t realize how implacable the mechanical man could be. When your brain is made of a network of magnets and wires, it doesn’t feel boredom the same way impermanent human flesh does.
Or perhaps he overestimated Artemus by thinking him capable of giving up in the first place.
Elspeth said, “Angeline Eisenbacher worked on devices like you.”
He paused. “Do you think there are any in the house?”
“I do,” she said. “I looked at her invoices, from after she arrived here. She was working on something.”
“That must be what her son is after. A device that can protect him.” If he had been human, he might have been irritated.
As he stepped towards the door, it slammed shut.
The night before they arrived at Eisenmacher’s house, Artemus had laid counting the number of stars stretched out across the sky like a sequined shawl and listened to the sound of Elspeth’s breathing. Twice he heard it quicken, as though she were running through nightmares. Each time he considered rising and going to her, laying his hand on her shoulder to quell whatever monsters were chasing her, but her breathing shifted back before he ever moved.
In the early morning, as the sky began to lighten, she woke as she always did, all at once, eyes opening. One swipe of her hand across her face, and she was ready for the day. It was remarkable. He knew no women like her, even among her fellow female Pinkerton agents.
On the other hand, he rarely socialized with humans. He was the Pinkerton Agency’s equipment, and equipment didn’t socialize in the evenings, didn’t go out to the opera or to a friend’s house. It sat in a storeroom instead.
Elspeth was assigned to make sure nothing happened to him. That was her main purpose and had been for the last two years.
Humans were odd. Sometimes when their thoughts ran in the same track over and over, they could no longer think of anything else. That was, he calculated, what had happened to her. She had become obsessed with him.
Not for the first time, he thought that it would be best for her if she were to find another assignment.
He didn’t know why he’d never told his superiors that.
She heated water in the last of the coals to make tea and wash her face, then ate a handful of dry biscuits from her saddlebag.
“We have time,” he said. “You can make yourself a better breakfast if you like.”
She shook her head. “Let’s get this over.” She didn’t like these missions, he knew. They’d argued them over the campfire more than once. She thought it wrong to make someone into a clank against their will. And that they couldn’t be trusted once they had been converted into their new mechanical form.
Still, the clanks produced from their missions, the injured men made healthy again by the addition of mechanical limbs and other appurtenances, those were an important part of the war effort, the effort that had been going on almost two decades now.
The man they were chasing had given up any say in the matter when he had shot a hospital guard dead and then climbed out a window to escape. They would capture him, and he would be taken back to the War Hospital for the series of operations that would make him a mechanical soldier.
Artemus was not like those soldiers. He had never been human, had no memories of flesh or love. He had been created by the English scientist, Patrick Lovelace, only eight years ago. The first few of those h
e spent idyllically, living with his master as a companion, entertaining guests with the marvels of calculation and conversation that he could perform. But when Lovelace had fallen on hard times, he had offered Artemus up to the Pinkertons, who had readily perceived the advantages of a mechanical detective.
They stared at the closed door.
“Should we look for another way in?” Elspeth asked. Her voice was uneasy, not a natural intonation for her. Artemus had seen her face down wild bears, men with guns, and even once a werewolf. He looked at her now. She shook herself like a dog shedding water and returned the glance, one fine blond eyebrow raised in question.
“If it were still open, I would say yes,” he told her. “But if the door is shut, that’s not how they want us to come in.”
“They?”
He shrugged. “Maybe just he. But let’s not make any assumptions beforehand.”
The door was locked, he found when he tested it. The ornate lock was a thing of chambers and barrels and prongs, but it took him only a few moments to figure out how to spring it.
He pushed it open, though he made sure he wasn’t standing directly in the doorway as he did so. A bullet wouldn’t damage him the way it would a human, but it could still hit a delicate mechanism or intricate joint. The hinges cried out as the door moved slowly inward.
They crouched on either side of the opening, listening hard, before he nodded and stepped inside, Elspeth following seconds afterward.
They stood in the middle of what had once been a formal parlor, full of graceful wooden furniture whose stuffed cushions were ragged tufts now, horse hair and batting stolen by mice for generations of nests. A cuckoo clock hung askew on the gray wallpaper scrolled with black fleur-de-lis. On the wall opposite them, shelves built into the wall housed books, but when Artemus pulled one out from the leather-bound array, it fell to pieces in his hand, bookworms wriggling frantically away across the shredded carpet’s gaps.
“How long has this place been deserted?” he asked.
“A decade.” Elspeth’s face was pale. Like most Pinkerton agents, she had a touch of the Sight. “Something’s wrong. It shouldn’t be like this.”
“Could something else have taken it over?” Empty spaces drew supernatural creatures.
She shook her head but didn’t answer. Her shoulders stooped as though she struggled to stand up.
“Elspeth?” He made a question of her name.
“She doesn’t want us here.”
“His mother?” But ghosts were easy to dispel with salt and iron. A ghost wouldn’t make her look like that. But even so, she nodded.
“Angeline Eisenmacher is still here?”
“No and yes.” Her eyes were bewildered. “I can’t tell you more than that.”
Through an open archway, they could see the dining room, a massive table leaning dizzily on a broken leg, surrounded by crouched chairs, like lions feeding on a kill. The paintings on the wall were scenes of mountains that Artemus, checking the almost encyclopedic memory Doctor Lovelace had installed, thought might be the Lusitanians.
A cuckoo clock hung near another door that most probably led to the kitchen. They chose not to investigate the apparently empty room, but chose the other archway, which led to a hallway winding its way deeper into the house. The carpet underfoot was also mouse-chewed, and all of the pictures hung askew or fallen, only a cuckoo clock hanging intact.
Elspeth said, “That’s the third clock like that.”
Artemus examined the clock. It seemed unremarkable: a typical Bavarian clock, once bright colors now faded. “It’s ticking,” he said. “Eisenmacher must’ve wound it.”
He touched the dial. Immediately the cuckoo’s door slid open and a fierce beak stabbed out at his fingers.
As he withdrew them, the beak’s owner appeared in the doorway and then launched itself into the air: a tiny clockwork bird, no bigger than a hummingbird. It hovered in the air, regarding them, the air shrilly protesting the rapid beat of its wings.
They both stood stock still, waiting. Artemus estimated the distance between himself and Elspeth, in case the bird dove at her. Those metal wings looked razor sharp.
But after a moment, the bird buzzed away and down the corridor.
“Still some life in the house, it seems,” Artemus observed.
As they explored the first floor, other birds emerged from the cuckoo clocks that seemed to have been mandatory for every room. Most swooped away as the first one had, but several began to follow the pair at a distance.
Artemus kept listening. Somewhere in this house was the fugitive Eisenmacher, perhaps listening in turn, trying to figure out where they were. He could hide in one place and stay there, if the hole were deep and hidden enough, or he might rely on moving around the house in synchronicity with their movement, hiding only where they had already looked. But, if the latter, Artemus would hear him.
Instead, all he heard were the hum of the birdwings and the small noises of breath and heartbeat and motion that Elspeth made, and the creaks and murmurs of the house answering her.
They found little but dust and spider webs and decaying furniture in the rooms they passed through at first. Then they began to find traps: the trigger wire that shot a crossbow bolt through a doorway, a floor that gave way into a hole leading God knows where. A chair with knives stabbing up from its arms. A heavy glass chandelier ready to fall, right where one might pause to look out the window.
And odd things that he wasn’t sure were traps. The woman who had built this house had spared no expense as far as modern conveniences went. Stove, icebox, washing machine… All just a little more advanced than they should be, improved by Eisenmacher.
He asked Elspeth, “What did she do for the war?”
She shook her head. “Classified.”
That wasn’t helpful.
Artemus went first always. Elspeth followed behind. They had been working together long enough that they knew each other’s reactions. They made their way through a hallway that curled past the kitchen, then led towards a narrow servants’ staircase.
“Eisenmacher?” Elsbeth called. They listened to her voice echoing through the rooms upstairs. “This is pointless, sir. Come out and save us all a lot of time.”
A voice echoed from somewhere. Artemus spun, but he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. “Go back, Pinks! I won’t go with you, dead or alive.”
And then the house began to come to life.
It started with the gaslights flickering in the manner of all gaslights, but they were the wrong color. They were white with just a hint of brilliant blue, the color of phlogiston. Birds buzzed through the air, a whirling crowd of clockwork. Upstairs, faint music played: a tinny, old-fashioned waltz.
One by one, every window snapped shut, then each door except for one, directly facing them: the doorway framing narrow wooden stairs, proceeding upward, then twisting around so you couldn’t see what stood at the head of the stairs. The birds subsided.
Artemus and Elspeth exchanged glances. Elspeth’s hands moved in sign language.
He wants us to go upstairs. That seems like a good reason not to.
Artemus replied, But how else will we catch him?
It’s a trap.
Traps are most effective when the prey isn’t wary. He’s bitten off more than he chew.
Doubt crawled across her face but she nodded reluctantly.
He’d removed his spurs the night before. Now he eased his booted foot onto the first stair, not in the center but to the side where it was less likely to creak, listening for any sound of movement from above.
Step. Step. Step. He was almost to the tiny landing where the stairway turned. This was a staircase for servants, who wouldn’t have been allowed to use the carpeted, wide front stairway. He wondered what had happened to the servants when Mrs. Eisenmacher died. Had they fled together, no longer willing to live in this isolated place, miles and miles from any civilized gathering? What had made Mrs. Eisenmacher seek ou
t this spot to build a house?
And, moreover, such a grand house, like one of the mansions in Seattle, far to the west.
When he inched his head around to look up the stairs to their head, he saw no one standing there, beside the squat brass post that ended the banister. The air was still silent except for the sound of his partner’s breath.
If he had been capable of pride, he would have gloried in the silence with which he could move. No clumsy, clanking machine he, but rather a carefully calibrated mechanism.
He was almost to the top of the stairway. The quiet air felt thick, as though it had congealed with time. Behind him, Elspeth followed, her steps loud in his ears, even though he knew someone else would not have been able to perceive them. There was a thin gray light, stronger to one side as though coming in through the front windows of the house, only half able to enter it.
Elspeth’s revelation that the house might contain others like him had given him pause. The Pinkerton agency had invested in him because he was so effective against humans. But he’d never fought other mechanicals.
He rested his palm on the top of the post and paused again, listening.
With the quickness of a striking serpent, the top of the post elongated upward into a brassy tendril, several inches wide at the base then tapering slowly into a metal tentacle. It coiled around his wrist with a pressure that would have sheared a human hand off, but only slightly indented his metallic skin. It exerted that pressure for several seconds as he tried to pull away from it, then abruptly released him. He leaned back, only his inhuman speed allowing him to avoid its slash out through the air towards his face.
Elspeth had stepped backwards, down in order to avoid its reach, a pistol in her hand. The brass tentacle wavered as though trying to figure out what was going on, searched first a few inches towards him, then her. Elpseth’s gun tracked the movement, but she held her fire, letting him act.
This time he was prepared. His hand flashed out to grab the tentacle at its base and pull with all his strength. Metal screeched protest as it detached from the rest of the post, and oily blue fluid gushed like blood from the jagged stump. The tentacle writhed wildly in his grasp, spraying more fluid across the stairs.
