by Trisha Telep
All right, so maybe her brother was correct, she thought as she searched. Maybe there really were . . . things out there. Davenport was the dreamer of the family, ruining his eyes reading philosophical tomes, writing spiritualist tracts and punching cards for Wicketsmith’s complex automaton-control routines. Constante preferred to keep herself firmly grounded in the material world, her interest primarily on making mechanical improvements to the family’s automata.
The gyroscopic stabilizing mechanism had been her idea, although her father and Stephen had run most of the tests while she’d attended classes.
Lightning flashed and something tickled her neck.
Constante reached up to slap at it – hoping it wasn’t a spider – just as her necklace’s knot slipped open. Cord and key started to slip down the front of her nightgown. She grabbed them both. Then, with a sense of trepidation, she opened her hand to look at the key clearly for the first time since her father’s body had been found.
“Wait,” her father’s assistant, Stephen, had said. He’d straightened and held out the small, shiny brass key. “We left a key out of one of the crates.”
“Can’t be – I double-checked them all,” Davenport had objected, looking down at his packing list. “It must be a spare.”
“All the automata had their keys around their necks when I packed them yesterday,” Ambrose had agreed.
“It might have fallen out of one of the new supply crates,” Constante had volunteered, looking up from her textbooks. She’d just passed the entrance exam to University College, and she hadn’t hesitated to leap into her studies before the term began.
Stephen had given the key a quizzical look, shrugged, and walked over to her desk.
“Then keep it as a good-luck talisman, Miss Wicketsmith,” he’d said, presenting it to her with a playful smile. “May it open the door to success in everything you do.”
Constante had blushed as she’d taken it. Stephen was two years older than she was, and she hoped with all her heart that he’d never noticed that his employer’s daughter enjoyed watching him work while she was pretending to study.
“May it get back in the box where it belongs,” her father had retorted, dryly. But behind Ambrose’s back, Davenport had winked.
Her brother noticed everything.
“Thank you, Mr DeVry,” she’d said, avoiding his gaze and casually setting the key on top of one of her books.
Half an hour later, when nobody was looking, she’d slipped it into her purse.
If anybody had ever realized that one of the crates was short by a key, they’d never mentioned it to her.
A year of being absently rubbed as she’d studied – or, sometimes, daydreamed – had worn down the key’s decorative markings. Now, as she studied it, Constante wondered if she’d been secretly cherishing a murderer’s gift all that time.
No matter. It would come in useful tonight. Giving up on her search of the table, Constante used her own key to unlock the automaton’s chest panel. She reached in and flipped the switch. The crystalline battery sparked and grew radiant.
Leaving the chest plate open for the extra light it offered, Constante moved through the warehouse following her brother’s advice. Wicketsmith’s Wondrous Automata had fourteen automata close enough to completion to have their batteries installed. Four were hulking, multi-armed iron soldiers destined to be shipped off to the Punjab; their mechanisms had been painstakingly insulated and plated to protect them from grit. One was completely assembled and the other three were nearly finished, just waiting for their final wiring.
Two of the automata were incomplete iron horses commissioned by the city, which meant they were ugly and strong rather than finely crafted aristocrats’ toys. Five more were labor-class automata for mines or trench digging or some other form of repetitive, dirty work, all lined up and ready to be shipped. The last three were private commissions, two mechanical maids and a mechanical butler, all elegantly shaped with smooth metal faces that could be covered, if the owner so desired, with realistic rubber masks. The private commissions cost the most, but they were the pinnacle of Wicketsmith’s artistry and the focus of their work to make automata as realistic as possible.
They had been experimenting with the gyroscopic stabilizer on the butler automaton, hoping a smoother gait and better balance would allow it to carry and pour drinks more precisely, an improvement the libation-loving earl ordering it would be happy to pay extra for. It wasn’t Constante’s ultimate goal for the stabilizer, but innovation cost money, so performance enhancements for aristocratic toys came first and practical applications could be developed later.
Soon all of the automata were gently crackling and buzzing, their aetheric batteries sending coronas of light dancing inside their well-insulated torsos. The air on the manufactory floor began to take on the freshly charged feeling that indicated a build-up of aetheric energy. Constante turned from the last mechanical and glanced at the windows, swallowing.
As if in response to her fears, lightning flashed and was followed by a sharp roll of thunder directly overhead. Scrapes whimpered and Constante started so hard that the key slipped from her fingers.
“Connie! Are you all right?” Her brother’s worried voice floated down from upstairs.
Constante froze, staring at the key which hovered inches from the floor. Something pale was wrapped around it – something pale and shaped like a hand. She could almost see the faint outline of fingers as they knotted the silk cord again.
“Connie?” Davenport shouted again.
“Are—” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat, her eyes still fixed on the floating key and the ghostly hand. “Are you coming back soon?”
“Yes, in a minute.”
“Hurry.”
“All right, all right.”
The key rose, slowly, its silk cord dangling.
Constante strained to see what – who – held it.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “Father?”
The key’s slow rise halted. Was that a “no”?
The hand didn’t look like a woman’s, but . . .
“Mother?”
No movement. She hadn’t expected any. Her mother had died a long time ago.
There was only one other Wicketsmith employee who was missing.
She had to fight to get the name out. “Stephen?”
The key bobbed up, then slid forward, hovering next to her, slightly above waist level.
Constante reached forward, her fingers trembling, and took the key. The well-worn brass felt ice cold.
“Stephen? But—”
The spectral hand faded. She fell silent, fear gripping her heart.
It couldn’t have been Stephen.
Stephen was missing, not dead.
“Davie!” Her voice shook. “Where are you?”
“Here.” The stairs clanged as Davenport hurried down them, his arms full. He dropped his bundle on the work table closest to the spot where their father’s body had been found. “Sorry; I stopped to get your robe from your room.”
Constante hesitantly slid the silken cord of her necklace back around her neck, shivering as the cold key touched her flesh.
“Here,” her brother said, holding out her robe. “You look chilled to the bone.”
“Thank you.” She pulled on the robe and knotted its belt around her waist. The extra layer of flower-printed cotton made her feel more secure. “Davie . . .”
“Hmm?” He cleared a space on the table.
“Why do you think aetheric energy summons the dead?”
“The decay of the radiant matter inside the battery attracts them.” He screwed a graphite pencil into place in a hole in the heart-shaped planchette. “When radiant matter is converted into aetheric energy, the disruption of the quintessential field creates empty spaces that need to be filled. Nature abhors a vacuum, you know. So energy is drawn into the lacunae, and lightning strikes the Civic Power Plant or spirits show up at an aetherically lit seance.”
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“So ghosts are a kind of energy?”
“I prefer the term ‘spirits’, but yes. They’re pure vitalic energy released from their earthly shell.”
“Do they have to be ‘released’?” She touched the key through the fabric of her nightgown. “Could a ghost come from someone who’s still alive?”
Davenport gave her an interested glance as he set the planchette on top of a blank sheet of paper. “Astral projection has been considered a form of vitalic transmission,” he said. “But it requires a great deal of training – only the most powerful fakirs and swamis can separate their vitalic force from their flesh. Why?”
Constante didn’t want to tell him about the hand. Putting it into words might make it real.
“I . . . I’m just trying to understand how this works. University College doesn’t teach spiritualism.”
“Someday it will.” Davenport pulled up two chairs. Outside, another burst of wind and rain pounded against the manufactory walls.
“What about . . . table-tapping and ghostly trumpets and all that? How can vitalic energy do any of that?”
“The same way magnetism moves things: by sending ripples through the aether. Or, sometimes, by transforming back into material form, or ectoplasm, in order to manipulate the material world. When you see or hear a ghost, you’re witnessing an ectoplasmic manifestation.”
Constante wanted desperately to be skeptical. Everybody knew that matter could be transformed into energy, but she’d never heard of it working the other way around.
Still, she couldn’t quite convince herself that she hadn’t seen a hand around the key.
She gestured to the planchette. “So, why do you need this?” “It takes less effort for a spirit to nudge a planchette on casters than to pick up a pencil and write.” Davenport touched the small wooden contraption, which rolled forward. “Sit down and put your fingers on top. Just a light touch, and don’t fight the planchette’s movement when it starts to shift.”
She warily rested her fingertips on top of the wooden plank. Her brother settled into his own chair and put his fingers on the other side, across from hers.
Lightning flashed through the windows, close. Thunder followed at once, loud enough to momentarily drown out the crackling and humming of the aetheric generator and the buzzing of the diamagnetic chamber.
“Father?” Davenport asked, closing his eyes. “Father, we’re ready for your message now.”
Constante wondered if she was supposed to close her eyes, too.
Scrapes suddenly barked, sitting straight up by her feet, and the planchette quivered under her fingertips.
She shot her gaze at Davenport, but he was keeping his eyes shut, concentrating. The planchette slid to one side and Constante looked at it, feeling her fingers growing cold.
Was that . . . another set of fingers, close enough to hers to be felt?
The planchette jerked back and forth and she struggled to keep her touch light and steady.
danger mer—
A burst of white light filled the windows at the same moment that something slammed into the manufactory’s metal roof and thunder deafened them.
Constante and Davenport both jumped back and Scrapes gave a long haunting howl as the aetheric generator shot off a curtain of sparks. The overhead lights that hadn’t already popped exploded in a series of firecracker pops, sending shards of clear glass tumbling through the wire mesh that covered the now broken bulbs. The manufactory was plunged into a darkness alleviated only by the cold blue glow given off by the aetheric batteries on the generator and in the automatas’ chests, and the dancing voltaic arcs that leaped back and forth across the metal walls of the diamagnetic chamber.
Constante glanced down at the table and saw the planchette still moving.
—iwether is here get ou—
“Look!” Davenport gasped, pointing.
The electromagnetic coils built into the diamagnetic chamber’s metal walls were glowing and sparking, and a pungent burning smell began to fill the air as something spun between them.
“It’s the stabilizer,” she said, filled with joyful relief. “Stephen didn’t steal it, after all!”
“Connie, wait!” Davenport grabbed her arm as she stood. She shot him an irritated look. “Where did it come from?”
She glanced from him to the floating metallic sphere.
That was a good question. The stabilizer hadn’t been there before, not when the chamber had been quiet and not after it had reactivated when she’d turned on the generator. But now it spun weightlessly in the chamber’s repulsion field, as if some magician had pulled it from a rabbit hole in space – or perhaps one of those quintessential lacunae Davenport had been talking about.
And, for that matter, she didn’t remember a pistol lying next to the diamagnetic chamber, either.
Had it been hidden in the same place as her gyroscopic stabilizer?
Scrapes began to growl, his ears flattening as he stared at the chamber. The burning smell grew stronger.
Next to them, the planchette spun off the table. Constante had a second to absorb the scrawl on the sheet of paper . . .
—t he kil —
. . . before something pale and ghostly danced over the surface of the one completed iron soldier, a steel-plated military automaton with four arms, which began to twitch. For a moment Constante saw Henry Meriwether’s wizened face transposed over the iron soldier’s glowing eyes, turning its expressionless features into a mask of malign glee.
Scrapes’s growling grew louder.
The automaton rose. One primary hand snapped its chest plate shut and the other reached out toward them while its secondary hands grasped the closest objects – a chair and a workbench.
“Come. Here.” The voice was an iron growl and a mechanical impossibility. Iron soldiers didn’t have mouths. They didn’t need to speak.
The workbench in the soldier’s secondary hand tilted as the behemoth lifted it, sending tools and machine parts clattering to the ground.
“Look out!” Davenport yelped, ducking under the table where he’d set up the planchette. “That isn’t Father!”
The soldier hoisted the bench over its head and hurled it at them.
Constante dropped, using an oath that would have gotten her kicked out of the Young Ladies’ Dormitory if the headmistress had overheard her. The bench flew over their heads and crashed into an oak filing cabinet behind them, knocking it over. Files spilled over the floor.
“It’s Meriwether!” she cried out as the iron soldier took a ponderous step forward, lifting the chair. “Make him go away!”
Davenport gave her a panicked look from his hiding place. “I’m a spiritualist, not an exorcist!”
The chair flew toward them, more accurately this time. Constante threw her arms over her head, wincing in anticipation of the impact, but a pale figure materialized in front of her, knocking the chair aside. The chair bounced off Davenport’s table and skittered across the floor, knocking fallen tools right and left.
Constante lowered her arms, staring, as the spirit turned to make sure she was all right.
“Oh, dear,” Davenport muttered, from behind them, spying the ghost. “Now, that’s truly unfortunate.”
The spirit was, without question, Stephen DeVry, looking like a calotype negative of himself – his flesh was pale and glowing instead of darkened to a nut brown by the sun, and his hair and irises were white instead of black. Still, Constante recognized him, from his strong, handsome face and broad-shouldered physique to his rolled-up sleeves, worn leather braces and scuffed work boots.
She’d certainly studied that physique often enough over the barrier of her textbooks.
Which meant—
“You’re dead?” she choked, her throat tightening.
He gave her a regretful nod.
“Look out!” Davenport shouted.
Something rumbled, and this time it wasn’t thunder. Constante and Stephen both looked toward the Henry-Meriwet
her-possessed automaton. The giant steel-plated humanoid was using its two left arms to shove aside a heavy filing cabinet that stood between it and them, groping for something else to throw with its two right arms.
Her brother scuttled to one side, keeping low and using the work tables and benches for cover as he angled toward the front of the manufactory.
“Connie, come on!” He gestured frantically toward the front door.
“We can’t!” she protested, looking around for a weapon. Henry’s automaton would have no trouble following them out into the rain. Wicketsmith’s metal soldiers were designed to function in all sorts of weather. They needed to stop him, not escape him. “Alert the police!”
“The alarm box isn’t linked to the generator!”
Constante grimaced. He was right. It wasn’t. She made a mental note to correct that significant flaw in the design as soon as she had some time.
Scrapes feinted toward the automaton, nipping at its metal heels. The heavy metal-plated head swung to one side. A terrier should be too small for the machine to register as a threat, but it seemed that Henry’s ghost brought its supernatural perception as well as its voice to the machine’s primitive senses.
A giant arm swung down, missing the dog. Scrapes growled and darted forward again, his teeth sliding harmlessly off the automaton’s steel-plated ankle.
“Scrapes! Scrapes, heel!” Davenport’s voice quaked as he edged out from beneath his desk. “Come here, boy! Heel!”
Stephen looked alarmed as he raised a ghostly hand to his mouth and gave an apparently noiseless whistle.
“Damn dog.” The deep, inhuman resonance of Henry’s spirit voice made the hair on Constante’s neck rise. The metal soldier swept a table aside with one arm as its others grabbed for the terrier. With an angry snarl, Scrapes darted under a wooden chair, his entire body quivering.
“Scrapes!” Davenport stayed low as he worked his way forward again, holding a hand out for the dog. “Scrapes, come here!”
Stephen ran forward, his insubstantial form passing through the workbenches and shelves as if they weren’t there. For a moment Constante thought he was going to grapple with Henry, but to her disappointment, he ran past the giant automaton and into the shadows.
