by Trisha Telep
Henry grabbed the chair and lifted it. Scrapes yelped and dashed between the soldier’s legs toward Davenport. As he passed, Henry swept the chair around in a giant arc.
Scrapes gave a sharp, high-pitched bark of pain as one of the chair’s legs hit him.
“I say—” Davenport leaped to his feet, outraged, just as Henry released the chair. Her brother barely had time to raise an arm over his face to protect himself before the chair smashed into him.
Constante heard a sickening crack. Davenport staggered back and sat down, heavily, on the floor.
“Davie!” Constante leaped forward, ducking around the table to kneel by her brother’s side. The automaton took another step forward. Scrapes whined, spinning and bravely shielding them from it.
Behind Henry, one of the metal laborers took a self-propelled step, reaching out with a three-fingered hand to grab one of the large, heavy steel punches they used for their industrial riveting jobs.
“Meriwether!”
The voice was recognizably Stephen’s, even though, like Henry’s, it echoed as though it were being spoken in a space larger and emptier than the Wicketsmith manufactory. The fact that the laboring automata also had blank metal face masks and no lungs for breath seemed irrelevant; the voices, like the spirits, defied every law of nature Constante had ever studied.
Henry paused and turned toward the new enemy. “You again? Between you and that damn dog . . .”
Constante dragged her eyes away from the metal combatants as they closed in on each other. Davenport gave her a sick look, holding his arm close to his stomach. His face was as colorless as the ghosts’.
“I think it’s broken,” he said, his voice strained.
“You need to get out of here.” She winced as metal struck metal behind them. “Can you move?”
He tried to force a game smile and failed. “I suppose I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“Not really.” She crouched and slid an arm around his waist, awkwardly bracing him as he stood. She winced at his whimper of pain. “Easy.”
The emergency police call box by the door would be dead, as Davenport had pointed out. That meant they had to go out to get help. But Wicketsmith’s manufactory stood on the outskirts of the city, in the middle of a sprawling industrial neighborhood of walled manufactories and warehouses. They didn’t have any neighbors to run to for assistance. Still, some of the buildings had night guards who might open the gates for Davenport while she—
Blinding white light burst through the windows and a deafening crack of thunder echoed around the building.
Sparks flew from the aetheric generator and overhead lights, and lightning danced down the bare metal water and gas pipes which criss-crossed the manufactory walls. An electrical arc leaped to her hand from the door handle Constante had been about to grab, making her gasp and jerk back into her brother, who drew in a sharp, pained breath. More electricity flew from the tin dispatch door to the glass pneumatic postal tube, shattering it. Constante and Davenport cringed as razor-sharp shards and loose paper burst into the air around them.
Metal shrieked and the strange burning smell from the diamagnetic chamber grew stronger.
Constante blinked rapidly to clear the spots from her eyes. Broken glass sprinkled down from her robe as she moved. Davenport’s eyes were wide and frightened behind his round spectacles; an eerie, pale light leached the color from the bright paisley print of his dressing gown and made him look nearly as ghostly as Stephen. One of the flying shards of glass had cut his cheek, and dark blood trickled down the washed-out white of his flesh.
“What was that?” Constante looked past Davenport, searching for the source of the unnatural light. Her brother, leaning on her, twisted to do the same.
The light was radiating out from the diamagnetic chamber, where her gyroscopic stabilizing device now seemed to be spinning in a portal to the void.
Several yards away, Henry gripped Stephen in his lower two arms and brutally ripped off his head with his other two.
The labor automata collapsed on the ground, twitching. Stephen’s ghost stood where the metal man had been, looking clearer than ever, his fists clenching with frustration.
Henry Meriwether gave him a cruel, victorious smile. His ghost, too, seemed to have gained strength. His stolen, four-armed metal body was now covered with ectoplasmic flesh and fabric, turning it into a realistic but monstrous version of himself, attired in his usual natty suit, vest and bowler hat. Although Meriwether had been a slight, greying man in his sixties while living, his ghostly body now reflected the broad-chested strength of the military automaton he inhabited.
The steel punch jutting out from his neck was a jarring note, however. Stephen had gotten in at least one good stab.
“Do you surrender?” Henry demanded, reaching up and grabbing the punch. He began working it back and forth, pulling it from his metal neck.
“Never,” Stephen shot back, turning and stepping into the next of the waiting metal laborers.
“It’s the chamber,” Davenport breathed. “The lightning – it’s not just affecting the magnetic dipole moment anymore, it’s creating some sort of aetheric flux . . . an inversion . . .”
“You think the ghosts and the chamber are linked?” Constante pressed.
“They seem to be getting stronger as the chamber gets stronger.”
“All right. Go outside and get help.” She released him. “I’ll pull the plug.”
“Be careful.”
“Always.” She gave him a quick smile and turned, drawing her robe closely around her and cinching its belt with a determined tug.
Stephen had succeeded in possessing the second laborer automaton. It stepped forward, but just as it was lowering its foot, Henry gave the mechanical man a sharp push.
Constante winced, knowing what would happen. Stephen threw his arms out in a vain attempt to steady himself, but the automaton couldn’t regain its balance. It crashed to the floor.
Constante slipped between the tables and got closer to the glowing diamagnetic chamber while Stephen struggled back to his feet.
She froze when her eyes fell on the gyroscopic stabilizer. If she pulled the chamber’s plug, her invention might vanish again.
She needed to retrieve it so that all of this wouldn’t be in vain.
Angling around to the front of the chamber, she stole a glance at the two battling automata. To her consternation, Henry was leaning over Stephen’s prone metal body. With a twist of one metal hand, the rival inventor plucked out Stephen’s aetheric battery from his open chest plate.
The automaton froze, going dark.
Stephen’s ghost rolled away from it, standing, as Henry turned and methodically began doing the same thing to the rest of the line of labor-class automata, yanking out their batteries as though pulling out hearts.
Constante darted to the front of the chamber. She was running out of time. Meriwether was smart, and he’d possessed the strongest automaton in the manufactory. If they didn’t do something soon, he’d be unstoppable.
Her foot hit the pistol on the ground and she crouched, picking it up. She didn’t want it to vanish when she pulled the plug, either. Not if it could be used as evidence.
Stephen might be dead, but at least she could clear his name.
Slipping the pistol into the pocket of her robe, she gazed into the abyss that stretched within the diamagnetic chamber.
The glowing void was filled with tiny points of light, like sparks or stars, swirling on invisible aetheric currents. Their movement was slow, measured, and hypnotic. The lace-trimmed skirt of her nightgown fluttered against her legs and the edges of her robe stirred, as though drawn toward the emptiness.
The void smelled like burning wiring. Or was that just the machine?
She stepped forward and grabbed the magnetically levitating stabilizer.
The mechanism should have slid smoothly toward her on its level magnetic field, but instead, she felt herself moving toward it. With a
gasp, she clutched the metal door frame with her free hand, feeling dizzy. The void spun around her, pulling her forward more insistently, a living magnetic field drawing her inside. Her fingers slipped from the metal frame . . .
Hands closed around her wrist and waist, steadying her and drawing her back. She stubbornly kept a tight grip on the stabilizer and, after another second of resistance, it snapped loose from its field. She stumbled backward, into her rescuer.
“Thank you,” she breathed, leaning on him for a moment while her pounding heartbeat slowed down. Then she looked up. “Stephen!”
Behind them, Henry was destroying the last of the labor automata.
“You don’t want to fall in there, Miss Wicketsmith,” Stephen said, his voice sounding almost normal now. “It’s not a nice place.”
“Were you in there?” She studied him, horror and fascination fighting for precedence. He was in his ectoplasmic form, but his touch was cool now rather than cold, and his hands felt solid.
If it weren’t for his strange, ghostly coloring, she would have thought he was alive.
“I was trying to keep Meriwether from taking the stabilizer when, abruptly, the power surged. That place suddenly appeared, and we fell inside.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Is . . . did your father—”
“He’s dead.” Constante felt a fresh wave of loss.
“I’m sorry.” Stephen seemed to remember himself, releasing her and drawing back. Constante flushed and smoothed her nightrobe, wishing he hadn’t. “Your father wasn’t in there with us. I’m sure he’s already gone on to a better place.”
Her throat tightened as she looked at him. Somehow, hearing him speak and feeling his touch was worse than just seeing him.
Stephen was here. He wasn’t alive, exactly, but he was here, and the magnitude of what she was about to do to him struck her like a blow.
“I . . . I’m sorry,” she whispered with dismay. “I need to shut this down.”
I need to kill you again.
“I understand.” He turned away. “I’ll keep Meriwether busy.”
“Steph—”
He was already gone, running toward the next set of automata, again heedless of solid objects. Henry laughed and strode after him, slower than Stephen but using his powerful arms to sweep aside everything that stood in his path.
Constante knelt and grabbed the power cord for the diamagnetic chamber.
If this works, Stephen will be sent away, too.
To a better place, like her father? Or back into that glowing void, trapped for eternity with Henry and who knows how many other hapless souls?
She wished she’d said the words that had been lingering on the tip of her tongue. That he hadn’t turned to leave before she could muster the courage to get them out.
But then again, maybe it was for the best. What good would knowing how she felt do him once he was trapped in that strange void again?
She didn’t want to send him back.
But she didn’t have a choice.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, giving the plug the hardest yank she could. Wires began to stretch. She yanked it again, and a third time, until the wiring tore away with a sparking pop and burst of short-lived flame.
The chamber crackled and went dark, the glowing void vanishing.
Constante turned to see if it had worked, bracing herself.
“Thank you, my dear.”
She gave a very unladylike curse, staring at Henry’s automaton. Its ghostly features had faded, but they were still faintly visible over the iron.
“I was loath to reach inside that machine myself. Losing my body once was more than enough.” He held out one of his four massive hands. “Give me the stabilizer and I’ll leave.”
Her hand tightened on the metal orb. If Henry was still here, where was Stephen?
She couldn’t have sent one away and not the other, could she?
Would it have mattered if one were possessing an automaton when the field vanished, and not the other?
Maybe, she realized with horror. Maybe, if the decaying radiant matter inside the automata’s batteries did attract other forms of energy . . .
“Give it to me!” Henry insisted.
“No!” she shot back. “You killed my father. I’m not going to give you anything.”
“I’ll kill you and your brother, too, unless you give me what I want.”
She backed away, and he followed.
“Why? What good will it do you now?” She bumped into a work table and reached out with her free hand, groping for a weapon. “You’re dead.”
“Dead?” Henry sounded amused, clenching one fist and rotating it. “On the contrary: I’m immortal. No more ageing. No more death. Just one new body after another. And that little invention of yours will be much more useful to me now than it would have been while I was still flesh.”
Constante shivered, imagining a future in which Meriwether’s Mechanicals drove all the other manufactories out of business, its ruthless and immortal owner doing anything necessary to monopolize the business. And how long would it take before he decided to expand into other areas, as well? Manufacturing, mining . . .
Government?
She reached into her pocket for the pistol, trying to remember where the metal soldier’s most vulnerable spots were, when another automaton came hurtling out of the shadows, swinging a pipe. With a loud clang, the pipe struck Henry and knocked him forward a step.
Constante felt a moment’s overwhelming relief. Stephen wasn’t gone after all.
The iron soldier ponderously stabilized itself and turned as the small butler automaton moved in front of Constante, swinging the pipe again and again. Scuffs marred Henry’s metal finish, visible beneath its ghostly flesh.
But Henry didn’t seem worried by the furious assault. He laughed, grabbing the pipe with his upper arms. Stephen tried to pull it back, but the military mechanism effortlessly tore it from his slender metal hands.
“You’re running out of bodies,” Henry mocked, transferring the pipe to his two right arms. Stephen backed away. Henry swung, and the pipe slammed into Stephen’s metal torso.
Constante jumped aside as Stephen’s automaton was knocked past her and slammed into the table. The table collapsed and the butler fell on its back.
Henry took a step forward, raising the pipe over its head.
Constante brandished her pistol. “Stay back!”
Next to her, Stephen’s automaton rolled onto its side and awkwardly pushed itself into a sitting position.
Henry chuckled. “That’s a single-shot pistol, my dear, and I’ve already fired it.”
Her finger tightened on the trigger. Nothing happened.
“This isn’t single-shot, Mr Meriwether.”
Constante’s eyes widened.
Davenport had returned, holding an arc disrupter in his good hand. He’d used his paisley belt as a sling for his broken arm. His dressing gown hung open, revealing a rumpled nightshirt and felt slippers, and his normally cheerful round face was taut with pain.
Henry growled, a low sound like grinding gears. “You don’t have the range.”
“Get away from my sister.” Davenport’s voice had lost all trace of humor. “Or I promise you’ll find out.”
Constante dropped to her knees next to Stephen. Henry Meriwether was right – the arc disrupter didn’t have enough range or power to disable a military-grade battery at anything less than point-blank range. But Davenport’s bluff seemed to be making Henry nervous, and at least it would buy her a little time.
“Sit still,” she hissed, as Stephen tried again to get to his feet. She yanked his dented chest plate wider and pulled out the leads for the mechanical butler’s experimental balance-compensation system.
When he realized what she was doing, Stephen reached out his metal hands to hold the wires for her. Her fingers flew as she connected the wiring and tightened the terminal screws to hold it in place.
“His automaton is still stronger tha
n mine,” Stephen warned her. A table clattered and they both glanced up to see Henry angrily shoving the obstacle aside, glaring at Davenport. Constante’s hands shook as she thrust the stabilizer into place.
“I know. Take this.” She pulled the key and cord from around her neck and dropped it into his metal palm. “You can move faster than he can, as long as you keep your balance. Get in close, unfasten his plate and pull his battery, just like he did to you.”
Stephen tried to pick up the small brass key, but it slipped between his fingers, falling on the ground. He reached for it, the butler’s metal fingers sliding uselessly across the wooden planks as he sought to scoop it up.
“Not enough fine-motor action,” he said, sounding frustrated. “I can’t grip it, Miss Wicketsmith. I’m sorry. I just keep failing you, over and over.”
She grabbed the key and handed it to him. “You haven’t failed us, Stephen. You’re protecting us, and I can’t even begin to tell you how grateful I am to have you back again.”
He looked up, startled, and the key slipped from his fingers again. Whatever he was about to say in response was lost in the crackling buzz of the arc disrupter as it was activated.
Constante looked up. Davenport was thumbing the “on” switch and backing away as Henry advanced. The disrupter’s crackling arc played uselessly over the military automaton’s iron shielding.
“I’ll try to think of something then.” Stephen gave up trying to pick up the key and stood, more smoothly than he’d been able to before as the mercury-filled stabilizer and feedback wiring registered every shift of weight and warned his mechanisms to compensate.
Constante swept up the key and got to her feet, slamming Stephen’s chest plate shut. For a moment, her hand lingered over the engraved heart as more words caught in her throat, strangled as she realized how ridiculous it would be to say them to a ghost.
Stephen gave her a faint, rueful smile, then turned and ran forward, grabbing a broken table leg as he went. The adjusted wiring her father and Stephen had developed made a perceptible difference. She hoped it would be enough.
