The Library Machine (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)

by Dave Butler

  “Morbleu!” the Frenchman shouted, and threw himself sideways. Distracted, Charlie fell back onto the tank. Bong!

  What was going on? Heinrich Zahnkrieger had switched sides. He had changed his mind. He was trying to use his redcap powers to break the pumping station.

  And Gaston St. Jacques realized it, and wanted to stop him.

  Charlie threw himself forward with his hands and knees—

  seized the Sinister Man’s cape—

  and tugged.

  St. Jacques fell backward onto Charlie and cursed as Charlie’s head and elbow jabbed him in the back. Charlie pulled the tall man’s cape over his face and rolled again, banging the man’s head against the tank as they moved.

  St. Jacques swung his pistol, and the metal struck Charlie behind the ear.

  “Don’t do this!” Jan Wijmoor begged. “You can’t! The machine is too large; the stress is too great!”

  Heinrich Zahnkrieger grunted, taking another step toward the hatch. He continued to chant words Charlie couldn’t hear, and when he opened his mouth, a dribble of blood poured out and onto the steel.

  Overhead, Charlie thought his friends were losing. The Pushpaka vimāna still danced against Royal Aeronautical Navy craft and the Queen’s dragons, delivering and taking blows, but Ollie had disappeared.

  Shot down?

  Transformed into the world’s tiniest snake to hide?

  The trees of Hampstead Heath burned. Charlie heard screaming as the crowd that had come to see the opening of the pumping station now tried to put out a forest fire with no water.

  “You stupid little thing!”

  This time, St. Jacques smashed his own forehead into Charlie’s nose. The move caught Charlie by surprise, and knocked him backward.

  St. Jacques jumped on him, kneeing Charlie in the throat. A flesh-and-blood boy, or even a flesh-and-blood man, might have lost consciousness at that. Charlie just got annoyed.

  He kicked his foot up and caught the Frenchman in the temple. “Sacre bleu!” St. Jacques shouted, and fell. Charlie threw himself on top of the Sinister Man, trying to smother him like a blanket, pressing down his limbs with Charlie’s own.

  “Heinrich, please!” Jan Wijmoor called his former student. “It’s not worth dying for!”

  Heinrich Zahnkrieger fell to his knees. Each syllable he spoke came out now as a cough that spattered blood. He paused a moment to look at the other kobold.

  “It’s the only thing worth dying for,” he said.

  Then he spoke one last incantation syllable.

  CLANG! C-R-R-R-R-AAAAAAK! BOOM!

  An unholy racket, like ten factories collapsing simultaneously, came from out of the open hatch.

  With a smile on his face, Heinrich Zahnkrieger tumbled forward and lay still.

  Charlie saw rain clouds on the horizon.

  Charlie had been in a landgrave’s castle. He’d been in the mansion of a wealthy industrialist. He’d been in the palace of a rajah and even in the floating vimāna of a demon lord, but he’d never been in any place he found as grand as this one.

  He stood in the gallery of St. James.

  And he was about to see the queen.

  Charlie and his friends wore rented clothes that had been described to him as “court costumes.” They were old-fashioned; he and Grim and Ollie and Thomas and Jan Wijmoor all wore knee breeches and hose; Gnat and Bob—Roberta, she was calling herself now, but Charlie was having a hard time making the switch—wore silk dresses, each with a long train held over one arm.

  Gnat had relinquished the Hound’s tooth and the scarf, just for the occasion.

  A lord-in-waiting ushered them into the presence chamber. The furnishings and decoration were elegant, but Charlie scarcely noticed them. He felt he was meeting his mother, for the second time in his life. Bob and Gnat dropped their trains, and ladies-in-waiting spread them out behind them with long wands. Thomas followed, and was careful not to step on the trailing fabric. Charlie came very last.

  Another lord-in-waiting read all their names off a single card, in the order in which they’d entered. “…and Charles Pondicherry.”

  “Just Charlie, Your Majesty.” They bowed and curtsied low.

  They’d been warned that, although she had asked for them to be presented, and that this was in itself an unusual thing, Her Majesty the Queen might say very little, or even nothing. But when they came up from their bows, she spoke.

  “Natalie de Minimis,” she said first. “Baroness of Underthames, you are welcome. Your mother was a fierce warrior. And now your people, along with those of the Undergravine of Hesse, have put down a revolt of our new experimental soldiers. And you did this despite agents of my government having falsely accused you of treason.”

  “Aye, Your Majesty.”

  “It is very satisfying to meet such a noble young woman,” Victoria said.

  Natalie curtsied again.

  “Roberta Alice Micklemuch,” the queen continued. “I have several admirals as well as an entire working committee of the Fellows of the Royal Society who wish to speak to you. I have been told you have learned how to make a city fly.”

  Heaven-Bound Bob grinned, impervious to the solemnity of the occasion. “I reckon I’ll be ’appy to ’ear from any of your people, Your Majesty. An’ I’d ’ate to disappoint all those learned an’ important gents, but if they’re ’oping I’ll make London fly, they’re mistaken. I know ’ow to fly all manner of craft, but only the one city, an’ it ain’t really a city so much as a pyramid.”

  “A flying pyramid will do.

  “Thomas Brunel.” It felt strange to hear Thomas’s name spoken like that, as if he were his father’s flesh-and-blood child. It felt strange, but right. “What a brave young man you are, Thomas. Your father built much of the ironwork on which my kingdom runs. I understand that you very nearly undid his labor, with the nails of the three worlds, in a certain pit in Moscow; I, for one, am glad you chose not to do so. Would you like to follow in your father’s footsteps as an engineer?”

  “I don’t know, Your Majesty.” Thomas retreated slightly as he spoke, and a lord-in-waiting stepped behind him to push him back into line. “I’ve spent all my life focused on a single purpose, and now…well, I’ll need some time to think about what to do next. And really, I’m still quite a small boy.”

  The queen nodded. “Mr. Grim Grumblesson. You have come to some notoriety due to your association with a committee created by certain members of my parliament. Whatever its purposes, the committee has done some rather sordid things.”

  Grim blushed and lowered his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “I think you should consider how that notoriety might best be put to use. Perhaps by standing for Parliament yourself. My jotun subjects could always use vigorous representation.”

  Grim blushed more deeply.

  “Also, don’t go anywhere. My prosecutors will be happy to have someone of your gravitas to testify against the Frenchman, as well as against certain members of Parliament, who were apparently corrupted by this Iron Cog.

  “Meneer Doktor Professor Ingenieur Jan Wijmoor!”

  The kobold bowed deeply. “Your Majesty does me too much honor, pronouncing my name, let alone those silly titles.”

  “Your country is yet at war,” the queen said. “I have hopes we may see a short end to the conflict, but in the meantime I pray you will consider an appointment to one of our universities. I understand several have offered.”

  “I find I favor Oxford, Your Majesty,” the kobold said.

  “And Oliver. Have you no surname, then?”

  “Judging by what they generally yelled after my Christian name in St. Jerome’s House for Wayward Youth, Your Majesty, I’d have to guess my full name was Oliver You-Muttonhead.”

  And then the queen laughed. The lords and ladie
s in waiting, all tall and elegant and perfectly manicured, laughed with her, warmly.

  “You know, Oliver,” the queen said, “it was once the custom and sometimes still is to give an orphan child the name of a special saint, or the name of the institution that raised the child. So you have children surnamed Temple, for instance, because they were fostered by the barristers of the Inner or Middle Temple.”

  Ollie nodded.

  “Do you feel it would be too late,” the queen continued, “to give you such a surname now?”

  “Such as Oliver St. Jerome, Your Majesty? It sounds a bit classy for a lad like me.”

  “I was thinking perhaps Oliver King.”

  Ollie turned white as a sheet, and he bowed again. His mouth worked open and shut, but no more words came out.

  “And Charlie, not Charles, Pondicherry. I said it once before, Charlie, and I’ll say it again now: you are a hero. I believe you have saved my realm, and maybe other realms too, though time will tell. Some people in your place would ask for land and titles, or for great wealth. What gift can the Queen of England give Charlie Pondicherry?”

  “Well, Your Majesty,” Charlie said. “Nothing, really. I think I’d just like to have some time alone with my brother. With Thomas, that is.”

  “Of course. I promise I shall not burden you with any official duties, so that your time will remain your own.” The Queen of England was generally painted with a solemn expression, which was a pity, because she smiled now at Charlie and Thomas, and her smile was warm and kind and loving. “And anything else?”

  “I don’t quite know where my bap’s buried,” Charlie said. “But wherever it is, can it be kept nice? I don’t mean a monument, but something? And a stone for Isambard Brunel, with the right dates on it? And Heinrich Zahnkrieger, the kobold who died at the pumping station…could he be laid to rest alongside?”

  “Done. Fairy godmothers grant three wishes in all the stories I’ve ever read, Charlie, so I think you’d better ask for one more thing.”

  Charlie hesitated; his thought seemed silly, but he plunged ahead. “Would it be all right, Your Majesty, if we thought of you as our mum?”

  Queen Victoria smiled even more broadly. “I hope that you will.”

  * * *

  “So you’re not going to marry Seamus after all?” Charlie said to Gnat.

  Her wings had regrown, and fluttered a brilliant green in the early August sun. Charlie and his friends other than Jan Wijmoor had gathered in a field of yellow flowers at the edge of London to say farewell. Jan Wijmoor was in Oxford—three days after his presentation to the queen, a group of professors had showed up in a cloud of chalk and pipe smoke to escort him to his new appointment, and Charlie hadn’t seen or heard from him since. Fortunately, he’d repaired all of Charlie’s holes and dings before the professors had arrived.

  At Charlie’s request, he had not repaired Charlie’s limp.

  Charlie and Thomas had made several trips to the Brompton Cemetery. There, in a lovely shaded corner, three headstones side by side commemorated Joban Singh, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and Heinrich Zahnkrieger. The boys had left flowers each time.

  “Nay, I’ll not marry poor Seamus now. ’Tisn’t fair to him, to treat him only as my reward for succeeding at my own tasks. He’s a person.”

  “Another way to see that,” Grim growled, “is that if he really were your equal, he’d have fought Elisabel tooth and nail, rather than submit as he did.” Grim wore a new cravat and a new jacket and hat. He’d come from some sort of political party meeting Charlie didn’t understand and didn’t try to understand.

  “Aye,” Gnat agreed. “That’s another way to see the matter.”

  “And will you be traveling back to Hesse with the undergravine?” Charlie asked.

  “Aye, someone needs to bring peace to that poor land. And we’re kin, if distant.”

  “Take good care of her, Lloyd,” Charlie said.

  Natalie de Minimis laughed.

  Lloyd laughed too. He wore his tabard and carried his herald’s staff, and it occurred to Charlie that he hadn’t seen the dewin’s eyes shift since the day he’d taken the job. “I’m just a poor singer, boyo, and a reciter of names. And neither the baroness nor the undergravine really need me to take care of them. But I’ll do my best, anyway.”

  “As will I,” said Bob. She still dressed in a somewhat boyish fashion, because apparently that was much more convenient for an aeronaut. But her boots were taller and more elegant now, and she wore a small leather vest rather than a peacoat, and her hair hung free. She looked the most changed of all of them. “With the fleet.”

  “Bob’s…Roberta’s a captain,” Ollie said with pride.

  “Yeah, well, old Pushpaka won’t accept anyone else, will she? But they’ve got me flying all sorts of other craft as well.” Bob grinned. “I insisted.”

  “Aren’t you part of the RMS now, Ollie?” Thomas asked.

  “I ain’t a Fellow, if that’s what you mean.” Ollie pretended to frown, but the expression cracked into a big smile. “But let’s just say that I’m spending a lot of time with certain Fellows of the Royal Magical Society, and I am…expanding my talents.”

  “You expanded them quite a bit on your own,” Charlie said.

  “Like I told you,” Ollie said, “I decided I was going to write the story and not let it write me. Now that means I have to go with the army into Germany. Try to stop the mechanical Bismarck, and the part of the Cog that’s still operating over there. Destroy the transmitter that was supposed to send mind-control orders to everyone in Britain—St. Jacques gave up the location. That’ll give me a chance to return Rabbi Rosenbaum’s book.” He beamed. “They’ve made me a regimental dragon-wizard. Rank of captain, as it happens.”

  “What about Ingrid?” Charlie asked Grim.

  “Since she agreed to rescue you from me,” Grim said, “I haven’t seen her. St. Bart’s had no record of capturing her, so I expect those ghoul wardens just let her go. I don’t think we were ever a very good match, as it happens.”

  “I don’t think she’s matched with Sal, either, if that matters,” Charlie said.

  A single tear came to the corner of Grim’s eye. “It does, Charlie. It does.”

  “An’ you lads?” Bob asked. “Up the ol’ frog like a couple of dwarfs?”

  “Frog and toad, road,” Charlie guessed. “Yeah. Though I feel bad. You’re all going off to war and politics, and we’re going rambling. We could help free Germany instead.”

  “You’re boys,” Grim said. “Go do boy things for a while.”

  “Aye.” Gnat smiled at them.

  “Where you going, then?” Bob asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “We’ll pick a direction and just see what we can see.”

  “Neither one of us has done much traveling,” Thomas said.

  Ollie laughed. “That’s true and it ain’t.”

  They all embraced, and then Charlie and Thomas picked a random direction and walked. On the ridge above the yellow-flowered field, they turned and waved goodbye to their friends.

  * * *

  Later in the afternoon, as they sat on a log with their feet in a small brook, Charlie took the envelope and the two halves of his bap’s pipe from his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Thomas asked.

  “The pipe was my father’s. I keep meaning to get it repaired. Mr. Wu gave me the letter,” Charlie said. “He was my neighbor in Whitechapel, and he wrote me a note. Shall we read it together?”

  Thomas nodded and scooted closer. To Charlie’s surprise, the envelope contained two thin sheets. One had a neat drawing of Charlie’s back and his mainspring, with written instructions about how to wind it. The second was a letter from his father. He read:

  Dearest Charlie, My Son

  I have asked my friend and neighbor Wu
Xiang to hold this letter. If you’re reading it, I am dead. I think it’s likely I was even murdered. This may be a terrible shock to you, and I’m sorry. It’s not a surprise to me at all. I made the mistake of associating with wicked people years ago; I have been paying for that mistake ever since.

  Here’s another surprise for you, Charlie. You are not made of flesh and blood like me, but of springs and gears. I would have told you when you were ready, but I wanted you to feel like a normal boy as long as you could, and I didn’t want you to have to keep my secrets.

  You’ll learn that being a mechanical boy makes you strong, fast, and tough, but it also means you’re going to have to depend on other people. Every day or so, someone should wind the spring in your back, to keep you moving. I’m enclosing a diagram of just how one winds the spring. I recommend you show this letter and diagram to Wu; he’ll help.

  You’re a special boy, Charlie. You’re powerful, but you’re going to need friends, every day of your life. That’s not very different from me, really. I needed a friend every day of my life, Son, and that friend was you.

  Of all the things I would want you to know after my passing, the one that matters most is this: you are brave, and you can be your own person.

  I love you.

  Rajesh Pondicherry

  Written below the note in a different hand were the words:

  I am sorry I did not give this to you earlier. I was angry, because I was afraid. Please forgive me.

  Wu Xiang

  Charlie folded the note carefully and replaced it in his coat. He’d never forget the words, but he knew he’d want to reread the letter again anyway. He put the pipe back too. Maybe he’d just keep it as it was, broken but still perfect. Still his bap’s.

  “Well, Thomas,” he said. “Where shall we go?”

  Vladimir Chopine

  DAVE BUTLER is also the author of two other books about Clockwork Charlie: The Kidnap Plot, which SLJ called “a page-turning adventure,” and The Giant’s Seat, which Booklist called “a treasure for readers who enjoy the steampunk side of fantasy fiction…an enchanting place for an adventure.” Dave lives in an old house and works in a study where one of the biggest bestsellers of the twentieth century was written. He has kept the room’s original shag carpet and wood-veneer walls. He likes games, guitars, languages, and, most of all, his family. Dave lives in Provo, Utah. You can find him on the Web at davidjohnbutler.com.