by L. C. Mawson
“I was thinking about something Edgar was saying about how we should stop the production of these mechanical men once we find them.”
“Edgar?” Ruth asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Captain Hall,” he clarified with a slight blush.
“Ivy was right; you are infatuated with him.”
“I am not!”
“First James, now Captain Hall. Is it the uniforms?”
He folded his arms. “Now, really, Ruth, I hardly think-”
“I am taking that as a yes.”
He huffed a little. “Ivy is a terrible influence on you, you know.”
“I thought I was the terrible influence on her. At least, that’s what you said when you found her slumped over her desk after working through the night.”
“You’re both terrible for each other. I dread to think of the effect you both have on Michel. The poor boy is going to pick up some terrible habits.”
“‘Boy’? You speak as if he is a child.”
Thomas frowned. “Ruth, in many ways, he is. He is still learning about the world. It does not seem unreasonable that he would need guidance, not unlike that of a parent. Guidance that you and Ivy have already set about providing.”
“I suppose that is one way to look at the situation...” Ruth grumbled. “Though, I wonder, if Ivy and I were men, would you put such maternal connotations on the matter?”
“Possibly. Since I am not in that situation, I couldn’t tell you. But that doesn’t mean that I am wrong.”
“No, it simply irritates me.”
“I have never seen a woman run so far from the prospect of motherhood.”
“I am perfectly agnostic on the prospect of motherhood. I simply don’t think of Michel as a child. Naive, perhaps, but he has a fully developed brain, albeit a mechanical one. He learns new concepts quickly; he is just starting from scratch.”
Anything else Thomas had to say was cut off by their arrival back at the airship.
“YOU’RE BACK!” IVY EXCLAIMED with a grin as Ruth and Thomas made their way back onto the bridge.
“Ivy was getting restless,” Michel explained.
Ivy folded her arms as she made a face at the mechanical man. “Of course I was! It’s boring up here, and Captain Hall wouldn’t let me tinker with his equipment.”
“You’re not trained as one of our mechanics,” Captain Hall said in a tired voice that told Ruth that he had probably been arguing the point with her for several hours. He turned to Ruth and Thomas. “So, did you learn anything new on your excursion?”
“I learned that Thomas has friends in odd places,” Ruth commented, mostly to Ivy, who smirked in a way that suggested that she already knew that.
Thomas elbowed his niece slightly before turning back to Captain Hall. “We have learned of someone using mechanical men as guards. We know where he will be tomorrow at six. Our plan is to confront the man. Hopefully, we will be able to get some answers from him.”
“If he’s bringing guards, you should have protection as well,” Captain Hall said.
“Too many people would draw attention to us.”
“Then just you and one of my best men. Perhaps I will accompany you myself.”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “In case you two are forgetting, you need me. Who knows what information about the mechanical men you may need.”
Captain Hall sighed. “You cannot defend yourself.”
“I’ll figure something out. Some weakness of theirs that I can take advantage of. Not to mention, you and Thomas won’t be of much use against them either. Guns stand very little chance of working.”
“I would still rather not put a civilian woman in harm’s way.”
Michel stepped forward. “I could go with her and protect her. Ruth is the one most likely to find a way to stop them, and I would be fighting them on even ground. The two of us would be the best bet.”
“You would only draw attention looking like that,” Captain Hall protested.
Ruth folded her arms. “There is a reason we originally pretended Michel was French. The fashions are so outrageous here, no one will notice a man in a mask.”
Captain Hall sighed. “I suppose you’re committed to this, aren’t you?”
“Of course. This is my mess and I am the best one to fix it.”
“I’m not happy about this.”
“You don’t have to be. This is my mission. You’re not in charge; you’re just here to keep an eye on me.”
He frowned at her, but couldn’t dispute her point. His job was to make sure she didn’t escape, nothing more.
“Come on,” Ruth said to Ivy and Michel before leaving the room.
MICHEL DIDN’T JOIN Ruth and Ivy in the workshop. He decided to explore the ship on his own instead.
“His natural curiosity is fascinating,” Ivy commented as she and Ruth entered the workshop. “Do you have any idea how that came about?”
“None at all. Michel’s sentience is as much of a mystery to me as anyone. Which, I have to say, is quite infuriating. But there is little I can do to figure it out without poking around in his head, which I am loathed to do. Who knows what damage my own curiosity could cause?”
Ivy smiled as Ruth pulled out the designs she had been working on during the trip over.
“You really do care about him,” Ivy said. “I imagine most inventors in your situation would be far more interested in replicating their work than helping it to develop as a person.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. This seems like the most basic of human kindness to me.”
“And to think, some people talk about how those with an inventor’s disposition are incapable of such things.”
“Well, that is exactly why I have never held psychology in particularly high regard.”
Ivy snorted at that. “Maybe they’re prejudiced against you because you’re more likely to offend them.”
“Then they need to develop thicker skin, which is hardly my concern.” Ruth lapsed back into silence as she circled a section of the chest of the mechanical man.
“The aether core?” Ivy asked with a raised eyebrow. “Do you think that could possibly be a weakness?”
“If we could disrupt it, they would power down completely.”
“Almost like remotely activating a heart attack in a person?”
“Exactly.”
“But how would you go about doing that?”
“That is the question, isn’t it? But, given how well it seemed to work and how little we know of Michel’s sentience, I have spent a great deal of time reading any research on aether I could find. I think I could use another aether core to create a pulse that, at the right frequency, could disrupt another core.”
“Do we even have another aether core on board?”
“I brought a few along with my tools. Though I may not have disclosed that to Thomas or Captain Hall. You know how jumpy the untrained can be around aether.”
“You really are prepared for any mechanical occasion, aren’t you?”
“If nothing else.”
“But, if you’re going with Michel tomorrow, wouldn’t the pulse shut him off as well?”
Ruth sighed. “I’m going to have to find a way to direct the energy into some sort of beam, rather than a blast.”
“Do you think you can manage that before six tomorrow evening?”
“Hopefully. Though I may need your help. Firstly, do you think you could set about acquiring some coffee for us? I fear tea may not be strong enough.”
8
Ruth was roused from her work some time later by a knock at the door.
“Could you finish soldering that together?” she asked Ivy, who readjusted her goggles before nodding.
Ruth headed to the door, opening it to see Captain Hall and Michel there.
“Are you ready to leave?” Captain Hall asked her. “You should have just enough time to change before heading out if you wish to arrive there for six.”
“I believe I am,
yes. Just...”
“Soldering is done!” Ivy called over her shoulder before removing her goggles and picking up the small contraption. It was a brass container, built around a cylindrical aether core. One end of the container had a handle and trigger, and the other was a directional rod.
“It’s a gun?” Captain Hall asked.
“It’s an aether disruptor,” Ruth corrected sharply.
“It looks like a gun.”
“It fires a burst that disrupts other aether sources. It will be effective against mechanical men and little else.” She frowned at the weapon in Ivy’s hands. “Or, rather, I don’t know what effect it will have on humans. And I have no intention of finding out.”
“But it will stop mechanical men?”
Ivy stepped towards the workbench at that, placing another aether core on the surface. It was giving off the same eerie blue glow as the one in the weapon.
“Watch this,” she said to Captain Hall before pulling her goggles back down over her eyes. Ruth followed her lead as Ivy stepped back before aiming the aether disruptor at the core on the workbench.
“What’s supposed to happen?” Captain Hall asked, just a second before Ivy fired the weapon.
The directional rod glowed with a loud whine, causing a sphere of light to bloom out around it. Then, so quickly that if one blinked they could have missed it, a straight, thin beam of white light burst forth, striking the core on the bench. The aether core’s glow increased to a bright white light before sputtering out with a slightly distressing screech.
“Is that it?” Captain Hall asked, clearly having expected more damage than the dark aether core.
“That will be enough,” Ruth assured him. “If the aether core is defunct, the mechanical man will be nothing more than a collection of metal shaped like a man.”
Captain Hall raised a sceptical eyebrow. “And you’re sure that it will work when the aether core is in the mechanical man’s chest?”
“As sure as I can be without testing it, but seeing as there is no way to do that...”
Captain Hall gave Michel a pointed look.
Ruth felt fury flood her stomach and stretch out to her limbs, causing her to grip at her skirts tightly. “As I said, there is no way to test it.”
Captain Hall returned her glare. “You had better get ready if you want to keep your appointment.”
He turned and stalked off, leaving Ruth to glare at his back.
“The captain doesn’t seem too fond of me,” Michel noted.
Ruth sighed, giving him a weary smile. “Nor me. Had we been born a few hundred years earlier, I fear he may have tried to burn me as a witch or some such nonsense.”
Ivy gave a disagreeing hum. “Maybe it’s not so much your intellect he doesn’t like, but the possibility that you might be a traitor.”
“But I’m not.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know that. And if he does start to like any of us, and then we betray him, he will feel worse for it.”
“Well then, let’s get these plans back and prove him wrong. Not least because Thomas’ infatuation is going to quickly get tiresome.”
AFTER A QUICK CHANGE of clothes, Ruth and Michel made their way back to the brothel, with Ruth carefully focusing on remembering the route she and Thomas had taken the day before.
“Where exactly are we heading and what should we expect?” Michel asked her after a few minutes of turning his head incessantly to get a good look at all of the oddities of the streets. It was perfectly understandable, Ruth thought, given that he had barely been outside in London. Wandering through the streets always seemed too risky. At first, any extra eyes on Michel increased the chances of him being identified as mechanical. After everyone knew about Michel, Ruth doubted they would be able to walk freely in the streets without drawing unwanted attention. Michel had never protested that, so Ruth had always assumed that he preferred to stay inside over being ambushed by crowds of people who wanted to gawk at him. Now, as she watched his fascination at his environment, she wondered if she had been wrong.
“A brothel,” she said, deciding to answer his question and stow her own away for later.
“Brothel?”
“An establishment where people pay for sex.”
“Ah. Yes, Ivy found me an anatomy book and explained the process.”
Ruth had to hold in a laugh at that. “Well, I doubt that knowledge will be needed. Madam Aude will take us to the room he usually books, and when he arrives, we will corner him and ask where he got his mechanical guards.”
“But those mechanical guards will be with him.”
“Well, yes. Hopefully between my disrupter, and your comparable abilities, we should be able to stop them.”
“Hopefully,” he agreed as they arrived.
Instead of the man from the day before, Madam Aude was waiting to greet them.
“Where is Thomas?” she asked.
“I thought I would bring Michel instead. He will probably be more useful if things go poorly.”
Madam Aude responded with a glare. “I sincerely hope you will do everything in your power to make sure things don’t go poorly. I am extending you an enormous courtesy, after all. The least you could do is try to keep my place of business intact.”
“We shall do our best,” she assured the older woman.
Madam Aude gave a look that suggested that she didn’t quite trust Ruth to follow through on that promise, but she led them upstairs regardless.
The room she led them to looked far more like what Ruth would have expected than the room she had met Madam Aude in the day before. There was a large bed covered in plush pillows taking up most of the room, but there were also wooden structures that Ruth presumed must be some kind of chair, but she had no idea how it would work, or why anyone would choose to sit on something so bizarrely constructed.
“Francis will bring him up when he arrives,” Madam Aude told them before leaving, closing the door behind her.
“Well, I suppose we now just have to wait,” Ruth said before inspecting the disrupter. She wanted to be sure that it was in working condition, and she desperately needed the distraction.
“Ruth,” Michel said, stepping forward in that way that she knew meant that he was trying to gauge just how wrapped up in her work she was.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For standing up for me when Captain Hall insinuated that you should...” He trailed off, leaving Ruth with the sense that he was disquieted at the thought of his potential demise. Of course, it was natural that he would be, but Ruth was never sure which common human behaviours and attitudes Michel would or wouldn’t have.
“Of course I did. I wasn’t going to kill you just to test this gun.”
“I just... I don’t know what I would do without you looking out for me.”
“You would be fine,” Ruth assured him. “If you ever wanted to strike out on your own, I mean.”
He frowned. “Is that something I should want?”
“I don’t know. I just mean, if you ever tire of tagging along with me, don’t feel that you have to stay.”
“I will remember that, but I cannot envisage a future where I would want to leave you and Ivy.”
Ruth couldn’t help but smile at that assurance, but before she could respond, there was a knock at the door. It opened a moment after and one of Madam Aude’s men ushered a portly older gentleman into the room, quickly shutting the door behind him.
The man frowned before saying something in French.
“I should have possibly seen that coming,” Ruth said. All of Thomas’ contacts speaking English had made her forget that they were, in fact, in another country.
“He’s asking where the usual girl is,” Michel said.
Ruth pulled out the disrupter and aimed it at the man, who immediately took a step back, his eyes wide as he started sweating profusely. “Tell him that I’ll shoot if he calls for his guards.”<
br />
Michel relayed Ruth’s command in French before turning back to her. “I thought you said that the disrupter wouldn’t work against humans.”
“He doesn’t know that,” Ruth figured, trying to get some kind of read on the man in front of her, other than ‘terrified’. “At least, he doesn’t, assuming he truly knows no English.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Michel admitted apologetically.
“No matter. Ask him how he came across those mechanical guards of his.”
Michel repeated her words back in French. The man shook his head frantically as he replied.
“A friend of his operated as the middleman. He swears that he doesn’t know the manufacturers, and he has never met them.”
“Ask who his friend is. Their name will be better than nothing.”
“And if he warns his friend before we can find them?”
Ruth sighed. “I don’t know. But it’s still the best lead we have.”
Before Michel could ask, there was a knock at the door, quickly followed by someone who sounded eerily like Michel shouting through in French.
“Tell him to tell them he’s fine,” Ruth hissed as the terrified man looked to her, clearly afraid that she could be spooked and shoot him.
Before Michel could relay the command, the guards clearly decided that something was wrong, kicking down the door.
Ruth responded instantly by firing her disrupter at the first guard. He immediately keeled over, as she had caught him in mid-step. The second guard seemed barely disturbed by his brother going down, heading straight for Ruth.
Michel jumped between them, slamming the second guard against the wall as his charge made a scrabbling escape out of the room on all fours.
“Shoot him!” Michel yelled at her as the guard tried to push him off.
“I can’t without risking hitting you.”
“Then get ready.”
