The Havoc Machine ce-4

by Steven Harper

  “Sharpe is sharp,” said Dante.

  “No. You are not totally organic. Neither am I. If I am not alive, and you are, Mr. Sharpe, where is the dividing line between us? Twenty percent mechanical? Fifty percent? Seventy? Eighty-one point six? Ninety-nine? One hundred? What if Nikolai had a living hand, or part of a living brain inside him? Would you think of him as alive?”

  “This is a foolish debate.”

  “Is it? How can I tell if you think for yourself, Mr. Sharpe? From my perspective, you are nothing more than a clump of cells following a biological imperative to eat, sleep, and gather enough resources to reproduce. Even your hatred of clockworkers is a biological imperative, is it not?”

  “Now look-”

  “I thought you were intelligent enough to see it. Miss Ekk reset that spider’s memory wheels so it would obey a new set of directives-her orders. The spider’s experience changed it and made it behave differently. You were a brilliant circus performer until you met a Polish woman who changed your memory wheels, at which point you wanted nothing more than a quiet life as a knife sharpener. Later, she died and a clockworker killed your son, which changed your memory wheels again and gave you a new imperative. None of this is any different than the spider encountering Miss Ekk’s probing fingers.”

  Sofiya touched the spider on her shoulder, but remained silent.

  “It’s completely different,” Thad shot back. “I make choices about what I do. That spider makes none.”

  “And Nikolai? Does he choose?”

  “He doesn’t. He’s a machine. I put my hand inside his head.”

  “These machines put their claws inside my head,” Mr. Griffin replied, unperturbed. “Did you actually make your choices, or were you forced to do what you did by circumstances? Everything that has happened to you led up to that choice, to that of killing clockworkers. Your life programs you to do it, just as those spider’s wheels program it to obey Miss Ekk.”

  It was more than enough. Thad sketched a mock salute. “We had a nice visit, but now it’s time to go. We do have a performance coming up.”

  “I’m sure it will be a fascinating one,” Mr. Griffin said. “Keep the spider with my compliments, Miss Ekk. Next time, you need only ask, if you would like one. I seem to be mellowing in my old age.”

  “Plastids!”

  “Shut up!”

  “We can find our own way back,” Thad said quickly. “No need to see us out.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Vanka dropped them off at the Field of Mars, they found a large crowd already gathering. Thad checked the time. They had more than an hour before the first performance of the day, and it was unusual for people to show up so early. Then he saw the soldiers and signs:

  DOWN WITH ALEXANDER.

  NO MORE SLAVERY.

  FREE THE PRISONERS.

  HANG THE TSARINA.

  “Applesauce,” Dante said.

  “This is not pretty,” Sofiya murmured beside him. “I hope Nikolai is all right.”

  The crowd on the street was thick and tense, and a cacophony of voices bounced off the barrack. The soldiers had lined up on the Field of Mars and were working on keeping the people off the field. Occasionally a small group of them made a foray into the crowd to go after one of the sign-holders, but the heavy crowd made it difficult, and the signs were made of cheap muslin unrolled between two sticks, which meant they could be collapsed and hidden almost instantly, which further hampered the soldiers’ ability to arrest anyone.

  Thad snagged a man holding a FREEDOM NOW sign. “What is happening here?”

  “You haven’t heard?” The man nodded at the Field of Mars, where a pair of automatons were laying the crossbar on a large gallows, complete with six trapdoors on the plank flooring. To one side stood another group of automatons with marching-band instruments. “General Parkarov has convinced the tsar to execute all the clockworkers in the Peter and Paul Fortress.”

  Sofiya’s face turned to ice. Thad’s legs went shaky. “And everyone is protesting this?”

  “No.” The man shook his sign in anger. “We don’t care about clockwork filth. But there are rumors the general will execute a number of the people he arrested last night, and they are not clockworkers. They have done nothing but be born peasants and Jews.”

  The automaton drummer set up a beat. Already the awful cages were trundling across the bridge from the island fortress, five of them with four people each. Thad couldn’t imagine that Saint Petersburg had twenty clockworkers. Rumor said the British government scoured its entire worldwide empire for clockworkers and still had fewer than two dozen at any given time. Even Mr. Griffin only had six. The man was right-the general was going to execute normal men and women.

  The man with the sign moved on to avoid being snatched up by soldiers. Sofiya put a hand on Thad’s arm so as not to lose him in the crowd. “Why is the tsar allowing this? He supports the serfs.”

  Thad set his jaw. “Maybe we can find out from them.” A line of carriages cut through the crowd, which had to back up or be trampled. From the first emerged the tsar in his uniform. This drew a mix of cheers and boos from the crowd. This surprised Thad, who had never in his life seen a monarch held up to public disapproval. Groups of soldiers ran into the crowd and cracked dissenters over the head or beat them about the body and dragged them away. This didn’t seem to discourage the others much, though neither did it turn into an outright riot.

  Tsar Alexander magnificently ignored the jeering, walked to the grandstand where his wife and son had seen the clockworker beaten and dismembered only a few days earlier, and took a seat. Courtiers and high-ranking members of the military followed, though there was no sign of the tsarina or General Parkarov. Thad made his way through the crowd with Sofiya in tow until they reached the soldiers guarding the grandstand. By a stroke of good luck, among them were the men who knew Thad had saved the tsar’s life, but when he muscled his way up to them, they barred his way.

  “I need to speak to the tsar,” Thad panted. “He’ll see me. You remember!”

  One of the guards drew a pistol. “You are not to see the tsar.”

  Thad backed up and trod on Sofiya’s foot, and the other people in the crowd pulled away. “The tsar would not be happy,” Sofiya said sharply, “if he knew you were keeping one of his trusted advisers away from him.”

  “Our orders come from General Parkarov,” the soldier snapped.

  The general clearly didn’t want Thad talking to the tsar. That made it all the more important. Alexander had reached the stairs to the grandstand only a few paces away, though his back was to Thad and Sofiya. Thad thought about making a break for it, but the soldier cocked his pistol and aimed it at Thad’s chest.

  Thad hoisted Dante high above his head. “Call it!”

  “Bless my soul!” Dante shouted. “Sharpe is sharp! Doom! Doom!”

  The sound of the parrot’s voice brought the tsar’s head around, and his eye fell on Thad and Sofiya. A smile broke across his face, and he gestured at them to join him on the stairs. The men were forced to give way, and Thad shot them a triumphant look.

  “Thanks, birdbrain,” he said, setting Dante back on his shoulder. “I promise you some extra oil this evening.”

  “Pretty boy,” Dante replied. “Sharpe is sharp.”

  One of the soldiers yelped as Sofiya passed him on their way to the grandstand. Thad glanced at her. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing important,” she sniffed. “Don’t keep the tsar waiting.”

  When they reached the steps to the grandstand, they bowed and curtsied and joined the tsar at his royal box. The tsar sat and Thad and Sofiya stood while the court whispered wildly behind fans and gloved hands. Thad hovered, unsure what to do next.

  “A fine day for a hanging,” the tsar said. “I know my wife rewarded you, but allow me to offer you a view from the royal box as my own thanks. Unfortunate about the circus, but there will be other days.”

  “The circus?” Thad
echoed. “I’m sorry, sire, but I haven’t heard.”

  “I canceled today’s performance in favor of this.” He gestured at the gallows, where an automaton painted black was taking up a position at a lever that would open all six trapdoors at once. “Too much in one day stirs the masses.”

  “They do seem agitated,” Sofiya said carefully. Maddie the spider slid backward on her shoulder, as if hiding from the tsar. The cages bearing their sad cargo rolled relentlessly up to the gallows and stopped. Soldiers armed with rifle and pistol moved up to each one. An automaton was hanging nooses from the crossbar with mechanical precision. With awful dread, Thad noticed three of the prisoners in the cages were children, not even twelve years old.

  “Sire,” Thad said, “I was talking with General Parkarov. As an expert at spotting clockworkers, I advised him that the people he had arrested were perfectly normal and innocent, the children doubly so. I’m curious about the decision to-”

  “Some of the ones in the first cages are definitely clockworkers,” the tsar said. “More are coming in a moment. Parkarov convinced me-quite rightly-that it would be best to rid Russia of them. Too dangerous.”

  “Are the children dangerous, sire?” Thad asked. His entire body raged with the need to move fast, but he was hobbled by the power of the man sitting next to him. Every word had to be soft and polite and careful.

  “Children of gypsies and Jews,” the tsar said dismissively. “No one will miss them. The other peasants were probably hiding clockworkers or plague victims, even if they aren’t clockworkers themselves. We’re getting rid of them, just in case. I’m being merciful in allowing them to be hanged instead of beaten and dismembered.”

  “I see. But sire, aren’t you planning to emancipate the serfs? This seems…counter to that.”

  The tsar looked honestly surprised. “I’m setting serfs free to bring Russia’s economy into the modern age, not to allow them to make assassination attempts or rise up against the throne. We are making an example of these. But enough of that.” He shifted on the padded bench. “Have you made any progress at finding the clockworker who tried to assassinate me, as my wife requested?”

  Thad wanted to hit him. The man was as much admitting that none of the people in the cages had anything to do with the plot to kill him, but he was still planning to carry out their deaths. Thad looked at the children in their cages of gold and decided to risk the truth.

  “I know who tried to kill you, sire,” he said slowly. “Though I do not know if you will believe me.”

  “Death,” murmured Dante. “Doom, defeat, despair.”

  Here, the tsar spun on his bench to stare at him. “Who was it? Tell me!”

  At that moment, General Parkarov, without his pipe, marched with several aides out to the gallows. The band of automatons struck up a loud, brassy tune, temporarily overpowering the shouts of the crowd. A pair of soldiers arrested another demonstrator and dragged him, shouting, into the barrack building. The general noticed Thad standing next to the tsar, and the look he gave Thad was an icy blade. If the tsar didn’t believe Thad, the general would be a deadly enemy. But he couldn’t remain silent.

  “It was General Parkarov,” Thad said. “His lands and serfs are double mortgaged, and he’ll lose everything in the emancipation. To stop you, he planted a bomb while he was inspecting the Nicholas Hall for safety, and then, when his plot failed, he brought you pieces of a spider and started this massacre to distract you-and me-from finding out what truly happened. I think now he’s trying to stir up the crowds against you.” A number of disparate thoughts were coming together now, and Thad spoke carefully. “He’s ordered his men to be deliberately brutal to try and make the people angry. He’s hoping for a lucky accident, or perhaps he has planned something more direct, and he’s going to blame it on an angry rioter. You should leave, sire, and have the general arrested.”

  “I see.” The tsar ran a finger over his side whiskers. “Well, I didn’t survive all those military campaigns by cutting and running, did I? And it wouldn’t be good for the people to see a cowardly tsar.”

  “But you do believe him?” Sofiya asked. Maddie peeped over her shoulder.

  “I believe it is worth investigating,” the tsar said, “after the hangings.”

  “But you can’t do that!” Thad exploded, then remembered himself and backtracked, heart pounding and mouth dry. “That is-apologies, sire-this isn’t necessary. You know none of those people had anything to do with-”

  The tsar gave a curt wave that silenced Thad. “The clockworkers should have been executed long ago, and the others don’t matter. These events have their own momentum, and it would be difficult to…put a short circuit in this, I think the new term is.”

  Thad’s heart sank. “Sire-”

  “Enough. I thank you for your service, Mr. Lawrenovich. Have some wine. And how is that little automaton doing?”

  “Despair,” said Dante as an automaton flitted up with a glass for Thad.

  Thad watched in helpless dread as General Parkarov’s men dragged the first six people from the cages. They were bound with heavy rope and couldn’t fight back. The automaton band continued to play a disconcertingly merry tune that completely masked the chants of the people behind and beside the grandstand. The tsar sat, surrounded by the court, sipping wine as calmly if he were watching a parade. A hundred responses flicked through Thad’s mind-running up to the gallows to denounce the general or inciting the crowd to riot or even taking the tsar hostage. But none of them would end well. He looked at Sofiya. Her wooden mask had descended over her face, but he saw the tremors in her body. She was upset, angry. If she broke control and exposed herself as a clockworker, she would join the people on that gallows, and Thad and the rest of the circus too, for consorting with her.

  Six soldiers yanked the first six prisoners up to the gallows and pushed their heads into the nooses. Three of them accepted their fate with hopeless resignation. Two-a man and a woman-struggled and spat, but to no avail. One victim was a child, a girl, and she was weeping. Outrage made Thad’s brass hand shake around the wine goblet. He cast about for something to do, something to say, but nothing came. Parkarov watched with glittering eyes at the corner of the gallows, and it occurred to Thad that he had a clear shot at the general’s head from the grandstand. The tsar had all but said he believed in Parkarov’s guilt. A shot would almost certainly disperse the crowd and end the executions, at least for the day, and without Parkarov to advocate for them, the tsar might let the matter drop entirely, especially with beautiful Sofiya around to talk him out of it. Thad himself…

  Thad swallowed. He would almost certainly not survive. Even if the tsar spoke up quickly, it was highly doubtful the soldiers in front of the grandstand would act out of anything but reflex.

  The little girl’s head went into the noose and the soldier tightened it around her neck. Thad’s throat thickened, and he glanced at Sofiya. The moment he did, he knew she was aware of what he intended. She shook her head minutely, and he gave a small grimace. He couldn’t let more children die. Sofiya shook her head again, pleading. Her eyes were bright.

  Thad casually reached beneath his jacket, as if scratching. General Parkarov’s attention was on the hanging. He held up his arm to give the signal for the drop. The black automaton at the trapdoor lever waited. The crowd fell silent. Thad grasped the cool metal and wood of his pistol, his eyes on Parkarov’s head. He drew.

  And then the spiders came. Dozens of them, hundreds of them. They spilled over the roof of the grandstand and swarmed in from the streets and skittered over the buildings across from the Field of Mars. They were all exactly the same: six inches across, counting the legs, with boxy bodies and four-lensed eyes.

  They all had ten legs.

  “Havoc!” Thad gasped. “Impossible!”

  “Shto?” gasped the tsar at the same time.

  The crowd and the court shouted and screamed as the little machines crawled over them. General Parkarov spun and dropped
his arm, but it wasn’t the proper signal, so the black automaton didn’t move. The automaton band played its happy marching song.

  “Mr. Havoc?” Sofiya said. “But you killed him!”

  Maddie bobbed madly on Sofiya’s shoulder with little squeaking noises, as if excited. A flock of the spiders swarmed over the black automaton at its lever. Even over the band music, there was a rending of metal. The black automaton crumpled like a ball of foil. Startled, Thad lost sight of the automaton beneath the spiders’ flashing claws. In seconds, the spiders cleared away, leaving behind a pile of more spiders exactly like the originals. Except they were black. They wobbled about uncertainly, then gained their legs and joined the others, which were swarming over the automaton band. The music wrenched into a squawking end as both musicians and instruments disappeared. Thad stared, his hand still on his pistol. He didn’t know what to do.

  “My heavens!” Sofiya cried.

  Several people from the crowd broke through the ragged regiment of soldiers and made for the gallows. Some of the soldiers made halfhearted attempts to stop them, but spiders skittered over them and devoured their rifles, replacing them with more spiders. General Parkarov drew his own pistol, but two spiders skittered up his arm and ate it, producing a third spider. Parkarov dropped the spiders and leaped off the gallows. Thad lost sight of him. The braver members of the crowd cut the binding ropes and nooses, setting the people free. A number of the spiders, meanwhile, were already eating the mechanical cages. The doors fell open, freeing the prisoners, who joined the chaotic, screaming crowd. The little girl was snatched up by a woman who hugged her tight and then vanished into the press of people. Thad had time for a flicker of gladness.

  The court was squealing in fear and trying to flee the grandstand, but the women’s skirts and the men’s tight, impractical clothes hampered them, and their human servants had fled. Spiders were devouring the little automatons. Two spiders crawled up Thad’s legs, intent on Dante. He felt their claws pricking through his trousers. Thad snatched the spiders off and flung them away, but more were bent on taking their places. It was impossible! Havoc could not have survived that explosion. But the evidence was here-ten-legged spiders that were smaller versions of the one Thad had seen in Havoc’s laboratory in Lithuania.