Ikey turned his attention to David and Gavril. They ate in silence, eyes on their bowls. On the other side of Gavril, Philip added another black bit to the small, wet collection next to his bowl.
After breakfast, the diners were marched into a large room that bristled with heat and noise, both of which sat palpable in the air and challenged everyone to shove each aside if anyone wished to move about.
Too much commotion ran through the room for Ikey to take in what was happening. He wished again for the ability to shut both eyes, to blot out the chaos, the bodies shuffling along in one direction, conveyer belts laden with boots running the other direction; a pair of boys pushing a cart along; teams of young girls snatching boots off the belt and running laces through the eyelets, their thin arms flashing in the gaslight beneath pale ribbons of faded, pastel-colored sleeves. Tiny hands. A mechanical ass held a young girl by her wrist and marched along. His captive’s little feet kicked at the floor. Her face was scrunched up and red and slick with tears and sweat as her free hand swatted at the automaton’s mindless grip, but she didn’t cry out.
Someone poked Ikey in the back. He hurried along and closed the gap that had opened between himself and Gavril. As they went along, Ikey made notes of doors, windows, pipes, and conduits, anything that might lead to an escape route once he and Cross needed it. His attention snagged on the two young boys as they shoved their cart past. It trundled along on a wobbly wheel that screeched under the weight of a crate. Their eyes were cast to the floor, their heads bowed as they leaned the entirety of their small bodies into the cart. As they passed, Ikey took in the hulking machines that clattered and banged and threatened to blow themselves apart before delivering some piece needed for the production of boots.
They left the room and emerged onto a catwalk. Their boots rang off the iron grating, but the noise was snuffed out by the incessant purring buzz of sewing machines humming beneath them. Along a wide floor, dozens on dozens of sewing machines spread out, each staffed by a woman or girl. Among the aisles separating the machines, boys pushed carts up and down, each cart laden with piles of the various leather pieces the women were sewing together. As they worked, the women stared down at mechanical hands poking out from the sleeves of their dresses.
Ikey shook his head, then spared a glance around the room, noting exits and such, but his eyes were drawn back to the activity beneath him.
They were led through another door at the end of the catwalk, and then down a winding flight of iron stairs to a room filled with a bank of machines that clanged and clomped like great mechanical heads chomping jaws of black iron. Men reached in after each chomp and swept pieces of leather to the floor where boys and a few other men scurried about, gathered them up, and sorted them into an array of shallow boxes on carts.
The inmates stood in line. David looked down the line, then reached over and grabbed Philip. He pulled the boy over to his side and admonished him to shut up. Philip never took his eyes off the clomping jaws of the machines. His face turned a shade more pale with each clang.
A large, shirtless man approached the end of the queue. He had broad shoulders and a gut thick with muscle. His bare skin glistened with sweat and an oily sheen. He pointed his finger at the head of the queue, then swept his finger over to the closest machine. Four people left the queue and followed the large man’s directions. As they stepped up to the machine, the men who had manned it skulked away, their arms hanging down, their backs bent, hands black and faces marred where they had wiped away sweat.
The huge man worked his way down the line until he reached Ikey and his companions. He paused a moment and looked at Philip and Ikey in turn.
“New here, are you?” he asked in a gravelly voice.
Ikey nodded.
The man patted his waist. A small handle of wood was stuck in his belt. From the top of the handle, a chain spilled down the trunk of his thigh, then looped back up to his belt where it was attached to a block of wood studded on four sides with short, brass knobs.
“Give me no trouble, and you’ll get no trouble.” He glanced at David’s and Ikey’s hands, then pointed to a machine. “You’ll take the belt.” He then pointed at Gavril and Philip. “You’ll sweep the floors.”
As Ikey followed David to the designated machine, he glanced back at the man who advanced along the queue. His back was covered in a carpet of small, steel scales. Down his spine protruded a row of knobbed scales that resembled the backbone of a horrible animal.
“What the hell is that?” Ikey asked David as they reached the machine.
“The Alligator,” David said and nodded to the men they relieved. “He wasn’t kidding—he was flat out lying. The man lives to give trouble. Work hard. Keep moving. Don’t give him a reason to single you out. That goes for the both of you.” David nodded to Philip.
Quickly, David explained their jobs, that he and Ikey would sweep out the pieces stamped from the leather as it was fed through the machine. Gavril and Philip would grab the pieces and sort them into boxes that would then be rolled out to the sewing floor.
As David stepped up to the machine, he waited for the tray underneath to rise up with a great clomp, then lower back down. As he counted out loud, David reached in and swept a handful of leather boot pieces onto the floor. When he reached four, he snatched his hand away. A second later, the tray lifted up and clanged against the underside of the machine again. David yelled out, “One,” and motioned for Ikey to help him sweep.
As he did so, Ikey looked the machine over, taking in the parts and imagining how things went together. A piston underneath the tray drove it up onto a strip of leather fed along on a roll several feet wide. On the other side of the roll, blades fashioned into boot pieces punched the needed pieces out of the leather. As he and David swept out the parts, the roll advanced to an unmarred section.
In his head, Ikey sketched out a different design, one with two rollers. The leather passed between them, and one roll cut out the parts needed as it pressed against the other roller. The leather bits punched out would then fall to the floor on their own, not risking a hand or limb. But then again, the pieces might get stuck in their templates, gum up the works. How did that not happen on this setup?
Ikey stooped on the next punch to watch the pieces fall free. As they did so, they revealed blocks shaped like the leather pieces. They slid through the cutters, pushing out any debris that stuck.
There had to be a better way to manufacture boots, however.
Ikey smirked at himself. What a dolt he was for even considering it after he had been shanghaied.
He stole a glance up and down the line. Like the women at the sewing machines, many of those sweeping the jaws of the machines sported mechanical hands or arms.
When he and Cross had departed from the train, he had imagined that they would have found someone capable of making augmentations, someone who had done a few and made a living as a general surgeon. Never had he expected augmentations to be as common as hats.
“How can everyone not know about this?” Ikey asked over the din as he leaned in with David to sweep the tray.
“Know about what?”
“This. Marlhewn.”
“Didn’t we go over this before? Weren’t you the one I explained it to in the wagon?”
“But I had no idea. Those women in the next room; they have mechanical hands. Nearly all of them. I could have counted the number of flesh hands on one set of fingers.”
David wiggled his own mechanical fingers at Ikey. “And how do you suppose we got to be like this, eh?”
“But, it’s everyone. Everyone has an augmentation.”
“Not everyone. Gavril doesn’t. Yet. And Philip doesn’t appear to have one. Yet.”
“He’s only here for six months. He’s working off his mom’s burial expenses.”
David snorted. “Hate to break it to you, my good man, but he’s here for life. He’s going to have an augmentation before six months.”
Ikey glanced at Ph
ilip. The boy hustled forward, his eyes on the clomping machine before him. When he reached Ikey and David, he dropped to his knees, swept up an armful of pieces, then hurried back to the cart.
“How can that be?” Ikey asked. “He’s not doing anything dangerous. Not like us.”
“You saw that hardware hanging off of The Alligator’s belt, right?”
Ikey nodded.
“Industrial accidents are the least of your worries here.”
As Ikey finished sweeping the tray off again, he watched as Philip plucked pieces out of the bunch cradled in his arm, and then deposited each piece in the appropriate box. From several feet away, the tremble in the boy’s hand was visible.
Ikey turned his attention back to the machine. He’d have to get Philip out of here as well. Long before his six months came up.
The machine clamped down on the leather strip again. Ikey stretched his back and glanced about the room. Cross’s height was not among the men at the machines. Ikey could imagine what Cross might do to The Alligator. The man was an utter bastard. As the morning went on, he strolled up and down the line, watching and yelling at people to pick up the pace. If the pieces weren’t swept from the machine in time, a second stamp would ruin the first set. When the Alligator found these truncated bits, he yelled at the individuals manning the machines, shook his fist, or struck the workers and knocked them to the ground. In one instance, he followed up with several swift kicks to a man’s ribs, capped off with a giant stomp on the man’s augmented hand.
Though it was a mechanical hand, the man cried out from the floor and sobbed. Once The Alligator lifted his boot, the man pulled his hand to his face and examined it. He clutched the air, and only his pinky and ring fingers curled. He touched the index finger. It fell backwards and rested against the back of the hand on a broken hinge. A fresh sob racked the man.
“Pay attention!” David hissed.
Ikey turned around and saw David reaching into the machine. “Two.”
Ikey shot his hand into the tray and scooped out the pieces. The machine clamped down again as Ikey pulled his fingers free.
He looked back to the scene. The Alligator moved on. A mechanical ass had approached and lifted the man to his feet, and then marched him past. The man clutched the hand to his chest as if it were real. Tracks of tears cleared paths through the dust and grime on his face. The mechanical ass propelled the man toward the spiral staircase.
“He’s going to have to go see a chopper to get that repaired,” David explained. “It’ll be added to his bill, so to speak. He won’t be earning a release anytime soon.”
“What'd he do?” Ikey asked as they leaned in together to clear the next tray.
David snorted. “Probably got too close to his reconciliation date. Can’t have the workers paying off their debts, can we?”
Ikey shuddered at the thought of The Old Chopper’s measured, flat voice. “How long until your reconciliation date?” Ikey asked.
“There won’t be one. I’ll be working here until I die.”
Ikey said nothing as he watched his hand reach into the jaw of the machine and sweep it out. It was an odd sensation to see the mechanical arm move and work in response to the movements of his shoulder and the twitches of muscles in his chest, but yet not know it was touching a thing if it weren’t for his eye to see.
How much of Rose’s world was touch? Perhaps that was why she objected to augmentations. The arm would be useless without sight. And to use the arm, the whole upper part of his chest was wrapped in canvas and held in place with a series of straps that cut off all sensation to the outside world except pressure, and a sensation of chafing where the sweat-soaked skin slid under the canvas and grew increasingly raw.
The urge to shut his eyes overwhelmed him, to clench them both tight and know darkness as the world dropped away. What he wouldn’t give to be back in Whitby, in Cross’s house, in the dark where he belonged.
The mechanical hand slipped into the machine’s jaw again. Did he long for that peace and security enough to do without the arm? It would be useless in Rose’s house. Maybe that was why he couldn’t stay with Cross and Rose. And it was just as well. He needed to get back to Uncle Michael. It had been weeks or more since his dad and Uncle Michael would have received a payment from Admiral Daughton, if they ever received a shilling to begin with, that is. Did they have a nursemaid? Did Ikey’s dad leave Uncle Michael alone in the house all day, in solitude?
Was he even still alive?
Ikey gritted his teeth. He swept the leather pieces away to rain onto the cement floor. He searched again for a glimpse of Cross among the crowd, as if he had missed the man for not looking hard enough. No sign of him emerged from the crowds huddled around the machines, and Ikey’s stomach turned over in his gut. The longer he stayed in Marlhewn, the worse things would get. He had his arm, his eye. He could confront his dad. He could take care of Uncle Michael.
But he owed Cross. Cross and Rose. But Cross, especially, who had brought him down here to begin with in the hopes of fixing him up. It was Ikey's own fault that Cross was in the situation he was in. Had Ikey left well-enough alone…
Then he wouldn’t have the arm and the eye needed to take care of himself in the future.
But he had to get back to the farm. That was where he belonged. The dark would no longer have him with his iron arm dead to sensation. Rose would not leave the house to help him. Cross would have been better off had he never tried to help Ikey at all. But now that he had the arm, he could go back, face down his dad, and make sure that if his dad ever lifted a fist again, he’d pay ten times over for each blow given to his family.
“This isn’t break time,” a voice bellowed behind Ikey.
He glanced back. The Alligator stood over Philip, who bowed his head and raced from the cart to the flurry of small scraps at Ikey’s feet.
The Alligator planted his hands on his hips. His index finger stroked one of the brass knobs on his homemade mace. “You don’t take a break until you go back to the grub hall.”
Ikey gave David a look of concern as they leaned over together and cleared out the tray. David shook his head.
Philip crouched and snatched at the leather scraps at Ikey’s feet. He sprang up and hurried back to the cart.
“You also don’t walk away while I’m talking to you.” The Alligator backhanded Philip across the face as the boy approached. He cried out. Pieces of leather flew from his hands and rained around him as Philip hit the floor in a sprawl.
Ikey stood and tightened his mechanical hand into an iron fist. It rose to his shoulder in a fluid, practiced move well-oiled from thousands of fantasies in which he avenged his family.
“Ikey,” David hissed. “Don’t.” He reached out for Ikey’s sleeve.
Ikey stepped back.
“What? You don’t approve?” The Alligator asked.
Ikey’s stomach filled with iron and his spine surged with fire at the thought of finally standing up to a bully.
But The Alligator approached David. “What were you saying?”
“He had it coming,” David said, a half-hearted wave at Philip, who sat up and cradled his eye with one hand.
The press clanged behind them.
They hadn’t cleared the tray.
The Alligator glowered at the tray. Redness washed over his bald head. “You have it coming, too.”
He threw a punch at David. The skinny man dodged, but The Alligator’s fist caught him on the side of the brow. David spun around and staggered a step.
The Alligator pulled his fist back for a follow-up blow.
Ikey peered at The Alligator’s back. He couldn’t determine how the scales were affixed, but he bet if he peeled one up and off, he’d find out how it was attached, and what was underneath. He stepped forward.
A hand grabbed his right elbow and jerked him back.
Ikey glanced over his shoulder. Gavril tightened his grip on Ikey’s elbow and shook his head.
A grunt from
The Alligator, and David took a blow to the back of the head. He collapsed to the floor.
Ikey jerked his arm out of Gavril’s grip. Gavril clamped his hand on Ikey’s shoulder. A thick, Russian accent whispered in his ear, “Move, I break your other arm.”
Gavril stared into Ikey’s eye with a steeled resolve that seemed out of place from such a thin, sick man.
A crunch snapped Ikey’s attention back to David. The Alligator lifted his booted foot from David’s hand.
David moaned. He stirred. The Alligator delivered a swift kick to David’s ribs. He rolled onto his side.
The Alligator turned around.
Gavril gave a slight shove toward the press.
“Get back to work!” The Alligator bellowed.
Ikey glanced back at Gavril, but he was crouching and sweeping up leather bits with his hands. Philip joined him. Ikey waited until the press clamped again, then reached in and swept out the arm-load of chewed-up leather that had accumulated.
As The Alligator walked away, Ikey hurried over to David.
“I’m so sorry,” Ikey said. “I meant to take him on. I didn’t mean—Gavril stopped me from helping.”
A thin smile creased David’s face. “Gavril saved your life.”
Ikey glanced up at The Alligator’s back as he yelled at someone else.
“I could have taken him.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” David said. “It hurts.”
The thumb of David's hand stuck out at an odd angle. When he attempted to make a fist, the thumb quivered. The innards clicked like cogs slipping. Ikey took the hand in his and gave it a cursory examination. He then pulled on the thumb until it clicked. When he let go, it fell limp against the palm.
“Oh, that’s much better,” David said. “Get back to work before The Alligator sees you. The Old Chopper will fix me up proper.”
Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Page 12
