The Falling Machine

by Andrew P. Mayer

  Her father's office was at the end of the hall, behind a massive oaken door. It seemed like a different place now. No longer a room full of forbidden secrets, but a cave with a terrible monster at its core.

  The hinges gave an ominous creak as O'Rourke pulled it open. “The butler's bones,” she thought to herself. It was a childhood joke that she and Nathaniel had shared, and the smile it brought to her lips quickly faded.

  The room beyond was mostly dark. The curtains were drawn, and the light inside came from an oil lamp sitting on her father's massive wooden desk, and from a roaring fire on the side wall, its crackling flames sending out a glow that seemed to dance around the room.

  “Come in, Sarah.” The voice was cool and even.

  “Will that be all, sir?” said O'Rourke.

  Her father lifted his arm and waved his hand as a response.

  The butler didn't say a word this time. He simply nodded and melted back into the darkened hall with practiced grace. The door shut behind her, and the room became darker, and quite possibly colder.

  Sarah didn't wait to be ordered in before she stepped forward. “Father, I—”

  He cut her off. “Don't bother to try and give me one of your ‘explanations,’ Sarah. I've heard all I need to know.” She recognized the timbre of his voice immediately—the familiar note of disappointment she'd been hearing from him almost constantly for the last few years. This was a different man than she had seen the other day, and she would need to be careful.

  She took a few steps forward, trying to stop at the edge of the carpet. Instead she tripped slightly, her foot coming down onto the wooden floor with a sharp snap. “All you need to know without actually bothering to speak with me, you mean.”

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I've indulged you too much. I'm realizing now that that may have been the cause of all this.”

  He looked up at her. There was a tense quivering around his eyes that made her feel a deep sense of unease. “But I'm sure you have something to say for yourself.”

  “I don't know what Nathaniel told you happened out there, but it—”

  “Did you know that they've had to amputate Bill Hughes's legs?” He moved his lips as if he were chewing on an invisible cigar. “The poor man could barely stand by himself anyway, and now his damn legs are gone.”

  “Father, I—”

  “Your precious machine man did that.” His voice was still low, but somehow he made it sound like a shout.

  “Tom? That's not—” Sarah tottered back a step, feeling the force of her father's anger. “I—”

  “I've tried with you, Sarah. I have. And you've always had a tender heart.” He looked away from her. “You're very like your mother in that regard. It's a good trait in and of itself, but in your case it's become one of far too many weaknesses.”

  “What are you saying, Father? Are you going to cast me out?”

  “Cast you…?” He made a face at her, followed by a grim laugh. “I love you, Sarah. You're my only daughter. Do you believe that I would turn you into a ruined woman of the streets? You really think so little of me”—he took a deep breath—”or of this family and our good name, that you think I might be willing to do that out of anger?”

  Sarah felt her resolve wilting in spite of itself. Her father seemed capable of turning her back into a child at a moment's notice under the best of circumstances, and these were far from the best. “What happened at the Darby mansion…I was only trying to help.”

  “Why were you even there, Sarah? I told you I wanted you to stay away from the Paragons. What possible good did you think you were going to do by getting involved with that ridiculous machine?”

  “Darby trusted him.”

  “Darby made him. But even a trained dog can become a feral animal when its master isn't around to hold the leash.”

  Sarah leaned forward and spoke softly. “If you just stopped and thought about things for a minute you might realize that you've never given Tom a chance.”

  He slammed both hands down onto the oaken surface of the desk. “Don't be such a child!” The ink and blotters jumped as he did so, sending the pen rolling off onto the floor. “I've fought by his side. I've seen him kill men with those metal hands. He isn't a person, Sarah, or a china doll. He's a machine, a weapon.” Her father stood up, sending the chair behind him crashing down. “He's as emotionless and deadly as a Colt revolver.”

  “Guns don't speak. They don't think.”

  “Enough!” her father thundered. “I'm not going to debate with you about things that you had no business being involved with in the first place.” He pointed to the chair next to her. “Now I want you to take a seat, Sarah, while I explain to you how things are going to be from here on out.”

  Sarah looked over at the padded office chair sitting next to her. When she looked back she saw that her father was picking his own chair back up off the ground.

  He turned his head and looked up at her. “Can you no longer simply obey the simplest request I make?”

  She stood there in silence, her brain trying to wrap itself around what was happening, but failing to find any context for it.

  “I said sit! “

  Sarah grabbed the chair and dropped herself into it. Even as the springs sagged underneath her she could feel herself moving into a petulant and angry pose—the classic position of a child being scolded by an angry parent.

  Having finished pulling his chair upright her father sat back down and faced her across his desk. “Now then…” His face was red with a slight sheen of moisture across it, although it clearly wasn't the exertion from picking up a chair that had made him sweat.

  He grabbed up a sheet of paper that had a short list of items drawn on it. She could see that it was numbered, but she could not read the rest of it from her position.

  “First, you're already long past a reasonable age by which you should at least have found a suitable prospect for a husband. Instead, at the age of nineteen, your only genuine suitor is the boy who was raised as your brother—one you seem quite content to let burn alive in a fire.”

  “I didn't!” she gasped.

  “Not,” he said firmly, “another word until I'm finished.” He gave the paper in front of him a terse little shake. “I will do whatever it takes to see you engaged by the end of the social season.”

  Sarah pursed her lips, but didn't respond.

  “Second, you are no longer allowed to leave this house without my permission, and even then you must be in the company of an approved chaperone. For some reason you believe it is perfectly acceptable for a girl of your age and station to roam the streets of New York alone. I can assure you that it is not. You may not care about this family's good name, but the last thing I need is for my daughter, the daughter of the leader of the Paragons for God's sakes, to be hurt, killed, or worse in some random street crime. So far you've managed to keep yourself out of the papers, but not for lack of trying, it seems.

  “Finally, you are, from now on, absolutely banned from having anything to do with that machine, or any Paragon business of any sort. I've somehow been unable to convince you that your life is no longer a part of that world. Bad enough that I have to deal with your stepbrother gallivanting around in that ridiculous flying suit of his.

  “Darby tried to convince me that allowing you some freedom would make you a well-rounded girl. But it made you rebellious and willful.”

  Sarah felt a ball of growing dread rising up in her.

  “And if, for some reason, you come into contact with the Automaton again, I expect you to treat that machine like the deadly menace that it is and report it to the Paragons immediately.”

  Sarah sat there in silence, and as the words faded she realized that her hands were wrapped so tightly around the arms of her chair that her fingers had turned white.

  Her father crossed his arms and leaned back into his seat. “I know you sometimes find this hard to believe, but I love you, and I'm doing all of this for you.”
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  She found herself so filled with rage that she was almost unable to move. Responses bubbled through her head, but she couldn't possibly vocalize the words. Not only would they make things worse, they'd open up a gap between her and her father that would never be closed.

  He did love her; she knew that. Maybe differently than she hoped, not unconditionally and not with the same respect that he had given her mother….She tried to tell herself that this was the only way he knew how to show it.

  She opened her mouth to say “I understand.” The words that came out were entirely different. What she said was, “There's a traitor in the Paragons.” It surprised her when she heard it coming from her own lips. More so because there was a part of her that still thought that it might be him.

  Alexander Stanton sat up in his chair, his face reddening.

  Sarah wanted to stop herself from saying any more, but the words were out there. It was as if she had dropped an anchor from her mouth and the chain was dragging everything else out of her as it fell. “Someone had to have told the killer when we'd be on the bridge,” she continued. “He couldn't just have been waiting for us there by coincidence.”

  Her father closed his eyes. She could hear the breath flooding in and out through his nose. It was like a bull getting ready to charge, or a locomotive gathering speed. He said her name slowly out loud, and she could hear the strain in his voice as he did it. “Sarah…”

  “Someone killed Mr. Wickham.”

  “Sarah!” Once again his hands slammed down onto the desk, harder than before. “Your tin toy killed Wickham!” he roared. “I've already told you once: You are done with the Paragons!”

  He stood up and pulled a thick gold rope that hung from the ceiling next to him. From outside in the hallway there was the sound of a ringing bell. “And you are obviously incapable of reason right now. Sterner methods are required.”

  Her eyes flew open wide. “What are you saying?”

  “You are absolutely forbidden to leave this house until such time as I believe that I can trust you again.”

  Sarah laughed nervously. “That's ridiculous! I'm trying to help you….Help everyone.”

  “You've been mesmerized by Darby and his sodomite friend. Hopefully this will help undo that influence.” He pulled the bell rope harder this time, but instead of having the intended effect, the bell made a single, strangled “gonk” as it was pinned inside of its box. “If I find out that you've left this house without my authorization, then I'll have you sent far away from New York to a convent where you can learn to be a proper lady.”

  The door swung open, and Daniel O'Rourke was standing behind it. To Sarah's eyes it appeared as if he was eager to take part in whatever hysteria it was that had brought him here. “Yes, sir?”

  “I want Sarah taken to her room immediately. She is to remain there until such time as I have determined that she should be able to leave it.”

  “I'm an adult! You can't just—!”

  She felt the Irishman's hand close around her forearm. “Please come with me, Miss Stanton.” She had an instinct to spin round and punch the man, but she held it in check.

  “Father, if you truly do love me, you have to listen to me. Tom wasn't lying to me. I know it!” She knew the outbreak would only serve to make things worse, but she had to get the words out. She felt desperate and alone, but maybe she could at least say something that might let her father realize the truth—if not today, then soon enough to do something about it…if he wasn't the traitor himself.

  “Get her out of here.”

  Gripping her arm tightly, and with surprising strength, the old butler steered her out through the door and into the hallway. She looked back just as it closed, and in that instant saw Alexander Stanton glaring at her through narrowed eyes.

  In the two days since the Darby house had burned to the ground the snow hadn't stopped falling. Sometimes it dropped in a heavy white curtain; other times it was simply a few flakes blowing to and fro in the wind before reaching the ground. But across the city only the stone and brick sides of the buildings were still visible, while the roofs and streets were an endless vista of white.

  It was still New York, but somehow a quieter, gentler version of the place. On the Lower East Side the wide-eyed faces of children peered out onto the streets from inside the front-room windows of candle-lit tenements, drinking in the magic of the city transformed.

  Along Allen Street their vigilance had been rewarded with the sight of a mysterious man who had been standing in the middle of the road, unmoving, for half an hour. He wore a badly torn cloth coat, with thick woolen gloves covering his hands. The boots on his feet were old and scuffed, and the hood over his head kept his face mostly in shadow.

  The children weren't the only ones who had noticed the man, and one of the tenants stepped out the door of his dilapidated tenement to face the stranger. He stood threateningly on the top of the stairs with a long wooden club in one hand and a lantern in the other. The chimney glass had a large crack in it, and the cheap oil smoked badly as it burned, smothering the light so that it could only let out a grimy yellow glow. Snowflakes hissed as they landed on it and vaporized.

  “Whatcha want?” the man said, holding the polished branch up above his head. He was dressed in breeches and a buttoned-up shirt that was so worn it was only a step above rags. The paper jammed into his shoes was sticking out through the holes in the leather, and the misshapen hat on his head had once been a simple Irish cap—now it was just a wedge of cloth pulled tightly over his head, the brim threadbare and misshapen.

  “There is no need to…threaten me. I simply wish to talk with one of the…residents inside.”

  “Ye can go to hell for all I care, but yer not gettin’ in here.” The man's accent was thick already, but he was clearly drunk, and it made him slur the words even more. “Go ‘way.” He took a swipe at the air with his stick.

  The Automaton did not move. “I can wait.”

  His face was unshaven, and when he opened his mouth to speak it was clear that the time he could have been helped by any kind of dental surgery was long past. “Ye been waitin’ here fer ‘aff an hour already. Don't need some bastard in a mask freezin’ ta death on our stoop, bringin’ cops and rats and God knows what else.”

  Tom tilted his head upward slightly, letting the light reflect off the flesh-colored paint on his face. Two glassy, lidless eyes looked out from behind the eye holes. They moved away, and then back at the man again.

  “Jaysus! What the hell's wrong with yer face?”

  “I had a very bad…accident. This covers my burned…flesh.” He reached up toward his mask with a gloved hand, as if he was about to lift it away and reveal what lay underneath. “It keeps the…children from screaming.”

  The man held up his arm to cover his eyes and turned away. “What are ye doin’ man? I din't ask ta see it.”

  Tom dropped his hand. “I mean no one any…harm. I only wish to speak with a person named…Murphy McAuliffe. Does he live here?”

  The man walked down the snow-covered steps to the street and shoved his lamp forward, looking the Automaton up and down. “There's over one hundred souls in here, and so maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. But if ya don’ leave now yer sure enough gonna get a taste of me shillelagh.” He brandished the knotted branch at him threateningly.

  Tom took a stride forward, and the man swung the club at him. It was an expert blow, and even if the man's addled state had taken some of the precision out of it, it still was aimed directly at his head.

  Tom caught it with his left hand and plucked the stick away. “I told you that I mean no harm.”

  The man tried to back away and slipped on the snow. Tom dropped the weapon and grabbed his wrist, pulling him up to his feet before he could fall.

  “What the hell?” the drunken man replied, and slammed Tom's head with his fist.

  “You are obviously unwilling to help.” Extending the arm that was holding the man's wrist, he swung around
and then let go. The man went flying out into the street, tripping on a hidden piece of rutted ice and collapsing onto the snow, his hands digging into the filth and mud hidden beneath its pristine white surface. “Please stay out of my way.”

  There were ten steps from the street up to the door. As Tom neared the top the door swung open and a woman stepped forward onto the stoop. She was clearly in her later years, and time had been decidedly unkind to her. Her face was puffy and blotched, with a shiny sheen, as if she had been waxed too many times. Her back was stooped, and she walked with a shuffling gait. “So, you want from this man you're going to see, what?” Her accent spoke of a very different world from the Irishman's.

  “I believe he killed some…friends of mine.”

  “And you're telling me you mean him no harm?”

  “Only if he…attacks first.”

  “I suppose you don't think what might happen to the rest of us when you fight.” She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. It was clearly only of limited use against the cold.

  Tom's glass eyes danced around hard enough to make a metallic click. “I will do my best to…protect you if I can.”

  “Because you think you're a hero. Like one of them high-and-mighty Paragons?”

  “Much like that, yes.”

  “Feh,” she said. “Heroes don't care. All they do is make sure their rich friends, they don't get hurt. But do you think they ever come down here and protect us?”

  “If they knew…”

  “You think they don't know? You think they couldn't come down here and clean up Five Points, or that fancy dead scientist couldn't make an army of metal men to come down here and be a police for this place?” Her righteousness had brought back a touch of youth to her cheeks, and for a moment, as her rage grew, she seemed to stand a few inches taller. “Nobody cares about anybody. Everyone just wants: wants to get out, wants to get rich, wants that little bit of food their neighbor has. All that wanting, down here, you ain't getting none of it.” Suddenly a look of shock grew on her face. “Look out!”