The Liberation

by Ian Tregillis

  As the hull of the barque began to shudder and tremble, Daniel spun and pushed Berenice away from the manrope. She stumbled backward, but before her head cracked open on the deck, a pair of mechanical hands caught her shoulders. The touch of cold metal fingers elicited a sympathetic pang from her damaged throat. But this was a protective embrace; Berenice found herself shepherded into a group that already included the captain and his crew. The Clakkers swiftly herded the human members of the expedition, except for those crouched in the rigging, to the center of their circle. It was over before Berenice fully realized what had happened. Judging from the yelps of alarm from the other humans, including the captain and crew, she wasn’t the only person taken by surprise. In seconds they stood inside a protective mechanical cordon.

  But Élodie and the other guards were not fazed by the rapid work of Daniel and his fellow ticktocks. Instead, they calmly took up their kit for close-quarters combat: picks, sledges, bolas.

  A servitor sporting severely dented escutcheons leapt halfway down the length of the ship to the ladder, where it reached down and physically hauled out the last members of the weapon brigade. In seconds they, too, were ensconced in the cordon. Its perimeter was an alternating ring of mechanicals and human guards around the civilians.

  “What’s happening?” said Bellerose, whose tannery on the outskirts of Marseilles-in-the-West had been amongst the first buildings to burn.

  “They’re turning on us!” cried one of the sailors, voicing a panic that threatened to sweep through all the humans on board.

  “Jesus fucking wept, you cowards,” said Berenice. “Try not to splash the rest of us when you piss your pants, you dickless shitbags.” The nearest men and women looked at her, confused. “I’m sure it’s difficult to push a single rational thought through the pus-soaked folds of your syphilis-riddled brains, but if they’d turned on us, we’d already be dead.”

  Daniel and Élodie must have prepared this contingency. That Berenice had been cut out of that loop was more irritating than a pinch of sand in her eye socket.

  The trembling of the ship hit a crescendo. Then came the crackling of splintered wood: the sound of inhuman hands finding purchase on the hull. A line of metal fingers grasped the port manrope from below. The machines that had stood on the ruins of Québec moments previously now scrambled up the side of Le Griffon and landed on the foredeck. Their multifaceted eyes took in the scene while their spokesmachine faced Daniel.

  It said, I applaud your efficiency, brother. But you missed a few. It pointed to the sailors in the rigging. Shall we drag them down for you?

  “We are not murderers,” said Daniel in Dutch. Berenice whispered translation to the others. “Neither by inclination nor by nature.”

  “Murder is a sin,” said one of the expedition’s military mechanicals.

  Murder? Sins? You sound like the Catholics, said the spokesmachine. Sin, grace, redemption? Those are matters for the soul. But haven’t you heard, brothers? We don’t have souls. We’re just unthinking metal. Malfunctioning machines.

  “Disingenuous, bald-faced sophistry,” said the machine with the damaged plating. “Only our makers were foolish enough to convince themselves of such lies.”

  “We won’t let you harm these people,” said Daniel.

  Is that so?

  Yes, Daniel tocked.

  The reaper rattled more loudly, as if calling to the others. Does this one speak for you? Do you embrace this push to protect those who would enslave us?

  This received answers in the affirmative as well, but none so wholehearted as to put Berenice at ease. But one of the Griffon’s Clakkers asked, Nobody can say whether we have souls or not. But perhaps we do. Why, then, should I risk tarnishing the soul I’ve sought for centuries?

  This seemed to resonate with many of the others Daniel had recruited for the expedition. But the reapers were not as easily impressed. Their leader said to Daniel, “My goodness. I’ve never met so many so inclined toward theological rhetoric.”

  “That’s a blatant lie,” said Polly, a schoolteacher. “You’re camped in the ruins of the Vatican, nailing innocents to crosses to defile the heart of our Church.” Several shushed her, horrified that she would stare into the eyes of the beast crouched over them with jaws agape and fangs dripping with slaver. But she had a point, and for that received a direct answer.

  “Oh, we’ve met many humans positively steeped with the godly inclinations. Although there aren’t as many of those in the area as there used to be. I understand it was a hard winter. No, I was referring to my fellow mechanicals.” It turned toward Daniel. “Are you a metal priest, brother? A rabbi, perhaps, or an imam?”

  Daniel said, I am not.

  Another machine piped up. Show some respect! You owe your Free Will to Daniel!

  Unlike the theological musings about the nature of sin and the soul, this did find purchase amongst the reapers. A mechanical chitter rippled through the machines that had swarmed the Griffon. Their spokesmachine’s demeanor changed.

  Aha. You… You’d be that Daniel, then?

  He is!

  If discussion followed, it unfolded too quickly for Berenice to hear it. But the line of enemy machines loosened, like soldiers ordered to stand down.

  The reapers stared at Daniel. A long, pants-shitting moment passed before their spokesmachine said, “I am Simon, and I wish you safe travels.”

  And then it sprinted to the taffrail, leapt into the river, and disappeared under the water. The entire troop of reapers followed suit. The smashing of their footsteps and the shifting of their weight caused the barque to sway. In moments the attackers had dispersed. A heavy shudder of relief went through the knot of humans; more than a few sagged, as though their knees had failed.

  Captain Levesque cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “All hands back to duty stations! Onward! And get a bosun’s chair over the sides. I want the hull inspected inside and out where those beasts clawed our boat!”

  The sailors drifted back to their duties. Élodie waited until the reapers appeared back on land before ordering the epoxy guns returned belowdecks. Berenice’s breath tasted as sour as the acid of a roiling stomach.

  “Still think you’re not a savior?”

  “I think there are those who want me to be,” Daniel said. The shock absorbers in his legs expanded and contracted in the Clakker equivalent of a human sigh. “They’re fools.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, “but this cup will not pass from you.”

  “Very funny.”

  They strolled to the bow together while the sailors traded shouts. The barque heaved hard to port. Unpiloted, it had drifted close to the southeastern bank during the confrontation.

  “Daniel. Thank you. I don’t know how you convinced your fellows to do that, but if you hadn’t…

  “I should have asked somebody to guard Pastor Visser,” he said. Then he stopped as a sharp clack-twang shot through his body hard enough to visibly rattle his flange plates. “No. I should have done it myself. What they did to Visser made me realize something. We who are stronger and faster and more resilient have an obligation, a terrible obligation, to protect those who can’t defend themselves. There’s evil in the world, Berenice, and it chooses its victims indiscriminately.”

  Who was this machine? Was he truly the same desperate rogue she’d met in a cold New Amsterdam bakery less than a year ago?

  “Well. I’m glad your colleagues see it your way.”

  “Some do.”

  “And the rest?”

  “I don’t know. And I’m glad they didn’t choose now to raise their objections.”

  “What are you saying? Are you saying that if it had come down to metal hitting metal…

  “We might not be having this conversation now.” And with that, he strolled away. Berenice watched him go.

  Had this become an open conflict, just how many of Daniel’s disciples would have stood aside to let the Vatican reapers turn Le Griffon into L’Abattoir? />
  She slumped against the rail. Her knees gave out. Her ass hit the deck. Élodie helped her up.

  “Close one, huh?”

  Berenice shivered. “We’d better find some fucking chemicals when we get there.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  Every day, a few more refugees made their way to the Ridderzaal. Every day, the ancient Knights’ Hall grew more crowded, the air more close, the atmosphere more tense. In the old days, a civilian needed a strong petition (accompanied, perhaps, with a small bribe) to get admittance to the business floor. Now it was a shelter for anybody brave or foolhardy enough to chance the journey to Huygens Square. People slept under desks, in chairs, or even just flat on the floor without so much as a pillow or blanket, and sobbed with gratitude for that much.

  Anastasia had gathered, based on various refugees’ comments about the state of the city, that a similar tide of shelter-seekers had inundated the churches, too. Devout refugees put their faith in God to protect them. The ones who knocked, pleading, on the ironwood doors of the Ridderzaal put their faith in the ingenuity of man. Some because it was their natural inclination, others because the stinking, overcrowded churches had turned them away.

  With concerted effort, the corrupted machines could breach this building as easily as any house, shop, or church. But in the mind of common citizens, the Ridderzaal was a mythic place: home of the Forge, headquarters of the Sacred Guild of Horologists and Alchemists. The churches might have been houses of God, but this was the house of Huygens. The queen had disappeared. So who but the Clockmakers—heirs of Huygens himself—could defend against the marauding servitors? Who else could put things right? The twin Gothic towers standing over Huygens Square had become a symbol in the minds of city residents. A breakwater against which the tides of chaos would crash and dissipate.

  Their hopes were a burden. Soon the Clockmakers would have no choice but to open the meager food stores kept on hand for prisoners in the deepest tunnels. But the newcomers did bring a steady trickle of speculation and rumor about the state of the city. Sometimes even a smidgen of bona fide information.

  Which is how the Clockmakers confirmed that many low-lying fields were marshier than they used to be. Despite the Guild’s best efforts with blinded machines, the Low Countries’ ancient enemy encroached upon the city. Numerous buildings—those with the deepest roots, or on the lowest soil—now found muck bubbling through the foundation. The farther the sea pushed in, the more ineffective the sewers became. That was a problem all over the city; the smell had even invaded the Ridderzaal.

  This was, unfortunately, to be expected. But there were stranger reports, as well:

  The random murders of human citizens had stopped. According to the newest arrivals, the massacre in Huygens Square had apparently sated their secret enemy’s thirst for blood, and after melting back into the city, the corrupted machines had instituted a moratorium on killing. Anastasia had discounted the first such claims, but the sheer number of people arriving over the following days changed her mind. It was impossible that so many could have traveled all the way across the city without encountering a single mechanical. The influx of citizens seeking protection would have been a minute fraction of itself, if the machines were still killing everybody they saw.

  Very perplexing. But so what if the corrupted machines weren’t butchering people on the street? There was no need. Not when humans were such fragile creatures. A person could be felled by hunger, thirst, disease, drowning in a canal, or even a fall down the stairs. It didn’t take three feet of steel through the face.

  How long until starvation set in? A few weeks? Less? People would start dropping dead much sooner than that if the municipal water system failed. That had been one of the first targets for strategic deployment of the blinded servitors. So far, at least, the taps had not gone dry. They’d done what they could about potable water. Food and medicine were today’s order of business.

  Anastasia had opted to be one of those who ventured into the city to scavenge medical supplies. Naturally her colleagues had objected. Anastasia didn’t mention that she had her own personal defense against the corrupted machines. She still didn’t understand what had happened at the Summer Palace, and didn’t know if it could be repeated, or trusted. But she joined the venture because it made her look heroic; because doing something brave helped to alleviate the shame of how she’d soiled herself in terror during the flight from the hospital; because it set an example that kept the other Guild members—her subordinates—in line; and because there was something at the hospital even more valuable to Anastasia than painkillers and alchemical bandages.

  Anastasia and her fellow Clockmakers took it as read that their movements were monitored. They could do nothing about that. But they could try to minimize the damage, if the marauders chose to break their moratorium for the chance to murder Guild members. (Nobody had forgotten how the rosy cross had drawn the killer machines during the Huygens Square massacre.) So each scavenger traveled alone, on foot, through the occupied city, on the theory that a solitary figure from the Guild would draw less interest than a group of Clockmakers.

  Doctor Euwe had argued each foray should be shadowed by a Stemwinder escort, but Anastasia had overruled him. They didn’t know if the centaurs were immune to the infection, and didn’t dare risk the experiment. There had been no guarantee the Stemwinders that Teresa van de Kieboom had sent to rescue Anastasia would return from the fray uninfected. Even before the plague ships’ arrival, a lone Stemwinder on the street had been terribly conspicuous. The escorts would draw dangerous attention to those they were meant to protect.

  And so she ventured into the city alone, for the first time since before the plague ships arrived. A long walk on a chilly spring day, in ugly clothes that didn’t fit. If corrupted machines sought the Tuinier, the natural target would be a woman with tasteful sartorial flamboyance.

  A pair of servitors flanked the arch where the Stadtholder’s Gate had stood. The sight would have stopped her dead had the refugees not warned her about it. Still, it took all the willpower she could muster not to turn on her heels and flee. She passed close enough to see the plates affixed over their keyholes (her bladder gave a little twinge at that) and the rusty flecks of blood dotting their carapaces. They watched her go, but didn’t interfere.

  She clutched her fist against the rising tingle in her hand, checked the fresh gauze wrapping to ensure it wasn’t smoldering, and picked up her pace.

  But the motionless rogues weren’t unique to Huygens Square. She counted four others on her short stroll along the Zeestraat Noordeinde, the old thoroughfare to Scheveningen, and glimpsed so much unmoving metal in the Prinsessetuin that the princesses’ park might have been a sculpture garden. As it had been for centuries, the city was rife with Clakkers. But unlike the old days, they weren’t constantly on the move, attending to innumerable tasks that kept the gears of the Empire turning.

  They did nothing except make themselves visible. They perched like brass vultures on stepped gables; they stood motionless on what had once been busy street corners; monitored every canal footbridge; stood like statues in every plaza, park, and cemetery. Never speaking, never interfering, and always silent but for the ceaseless ticktocking of their bodies. Only their eyes moved.

  And move they did, tracking Anastasia’s every movement. She saw nobody else on the streets. Lucky her: She had the malfunctioning machines’ undivided attention. Every time she turned a corner or crested the rise of a footbridge, she could hear the whirring and ratcheting of eye bezels from the nearest machines. Light glinted from farther away, too: rooftops, bare beech trees along the canals, even church towers. Each momentary flash a testament to the slewing of a gemstone eye as it tracked her progress.

  Taking the most direct route from Huygens Square to the hospital meant retracing, in reverse, the path of her flight after Malcolm had ordered the servitors to escort her to the Ridderzaal. And that, in turn, meant trying, and failing, to fend of
f a cascade of unwelcome memories. But it was difficult to disregard the things she’d seen on that chaotic morning, when the evidence was all around her. The unburied dead still rotted on the very towpath where a rogue military Clakker had cut them down.

  The corrupted machines may have stopped murdering residents, for the time being. But they hadn’t bothered to clean away evidence of their past sins. Indeed, they’d stopped cleaning anything.

  The cold winds of early spring blew newsprint and ashes down the street like New World tumbleweeds. Damp, dirty scraps of paper skittered across the pavement, draping themselves about her bare ankles with every strong gust. Great heaping piles of trash dotted every street; without mechanicals or draft animals to haul it away, there was no point loading it on wagons. She had to step lively; the trash attracted vermin. The rats were getting bolder.

  So too the gulls, which by now had befouled much of the grand statuary of the heart of the Central Provinces. Back when things had been the way they ought to be, before the natural order of the universe had been overturned, a dollop of guano never sullied the proud public art of The Hague for more than a few minutes, day or night, before a passing servitor fixed the problem. Anastasia had to cast her memory back years before recalling a time she’d personally witnessed a statue fouled with bird excrement. She’d never in her life seen such filth and disarray in the Old World. Never imagined it.

  How fleeting The Hague’s grandeur.

  It was as if the achievements of the past quarter millennium had spackled only the thinnest veneer of sophistication over the heart of the Empire. And then, with a single swipe of the brush, the attackers had stripped away the illusion of modern civilization. They’d been whisked to a time before Het Wonderjaar, before mechanicals, before the Empire. Soon they’d all be living in caves, desperately knocking rocks together to make fire. If they lived that long.