Infernal Devices

by KW Jeter

  I stared in utter amazement. No heart, no bone, no human ligament or vein. Inside a metal cage, gears whirred and meshed. Wound springs intertwined with each other, and ticked off the slow measuring of his artificial life.

  Looking up, I saw him savouring my astonishment: "Yes," he said, smiling. His hands restored the metal covering, and buttoned the shirt over it. "The man who made me – the man who made you – he was a genius, wasn't he?"

  "It's–" Words failed me. "It's impossible–"

  His eyes seemed to flash, as though in anger. "Oh? Is it?" The voice took on a sharper edge, cutting through the affected humour. "And if I were to open you up – would you see anything less remarkable? Less intricately dazzling, in its squelching, spongy way? Lungs and heart and spleen, and all the rest – ticking away, as it were? Yet you walk down the boulevard, and pass any number of such wonderful devices, all ticking away as they walk, and think it no great marvel."

  The vigour of his outburst caught me off guard. "But but human beings–" I stammered. "They're not made; except, perhaps, by God." No sooner had I spoken it, than I regretted the mawkish-sounding religious sentiment.

  The Paganinicon seized on it: "Ahh! You find it possible to believe in an invisible Creator; but one that you could have seen, and talked to, while he was alive – that's beyond you, is it?" He smiled triumphantly, pleased with his rhetoric.

  A little while ago, I had been running for my life through the marshland, and now I was debating theology with a clockwork violinist; my brain was not so much whirling with events, as it was drifting free of all moorings to reality. I struggled through my exhaustion to assemble a riposte. "The operations of an invisible Creator are meant to be beyond our comprehension; such are Mysteries. But clockwork – gears and wheels and springs – that is another matter."

  He gave a scornful laugh. "Don't try to split that sort of hair with me, Dower; I know as well as you do that the simplest watch is as much a befuddlement to you as the workings of the heart that beats inside your chest. It's all a mystery to you, isn't it?"

  I felt a sting of resentment at his insinuations. "I can't imagine," I said stiffly, "on what grounds you make that assertion. I run my father's business, as he did–"

  "If you please." The Paganinicon winked at me. "We know the truth about that one, don't we, now? "Run my father's business," indeed – run it into the ground, more like. You don't know the first thing about those gimcracks that the old boy left behind."

  "How – how would you know that?"

  He leaned close towards me. "Because, Dower, my

  somewhat brother – we share the same brain. Don't we?"

  The carriage's interior seemed much closer around me; the smug, knowing gaze of two pairs of eyes weighed heavy against me, as we continued to rattle towards an unknown destination in the inky night. "I… don't know what you mean…"

  "Oh, tell him," cooed Mrs Wroth at the Paganinicon's ear. "Stop toying with him; you're so cruel." Her eyes narrowed in a species of rapture as she spoke the last word.

  "Very well." Though he bore my face, its outlines were filled with a sly knowledge, rather than my continuing bafflement. "Now listen very closely, Dower; do try to make elastic these petty definitions of possible and impossible that you entertain." He settled back and regarded me. "Thus: I am a thing of clockwork. Your scepticism does not outweigh what is. You have seen my jewelled heart. Yet, admittedly, I am no clanking mannikin, pivoting a fixed smile and glass eye on the world. Behold." He held his hand palm upward and flexed it through a sweeping gesture similar to a magician's. "I have subtlety of movement, rather better than yours, in fact; I could play the violin, if one were here. No, my future audiences will not be disappointed in my skill. Everything that human beings of flesh and blood are capable of, is within my power."

  "Everything," said Mrs Wroth. She gazed raptly at him.

  "Yes; yes, that's true." The Paganinicon nodded. "There will be no disappointments in that aspect, either…"

  "I've already made sure of that," she said smugly.

  "… for, of course, that is where the, ah, fire springs from, is it not? The passion that goes into the music? And how, I ask you, could I perform like the great virtuoso Paganini, if I were not… equipped in all ways like the original?"

  "I couldn't imagine," I said frostily. Even in my fatigued state, and under these strange circumstances, my companions' sordid references were clear to me.

  The Paganinicon raised his finger towards the carriage's roof. "Yet surely it must puzzle even such a stolid nature as your own, my dear Dower, how this is possible. Those crude forerunners that your father – our father – devised, those Clerical Automata back in London… you know yourself what an intricate assemblage of gears and springs is in those devices, all to propel them through the simplest, repetitive gestures and squawkings. How much more must then be necessary, eh? – for a masterwork such as this!" He slapped his chest with a bravura flourish; it gave a dull metal thud. "What possible mechanism could govern a range of motion, speech… everything, exactly human in every respect? Eh, Dower? What could it be?"

  His voice had mounted from enthusiasm to mania. "I have no idea," I said carefully, drawing back.

  "What else but a human brain! Of course! It's obvious!"

  I studied him for a moment. "Are you saying… that you have a human brain inside you?" It seemed a grisly notion; I had an involuntary vision of one sloshing about in a zinc-lined tank behind his eyes.

  He reached across and tapped me on the brow. "No… but you have one inside you." His smile grew wider, revelling in the perplexity he generated.

  I admitted defeat: "I'm sure I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

  He folded his long hands – the duplicates of my own beneath his chin. "Let us examine," he said in scholarly parody, "the principle of sympathetic vibrations. You are familiar with the concept? Good. Let us say… a violin string is plucked; across the room, a violin string tuned to the exact same note – not the least shade higher or lower vibrates with the first, though no hand has touched it. A commonly observed phenomenon. It is most often seen with musical instruments, as the nature of their construction makes them especially resonant; yet all things are resonant to some degree; it is merely a matter of finding the particular vibration that would make, say, a stone vibrate in tune to it. These vibrations with which we are commonly familiar are vibrations in air; yet other media exist which are capable of transmitting vibrations even more subtle than the sounds a plucked violin makes. Some vibrations are so rarefied – yet real – that they are beyond our modes of perception; that is to say, perceptions of which we are aware. These vibrations, and the media in which they travel, surround us, penetrate us, even shape our very thoughts and existence – yet we know them not, much as a fish would be unaware of the water in which it swims. Do you follow me?"

  "I suppose so," I said, shrugging. "Though I can't see the point in conjecturing about things that can't be perceived. You might as well assume they don't exist at all, and be done with them."

  "Well, well – this from the man who was invoking God a moment ago; I admire the flexibility of your logic, Dower. But no matter. This medium of which I speak, and the subtle vibrations that pass through it – it can be rendered perceptible, and useful for those with the necessary skill. You see, it is the medium in which the fine vibrations of the human brain radiate from inside every human skull. Each brain is tuned, we may say, to a particular note in this medium, just as an infinite number of violin strings may be tuned to an infinite range of pitches sounding in the medium of the air. All that is lacking is a means of sensing those vibrations, and tuning another object to their pitch, for a resonance to ensue, exactly similar to a violin string sounding along to another string's note." The Paganinicon's voice dropped, the hush of secrets being imparted. "That, my dear Dower, is what your father accomplished."

  "Indeed." I was baffled as to what point this explanation was leading.

&nbs
p; "Don't look so befuddled," said the other. "It's simple enough. Dower, Senior created a device sensitive enough to pick up the vibrations of a particular human brain. There is an incredible amount of untapped cerebral capacity inside even the most prodigious genius – your father saw that that capacity could be the means for controlling and modifying the actions and responses to external stimuli of a complex automaton such as myself.

  "The brain to whose vibrations the governing mechanism is tuned thus serves to regulate two creatures, one of flesh and blood, the other made of clockwork. Now, then who do you suppose it is, whose brain is being used in this manner?" His eyebrows arched in counterpoint to his smile.

  A grotesque suspicion formed in my thoughts. "Do you mean… me? My brain?"

  "Very good! You're quick, Dower! And it's quite a personal history you have, if I may say so. Your father, having discovered this principle of rarefied sympathetic vibrations, needed a human being whose mind was of a particularly complex yet stolid nature – one not given to the various excitements that cause the erratic brain vibrations in most other human beings and render them unsuitable as the necessary adjunct to the governing mechanism. So he searched out and married your mother, a woman – and I mean no disrespect to her memory, now – a woman of singular unresponsiveness. Against all difficulties, he managed to get her with child – you, Dower. Upon her death, you – a mere infant – were sent off to be raised by your aunt, primarily to keep your cerebral vibrations from close proximity to the devices upon which your father was working; it would have been disastrous if the conjunction had been made too soon."

  For a moment, I felt as if I were inside the carriage, and yet at the same time far away, listening to someone else's life being narrated. A dream; this person with my face was describing mysteries – long-suffering puzzles of abandonment and a child's exile – and the answers to them that were as cold and intermeshed as the sharp-edged gears inside a watch. I brooded in my silence until the other spoke again.

  "You see," said the Paganinicon, "the governing mechanism, once installed in the device it is to control, must be brought within a few miles of the adjunct brain – yours – for it to pick up the subtle vibrations and begin its operations. However, once it has been activated, distance between the device and the brain is no longer a matter of concern; the medium in which the vibrations travel is not bounded by space. Its nature is of another dimension entirely." He peered closely at me. "Do you understand that?"

  "I– I believe so." My trembling hand passed over my brow. "Somewhat… It's all so strange…"

  He nodded, moved by another form of sympathy. "I suppose it is. But the proof is before your eyes. Before he died, your father moulded my features" – he touched his face with one finger – "from a portrait your aunt had sent him. But then he died before he could send for you and bring you near enough for the vibrations of your brain to set me into life; I was but inert machinery, gears frozen, waiting. And, as you know, your father's estate was left in much confusion; though much of his work remained at the shop you inherited, the contents of other laboratories – he had several throughout the city – were dispersed. Such was my fate, though I was of course unconscious of it." He pulled at his lower lip, falling into sombre thought.

  I felt a twinge of compassion for him, this device in my image. So we were moved, from place to place, all unknowing, like blindfolded chessmen upon an unlit board.

  The Paganinicon roused himself from his reverie, and continued: "I am grateful to our mutual acquaintance Scape for this account of this history we share; he is something of a self-taught authority on the subject. And a leading character in the drama himself, at least in the latter stages. It was he who, in partnership with his charming colleague Miss McThane, came into possession of my inactive form; he had been circulating a few gambling enterprises – so-called games of chance; the odds were lamentably fixed in his favour – in the North; an eccentric industrialist and collector of curiosities squared a debt from the whist tables by giving Scape a number of odd mechanical devices that had come into his possession through a circuitous route, as these things do. Scape, ever a tinkerer, gladly took the lot; chief among them was myself. Being no more than a lifeless mannikin – however complex internally – I was of little value to him. A person in his business had many sources of information, though; he knew that members of the Royal Anti-Society were interested in constructs from the workshops of the senior Dower. They brought me south and attempted to sell me to Sir Charles, claiming that they would be able to activate me; that was the motive for their visit to your shop in London – they were looking for the necessary governing device. A pointless quest, actually; if Scape had had a bit more theoretical knowledge, he would have been able to determine that a smaller version of that rather cumbersome device – a second Aetheric Regulator, refined in size from the original in the mahogany cabinet – was already incorporated in my workings. Failing in his attempt to steal what he mistakenly thought was necessary to his enterprise, Scape was forced to the expedient this night of attempting to pass you off as me; a rather interesting notion of flesh and blood masquerading as clockwork, rather than vice versa."

  "I discovered the fraud," interjected Mrs Wroth.

  "So you did, my dear." The Paganinicon patted her hand. "And I'm very grateful for your keen perception. And your powers of persuasion." He turned back to me. "You see, Dower, in the general confusion engendered by the Godly Army's attack on Bendray Hall, the esteemed lady here discovered our good friends Scape and Miss McThane in the act of slipping out of the Hall through the scullery window. She made a rather forceful protest about the deception to Scape–"

  "That loathsome little bugger," she muttered darkly.

  "–and prevailed upon them to produce the real Paganinicon. Fortunately, it was close to hand: they had hidden it in a small hunting lodge on Lord Bendray's estate. Going thither, they were surprised to find the Paganinicon – myself, that is – activated, walking about and capable of conversing. Scape, in his previous attentions to my person, had left my main and various auxiliary springs fully wound; he was unaware that all that was then necessary to set me into motion was to bring the adjunct brain – that's you, my dear Dower – within a few miles of the Aetheric Regulator contained within me. If Scape had been at my side, rather than riding in the carriage with you as it approached Bendray Hall, he would have seen this culmination of all the care he had lavished upon my poor, neglected workings – he really is very clever about mechanical matters; in a rough, untutored way, of course. It being a matter… shall we say… close to my heart, I, of course, was able to enlighten everyone in the party – Scape, Miss McThane, and the good Mrs Wroth" – he patted her hand, and exchanged smiles with her again "about a good deal of the mysteries surrounding this sudden animation of what had been silent and unstirring metal. There was little time for explanations, however, before we were joined by another bearing quite distressing news about your predicament, Dower." The Paganinicon looked at me, raising his eyebrows as if expecting me to supply the next word. "You know? Your friend – the swarthy fellow–"

  I was still struggling with the revelations made so far. "You mean – the Brown Leather Man?"

  "Is that what you call him?" the Paganinicon shrugged. "Suits him well enough, I suppose. I rather fancy he calls himself something else; unfortunately, the urgency of the situation precluded lengthy introductions. No matter; it seems the fellow had surreptitiously witnessed many of this night's events; I imagine that rather dusky hue of his is rather convenient for skulking about and spying on people. He informed us that you were in danger of being captured and killed by one or more of the various factions whose ire you seem to have aroused. This prospect was viewed with alarm, especially by me: I have more than a brotherly fondness for you, my dear Dower. Your death – more particularly the death of your brain, which serves as my own, may I remind you – would naturally put an end to my functioning as well. Thus plans were hastily drawn up, to ensure your continuin
g safety. By that time, the siege of Bendray Hall by the Godly Army had metamorphosed into the general pursuit of your person; the way was clear for Mrs Wroth and myself to return to the Hall, there to commandeer a carriage and driver, and set out for the rendez-vous which your friend, the Brown Leather Man, had appointed. Scape and Miss McThane have meanwhile gone ahead to the nearest seaport in order to arrange passage for you – just to some place where you'll be safe until things settle down a bit." The Paganinicon sat back, spreading his hands in a gesture of satisfaction. "There – you see? All perfectly simple; everything is made comprehensible, given enough time."

  I nearly retorted that the explanations he had given were neither simple nor comprehensible, but held my tongue instead. Having recovered somewhat from the exertions of my flight across the fens, I could appreciate that I was out of danger, at least for the time being. And whatever motivations my rescuers had for their actions, they did not seem to be intent upon my immediate death. The results of my own efforts at negotiating a course across the world's perilous chessboard had met with more disaster than success; I was content to be the pawn of others for a while, as long as it appeared I was being shuffled to some obscure file far from the furious checks at the board's centre.