He closed his eyes as he choked out the request. “Allow me to be tender to myself at least. No one else will ever want to touch me.”
I felt my face heat, understanding his meaning perfectly. Ten pounds psi, twenty, scrotum, shaft, glans. The ideas it sent rushing through my head overwhelmed me, intellect and body both.
He mistook my silence and pulled away, rolling onto his side to put his back to me. “My apologies. I didn’t intend to ask. I shouldn’t have. Please forget I ever said it. Please, Tinker.”
He was distraught. I felt the strongest urge to lean down and kiss his hair. I was losing my mind. I did lean down, but only to whisper in his ear.
“I will teach the hands to caress, Colin,” I vowed with all my heart.
He froze, then nodded.
And before I could do anything else irredeemably foolish, I removed the hands and took them away to be finished.
9.
So I taught the hands. During the days, I taught the hands to grip and climb and maim. At night, I taught them to caress.
I was fortunate that, although I was a mere Machinist, Second Class, I had privacy. As Major Barker’s apprentice, I slept near his quarters in a room that was little more than a closet. But I had a cot with an iron frame as sturdy as a granite mountain and a lock on the door.
By now, I was an expert at touching myself. It was my only relief from the sexual demands my body made upon me, demands more incessant than even hunger and thirst. But though I knew how to pleasure myself, usually it was done furtively, expediently, and, to pardon the pun, mechanically. I’d never made a study of the thing.
Now I was motivated to use my art to its highest effect. I wanted to give Colin some beauty to cling through in the midst of the darkest night, in the terror and uncertainty of the front lines. And my only means of doing so were through my own body. How could I teach the hands unless I first taught myself?
Every night when I went to my cell, I would take the hands with me. I’d lock the door and remove my clothing. My own hands played upon my body, learning, feeling, and then I’d adjust the delicate gears and wires. I imagined I was touching Colin, or that Colin was touching me.
I composed odes for fingertips and palm, teasing touches of adoration, strokes upon his length, circles in tender places, ancient rhythms of cresting need and completion. You are beautiful, the hands said as they caressed. You deserve to be loved.
Of course, the hands would be wired to his will. He could override their training, tell them what to do with a mere thought. But when his will softened, when he stopped consciously guiding and gave in to sensation, the hands would revert to the blueprint I’d given them and perform upon his body the notes of the composition I had written.
The thought made me heady with desire. And as the mechanisms of the hands became ever more finely tuned, I tested them upon my own body, imagining that I was Colin, that the hands were giving him the sensations I was feeling, sensations I had created. They teased and tickled, handled the ball sac gently, rubbed the space behind, stroked with exquisite pressure, thumbs circling just under the glans. When I was certain they could wring no greater pleasure from my body, I considered them complete.
10.
My time with Colin was shorter than I’d ever dreamed. The war was not going well, and there was a push from the top for the golem army Major Barker had promised. They wanted the prototype hands in the field as soon as possible. So it was only a matter of weeks before we stood in a hangar with the brigadier and demonstrated the hands. There was a wall, which Colin easily scaled. Stacks of bricks were broken; steel rods were bent. The brigadier was thorough. He enjoyed seeing Colin use the hands on his own, and then he’d read from his list of commands and watch the hands take over, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction.
Colin steeled himself not to give anything away, but I knew him. I could see the fear in his eyes every time the hands moved with a will of their own.
Then they brought in the prisoner of war. He was an older Russian, afraid but holding his chin up proudly. I wished I could stop it or at least turn away. But if Colin had to bear it, so did I. I was concerned he would refuse, but the brigadier was too interested in his own power to even test Colin’s will. He himself ordered the hands to crush the man’s throat and they did, thoroughly and quickly, without even a spurt of blood.
One thousand psi crushes the windpipe and the arteries. Death is inevitable within five seconds, complete in thirty.
When it was done, I turned away, unable to bear the look on Colin’s face.
I went to say good-bye to him and to give the hands one final adjustment. The hands were his now; he’d been wearing them for nearly a week. He was sitting on an exam table, dressed in a new uniform. His packed kit was next to him. We were in a room where they gave exams, which had the advantage, at least, of being private. My heart was hammering in my chest, an engine run amok. This was the last time I’d ever see him.
It was disturbing how much my mind had become wrapped up in him, how deeply he’d burrowed under my skin. Even when I worked in the hangar on the golem, he was never far from my thoughts. If I opened my chest plate, would I see the stain of him against the silver of my artificial heart? If I drew my blood, would I find tiny traces of him in it, like the filaments we used in the automaton oils to keep them fluid? Would each filament be engraved with his name by a minuscule pen? Foolish thoughts—and ghoulish as well. But I knew I would remember him always, like some pathetic spinster who remembers the one man she’d danced with once in her youth, the one man who’d looked at her kindly, who made her feel beautiful.
“Tinker!” Colin said as I entered the room. He looked relieved. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to say good-bye to you.”
I gave him a tight smile, not trusting my voice. I hoped my singularly stupid adoration was not on display all over my face. I took a tool from my pocket and placed his left hand, palm up, on my sternum. I opened the plate on the forearm.
I looked up into his eyes, which were watching me, and then used a small pick to make an adjustment.
Flip switch to disabled. Smash the switch with a hard tap so it can never be reset.
I closed the plate and repeated with the other hand. This time, I left the hand on my chest when I was done.
I spoke aloud the command I’d given the brigadier, the command to crush.
Colin recognized it. For a moment, his eyes flared with panic. But the hands did not move. He stared at me, wide-eyed. Slowly, the steel fingers on my chest turned and closed around the lapel of my jacket. He blinked his eyes, which were suddenly bright.
“These are your hands,” I said quietly. “They’ll do everything we tested, but only when you ask.” I moved my fingers of flesh and blood up to squeeze his metal ones.
He breathed out a shaky sigh. “Thank you, Tinker. God bless you.” His voice wavered.
“Mechanisms fail,” I said with a tight smile. “Most unfortunate.”
His gratitude, and the admiration on his face, flooded me with joy. At least I would have that. At least I would know he didn’t hate me in the end. But there was nothing else for me to do, no reason for me to linger. I took one last look at him and turned to go. But his fingers firmed on my lapel, not allowing it.
I turned back to him. We were close. I was standing between his knees. His gaze on my face was intense and I could feel the heat rolling off him. I suddenly found it difficult to breathe, as if the need for oxygen had been replaced by a need for something else, and my body was struggling to make the adjustment.
“The hands…. The way they touch me…. You did that.” He was blushing, but he stubbornly held my gaze.
I knew at once what he meant. He had tried it—the caress. I looked down, feeling my face burn. I placed my hands on his steel forearms as if studying them.
“When you need comfort,” I said, “pretend the hands belong to someone who loves you, someone who accepts you as you are, someone who…who aches to please you.”
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I bit my lips, my gut twisting with anxiety. I’d meant for him to understand, yes, to understand that it was me. But I imagined it would happen once he was far away, where I couldn’t see how he would feel about that knowledge.
“Is that someone you, Tinker?” he asked, his voice rough.
I was too afraid to answer.
He pulled his hands free and clasped my shoulders. “Look at me. Is that someone you?”
I looked into his eyes. “Yes.”
He sighed and leaned slowly toward me, his eyes reading mine, giving me plenty of time to pull away. I didn’t. No, I fell into him like a collapsing bridge, meeting him more than halfway. His mouth on mine was needy and commanding. He parted my lips with his tongue. I’d never been kissed before, didn’t think I ever would be. It was heaven. Our tongues met and slid and teased and I was swept away on a wave of lust and need and natural instinct.
He moved his hands down to grasp my waist, then slid them around my back and pulled me close, never breaking the kiss.
Oh, the marvel of those tender hands, controlled not by me this time, but by him. I’d never been held in passion, and not at all since my mother’s last clasp as she left me with Albertus. My body craved it like it was water and every cell was dying of thirst. A storm of feeling overwhelmed me. I pressed closer, between his legs, wanting to never leave his arms. I felt his prick stiffen as it pressed against my own. I am desired! Me, Tinker Gray. My heart thundered like a million bells tolling. This was too wonderful to believe—and too dangerous to sustain, for both of us.
We were not alone in the hospital and we both knew it. We could be shot for this. He withdrew from me reluctantly and I from him. I took a step back. We stared at each other.
“Tinker,” he choked out. “Will you…if I make it….”
I could hear footsteps approaching. Dear God, not yet.
“Find me in London,” I said hurriedly. “I’ll wait for you.”
“No, don’t wait. I probably won’t make it. Only….”
“Live,” I said fiercely. “I’ll wait.”
After they took Colin away, a nurse gave me a parcel from him. I didn’t open it until I got back to my quarters. Inside were five notebooks filled with handwritten music. I was no expert on musical compositions, but we’d made music boxes in Albertus’s shop, so I knew how to program notes. I stole some bits from the hangar and made a simple music box. I programmed it to play one of Colin’s pieces. It was a melancholy and haunting little tune.
A composer. He was truly a composer. Oh, the terrible irony of war. A composer and a maker of miniatures, made to dance to the song of death.
11. London, 1857
In the spring of ’55, we got news that English citizens had protested the war by throwing snowballs in Trafalgar Square. That made me laugh so hysterically that Major Barker threatened to have me thrown in the stockade for madness. By February of ’56, the war was over.
Barker tried to convince me to work for him, to keep my commission. But he didn’t try very hard. The golem had been a failure.
Pins misaligned by point-oh-two millimeters, engine cross-wired, runs briefly, then fails. Pretend frustration, pretend chagrin.
Barker hated me by the time I took my leave of him; he gave me nothing. I didn’t care.
In London I had a safe-deposit box. Albertus had allowed me to make creations for myself in my spare time. To start your own shop someday, Tinker, he’d said. My miniatures took so little material, after all. He was a good master.
I rented a few rooms at the edge of Seven Dials and went to see some of Albertus’s most faithful clients. The marvels bought me a year’s rent and the material to make many more.
I was in business. I was alone.
I sought news of Captain Colin Davies, but the war department could tell me very little except that he was not on the lists of the dead. I made larks and gave them to dying children. I made inventory for my store. I worked until my eyes could focus no more and forced me to sleep.
In my dreams my devices lived on. Perhaps a dervish would be discovered in a barn in Russia tomorrow. Perhaps it would be activated and kill a young sheep farmer’s son. How many did the army make? One thousand? Two thousand? Ten? I would never know.
I had only one reason to live, to prosper—a hope lodged deep in my mechanical heart.
It was a Wednesday and the skies were drenching London in rain when the door to my shop opened. I looked up from my tools. He was in a rain cape, hood up. My pulse started to race even though I couldn’t see his face.
Adrenaline released 500ng/L. Heart pump accelerates in response. Pulse 90, 100, 120. Fingers drop tools, clutch counter.
He lowered the hood.
“Colin,” I said.
He’d aged ten years. His hair was longer and there was heavy stubble on his face. He had dark circles under his eyes and he’d lost weight. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I was frozen in place but he came to me, his gaze searching mine.
“Is this all right? Do you still want to see me?” He looked anxious, as if I would tell him no, as if I hadn’t been dragging through the months in agony for him to appear. The shop door wasn’t locked, the blinds were not drawn, but I didn’t care. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him tight.
“I waited,” I said.
His body was solid and hard and wet against me. He ran his hands up my back and into my hair. He kissed my forehead and then he was kissing my mouth, hot and hungry.
I wanted him so fiercely I thought I would die. I’d been denied for so long, a lifetime of want. I had to get him out of those wet clothes and into a warm bed, with me.
I pulled away from him long enough to cross the room and lock the door. I turned the sign in the window to Closed.
“I live in the back,” I said, not hiding the need on my face. “There’s a bed.”
He shrugged out of his rain cape and held up his hands. “These first,” he said, his voice strained. “Can you make them normal? Remove the killing strength? I want to touch you, but I….”
I understood. I swallowed down the ruthless passion raging through my veins and took up my tools. My hands trembled.
Grip strength down to seven hundred pounds. Blow force five hundred. Set the maximum duration to something human; blood and bone tire even if steel does not.
“It’s done,” I said, closing the panels.
“Can you be sure?”
I pointed to a mannequin, a ballerina with a long steel throat and an egg-shaped head. He looked at me, silently asking permission.
“Try it,” I urged.
He walked up to the mannequin, raised his right hand to her throat, and frowned in concentration. His fingers closed around the silver tube. He squeezed, then smiled. He tried harder. He threw back his head and laughed. I grinned at the sound.
He took two long strides and caught me up, spinning me around.
“Oh, Tinker. What I owe you. What I owe you!” He trembled with emotion.
“Shhh. In the back.” I began kissing his neck, and he carried me into the back room.
As soon as the curtain closed, my lips were on his. We kissed until we were drunk with it. His breathing turned harsh and his caresses needy. The fire in my blood roared back hotter than before. He was still lifting me, my feet off the ground, but he finally put me down so he could undo my clothing. We fumbled with each other’s collars and shirts. The air was cold against my skin as he bared my chest. I worried about him catching his death, wet as he was.
“Let me get the fire,” I said. “You climb into bed.”
I pulled away to light the tinder in the stove. I heard him undressing behind me, and a thick surge of lust threatened to make a quick end of things right then. The fire caught at last, despite my fumbling. Dreary daylight spilled in through the curtains over a small window. I felt terribly self-conscious as I dropped my trousers and smalls. I crossed my arms over my chest, held my breath, and turned. He was alre
ady in the bed, but he had the covers back, waiting for me, and I could see his bare chest, his arms, his muscular thighs, the thick, hard shaft of him, its foreskin fully retracted.
Scarred body, too thin, strongly aroused, male, beautiful.
I couldn’t believe this moment had come, that I had a lover, that we had both survived the war, that Colin was really here. I went to him, slipped between the covers, and pulled them up to hide myself. I was so hard I throbbed like a metronome.
“I’m sorry I’m not more to look at,” I said, even as my fingers, caring nothing for my modesty, stroked the heavy muscles of his chest.
“Tinker”—he laughed sadly—“you are sweet as an orchard peach. I thought so from the first moment I saw you.”
I looked at him skeptically.
“Lovely and brilliant and brave. What you gave me. What you risked for me….” He took a deep, shaky breath.
“Hold me,” I said, desperate. I could feel his naked skin next to mine, still cold from the rain. I pressed against him, needing more.
He took my lips with a groan and rolled on top of me. God. The weight of him pressing me down was the remedy to everything my body had ever craved. I put my arms around his ribs to cling all the tighter.
There was no more talking then, only his tongue stoking my mouth, his hands, the hands I had taught to caress, teasing my sides, my arms. His prick lay heavy against my hip.
His is two-point-five centimeters longer than mine, hard and hot with blood (a quarter pint, circulating), pulsing every third beat, bollocks tightening in preparation for release, male, my Colin, mine.
I had no finesse in me. I’d taught the hands to tease but at that moment I wanted him so violently I was incapable of subtlety. I slid my hands down to cup his arse, and I began to thrust against him. I was making embarrassing sounds in my throat, but it was like distant thunder for all I could control it or cared. He broke the kiss to pant my name and I latched on to his throat, his collarbone.
“Please,” I begged over and over as I rutted against him. The indescribable pleasure in my prick and in every centimeter of my skin where he touched me made my eyes roll back in my head. “Colin.”
Wilde Stories 2014 Page 6