Monstrous Devices

by Damien Love

  “Which reminds me,” the old man went on. “I mean, well done avoiding capture and making your way here, Alex—but you could have saved yourself a lot of time and trouble if you’d just taken a taxi. I mean, that’s what I did. Bit of an extravagance, but, oh, I think the situation warrants it. I have accounts with a couple of the better Paris companies. Nice cars, clean and warm. Didn’t I give you a card?”

  “No,” Alex said.

  “Oh. I meant to. Are you sure I didn’t?”

  “You didn’t,” Alex fumed.

  “Oh. Oh, well, maybe turned out for the best,” the old man hurried on, seeing the look on Alex’s face. “Who knows where I’d have wound up if you hadn’t managed to get salt into that life-sizer, eh? Not sure I could have handled two.

  “Anyway, I arrived here this morning, but something didn’t feel right. So I camped out in the trees at the top of the hill, watching Harry’s place until I knew what was what. Beckman had read Harry’s note about coming here, and they would have been keen to get Harry out of the way, even if they hadn’t guessed you were heading this way. I have a feeling they were still busy searching for you in Paris, actually; that’s why they used the life-sizers to try and take me to their hideout.

  “Sure enough, I soon saw them, Beckman, the girl, and Old Willy von here, moving around the house with a gun. Next thing I know, Beckman and the girl just went racing off. That had me a little baffled, but I think I’ve worked it out. That damaged robot you found on you, that was a tracker, fairly dumb little thing, but effective. When you set it off, they went chasing after it. But if it’s wallowing around in a load of salt now, the signal will be going crazy, so they’ll probably be quite a while tracking it down.

  “Meanwhile,” the old man went on, “just as I’m about to come down to the house, I see you turning up. I wanted to get to you while you were burying the robot, but I was trying to make sure I wasn’t spotted. I’d seen the girl sending fliers out in various directions to patrol the area, and you were too quick. Suddenly you’re inside the house with Willy and his shotgun, so I held off. By the way, what was all that walking in circles around the trees business?”

  “My footprints led straight to where I’d buried it,” Alex said, a little embarrassed. “I thought if I did that, it would put off anybody who was following.”

  “Mmmm,” his grandfather considered, nodding. “False trail, eh? Well, yes, it might have worked. I left something similar in Paris, hoping to keep them tied up for a while. Although, when laying a false trail, it pays to bear in mind to not make it look like it’s been left by someone who has suddenly become a lunatic. Tends to rouse suspicion. But, as a general point, good thinking. Although, as it happened, I didn’t need any trail, because I’d seen you burying it. Et voilà.”

  He pointed to the robot in Harry’s hand.

  “So, Harry, what’s the verdict?”

  Harry put the robot and screwdriver down by the lamp, removed his eyepiece, and sat back, gazing at the toy standing in its halo of white light.

  “Well, lessee,” he said, clearing his throat. “I am ’ereby pleased to report I ’ave successfully developed my prints and conducted my preliminary study.”

  “Harry here is exactly the astonishingly useful kind of chap who would buy a secondhand X-ray machine from his local vet and keep it with a darkroom set up in his cellar,” Alex’s grandfather said. “And he also has something of a flair for the dramatic himself. For Pete’s sake, man, don’t keep us in suspense. Is it or isn’t it?”

  Harry took a sip of wine, savoring the moment. “That’s it,” he said quietly. “That’s it, all right.”

  “Splendid,” said Alex’s grandfather after a pause, slapping his hands. “Of course, we always knew it, but pays to be certain. Who knows how many other copies might have been made over the years. And so?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said, tapping the robot’s head. “It’s in there.”

  “Well, well,” the old man said, rubbing his chin. “There we have it.”

  Alex looked from his grandfather to Harry and back.

  “What? What’s in there?”

  “The holy and awesome seventy-two-part name,” von Sudenfeld groaned, without raising his head from the table. “The true name of God.”

  XVI.

  WHAT’S INSIDE A ROBOT

  IN THE CELLAR, a sharp memory of chemicals and electricity hung on the air. The red safety light Harry had been using while processing his film was still on, a bare bulb on a wire, carving everything out in livid crimson and black, except for a stark, glowing white lightbox mounted on one wall. Two ghostly black prints were clipped to it.

  “Let’s have a look, then,” Alex’s grandfather said, striding to make a closer inspection. “Uh-huh. And there you are,” he muttered.

  “If I’d ’ad more time, I could’ve got us a clearer look inside,” Harry said, setting down his wineglass and shotgun and starting to shuffle together a mess of notes on a workbench. Beside it, a chair stood pulled out, the cut remains of a rope lying around it on the stone floor. “It’s fiddly tryin’ to work out the right radiation levels for a clear image. But it gives you an idea.”

  “This is wonderful work, Harry,” Alex’s grandfather said. He touched a finger to one of the prints, tracing a line.

  Alex joined him, peering up at the X-rays. They showed the tin robot’s unmistakable skeletal white phantom, photographed once from the front and once from the side against a world of black, leering its savage smile.

  Alex was puzzled. In the torso of the thing, where he would have expected its clockwork mechanism, there floated instead a translucent gray shape, a rough rectangle that took up most of the toy’s insides, surrounded by a brighter, whiter cloud. Bending closer, he could faintly discern small, dark lines running across it.

  “Extraordinary,” his grandfather murmured.

  “Right,” Alex said, stepping back. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

  “Later, Alex. We should probably think about getting out of here—”

  “Oh, no,” Alex cut him off. “You tell me what’s going on. Right now.”

  “But, Alex, my dear chap—”

  Alex pulled out his phone, taking care to cover the cracked screen. “Or I could call Mum, and you can tell her. After, you know, I’ve told her how my holiday’s been going.”

  “Really, Alex.” His grandfather stuck out his bottom lip. “No need for that, old man.”

  “He has been going on about this name of God thing all night.” Alex pointed at von Sudenfeld, who had moved to take his place at the screen. His face shone deathly white as he stared at the spectral pictures. “What’s he talking about? What is that in there?”

  Alex’s grandfather looked at Harry as though for help. Harry shrugged, raised both hands palms up, sipped some wine.

  “Yes, thank you, Harry. Okay. Name of God.” The old man glowered darkly at von Sudenfeld. “Let’s see: I told you about the golem. Well, there are various versions of that story, various explanations of how exactly Rabbi Loew brought it to life. And one of them is that he used the name of— Well, really, it’s just a magic word. Like abracadabra.”

  “Ha!” von Sudenfeld snorted.

  “Honestly, Willy, you’re on thin ice,” Alex’s grandfather snapped. He turned back to Alex. “These holy men and mystics, like Loew, they had come up with all these secret names for God. They just made them up, basically, like a kind of code. They took different letters from here and there in various paragraphs in their Bibles, stuck them together, and came up with these nonsense words, these names.”

  Von Sudenfeld sighed. But he didn’t say anything.

  “But there are legends,” Alex’s grandfather went on, “that the true name of God was actually revealed to a chosen few great scholars. These names were all supposed to have power. But this true name was supposed to unleash the
most terrible power of all. Some people say that Moses—y’know, the baby in the basket chap—he’d been told this secret name while he was having his chat with the burning bush. You know that story?”

  Alex nodded. “Kind of.” He strained his memory. Picture book images came flickering back, pages from childhood, a man with a staff in a lonely place. “He was a shepherd, out with his flock, when he saw the bush on fire. But, yeah, I remember: even though it was burning, it wasn’t being burned by the fire. And when he went to look closer, he heard a voice from the bush. Eh, God talking to him. He told him he was going to make him the leader who would lead his people to safety.”

  His grandfather nodded. “Close enough. So—”

  “So, what is it?” Alex interrupted.

  “How’s that?”

  “God’s secret name, what is it?”

  “Yes. Well. The idea was you had to study and meditate on the name for a long, long time before you could begin to understand it or even try to pronounce it. It’s got, what, two hundred and sixteen letters or so in it; it’s unpronounceable. Gobbledegook. But the story was you had to treat it with care and respect, not just invoke it willy-nilly. Because, if you made a mistake trying to say it, or if you weren’t in the right state of what these self-styled great sages would call spiritual purity, you’d be struck down dead.”

  He paused, then leaned over Alex and said: “Boogie-boogie-boogie,” widening his eyes and wiggling his fingers in the vibrating red light. “Superstitious twaddle, of course, but it made them look good.”

  “Okay.” Alex frowned. “I’ve got it. But what does he mean the name’s in there?” He pointed at the X-rays. “What’s in there?”

  “Well, there are versions of the story. But in the one we’re talking about, to give the golem life, Loew was supposed to have carved this all-powerful name out onto a small clay tablet, and then put this tablet into the golem’s mouth—like a magic battery—and, hey, presto.”

  Alex turned back to the prints, struggling to put it together. “And that tablet—it’s inside our robot? That’s it?” He reached to touch the translucent shape shown inside the toy.

  “Looks like,” his grandfather said. “You see, the golem stories all ended rather badly. Everything went to plan for a while, but eventually Loew couldn’t control it. The creature grew bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger, until it finally just went mad, out of control. A monster loose in the countryside. Torn-up buildings. Killings. The old story: the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Frankenstein’s monster, HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and on and on—the magic gets out of hand, the creation becomes uncontrollable and almost destroys the creator, you know?”

  Alex nodded. “Well, Frankenstein, I know that. And Terminator. That’s about machines taking over and—”

  “So, anyway, finally he had to deactivate it and return it back to being just a lifeless clay statue. And he did that, more or less, by taking the tablet back out of its mouth again. Pretty handy, eh?”

  At Alex’s side, von Sudenfeld had reached to touch the picture, too. He began making a small, quiet cooing sound, almost a sickly purr. Alex shivered.

  “But how did it wind up in there?” Alex asked, stepping away.

  “Well,” his grandfather said, “the idea is that, after it went mad and he removed the tablet, Rabbi Loew hid the golem’s body, in case it was ever needed again. If it was, they’d be able to restore it to life, you see. But, to do that, they’d need the tablet to pop back into its mouth. And so the tablet was hidden, too, but separately, just to be safe. It was secretly passed down through generations of people in Prague, until finally it came to our old friend, the toymaker Mr. Loewy. Who, as you might have worked out, was a vague descendant of the original rabbi.

  “Now,” the old man went on. “Loewy came up with an ingenious way of hiding the tablet, the best hiding place of all: in plain sight. He made our little robot here, and he popped it inside. A kind of an in-joke about the original golem, you could say. Then he made copies—he was supposed to have made three, but I suspect he might have made more that have been lost—and he put them all on display in his shop. He’d never sell the real one, of course. He would have kept it safe, then passed it on to the next person, who would have kept it safe after him. But then the war came along, and everything was scattered and lost. But: that original robot was different from the others in one other key respect. Right, Harry?”

  “Oh, er, right.” Harry had taken the gun and stood halfway up the stairs, peering into the kitchen, on guard. “Yeah. The other toy robots, well, that’s just what they was: toy robots. Clockwork, y’know, wind-up toys. But this one, see, its key ain’t to wind it up. Its key’s to unlock it. Loewy, ’e was right clever with ’is ’ands, and ’e came up with this devilish locking mechanism. See, ’e was a watchmaker an’ all, so you can imagine: ’undreds of intricate little coils and springs, all wrapped around the tablet in there, keeping it ’eld, cushioned tight. See?”

  Harry pointed to the X-rays. Alex stepped forward, looking closer at the white cloud surrounding the shape of the clay tablet. It seemed composed of countless hairlike threads.

  “But there’s a catch,” Harry went on. “Try to open it without the key, and those coils will tighten around the tablet and destroy it, crush it to dust. I’ve looked at it every way, but I can’t figure a way to open it safely.”

  “The tablet is just clay,” Alex’s grandfather pitched in, “and very old and fragile by now. Which I suspect is where you come in, eh, Willy?”

  “Eh? What?” von Sudenfeld grunted, turning back from the screen. He kept his gaze lowered.

  “Well.” Alex’s grandfather fixed him with a friendly stare. “Our friend who’s so desperate to get his hands on the robot here, he has a very tight-knit little group and doesn’t generally invite anyone to join without good reason.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Von Sudenfeld’s voice sounded gritty.

  “No? Well, I’ve been thinking. You already had your own Loewy robot, but of course it turned out to be only one of the copies. And just as well, as, from the photographs I’ve seen, you busted it open trying to get inside. But a collector like yourself, you’d have learned the full story soon enough. Now, someone like you, with the resources you have at your disposal, if a chap like that were to turn his mind to finding something, chances are he could have it found. Not the robot, of course, because we have it, although I’m sure you’ve had people of your own searching for it. But the key.”

  Von Sudenfeld said nothing. A nerve started twitching under one eye.

  “The key,” Alex’s grandfather repeated. “You’ve found it, haven’t you, old man?” He kept his eyes on von Sudenfeld’s face. “Why else would our friend take you under his wing? Only thing that puzzles me,” Alex’s grandfather pressed on, “is what you think you’re going to get out of it.”

  “He has promised me to share the power!” von Sudenfeld suddenly snapped. “He will teach me. We will all share together! Go on together! Rule together!”

  “And you believe him?” Alex’s grandfather grinned, but he sounded sad, pitying. “What on earth makes you think he’ll keep his word?”

  “Ah, but this is it,” von Sudenfeld rasped. “He cannot lie. He has been studying, preparing himself, purifying himself physically and spiritually for the procedure. You see? He cannot lie! He cannot risk the stain.”

  “Purifying himself?” Alex’s grandfather laughed. “Never mind telling you lies—they’ve been trying to kill us! Now, that’s not very spiritual, is it?”

  “Pah,” von Sudenfeld spat. “You don’t count. You are out to destroy the name of God; you are enemies. Killing you would be justified.”

  “And there we have it.” The old man beamed at Alex. “The fundamental lunacy of the people we’re dealing with.

  “Question is”—he turned back to von Sudenfeld—“if you did happen to
have the key, where might you keep it, hmm? I think we can be pretty sure you haven’t already given it to him—because, as much as you’ve told us about how holy and pure your friend is these days, I reckon you’re still suspicious enough not to just hand it over to him until the last possible minute, when you know for certain he’s not simply going to take it and get rid of you. But, at the same time, you’d want it close, where you can lay your hands on it quickly when the time comes, eh?”

  Von Sudenfeld backed away as Alex’s grandfather moved toward him, while Harry casually but not-so-casually stepped down from the stairs on his other side. For a moment the three stood in silence, von Sudenfeld’s eyes darting from face to face, until, with a squawk, he ducked his head and the others fell on him.

  A flailing arm hit the hanging bulb, setting it swinging crazily. In the lurching red light, Alex could make out only shuddering fragments as the men struggled, all shadows, backs, and elbows: a glimpse of Harry trying to hold von Sudenfeld’s arm; the tubby man suddenly wrenching it free, seeming to slap himself in the mouth.

  At this, Alex’s grandfather and Harry stepped away. Von Sudenfeld stood panting, disheveled but curiously triumphant. There was something different about him. It took Alex a few seconds to work it out. His hair had somehow been pushed far back up his scalp, perched oddly above a large expanse of pale forehead.

  “That’s torn it,” Harry said, catching the light, stopping it swinging.

  “Still,” Alex’s grandfather said wearily, “neatly done.”

  “What?” Alex asked. “What did he do?”

  “Do you mind, Willy?” the old man said. Von Sudenfeld recoiled as Alex’s grandfather reached gently for his head, lifting off what was now clearly a toupee. A large piece of white tape hung loosely from the lining. He set the wig back in place, patting it down.