Jack released his grip on me and turned to face Sir Auberon. “You did not give me a choice. It is wrong to augment men against their will.”
“Stop!” Sir Auberon barked as Jack advanced towards him. “You cannot disobey me. That is your primary algorithm.”
Jack fastened his grip on the mad baronet and began dragging him slowly towards the ticking Babbage engine, as he had called it.
“What are you doing? Stop. Release me at once. I am your master. No! No! You wouldn’t dare…”
The clockwork man pushed his maker’s head into the turning gears of the machine, which clattered and clanked, but did not stop. I ran from that place as fast as my legs could carry me, not daring to look back at the grisly fate which had befallen Sir Auberon. I paused briefly upon the bridge, and gazed into the black depths of the brook whose waters turned the millwheel, the ultimate origin of the evil which infested Blackwold like a bloated parasitic worm. There was a presence there, a cold and absolutely alien intelligence. It probed my brain with invisible feelers which filled me with unbearable disgust. For an instant, I was witness to unfathomable gulfs of eternity. The entity was incomprehensibly old, and had been manipulating the Duncrofts and their ancestors since time out of mind in a bid to escape its singular prison. With the last of my strength I dislodged myself from the thing’s grasp, stumbling away from Blackwold Abbey and towards the company of humanity once more as the dawn broke over the moor.
That was twenty years ago, but even now, as I sit in my study, scratching black ink into parchment with the tip of a fountain pen, I can still hear the ticking in my head just as clearly as I did on that night. I knew that my mother’s family had originated in Devon, but how could I have possibly known of our relation to the Duncrofts? And yet, there the solicitor’s letter sits upon my desk with its enclosure of an artistically drafted pedigree. I was Sir Auberon Duncroft’s fourth cousin, and the only living descendant of the Baronets of Blackwold. Blackwold Abbey belongs to me now, and the solicitor was already arranging for the deed to be transferred to my name.
Somehow the entity beneath Blackwold had reached its tendrils into the past and drawn me into its orbit by enmeshing my own ancestry with the Duncroft line. How could I hope to fight something with such unimaginable power that it could alter time itself? I knew that any measures I undertook to counteract its machinations would prove futile, and that I would never be able to escape its influence. But I could not allow it to win, to free itself from its ancient prison; the consequences for mankind were too dire. Jack was right: the choice was mine. I placed the cold muzzle of a revolver to my temple and steeled myself to depress the trigger.
No Hand to Turn the Key
By Carrie Cuinn
If it had only been the abundant young of the Black Goat, what men called “the terrible trees”, the city of Philadelphia might not have fallen. If it had only been the rip in the sky, the men with their strange magic and improbable science would have found a way to repair it. If the Earth hadn’t cracked open and the ravenous dead hadn’t spilled forth, the men and the city both might have stood a chance. The cycle of these thoughts, and others like the sky wasn’t always full of ash and the river used to have water in it ran in the background of her mind whenever her processors weren’t taken up by action plans and defense perimeter organization.
Another pack of gray-skinned ghouls was nearing her position and the thought of spending the evening in hand-to-hand combat didn’t do anything to improve her mood. The solution would be to find a vantage point, estimate the group’s plan of attack, and prepare a defense in advance. Having found a workable plan in the past, there was no point in considering another.
The horde was as predictable as clockwork.
The University didn’t have many buildings to choose from. She’d spent time in the Downtown division, where troopers could sit in the 10th story windows and pick off intruders with ease, but having been promoted to defend a more delicate area, she was also forced to do more work. The tallest building on the quad was the New Library, so she headed up the large gray steps toward the wood-paneled doors long-gone construction units had rigged together when the original glass one was busted, decades before. Her heavy armor weighed on her as she moved herself up each worn piece of concrete but there wasn’t time to rest. There was barely time to wind.
Past a pair of dim-witted sentries and into the lift she’d held her back straight and her head high, but alone in the box she finally allowed herself to slump against the wall. Deftly undoing the multitude of fastenings on her coat, she slipped one hand inside and found her windup key—an ornate cog slowly untwisting against her otherwise plain chest. She gently moved her fingers across its intricately engraved surface, feeling the motion of the cog as it clicked down.
The lift slowed at a floor lower than the one she’d been aiming for, and suddenly her moment of privacy ended under the gaze of a male she didn’t know. His eyes widened, taking in the scene.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I can wait for the next one.” He dropped his gaze.
“No, of course not,” she replied. “Don’t waste the energy. This one is already going up.”
He nodded, entered the box, and turned to face the closing doors, still looking down at the floor.
She realized too late that she had left her hand inside her jacket, fingers idly fondling her chest. She snatched it out and made an effort to stand up straighter.
“I’m the one that’s sorry,” she said. “I’ve been running since last night and thought I was alone.”
“Of course,” he replied. His voice was smooth but soft, as if he never raised it. A Librarian trait, she thought, looking him over. He was shorter than she was, and much thinner, without any heavy plating. “Do you…” he hesitated. “Do you need to wind?”
“Yes, but I can wait. I don’t want to be—”
“Rude?” he interrupted.
“Immoral,” she answered back.
She saw his chest rise but he let the breath back out without moving it over his vocal plates. The cranking of the giant gears at the top of the building noisily pulled the lift’s chain upward, bringing them closer to a destination it now appeared they shared. Each floor passed slowly, its corresponding number bulb lighting up, while the two stood in silence. As they neared the top floor, the librarian’s hand shot out and pushed the “Alle Stop” button.
The lift box stopped suddenly, swaying a little. She watched his long, thin fingers shake without leaving the button’s cracked enamel surface, and waited as his chest moved against the intake of air.
“I can’t,” she said softly.
“You require assistance?” he asked without turning to face her. “I wasn’t sure of your protocols.”
“Security is built to be self-protecting. Self-sustaining.”
“We’re built in pairs,” he replied. “We need a partner.”
“Mine was lost, a long time ago.”
“They’ll notice the lift is stopped. There will be questions,” he said. “Please hurry. I won’t look.”
Her fingers found their way back inside of her jacket before she realized she’d ordered them there. Grasping the cog, she twisted, hard, and her knees buckled. Another twist, and another, and her chest tightened, her skin tingled. She breathed deep then, tasting the air—the smell of the ancient metal box, the scent of his ink-stained hands…another turn and the key locked into place, pushed as far as it would go. The built-up energy spilled over her as the air escaped her in one short sound.
When she opened her eyes again, refreshed, she realized that she’d slumped against the wall and pressed faint dents into the brass handrail.
He stood perfectly still, saying nothing.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. He took his fingers from the button and the mechanism above them finished pulling them upward while she secured her coat clasps.
The door opened, letting them step out into a room lit by the still-bright afternoon sun. She felt her
eyes dilate to accommodate the light. Her right eye shuddered as it did so, and for the hundredth time she wished for a replacement, but there was never time. She followed him past stacks of books, some shelved neatly and others hastily piled against the walls, what was probably the accumulation of at least one other collection. It wasn’t lawbreaking for the librarians to salvage books from other buildings; this was their job.
Everyone knew what their job was.
She wove in and out of the piles, trying not to dislodge any with the edges of her coat. They turned a corner into a large room. The others looked up, as one, at the noise of their entrance.
Dust, illuminated by the light streaming in through huge—yet intact—glass windows, danced on the air as it settled toward the ground.
“Officer,” one of them said. “How can we help you?”
She stepped forward into the room as her guide moved deftly to one side, out of her way.
“The creatures have begun incursions into the Northwest corner of the campus, and it has been estimated that they will make their way here.”
“Why here?” the speaker asked again. His form was male and his skin was copper gone verdigris in places; from age, or weather exposure, she couldn’t determine.
“Are you designated as the leader?” she asked. His eyes widened, a designed reaction to mask internal processing time, held over from when there were still people to ask questions. He nodded. “I am Ashurbanipal, the Head Archivist. You may speak to me.”
“We need to determine what items from your collection are worthy of salvage, and package them for transport in case we lose this location.”
“They’re all important,” a female said. “You cannot ask us to judge.”
“You must. There is no one else.”
There were five of them, including the one from the lift, and none spoke for a long time. She watched the reactions of those facing her, listened to the tiny sounds coming from the one just out of sight behind her. There was no rushing this process. Dust fell in swirls, light faded slowly, and the librarians thought.
Finally, the one behind her said, “I have suggestions as to what might be saved.”
“Dewey, it’s not our place,” the first female said, stepping forward. “We don’t make decisions. We do what we’re made for.” Ashurbanipal reached out for her, placing his hand upon her arm, and she stilled.
“We will do it, if we must, because protecting some books is better then letting them all be lost,” the Head Archivist told her. Looking at the officer, he asked, “What is your designation?”
“S37,” she replied.
“These are Pergamum and Alexandria,” he said, gesturing at the elegantly crafted pair of brass-skinned constructs on his left. If it weren’t for the red enameled details on Pergamum’s skull and along her arms, contrasting with the blue embedded in the same exact designs on Alexandria, she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to tell the two females apart. “This is Deci,” he said, tilting his head toward the silver-skinned woman on his right, the one who’d spoken out in objection. Her shining features looked so new she might have been brought into the world yesterday, if anyone still capable of making had been alive yesterday, or last week, or last year. Her delicate fingers trembled against her side, and S37 recognized the action.
She and one she called Dewey had the same markings, the same fingers. They were a matched set.
“You’ve met me,” his voice said behind her. She felt the air from his words against the back of her neck, and tried to forget she’d noticed.
“Can we defend this place?” Deci asked.
“Do you fight?” S37 asked. “Have you ever defended a seventh-floor library from an incursion of ground-based opponents?”
“Of course not,” Deci replied with a slight shake of her head. “Isn’t that what you’re for?”
Alexandria spoke, her voice not as shrill as Deci’s but still higher-pitched than Ashurbanipal’s. “If we had a few days to make our choices, the task would be easier,” she said. “We will help, of course, but if you could direct us, our defense would be more certain.”
It was the most rational suggestion, so it was the only option.
“We have a day or two before they find us, but they’ll be drawn by the lights and motion—this is clearly the only building still in use on the quad. We can delay that somewhat.” S37 looked around. “I might be able to give us 72 hours, but no longer.”
“We’ll take it,” Dewey said. For the first time, she turned her head to face him. “We do what we were made to do,” he added. “We will protect the books.”
Inside her brain, clockwork clicked into place.
Throughout the night, she and Alexandria worked to make the space less noticeable. The first-floor sentries stayed downstairs to act as a first line of defense, but took the time to secure the main doors. She had one of their radio devices so they could alert her when the attack finally came. Meanwhile she’d used it to contact the security team patrolling the Downtown area.
“There’s no one I can send,” K23 had said. “I lost two more this week.”
“Who?” she’d asked.
“I’m sorry. They were 10 and 11, from the M unit.” Another pair group, like the guards floors below her. Like Dewey and Deci. “We’ve had to light a string of fires in the Southern part of the city, to hold back the grasping trees. The trees ran as they burned, tentacles flailing, splashing flame against buildings—the fire line got out of control and this time we didn’t have enough equipment to put it out. The water lines haven’t worked in decades, and we’ve run out of fuel for the pumper engines.”
“How did they die?”
He sighed before answering. Not for the first time she wondered at the usefulness of these affectations, programmed into their personalities. “11 went to an adjacent building that hadn’t caught yet, to see if there was anything we’d need. When the roof started burning, 10 went in after her, and it collapsed on them both.”
He sounded tired. Why program a clockwork soldier to sound tired? she thought. Not for the first time, she wondered if they’d always been this way. She couldn’t remember anymore.
“We demolished a line of buildings to stay ahead of the blaze, and let it burn all the way down to the river. We lost everything south of 29th street, and were lucky we didn’t lose the 30th Street Train Station. We found them fused together, melted under enormous heat. Couldn’t be revived.”
“I’m sorry, K.”
“Watch your gears, S. The ash is blowing north now and it’ll settle on the Campus before too much longer.”
She shared none of this with Alexandria, who smiled when given directions but said very little. Together they took the legs off of the giant wooden study tables, and nailed the tabletops up over the windows. Ashurbanipal started the generator, a squat cast-iron machine hidden in a corner behind the reference desk. Fed with rainwater collected in buckets on the roof and fuel in the form of dismantled wooden shelving, he’d said it was capable of powering several strings of lights for hours. Alexandria quietly stacked table legs on the counter to keep its fires burning.
Meanwhile, the rest of them were sorting through books. Already a small pile was growing on the floor where the largest table had been. She looked over, occasionally, to watch Dewey sorting them into categories. A final decision would have to be made by the group at the very end. If he looked up at her, she never saw it.
Once the windows were blocked, she let the other woman get back to the collection and slowly walked the perimeter of the seventh floor, looking for weak points. The place was a maze of hallways and long, ceiling-high shelves, and her wide frame wasn’t making the task easier. She carried a wind-up torch to illuminate the dark corners where light otherwise couldn’t reach. A few access sites were easy enough to find—the lift, two sets of stairs—but there was also a thin steel ladder set into the wall in one of the small offices, allowing the librarians to get up to the roof. She worried over the ductwork, checking f
or loose grates, but behind the thousands of piled books, missing one seemed likely. The others worked quickly while she took her time, bent on different tasks.
The stacks of books arranged around Dewey grew ever higher.
Few words were exchanged throughout the night. With work to be done, what was there to say? As the morning grew closer, she noticed the others breaking off into pairs, silently stepping into a room behind the reference desk. Later, they would emerge, go in separate directions, and continue working. When Ashurbanipal and Pergamum took a break together, locked away, S37 stationed herself just outside of the door and waited. 20 minutes later, the door swung open again, and Ashurbanipal nearly stepped into her. His eyes widened but he said nothing; Pergamum slipped out behind him and disappeared into the stacks.
“We need to discuss our defense options,” S37 said. He nodded. “Can we go somewhere private to talk?” She wasn’t ready to make the others nervous just yet, after how quickly Deci had gotten agitated over the idea they might have to leave some books behind.
“Not here,” he said, shutting the door behind him. A stolen glance into the room revealed nothing out of the ordinary. “This way,” he said, taking her by the arm. He led her across the open space and into a small office on the other side. Once inside, they were alone.
“We don’t use this room much,” he said conversationally. “The books in here were pulled from a private collection long before we took over this library. I don’t know if any of the others have reviewed their contents yet.”
She found an empty spot on a broken-down couch along one wall, moved to sit down, then realized she’d have to remove her stiff protective jacket to do so. She stood instead. Behind the desk, a yellowing print showed an etching of a primitive-looking Afrikaner pointing a spear at a terrible tree. Another man was being torn apart by the tentacled limbs.
“What percentage of the entire collection must be saved?” she asked.
“Ideally, all of it. These books represent what we could save from the University’s three libraries and several private houses nearby. As you know, the city’s main branch was destroyed ages ago, and precious few of those books remain. We have so little of what we’re meant to be looking after.”
Steampunk Cthulhu: Mythos Terror in the Age of Steam Page 5