Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl

by David Barnett

  She pushed the doors closed and they fitted snugly together, the seam sinking into invisibility. Maria pulled up her leotard again to cover her modesty and spare Gideon’s blushes.

  “You are a wonder,” he breathed. “A miracle. And Crowe has debased you to sate his own perverse appetites. How long has this horror been visited upon you?”

  “Since Professor Einstein left, six months ago,” said Maria. “Crowe was cautious at first, merely looked at me for long weeks while . . . while he pleasured himself. Then he would undress me, and touch me. Then, when he became bolder, he would wind me up and have me dance for him. And . . .”

  Maria put her face down again, and Gideon was shocked to see a single tear rolling down her cheek. “Did Crowe not know you could speak?”

  She shook her head violently. “I would not waste words on that scoundrel. It was better to let him believe I was merely a mute object. He would have merely heaped more insults upon me and enjoyed my pain yet further if he thought I could . . . could feel.”

  “What is it like, when you wind down?” asked Gideon, after a while. “What do you feel then?”

  “It is like sleep, I imagine,” she said. “And sometimes, when I sleep, I dream.”

  “Nightmares, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No. Scattered, fractured dreams. Faces I cannot name and voices I cannot recognize. Dreams of London.”

  “London?” asked Gideon. “You have been to London?”

  “I cannot have,” said Maria. “But my dreams are of another life, without clockwork and pipes.” She shook her head. “Cruel illusion.”

  “The clockwork and valves I can understand,” said Gideon. “But your speech, your intelligence . . . how does one achieve that with gears and pistons?”

  Maria looked at him. “There is another element, Mr. Smith, which I do not understand and cannot show you.” She pointed to her forehead. “In my head there is a machine that powers my thought and gives life to my body. Something Professor Einstein invented, or found.”

  He stood and looked out the thin window, just as Bob whirred into life and began to noisily push his cutter across the lawn.

  “I am going to London,” said Gideon. He turned and knelt before her. “Come with me.”

  7

  The Imitation Game

  Maria looked startled. “Come with you?”

  “What is there for you here? Abuse and degradation?

  Come with me. I shall keep you safe.”

  Maria blinked. “Keep me safe?”

  “I have a mission in London,” said Gideon. “I am to return home to Sandsend at the earliest opportunity, to deal with grave business there. But perhaps I can help you find your Professor Einstein.”

  She put her head to one side, the gears and wheels within her whirring. “Give me a moment to dress more appropriately. How shall we travel?”

  Gideon punched the palm of his hand. “I have no resources, no money.”

  Maria said, “In the parlor there is a bicycle with a hydraulic engine. Take it to the front courtyard and I shall meet you downstairs.”

  After checking that Crowe still slept, Gideon quickly pulled on his socks and boots and stole downstairs. The bicycle was heavy and crowned with other junk and inventions, and something crashed with an alarming clatter as he pulled it free. He pushed it out into the warm morning sunshine before heading back inside. He stopped dead in the doorway as Maria descended the staircase with a fluid grace that would have been stunning from even the most well-bred lady. She wore a full skirt and a white blouse, a gray serge cape around her shoulders. Her feet stepped down the stairs in polished black laced boots, and her blond hair was arranged beneath a bonnet. “Maria,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

  She took his outstretched hand to step down from the final stair. “The bicycle should get us to the next village. After that, we shall need money,” she said.

  She led him into a workroom and pulled open one of several drawers beneath a row of trestle tables piled high with cogs, devices, and test tubes, withdrawing a sheaf of pound notes.

  “We can’t,” said Gideon. “It would be stealing.”

  “Professor Einstein kept it for emergencies,” said Maria.

  “He was somewhat . . . disorganized. He secreted money for when tradesmen called or deliveries were made. I am sure he would be happy for you to take it, under the circumstances.” Gideon nodded uncertainly. “I shall pay back whatever I spend,” he said. He took a book from the table and put the money inside it for safekeeping. He found a cloth bag and stuffed the book and money inside, along with Maria’s brass key.

  His heart sank to see Crowe standing in the hall, scratching his nether regions and yawning. He looked at Gideon and said, “Ah, up already? I was just going to put some breakfast on.” Then Crowe saw Maria and frowned. “What are you doing with the automaton? I could have sworn I put it back in the tower.”

  “You did,” said Gideon. “And I have removed her. Your abuse of this poor girl is at an end, Crowe.”

  Crowe laughed. “Her? Poor girl? It’s a thing, Smith. And a thing that doesn’t belong to you. Now leave it be and get out.

  I’ll not have you repaying my hospitality with theft, you blackguard.”

  “Oh, I’m leaving all right,” said Gideon, taking Maria by the hand. “And she is coming with me. This is not theft, Crowe.

  It’s liberation.”

  Gideon barged past Crowe, dragging Maria with him toward the door. The old man shrieked and flew at him, and Gideon swatted him off easily. He strode out of the house and toward the motorized bicycle, muttering, “Could have done with a bit more time to figure out how this contraption works.”

  “There is a toggle on the box behind the seat,” said Maria.

  “I observed Professor Einstein working on the vehicle.” Gideon hit the toggle and there was an alarming judder and a hiss of steam, which settled into a rhythmic vibration.

  He hopped on to the seat and Maria wrapped her hands around his chest, murmuring, “I suggest expedience, Mr. Smith. I think Crowe has a gun.”

  Gideon released the brake just as the first bullet whistled past his head. The bicycle surged forward, and Maria held on even tighter, which Gideon found most agreeable. The bicycle wavered perilously as it shot ahead at an alarming velocity. “Come back with that clockwork tart!” shrieked Crowe.

  “It’s mine! Bring it back!”

  As he steadied the bicycle and piloted it along the drive toward the gates of the Einstein house, Gideon called over the noise of the motor, “Are you quite well, Maria?”

  “Never better, Mr. Smith,” she laughed delightedly as the drive curved upward and spilled them out on to a country lane. “Never better.”

  The bicycle sputtered and died as they came within sight of the village, a small, bustling hamlet called Hawerd. Gideon paid the postmaster from the wad of notes to take the bicycle back to the Einstein house. As he did, he noticed for the first time the book he had stuffed the money inside: Investigations into the Atlantic Artifact and Experiments with the Aforementioned in Terms of the Animation of Automata. He put it back in the bag and asked the postmaster if there was any transport headed toward London.

  “You’re in luck,” said the man, glancing at his fob watch. “The express omnibus is due in half an hour. Have you in London by lunchtime.”

  He gripped Maria’s hand and said, “Let us take some refreshment in the tearooms until the bus arrives.” Then he paused. “Uh, forgive me, Maria, but do you actually eat or drink?”

  She smiled demurely. “I don’t have to, but I can. The food is processed within me and mulched down into liquid to lubricate my working parts.”

  Gideon grimaced. That somehow took the shine off the thought of a good strong cup of coffee. But his own stomach rumbled and reminded him he had not eaten since the night before.

  As the coffee and pastries arrived, Maria said with a distant gaze, “London. Think of it. I can see i
n my mind’s eye images of the Lady of Liberty flood barrier, the Threadneedle Ziggurat, the airships clustered around the Highgate Aerodrome.”

  “Perhaps you read of them in books,” said Gideon. “Or newspaper articles. The Lady of Liberty statue is only five years old; perhaps your professor attended the dedication service when the French presented it to Britain to celebrate the defeat of the Yankee rebels in 1775.”

  “I have seen them,” she insisted. “I have watched the airships circling the aerodrome in bright sunshine, seen the cascading foliage down the levels of the ziggurats.” She looked at him. “I do not understand how I could have invented that. How could Professor Einstein have given me memories of things I have never seen?” She laid a hand on his bare arm and his hairs prickled. “Sometimes I wonder where they came from, whose they once were.”

  “Did he never speak of the memories and dreams he had given to you?” he asked gently.

  She shook her head tightly. “What ever reasons Professor Einstein had for keeping them a secret, he must have thought they were valid. However, he is gone and you have emancipated me from the yoke of dreadful Crowe. Now I can seek answers.”

  They stepped out into the sunshine just as the omnibus rattled through the village. Gideon paid the money and they were directed to a double seat halfway down the carriage. “The outlook is fine for London, today,” the driver said with a smile. “Perfect weather for lovers.”

  Gideon flushed and tried to protest but Maria hushed him. She said, “Would you mind awfully if I took the window seat?”

  As the bus steamed forward, Maria became lost in the countryside unfolding outside the window. Gideon reached into the cloth bag to count the remaining money, and his hand paused over the book. It was written in English, in diary form. Much of it was dense formulae and scientific jargon, but he reckoned he could get a sense of the book from the intermittent prose entries. He settled back in the seat and began to read.

  January 11, 1888— A most intriguing visit from a Mr. W, who represents the British Government and who I anticipated was here to, as the British say, “lean on me” to work faster toward our goal. I was all prepared to tell him going to the moon is not quite as simple as taking a train to Birmingham. But he came bearing gifts. A recent exploratory mission to the bed of the Atlantic Ocean by a Royal Navy submersible had uncovered the remains of a sunken Viking longship. Among the booty recovered from the wreck was a most unusual item that Mr. W. brought to me for my investigation, with the possibility that it might aid me in my endeavors.

  So: The item appears to be of some kind of opaque glass, frosted with a slight yellowish tinge, almost as though it had been forged from sand. It weighs three pounds and has a size of seventy-five cubic inches, and it is shaped like a rough, slightly distended half-sphere, the top being smooth and bisected by a slight indentation, the underside sporting exactly one hundred symmetrically arranged holes, each an eighth of an inch in diameter, and one larger hole. If it is indeed glass, it is extremely tough; I made the mistake of allowing Crowe to hold it, and the damn fool let it slip from his fingers. It hit the floorboard of my workshop and did not crack, chip, or otherwise become damaged. Crowe’s mishap did, though, reveal a hitherto unseen mechanism allowing the flat bottom of the artifact to open on tiny hinges, revealing a hollow interior.

  Quite what the point of it is, I am at a loss to explain. Other items from the longship have been dated at the tenth century ad, so all I can say for certain is it is very, very old and manufactured by a very advanced civilization.

  February 23, 1888— Investigations into the Atlantic Artifact have been sidelined of late, to allow me to concentrate on my work in other fields, but a strange occurrence today causes me to pick up my pen once more.

  The artifact had been on my desk, gathering dust and proving no more use than a paperweight. But then Baxter, the venerable cat who patrols the grounds of the house, padded into my workroom bearing a present of a half-dead mouse, which he deposited proudly upon my desk, and the poor beast twitched as its life essence deserted it. It was then the development occurred. . . . Baxter had lain the mouse by the Atlantic Artifact, and almost immediately it was suffused from within by a red glow, faint but definite. I immediately placed both the dying mouse and the artifact in a glass fish tank, isolating them from external forces, and monitored the progress every ten minutes. Within half an hour the mouse had died. The red light continued to glow, and did so for a further seven hours, gradually dimming in the final sixty minutes. Curious.

  March 14, 1888— My dear Albert’s ninth birthday today. How I miss him and my darling Pauline. But the work the British Government has me doing here, while producing little of merit so far, is well paid, and they are both looked after in Munich, though I worry the constant infernal spats between the French and the Spanish will spill over into violence again, and Germany will be dragged into the hostilities.

  The past three weeks have seen much progress with the Atlantic Artifact. I bade Baxter bring me more presents, and he obliged with a succession of dead and dying mice. The artifact seems to respond to living things as they are near death, and for a period of no more than seven hours after death has occurred. It is frightfully perplexing. Could I be on the brink of a major discovery? Is the artifact nothing less than an indicator or meter of the presence of the very soul?

  March 21, 1888— A major breakthrough, and one of those accidental (or is it?) moments of which great discoveries are made. I was looking through a book of underwater creatures and marveling at a very distinct picture of Chrysaora fuscescens, the Pacific Sea Nettle jellyfish. I was idly pondering how its gelatinous dome and trailing fronds looked remarkably like a brain with the spinal cord attached when it struck me like a thunderbolt. The Atlantic Artifact was the rough shape, size and weight of a human brain.

  I have a small colony of frogs that I have been dissecting with the purpose of investigating the electrical impulses that power bodily functions. A small current applied to the nerve endings of a dead frog will cause the legs to twitch, and on an impulse of my own I rigged up a copper connector to one of the nerves of a recently deceased frog and inserted it into one of the many holes on the underside of the artifact, which glowed excitedly as I brought the animal to it.

  The results were instantaneous. The frog’s right leg moved immediately, proving the artifact is possessed of some internal electricity-generating component. Marvelous, given the age of the artifact.

  But there is more.

  With the ordinary electrical impulse, the frog’s leg merely jerked and twitched. When plugged into the artifact— which I have already begun to think of as a “brain”—the leg performed a fluid, natural movement, exactly in the same way the living frogs in my colony moved when swimming. The artifact was not merely running a current and exciting the animal’s nerve endings, it was “remembering” how the frog would have moved in life, and replicating it.

  I left the frog attached to the artifact overnight, and the next morning the artifact still glowed, much past the seven hour limit when it is merely adjacent to a newly dead beast.

  I must investigate further.

  March 23, 1888— I have exhausted my colony of frogs. I tried different nerves and muscles attached to different housings in the base of the artifact. With one group, the forelegs moved. With another, the rear legs. I achieved a beating heart, an opening mouth and, with my final frog, I had the notion of placing its brain inside the artifact, which glowed brightly as though it somehow “approved” of this development. Within moments I gazed into the shining, unblinking, yet evidently seeing eyes of a frog dead for six hours.

  I saw my own reflection in its black eyes. It was like seeing eternity.

  Or perhaps God.

  March 24, 1888— I had Crowe capture a magpie in the garden and after some rough surgery I have managed to connect its spinal cord to a large copper attachment, which fits snugly into the largest hole on the base and up into the hollow space within the artifact, wher
e I reattached the cord to the unfortunate bird’s brain. Immediately it began flapping around madly on the desk, its eyes swiveling, its ratcheting cries echoing around the room. I observed the thing for an hour before putting it out of its misery.

  I need something bigger.

  April 4, 1888, I have a heavy heart, but I knew what I must do. It is what Baxter would have wanted, being a very scientific cat, and his sad but natural death affords me an opportunity. As exciting as the impulses from the artifact are, do they necessarily indicate anything more than an advanced form of electrical charge allowing the nerves to “remember” their function in life? The real test is whether individual tastes and even memories of a specific living thing can be carried over and recharged by the artifact after death.

  I wasted no time in attaching Baxter. Oh, the joy at seeing his eyes open and look at me! A test was called for. Baxter had always been a contrary cat, and unlike his brethren shunned fish. But he had a great love for chicken. I had Crowe bring me two bowls, one of tuna and one of chicken, which I placed before the reanimated cat.

  He went straight for the chicken! It was not mere automatic electrical impulses driving Baxter. He had been restored to his former life and memories. Or at least partially . . . although he expressed his former interest in food, he seemed to regard me with blankness, as though he did not remember me at all. The poor thing was in pain and I swiftly administered a large dose of morphine, to keep him alive but unconscious.