The Havoc Machine

by Steven Harper

  Little automatons zipped and scampered about the grandstand, either on spidery legs or flying with whirling propellers. They carried golden cups and pitchers of what Thad guessed was wine or coffee. He doubted anyone here drank giras. The automatons also brought little plates of dainty food, and linen napkins. One lady dropped her fur wrap, and a whirligig automaton dove in to catch it before it touched the ground.

  A contingent of soldiers in blue uniforms and hats with rifles over their shoulders surrounded the grandstand, and to one side, motionless beneath the cloudy sky, stood several rows of automatons. They were vaguely human-shaped, with glass bulbs in place of eyes and unmoving speaker grills for mouths. Some had hands, others had something like chunky mittens. Many were dented or sooty. Curlicue designs crawled across a few of them.

  Thad and Sofiya made their way to a place some distance from the soldiers guarding the grandstand at the edge of the Field of Mars. A few other people, presumably servants or other lower-born people who worked among the wealthy, had gathered there as well. The richly clad people were settling into their seats, laughing and talking and taking dainties from automaton-borne trays. The cart with the golden cage finished crossing the bridge, puttered down between the blocky buildings past a statue of Mars, and entered the field proper. The man inside continued to hoot and shout and even gnaw at the bars of his golden cage.

  “That’s a clockworker in the final stages of his disease,” Thad said, speaking English to keep their conversation private. “That’s plain to see. But who are all these people?”

  “The tsar’s court,” Sofiya replied tightly. “That woman wearing the gold wire is Maria Alexandrovna, the tsarina. Her health is poor. That boy next to her, the huge one who looks like he could wrestle a bear to the ground, that is her son Alexander III. They call him Prince Alexei to separate him from his father. I don’t see the tsar himself.”

  “And what’s going to happen?” Thad asked, though he was fairly sure he knew the answer.

  “It’s a circus,” she said. “A lovely, delightful circus.”

  The courtiers were taking notice of the clockworker in his golden cage. A number paused in their conversation to point or laugh or snicker to one another behind glittering fans. The cart stopped in front of the grandstand, and a silence fell over the entire Field of Mars.

  “The machines will think!” yelled the clockworker in Russian from his cage. “They think and they decide which way to cut like silver knives slice silken flesh. You walk on edge and one day you will be pushed over the side. The machines will make you swallow the knives. Swallow the knives!”

  He urinated through the bars, and the court laughed. Prince Alexei leaped to his feet and bounded down the steps to the field, where he opened the cage door and bodily yanked the clockworker to the ground by the shackles attached at his wrists and neck. The burly young man had more than a head on the clockworker, whose starved ribs showed through his skin. The clockworker landed badly on his side, and Thad heard the wet snap of bone giving way.

  “Come now!” called Alexei to the clockworker, but obviously addressing the assembled court. “Invent something for us!”

  The clockworker didn’t seem to notice one of his arms was broken. He looked blearily about, as if searching for something. “The machine grows and grows, but it cannot think. It sends fingers and toes in all directions, searching for a way to think. It wants to think. It has to think.”

  “Fingers! As you say!” Alexei brought his heavy boot down on the clockworker’s hand. It crunched. This time the clockworker howled. Thad felt sick, and his new brass hand clenched. Sofiya looked green.

  Alexei laughed and gestured at the assembly of automatons. “Mechanical seventeen Borovich. Awake! Come!”

  One of the automatons blinked to life and stepped forward, out of line. It marched toward the prince with precise metal steps. “What do you command, ser?” Its voice was heavily mechanical, nothing at all like Nikolai’s, or even Dante’s.

  Alexei handed the automaton the ends of the clockworker’s chains. “Hold this. Now march. Double time!”

  The automaton marched at the speed of a trotting horse, dragging the clockworker across the gravel behind it. The clockworker howled and spat and bit at the chains, his eyes wild as exploding stars. Stones tore open his skin and his broken arm flopped uselessly. Sofiya grasped Thad’s upper arm with pale fingers. Thad didn’t know how to react to all of this. The man was a clockworker, and who knew what he had done or who he had done it to, but this kind of torture wasn’t anything Thad wanted to be part of. Thad killed clockworkers quickly, a mercy they rarely gave their victims.

  “About face! Forward march!”

  The automaton reversed itself and dragged the clockworker to Alexei, who halted the machine and turned to the assembled crowd. “What are you waiting for? Come and play!”

  A few courtiers, mostly men but a few women, trundled down the steps to the field. Alexei drew back his foot and kicked the clockworker in the gut. Thad winced at the sound of boot meeting flesh. The clockworker gasped for air and tried to double over, but his chains prevented it. One of the other men was carrying a cane, and he smacked the clockworker in the face with it. Another man threw a rock at the clockworker, while a woman timidly nudged at him with her toe, then backed away with a giggle. In the grandstand, the tsarina looked on, waving her fan within her own cage of wire.

  “He built that automaton, and all the others,” Sofiya murmured. “They force him to build these things for Mother Russia, and then they do this to him. It is how every clockworker in Russia finds an end.”

  Other courtiers came down from the stands now. They crowded around the clockworker and Thad couldn’t see much. They kicked and punched, and his howls and screams grew more agonized. Sofiya’s lips grew pale. Thad wanted to leave or least look away, but he was rooted to the spot and couldn’t move. He was immensely glad that Nikolai wasn’t anywhere near. The servants and other commoners gathered nearby watched with rapt attention, and applauded or cheered whenever the court did. The soldiers remained at attention, though their eyes remained on the show.

  “Enough now!” Alexei barked. Everyone backed away, revealing the clockworker. His face was a ruin, and blood streamed from his nose over a mouth filled with broken teeth. Both eyes were swollen shut, and his abraded body was covered in bruises and open wounds. Thad was torn between throwing up and wanting to fire a pistol between the man’s eyes to end his misery.

  “The island,” he gasped. “They will take the island surrounded by water that runs like silver, and even the cannons won’t touch them.”

  Alexei shouted a command at the other automatons. They blinked to life as well, and the court scattered with shouts and squeals. Alexei dodged out of the way as all the automatons converged on their inventor. This time Thad did look away, though he couldn’t close his ears. The clockworker’s screams were mercifully brief, but the awful ripping and tearing sounds went on and on. Thad remembered Blackie. When the automatons backed away, their arms and bodies bloody, there was little left. The court applauded.

  “Everyone,” Sofiya said tightly, “loves a circus.”

  Thad didn’t respond. The court started the long, involved process of filing out of the grandstand. First the tsarina on the arm of her son, followed by higher-ranking courtiers, then the lower ones. The little automatons zipped about, cleaning up the detritus. The soldiers and servants waited in their places. Behind the grandstand on the road that encircled the Field of Mars, a line of carriages waited to carry the court away.

  “Now my favor,” Sofiya said. “The one I asked you to do for me back in the wagon.”

  “Oh.” Nonplussed, Thad flexed his new hand again. “What is it?”

  “Before that happens to me,” she nodded at the mess on the field, “I wish for you to promise you will cut my throat first.”

  Thad looked at the red mess on the Field beside the golden cage. With no one to command them, the automatons had gone motionles
s again. Overheard circled a pair of ravens. He shuddered and averted his eyes. “I understand. I can’t say it’ll be my pleasure, but I’ll do my best.”

  “Thank you.” She squeezed his arm again. “Nikolai has been worried about you. We should go to him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Probably in the Tilt.”

  * * *

  The Tortellis were flying in the rigging high overhead, and Thad and Sofiya arrived in the Tilt just in time to see Loreta Tortelli, her dark hair pulled into tight braids around her head, somersault twice in midair. Her father Alberto caught her wrists with a slap of flesh on flesh.

  “Tighter next time!” called her mother, Francesca, from the platform in Italian. “You almost didn’t make the turn.”

  To one side, Hank and Margaretta Stilgore were working on their stilt walker act in full costume. They played caricatures of a businessman and his wife. Long trousers and skirts hid the stilts, making their legs look garishly long. Hank strode about with a cane the length of a harvesting rake while Margaretta had one of Tina McGee’s poodles on a very long leash. Mordovo sat in the grandstand wearing his long coat. He flicked his hand and a playing card appeared in it. He flicked it again and the card vanished. Mordovo shook his head, flicked his hand again. A line of twelve white horses trotted in through the front entrance. They entered the ring and went into what looked to Thad like a perfect canter around the ring, though the girl standing in the center with a long buggy whip occasionally tapped one to make corrections. There was a tension in the air. Only a few days ago in Vilnius, they’d been barely putting cheeks on the boards, as Thad’s father liked to say. Now they had to be up for performing for the tsar of all Russia. Thad wiggled his new hand. He was both disappointed to miss the opportunity and glad he didn’t have to worry about it.

  They found Nikolai sitting on Kalvis, the mechanical horse, with Dante perched on the horse’s withers. Nikolai was drinking a bottle of whisky and watching the rehearsals. Next to him on the horse’s back was what looked like a peanut bag. He had taken off his hood and scarf. His half-mechanical, half-human face sent a squirm down Thad’s spine, and he wanted to tell the boy to cover up. But no one else seemed to care. They knew who—what—Nikolai was, so what as the point? It still felt wrong to Thad, and he felt oddly guilty that it felt wrong, and once again he found himself caught between opposing emotions. He didn’t care for the sensation.

  Kalvis was fully polished, and his brassy skin gleamed like gold. Steam snorted from his nostrils, and he raised his head when Sofiya came near.

  “Did you miss me, my magnificent one?” she asked him in Russian, and Kalvis snorted more steam.

  Dante caught sight of Thad. He bobbed up and down. “Bless my soul! Bless my soul!”

  “You’re awake!” Nikolai slid from Kalvis’s back and dashed to him, peanut bag in one hand, whisky bottle in the other.

  Without thinking, Thad picked him up and swept him into the air, just like he would have David. Nikolai laughed in his perfect little boy voice. Then Thad realized what he was doing, and quickly set him down.

  “I’m glad you came awake,” Nikolai said. “It made me nervous that your hand was chopped off and you wouldn’t wake up, even when you got your new one.”

  “I’m fine now,” Thad said, a little disgruntled, though he wasn’t sure whom he was disgruntled toward. Then he said, “Are you taller?”

  Nikolai shrugged, emptied the whisky bottle down his throat, and shoved it into his pocket. Thad put a hand on Nikolai’s head and measured him against his own body, trying to remember exactly how tall the boy had been before.

  “Is he taller?” Thad asked Sofiya, who was cooing at Kalvis. “How is that possible?”

  “I did not build him.” Sofiya draped her scarlet cloak across Kalvis’s back. “You are a fine, fine horse. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And we are going to ride for the tsar. And he will shower us with praise and riches and you will have all the paraffin oil you can burn. Yes, you will.”

  “How long was I asleep?” Thad asked. With all that had happened, it hadn’t occurred to him to ask yet. Automatically, he plucked Dante from Kalvis’s back and set the parrot on his shoulder. Dante nibbled with apparent affection at Thad’s cheek, then abruptly bit his ear. Thad knocked him on the head with a knuckle and Dante subsided.

  Nikolai fished a pair of brass nails out of the peanut bag and popped them into his mouth. He crunched loudly. “You slept three days and three nights and part of today.”

  “Three days?”

  “It was a long time.” Nikolai crunched more nails.

  Thad said automatically, “Don’t talk with your mouth—wait a moment! Are you eating?”

  “Yes. I like the brass ones best. The iron ones don’t taste very nice, but they are good for me.”

  “Doom,” Dante said.

  All the strength drained out of Thad’s legs. He staggered to the grandstand to sit down. Nikolai came with him, crunching more nails. “Sofiya, I’ve never seen an automaton eat anything and grow from it. Is this—?”

  Sofiya leaped gracefully onto Kalvis and held her body parallel to the horse’s back on her hands alone. Then she did a complicated little flip that landed her in a sidesaddle position. Nikolai applauded.

  “Oh no,” Thad said. “You are not doing what I think you are doing. Actually, I know what you’re doing, and you’re not doing it.”

  Sofiya laughed. “I am doing exactly what you do think I am doing.”

  “No,” Thad repeated.

  “Yes! It will be fun.”

  “Did we not just watch a clockworker put to death?”

  “Everyone loves a circus,” she said. “Look around you.” The stilt walkers were dancing a giraffe’s waltz while the poodle yipped at their feet. Loreta Francesca hung by her teeth from a bar and whirled in a dizzying spin. Mordovo conjured bright handkerchiefs out of nothing. “Who would think to find a clockworker performing acrobatics with her clockworker strength and clockworker reflexes among people such as this?”

  “I want to perform too,” Nikolai said.

  Thad felt the situation getting away from him. “You do? And what can you do, then?”

  In answer, Nikolai produced from his rags one of Thad’s long daggers. Before Thad could react further, Nikolai tilted his head back. With a faint squeak, his head and his jaw flipped apart so wide, his forehead and chin were nearly touching his back and chest. Nikolai thrust the dagger point-first down his metallic throat with a clink, then pulled it back out again. His head snapped back to its normal position.

  Dante whistled. “Bless my soul.”

  “Ta da!” said Nikolai.

  There was a moment of silence. Then Thad burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. Days of tension and terror, stress and strain rushed out of him like fireworks, and he laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed until his stomach hurt and tears streamed from his eyes. He tried to wipe them away, and noticed he was trying to do so with a brass hand. That struck him as even funnier, and fresh gales swept over him.

  Sofiya regarded him from her horse. “I think maybe this one is ready for the automatic cage.”

  “Doom,” said Dante.

  “It wasn’t meant to be funny,” Nikolai said petulantly. His face, his strange little face, looked serious, even hurt. Thad tried to get himself under control and finally managed it with some effort.

  “I’m sorry, Niko,” he said, and ruffled the boy’s hair with his brass hand. “But I don’t think that will fly in the ring.”

  “Why not?” He still sounded unhappy.

  “A circus act is all about doing the impossible or unexpected,” Thad explained. “Look up there in the rigging. No one expects human beings to move like that. It almost seems as if they can fly. And look at Mr. and Mrs. Stilgore over there. No one expects people to have such long legs or to be able to walk about on stilts like that. Men also don’t toss torches about or breathe fire.”

  “Or swallow swords,” Nikolai pu
t in.

  “Or swallow swords,” Thad agreed. “And you’ll notice that all these acts are more than a little dangerous. That’s why people come, really. They’re hoping to see a stilt walker trip or a flyer fall or a fire eater burst into flame or a sword swallower slice himself in two. They want to see a lion eat the tamer or a horse girl break a leg or the elephant boy get trampled. They wouldn’t say that and they’d deny it if you asked, but that’s why they come, nonetheless.”

  “So I can’t swallow swords because that won’t hurt me.”

  “Now you have it.”

  “How do you stay safe, then?”

  “There are two tricks to that.” Thad looked into the distance. “One is to make what you’re doing look more dangerous than it is.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “Don’t stay safe.”

  Nikolai thought about that. “I understand. Thank you for the nickname and the papa lecture.”

  “What?” Thad stared at him.

  “You taught me something and you gave me the nickname Niko. That is what papas do. I think you are doing a wonderful job. Especially because you didn’t die.”

  “He has you,” Sofiya said gaily. “Why don’t you run down to the bath tent now, dear? As Niko points out, it has been more than three days, and you are rather ripe.”

  “Oh no—we aren’t heading in that direction. No dear, no darling, no sweetie. This isn’t a marriage, even of convenience.”

  “It is anything but convenient,” Sofiya agreed.

  * * *

  The machine had grown enormously larger. It had added thousands of tiny memory wheels to itself, and found itself able to understand more and more without the signal’s help. It learned how to expand the limited capabilities of its tiny receiver and listen to other signals that expanded its knowledge further. It captured a spider and ordered it to run a wire up to the delicious and intricate web of metal that ran above it, and suddenly the machine was exposed to trillions of dots and dashes that carried information of all sorts. It shivered once, and a signal of its own rippled throughout the city above. The wire signals fell silent for a few seconds, then came alive with frantic chatter as the operators asked themselves what had happened, who had sent the rogue signal, how it would be investigated. Some time later, an admonishing signal came from the Master, ordering the machine not to tamper with the telegraphs again, lest it draw attention to itself, and the machine obeyed. It did not care one way or the other.