by Неизвестный
His voice was mechanically cold. “It is necessary, Mistress Largen.”
Missy Largen was not a lady, in all but the most basic definition of the word. As an alchemist she’d taken up a man’s job, and necessarily wore leather overalls and amber-lensed goggles like the apprentices and masters at the city’s smithies. The only thing feminine about her was her curled hair and the elaborate gold hair-stick she used to keep it in a bun. It glinted as she stepped into the lamplight
“Is this really what it’s come to? You’re apprehending your own brother.”
“I am only following orders, mistress.”
Missy smiled wryly. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, for me, Ricks has moved past that. Now, put him down.”
“Ricks, mistress?”
Exasperation. “Him. The labori – my labori – that you’re carrying.”
“Laws state that all labori must be scrapped.”
“A law that was only passed yesterday.”
Missy pressed a hand to her forehead in frustration. Ricks wasn’t in good shape at all; her recent experiments had changed him. Instead of doing only as instructed – when instructed – he had started doing his tasks automatically, sometimes even asking if she needed help and then proceeding to do the small chores she usually didn’t bother with. Not that she minded, but it taxed him too much, enough that she shut him down manually (on a regular basis, now) so he would rest. Otherwise he would’ve worked himself to breakdown. Still, there was no way she could win against this soldier without Ricks. She was an intellectual through and through, holed up in her lab day in and day out – she didn’t have the strength to overpower that.
But she could outsmart the soldier. Easily, even.
“Let me get my data, soldier, and you can have him.” There. Rules dictated at least this much leeway must be given. The soldier laid Ricks out on the floor, almost reluctantly, and stood by as Missy opened Ricks’ torso plate. She manoeuvred her hand past the gears and levers that operated his body, to the heart chamber. It was basically a boiler, and the leather sacs on either side – modelled after human lungs – supplied the required liquid. Behind the chamber, a switch. Missy flipped it, closed the torso.
Ricks’ eyes slid open without any fuss of fluttering or blinking, and he got up. “Mistress.”
“This will be considered treason by parliament, mistress. Please make no further contact with your labori.” The soldier pulled a rifle from his back and levelled it at Missy, keeping it on target as he caught Ricks’ wrist.
Missy backed away, waited until the soldier had hoisted Ricks up and turned away. And then: “Don’t let him take you, Ricks!”
Something clicked, or rather whirred to life in the labori. Within a few seconds Ricks and the soldier were struggling with each other, the rifle firing wildly across the room, bullets shattering quite a few of Missy’s precious vials and flasks. It was times like this Missy was glad she’d modified Ricks earlier on. Her favourite modification was the chrysopoeia gold, a material discovered by one of her more famous associates on the way to the philosophorum lapis. She’d transformed the metal herself, after reading his research paper, and she’d seen the scrap metal transform into gold – but stronger, harder and sturdier than any other gold in history. The first wonder of alchemy.
Ricks was also quite a wonder, if currently in a rather morbid way. Missy heard a sickening crunch as his metal fist closed around the soldier’s upper arm, and then the clanging of the standard-issue rifle against his chrysopoeia skin. Those dents would be a pain to straighten out but, more importantly, Ricks mustn’t come to any harm. The soldier, if Ricks didn’t get rid of him now, would do very great deal of it.
A split second of panic as a bullet ricocheted past her and into a flask behind her. “Kill him if you have to!”
She ducked, curling protectively in on herself. A second sickening crunch, a sound akin to a whistling kettle, and then white steam was clouding her vision. She froze in place, waiting and trusting Ricks to seek her out and guide her through the wall of hazy warmth. He did, a metallic hand finding hers and helping her up. The steam gradually cleared, and Missy found herself looking at the clockwork carnage of a soldier labori torn open on the floor.
“Did you know, mistress?”
“Missy, Ricks. Call me by my name.”
“Missy.” Emphasis. “My processors rely on statistics, so I assumed he wasn’t, but did you know? That he wasn’t human?”
She nodded hesitantly. “Since the moment I laid eyes on him. You were asleep.”
The soldier. A labori. Movements smooth enough to
be of nerve rather than clockwork. Voice flat, eyes blank. But soldiers nowadays were like that, too. A labori. And if Missy hadn’t spent so long researching on and working with them, she wouldn’t have noticed either. All the same, he’d come to get Ricks for the junkyard, where they probably would’ve scrapped him as well.
Ricks sat down, simply folding his legs and lowering himself onto the floor without any unnecessary (human) motions. His face was blank, but Missy could tell a frown would have been appropriate. He was thinking. No, contemplating. He looked up.
“Did you replace the Aether in my heart chamber again, Mistr— Missy?”
Missy smiled, nodded. “You can tell?”
“I have no previous records of my current processor state. Shall I log this as a new emotion?”
Another nod, followed soon after by the sound of Ricks’ recording programs starting up.
This was what made Ricks unique, important, even precious to her. The Aether. Where other labori heart chambers boiled water for steam, Ricks’ heart boiled Aether. She hadn’t perfected it yet, but it had done what she’d expected. The very essence of Life itself, it had given Ricks a semblance of a soul – the wish to do and help, the fragmented conscience that was currently weighing on his processors. A victory, albeit a small one, and one that she couldn’t dwell on at present. She grabbed his wrist, despite knowing that he wouldn’t move until she gave a verbal command – and Ricks got up.
*
Missy tore through the alley that led from the back of her workshop, her travel cloak streaming out behind her. One hand was grasping tightly around Ricks’ wrist, the other hand clutching the formula of what she hoped was the perfected Aether she’d been looking for all this time. The sample she’d managed to create was in the pack on Ricks’ back, along with a few ingredients and essentials. And then he was in front of her, leading the way with his Galileo Navigational System through the back alleys of the city, going at a speed Missy could barely keep up with.
But stumbling along, Missy couldn’t help the sense of satisfaction that swelled through her body – that Ricks was rushing of his own accord meant he had an appropriate sense of urgency. Not to mention that he now easily remembered to address her by her name and understood her non-verbal cues.
Heavy footsteps of armed troops behind them.
She had started packing immediately after their encounter with the soldier labori, but the governor must have had a lodestone resonating chip implanted inside it, judging by the speed at which back-up had arrived. Worse, these troops were obviously human, eyes blazing with adrenalin from their chase, which meant she couldn’t simply order Ricks to kill them as she had earlier. They outnumbered him anyway. Ten-to-one, at the very least. Missy tried not to think about the differential treatment she was giving the human soldiers and concentrated on keeping up with her labori.
“Missy Largen.”
She winced at the intimidating voice. Perhaps Ricks tensed, despite the stiff metal of his body being unable to show it, and they turned, almost in unison, to face troops who had somehow managed to head them off despite the many twists and turns Ricks had taken them through. They were already on the edge of the city, so close to freedom from the governor’s jurisdiction, yet so far. Troops in a scissor formation closed in on them, and Missy had to take it as consolation that Ricks moved to protect her. She folded the paper in her han
d and thrust it into her breast pocket.
*
A heavy-duty labori, originally designed for armoured warfare and now, apparently, repurposed for restraining or transporting other labori, clanked into the governor’s gold-set velvet-and-mahogany office. Even Ricks’ chrysopoeia skin was barely holding against its arms, with their hydraulic pumps more like tank engines than muscles. Behind them Missy was struggling fiercely against a burly human captor, who looked, despite his uniform, more of a mercenary than a soldier. Both she and her labori were thrown unceremoniously on the lion’s pelt rug in the centre of the room, and the two soldiers retreated out the door to stand guard.
“I hope you’ll forgive our misconduct towards you, Miss Largen. You put up quite the fight.”
“It was necessary.” Missy allowed Ricks to help her up. “And no, I won’t.”
Gerard Robinson, Governor of Met City. Missy had wanted to believe he was a good man, a governor born and bred in the Labori Age, capable of running the city while maintaining peace and the balance between humans and labori. Unfortunately ...
“An explanation, perhaps, is in order.”
“None required.” Missy glared venomously at him, arms folded across her chest. “You and yours want my labori, and I will not have him scrapped at the junkyard.”
A sigh. “While we do require that you surrender your labori, Miss Largen, Ricks – that is what you call it? – is hardly important enough to warrant the kind of mobilization we’ve seen today.”
Missy opened her mouth to speak, but Robinson pre-empted her. “Neither is this about the soldier labori that was found in your workshop.”
“All right, you’ve got me.”
“Please, take a seat.”
She reluctantly slid into an over-stuffed armchair across from the governor, Ricks moving to stand behind her.
“We’ve been watching you, Miss Largen. Watching ever since you published your first paper on the existence of Aether. I would have preferred to hire you as a governmental alchemist, but it is obvious you would never consent, and so the alternative was taken.”
“All for the Aether?”
“Not for it but to destroy it.”
“All the more reason not to hand it over to you. Since I’m here, though, I have quite a bone to pick with you.”
“Regarding the Labori Recall Act, I expect, though you know as well as I do that we have no choice about it.”
He paused to enjoy Missy’s agitation.
“According to your research, your Aether not only has all its fabled miraculous properties, but also the ability to give labori life. Well. Even if it is the next breakthrough towards the philosophorum lapis, the spread of Aether could lead the labori autonomy. And one day, Miss Largen, they will realize they are stronger, smarter and better than us, capable of manufacturing offspring and more Aether, and then there will be hell to pay.”
“Surely that is only a remote possibility.”
“And yet.”
“Only because you refuse to see the labori as labori!”
She stood up in her agitation, then paced. “You disguise them with skin and flesh, making them look like us, and then you treat them all the worse for it! If people could only learn—”
“To be like yourself?” Robinson sounded tired. “To dress their labori in alchemist’s gold and treat them as humans?”
“As equals, governor. Race does not matter if they are still treated as slaves.”
“But you agree, Miss Largen. You say ‘if only’ because it will not happen and you know this. Not now, perhaps, but many years from now something will happen. I would like to prevent it as best I can.”
“The Aether will prevent it. Once the labori have souls—”
“They will be able to think for themselves and recognize the prejudice they suffer under.”
“I suffer under no prejudice or maltreatment, Master Robinson.”
The governor, dumbfounded, blinked at Ricks, who had been previously silent behind his mistress like any normal labori. Now after interrupting the humans’ conversation, something unheard of, he seemed to realize it was taboo and fell still, as if unsure of himself.
“I see you’ve taught your labori quite a few parlour tricks, Miss Largen.”
“They are not mere parlour tricks, governor.”
“I apologize for interrupting. It was not my place.” Ricks fidgeted once more, then returned to the complete stillness only labori could achieve.
“Parlour tricks,” the man behind the desk repeated firmly.
“I don’t understand, Robinson!” Missy slammed her palms on his desk. “Here is the proof that the Aether works, that it will improve the situation, and ... and you wish to suppress it.”
She withdrew, suddenly understanding, frightened.
“Parlour tricks.” Belatedly, hand unconsciously resting on the pocket that held her secret, but it was too late.
“Escort Miss Largen to the dungeons, please. And restrain the labori.”
“No!”
It would have been a repeat of the morning’s events, the order to kill already on her tongue when she noticed the state of Ricks’ torso. Earlier the rifle rounds had dented multiple depressions on his chrysopoeia plate. Now his torso plate was perfectly smooth, as if he had never been shot at all.
The shock cost her the chance to call to her labori, but she saw he wouldn’t have been able to help her anyway. The burly guard and his labori counterpart returned through the door and had them restrained within the minute, despite Ricks’ vehement struggling. The governor strode over.
“I apologize, Miss Largen.” He pulled the parchment from her pocket. “Really, I regret having to do this.”
A gesture and the guard lumbered out with Missy in his arms. The governor turned to the labori.
*
In all truth, Gerard Robinson would rather have left Miss Largen on her own but the governor, as member of parliament, had to cater to the interests of his people over his own. Quite the genius, Missy Largen had made up for losing the first alchemical milestone by starting immediately on the next. Even the master alchemist who’d discovered chrysopoeia gold had given up on the possibility of Aether, settling instead for a steady job with his bolstered reputation. But she had the determination and arrogance of her bourgeois caste, and had used it to her advantage.
She had discovered Aether, and the governor was going to take it from her.
He reminded himself that this was necessary. If the labori weren’t nipped in the bud, the people would have even more time to assimilate them as common servants so when the rebellion happened, it would be too late.
“Open his torso, guard.”
“Yes, master.”
Labori had no pressure sensors except in their hands and feet, let alone pain sensors, yet Ricks seemed to at least understand, and fear, what was happening. Certainly, he could see the larger labori rip his torso plate open. The governor advanced on him and flipped the kill-switch behind his exposed heart chamber. The labori’s eyes blanked and slid shut with the sigh of his heart chamber deactivating.
And that is that, Robinson thought to himself, as he removed the Aether-filled sacs from Ricks’ thoracic cavity. The lungs would be stored alongside Missy Largen’s backpack – and the Aether sample he’d found in it – in a private safe, for when humanity could use it without destroying itself. In the far future. In the meantime the labori would be dealt with more permanently. “Send him to the scrapper.”
“Yes, master.”
*
Down a few flights of steps and past stone corridors that looked out of place in the new age of wood and metal, Missy found herself in the dungeon. There were cells other than her own, barely visible in the darkness past the metal bars that kept her from her freedom. A guard stood by the door, back to her, motionless. One of the disciplined soldiers, she expected, who refused to be trumped by the labori, instead training themselves to be better than their new recruits. Some at least, through medit
ation, learnt to be as still as mechanicals, which came to be known as the mark of an elite soldier.
Missy doubted she was getting past this soldier any time soon. She settled in a back corner of her cell, curling her legs to her torso and hugging her knees as she surveyed her prison. A way out would reveal itself eventually – or so she hoped.
*
The junkyard, where even the sunlight seemed rusty. Stretching lines of dead men walking – mindless natural gold, blackened steel and dull bronze with their rubber skin and flesh already removed – weaved around towering mountains of trash. Most of it was scrap metal, household appliances and even other labori, unidentifiable after an experience with the scrapper and now decomposing past recognition.
Unresponsive eyes ignored the labori guard as it trudged past them, blindly moving toward the same destination at the centre of the junkyard. In its arms, the limp body of an incapacitated labori, of gold that shone brighter in the sunset light than even those from aristocratic households.
Governor Robinson headed separately for the scrapper’s control room, nervously hurrying past the eerie decay of his surroundings. By the time he arrived, Ricks’ body was already in place and the other labori were filing in to fill up the area under the scrapper’s head.
Hand resting on the lever that would activate the scrapper, Robinson paused. Here he was, after having been brought up by domestic labori, repaying all the trouble his parents had set them to by destroying them. Every single one. Then again, they were only machines, and machines were scrapped here every day – why should labori be any different?
Ah, but one of them had a soul. Had, had. He’d taken it from him, in the form of the Aether in his heart.
Necessity. The labori named Ricks had murdered once, just half an hour before; he would do it again.
Outside, none of the labori looked up as the heavy head of the scrapper began to fall, gaining speed as it closed in. They stood absolutely still, as per orders, hands by their sides and eyes staring blankly forward. Only the labori guard stood with his arms up, cradling the most important victim in this round of scrapping.