And yet, this was not what presently captivated them. The mechanical giant charging down the corridor occupied the main of their attention.
It resembled the colossus that had carried their ship in, and though only a quarter as big as that mountainous doorman, it was still large enough to make Iren seem a child. Its shoulders were broad; its legs were stout; and its arms hung near the ground. It suggested, at least to Senlin’s eye, the unlikely marriage of train locomotive and gorilla.
Running made it sound like an anchor chain unspooling from a winch. The blank, white dial, which stood in the stead of a face, made it difficult to tell whether it saw them standing in its way or not. It skidded to a halt just short of the unflinching Byron, who had apparently been yelling, though no one could him over the clamor.
“Don’t run! Don’t run! You’re tearing up the carpets again. Bad! Naughty Ferdinand! Why did the master think it wise to give a two hundred and ninety ton train legs to run on and the brain of a fourteen pound dog to think with?”
“You shouldn’t say that about your brother,” Edith said.
Byron stamped the ground at her, a gesture that seemed to suit his stag head more than his piped trousers. “If you ever call him that again I will gore you.”
As they spoke, Ferdinand bent down to examine each of the crew separately. Adam could not resist touching the side of the giant’s face. The feel of cold steel was almost surprising; the thing seemed so full of life.
“He’s a genius,” Adam said.
“I assure you, he’s not,” Byron said.
“I mean the Sphinx. These machines, you, all of it, it’s like seeing the future,” the young man said in a wondering way. The stag tossed his head in pleasure at the praise.
Like a dog inspecting houseguests, Ferdinand’s movements were at once rapid and clumsy. The walking engine’s glowing face illuminated theirs, which only spotlit their alarm when he began tapping at their side arms with a finger like a stovepipe.
“You’re armed?” Byron said, touching his throat in a formal gesture of appall.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t notice,” Edith said, unbuckling her sword belt amid Ferdinand’s probing. “We were thrown off the boat before I could explain— Get off me, Ferdinand!”
“He’s not going to let us go a step further until you give them up. You know how protective he is.”
Following the first mate’s lead, Captain and crew laid their pistols and sabers in Ferdinand’s waiting hand. The walking locomotive stowed their weapons in a cupboard inside his chest with all the reckless zest of an underpaid porter. They cringed to hear their beloved pieces clang and rattle inside his cavity.
“And the chains, too,” Byron said without looking at Iren.
“But they hold my pants up,” Iren said, which was increasingly true. Their poor diet had taken its toll.
“Well, it’s a good thing you have two hands then,” Byron said.
“You want me to walk around holding my pants?” She attempted to loom over the stag, though he pointedly ignored her.
“Frankly, I think you’re the best man for the job,” Byron said. “But if you want, you can ask the scrub brush to do it for you.” He nodded at Voleta.
Senlin knew Iren well enough to detect the subtle change in her stance, the squaring and opening of her feet. She was preparing to attack. Senlin stepped between them, and craned his head about until Iren was unable to look past him. Only after securing her gaze with his own did he speak, and then in a most moderate tone. “We must read this situation carefully. This is a lot to absorb at once. We must think long and hard, must delay any confrontation until absolutely necessary. And we can only do that because of you. You are our courage, Iren. We don’t look to you for your chains or your might; no, we look to you for your nerve. That is all we need now.”
Iren was reminded why she liked the man, why she had decided to yoke her fate to his; for all his failings, he was at least appreciative of her and all the crew. She should never forget that Finn Goll had made a life for himself while taking hers for granted.
Even so, she was uncomfortable with their present lot. “I liked the Sphinx better when he didn’t exist,” she said, handing her chains over.
Satisfied that his duty was done, the colossus turned quite friendly, almost frolicsome. Byron continued to bark at the amiable wrecker as he approached a brass panel set into the wall. It contained three rows of numbered buttons, twenty-three in all. He depressed one, and the passageway began to rise.
It had occurred to none of them that the entire length of the corridor’s floor was in fact an elevator and the means for approaching the white doors set so high on the pink paper cliff. The elevation made the door they had come by seem to shrink. Everything around them was falling into the floor. It was quite disorienting. A hum permeated the air and the shiver of unseen machinery traveled through the pack of rugs. Otherwise, their ascent was quite placid.
Without further explanation, the irksome stag began a stiff march down the corridor. Traversing the hallway as it rose played a terrible trick on their equilibrium; it appeared as if they were climbing a hill, though the floor was perfectly level. With each step, they staggered like foals. Since he was accustomed to the phenomenon, Byron was pitiless in his pace.
“You might not guess it to look at it now, but once upon a time, the Sphinx hosted hundreds of leaders, dignitaries, intellectuals, and artists. Since the Sphinx could not allow his guests free access to all his inventions and experiments, he constructed this hall to manage the flow of traffic.”
“What happens if you open the door, and the hall’s not there?” Voleta asked, pulling at Iren’s arm as she tried to keep pace with the marching stag.
“The doors won’t open until the hall arrives.”
“What if I broke it down?”
“You would fall into a hole, and no one would miss you.”
Their ascent halted just as they arrived at the end of the hall. The doors before them looked as if they belonged on a bank vault. Byron turned to deliver some final insult, but his fraternal engine spoiled his act. Ferdinand pushed the doors open.
The Sphinx, what could only be the Sphinx, waited on the other side. And they saw Edith had been right. He did look like a spoon.
Chapter Four
“The Sphinx could never reveal himself without losing his essential mystique. To be the Sphinx is to be unknown. If, however, he were a myth, he would be just as unknowable. We can only hope that one day he will emerge and prove once and for all that he does not exist.”
- The Myth of the Sphinx: A Historical Analysis by Saavedra
Butterflies colored the air with bodies bright as a woman’s brooch and wings as fine as vellum. Separately, they ticked like a pocket watch; together, the fluttering kaleidoscope raised a mechanical drone.
Their wings were painted to mimic domestic scenes: the blue and white pattern of a china plate; the gleaming grain of polished burl; the creamy porcelain of a sink; and the yellow blooms of a bouquet. The swarm gamboled inside the burnished copper dome overhead, dazzling Senlin and his crew with their quaint camouflage.
A bolt of lightning shot up and, in an instant, transformed the butterflies into smoking, tumbling ash.
Voleta tried to catch one of the larger wafers, but the moment the black flake lighted upon her hand, it crumbled into soot. “What a waste! They were so pretty. Why did you do that?”
The Sphinx’s voice sounded as if it were being blown through an old trumpet. “To keep their secrets, my dear,” he said.
He was tall to the point of gauntness and showed not an inch of skin. His hood started in a crooked point at his crown, and ran to the floor where it formed a puddle of black velvet. He still held the device that had thrown the lightning; it resembled a tuning fork, but it seemed far too innocuous to be capable of striking such a spark. Under his cowl, he wore a concave mirror as a mask.
“I see the resemblance,” Iren whispered to Edith, though the first
mate was too on edge to respond. Iren had never seen Edith look so pale. She wished she hadn’t given up her chain so quickly.
Senlin was not oblivious to the strain his friends were under. First, the essential bond of the ship had been taken from them, and now, they stood in the presence of a myth. It was all a little much to digest at once. He knew they would look to him for composure. Whatever came, he had to hold himself together.
The room recalled a gentleman’s study, albeit an opulent one. A vast desk dominated much of the lacquered floor, its top bearing the trappings of industry. Books and papers were stacked and strewn amid a variety of tools and equipment, from a jeweler’s tweezers to a sewing machine, from a rack of test tubes to a ballpeen hammer. Engines lay in states of assembly or disassembly; it was impossible to tell which. Some of the machines resembled an animal’s limb, and one, alarmingly, a humanoid head.
The shelves behind the desk banked enough books, artifacts, and pottery to stock a museum. The miscellany encompassed the room, rising up to the lip of the copper dome. Senlin noted the absence of a ladder or stairs, leaving him to wonder whether the display was for show, or if the Sphinx, when no one was looking, climbed his shelves like a spider monkey.
Marya waved to him from a high alcove where she sat swinging her legs. She plucked an emu’s egg from a gold eggcup, and began to bobble it playfully, pretending that she might drop it. Senlin winked at her.
Whatever came, he had to hold himself together.
“What have you done to my arm?” the Sphinx said.
Edith stiffened. It was all she could do to formulate a reply, though the Sphinx had crossed the room before she could finish. He moved strangely, gliding as easily as a dust mop across the glossy floor.
“Nothing. It’s run out of fuel, and my stock was lost. The engine is fine.” She had just gotten the arm out of its sling when the Sphinx glommed to it.
“Fine? Fine?” The Sphinx’s gloved hands ran all about the arm, caressing it, peeling back its many panels like the petals of an artichoke. “Where did this dent come from? Is this rust? You’ve soaked it. And you haven’t been oiling it, have you? Look at this: the radius is sheared. What have you done?”
The chastisement was so rapid and fierce Edith hadn’t time to reply.
“Now, see here…” Senlin began valiantly.
“Ferdinand, if he speaks again, tighten his lips for me, please,” the Sphinx said without interrupting his inspection of Edith’s arm. “Where’s Captain Lee?”
“Dead,” Edith said.
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“No, I’m sure the thought never crossed your mind.” The Sphinx stepped back from the limb and emitted an unnerving, reverberating tsk-tsk. He produced an eggbeater drill from some recess of his robe and began unscrewing bolts in Edith’s shoulder. “It’ll take a few days to repair, and then maybe a few days more to decide whether you deserve to have it back or not. Now, tell me who you’ve brought me.”
Though jostled and disturbed by it, Edith tried not to look as the Sphinx worked upon her arm. “These aren’t recruits, sir. These are my captain and crew.”
“A cyclops, an addict, a hod, and an old woman who seems to have lost her belt. Quite the crew.”
Iren pulled and twisted the waist of her pants, wringing their hem rather than the Sphinx’s neck. Voleta petted the amazon’s arm to calm her.
“The boy seems like a fine candidate for an eye. I have just such a thing, a perfectly good ocular engine that was ejected by its last host.”
“Ejected?” Adam said, surprised that the conversation had wheeled so quickly around to him.
“An infection pushed it from her head, but don’t fret, my boy— the eye is in perfect condition.”
“He’s an inveterate coward and a thief,” Edith said in a near bark. “He’d take your wonderful engine and pawn it without a second thought.”
Adam looked as if he’d been skewered by the first mate’s words. He understood what she was trying to do, but he wished she might’ve invented a flaw that was a little further from the truth.
“And yet you have him on your crew?”
“He’s working off a debt,” Edith said.
“What about the hod girl? Is she ill at all?”
“Absolutely healthy, except for her conscience, which was stillborn, I’m afraid. We nearly left her on a ledge this morning.”
“Truly,” the Sphinx said, amused.
“It’s true.” Voleta craned out her chin proudly. “But if you’re giving out engines, I’d like an extra set of arms.”
“Oh, you would? Whatever for?”
“So I could waltz with a man and punch him in the kidneys at the same time.” She put a manic smirk on. “That’d be grand. He’d say, ‘Oh, darling, someone is pummeling my guts!’ And I’d say, ‘I can’t imagine who!’”
“See, she’s ruthless,” Edith said.
“Why are you being so defensive?” the Sphinx said, churning his drill into her arm. “You’re obviously fond of them, Edith; you needn’t pretend. You act as if my gifts would be a punishment. But you know I am nothing if not fair in my terms and explicit in my expectations.”
Having loosened the final bolt, the Sphinx pulled the engine from her shoulder and handed it to Byron whose demeanor had turned quite servile.
Pale faced and with brightened eyes, Edith touched her shoulder where the scarred and purpled skin puckered about four empty bores. She had not believed, had not wanted to believe, that her arm would be so summarily removed. It was too essential a thing to be just unscrewed and walked away with. There wasn’t even blood to mark the loss, just a sense of unbalance and a terrible lightness.
Byron carried her crooked, lifeless arm to the Sphinx’s desk and laid it down as reverently as a mourner sets flowers on a grave.
“You are very disappointing.” Senlin’s voice, clear and loud, startled them all. Remembering his charge, Ferdinand clomped over to Senlin, who was barreling on. “I’ve walked through your Tower, and seen your mighty works. But I never dreamed that their fruits would be squandered upon such vanity!” He shouted the final word into the milky glass of Ferdinand’s face. The walking locomotive’s hands parted on either side of Senlin’s head, as it prepared to applaud the man’s brains out.
Only after Ferdinand had begun to drive its hands together did the Sphinx intervene with a small signal. The palms of the machine, each broad as a washboard, stopped within a whisper of Senlin’s ears. “It is not my Tower. But, please, do go on,” the Sphinx said.
“The Tower is an electrical generator. The Basement pulls the water, the Parlor fires it, the Baths move the steam, and the turbine of New Babel turns out the current. I’m sure other ringdoms contribute to the process. Your machines make this possible, but much of the work is done by men and women, some of them slaves, some of them free but throwing all their health and wealth at this useless industry. Because what becomes of the electric current? Why, it drains out upon your doorstep. All those lamps burning away in your corridor, burning away in empty rooms— is that how you spend their sacrifice? How noble. How worthwhile.”
“I agree,” the Sphinx said.
“With what part?” Senlin asked.
“The agreeable part.”
Ducking past the looming engine, Senlin approached the Sphinx. Byron raised huffing objections, but Senlin was undeterred. “You have these machines, these powerful, autonomous locomotives capable, I’m sure, of incredible feats of strength.” Narrowing the gap, his own upside-down reflection grew in the Sphinx’s mocking bowl of a face. “Take that colossus in your port, for example. I bet he and a few more like him could replace all the hods in the Tower. You could free men from their drudgery if you just released your valets.”
“Oh, please, let’s not pretend,” the Sphinx said and leaned down, drawing so close that Senlin observed his upside down face swell, twist into ribbons, and then coalesce again, enlarged and right side up. It was strange
to be menaced by his reflection. “You don’t care. Not about the hods or the masses pedaling for beer and stoking for a show. You don’t care about anyone really, not even this supposed crew of yours.”
“Really?” Senlin said and refused to look away from the shaking saucers of his own eyes.
“Of course not. I’ll prove it to you.” The Sphinx’s buzzing voice lifted with merriment. “But why don’t we continue our conversation in a more comfortable environment?”
The Sphinx lead them through a brief vestibule where Senlin found time to whisper in Edith’s ear, “We will get it back.”
Her dazed stare flitted to his and seemed to find a little relief.
They entered what was in many ways a traditional music room, complete with portrait chairs, a cheerful fire in a glazed-brick hearth, and hanging tapestries depicting scenes of musicians playing instruments. But where one might reasonably expect to see a piano, there stood instead a wizened tree.
The hill of soil that held the tree lay upon the floor like the sweepings of a broom. A fishbowl lens in the ceiling cast a pale, orange light. Almond-shaped leaves adorned the bowers and dried upon the tile floor all about the twisted trunk. Most curiously of all, a scattering of piano keys erupted like mushrooms from the soil.
Voleta ventured over to pluck one from the dirt. “It’s a piano tree?”
Byron took the key back with a deft little snatch and returned it to its socket in the earth. “It’s a type of ash. It was given to the Brick Layer by one of his masons.” The stag clapped the dirt from his hands, ringing them like finger cymbals. “Originally, it was just a sprig in a pot that lived upon the Brick Layer’s piano. But after several months, the piano began to lose its tone. When the Brick Layer tried to open the instrument, he found the sapling’s roots had broken through the lid and grown all about the strings. The Brick Layer couldn’t bear to cut them out, so he decided to sacrifice the instrument, which he continued to play until the last note was silenced by the tree.”
Arm of the Sphinx (Books of Babel Book 2) Page 24