Merciless Reason

by Oisin McGann

  “What I’m doing is for the good of mankind,” he declared. “The family wouldn’t understand. There’s hardly a man among them who is capable of thinking beyond their petty greed. They would only get in my way, or misuse my discoveries to try and make short-sighted gains in money or power. I am focused on an altogether bigger picture. Come with me, Cathal. Let me show you.”

  Gerald gestured to Red, who took Cathal’s elbow in order to pull him to his feet. Cathal shook his hand off, rising out of the chair.

  “Touch me again, yeh stinkin’ crawler, and I’ll shove me foot so far up yer arse, I’ll kick yer teeth out.”

  Red laughed and jerked his head in Gerald’s direction. Cathal glowered at him, but then hobbled after Gerald, the shackles on his feet keeping his steps frustratingly short. All three left the chamber and made their way along another stone passageway braced with stout timbers.

  They passed a warmly lit room and Cathal was able to glance in, catching sight of a wall of leather-bound books, all alike, and an armchair drawn up beside an oil lamp which stood on a rough wooden table. A massive figure sat in the chair, which was positioned to the left side of the door. The seat barely contained him, his legs stretched out to the front, his ape-like arms jutting over the sides, hanging from shoulders that were at least as wide as the armchair itself.

  Dressed in shirt, trousers and good shoes, the huge man with whitening hair was reading one of the books in the light of the lamp. He held the book in his left hand. His other arm ended not with a hand, but with a kind of claw. It was not unlike a crab’s, except that it appeared to be made of metal or ceramic, like an engimal’s. The giant held it to his brow, obscuring his face, as if deeply moved by what he read. Cathal stopped to try and get a better look, but Red pressed him on.

  “God, yer fierce nosey. Be a good dog, dere boy. Don’t be pokin’ yer snout in where it’s not wanted.”

  “Go an’ shite!”

  Gerald chose to ignore the friendly banter going on behind him. He slowed down to let Cathal catch up, and told Red to go on ahead. Once the man was far enough ahead to be out of earshot, Gerald began speaking as a schoolmaster might to a favored student with whom he was sharing an afternoon stroll. The clinking of Cathal’s chains echoed along the stone corridor, spoiling the image somewhat.

  “I don’t need to explain to you that it is the intelligent particles in our blood that give us our aurea sanitas, our … physical advantages. And that engimals are at least partially formed by the same particles. It is what allows them to heal; an ability in these machines that has confounded humans for hundreds of years. The particles may well explain how these machines can be alive at all, if we can learn enough about them.

  “I have studied mathaumaturgy for years, the mathematical language—once thought a kind of magic—that can be used to communicate with engimals. I tried showing some of the most intelligent engimals symbols and projected flashing lights into their eyes, even had them listen to a telegraph key in an attempt to convey messages. I have had some success, but it is incredibly slow and crude. You can say things like, ‘Sit down,’ ‘Are you thirsty?’ or ‘Follow me.’ Each message could take an hour or more to complete. The process was intolerable. If there was once a means of using this language to control engimals, I am sure it had to involve a machine that could translate this code, something that could convey instructions far faster than this ham-fisted method.

  “And then I discovered that one could transmit one’s intentions through music. Once I realized it, it made perfect sense. Music is basically a kind of mathematics, given fluid, graceful substance in the form of sound. I learned that if you focused your thoughts while playing a musical instrument, you could pass instructions on to an engimal.”

  Cathal didn’t say anything. He had seen engimals perform complicated series of tasks while Gerald stood nearby, playing his violin—his old, normal one—or sometimes just whistling. And he also knew that Gerald had gone much further. Cathal’s mind was distracted from the monologue for a moment as he noticed the noise of industrial machinery he had heard earlier was getting much louder now.

  “But if one can do this to engimals,” Gerald continued, “and if this form of command is acting upon the intelligent particles in the bodies of those creatures, then surely you could take command of the same particles if they were flowing in someone’s blood?”

  He came to a sudden halt and turned to face Cathal, an intense look on his features.

  “And as you have experienced for yourself, I was right. So far, my ability extends as far as controlling the movements, sometimes even the emotions, of anyone with aurea sanitas. That includes myself, of course. I have consciously increased my strength, speed, reflexes, my powers of healing and so on. My mind has far more control over my body than any normal human, and my body is reinforced like no other. Even your gifts are faint in comparison.

  “Imagine, if you will, a few well-chosen, rational people with my abilities,” Gerald said with a hint of wonder in his voice. “Placed in influential positions, we could end wars, enforce the law, cure disease. We could raise mankind up from the gutter of ignorance, superstition, greed and brutality in which it currently languishes. We could finally have a world ruled according to level-headed reason, rather than emotional or instinctive urges. It would require harsh measures in the beginning, as I have had to demonstrate, but in the end everyone could share in the benefits of control over the intelligent particles.”

  There was a rectangle of brighter light ahead; the end of the tunnel. The sounds of machinery clanked, clattered, gushed, thudded and hissed in the space beyond.

  “Yeh mean, ‘the world would be a better place if only everyone would live the way I told ’em’?” Cathal snorted. “Where have we heard that one before? Oh, yeah … from every dictator in history. Face it, Gerald, yer gibberin’ like a baboon. Yeh want to use yer head to make the world a better place? Top yerself and donate your brain to science. There’s real doctors who’d love to know what’s goin’ on in there.”

  “Now, you see, that’s the kind of repartee I’ve been missing,” Gerald laughed as they reached the end of the tunnel. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the, noise now. “You haven’t quite got Daisy’s talent for the cutting remark, but, by Jove, there’s spirit in that blunt delivery of yours. You were always one for the well-targeted insult.”

  Cathal emerged with his captor into a cavern, and his repartee failed him. The sight before them left him speechless.

  “I forgot to mention!” Gerald shouted over the racket. “My research has moved to a new level! After some recent discoveries into the nature of intelligent particles, I realized that merely attempting to control human behavior betrayed a certain lack of ambition. As a result, I require the particles in bulk supply! It took me some time to perfect the system, but I think I’ve cracked it. Welcome to the Engimal Works!”

  Cathal stared at the macabre scene before him, the noise almost overwhelming his senses. But only one question forced its way through his battered consciousness, and he turned and yelled it at Gerald:

  “Why are you using children?”

  XV

  UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

  CATHAL STOOD AT THE PIPE ORGAN in Gerald’s room in the underground lair, still in his shackles. Gerald was droning on and on about his experiments, but Cathal could not bring himself to pay him any attention. He was too badly shaken by all the things he had witnessed—in particular the demented scenes in what Gerald referred to as the ‘Engimal Works.” Cathal closed his eyes, tapping keys on the organs keyboard one at a time, listening intently, as if the sounds might give him some insight into the workings of Gerald’s mind. An organ like this normally relied on air pumped into it to work, but Cathal could see no trace of a pump. Probably because no pump was needed.

  Like Gerald’s violin, this instrument had been made largely from engimal parts. Having seen the slaug
hterhouse where these parts were harvested, and the children who worked there as slaves, Cathal had finally become convinced that Gerald was either truly evil or irretrievably insane.

  Gerald was sitting in one of the armchairs, holding his violin. He was not playing it, but rather stroking its strings with his fingers, as if it were a pet, while he outlined his dreams of healing the human race. The engimal’s dead body did not respond to his affectionate caresses. He was just launching into another outlandish theory on human-engimal relations when the roar of some animal echoed down the passageway leading to the Engimal Works. Gerald sat up abruptly, placing the instrument on the table beside him. Cathal looked up, but otherwise did not move. The sound came again, and this time Cathal thought he heard words in the bellow, though the noise sounded more likely to have come from the lungs of a buffalo than a human. In a moment of amused hope, Cathal wondered if one of the larger engimals had got loose from its pen and was wreaking havoc among its keepers.

  There came the irregular beat of numerous running feet, along with urgent, panicked shouts. The door to the passageway was closed over, and as the footfalls came closer one heavy pounding pair could be made out, leading the rest. Cathal and Gerald heard the panting breath of a large animal, then there was another incoherent bellow and the door was smashed open, some terrible force tearing it from its hinges and sending it clattering across the floor.

  The man who squeezed through the doorway was almost seven feet tall, and nearly a yard across at the shoulders. His large head was hung with a rectangular jaw that jutted out almost as far as his wide, flattened nose. Heavy brows hung low over deep-set blue eyes and his thick, wild hair was pale blond turning to white. The giant was trembling like a beast in shock, his eyes wide and crazed. Sweeping his gaze around the room, he exhaled a tortured, rasping breath and lumbered straight for Gerald, his massive arms outstretched. The fingers of his normal left hand were curled, grasping like a bears paw. Where his right hand should have been, a crab-like claw jutted out instead, opening jagged, grasping pincers.

  “Cathal, help me!” Gerald had time to cry before that bear-like hand clamped around his throat and the engimal claw swung back as if to knock his head from his shoulders.

  Drawing a slow breath in through his nose, Cathal folded his arms as best he could with his shackles, watching as Gerald was lifted out of his seat by the neck.

  “Cathal!” Gerald cried again, then his voice was choked into silence.

  Cathal decided to wait and think this through, wondering if this new development was likely to help his situation or make it worse. While he pondered, six of Gerald’s men piled into the room and threw themselves onto the giant’s back and shoulders. The massive man smashed one over the side of the head with his right forearm, then seized another by the ankle and swung him away across the room. The other four managed to drag him back, distracting him enough for Gerald to break his grip. Gerald delivered a sound punch to the giant’s jaw, hard enough to turn his head, but then the huge man grabbed him by the face and hurled him flailing against the bank of filing cabinets.

  A boulder-like fist splintered another man’s ribs and tumbled him into a crumpled heap on the ground. The giant was about to break the next man’s neck on the edge of one of the worktables when Cathal finally decided things were getting out of hand. He bunched himself up and dived against the back of the giant’s knees. The man toppled backwards and Cathal rolled out from underneath him, whipping the chain of his shackles across the brute’s face. He seized Gerald’s violin, intent on smashing it over the giant’s head.

  “Stop!” Gerald shouted, leaping over to get an arm around the maniac’s neck.” “Cathal, no!”

  His headlock cut off the blood to the giant’s brain, and the brute’s eyes went glassy, but he managed to get up into a kneeling position. The three men still able to move scrambled over and grabbed hold of his arms. Gerald gritted his teeth, keeping the lock on, and Cathal raised the violin again.

  The giant’s eyes rolled up into his head and he started shaking uncontrollably. This was not an effect of the head-lock. Gerald released him, but the shaking continued. Foam seeped from between the brute’s tightly clenched teeth.

  “He’s having convulsions!” Gerald barked. “Get him over to the organ, quickly!”

  It took all five of them to carry the violently jerking body over to the pipe organ, and as Gerald pulled a metal cable from the base of the organ, Cathal and the others clung on, trying to control each of the giant’s limbs as if they were thrashing snakes. The end of the cable was fitted with a threaded nut, and Gerald ordered them to flip the giant onto his front. Under the hair covering the back of his neck, Cathal was intrigued to see about an inch of the threaded end of a bolt protruding from the base of the man’s skull. Gerald hurriedly screwed the cable onto the bolt, then lunged over to the organ’s keyboards and began playing a soft, soothing tune.

  The giant’s fits grew weaker, subsiding to a twitching that eventually settled into stillness as the music continued to play. Cathal stayed where he was, on his knees by the giant’s engimal claw.

  “You can leave now,” Gerald told his men. “He is subdued.”

  The three men rose and staggered eagerly away. Helping their injured colleagues to their feet, they left the room, casting fearful glances back at the slumbering form on the floor. When they were gone, Cathal let his head hang, catching his breath before he spoke.

  “What in the name of Holy Jaysus was that all about?” he demanded.

  “He was dead for a long time, and I brought him back to life,” Gerald said in an offhand way as he wound down the tune. “But it was not achieved without cost.”

  Cathal regarded the still body, and then looked around the room at the destruction it had caused.

  “Well,” he said, snorting, “if you were going to bring someone back from the dead, I’m glad you picked the biggest, meanest, maddest bloody gouger you could find. Perhaps you should’ve started with some recently dead bank clerk or somethin.” Or a poet, maybe. Somebody who was a bit less of a bleedin’ berserker.”

  Gerald chuckled, and turned away from the organ to gaze down at the giant’s face. His expression could almost have been one of regret.

  “I can assure you, when this man is thinking clearly, he is far more dangerous. Most of us are.” Gerald knelt down and unscrewed the cable from the back of the huge man’s neck. “Part of the reanimation process involved injecting new intelligent particles into his brain. For some reason, these new particles are in conflict with those already present in his body—he had high concentrations of his own before I started. I have been unable to resolve this conflict. Every few days his body rejects the particles in his brain and I have to inject new ones—as I have just done. Obviously, I left it too long this time, distracted as. I was by other matters. The way things stand, our over-sized friend here is unable to live more than three or four days without this process. I have no idea why that is. It is incredibly frustrating.”

  “Heavens, Gerald!” Cathal exclaimed. “You mean you’re foolin’ about with a science beyond our understanding, and it’s havin’ unintended consequences? Well then, usin’ mindlessly violent barbarians for your experiments is the only rational course of action. What’s next? Rabid bleedin’ tigers? Armored polar bears, maybe?”

  “A mindlessly violent barbarian?” Gerald said softly, shaking his head. “Yes, I think we can do better than that.”

  He clicked his fingers near the giant’s head.

  “Come on, wake up,” he muttered. The giant’s eyelids flickered and began to open. “Come on. That’s it.”

  A deep, rumbling moan issued from the unconscious man’s lips, turning into a growl. Cathal stood up, his hands clutching the chain of his shackles, wishing he was capable of more than hobbling with his ankle chain. The giant let out another growl, opened his eyes and slowly sat up, pulling himself back to lean against
the wall. Gerald crouched down in front of him, snapping his fingers again.

  “Do you know who I am? Do you know where you are?”

  The giant’s engimal hand moved with startling speed, but with graceful control, catching Gerald’s fingers in its firm grasp.

  “Get your confounded fingers out of my face,” he said in a grinding voice that sounded old, malevolent. “Yes, I know you. You’re the blackguard who has raised me from the grave to help you counter the conniving schemes of that pit of vipers we call a family. And I am here, in this dungeon of a place, while you engage in your arcane and fiendish experiments upon me, in the hope of sustaining my life long enough for me to throw some reins on our relatives.”

  The giant’s head rotated, his gaze falling on Cathal for the first time.

  “You, I do not know—but then it seems much has changed in my absence. And not for the better, I might add.” His attention turned back to Gerald. “You must put an end to these convulsions. Their effects cloud my mind, and they leave me suffering terrible furies, which I struggle to control. My thoughts are still somewhat addled, even now. If I am to be capable of tackling the complexities of the finances of the North American Trading Company, and disentangle the machinations of some of our more ambitious kin, I will need my wits about me, Gerald. These violent rages must be brought to an end. I cannot—I will not—tolerate such a vulnerability”

  “That is unfortunate,” Gerald replied as Cathal watched this exchange in baffled surprise. “Because much as I would love to allow you to make a more thorough recovery, the time has come, I think, for you to meet the family.”

  “Jaysus,” Cathal sniffed, gazing round again at the wrecked room. “Good luck with that.”

  Daisy sat in an armchair in her office, high in the tower of Wildenstern Hall. She was reading Clancy’s letter again. It was the only source of comfort she had as she sat there, in the early hours of the morning, fretting over Cathal’s disappearance.