Clockworks are incapable of feeling pain, or any other sensation for that matter. Even though we know this to be true, it is still sort of sad to see an automaton reduced from its service to a rubbish heap. The wrench found its way on top of a seam in the metal, burst it, and forced the broken casing into the turning cogs and sprockets inside. The wheels ground to a halt, and the whole automaton fell silent for a second.
Liza placed her foot on the casing to wrench out her weapon, but just then the arms suddenly closed on her torso, and rather unceremoniously bustled her into the metal cage. The door slammed shut, and a locking mechanism clanked into place. Liza was stunned for only just long enough to formulate sentences using words which would make my mother faint and my father whistle.
“Cap'n, watch th'arms!” she cried out, immediately getting out a smaller wrench from her belt to try to disassemble the locking device from the inside. I vaulted over a couch as one of them approached me, and as I turned back, fumbling for my knife, I noticed that there was a momentary hesitation in the machine. It stopped fully, then rotated to one side and began to come around the couch, carefully moving to not damage it.
An idea began to form.
It wasn't really Wrightworth's fault that his automatons were creatures of order. They had the basic instructions they were given, and had no choice but to follow them. They didn't know how to bend rules to achieve objectives, like humans can. After all, you can't put a human brain into a steam engine or clock spring.
Victoria and Dale were both safely avoiding their would-be captors, but two of them were coming for me at the same time. Not exactly fair, but then, we weren't exactly being fair ourselves. They aimed to pincer me behind the couch, but there were plenty of escape routes I could take. These machines were not the quickest, but what they lacked in speed, they made up for in relentlessness and pure determination. I jumped to one side of the couch, and they circled around it. I ducked behind a table; they came to the other side. I was growing sort of weary of running and jumping so much.
I heard Luke cry out and turned, shining my lantern in the direction I figured his voice came from. It was a mistake to take my eyes off the floor, however-- I took one step, and my boot fell on a plush pillow knocked from the couch over which I vaulted several times. It slid effortlessly against the polished hardwood floor, and my foot went with it, sprawling me awkwardly on the floor. One of the machines loomed over me, and reached downward with one of its arms.
I scrambled for something to put between me and the arm, my fingers closing only on the other pillow from the couch. I flung it at the machine and rolled to one side. The pillow struck the machine's outstretched arm, and then fell down to the wheels, where the fabric got caught on the corner of a metal plate. It hung there by a few threads.
The automaton suddenly jerked to a halt, then retracted its arm and backed up, continuing until it banged into the wall. At this, it jerked violently again, and after a few seconds of grinding and whirring in its mechanisms, stopped completely.
“I knew it! They won't harm anything in this room that's not us!” I called. Luke, for his part, was all right, though the machine had seized his jacket and taken it from him. It lay in a heap inside the cage. “Box them in with furniture!”
It took some doing, but with only six of them now, it was an easier time to lure them all into one area while Dale and Martha pulled the heavy couches into a sort of box shape in the corner. Victoria, Luke, and I maneuvered them into the corner area, and as soon as they were all gathered, those two pushed the entrance to the couch-corner shut, and we all dodged over the back of the nearest furniture piece.
Locked in a corner, with no ability to move without damaging the furniture, the automatons bumbled about for a few seconds, bumping into each other and clanging about before coming to a rest. All that was left now was the damaged one that held our poor engineer. She has been working at the mechanism for a minute or two now, swearing like a proper sailor under her breath the whole time. The mechanism finally came apart, and the locking bar's spring was easily removed. She kicked open the cage door, dropped to the floor, and seized her big wrench.
An irritated Liza is like a bottle of champagne. The cork pops off with quite a bit of force, and the contents spray out for a few seconds before coming to a rest. I briefly thanked the Lady that Liza didn't have a bad temper, but Dale vocally lamented the “disassembly-by-force” of the already-broken automaton. Liza wiped her forehead, and smirked.
“Nary a cage th'c'n hold th'likes o'me, I always say,” she said, and gave the heap one last kick.
The issue of the bars was not a terrible lot of trouble, once Dale and Liza pulled up the floorboards in front of them and disabled the mechanism. While my crew and I fancied ourselves explorers, the other part of our self-given title was “treasure hunters,” and we were not ones to pass up a perfectly good pile of sellable salvage. Martha stuffed one bag full of fancy knickknacks and paintings from the drawing room, and once we were back in the main entry, we left the bag by the door to get on the way out. This was standard practice for our collections.
We now knew two things: one, that the floor was likely going to be pressure-sensitive practically everywhere, and two, that there should be no surprise if walls open and things come out. The doll that had greeted us had retracted back to its place in the track, and was silent, but who knew where the next doll would pop out and cordially tell us to wait.
How long had they been waiting, themselves, to tell a visitor their message?
Liza cracked her neck. “Place like this, I wager th'top part is his house, and th'bottom would be th'workshop. Makes sense, ye'd want guests tae see ye've got plenty o'th'niceries, and keep them out o'your work.” She indicated the large doors on either side of the giant staircase. “We want tae take his niceties, th'bet'd be tae go up there, but I think we sh'd see if we cannae get to a basement. That's likeliest where th'good stuff'll be.”
Martha grinned. “Good stuff is anything we can take with us and turn into Lyrea, I say.” She licked her lips. The crew wasn't ill-fed, certainly, but it had been a short while since we'd had a grand banquet like Martha liked to make up.
Dale chuckled. “If there's something to analyse down there, then there's something to sell. I'm sure the Old Capitol's museum district would dance for this man's work, if what we have seen so far is anything to base a judgment on. Downward, I say as well.” He nodded.
Victoria's eyes drifted over the doors, and then turned toward me. “Well, Captain?”
I nodded. “If there's nothing down there, we can come back to the top, but his journal indicates there will most certainly be something down--” I said, but was suddenly interrupted by a low rumbling, as if from far away but also all around us, something was shifting against another something, and they were both huge. It felt like a small earthquake.
We all tensely stood as the rumbling sound stopped and the tremors died out. What on earth was that? It felt like the whole place was being dragged along the ground like a child drags a wagon with a broken wheel. Several seconds passed in stillness.
I sighed in relief, and brushed my hand down the buttons of my jacket. “Let's get down there. Put everything in a bag, and then get out of here. We'll see if we can't find a way out of the ice another way, and build a heating device to clear the cave so we can pull the Nephele out. I am sure Wrightworth has something we can use for that downstairs.”
Liza pushed open one of the doors which, sure enough, opened into a staircase downward under the grand staircases in the foyer. Both doors led to the same staircase, which terminated in a humongous trapdoor that was the foyer staircases. On either side of the walls going down, a rail-and-pulley system seemed to be able to ferry large things up into the house's entryway through the trapdoors that opened when the staircases swung upwards and outwards on great hinges. This was a sophisticated setup old Wrightworth had here.
We filed down, stepping as lightly as possible. I motioned the others to keep
close to the walls, walk near the baseboards to minimise the pressure their weight put on any potential trip panels. This part of the house was definitely not well-decorated, or in fact decorated at all. The bare hardwood stairs terminated onto a similar floor, strips of metal sheeting running the length and breadth of the huge downstairs room. On each of the three walls we could see, large, metal-banded doors were tightly shut, some with bars across them. This room seemed to be a workstation, as there were dozens of metal tables, above which hung down throngs of tools and lenses on metal-hinged arms. The walls themselves were covered in racks of tools, shelves of spare parts, rows upon rows of cans of paint and varnish, and items I could not identify at first glance. Along each wall, there stood four automatons.
Not at all like the ones upstairs, these clockworks seemed to be left bare, no features painted on their faces, no frills or bows or even clothing at all for that matter. The intricate joints and sockets of the automatons were fascinating, but the most eye-catching aspect of these automatons were the two sets of arms and the squat rolling belts that made up the locomotive mechanism at their base. To say they were laboratory assistants was a safe bet.
On the back wall, a large, rounded shape stood squat and heavy in the shadows. I shined my lantern that direction, and the light fell across the surface of a huge metallic tank, with rounded corners, rivets welded into the metal to make sure there was a tight seal.
Dale whistled. "That's definitely the central gas store," he said, and he and Liza began toward it.
"Watch for trip panels!" was on the tip of my tongue, pushing the doors of my mouth open to run out and catch them. My lips parted, and breath coursed through my throat, emerging as sound. The words formed in my mouth, and just so nearly tumbled out to warn them, but they were too slow.
Click.
"Son of a bitch," I murmured, as all around us, pressure valves clanked shut in the bases of the automatons. A baker's dozen little pilot lights flared into light, and their luminescence, just barely enough to register in my eyes, was obscured by the grates that covered their tiny boiler systems. The water in their pressure tanks began to melt, heat up.
We had less than a minute, I wagered, before they began to move. "Don't just stand there, you two," I said. "Get that tank open and running!"
We would need light to be able to fight in this room. I cast my lantern across the walls, and was relieved to see several gas lamps adorning the walls, these ones much less decorative than the ones upstairs. Perhaps more important than just having the lamps, though, I noticed the ventilation grates in the ceiling, each one with a great fan inside it. These, too, began to rotate slowly.
"There seems to be pressure inside!" said Dale, checking dials and gauges. Liza pulled a ratchet-like tool from her belt, and affixed one end of it to a large valve.
"I'm gonnae throw 'er open!" she growled, clenching her teeth. Her breath came out as a long white puff as she strained on the cold valve, her muscles tensing hard against the tool. Dale grabbed her gloved wrists and pulled too, and with a sudden KA-CHUK, the two of them fell backwards, Liza's frame crashing into Dale's as they tumbled.
A hissing sound emanated from the valve, and Liza grinned. "We've got gas!" she said, and wrapped her fingers around a lever on the wall by the valve. One good yank, and the lever clunked into position. With a sudden and pronounced click sound from all around, igniters in the gas lamps on the walls lit the tiny streams of fuel that began to flow. The room filled with a warm light, and the scent, a sort of ice-and-dust odor, began to change into one of lightly burning candles.
On the tables here and there were various projects in equally various stages of completion. To one side, a slender brass doll body lay in pieces, seemingly in the process of being assembled. To another, a large clockwork hand was partially attached to several pumps and rubber tubes. One table, however, caught my eye. It was littered with jars and beakers of liquid in various colours, with vague shapes submerged in each. We could spare a second to look...
This table seemed most recently used, which is to say that it still had small tools scattered about along with the jars, while the other tables seemed to be relatively tidy. A piece of cloth covered a dome-like object about the size of a watermelon in the center of the table, stained with what I assumed were the fluids in the jars. I examined one of them closely.
The liquid was a murky, clouded sort, and it was only by virtue of the gas lamp shining through it that I could see a shape. I jostled the jar a little, hoping to see what was inside.
What appeared to be a glass eye attached to several tiny copper wires bumped against the inside of the jar. I shuddered. Artists call it art, and scientists call it science, but whatever it is, prosthetic eyes look too real for me. The way they are painted, the way they are polished, they just look a bit too real. This one even had false nerves coming off the back of it! I swallowed hard.
The assistant machines were beginning to boil, and any second they would likely begin to move. Dale and Liza rejoined the others, and Dale called to me, "Well, captain? What now?"
I thought for a moment. It stands to reason that these automatons were assistants for helping with work in the workshop. Their innate behaviour should not be hostile to people, but the chances that someone like Wrightworth would have added extra instructions for people who were not him were high enough to warrant care. "Everyone, get up on the stairs, around the corner. I'll see if I can't figure out their general attitude toward people. If it's less than friendly, we wait until they shut off again, and then try not to trip the floor switches." I checked the handle of my knife again, just to make sure I was still armed. Heaven knows knives don't really help against metal, but it was at least something.
The others retreated a ways up the stairs, around the curve up to the first floor foyer. As they went back up, I turned again to the desk. I seized the corner of the stained cloth, and slid it off the thing it covered, a smooth glass dome vacuum-sealed to a smooth plate, into which was pumped a thin green liquid, this one much more transparent than the others. Suspended in this liquid by a small platform inside was--
I started to throw up a little in my mouth.
I could hear the rotors inside the machines whir to life, here and there and then all of them together. I heard the steam releases in their systems start to build pressure. And yet, I could not stop staring at the thing in the dome.
Suspended in the liquid was a brain, discoloured by the green liquid but otherwise preserved. The exact size and shape of a human's. Hundreds of tiny needles were stuck into it, and the other ends of those needles were attached to little clamps on the ends of wires that fed into a box on the smooth plate.
I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and tore myself away, turning to face the nearest bank of automatons, my fists clenched tightly.
The four of them stood motionless on the wall. I sighed, breathing through my teeth. They were not moving, but that does not mean they were not a threat. My eyes wandered to the levers at the side of the table, carefully avoiding the thing in the glass, and I reached out to one of them. They were colour-coded, but not labeled any other way. A red, a green, and a blue lever invited me to try pulling one. Did I dare risk it?
*****
Here's one of my biggest weaknesses, you see. I have a sort of issue with curiosity. In a completely equalised scenario, I have the habit of trying things out to see which direction the balance shifts, to add a little variables into the equation. It's gotten me into a bit of trouble before. I could tell you stories.
My fingers closed around the blue lever, and I pulled on it until it clicked. Its spring pushed it back to its original position. I spun to face the automatons on the wall nearest, ready for them to move, but all I heard was a faint hum behind me. The machines remained motionless.
I sighed, and straightened the collar of my jacket as I turned back to the table. "I think we're safe, everyone," I said, the last word falling flat as I registered the hum. The base of the glass dome had slid
open, and I could see the edge of a rotating disk inside. It rotated slowly, and was the sort of tan-yellow colour of beeswax.
Victoria took great interest in the brain. "It's almost perfectly preserved... There's very little deterioration at all. It's like a photograph of itself. And these connections, these wires, they are placed very specifically. Whomever did this preservation knew quite a bit about the working of the brain. Here is the portion of the brain that deals with personality, and here's the portion that deals with senses, and here's the speech center..."
She hesitated. "It's almost like the thing is still alive. Impossible, but..."
Liza, meanwhile, was inspecting the turning mechanism and the disk with a lens. "This looks like it's a recordin' device, like a phonograph blank. There's a needle back up in there, attached tae a wee wire tha'goes up intae th'box. If I didn't know better, I'd lay a wager on it bein' wired direc'ly tae th'brain up in there."
Luke, Dale, and Martha had taken to excavating the salvageable parts from the other tables, putting them in bags. Dale particularly relished taking the large hand, mumbling something about clock-working it into a cartography tool later. He called me over to a machine, though, to have a look at it.
The Nephele Ship: The Trilogy Collection (A Steampunk Adventure) Page 5