From the back he was not obviously a mechanical. In cap and gown, in dim light, he could easily have passed for his living self.
He led her swiftly through the garden, keeping to the hedges and the thickets. A tumult was rising behind them, voices both human and otherwise, and the barking of dogs. Emma was not a woman for prayer, but she dared hope that Ratisbon had escaped the hunt.
It was quiet here, the air warm and still. No stars shone, nor any moon.
Her guide was surefooted in the dark. Emma followed as closely as she might, making her way by feel and by instinct. Faintly through the din behind, she heard the sound of the river, water lapping grassy banks and the rustle of reeds.
A shadow awaited them: a flat-bottomed punt with a figure standing in it, darker than the darkness. By the gleam of his eyes, Emma knew him. “Ratisbon!”
She barely breathed the name, but her relief was strong and deep. “Madam,” he said. And in a completely different tone: “Sir.”
“Best be going,” Sir Willoughby said. In that light or lack thereof, his voice sounded remarkably human.
Ratisbon handed Emma into the punt even as Sir Willoughby clambered in behind. As Emma settled on the hard wooden rail of the seat, Lady Jocasta’s servant dug the pole into the bank. The craft lurched out into the current.
Lights swarmed and swirled farther upstream, around the walls of Xanadu. “What did you do?” Emma asked, not caring which of them chose to respond.
It was Sir Willoughby who answered, “I set a command on the servants. All in the same instant, they ceased whatever they were doing, marched in formation through the house, and proceeded to dismantle the outer wall.”
“Ah,” said Emma, both amused and impressed. “It seems they are still about it.”
“And so they shall be,” said Sir Willoughby, “until the sun rises or their masters manage to remove the codices. Which is not as easy as it might have been. I welded many of the ports shut.”
“You were always an evil genius,” Ratisbon said under his breath; but if Emma could hear, then certainly Sir Willoughby must.
“Evil perhaps,” he said, “but genius? Fool rather, and ten times fool.”
There was genuine pain in the words, though the voice was soft and calm.
“It was an accident, then,” Emma said.
“Oh, quite intentional, I assure you, Miss Rigby,” said the automaton that contained Sir Willoughby’s soul. “In my pride and vaunting folly I dreamed of immortality. I created a form of perfect beauty; I transferred my essence into it. I left my earthly remains behind, taking little care for their preservation. I had, after all, succeeded. I ruled triumphant. I had no further need of mortal flesh.”
Here on the river, in the warm and murmuring night, Emma considered the uses of delicacy. They were, she concluded, few. “It seems that you miscalculated,” she said.
“I did indeed,” said Sir Willoughby. “The eidolon was grown as a flower is, nurtured in the most secret of gardens. Like a flower, once taken from the earth, it withered. It began to age—fully a decade in a night, then more swiftly with the coming of day.
“I wasted too long in disbelief and then in horror. When at last I gathered my wits, it was too late. My mortal flesh was dead and rotting. The flesh that in my hubris I had made was nearly so.” He paused. An automaton had no need to breathe, but the man’s spirit trapped within it was overcome.
“You left your laboratory,” Emma said while he struggled within himself, “and returned to Xanadu. Yes?”
“Yes,” he said. “I nearly failed. With every furlong I travelled, the shell of my soul crumbled further. In the last moments, as I gave myself up to the inevitable, my allies transferred my essence into this sturdy if undistinguished receptacle.”
“Not one of your Adonises?” Emma asked.
“Those are pretty toys,” said Sir Willoughby, “designed to please for an hour or a day. They’re not built for much use. I couldn’t live in one for long before I had to transfer again, and so again—and with every transfer lose a little more of myself in the moment of nothingness between.
“And so,” Sir Willoughby said, “I inhabit ordinary leather and steel, with a heart of turning gears.”
They drifted down the river, riding the current in silence. Emma had much to reflect on: of science and secrets; of accidents and tragedies and an oath that she had sworn under another name than her own.
Then at last, as Sir Willoughby’s words repeated themselves in her mind, she remembered where she had seen the face of Pluto’s eidolon. A portrait in Lady Ada’s house. A likeness of her father, the great and infamous poet, the notorious Lord Byron.
o0o
The first light of dawn cast a pale sheen over the furnishings of the private salon at the Rose and Crown in Cambridge. Emma had come to it in relief so powerful that it weakened her knees. Here under lock and key were her own garments, and a couch on which she hoped to rest while Ratisbon prepared Lady Jocasta’s carriage for the return to London.
She might hope, but reality was a cold and merciless thing. A visitor awaited, sitting as upright and still as one of her own eidola.
Mistress Artemisia regarded Emma with a cool and dispassionate eye. “Good morning,” she said, “your highness.”
She spoke the title with a faint and yet distinct suggestion of irony.
Emma inclined her head. “Mistress Artemisia. To what do I owe the honour?”
“I believe you know, Miss—Ridley, is it?”
“Rigby,” said Emma.
“One of a certain lady’s agents, I understand,” said Mistress Artemisia. “Your disguise was rather convincing, as one might expect.”
“I am not here on her behalf,” Emma said. Her mind was clear, hard and sharp, and free of fear. “What I sought in your house, I did find; I stole nothing, and only took away what belonged to itself. I can assure you that your secrets will remain safe. I was not sent to betray you, or to destroy what your masters have built.”
“My masters,” said Mistress Artemisia. She shook her head and smiled. “You are a clever child, and rather less arrogant than your age and ignorance might portend. If you survive your reckless youth, you will go far.”
“I try to be as little reckless as I may,” said Emma. “I will not speak of what I saw in Xanadu. You have my word.”
“I do believe you,” Mistress Artemisia said, but she made no move to rise or go.
Emma’s weariness had given way to sharp annoyance and the dawning of puzzlement. “What, then, do you wish of me? Why have you come?”
“There was an agreement,” said Mistress Artemisia.
“My life? My soul?” Despite herself, Emma’s breath came short.
“Not exactly,” said Mistress Artemisia. “I must make a request of you, which you would be well advised to grant. When you return to London, persuade Sir Willoughby to reveal himself to Lady Ada. Let her know what he is and how he became so—though I would bid you refrain from speaking of the uses to which we put his creations. Then accept whatever task she lays upon you.”
Emma’s brows rose further with each word. “Why? What do you hope to gain?”
“I? Protection. You? Perhaps the furthering of your career, and the alleviation of boredom.”
“Protection from what?”
“You need ask?”
“Humour me.”
Mistress Artemisia smiled. “Clever indeed. We practise the transference of souls. Were the names of our guests to be known or their actions to be revealed, the consequences would be terrible. And yet, in a sort of paradox, the more that certain powers in the world know of what we are, the safer we may be. Lady Ada is such a power, who in her own quest has discovered secrets far greater than ours.”
“Then they must be very great,” Emma said. Her eyes and mind sharpened. “Are you suggesting that I discover them for you?”
“No,” said Mistress Artemisia. “We have spies of our own for that. There is one thing, one message you
might convey.”
Of course there was. Emma stood stony-faced, offering nothing; no expression, no evident emotion.
“Say to Lady Ada,” Mistress Artemisia said, “that the naming of Xanadu was neither fashion nor coincidence. Say also,” and there she paused, as if measure her words, “that where poets dream, men of science may conceive reality. When poetry and science meet—there is the making and breaking of worlds.”
“You speak riddles,” Emma said.
“Then I give you a name,” said Mistress Artemisia. “The Promethean.”
Emma drew in a breath, carefully. “So. It is true. My lady’s father in his pride—after all, he succeeded. He lives; he truly has become immortal.”
“I will not say that he lives,” said Mistress Artemisia, “but whether he is immortal…that may be a matter of interpretation.”
“Indeed?” Emma said. “The eidolon of Pluto that wears Lord Byron’s face—does it not also contain his soul? When, that is, it is not inhabiting the bodies of those who dwell for a while within the eidolon? Is that the heart of all Xanadu’s secrets? But if that is so, why reveal it now? Why even hint at it?”
Mistress Artemisia did not reply. While Emma stood, dizzy with speculation, she had risen to her feet.
She was almost at the door. Small as the room was, still her speed was somewhat less than natural.
Emma caught her arm. It was flesh; she was certain. But the balance of the body, its movement, the strength with which Mistress Artemisia spun free…
In the swirl of skirts, Emma saw a thing that she could not mistake. Gears; wheels. Feet of leather and steel.
Mistress Artemisia paused in the door. “Some things should not exist,” she said, “and some of those cannot help themselves.”
Emma had no sensible response to that. Before she could think of one, Mistress Artemisia was gone. Emma stood alone, bowed down beneath a burden of secrets.
o0o
Queens’ College and Lady Jocasta Merriwell together mourned the sad and terrible death of Sir Willoughby Smythe. So tragic; cut off so soon in the service of science. His like, the Fellows agreed, would not be seen again.
The automaton that walked with the late professor’s distinctive gait took ship three days after the funeral, sailing for the Americas. An African servant, unmistakably human, accompanied it, as did a young woman of discreet but evident means.
Ostensibly they were to tour the remote and marvellous continent. Much more secretly, they were to make certain contacts and secure certain alliances, and widen the net that Lady Ada had cast across the world of men and machines.
Lady Ada did not come to see them off. She had bidden them farewell in the early morning, receiving them in her study.
She had been there all night; Emma recognised the signs. Her eyes were a fraction too bright, her carriage just a little too erect. She was holding herself up by force of will.
It was never Emma’s place to offer comfort, still less to invite Lady Ada’s confidence. Yet one thing she felt bound to say. “If the one you have been hunting for so long is indeed in Xanadu, he must surely by now be rendered harmless. Otherwise the world would know; and the world has heard no word.”
Lady Ada sighed. “So one might think,” she said. “And if the soul must transfer again and again, losing a fragment with each shift, there can be little left at all. And yet…”
And yet, thought Emma. She held her tongue.
Lady Ada saw: her glance was, not grateful; that would be beneath her. But it acknowledged Emma’s tact. Acknowledged, and then moved firmly on. “Whatever the truth of that, there are a world of tasks to be done, and terribly few of us to do them. You three will serve us well in your various capacities.”
Emma bowed to the compliment. Her heart was beating more quickly than usual. A commission, at last. Adventure—at too long last. And with such companions.
“It will be an interesting journey,” she said.
“And useful for the cause,” said Lady Ada. “Godspeed, then. Until we meet again.”
“As we shall,” said Emma, and that was more true a promise by far than the one that she had made to Mistress Artemisia.
The Gods That Men Don’t See
Amy Sterling Casil
“They have brains the size of walnuts. My dog is smarter than they are,” Torvald said.
“The average brain of a howler monkey weighs 55 grams,” Ginny said. “And you gave your dog to the shelter.”
“Okay, two walnuts. And I couldn’t take him with me to Iceland so I had to do that.” Torvald’s forehead wrinkled and his eyes flashed like a cold front advancing across Humboldt Bay.
“Fourteen walnuts,” said Ginny, snapping shut her tablet cover.
“It’s just a waste of time,” he said. “No one cares about howler monkeys. If you want the real action go to Tanzania. Or Uganda.”
“We’ve already been over this,” she said, wondering why her voice sounded so kind when an ice block had formed below her stomach and her cheeks burned.
Torvald unwound his long legs and eased himself out of his prized red leather Swedish recliner. She recognized the anger in his steps. “I’m going to have a beer,” he said.
She said nothing. Her hands acquired a life of their own and opened the tablet again. There was an email from Richard. Did she dare read it now? She heard the big feet slapping in the kitchen. The high-pitched squeal of the refrigerator door. Clank! Beer bottle out. Clunk. Drawer opened.
Her finger lightly touched the incoming message.
Just one line.
“I can’t wait to see you. Tomorrow it is. All my love—R.”
“I’m never going to Honduras,” Torvald said, leaning around the door.
Torvald’s long Nordic face shone in shadowed relief from the kitchen light. This was post-graduate housing, so the old fluorescent lamp hung crookedly and too low over the kitchen table. His white-blond hair made a soft crown like hanks of cotton candy framing his sharp features.
“I know,” she said, not looking up from the tablet.
“You’re making a big mistake,” said Torvald, shaking his finely-made forefinger at her.
Ginny felt as though a stranger was speaking with her voice.
“I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight,” she said.
All my love—R.
o0o
There is no flight from the U.S. that takes much less than 10 hours to get to Tegucigalpa. To La Ceiba was an approximate one hour flight, but Ginny had missed the morning departure. Even if she went to La Ceiba in the afternoon, she would have to stay in some cheap hotel overnight before taking the small plane to Brus Laguna, from where she would find the guide Richard had assigned to her.
Part of her wished Richard could have met her. Of course not at the Honduran capital; Ginny wasn’t stupid. But she thought perhaps at Brus Laguna, or even La Ceiba. There was a charming hotel in La Ceiba and she wondered if they might not have spent a night there before heading to Brus Laguna to take the “collective” boat to Ciudad Blanca.
So she checked into the Humuya Inn at 10:00 p.m. and was stunned to find the tall young man at the front desk spoke perfect English, but was helpful with Ginny’s dreadful Spanish anyway.
He left her with a stack of towels and the wireless password.
After a long shower, Ginny put on the white terry hotel robe and opened her tablet and began feverishly messaging Richard.
“Expect to take flight to La Ceiba tomorrow,” she wrote. “Ha-ha, I guess I was foolish to think I’d make it all the way to the coast in one day.”
No reply.
“Any new observations? Did more males start using the rocks as well?”
Nothing.
This was the most exciting development, as several female howler monkeys had been observed using rocks to crush tougher leaves in the forest canopy. Alouatta palliata, the golden-mantled howler monkey, was a large, physically impressive primate, despite the fact that its brain had been found
to be smaller than that even of small monkeys such as the capuchin. It indeed did have a 55 gram brain, not as small as a walnut as Torvald had said, but about as big as two handfuls of raw walnuts. Ginny had one year left on her NSF fellowship at Iowa State, but by making this trip, she hoped to extend it as much as another twelve months. All it would take would be a few solid observations and documentation of the tool-using behavior of the substantial group of howler monkeys Richard Weyland had been studying for the past three years.
The study was affiliated with the multinational excavation of the fabled “golden city” on the Honduran coast, La Ciudad Blanca. No gold had been found, of course, after six years of excavations followed the fabled city’s discovery by laser-directed radar—LIDAR.
The crazy thing about the whole trip, about going to Honduras in June instead of returning to the lab or pushing for one of the few slots in Tanzania or Uganda, was that Ginny had never slept with Richard.
He said he loved her. She had said she loved him.
She shut her tablet; perhaps the satellite had gone out. At 5 kilometers from the massive excavations at Ciudad Blanca, the wireless was never reliable.
This Ginny knew. Her phone was in her purse. Perhaps he had—
She wouldn’t look.
Her last thought before sleep was an image of Richard’s flashing brown eyes, which changed into the close-set, liquid dark orbs of a howler monkey, its magnificent gold and black mantle framing its face.
In the morning she bought a metallic-tasting atole while waiting for the taxi, and at the airport, was so famished that she hungrily gobbled an overpriced pupusa, something she’d told herself she’d never eat. There were no fellowships or honors for fat female primatologists.
She had expected the pupusa would taste like a greasy, American cheese-stuffed quesadilla, but it was much softer and more substantial, the earthy corn taste overwhelming the mild, salty cheese and bits of unidentifiable shredded meat in the center.
The flight to La Ceiba was filled by two middle-aged Minnesota bird-watchers and an additional pair of honeymooning couples. Ginny felt she stood out with her backpack, bedroll, khaki shorts, and denim shirt.
Mad Science Cafe Page 20