Broken Hero

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Broken Hero Page 6

by Jonathan Wood


  “No.” It’s my turn to cut Clyde off. “Let’s get back to the part where we had to fight a giant clockwork robot that was designed by a Nazi.”

  “Oh.” Clyde stops for a moment, looks around himself, shrugs twice, then comes back to me. “Well, we did that. That was sort of the end point.”

  I mull this over.

  “So,” Hannah looks at me, “yesterday you guys fought a giant Nazi clockwork robot?”

  Which, in the end, I suppose we did.

  “Feckin’ sweet, right?” says Kayla.

  “Maybe,” Felicity says, “we could be a little less self-congratulatory, and a little more outcomes-focused.” She points to the schematic. “This is for a prototype. What we fought yesterday was not a prototype. It was real. It was created by a man who for all we know was committed to serving one of the vilest evils to face mankind in the twentieth century. I doubt he stopped at just one.”

  “But it’s 2015,” Hannah objects. “Why the piss are they coming out the woodwork now?”

  “That,” says Felicity, laying both her hands on the table, “is exactly what you lot are going to find out.”

  8

  Work out if the Nazis hid a clockwork robot army somewhere in England. Just another everyday assignment at MI37. I wish I’d made a bigger coffee. In its absence I go with massaging my skull and trying to crack my neck. When that doesn’t work, I just study my hands.

  “OK,” I say, working my way through it. “So two leads. Joseph Lang, and a Scottish pub. Front end and back end of the problem. Front end is located 1935—Lang conceives of this thing and draws up some plans. Back end is yesterday one of the bastards emerging from the ground up in Scotland. So trace the dots forward and back until they join up in the middle. That means two teams—”

  I hear muttering and look up. Kayla has leaned across the table and is showing her phone to Tabitha.

  She notices the silence and looks up. “What?”

  “Yeah,” says Tabitha, still staring at the phone and ignoring both of us. “He looks OK.”

  My eyes narrow. But given the conceivable array of scenarios that could have led to that statement, I decide that I really don’t want to know.

  “Who looks OK?”

  Damn you, Clyde. Damn you.

  Tabitha grabs Kayla’s wrist and angles the phone toward Clyde. “Potential genetic material,” she says.

  Clyde’s eyes narrow too. I think he’s just realized the course he’s steered us onto.

  “Don’t ask,” I say. “Please for the love of all that is good and kind in this world, do not ask.”

  Hannah looks around the room. “This still isn’t a hazing ritual, right?”

  Felicity seems to be resisting the urge to facepalm.

  Watching her struggle through her disappointment in us, her desire for us to, just once, behave like professionals, allows me to slough off one more layer of my hangover.

  “This is the kid’s thing, isn’t it?” I say to Kayla. “If I were to look at that phone, I would see a man you are thinking of trying to coerce into sleeping with you.”

  Tabitha’s hand twitches.

  “Do NOT show me,” I say. “I just want to say two things, and then move rapidly on. One, I still think it is a staggeringly bad idea for you to retread the path of parenthood. Two, assuming this isn’t really relevant to the whole tracking down hidden clockwork robots thing, and that the young man on your phone is not the great grandson of a prominent Nazi thaumatophysicist, then can it please wait until later?”

  Kayla grinds her teeth. Close enough to a yes.

  “So,” I say, trying to smudge out the last of my headache with a palm to my temple. “Two teams. One heads up to Scotland, digs beneath the pub and sees what they can find. The other digs into Joseph Lang, see what we can learn about him.”

  “Done.” Tabitha releases Kayla’s phone and grabs a manilla folder off the table. She slides it toward me. “All here.”

  All right then, so we have a few more breadcrumbs than I’d assumed. I slip a smile over at Felicity. That seems a lot like professionalism.

  “So,” I say, “do we have any idea where his belongings ended up? Anything not go with him back to Germany?”

  Hannah stirs again beside me. “Well, if they kicked the bugger out,” she says, “they’re bound to have confiscated his research. Least, as much of it as they could lay their grubby fingers on, right?”

  Tabitha’s expression lies somewhere between grin and grimace. “His whole apartment,” she says. “Confiscated his home. How we have the schematics. But most stuff is still on site.”

  “On site?” I lean forward. “But he was kicked out in 1938. His apartment can’t still be—”

  Tabitha stabs a finger at the folder. “Can be. Is. Bloody read that.”

  “You literally just gave it to me.” The words escape my lips before I remember we’re trying to be professionals. “I mean, I will as soon as this briefing is over.” From Felicity’s expression that was too little, a little too late.

  “It’s actually a rather interesting legal loophole,” Clyde starts before anyone can stop him. “You see early thoughts on magic resembled a lot of current popular fears about radiation. There were all these worries about extra-reality contamination around sites of magic. Sullivan’s Polluted Ether Theorem of ’36 to give it a name, though by any other name it would still be as awfully wrong as it is under that one. There’s not even such a thing as ether. The man barely deserves the name thaumaturgist, to be honest, and his Latin was laughable. Not that I want to brag about my own handling of a dead language, but if one commits to the path of tearing reality open, one might as well have the decency to learn one’s tools, I always say. Well not always. Just in this one case really. But if I were to talk about it more often, I would say it more often. Because it really is true. Just common decency really.

  “Anyway,” Clyde continues, somehow failing to pause for breath, “because of that, there were a lot of concerns that the apartments of early government-sponsored thaumaturgists were horribly contaminated and would basically cause anyone who entered them to turn into mutated gloop. So they waited for the contamination to become more diffuse. Except no one knew when that was going to be. Well, not until Barkman got around to refuting Sullivan’s theory in ’76, though at that point it was basically common knowledge and Barkman was just a glory hound who managed to swing writing the actual paper. But at that point, no one really gave a damn about these old apartments. They were far more interested in creating something that would actually cause inter-reality contamination and turn people into mutant gloop. Really, the cold war was a very odd time for thaumaturgy.

  “So the apartments basically stayed protected by these outdated laws that no one’s got around to repealing. There’s about eighty of them scattered around the country. Mostly in London really. Though there’s a concentration up in York too. Big hotbed of thaumaturgy in the late forties up in York, as it happens.”

  And finally the breath happens.

  “So,” I jump in as fast as I can, “basically you’re agreeing with Tabitha’s initial statement of, ‘yes.’”

  Clyde thinks about that for a moment, opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “Yes.”

  “OK,” I nod, “so basically we can go there and clean out the rest of his stuff, right?”

  Another pause. “Yes,” Clyde says. He opens his mouth again, checks my expression, closes it.

  “All right then,” I say, “let’s head over there.”

  We all stand. All except Hannah. “Wait,” she says. “Us?”

  I nod. I think I was pretty clear about the whole thing. Hannah turns to Felicity. “You don’t have civil servants to…” She hesitates. “Wait. Is this the hazing thing?”

  Felicity smiles a little sadly. “This, I am afraid,” she says, “is it. The entire staff of MI37. We are not quite as grand as you may be used to. Everyone chips in here.”

  Hannah shakes her head. “Fucking hel
l.”

  I look at her again. And there is nothing in particular about her to dislike. But she feels like a stumble in our gearwork. I just hope this case is small enough to allow us to work around it. So she can do her rotation, or penance here, or whatever reason she’s turned up, and move on, and we can get back to normal, to stability.

  We stand. Kayla flips her phone at Tabitha again. “What about this one?”

  “You’d break him like a twig.”

  A sound makes me glance at Felicity. And she actually did facepalm on that one.

  9

  All of us except Felicity wedge into the small elevator that leads up from the subterranean confines of MI37 to Oxford’s street level.

  “What about that pub?” Kayla asks. “Just going to let that go feckin’ cold are we?”

  This demonstrates considerably more interest in our operational procedures than Kayla usually shows. “You’re just trying to get out of carrying all Lang’s crap back to the office, aren’t you?” I say.

  “Fecker,” Kayla says as sweetly as she is able, “I could carry that whole building back here without breaking a sweat.”

  I have never tested the exact limits of Kayla’s strength. There is a chance this could be true. That said…

  “You are still trying to get out of it, though,” I say.

  “Feck, yes.”

  Clyde giggles. Tabitha scowls, though she’s been doing that pretty much since birth. Hannah is still trying to look at everyone at once and not appear like she’s doing it. She is actually very good at that.

  “Look,” I say, “Lang’s apartment is right here. We’ll just pick up the stuff. Then you and I can head to Scotland while Clyde and Tabitha dig through it.”

  The elevator doors ping and slide open to reveal MI37’s front door.

  “And me,” says Hannah.

  I look at her blank faced.

  “And me,” she repeats. “You forgot me. I’ll go up to Scotland too.”

  “Oh yes,” I say, mentally cursing myself. I have to at least fake politeness. I reach out to open the front door. “Of cour—” I start.

  And get no further.

  Two enormous figures hulk on our doorstep. One has a fist upraised, as if about to knock.

  In keeping with the government’s desire to keep the whole magic/aliens/oh-shit-what-is-it stuff under wraps, MI37 is a very secret organization. So its headquarters are very secret. So our front door looks a lot like the service entrance to the dubious travel agency next door. It was probably originally painted black, but is buried under such an accumulation of graffiti, fliers, and stickers advertising phone calls with women of ill repute, that it’s hard to tell. It would be the sort of doorway someone might hang around in if they wanted to smoke something illicit, except it’s right on one of the main streets leading to the train station.

  It is, very much by design, an unwelcoming doorway. It is not the sort of doorway one lurks before. It is certainly not the sort of doorway one stands before with one’s fist raised.

  And if the alarm bells didn’t already have me reaching for my pistol and Kayla extracting her sword from its sheath, there is always the fact that the figure’s fist appears to be made of solid bronze.

  10

  “Nein! No! Stop! Achtung! Please!”

  The bronze fist is now an open bronze palm. It hovers inches before the barrel of my extended gun, glaringly on display on the busy Oxford street.

  I hesitate. While it’s an assumption that probably has its roots in the grossest Hollywood assumptions, I still don’t associate asking politely with people who want to kill me.

  The second’s pause gives me more time to absorb the scene. Two figures. Both of them at least eight feet tall, hunched, wreathed in heavy canvas that falls to the floor… I suppose the word is cloaks, as anachronistic as it seems. It hides their exact forms in shapeless brown folds. Heavy hoods leave their heads in shadow.

  But there is still the exposed fist there, making it abundantly clear that these are the kin of the robot we fought yesterday.

  “This was mistake,” says the robotic shape with its hands where I can’t see them. “I told you. We go now.” It has a thick German accent, every w replaced with a v. Vee go now.

  “Uhrwerkmänner,” Clyde breathes behind me.

  “Gesundheit,” says Hannah. Her pistol is also drawn, pointing over my shoulder and tickling my ear. Still, that’s some surprisingly cool nerves. At this point during my orientation I think I was curling up and crying uncle.

  “No,” Clyde starts, “I mean that these are them. These are Lang’s Uhrwerk—”

  “I know what you meant,” Hannah says.

  “Oh.”

  “We mean no harm,” says the one with its palm extended. “We come because we want to talk. To discuss with you, yes? You understand?”

  I am very aware of the amount of weaponry we are showing right on our own doorstep. The bulk of the Uhrwerkmänner hides a lot of what’s going on from the cars driving by, but that bulk in and of itself is going to attract some unwanted attention. This is not the place to do this.

  “Put the weapons away,” I say.

  “Seriously?” Kayla and Hannah ask at the exact same moment. Synchronicity between the pair is not necessarily a reassuring development.

  “Very much so.” I slide my pistol back into its holster.

  I hear the sword slide home. A moment later, Hannah’s gun stops tickling my ear.

  “What do you want to talk about?” I ask the robot. “Yesterday one of you tried to kill us.”

  A club descending. I blink the after-image away and rub my palms dry on my trouser legs.

  “Yes,” says the one with hidden hands, “yesterday you killed my friend Nils, let us talk about that.”

  “No, Hermann,” says the first, turning away from me, shapes moving beneath the surface of his cloak like tectonic plates. “We are here because we need their help.” He turns back to me. “We need you to save our lives.”

  EN ROUTE TO THE MI37 SERVICE ENTRANCE

  I honestly had no idea we had a service entrance. Tabitha apparently did. While the Uhrwerkmänner take the street route, we navigate the bowels of MI37 and pick up Felicity along the way.

  “Seriously?” she asks me. “On our doorstep?”

  “They say they need our help.”

  Apparently there is a facial expression for times like these that perfectly mixes skepticism and concern. Felicity provides me with a good opportunity to study it.

  “This sort of shit happen to you often?” Hannah asks, hustling along behind us.

  “No,” says Tabitha at the same time that Clyde says, “Probably more than it does to other professions.”

  Felicity nods. “Both of those answers.”

  “Right then.”

  Another elevator ride takes us to the service entrance and a narrow alleyway. Tabitha studies her laptop along the way. “Nothing on security cameras or satellites. They’re alone.”

  Kayla pulls back an old-fashioned steel grill as the elevator’s broad doors sweep open. The two Uhrwerkmänner stand in the alleyway, hunched and cloaked. I can smell something like engine oil and even standing still they emit a faint whirring sound.

  Felicity steps forward. She extends a hand. “I’m Felicity Shaw, director of Military Intelligence Section Thirty-seven. I understand you are seeking aid from the British government.”

  The one on the right shifts awkwardly, looks back at the alleyway’s entrance, but the other steps forward slightly. “I told your friend. We are in need of your help. Our lives, they are in danger.”

  “From whom?” Felicity is brusquely efficient.

  The robot hesitates. Then, “From time,” he says.

  Felicity flicks a look in my direction. I try to micro-shrug, but that’s more Clyde’s game. She turns back to the robots.

  “If I’m going to offer you any form of asylum,” Felicity says, “I’m going to need something decidedly less cryptic.”
>
  The one nearer the alley exit shifts again. “They can offer us nothing,” he says. “This was mistake. I should not have listened to you.”

  The friendlier of the two turns to him. Clacking German vowels and consonants are muttered in a rush back and forth, one placating, the other grumbling. The friendly Uhrwerkmänn turns back to us. “I am sorry,” he says. “This is difficult for us to discuss. We are so used to isolation. Of taking care of our own. This is difficult for Hermann. He feels Nils’ loss sharply.”

  Another explosive burst of German from Mr Tall Bronze and Miserable. I see Kayla’s hand twitch toward her sword handle.

  “Nils?” Felicity asks when the outburst is over.

  The Uhrwerkmänner bobs his massive head, cloak quaking about him. “He attacked you yesterday. He caused much damage. He will not be the only one.”

  Kayla’s hand twitches again. Felicity subtly shifts her stance, squares her weight between her feet.

  “Is that a threat?”

  The Uhrwerkmänn jerks his hands up, and Kayla’s sword is out of its sheath in the blink of an eye. My pistol and Hannah’s are hardly a second behind it. But the robot’s palms are again up, defensive. He takes a stumbling step back.

  “No. No. Nothing like that. No. It is a tragedy. It is why we are here. We are breaking down. We need to be fixed.”

  Felicity gives me another look. My gun is still out, but no longer trained on the big machine. The one called Hermann seems torn between fleeing for the street and charging us down. But the other one… He sounds genuine. There is an edge of bitterness and sorrow in his voice that I think it would be hard to fake. And honestly, if they wanted to attack us, that moment surely would have come by now.

  I nod back to Felicity. For what my opinion is worth. She hesitates another second then nods in turn, this time to the Uhrwerkmänner. “You’d better come in.”

  11

 

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