Just when their pants dropped down on their ankles, the boys heard a faint screeching sound. So Dom grabbed his unbuttoned trousers by the waistband with his right hand and Jay with the left, and ran like crazy. With his ankles entangled by his own pants, Jay lost his footing and fell.
“Why are we running? I thought we were going to wear our clothes backward?” Jay asked, wiping dirt off.
“Get up, bai, hurry. We can do that while running.”
“What’s wrong this time?”
“They’re coming for us.”
“‘They’re coming for us’?” Jay repeated mockingly.
“Yes; can’t you hear that sound?”
“Big deal,” Jay said. “Those are just birds – squeaking. Do birds squeak?”
“That’s no bird, bai; that’s them. And they’re getting nearer.”
“Those birds sound like they’re miles away.”
“Exactly. They’re getting nearer. No time to explain, bai. Just trust me on this.” Dom held up his fist.
-fistbump-
And so the boys were off again. This time they were multitasking – taking off their clothes and putting them on in reverse, wrong side out, while running.
The boys doubled their pace, as the squeaking sounds grew fainter. They were still nowhere near the gate of the subdivision, and the sun had fully set. Their hearts sank, when they saw the row of houses once again.
“WE’RE BACK AGAIN, bai. Look,” Dom said.
“The sounds seem to be getting louder,” Jay noticed.
But it wasn’t the squeaking-bird sounds. It was a putt-putting sound of a motorcycle engine.
“The driver’s come back for us,” Jay said, delight and relief showing in his facial expression. But that feeling of relief was fleeting, because they could not find the source of the sound.
“Where is he?” Dom wondered. “I can hear the engine, but I can’t see the tricycle.”
So the boys began shouting, “Kuya!” to get the attention of the tricycle driver.
“Is this one of their tricks, Dom?”
“I don’t know, bai. But I’m sure the tricycle is around here somewhere.”
Then the bird-squeaking sounds started to fade once again.
“They’re getting nearer, Jay. We have to move fast.”
“Look, there’s something burning in the distance,” Jay pointed to a small bonfire, burning a hundred meters or so from them. The boys ran in the direction of fire, and finally heard the voice of the tricycle driver.
“Listen to me,” the disembodied voice said. “You can’t see me because of the lamat. The only thing that is not affected by the lamat is fire. I burned some gasoline by the gate. Get to that fire, now.”
The boys hurried, as the squeaking sounds got fainter by the second. They clearly heard the engine of the tricycle revving, yet it was completely invisible to their eyes.
“Hey, Kuya, why can’t we just ride with you? You’re just beside us, right?” Dom asked.
“Because you have to reverse the lamat first. Hurry and get to the gate. They’re getting closer. I can barely hear them anymore,” the driver said.
“Isn’t that supposed to mean they’re far away?” Jay asked.
“The closer they get to you, the more quiet they sound. That’s how they trick their victims, Jay.”
The boys finally reached the burning flame. Then, out of nowhere, something suddenly held them back, pulling them away from the fire.
The boys struggled to free themselves from the grasp of the phantom hands. Just as they thought all was lost, a huge ball of fire erupted by their side. The sudden explosion surprised whatever it was that was holding the boys. Now free from the clutches of the unseen forces, they scrambled to get behind the fire.
“Kuya, you there?” Jay shouted.
“Right behind you. Don’t get too far from the fire. They can’t touch you if you stay close to it.”
“How did you make that fire a while ago?” Dom wondered.
“Gasoline. You owe me a full tank,” the driver said.
“Oh, we’ll give you more than that. Just get us out of here,” Jay said.
“First, make sure you have all your clothes worn in reverse,” the driver instructed.
“Check,” they said.
“Next, walk backward, slowly, but don’t turn your head and look back. In a few steps you’ll have your backs up against the gate. Once you do, slowly slide to the exit.”
The boys did as they were told. Once they had their backs to the gate, they felt their way around and finally managed to wiggle out of it.
AND THEN THEY were free from the lamat. They now clearly saw the gate which stood between them and the subdivision, unlike just a few moments ago, where front was back and back was front (or side). They also finally saw the tricycle driver beside them.
Both boys thanked the driver non-stop for coming after them. They raised fists to their new hero.
-doublefistbump-
“Kuya, we owe you our lives,” Dom said.
“And a full tank of gas,” the driver added.
“Thanks for coming back,” Jay said.
“Wait, you’re not one of them, are you?” The thought scared Dom, but he had to ask anyway.
“Don’t insult me, boy. This bottle of oil would be boiling, if I were one of them.” The driver showed a brown bottle to the boys. “That’s how I knew those girls were trouble,” the driver continued, “this was boiling the whole time when I brought you here earlier.”
“I don’t get it,” Jay said.
“This oil was blessed by a mananambal. It boils in their presence,” the driver said.
“That doesn’t sound very scientific.”
“Nothing has been scientific since we got here, Jay,” Dom said. “Try explaining why we kept coming back to that god-awful place.”
“So what do we do now?” Dom asked the driver.
“We walk backward, all the way to the main road.”
“Why can’t we use your tricycle?” Dom wanted to know.
“I used up all my gasoline to make a giant fireball, remember?” the driver said. “And I’m not leaving my tricycle here. We’ll pull it as we walk backwards.”
“I’d happily pull it while you sit in it. At least we’re not some party’s dinner anymore,” Jay said.
Dom agreed, and both went to work pulling the tricycle with the driver.
Noel Tio works at a beach resort on the island of Mactan, as a Training Manager. His job entails a lot of listening to people's stories. In turn, he gets to tell stories when he does his training programs. The people in his office are thoroughly impressed with his dedication to his work, because he works through his lunch break. Little do they know that he’s just writing fiction. His work has been published in Philippine Speculative Fiction volume 4 and The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2005-2010.
EK Gonzales
Soulless
THE TURNING OF gears and creaking of hinges followed the clang of iron. A dim oil lamp swung above his unruly, uncut hair.
Too much metal. Too much fire and smoke. Too much coal. He considered the automaton prison guards, the guardia civil, for the thousandth time in sixty days. The automata were impractical, iron and steel both outside and within, in a country that sweltered with humidity.
Too much metal. Too much fire and smoke and coal. Too many people were dead. Too many were in jail. Many more people deserved to be dead. People who needed to pay for playing with the lives of ordinary men and women, merely to have more power, more control. His thoughts ran in circles, filled with confusion, despair, and anger.
He did not look up at the clatter of the prison bars. He now knew the usual noises within the Bilibid Coreccional. The sound of many stiff boots on moldy wet stones no longer bothered him.
It was too early for Isagani to be visiting, the only friend left who did. Everyone else involved in the treason charges had been taken away by their rich families, escaping to the family
businesses, the provinces, or other countries. He had no family to remember him.
Two prison guards pulled him up and dragged him forward. “Filibustero. You can leave.”
When a party celebrating a disappointment was mistaken for an attempt to incite a revolution, he and his friends had been arrested. He was not even at the panciteria at all when the party happened. But he had been a friend of intelligent insulares and mestizos, the colony-born and the half-breeds. He was an indio, a native of a land ruled by strangers. He was a scholar, dependent on benefactors. No one would want to save him.
Yet someone had.
AFTER HOURS OF signing papers and answering mundane questions, questions he had already answered many times, he was thrust into the glare of the afternoon sun, and onto the cobblestones of the street. A guard of flesh and blood put a scrap of paper into his hand.
He stared at the address for a moment. Then he sighed, and began the long and lonely walk across the España bridge, to a large stone house in Binondo.
He looked upward, as the clockwork soldiers of the Intramuros emerged for the evening. He heard the old sad melody of gears turning, chains clanking, and wood creaking, as Manila was enclosed in the thick stone walls.
The whispers for independence had become murmurs. The disparate islands that Spain called the Philippines were learning to act as one, all seeking reprieve from the slavery, seeking to own what was truly theirs. The colonial government struggled to quell the tulisanes, his people hiding in the woods, scavenging when necessary, fighting for a stolen land. The walled capital kept a ruse of joviality, feasting and drinking in their large stone houses. And yet the well-dressed ladies, the adorned men, the un-pious friars, spoke of the murmurs of resistance, the whispers of independence, under the bright chandeliers.
He knocked wearily at the heavy wooden doors of a large stone house. Faint, he sat on the street, and waited.
“Why do you sit here like a broken doll?”
He glared at the voice above him. The man’s jeweled cane tapped near his hand. The eyes were hidden behind tinted lenses. The hair was fully white, pulled back and hidden under a wide-brimmed foreign hat. The jeweler, judged unfairly as a filibustero some years ago. The man had disappeared to other lands, and recently returned, with finery and gems, a darling of the peninsulares and ilustrados.
“Come,” the jeweler said.
Basilio followed.
HE WAS LED to a large room on the wooden second floor, lit only by a small lamp over a dining table. The table was covered in large swathes of paper, filled with sketches.
A large lamp, unlit, shaped like a pomegranate, sat over a wooden box with intricate carved designs. The jeweler took a small key, and opened one panel of the box, revealing a compartment filled with gears and cogs, spinning in all directions.
He saw other designs, farther from the pomegranate lamp. There were sketches for clockwork devices, small and easily hidden in eaves and inside wood panels. Each device ticked away an amount of time, different for each type. He saw maps of the capital. He found plans of the Governor-General’s palace, the San Agustin church, the Fuerte de Santiago, the Universidad de Santo Tomas, the Ateneo, the Letran.
He saw the lamp, the clockwork, and the plans, for what they were meant to be. They were to be weapons against the peninsulares. They were weapons of vengeance.
He was to be a weapon, as well.
The jeweler had chosen Paulita Gomez’s wedding reception as the venue when he would deliver judgment. It was a perfect, auspicious time. Furthermore, the Gomez mansion had been stolen from Captain ’Tiago, Basilio’s benefactor, ruined by the friars, destroyed by Basilio's arrest.
He remembered. He recognized the location of heiress Paulita Gomez’s mansion, but kept silent. Basilio remembered the rage he had allowed to boil, in the two months he was surrounded by damp walls and bars. It was not his place to refuse. His anger wanted to assist, by any means. He had shut his heart many weeks ago. Now, as he looked well at the drawings before him, he clenched his fists.
The jeweler gestured again, and he followed.
He was led through a hidden door into a hidden basement, cold and drafty. But the basement was filled with wood. With wooden men made of kawayan, narra, and kamagong. They were lined in rows, each one armed with iron blades, farmer scythes, and kamagong staves. Each creature was two heads taller than him, and twice as large at the torso.
The jeweler opened the torso of the nearest wooden figure. Within it worked metal and wooden gears, moving pneumatic bellows as lungs, coursing hydraulic fluids for blood. Some were similar to those within the foreign automata, other parts looked different. A wooden face was opened as well, revealing clockwork and galvanic systems working as one, operating a mechanical brain.
“Craftsmen, woodworkers, and engineers have perfected your design,” the jeweler informed him. “The explosion will be the signal for these warriors to deploy.”
He remembered another, deeper rage within him, one that seethed quietly under the coals. The rage against the constant implication: that the colonists, the white man, always knew better about everything. This deeper rage mixed with the injustice of his arrest, with the wrath of at least two deaths, because a woman loved him, because a man became like a father to him.
The jeweler closed the compartments. “With these, we now have soldiers. We have strength that will match the guardia civil. We will turn the tide of war in our favor.”
“War.” Basilio’s brain repeated the word. It sounded both hollow and menacing.
“The time has finally come,” the jeweler said. “The house of cards is ready to fall, with a slight breeze, with a press of a finger. The people are more than ready to revolt. The governor-general has no true strength remaining to him. The friars have empty words. There are funds, people, and weapons enough and to spare.” The cane sounded on the ground. “Tonight all the heads of state and the church will be dead. Tonight we will claim this land as ours. We will take it from them. We will take what is properly ours.”
“We attack tonight. You will join me,” the jeweler said, a statement of fact, not a request.
Basilio clenched his fists again, and looked the man in the eyes. He nodded.
IT HAD BEGUN four months ago, a life ago.
Mechanical oddities and curiosities hung on the wooden walls of the stone house’s second floor. The singing birds of Shanghai. The dancing puppets of Kyoto. A monkey playing cymbals, from Paris. A magic box from Hamburg, with many hidden compartments revealed with gears. Intricate clocks from Vienna and Switzerland.
There were none made by his own people. Their artifice had been limited to work tools, carriages, and bamboo organs. The collection made him more keenly aware of this disparity.
Basilio peered down at designs draped over the dining table. Steel joints attached iron rods. Gears connected the rods. All these were attached to each other to form a figure. Standing in the shadows was a replica of the design: a figure made of iron and steel, shaped like a man, of European build. An automaton, similar to the guardia civil.
The English artisans had been purely mechanical in their training. But he had the mind of a doctor, in a land where metal was imported and expensive.
Human anatomy had been one of his best subjects in the medical school. Where his fellow students merely put names to memory, he sought to understand how each part composed the whole. He studied how bone attached to muscle, how each blood vessel supplied each part, how each nerve made each part move. He sought to understand how each joint moved.
The jeweler coughed slightly, disrupting his thoughts. “Well?” he asked.
“This is too much metal,” Basilio said. “Too much fire and smoke, too much coal.”
He kept silent about how imbalanced he felt the metal man was, how heavy it was at the torso, supported as it was on spindly legs. Oddly, it did not seem sacrilegious, or traitorous, to look at such a figure. A figure of a man, but without a soul.
“What do you suggest
?” Simoun asked.
His answer surprised him, how easily it departed from his brain and his lips. “Señor, you were born here. You know how strong our material is. No European artifice can match.”
“They will be weaker.”
“Not if they are created well.”
“You will assist me in this?” the jeweler asked. “You shall create this warrior for me?”
He considered his sketches, of arms made of kawayan, jointed by oiled kamagong, of torsos made of narra, housing a hydraulic-pump heart, pneumatic lungs, and various clockwork organs of motion. He was surprised that the jeweler had been aware of the sketches. They were drawings he had made during snatches of free time, while waiting for his friends, or resting after studies.
Isagani's good-natured chuckles and cheerful words rang in his ears. Unlike the others, Isagani never thought the sketches were useless dreams. “But you’re a doctor, my good friend,” Isagani said. “What you understand is life and creatures of life. For this to work, you need to know the properties of these materials as well. You need to know them as an artisan.”
“You study law,” he had retorted.
“So I do,” Isagani had replied, with a grin. “But I may know where to find some books about automata and galvanic current. And my uncle has books about the plants.”
The conversation was followed by other detailed and animated conversations, as anatomy was planned with mechanics. The conversations continued late into the evenings, where Basilio found himself accepting breakfast from Isagani’s relations.
“They are pieces of paper, Señor,” Basilio answered Simoun at last. “Ideas. Thoughts.”
“Make them live,” the jeweler replied.
IT HAD MERELY been an exercise in science to him, back then, working for the jeweler. Proof of a concept, that if iron men could be made by those in faraway lands, in the image of real humans, then it stood to reason that wooden men could also be made, as they had already been made by the Tsino and the Nihon.
It was also returning a favor, that he remembered who a man was before a whole country knew him. A life loaned for a life given back to him. A favor for a favor.
Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume 10 Page 14