by Ian Whates
All of which left Tylus with an awkward dilemma, one which was only likely to be resolved once he understood exactly what these devices were doing to the nicks and determined whether or not their effects could be countered. The latest developments had been reported through official channels and the watch was waiting for direction from up-City but, according to both Johnson and Able, instructions could be a while in coming.
"Nothing new in that," Able assured him. "We're well used to coping for ourselves down here. It's something you have to pick up quick in the watch if you want to survive."
From all that Tylus had heard, there was one place they could turn to for information while they waited for the wheels of command to turn: the dog master. If he dealt in similar mechanical-organic hybrids to these devices, as had been suggested, he might just be able to shed some light on the matter. Nobody had any better ideas, so Tylus set off to find this shadowy figure. Richardson and Dewar accompanied him, though neither seemed too thrilled at the prospect.
"You hear dark things about the dog master," Richardson muttered.
"The things you don't hear are even worse," Dewar assured him.
Interestingly, it was Dewar who led the way. Richardson admitted to having a vague idea of the areas the dog master haunted, but only Dewar seemed confident of the exact location, which added some credence to the man's claim of having lived down here in the past.
They took with them the deactivated device, which had been severed from the unfortunate street-nick's corpse. The mechanism had shown no sign of animation since being removed. Tylus, who carried it, was surprised at how light the thing was, and how small. Once they were cut away from the nick, the spindly legs had retracted, curling up on themselves to leave an irregular ball which fitted comfortably in the palm of his hand. This also had the effect of making the device seem even more organic, since it had curled up in much the same manner as a spider or other small creature might in death or when under threat.
Tylus held the thing in a cloth bag and was more than a little nervous about carrying it at all. He was doing so only by default. Richardson had made it clear that he was not about to touch the thing and Tylus had not even bothered offering the task to Dewar. For some reason, he was determined not to look weak in that man's eyes.
Dewar led them through a prosperous area close to the guard station. They walked on cobbles down Wood Street, where shop windows were filled with chairs and tables and cabinets and dressers, carved out of various woods in varied style, from utilitarian simplicity to extravagantly sculpted ornateness, though the former predominated. Many of these would have been produced by local craftsmen from wood brought in via the river, though some were undoubtedly imported already made.
Iron lamp posts stood silent sentry at intervals along the street's course, testament to the days before the war when electricity had been more widely available.
They headed down a side turning, past a tavern whose freshly painted sign declared it to be the Boot and Shoe Inn. Slatted iron-frame benches lined the tavern's wall, in front of which half a dozen ale barrels had been stood on end, each with a disc of wood nailed to its top to form a table. At one such, two bewhiskered men were sitting, their flagons of ale on the table before them. The pair glanced at the trio and wished them a good day as they strode past, though whether this was because of his and Richardson's uniforms or they were simply predisposed to politeness, Tylus would not have cared to guess.
The turning led into another broad avenue, again with its full complement of redundant street lamps. The houses here were two-storey and looked well maintained, but as they crossed this street and took another narrow turning, that soon changed. The buildings became noticeably more dilapidated while remaining substantial in size - faded reminders of better days.
In minutes they had moved from streets where people were plentiful to ones where they were almost entirely absent, though dogs remained numerous. Perhaps they always were down here and Tylus was simply more aware of them given who they were going to see. Most looked natural, which was not what Tylus would have expected from what he'd heard, but a particularly large and mangy-looking specimen, which padded away in front of them, looked to have a stilted, awkward gait.
One turning led to another and the state of the buildings in no way improved.
"He knows we're here," Dewar said quietly.
"How can you be sure?"
"Look behind us."
Tylus did so. Two hybrid hounds stood there, differing in size and underlying breed but unified by their shared patchwork of fur and metal. The larger of the two, which stood as high as the Kite Guard's thigh, boasted a pair of brown canine eyes; the smaller dog didn't. In their place it had two bulbous grills, unblinking bulges which looked to be built out of wire mesh. The larger dog's jaw and, presumably, teeth were made from metal, while the smaller one's head looked completely natural apart from the meshed, insect-like eyes. Both had necks constructed of overlapping steel plates. Tylus was fascinated by the way these plates slid smoothly over each other as the dogs moved, a fact which became apparent as the larger hound padded forward, lowering its head on drawing nearer.
Dewar stepped towards the creature. "Dog master, we have business with you. And we bring you a gift."
He gestured towards Tylus, who reached gingerly into the cloth bag and pulled out the curled-up spiderish mechanism. He hated handling the thing, afraid that it was only playing dead and would spring to life at any moment, to dig its invasive claws into his body. Yet it remained inert as he held it out on his flat palm towards the hound, which sniffed at it suspiciously, as any wholly natural dog might.
The false-dog cocked its head, voicing an all-too convincing growl, which prompted him to lift his hand away slowly. It then trotted forward again, passing between them, until it stood in the direction they had been walking. A few paces ahead, it stopped, turned back to look at them and voiced a single, slightly tinny bark.
"I presume we're supposed to follow," Tylus said quietly.
"I would imagine so," Dewar replied.
As they set off after the lead dog, another hybrid hound arrived to join the smaller one behind them, with a fourth appearing almost immediately, this one the largest yet. Tylus tried to regard them as an honour guard. That way, it didn't feel quite so much as if he and his companions had just been relegated to the status of prisoners.
Their canine guide led them to a flight of old iron steps, black paint peeling from the handrail which was surrendering to rust. The lead dog didn't hesitate but trotted straight up the stairs. Slightly to Tylus's bemusement, the smallest of their four-strong escort disdained the steps altogether and instead scuttled straight up the wall, its limbs splayed out to either side like some disjointed crab. The lead dog pushed against the door at the top of the stairs, the bottom half of which instantly swung open, closing again once the dog had trotted through. Following at its heels, Dewar turned the appropriate handle and the door opened as one unit. When Tylus went to step in behind the arkademic's man, the wall-climbing dog skittered through the doorway above his shoulder, its back almost brushing his hair, causing him to cringe despite his best efforts not to.
He glared after the thing but soon forgot it as he stared at what waited on the other side of the door. He seemed to have stepped into a jungle, though one built by human hands rather than the dictates of nature. An undergrowth of clutter rose to his left: boxes, steel plates, coils of wire thread, circuit boards, pins, iron rods, small wheels, parts of goodness knew what machinery, all heaped together with no obvious rhyme or reason. Thick, bough-like pipes paralleled the floor and vines of steel cable looped from the ceiling in every direction, forcing Tylus to duck as he followed Dewar deeper into the room, while the whole place was oppressively hot.
"How creepy is this?" Richardson said from behind him.
Tylus grunted a noncommittal response. Bearing in mind the nature of the dog master's creations, he was just relieved that, as yet, there was no evidence of a
pile of discarded organic parts to match the mechanical one by the door, particularly given the temperature in here. Then he saw the man himself, who stood before them with the lead dog at his side.
The dog master looked like some feral creature, as wild as any of the under-City's numerous unclaimed hounds. Not a tall man, yet his presence, outlandish appearance and sheer energy seemed to raise his stature beyond mere physical height. For clothes he wore a patchwork of what could only be dog pelts, which appeared to have been layered and stitched together in some mad artist's frenzy. Strips of tattered fur trailed from the arms like fronds and colour changes occurred apparently at random, with no thought to matching or blending: chocolate brown one minute, brindled grey the next, with a strip of creamy white here and a panel of sandy gold there. Tylus just hoped the skins had been properly cured.
The man's face matched his attire; unshaven, but not in the sense of possessing a beard, rather in the sense of someone who had simply forgotten to use a razor for several days, leading to a rash of peppercorn stubble in haphazard white and grey. The hair was unkempt, uncut in a fair while and whiter than the stubble. It fell in draggle-like strands over ears and neck and shoulders, hair which showed slight kinks and waves as it tumbled but would probably have been straight were it worn shorter.
Yet it was the eyes which dominated. Set above a prominent hooked nose, they burned like hot coals, with an energy that Tylus already thought of as manic even before this outlandish apparition spoke.
"What an interesting party it is that comes to visit me. An officer of the watch, a Kite Guard descended from the distant Heights and, last but not least, my old friend Dewar. How privileged I am."
Friend? Dewar had made no mention of actually knowing the man.
"Hello, dog master," Dewar said levelly and perhaps a little cagily. Tylus caught the hint of reservation and wondered exactly what the history was between these two. Should he be concerned about it? Had it been a mistake to let Dewar accompany them? A little late to worry about such things now.
"It must be, oh, I don't know, a long, long time since you were last here, Dewar; and how did you say goodbye on that occasion? By kicking one of my poor pets, as I recall."
"No offence or insult was intended to either you or your pet, dog master, but I was in something of a hurry and it would insist on trying to hump my leg."
"But it's a dog, and it liked you. What would you expect it to do?"
"Leave my leg in peace. All the other dogs down here seem to manage to."
"No matter, that's all behind us now, long forgotten." The dog master waved a hand with a casualness which didn't fool Tylus and he doubted whether it convinced Dewar either. "Now, I understand you have a gift for me?"
Tylus reached into the bag again. He had hoped that, having done this once already, grasping the device might be a little easier the second time. It wasn't. But he still held out the curled-up construct with a steady hand.
The dog master peered at it. "Hmm, vile things aren't they?" He then snatched the thing from the Kite Guard and casually tossed it up in the air and caught it again, as he might a ball.
"They're the Maker's," he supplied. "My pets have brought me one or two of late, but another one's always welcome."
"You know this Maker?" Dewar asked.
"By his deeds, certainly. As an individual? No. Nor would I wish to. I mean, look at this," he held the construct out to Dewar. "It's an abomination. The man needs locking up, which is what your two friends here should be doing rather than pestering an old man like me." He indicated Tylus and Richardson.
"We're working on it," Richardson growled, as if insulted by the implication that they weren't, although Tylus suspected the watch had suffered far worse insults.
"We were hoping you might help us discover what these devices are intended to do," Tylus said.
Dewar glared at him, as if he had spoken out of turn in some way, though he failed to see why.
"Help, you say? Why would I wish to do that?"
"Perhaps we could help each other," Dewar said quickly.
"Go on."
"You mention that your pets have bought some of these things back here, so you're aware that this Maker is encroaching on your territory."
"His horrors are everywhere," the dog master confirmed. "Mass-produced shoddy little tin cans with legs. They're crawling around all over the place, and for there to be so many he must be making them from a template and rolling them off a production line."
"Is that possible?"
"Anything's possible if you're willing to sacrifice quality. I am not. Look at Sirius here." He patted the hound beside him. "Pure craftsmanship and one of a kind. Whereas this thing," he tossed and caught the curled-up construct again, "is nothing more than inferior quality, assembly-cloned junk."
Dewar nodded his sympathy. "Yet the Maker's creatures trespass, they invade your domain."
"True, all too true. You are suggesting, I take it, that it would be in my best interests to assist you in your efforts since they are aimed at stopping the Maker and his invasive creations."
"Precisely."
The little man's head bobbed from side to side, as if he were inwardly debating the idea. "Your argument does have a certain merit."
"I'm glad you think so."
The dog master paced in front of them, as if considering the possibility. "So what exactly would you want of me?"
"Your expertise, your insight, your peerless knowledge," Dewar flattered, shamelessly. "Specifically, we need to find out exactly what these devices of the Maker's do and how they do it. Once we know that much, we can begin to work out a way of stopping them."
"And so you come to me." Abruptly, the dog master started to laugh; an edgy, hysterical sound. Tylus and Richardson exchanged anxious glances. "You must forgive me," he said as the laughter subsided, "but this is all just so wonderfully rich, bizarre even. As if the guard actually taking their responsibilities seriously is not astonishing enough, we now have you, Dewar, of all people, standing by their side. Despite what people may say, surely it is the world that has gone mad and not I."
Dewar's smile in response was a tight thing lacking any hint of amusement. "That's as may be, but you remain the one person best qualified to unravel the secrets of these devices. Will you help us and in doing so help yourself?"
"Oh, I'll help you alright; particularly since I already know the answers, so it won't require any real effort on my part. But there is a condition; something you must agree to do before I share my secrets with you."
"Namely?"
"When you go after this Maker, as I'm sure you will, you must take one of my pets with you." He patted the false-dog beside him. "I may not be able to accompany you in person, to witness his downfall with my own eyes, but at least I'll be able to see it by proxy."
All of which depended on their ability to find and defeat this Maker in the first place, of course. Tylus only wished he shared the dog master's apparent confidence on that score. Dewar looked enquiringly across at him. The Kite Guard could see no obvious objection to the man's demands, so nodded his agreement.
"Very well," Dewar replied, turning back to the dog master.
"Excellent!" The small man clapped his hands together and rubbed them with apparent glee. "Now, you want to know what these devices do. Tell me first what you think they do."
"Control people in some way..."
The dog master shook his head, "No, no, nothing like that; they don't control people, they infect them!" He spread his arms and hooked his fingers, looming forward like some villain from a pantomime intent on intimidating his audience.
"With what?" Dewar responded calmly.
"I'll show you!" The dog master's smile reminded Tylus of an excited child's, desperate to share a secret. He crooked a finger, summoning them to follow, then turned and walked across to a worksurface.
As he emerged from beneath a cluster of hanging cables and looped tubing, Tylus was amazed to discover that above this wor
k station sat an array of screens fixed to the wall, three rows of them, the bottom two at least a dozen across, the top only a few less.
"My eyes," the dog master explained, gesturing towards the ranks of screens. Perhaps he noted Tylus's reaction, or perhaps he was merely showing off. "Everything my pets see, I see."
Each screen showed a different view of the under-City, each depicted in black and white but all with crystal clarity. With a start, Tylus realised that one of the images was of them, as seen from behind and from a low elevation. He looked over his shoulder to find the hound Sirius, which had led them here, staring back at him.
"Now, where is it?" The dog master was rummaging among a clutter of objects on one corner of the desk. "Ah yes." He picked something up, his back masking from the Kite Guard exactly what, and moved across to a bulky implement standing on another section; a microscope. He placed whatever he had found on the viewing stand, peered into the lens and gently rotated a large wheel, adjusting the focus. "There." He gestured for them to come forward.
Dewar looked first, then grunted and stood back to make way for Tylus. Closing one eye, the Kite Guard peered down, to see a transparent, segmented worm. As he watched, the thing wriggled, and a part of another, similar thing moved briefly in and out of view across the top left-hand corner. Tylus had encountered microscopes during training but had never felt entirely comfortable with these revealing glimpses into the micro-world. He stood up again quickly, allowing Richardson to step forward.