The Affinity Bridge

by George Mann

  Bainbridge nodded and withdrew his cane. The other man sighed visibly with relief. "Good man. Now, heed my advice and take your leave. I assure you that you do not wish to be associated with this business any more than you already are." He turned to Veronica, who was crossing the room to join them once again. "Are we set?"

  Veronica nodded.

  "Then come on, Newbury. Lead the way."

  Newbury shook his head in disbelief. "You never fail to impress me, Charles." He held his arm out for Veronica, fearing that, without her aid, his injuries may soon overcome him. She took it, and together they set off in the direction of the manufactory proper, following the route they had taken during their previous visit, when Chapman himself had been serving as their guide.

  The hanger was suffused with the same biting chill as the city outside of the walls, but at least, Newbury considered, it was sheltered from the wind and the rain. He pulled his overcoat tighter around his shoulders, and watched as the others did the same. Below, on the hanger floor, a new gondola was under construction, and the scene was nearly identical to the one Newbury and Veronica had witnessed a handful of days before, although the workmen in this instance were still assembling the basic shell rather than fitting the interior. Newbury leaned over the rail, searching the floor for signs of Chapman. He was nowhere to be seen.

  Bainbridge approached the edge of the metal walkway, clasping the rail with his left hand. He surveyed the industrious scene below. "You're right, Newbury, it's a very impressive operation, indeed."

  Newbury nodded, fighting back a shiver. He knew he'd lost a lot of blood, and consequently he was feeling the cold somewhat more than usual. The bandages and salves he had applied at Veronica's apartment had helped to stem the tide, however, and he was convinced that the worst of it was over. "Yes, this is where they assemble the passenger gondolas. The next hall is where they build the frames for the main body of the vessel." He waved his hand. "Come on. We have to pass that way to get to Villiers's workshop, anyway."

  They made their way along the metal walkway and down onto the main floor of the hanger, where the workmen seemed to ignore their presence entirely, preferring to continue with the task of constructing the gondola. The place was filled with the loud din of industry, and Newbury wrinkled his nose at the smells of oil and scorched wood.

  The next hanger was equally busy, with the skeleton of a vessel being hoisted into place by the pneumatic cranes that ran around the edges of the large room. Bainbridge looked up, clearly impressed, as Newbury led him past the foreman, who was bellowing instructions to the men working the cranes, trying to make himself heard over the noise. Sparks dripped from welding arcs high above them. They edged around the machinery and exited the main airship works, passing along the short corridor that led them out into the smaller room that housed the automaton production line.

  The room was crowded and hot, the steam-driven presses firing noisily as they worked at incredible speeds, pistons pumping furiously as they pushed out the brass components that would be used in the assembly of the clockwork men. A swarthy-looking man in a pair of grey overalls looked up when they entered the room, downed his tools and passed the chest plate of the automaton unit he was working on to another, smaller man who had been assisting him. He made his way over to the group of three interlopers, wiping the grime and oil from his face with the back of his sleeve.

  "Can I help you?"

  Newbury stepped forward. "Yes. We have an appointment with Monsieur Villiers. The clerk on the desk in reception sent us through."

  The man eyed them warily. "An appointment, you say? Can I see some identification?"

  Bainbridge bustled forward impatiently. He pulled a small leather wallet from his pocket and flicked it open, presenting it to the man. Inside was an official badge and papers from Scotland Yard, bearing the crest of Her Majesty. The man looked perplexed, as if he were unsure whether he should let the Chief Inspector and his companions through to see his employer, or why they should even be interested in speaking to the reclusive scientist. Eventually, though, he seemed to come to a decision. He stood aside and waved them at the door to Villiers's workshop with a shrug. "He's in there."

  "Thank you." Newbury inclined his head in gratitude and approached the door to the workshop. He didn't bother to knock, instead reaching out for the handle and giving the door a gentle shove. It swung into the room to reveal the same cluttered workbench they had seen before, buried beneath a vast array of components, but no sign of the man they were looking for. Newbury ushered the others through, then closed the door behind him.

  Bainbridge was frowning. "Where the devil are those damnable fellows hiding?" He cast around, trying to make sense of the cluttered workshop. He looked flustered, as if he thought that the two men had somehow managed to get away.

  Newbury was just about to respond, when Veronica tugged on his arm. "Look!"

  He followed her gaze to where she was pointing. The automaton in the corner—the demonstration model they had seen during their previous visit—was rising out of its chair and edging towards them, its left arm outstretched, its fingers opening and closing like the shining brass pincers of a crab. Its feet clacked on the tiled floor as it walked. Bainbridge, seeing the sinister-looking device making a beeline for him, grabbed his cane with both hands and gave the brass knob a sharp twist to the right. "Oh no you don't!"

  The shaft of the cane began immediately to unpack itself, and now that he had a better opportunity to observe the mechanism, Newbury was even more impressed. Small hinges unfurled at the top of the cane, causing thin brass rods to uncouple from the main shaft of the weapon so that they formed a kind of metal cage around the device. The central column began to spin rapidly, generating sparks of light within the cage itself. There was a sudden flicker, and then blue light arced along the length of the weapon, running back and forth along the conductor rod with a sharp electrical hum, from the handle all the way down to the tip of the shaft. Bainbridge, raising the weapon before him like a rapier, wasted no time. He jabbed the point of the cane towards the chest of the shambling automaton, the sharp tip actually managing to pierce the brass plate and bury itself deep in the heart of the clockwork device. Pulsing electrical energy leapt from the cane into the delicate internal mechanisms of the automaton, which either overloaded the device or caused its delicate clockwork brain to seize. There was a grinding sound from deep within the machine, the stink of burning oil, and then the device gave a spasm and dropped to the floor, rendered useless by Bainbridge's attack.

  Newbury edged forward and leaned over the unit. The blue light that had flickered beneath the porthole in its chest had gone out and its eyes had ceased spinning.

  He looked up at Bainbridge, who was busy repacking his cane. "Good show, Charles!"

  Bainbridge smiled. "Now you see why I always endeavour to have the device by my side. One never knows when it may come in handy."

  Veronica sidled up beside them. "When you two gentlemen are finished congratulating one another, I have something interesting to show you." She stepped away again, crossing the room to where the automaton had been sitting when they first entered the room. Newbury couldn't help but emit a short chuckle when he saw the scowl on Bainbridge's face. He made his way over to Veronica. "What is it?"

  "Here." She ran her hands over the wall, demonstrating the thin outline of a door, hidden in the wall behind the automaton's chair. "I wonder if this is where we'll find our quarry."

  Newbury put a hand on her shoulder. "You're to be congratulated, Miss Hobbes. I'll wager this is exactly where our quarry will be hiding. Stand back, won't you?" He waved the others back from the wall to give himself room to manoeuvre the chair out of the way. Then, returning to the wall, he ran his fingers around the edges of the door. Bizarrely, it appeared to have been cut directly out of the wall, as if someone had simply chopped a section of the wall away and then reattached it on a pair of well-placed hinges. It was decorated in the same dark wood panelling as the re
st of the room. Newbury admired the handiwork; it was an exceptional piece of engineering, and if Veronica had not noticed the thin outline of the door it was likely they would have abandoned their search of the workshop and moved on. He ran his hands over it again. There were no obvious switches, handles or triggers in the vicinity. Not knowing what else to do, Newbury gave the door a push and felt it give a little. He pressed more firmly, until there was a clicking sound, and then stood back as the door swung free towards him. He caught hold of it in his left hand as it came towards him, peering cautiously into the brightly lit chamber revealed on the other side.

  Pierre Villiers stood beside a low mortuary slab in a room that had been fitted out like a hospital surgery. White tiles covered the floor, walls and ceiling, and bright gas lamps burned with intensity in fixtures situated along each of the walls. A trestle table had been set up beside the slab, holding an array of tools, knives, lenses and other items of surgical equipment, and Villiers himself was stooped over the empty skull of an automaton, preparing to transfer a human brain into the cavity. The organ itself rested beside him on the slab, suspended in a large glass demijohn filled with a yellowish fluid that bubbled effervescently, as if it were connected to an air supply of some sort. The entire setup reminded Newbury disconcertingly of the morgue: cold, clinical and filled with the overwhelming stench of death.

  Villiers did not look up as Newbury, Bainbridge and Veronica filed into the room, their shoes clicking on the porcelain tiles. He was alone, with no sign of Chapman to be found. Newbury cleared his throat. After a moment, Villiers looked up with the briefest of glances, before turning away and continuing with his work. He talked as his fingers danced around inside the automaton's brass skull. "Sir Maurice. I did not expect to be seeing you again so soon."

  Newbury laughed. "I think, Monsieur Villiers, that you did not expect to be seeing me again at all."

  The Frenchman shrugged. "As you say."

  "They're not quite as infallible as one has been led to believe, are they, these automatons you've created?"

  Villiers reached for one of the tools on the trestle table beside him and began cranking something noisily within the brass head. "No. But they are beautiful though, are they not? A wonder of modern science? Do not tell me that you are not intrigued, Sir Maurice, that you are not at least a little bit interested in how I managed to make them work." He glanced up, looking at Newbury, although his eyes seemed to be focused on something else that the others could not see. He cleared his throat. "Here, let me show you what I am doing."

  Bainbridge started forward, brandishing his cane, but Newbury put an arm out to stop him. "Just a few moments, Charles. It pays to know what we're dealing with."

  Villiers laughed heartily. "I knew it!" He moved around the mortuary table, turning the automaton's head towards Newbury, so that the Crown investigator could see clearly inside the empty skull. There was a short brass spike at the base of the cavity, with four exceptionally fine filaments trailing out from a separate point just below the tip of the spike itself. Villiers put his hand inside the cavity. When he spoke, his voice was full of arrogance and pomp. "The human organ is placed in this cavity, here, lowered gently onto the brass spike to hold it firmly in place. The wires are then threaded precisely through the cortex until they engage with the sensitive response centres in the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Electrical stimuli, generated by the movement of the automaton device itself, are then fed back and forth along these wires to create a simple neural interface that enables the organ to receive input from the world outside of the machine's casing." He clacked his tongue against his teeth. "I call this my 'affinity bridge,' the device by which my creations may learn to interact with the external world." He grinned, as if satisfied that his audience was giving him his due attention. "Once it is working we pack the rest of the cavity with a preserving jelly to ensure the organ does not degenerate or become damaged if the device is required to make any sharp movements." He paused, drumming his hand on the table before reaching for the large glass jar that held the harvested brain. He slid it across the tabletop so they could see. Newbury heard Veronica swallow.

  "But what about the original personality, the person whose brain you have stolen? Doesn't that present itself once the organ is connected to this 'affinity bridge'?"

  Villiers practically scoffed. "We bypass the original personality, of course! Consciousness is simply a by-product of the human organism. It is not necessary for life to be self-aware. It is certainly not necessary for an automaton to be self-aware. In truth, in attaching a human brain to the affinity bridge I am simply engaging the neural structure of the organ, making use of the existing nervous system and the brain's inherent processing functions. It is a much cheaper and less time consuming option than building a new component to do the same job, although, as you've seen, the latter is indeed possible." He smiled. "At its most basic level, Sir Maurice, the human being is essentially a machine."

  Newbury nodded, appalled by Villiers's arrogance and yet somehow still intrigued enough to want understand the elaborate details of the process the man had developed; the melding of man and machine. "So what went wrong?"

  Villiers glowered at him. "Nothing! My device functions perfectly."

  Bainbridge, impatient and keen to draw the conversation to a close, decided to speak up at that point. "Poppycock! What about the airship crash, and all these reports we've had of your machines going haywire?"

  "The human organs!" Villiers sounded enraged. "Joseph brought me faulty organs." He banged his fist on the mortuary slab. "In the early days I had no mind to enquire where Joseph was obtaining the human brains that I needed for my work. Frankly, I had no reason to care. At least not until some toffee-nosed art dealer began claiming his machine had been exhibiting dangerous and unruly behaviour. I had the machine brought here for testing, and when I opened up the skull cavity I found the organ riddled with signs of the revenant plague. I asked Joseph where he'd laid his hands on the organs, and that's when he told me he'd engaged a third party to retrieve them from the Whitechapel slums. Of course, by that time the plague had already begun to spread far and wide, and we had no way of telling which of the devices might already have been affected. We had no choice but to continue."

  Veronica spoke softly. Her voice sounded remarkably calm. "So that's why The Lady Armitage went down?"

  Villiers nodded. "Yes. Joseph had the pilot unit removed from the wreckage before the police arrived. The device was returned to my workshop. The casing was badly damaged by the flames, but there was no mistaking the signs. The brain had practically been reduced to a sponge inside of the brass skull, all malformed and rotten with plague."

  Newbury glanced at Bainbridge before stepping forward towards Villiers. "If the technology had developed in different circumstances, without the need to resort to murder, you would be heralded as a genius, Monsieur Villiers. I'm ashamed to say that the path you have taken in this instance, however, has reduced you to nothing but a common criminal." Newbury put his hand on the automaton's head to hold it still. "You do understand that you're going to have to come with us?"

  Villiers nodded slowly. "May I just—"

  There was a terrifying bang.

  The sound seemed to reverberate around the entire room. Villiers slumped to the floor, blood streaming from a bullet hole in his forehead, just above his right eye. The white tiles on the wall behind him were spattered with a bright spray of blood and brain matter. Veronica screamed. Newbury spun around on his heel to see Chapman framed in the doorway, clutching a revolver that he turned to point directly at: Newbury's face. Smoke curled in lazy curlicues from the end (of the discharged barrel.

  "Never could keep his mouth shut, the arrogant bastard." Chapman flicked his hair away from his face, eyeing the three of them carefully. Veronica shifted slightly and Chapman waved the gun at her. "Not a single move, Miss Hobbes, or your beloved Newbury gets a bullet in the head, just like poor old Pierre." These last few wor
ds were delivered with a nasal sneer. He took them all in with a sweep of the barrel. "Now we're going to do things my way." He indicated with his head. "Newbury. Over there, with the girl."

  Newbury eased himself around to stand beside Veronica. "Whatever happens today, Chapman, this is going to follow you. You can't keep running forever."

  Chapman shook his head. "Oh, please. Don't patronise me, Newbury. You really should know better than that." He turned to Bainbridge. "You. Old man. Your turn next. Get over there and join them in the corner." Bainbridge turned slowly towards the industrialist. He made a cautious step towards Veronica and Newbury, then altered his momentum at the last moment, whipping up and out with his cane and connecting hard with Chapman's outstretched wrist. There followed a brief moment of chaos when, for Newbury, the world seemed to suddenly stop. It was as if the whole scene had been cast into silence. The revolver went off, sending a bullet ricocheting off the tiled walls and causing Newbury and Veronica to duck involuntarily to avoid being hit. Chapman let out a howl of pain and clutched at his wrist, letting the revolver fall to the floor so that it skittered across the tiles towards Villiers's corpse. Bainbridge readied himself to strike another blow.

  Then reality came crashing back in, and Chapman, reacting faster than the others, turned and ducked out of the doorway, leaping over the skeletal frame of the ruined automaton and fleeing the workshop as quickly as his legs would carry him.

  Bainbridge stooped to retrieve his revolver.

  Newbury and Veronica looked at one another, and then, making up their minds at exactly the same moment, they gave chase, each of them sprinting out of the door in pursuit of the fleeing criminal. Bainbridge was quick to follow, hefting the gun in his right hand.

  Behind them, the corpse of Pierre Villiers stared unseeing through the open door, his jaw slack with death, blood pooling around the exit wound at the back of his splintered skull.