Cogs in Time 2 (The Steamworks Series)

by SJ Davis

  —

  Now when the airships drifted past at their obnoxiously slow crawl, Jorge waved an angry fist at them, and what they represented. If alone, he often shouted words to match, a stream of vulgar obscenities drowned out by the noise of the vessel passing over him.

  Jorge knew that there was never any hope of his insults reaching the ears of craft’s crew, and he never wanted them to. The abuse was always at the gods, staring down uncaring from their heavens, at the people that had ruined his life, or the cruel whims of fate itself. The great machines of the new age of mankind were just an easy target.

  He had fled to the city, into its murky depths, amongst all of the scum and grime. Initially, it had frightened him in its immensity, sprawling for what looked like forever, miles of interwoven steel and brass pipes over stone and wood, chimney stacks and furnaces that never seemed to cease polluting the world. He felt dizzy looking up at the massive factories standing side by side with older buildings, cathedrals and battlements, rotting from disuse and dwarfed by the industry of the new era.

  The people were never ending. Jorge had never seen so many in one place before. Strange faces with unusual clothes or accents surrounded him wherever he went. The city never quietened down and ran at all hours, stuck at the same level of activity at night as during the day. It was always sheer chaos, a heady and intoxicating mix of shouting voices and loud, mechanical noises. Carriages and other wheeled conveyances, strange machines driven by engines instead of horses, could arrive at any given moment in the streets outside and leave again just as rapidly once they had conveyed their passengers or picked up their goods. The avenues and roads bustled with people, the crowds spilling out from the buildings as a fractured, irritable tide made up of hundreds of tiny faces.

  At first he had starved, eating only the scraps from waste bins, until in desperation, he had lent his hand to pick-pocketing. The first time he tried, he had almost been caught, clumsy and inexperienced. Pursued, he'd run through streets and alleys, climbed up girders and along the sides of buildings until he was totally lost and completely alone. At last, mercifully alone with just himself, for the first time in months.

  After the incident, he'd returned to begging and scavenging what he could, terrified of trying to be a thief once again. He explored, driven by necessity, searching for the most profitable places to beg in front of people, the best places to find water caught from the rainstorms, or leftover food from some unknown table or stall.

  Unable to deny a childish fascination with what the city had to offer him, Jorge wandered aimlessly through the old cobbled streets, looking at the shop fronts of tradesmen of all sorts and varieties, the old with the new. In most, the trappings of their craft remained as they ever did, but usually with new devices or conveniences, wonders that made people laugh and clap. They were all wretched things, which only served to remind him that he could never escape from them. It left him feeling helpless and with a bitter taste in his mouth.

  The worst had been a little clockwork man that had scuttled around in a tailor’s showroom. Unable to speak or think independently, it simply followed the nearest person on its tiny tracks, whirring and clicking away to itself. No matter how much Jorge had dodged around, tried to lose its attention, it had stayed with him. It’s elaborately painted face, purposefully garish and comedic, had taunted Jorge.

  If men could be taken away and replaced by automatons like this, what hope was there for the species?

  The other areas he found were no better. The docks were probably the least and most bearable at once. The ships came at all hours, tankers and cargo ships, others carrying hordes of passengers that swelled the population of the city even more so than it’s already overcrowded state. They all arrived with smiles, hopes and dreams. Jorge would inwardly laugh to see them, knowing that those same hopes would be dashed soon enough.

  Down on the wood and metal piers, thickset men were always loading and unloading, the whole sector wreathed in a fog of steam and smoke from the furnaces of the titanic craft, much larger than any airship or building—aside from the factories. As with elsewhere Jorge looked, the abundance of clockwork machinery dominated, corrupted the scene. Soaring high towers with mechanical arms for conveying heavy loads down to the workers, and the pallets of loaders, vehicles with iron-shod wheels that operated by intricate mechanisms of bronze and silver coloured gears, cog wheels and pipes, driven by bright burning fires in boilers incinerating lumps of coal.

  At least there was a purity of purpose there. The men that worked the docks shared communal camaraderie, born out of repeated proximity and backbreaking toil. There existed a familiarity to the workhouse that Jorge had spent long hours in during the war, shovelling coal and cleaning the parts with the other boys his own age. Machinery could do as much as it might, but it could never replace the raw sinew and muscles of the foul mouthed, cantankerous workers. Somehow, the dock workers represented resistance in the face of the advancing obsolescence of man.

  Every morning before dawn, Jorge travelled to the docks and clambered to the front of the queue of people in front of the dock master’s office, trying to draw attention to himself, so he might be selected for work. The duties were hard when he was chosen, leaving him exhausted and sore, with limbs that ached for days after. However, it fed him and left him no time to think or dwell on his scathing thoughts. The days that he wasn't picked out, Jorge hid in the quiet places that he'd found, in discarded metal containers on derelict wasteland. He was fast becoming a spiteful recluse away from the eyes of men other than the very dregs of humanity, the drunks, criminals and outlaws.

  On one such day he first met Mortenson.

  II

  He hurried along through the early evening, through alleys known only to the gutter scum and footpads, the forgotten victims of the spread of the city. Those people who had been absorbed into its walls, that it had no purpose for, and who had to eke out an uncertain existence however they could, no task too unsavoury. It humiliated him to feel that he was one of them, far from the sight of the wholesome people in the bustling streets. Looking at them was like seeing through a pane of glass, never being able to reach out and touch, always distant from their easy smiles and boisterous confidence.

  That evening the old man had told him that he must arrive by the third hour after dark. As always, very precise. Jorge held the timepiece that Mortenson had given him tightly to his chest, intermittently looking down to check it as if the arms would suddenly break their monotonous, slow cycle with a burst of speed and make him late. He could not afford to be.

  Jorge couldn't say why Mortenson had travelled to the docks in search of a servant, nor what about him had caught the old man's eye. Initially sceptical, the promise of a warm meal and money had been enough to convince Jorge to follow Mortenson though, and since, he had learned how fortunate he was. Working for the old man had been the only positive thing to happen to Jorge since he had arrived in the city. He even tolerated having an extravagant, unwholesome timepiece at Mortenson's insistence he must learn punctuality.

  The tasks were always commonplace. Usually, fetch some item or shipment from one place and carry it to another, or on rare occasion to Mortenson himself. The people the old man dealt with were largely polite, if insipid servants or clerics. Jorge very rarely even needed to bother to start conversation, simply scrawl a cross on a piece of paper and collect the item. In the beginning, he never looked at them, his curiosity easily put at bay by his fear of losing whatever contract he possessed with Mortenson. After a time, his confidence grew, and he couldn't resist paying more attention to what he was ferrying around.

  Nearly every transaction was mundane, he learned, usually some piece of tubing or clockwork parts, exposed springs and wheels. If Jorge had possessed more of an interest, he might have tried to learn what they were from the pale technicians that passed them to him, but the pretend smiles and nervous pretence always infuriated him. Ultimately, he was content to be fed and to have purpose. If the
old man ever cared that Jorge might pay attention to what he was carrying around, he never showed it.

  Jorge had no idea what to spend the money he steadily accumulated on. Instead, he carefully stashed it beneath an old loose brick in a wall near to where he slept under a dirty tarpaulin. Every night, he counted the amount of coins and the bizarre papers that Mortenson insisted was a type of money, unknowing of why some were larger than others, or what the numbers on them meant. The pieces of paper had pictures on them, heads of crowned kings and queens, grimly staring to the side in stained green. Jorge new them all from looking, but was entirely unsure of whether he had a lot of money or a little. All he knew was not to lose it.

  The one time that he did have an interest in what he was conveying was an instance when he had been tasked to pass the item directly over to Mortenson's residence. The house had not seemed as grand as Jorge had expected, although it had been a mansion beyond the means of any but the extremely wealthy. From the outside, the building had begun its slide into disrepair sometime since, the lime plastering crumbling and the murals on the walls fading. Creeper plants grew up over walls, dislodging bricks that had threatened to trip Jorge by catching his shoes. He had not managed to step inside to see any more, because Mortenson had caught him at the door, and ushered him away without a word. Even so, Jorge liked the building. It was an oasis of old fashioned sensibility, free from any of the monstrous artefacts that festooned every other residence in the city.

  The item itself had been a series of delicate, small crystals, made of a clear stone, and carefully wrapped inside a padded and gilded box. It had easily been the most expensive thing that Jorge had ever been trusted with, and very likely the most valuable set of objects that he had ever closely beheld. It made his chest swell with a sort of pride that Mortenson trusted him with them. He had stopped just around the corner of his destination, and with gentle fingers, softly pinched thumb and forefinger, holding one after another up to the flickering light of a street lamp. No matter how he tilted or angled them, none reflected any colours. Any illumination seemed to enter, and be somehow blocked dead from leaving the other side. They had fascinated Jorge as he turned them this way and that, searching for their secrets.

  –

  Finally he arrived, within time. Early even. Night was drawing in fast, the sun long since out of sight behind the buildings on the skyline, and darkness beginning to fall. It looked like the lamp lighters had already been out on their patrols, leaving the streets behind them bathed in grainy yellow hues. It was going to be a cold evening, even in the city, where warmth seemed to bleed from every crack, the whole thing one immense beast, the smoke stacks in the distance belching as it breathed. Jorge wore a little coat, threadbare and full of holes, which he had found months back whilst rooting through some waste. He pulled it tighter, for all that it didn't help much to keep the chill out.

  Mortenson's residence was set some way back from the nearest street and from its neighbours by its grounds. A high fence atop a short stone wall surrounded it, stained dirty green and brown from the elements. Peering in, Jorge could only see a vague shadow of the building, lost in the failing light and by the overgrown vegetation. The handful of times that he had been there, Jorge had always been struck by how stark the difference was by comparison to the vibrant, bright, noisy thoroughfares elsewhere. This one part of the city never seemed busy, only ever a handful of people in the street. It was, as always, unsettlingly quiet.

  Mortenson's gardens looked as if they had never once been cultivated, wild with tall weeds and grass, bushes and shrubbery. Trees grew upwards, pointing to the skies, but their branches had grown at crazy angles, some arching out as if to try and escape, others resigned to their captivity and low to the ground. Jorge didn't know anything about trees, but it was clear that several different types occupied the grounds, some with fat, wide leaves, and others spiky with pines. They all looked equally sinister in the light now.

  The few stone decorations still evident that they had ever been present had become overgrown, the fountains bone dry from neglect, the statues toppled or cracked and broken. No lamps provided illumination to the scene, beyond one tired old lantern hanging on a hook by the gate, presumably lit by a well-meaning street lighter. It struggled with futile inadequacy to beat back the darkness of its surroundings. One path of uneven pale stone led into the depths and towards the house, parts of it lost by moss and vines. In Mortenson's gardens, nature held mankind’s hostile progress at bay, and had begun to envelop what damage had been wrought upon it.

  The gates were never locked in Jorge's experience, and he opened one with a loud creaking noise, orange rust staining his fingers as he took some of it away with his hand. He carefully closed the gate, trying and failing to make as little noise as possible. He spat on his hands, rubbing them together to clean the rust off and wiped them on his coat before he proceeded. The fabric was already grubby, and the extra wouldn't hurt.

  Carefully, Jorge lifted the lantern from its rusted hook, the candle inside low from being left unattended for some time. He cast its light in front of him to illuminate the path leading forward, and began a slow walk towards the residence, remembering previous visits and carefully choosing his steps as to not lose his footing.

  The gardens were eerily lit, the only illumination from the flickering light inside of the lantern and the rapidly diminishing street lamps behind him. Before too long he left those, and the world shrunk to a splash of light surrounding him. Long shadows stretched away from Jorge, as if he were fighting back the darkness, the light claiming some territory for his own. He was reminded of the old stories his mother had told him about the monsters that hid in the dark, and that couldn't drag you away if you were in the light. Silly childish fancy.

  A sudden gust of wind pushed through the undergrowth, making the trees shake and letting loose a shrill sigh. Dead leaves blew around his feet. Perhaps the universe sought to remind him otherwise. He pushed her and the stories out of his mind at once, but hurried on nonetheless. The shadows silently pointed the way to where the dark building waited.

  The mansion was dauntingly big up close, a black silhouette blocking out everything else. Jorge couldn't see any lights inside and at once worried that he had made some mistake.

  On the porch was a large pair of dark wood doors, with the same rusted metal that had adorned the gates for the handles. There might well have been some carvings on them, but in the low light Jorge had little chance in making them out. He rapped the door with more force than intended, and the knocker made an echoing crash that broke the quiet far too loudly. Wincing, Jorge stepped back and waited.

  He became aware of just how subdued his surroundings had become. The sounds of the city had become a familiar constant, and their sudden loss was an oppressive silence, the lack of sound deafening. He hadn't noticed before how he had become so accustomed to them.

  When no immediate answer came, Jorge occupied himself by nervously studying the porch in the poor light, half hoping to look intelligent when his benefactor found him, half trying to occupy his time and not dwell on the sensations of being alone and exposed. Inwardly, he seethed at himself.

  Only a coward would be afraid of the dark.

  No matter how he tried to rationalise that in his head, it didn't stop him though. The freak gusts of wind caused the leaves around his feet to make scratching noises as they tumbled over and over, scraping against the stone tiles. Its strength made the bushes and trees rustle menacingly. The irony that he had spent a lifetime resenting the advance of man’s attempts to master the world and bring it to heel, only to feel as though he were intruding where he had no right to be when confronted by untamed nature, was not lost on him.

  Several minutes later, no response had come, and a growing sense of unease seeped in with the nervous worry and uncomfortable, simmering fear. Jorge tried a hand at an oversized handle on the closest door, slowly pulling it downwards and unlatching it from the other side. It wasn't locked. Th
e hinges creaked as the ancient door slowly swung inwards, mercifully nowhere near as loud as the knock had been. Even so, he cautiously looked around him for some fantastical faerytale predator.

  Indecision suddenly overwhelmed him.

  To go in or not to?

  On the one hand, he couldn't spend the evening waiting outside. If he had made some kind of mistake and was supposed to meet Mortenson in a different place, then he would have no time to go and find where he was supposed to be if he waited much longer. On the other, he was breaking into the residence. The old man was unlikely to be happy with that.

  Looking at the hungry flame consuming the rapidly diminishing candle in the lantern gave him his answer. Jorge had no desire to be left outside without light. He stepped over the threshold, and into the residence.

  III

  Inside was just as cold and dark as outside, and the unnerving lack of sound continued its frightening reign, broken only by the occasional creak or muted gust of wind against the walls. Jorge crept through the house, the light from the lantern casting sharp, unnatural shapes over the contents of the rooms. The only other source of light was from the moon far above, lost behind the poisonous clouds of heavy smoke in the skies. It added little through the windows, only a pale blue hint on the furniture nearest to them.

  Wherever he stepped, small clusters of dust leapt into the air, as though the rooms had been abandoned for some time. The thick layer of dust covering everything and the pungent dank scent in each room seemed to confirm the fact. Shining the light around the walls, he could see they were busy with cobwebs and patches of mildew. The sense of unease still prevailed, but nonetheless his natural curiosity and pressing business kept him at the task of wandering through the building. He had not dreamed that the old man would let the place fall into ruin as he had.