Men and Machines II

by Charlie Nash

  His uncle acquired a thoughtful expression, then leant down again, his hot rank breath swirling into Toby’s face. His knuckles creaked as he seized Toby’s collar. “The Spinning Jenny’s looking for a new floor lad. I need to know what they’re doing over there, you hear? And they don’t know who you are. You’ll go. And report to me each day.”

  Toby could scarce believe his luck. Out from under his uncle and the dragon. Into the world beyond the Grim Maiden. He snatched up the shovel and gaily hoicked coal into the chute.

  “Oh, boy?” said his uncle.

  “Yes?” said Toby.

  His uncle pointed to the dragon. “You cross me, that’s where you’re going for breakfast.”

  The next morning, Toby became a spy.

  He found differences between the two factories quickly. The Spinning Jenny was not sooty like the Grim Maiden, but covered in a layer of soft fibrous down. Toby turned the stuff through his fingers, until he discovered this led to a fearful itch that was unabated by scratching. This was unfortunate, because Toby’s official role was gathering up masses of the black fluff for deposit into a giant hopper.

  The source of the black fiber was the thing that stole Toby’s attention. A great mechanical spider, her body panels of beaten brass and studded steal, gleaming under the gas lamps. Her legs worked her spinnerets in a blurred fury, while two pasty, dumb, resurrectionist-crafted workers spooled the fine thread onto reels for the winders. Toby swept distractedly, watching the spinnerets work, until the Academy men moved him on. These men were always before her, dressed in waistcoats and top-hats, and holding up great cards before her dull red-lens eyes. Toby snuck a look at the cards and found them covered in complex mathematics, which he tried to memorize for later comparing to his papers.

  Adjoining the spider’s weaving room was the winder room, where a series of colossal machines ran from a great crank shaft, which itself emerged with a good deal of steam and dirt spray, through the floor. The winders pulled the threads off their spools and passed them through a dripping resin tray, before a turning shaft laid the wet fibers down on a wax mandrel.

  One mandrel was huge and boiler shaped, while the others were long and narrow for pipes. The threads wrapped around until the whole surface was covered, then the machine kept a creeping rotation while the resin set hard as glass. Toby worked this out by experimental poking of the windings in various stages of set, at which he was caught at twice, once copping a sock to the ear, and another the threat of expulsion, a fact he concealed from his uncle. Besides, his uncle only wanted to know about the spider.

  “I don’t care for their damned winder-bobbits!” he declared. “For I could make one myself with any engineer competent in industrial thievery! No, boy, I want to know of the source of the carbon-fiber, that great arachnid. She is the key. And I want her stopped, do you hear?”

  “But uncle, the science men are always with her. And they chase me away.”

  “Well, then, you’re no good to me at all, and I’d just as sooner have you sunk in the river.”

  This exchange bore new consequences. His uncle raved long into the evening, pacing by the glowing forge fire, just beyond the reach of the dragon, muttering about wrongs and slights and promises broken.

  Keeping one ear on his uncle’s raving, Toby snuck into the study and read more crinkling pages of the man’s diary. He discovered his uncle had once been party to the Academy. But the entries of formulae and complaints about Kelvin only comprised a few pages, ended abruptly, and there began the problems. Someone had crossed Toby’s uncle, and the scratchy madman writing hinted both at the rage that followed, and that definitive action had been taken.

  Toby put the diary aside with a churning in his guts. His uncle already knew he was reading papers. He’d better attempt to stop the spider or he might become cinders for the dragon’s forge, or a deadweight at the bottom of the river.

  He tried the following night. He affected extra slowness, and worked his way into the spider’s room right near the shift’s end. Standing behind a wide steam pipe, he was missed in the final check. A half-hour later, the factory was silent. Toby poured cold tea into a china cup reserved for the Academy men, imagining himself critiquing Lord Kelvin, and worked on some kind of plan.

  As a first attempt at sabotage, he upended half the cup of tea into the resin bath of one of the winding machines. There, he could convincingly tell his uncle he’d tampered with their formula.

  Sipping on the last of the evidence, Toby sidled round the wall towards the spider’s head. It was beautiful, really, but menacing. Delicately curled against a little platform, supported by a plinth, legs curled in multi-jointed archways, except for the two slowly cycling at the spinnerets. The resurrectionist-workers, chained, vacant-eyed and slack-jawed, only had to twitch the fiber once each minute. The two of them gave Toby the creepy-skin wiggins, but it was the spider he was really wary of. She looked as though she would scurry after him if he turned his back. He wasted a good turn of the clock scaring himself with spider-chasing scenarios. He wasn’t sure what was worse; his imaginings what she might do to him, or that he was expected to destroy something so magnificent.

  Toby inched up the railed walkway. This was where the Academy men always stood to hold up the formula cards. He looked about for the creamy sheets—his uncle would be impressed with one of those—but none remained.

  The only thing on the platform was a short length of pipe. Toby was still unsure whether the spider was automata—gears and springs and alchemist’s secrets—or dynamo powered. Still, the pipe was thick and would equally disrupt cog or spark.

  Toby surveyed the beast. Her panels were smooth like armor, and he’d have to climb to reach anything other than her head, where six dull red eyes stared lifeless from their oversized sockets, two larger than the rest. Otherwise the face was featureless, but for a pinched circle orifice in the lower third. Screwing up his face in distaste, Toby shoved the pipe up this opening, where it smartly jammed, protruding two inches. Toby tried shoving it further to no avail. Oh dear. That would certainly be noticed.

  And worse, nothing appeared to change.

  Desperate, but losing will for destruction, Toby emptied the pitiful remains of his tea into one of the spider’s eye sockets. The liquid was barely a few drops, so he threw in the cup after it. Toby waited until he heard the end of its thumping descent. There! Surely, that would do some ill. Toby scurried off to report what he considered success.

  His uncle was unimpressed. “And did yer stay to ensure she stopped in her spinning, did you, boy?”

  Toby’s ass smarted in anticipation. “N-no. She wasn’t really spinning anyway, uncle. Not when the Academy men aren’t there!”

  “Git back there an’ make sure!”

  It occurred to Toby that he might simply escape his uncle by applying himself to his job at the Spinning Jenny, but the idea was too fresh to gain traction. Instead, he allowed himself to snivel on the way back.

  The factory’s insides were black on black, and Toby kept running into fiber-coated surfaces. By the time he reached the spider’s room, he was scratching like a flee-ridden ape. The spider seemed quieter, until he heard a low hum, and noticed her eyes glowed dull red, reflecting dimly across every surface. The pipe he’d jammed in her head was still there.

  Mmmmmmmmmmm.

  God, was one of the resurrectionist-workers loose? Toby stood up on the railing to check, and found himself looking straight into the spider’s eye. He wondered what had become of the tea cup.

  “Mmmmmmmmmooooooo.”

  Toby froze. The hum ran through the railing and up his hands; the source was close. He peered around. The workers were in their places. Was someone else here?

  “Hello?” he called feebly. He tried to think of a story to explain what he was doing, should he indeed be caught. He pretended to brush fibers off the spider’s head.

  “Mmmmmoooooorrrrr.”

  Toby jerked and nearly fell, the hum dancing in his fingers
. It came from the spider’s head!

  “Mmmooorre,” said the vibration.

  “More?” asked Toby.

  “Eeeeeesssss.”

  Toby hung off the railing, frozen as he listened. The voice was high and tinny, as though someone was in the spider’s head speaking down the tube. The Spinning Jenny’s owner had a daughter who sometimes appeared in the office window, corseted and trimmed in Kevlar-patterned fabric. Toby crawled to the top railing to peer deep inside the eye cavity, looking for blonde ringlets and the grin of an executed prank … but he could see nothing, not even the tea cup. Just the dull red glow. The cavity was too small for a person.

  “Oooooorrrtaaaa,” insisted the spider-voice.

  Orta? Orta? Toby mouthed the sounds.

  “Ooowwwwaaaattaaaa.”

  “Oh! Water!”

  “Eeeesssss. Mmmooorre. Owatttaaa.”

  Toby looked about. The Royal Academy men were always the ones who attended the spider, and he’d never seen them feed her. But the spider was speaking to him. She needed water. Maybe they’d forgotten before they left.

  He could find no cup, but the wash-down bucket by the wall was half-full of rank soapy liquid, a quarter inch of grease on top. Toby supposed it would do. He slopped the lot into the spider’s eye cavity, getting at least half on himself.

  Abruptly the vibration lost its tinniness, and the spider-voice oiled and smoothed.

  “Anku. Elp me.”

  “Help you … what?” said Toby.

  “Ankyou fooor elping me.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” said Toby, brushing his lapels proudly. He was like an Academy man. Spider tender. Definitely not something to mention to his uncle. He frowned at the thought. What would he tell his uncle now?

  He stepped down, lower lip in his teeth.

  “Wait.”

  Toby stopped. The spider seemed to fix him with her dull red eyes, legs curled, except the two nearest the spinnerets, which still slowly cycled. He shivered.

  “Help me,” she said. Imploring.

  He wavered, his uncle playing on his mind. “With what?”

  “Three thinngs oaan-leee,” said the spider reasonably, her voice better and better. “Say you will, and I will help you.”

  Toby peered at the tube. One of his papers talked of resonant frequencies. He wondered if the spider was using the pipe so to make the voice. He wanted to know how the water changed the tone. He wanted to study it, like an Academy man. Maybe she would let him.

  “All … right,” he said.

  “Releeese the dragon,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I seeeee you at the factory across the water,” said the spider. “You can get to the dragon. Releeese it.” Toby snuck a look at the narrow wall window through which he could just see the fires of the Grim Maiden foundry. So, the dragon could see. She knew about him. He was discovered. He bit his lip, considering which was the greater beast: the spider, or his uncle.

  The one in front of him won. Still, Toby coughed in miserable self-pity as he re-entered the Grim Maiden. This was not what he had imagined. Maybe he should just go to bed … but then what would he do tomorrow?

  His uncle was asleep at his desk, one hand on his whip, the other inside his pants. The dragon slumbered by the furnace mouth, the low coals reflected as orange smudges on its dull scales. The beast was tethered by two thick chains that ran in opposite directions to two equally thick girders, secured by drop-pins. Toby found the first had rusted solid, but the second was directly below the oil-dripping flywheel for the forge hammers and came away with greased ease. The chain clattered to the floor. The dragon opened one murderous eye. Its gaze noted the flaccid chain, then again found Toby. It rose.

  With a wetness in his pants, Toby ran. He didn’t stop until he reached the Spinning Jenny and shimmied back inside. The spider’s red eyes were fixed across the river. Toby watched, heart racing, until a burst of flame erupted from the Grim Maiden, spinning roof tiles skyward like war-parade confetti. The fire and destruction quickly spread as the dragon – now trailing its two chains – laid waste to the factories across the river. Debris soon clattered on the Spinning Jenny’s roof.

  Thud, thud, thump.

  “Won’t the dragon come here, too?” asked Toby.

  “Yeeees,” rumbled the spider. “Now, undooo those bolts.”

  “Which?”

  She ballerina-ed her legs to point to two bolts, each the size of Toby’s arm, which attached a metal loop over her body to the plinth beneath.

  “Er,” said Toby, sensing the situation was well out of control.

  “It is toooo late for second thoughtsss,” said the spider silkily. “The Grim Maiden is no more. You are meant for bigger things. You will correct the wrongs of your uncle. These body prisons. Those experimenters. Releeeese me.”

  “Er, ah ...”

  “If you do not, the dragon will find you,” she urged. “I will protect you. Releeese me.”

  Toby considered two things. The dragon was a hideous force, and there was no shortage of coal in the London factories. It would eat and destroy for as long as it wanted. This, and the spider had mentioned his uncle. How did she know him?

  It took a good deal of grease-infested maneuvering, but Toby managed the bolts after standing on the end of a shifter bigger than he was. The last nut fell below the plinth with a boom. The bolts were too heavy to remove, but the spider rose up on her spindly legs and pulled both from their holes. She shook once, and the whole shackle tumbled undone. She whipped around her body, stretching her hideous length, glowing red eyes clamped on Toby. His primal center screamed to run. She was too fast to be automata! Too smooth for electrics!

  “What are you!” he blurted.

  The spider drew back. “I was once a woman of the Academy. This factory was my home. I wove carbon, and my hussssband engineered the furnaces and engines across the river. Brothers owned the factories, men of the Academy. Then the Grim Maiden … your unnncle … he accused my husband and I of spying for each other. Convinced the Academy we were traitors, and could be punissshed.”

  A long silence fell, until Toby thought she had finished. Then, she spoke again, softly as her voice would allow.

  “The Academy were experimenting with pressure-moved automata. Hot-oil hydraulics. But they had nothing to drive it. The resurrectionists could not provide intelligence. They needed a living brain. So, they took my body away and put my mind inside this.”

  She shivered her legs, as if repulsed. Toby’s mouth hung open. He’d aspired to the Academy, and his mind tore between fascination, and the horror of the methods she described. He was just smart enough to mention neither.

  “What happened?” he said instead.

  The spider gazed at the cross-river destruction. “I refused. I would not weave the carbon thread for their tanks and boilers and pipes; parts for their new steam engines. So they used extortion. I thought my husband had escaped. But they poisoned his drink with anarchist imbibings. Darwinian accelerators.”

  “Transalimentary tinctures!” said Toby, remembering his recovered Academy paper.

  She shook with rage. “He became the dragon, the Academy’s beast. Forced to work a furnace like a lowly bellows. Wretches! And we have watched each other, beast and beast, across this river, as the brothers have fallen out and fought, and kept us slaves. Until today.”

  The spider rotated herself, surveying the destruction. Toby smelled a gathering storm. He had put this in motion. He didn’t know if he could stop it. He didn’t know if he should.

  When he could speak again, it was with a waver. “What will happen?”

  “There is a new world to create. My fiber can build structures light enough for flight, and my husband designed powerful engines. A new world we will make, lighter than iron and steel! We can build anything, with a few human hands. The Academy will work for us. As subjects. As slaves. As they made ussss.”

  Toby’s dreams evaporated like a droplet on a hot ste
am pipe. She would destroy everything! This had been wrong, all wrong.

  Less than ten feet separated him from the door.

  He made it half-way before one of her spike-legs struck, cutting off escape. Toby sprawled headlong, rolling over with pain in his knees to find the spider’s red eyes in his face, the bulbous body and all those legs rising above.

  “You promised three things,” she reminded him.

  Toby could easily have forgotten he had agreed to any such thing, but he knew the spider would not.

  “You have given me a voice—” she touched the attempt-at-sabotage pipe protruding from her face with a delicate front leg “—and you have enabled this new beginning. Ride with me. Help me. I need human hands. And I will favor you.”

  It was hardly a choice. Toby wiggled as her foreleg stabbed him through the shirt collar and hoisted him up behind her head. Mercifully from this vantage, Toby could no longer see her red eyes, but the legs crept creepily in his vision. She moved just like the spiders that used to run at him in his bed at the Grim Maiden.

  They were soon scuttling across London Bridge, passing upturned cabs, the horses charred and dead, or missing. One lucky one was swimming in the river. Toby decided in that moment. He would live longer if he did what she asked.

  Then, he heard a tinking rattle somewhere below.

  “Sorry about the teacup,” he said, hoping it would not be held against him.

  “It provides vibration modulation,” she said.

  Toby breathed in relief, short lived. “Where are we going?”

  “Birmingham. Manchester. Glasgow. Destroying factories. Then, our carbon age will rise.”

  Toby noted this as the sort of occupation that distracted adults enough to leave him alone. But ideas of escape, of the future he imagined, were gone.

  “Where’s the dragon?” he asked, as they passed the splintered, burning remains of two match factories, plumes of gray smoke rising into the soft dawn now breaking on the horizon.