“I think you cannot do that, Gwendolyn. You’re a passionate woman. I honour you for it. But I fear you will not feel moderately if you know what I—”
“What you are doing? Or, no. What you have done. That’s it, isn’t it? Horace, what have you done?”
“I knew you would take that tone.”
“If I—if I could conceive—would you love me again?”
“Gwendolyn, if I could conceive, would you forgive me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.”
“What do they do, Soames? Your ears are sharper than mine.”
“Nothing. They are not moving. Let us go, before the door opens.”
“There’s the bell, and mighty soon. Master must not be talking too much tonight. Is the tea tray ready?
“It’s not he doing the talking. It’s that Clewis. Is the tea ready, Cook?”
“That it is, Mr Soames. Ileen, do you take the tray into the drawing room. Why, whatever is the matter, girl? You’re trembling!”
“It makes nothing, Cook.”
“I promise you, Ileen, I will be watchful. He shall not harm you.”
“Soames, more brandy here. And see if you can run Ileen to earth. I’ve been ringing these past five minutes. Clewis wants a closer look at her arm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then while we’re waiting, can you direct me to—?”
“The necessary is under the stairs, sir.”
“Flushed by our very own water tank, Clewis.”
“On the roof?”
“Precisely.”
“Admirable. I shan’t be a minute.”
“Mr. Clewis, sir, permit me. The necessary is this way. That door leads to the back stairs.”
“Oh, does it?”
“Sir! Mr. Clewis!”
“There’s the bell again, Soames. Better go see what your master wants.”
“Er—sir—”
“Don’t scream, Princess Elena. You’ll be very easy to kill.”
“Let go of me! Non! Docteur Penderby will not permit—”
“Dr. Penderby will lick my boots when I explain he’s been harboring an escaped, half-baked Promethean.”
“Madame Penderby will not permit! She knows! She is my protectress!”
“Then we’ll just take a little walk down the back stairs to the mews, and Penderby can lick her boots instead. Come along! Don’t squeak so, dammit! Hell, what is that?”
“D-docteur Penderby’s orangutan.”
“What’s it doing on the servants’ stairs? Christ, look at those teeth. Where does this door go? Ballroom? All right, through here, and quick.”
“Unhand her, you villain!”
“M’sieur Soames! Thank God you have come!”
“Dr. Penderby has sold this Promethean to me, Soames. We discussed it when you were out of the room.”
“You lie, sir. I must respectfully demand you release her.”
“Always a good servant, eh? I don’t think you can stop me, Soames. Get back! I say, put down the sword!”
“Sir, I must insist.”
“Aaaagh! The bitch bit me!”
“Save me, Soames!”
“Get behind me, Ileen.”
“Did Penderby teach you to fence, mechanical man?”
“En garde, sir.”
“Oh, mon Dieu, shall I fetch the mistress?”
“Perhaps it would be—ugh!—well—ah!—go, Ileen! I can hold him!”
“Not bad fencing for a box of gears and stale meat, Soames. Ow! Dammit! Now listen—ah—you haven’t a legal leg to stand on, you know—ugh!—I created and I own the girl just as your master created and owns—ow!—owns you! *pant* Will you just slow down and listen?”
“Not quite, sir. Dr. Penderby built me from scratch, sir. A box of gears and, as you put it, stale meat. You began with a human being—ah!—who was also—”
“Soames! Ileen told me you were—what is going on here?”
“It’s run mad, Mrs. Penderby. Ow! Damn! Where’s the off switch? I can’t hold it off much longer!”
“There isn’t one, Mr Clewis. We don’t put an off switch on persons in this house. But Soames, what are you about? Someone will get hurt!”
“Just like that fool Penderby to animate something and leave off the dead man’s switch. Ah! Take that!”
“A good hit, sir. Fortunately—ugh—not in a vital spot. In fact, Mr. Clewis, you found a body floating in Lake Geneva that stormy night and you—ugh—made use of it, didn’t you? Where did you find an arm to replace the one she lost to the steamboat paddle?”
“What does it matter? She was dead! She is dead! And she’s mine!”
“I beg your pardon? Mr. Clewis, Ileen is far from dead, and she is no one’s property.”
“It’s just a housemaid.”
“Ah!—she is a princess of Wittgenstein, sir, as I suspect you knew—ugh—if not the night you pulled her from the lake, then surely—ah—the following morning. Every village round the lake was in mourning for her, and searching for her body!”
“Ileen! Is this true?”
“Madame, I do not know. M’sieur Soames is convinced.”
“Soames—”
“Oh there you are, Soames, where the devil is that housemaid—Clewis! What’s to do here? Gwendolyn?”
“Horace, stop them! Soames says Ileen was a princess before she died, and Clewis put her in his laboratory.”
“Sir, I found him trying to smuggle Ileen out of the house.”
“But is it true, Horace?”
“So Soames tried to tell me. Put down the sword, Clewis. You can’t hurt Soames, and you—I say, old fellow, have a care—augh!”
“Horace!”
“But Soames is bleeding! Docteur Penderby, he most certainly can be harmed!”
“I thought—but, Horace? Soames is an automaton, isn’t he?”
“Er, not entirely.”
“You see, Mrs. Penderby—ah!—your sanctimonious husband—argh—has been working with stale meat for a long time! Ah—that hurt, didn’t it, mechanical man? Ah-hah!”
“Only—only a trifle—ugh!”
“Horace, you didn’t! Oh, Horace, is that why Soames looks so lifelike? You’ve been animating corpses?”
“Only bits, Gwendolyn. The autonomic systems. I’m so sorry. I meant to tell you when I finally succeeded! But by then—your hostility to reanimation—I felt sure you would hate it. You surprised me with your championship of our Ileen.”
“You successfully integrated organic systems with automated ones at last? How splendid! Horace, you should have told me!”
“I wanted you to see how well Soames worked. But by the time you accepted him, the habit....”
“It works bloody well, Penderby, and I’m so pleased—augh!—for your improved relations with your wife—argh!—but can you call it off now?”
“I don’t know, Clewis. I’m beginning to think the best way to settle this is to alert the royal family of Wittgenstein to the whereabouts of their missing princess.”
“She’s dead, you fool! Just clay now!”
“I doubt they would see it that way. You’ve desecrated a royal corpse—attempted unholy practices on it. They’re awfully primitive thinkers in the smaller duchies, eh? We can deal with this the civilized way.”
“Damn you! I’ll take my stale meat home and pull the plug and—argh!—if you come to your senses, we can correspond more about your methods—”
“Damn you, sir, you blackguard! You shall not speak of her so!”
“Horace, stop them! Where are you going?”
“Hah! He’s getting out of the way, dear lady, as you should—ugh—do too! A-hah!”
“Ileen! Flee! I can’t hold—”
“Ah! Hah! Damn you, why don’t you die?”
“Soames! Ah, my Soames, he has killed you!”
“Hey! What—Penderby, is that a boat hook? You ass, your butler could fence better than you can.”
“It’s a crocodile hook.”
“Crocodi—AAAAAAHHHHHH!”
“Soames! My Soames, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!”
“Horace!”
“Sorry, love, but he was right. I couldn’t have beat him with a saber.”
AUGHHHHH! HELP! ARGH—ARGH—AIIEIEEEEE!”
“He’s—it’s eating him.”
“‘Myes. Bit of a mess.”
“But—but won’t you want him for parts?”
“And risk having his soul hang about in the tissues? No thanks.”
“I don’t know that it would.”
“My dear, I’ve been working on this for months. I think I know more than you do about the process.”
“But Horace, look at Ileen. She remembers nothing about being a princess.”
“And yet she behaves regally.”
“Is this how a princess mourns her—her chevalier blanc, Docteur Penderby? With rage, not tears? You let him die!”
“Not yet, I fancy. Gwendolyn, help me get him up on the slab.”
“Ileen! He didn’t steal you!”
“Oh, my Soames, you survive!”
“My autonomic nervous system is flesh, but my heart is mechanical. If he killed me, how—?”
“Docteur Penderby set the crocodile on him.”
“Soames, I have reconsidered my position on the ensoulment of automata. Mrs. Penderby suggests that your recent heroism could not have been performed by the butler I mandated you to be.”
“I have devoted some thought to the matter myself, sir.”
“And you conclude, Soames?”
“That the higher vital processes, by which I refer to those acts of volition which ordinary persons—even servants—perform on a daily basis, bring one inescapably into a condition of conflict between two things one ought to do. One’s duty must, inevitably, war with itself. Out of the strife, a soul arises.”
“So to suffer is to be ensouled, eh? Do you fancy this applies to reanimated, er, flesh as well as to a more synthetic construction?
“You refer to me, Docteur Penderby.”
“More like a princess every moment, Horace.”
“Well, Ileen? What is your opinion?”
“Docteur, I think the flesh remembers more than we know. To breathe, to eat, it is to be someone. But it is not until one loves that one knows for sure.”
“How does that fit with your theory, Soames?”
“Sir, I assure you that until I loved, I did not suffer.”
“Oh, Horace! They love!”
“I see.”
“Since Dr. Penderby does not seem to object, will—will you return to Wittgenstein, Your Highness?”
“I blush! Do not speak to me so, my Soames.”
“It is your rightful place.”
“No longer. No doubt some cousin sits on my throne now. And it would be difficult for me to prove my identity. I still remember nothing. What good is a princess who knows nothing? My country needs someone with a memory.”
“Ileen, I hope you know you are always welcome to refuge here in our home. My husband and I will always offer you shelter. I know Soames will be glad to have you here.”
“Begging your pardon, Madam, but no. I fear I cannot remain in service.”
“But Soames, we adore having you here. No one else has been able to keep order half so well.”
“If death has ruined Ileen for her royal position, love has spoiled me for this work. If she will have me, I will take her away to the Americas and seek our fortune there.”
“I say, Soames, surely we can reach an accommodation. I have hired an expedition going to darkest Louisiana next June, on a search for the famed Ivory Billed Woodpecker. It appears that Mrs. Penderby will be in labor about that time, and as my place is by her side, perhaps you would go for me? Not as a servant, but as a junior partner. Clearly you are wasted in a domestic capacity. But as a fellow adventurer, may I say a born gentleman, and may I hope a friend, you could be invaluable to me, personally. I ask not as your employer but as one man to another.”
“I am overcome, sir.”
“My Soames! You won’t leave me!”
“Your Highness, I cannot aspire to your hand, but I can adore you forever. Grant me the privilege of doing so where the dear sight of you may not tear my heart to pieces.”
“Rise, Soames. I have been an impertinent maid, and an unlucky princess, and I do not know how to find my way here, even among friends. But if you would take me with you, I could try to make more success as a free woman.”
“She is a free woman, Soames. You have the Society for a Broader Definition of Humanity’s blessing.”
“Don’t look at me, old boy. Whom you choose to bring with you on our expeditions is none of my concern.”
“Ah, I remember something! You must now kiss me, Soames.”
“May I?”
“It is entirely convenable.”
“Mrs. Penderby—Gwendolyn—I think we should look the other way.”
“Let us follow their example, Horace. I am sure it is convenable.”
Jennifer Stevenson loves anything that clanks. She lives in Chicago with a mad infrastructure geek and can be spotted in theme restaurants tapping on the junk nailed to the walls.
The Savage and the Monster
… by Nancy Jane Moore
“What could it truly be, this strange child of such a mother? I pour over her book again and again searching for clues, but find only hyperbole and misdirection. Not even Madame M. can clearly see the truth in this matter. Fraser laughs and says he believes Mary Godwin ran off with Polidori and the book is an attempt to save her reputation. It is the answer I would expect from him.
“One thing only I can make out clearly. Wherever it is, she is, for if there is a moral in that volume it is that life once created should never be abandoned.”
From the private journals of Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace
Jane Freemantle sat in the front row, back straight, hands folded in her lap, eyes focused on the speaker. She wore a white dress, which made her brown skin appear darker than it was, and her black hair was piled atop her head in an elaborate arrangement. Every woman in Lady Fortescue’s drawing room had examined her carefully, some surreptitiously, some with frank, almost rude, stares.
The Hon. Elizabeth Freemantle was saying, “The metalmen present a danger, particularly if there is any truth to the rumour that some rogue magician”—she deliberately did not name him—“has found a way to ensoul them. Even without souls, they can be exploited by unscrupulous men and used to cause great harm.” Her voice cracked slightly on the last word and she paused a moment.
Jane shivered. She hoped no one noticed.
“Great harm,” Elizabeth said, her voice now firm. “But the most extreme risk comes from the Prometheus itself, a creature biological, not mechanical, but endowed by its creator with enhancements that make it all but indestructible.”
The audience gave a suitable gasp.
“Almost indestructible,” Elizabeth said. “Fortunately, Mr. Frayle, the distinguished engineer, has developed a weapon that, if fired through both the head and body of the Prometheus, will destroy it beyond all possible repair.”
That was Jane’s cue. She got up and walked over to the box that held the prototype of Frayle’s double-barrelled gun, and took out the weapon, holding it across her body as one might hold a hunting rifle. The two barrels were built in a V shape, with about a foot between them at the widest point on the open side. They came together about six inches in front of the trigger mechanism. Behind that was the engine that gave the weapon added power, so that it would shoot multiple heavy projectiles through each barrel.
The audience gasped again, louder this time.
“Do not worry,” Elizabeth said. “This is only a prototype and will not fire. Jane, please show the weapon to the ladies.”
Jane carried it around the room, stopping to let each woman look at it, and allowing the few who dared hold it in their hands. �
��It’s lighter than it looks,” one said. Another squealed as she touched the trigger.
“I repeat: This weapon will destroy the Prometheus. But one gun is not enough. We cannot just send one soldier out to find this creature, who has eluded armies time and again. We must send out many people, all well armed and equipped, in the hope that one will get close enough to kill it.
“We need funds to manufacture the weapons, and funds to train and equip the brave young soldiers who will set out to eliminate this abomination.”
Murmurs around the room. The mention of money always produced murmurs.
“And those brave young soldiers will not all be men,” Elizabeth went on, knowing her audience was drawn from the Mary Wollstonecraft Society. “My ward, Miss Jane Freemantle, will be among them.”
Jane had heard the fundraising speech so many times now that she no longer flinched when Elizabeth said this. Instead, she gave a modest smile.
“Jane will be giving us a demonstration of her shooting ability after tea,” Elizabeth said.
Jane walked around behind the ladies to return the prototype to its box, so that she wouldn’t stand between them and Elizabeth. As she walked past the last of the women, she heard someone say, “They say she’s actually a Red Indian, but her manners are very nice and she doesn’t smell like one, certainly, though she is very dark. How ever did Elizabeth find such a girl?” The person she spoke to shook her head.
Jane stiffened. Yet another reminder that she would always be, at best, a curiosity to these people, different from real human beings. She resisted the temptation to tell the woman how she and Elizabeth had met; it would shock her, certainly, maybe even impress her, but it wouldn’t change her attitude.
Though it was a good story. Jane and Elizabeth had saved each others’ lives twelve years earlier.
It was Tcax who first spotted the boat. She had been racing with the boys when they first heard the engine clanking up the Bayou Teche. In the bayou country, where most sounds came from people or animals, the noise of a steam engine could be heard for miles.
“I bet it’s that funny white man, who comes to pick flowers,” one child said. They all ran to climb trees along the bayou. Tcax picked a large oak with a split trunk, and climbed out on the half that grew across the bayou. A year ago, she had been taller than most of the boys, but they had begun to pass her in size. They taunted her for being small now, but at the top of the tree it gave her an advantage: She could crawl out farther before the bough would break.
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