Colin and Liam shared a look, perhaps grateful she didn't have one of those for them.
Once they got beyond the people rushing to ogle the scene of devastation, the ringing of bells announced the arrival of a fire engine. Impressive that it was so fast to appear in such an area, and Verity wondered about that. Was someone watching the mad scientists lair? They were dead now, so it wasn’t so much of a bother, though her thoughts did turn to how he had managed to snatch so many children so quickly.
Hefting the automaton, she led the way back into King Fog. With a heavy mechanication over her shoulder, Kensington had never seemed so very far away.
Chapter Three
Amongst the Children
“Wonderful, just wonderful,” the voice in the sphere creaked out, “children…”
Doctor Alexander Potts stared out of his automaton's eyes at the small kitchen they were all crowded into. When he possessed a mortal body of his own, children were the bane of his existence. Being a teacher that had been somewhat of a problem.
Now as a three-foot-tall automaton it hadn't much changed.
The blonde young woman who had carried him from the Monster House, hadn't stopped staring at him since she took him out of the sack. Despite the ignominy of that little incident, she was certainly the most interesting of the collection of ragamuffins.
The tall young man, who looked to have some Indian ancestry, kept his arms crossed and said nothing. Alexander felt like he stared at the automaton shell he wore rather as he would something he was about to take apart.
Since this was his only habitation at the present moment, that made him rather nervous. He might pop into wheel mode and try to escape, but these little blighters looked to be light on their feet.
So there was no choice. Instead he bleeped where he would have cleared his throat. That reminder of his predicament was extremely unwelcome.
"I mean... how delightful."
A door banged somewhere off further into the house, and the children glanced over as a tall man, wearing a bowler hat and carrying himself with the air of one from the military entered. Taking off his hat, he glared at Alexander.
"Well, have you taken it apart yet?" he asked.
A clank of alarm escaped the automaton body, when he would rather it didn't. "Taking me apart," he burbled, "would be killing one of the finest brains in England."
"Bit uppity," another boy, dirty and with a thick Cockney accent commented, "but what's he on about?"
The eldest girl bent down. "I am Verity Fitzroy, and who might you be?"
Finally, they were getting somewhere. "Pleasure to meet you. I am Professor Alexander Potts of the Brunel Institute, Kent."
The only adult in the room straightened up at that. "I say, the Ministry did some business there a couple of years ago. Describe to me if you will Professor Henrietta Falcon."
A test then. Though he didn't like his credentials being questioned, Alexander turned to face the gentleman, obviously the one in charge. "Professor Falcon is a striking dark-haired woman, but also I should say rather too demanding for one of the gentler sex. She run's the Centre like it is her own private..."
"He's met her then." The man crouched down next to Verity. "Pretty sophisticated piece of a mechanication."
"I still say we pull it apart," the dirtiest boy grumbled.
"I don't think it is a mechanication or a replication," she said. When she peered into his gleaming automaton eyes Alex realised that she saw more than just his brass and bronze exterior. A sensation of warmth passed through him, such as he hadn't experienced since the incident. She actually saw him.
When he gathered himself from that rush of unexpected emotion, he responded, "I am not." His programming whirred within, preventing him from uttering many things, and it took him a moment to grasp what he could and could not recall.
"I am Professor Alexander Potts... or at least his brain. That is what the Monster was doing." He pointed to the small blond boy who had struggled in the mist with his captor. "It was trying to replicate the original experiment that created me, with him."
"Colin," the smallest girl said with a gasp, and almost immediately covered it up with her hand.
"Yes, quite. I am afraid it would have killed his mortal body as it did... as it did mine."
His memories of that moment were missing, but he recalled a swirl of green and purple, and remembered the unutterably terrible moment when he'd seen his own dead body lying discarded on the floor.
Verity rested her hand on the top of Alexander's head and gave him a pat.
"Putting people inside automatons? I don't believe it!" the tallest boy burst out.
"Henry, after everything we've seen, you must allow things are changing at a tremendous rate." Verity turned back to him. "Can you tell us anything about this monster you saw?"
Now here was the sticky point of it. Alexander tried to rewind to that moment, but even when he ran at it in the green mist, for some reason he couldn't pin point what the monster looked like, or if he even knew his name.
Another unwanted jet of steam escaped his body and that embarrassed him too. "No, I cannot access that information..."
A ripple of sighs and rolled eyes followed his announcement.
"That's a real monkey wrench in the system... a convenient one too." The dirty older boy, was still glowering at him. "So now let's take him apart and Verity can see how he ticks."
Suddenly the little chestnut-haired girl leapt up and wrapped her arms around Alexander. For a moment her bouncing curls obscured his vision. "That's a wonderful name for him, we shall call him Monkey Wrench!"
"Oh no..." he let out a sigh which expressed itself as yet more steam.
"Yes, Monkey Wrench!" The blond boy who fought so valiantly grabbed hold of the automaton's slick surface too. This was taking an unpleasant turn.
Now the room was full of childish yells and screams as all the little blighters tried to get a word in. For a moment it was pure chaos, and Alexander believed he was starting to get a headache even though he didn't technically have a flesh head to experience that.
Finally the man's voice cut through the hullabaloo. "Seven! Seven! Please." They quieted a little, but after no small amount of complaining.
"Here's what we're going to do," the man from the Ministry said. "I'm going to go back to the office and confirm if there was or is a Professor Alexander Potts from the Brunel Institute, and while I'm doing that, Verity here is going to look this thing over."
"She's not going to take Monkey Wrench apart!" The other girl shouted until the room fairly shook.
"No, no I won’t, Emma,” Verity said with a sigh. "I'll just check out what he has going on in there." She pointed at his chest plate.
Alexander didn’t know which was worse; being pointed at in such a common fashion, or being labelled with ‘Monkey Wrench’ as a name. He didn’t have a lot of experience with children, but he was certain such things stuck for life. Or in his case unlife.
Verity pulled Emma and the other ragamuffins off the automaton and took hold of his hand. Alexander actually experienced the sensation, which was an artifact of the process of sticking him into this shell, but one he didn’t understand.
Away from the chaos of all the children, he climbed the stairs with the young lady, contemplating how he came to this point. He knew he was going to have to explain himself, and the problem remained, he would not be able to do that. He hoped this little expedition and her ‘look over’ didn’t involve a trip to the scrap merchants for him.
“Now then, sit here,” Verity said once they reached the top of the stairs, and now he understood; these children lived in the walls of a house.
Certainly the building must have got designed like this, but why? Maneuvering his spherical body over to the stool where she indicated, he took in the small amount of belongings she could fit in here. A narrow bed, books stacked all around it, but a tinker's bench took up the majority of the space. His brother Roger, whose inclinations le
aned more that way, owned something similar in his rooms in Cambridge.
Since Alexander’s preference was for the more theoretical, he found spanners, cans of oil and drills rather quaint. Still when Verity picked up a screwdriver and moved towards his chest panel, he slapped his three-fingered automaton hands over it protectively.
He’d never met a female doctor, and he was sure he wouldn’t have let one near him as she did. “What are you doing?” he squawked, several loud beeps popping out in an embarrassing manner.
Letting out a sigh, she knelt back on her knees and stared at him. “I just want to check out what sort of workings you have going on in there. I promise I won’t touch, just look.”
It all felt very… personal and intimate. Not that he had anything to be intimate with. Funny how when he’d had a flesh and blood body he hadn’t really thought about it, but now he missed its sensation greatly.
He longed for the smell of spring flowers, and the taste of a steak cooked to perfection. While whoever made this shell somehow worked out how to translate the touch, he left out other senses. Probably didn’t think were as important. They were though.
He forced himself to relax his arms and let Verity open his chest plate. While she worked on the screws, she glanced up at him. “How long have you been like this?”
Time, there was a difficult point. Alexander tried to recall what day he last remembered his flesh body, but a searing pain in his head overwhelmed him. Pain, that was likely why the monster had let him have the sensation.
“I… I can’t really say,” he confessed as she removed the last screw, and placed it on the bench. “I have no idea to be honest.”
Verity nodded, as if she’d expected this, but how could anyone expect anything of this situation. A few clankertons that he knew of in Europe, India and America banged around the idea of automatons that thought like humans, but they were the laughingstock of the scientific community. To say they were considered eccentric would have been kind.
The monster who did this to him decided to go another route and apparently got a great deal further with it.
“That's understandable,” Verity muttered, swinging open the chest plate. Bright green light poured from inside so that she fell back and groped around on her bench for a pair of goggles.
Alexander meanwhile stared down at the emerald rays beaming out from his own body. He no more knew what was inside this mechanical shell than a human would have in the dark ages, and despite the horror of his situation it intrigued him.
“Oh, I say, what is that?”
Verity adjusted her goggles and peered in. “Whatever it is it’s… it’s beautiful.”
Alexander wished his automaton neck was capable of extending. “Well, please, go on, enlighten me.”
The girl stared for a moment, tilting her head and choosing her words with care. “You have a small, clear crystal container in the center of your chest. In it there is a bright green flame, but I can’t see any fuel that keeps it burning.”
Green flame. Darkness squeezed in on Alexander’s vision, flickering and threatening to shut his sight down completely. No Emerald Flame. A sensation tickled in his mind, that it was familiar, but as he tried to grasp it the more it darted away from him. Another blank spot in his recollection. It was beyond frustrating.
Verity craned her head to one side, the flame reflecting in the lenses of her goggles. “It is attached to the boiler, so that’s where you are getting your steam from.”
“Don’t touch it!” Alexander burbled, suddenly terrified of this child messing with his innards.
“No fear there. I have never seen anything so bright.” Still she didn’t close the chest plate. “I don’t spot anything else particularly different about you that could contain a…” She paused. “A soul… or a mind even.”
Alexander didn’t know what to make of that. He might have expected the girl to find a tiny analytical engine, or something more aether based.
“I am Professor Potts,” he murmured, as if to remind himself. “I remember growing up in Surrey with my parents and my brother Roger and then studying in Cambridge. The Brunel Institute approached me in my second year there… I was so happy.”
Verity finished screwing shut the chest plate without saying anything. When she was done, she pushed the goggles up on the top of her head and peered at him. “Did you have a wife or children?”
He worked his brass head back and forward. “Never had the time for any of that. My parents died several years ago, but Roger lives in London.” He patted his rotund mechanical belly. “I am more than just this I swear.”
With a sigh, Verity put away her instruments, laying them out neatly on her bench. “You are certainly the most complex automaton I’ve ever seen. Even I can’t be sure what all your workings do.”
Alexander began to feel the implications of his situation. When he’d been in the Monster’s house things were fractured somehow, and his only concern was revenge and survival. Now, in the quiet of the childrens’ house the reality began to settle on him. He was an automaton, and it remained to be seen what the future would hold. His flesh and bone body he was certain was gone, and that meant he was reliant on this metallic one alone.
A low beep escaped him in place of the place where he would have sighed.
Verity patted his shoulder. “Stay here, Professor Potts. Mr Thorne will be back by dinner time with some answers.” She must understand he wanted a little time to think on things.
As she climbed down, the mop-haired girl Emma, climbed up. His irritation rose, but since these children were the only help available in this matter, he didn’t voice it.
The girl plopped down next to him and swung her legs though he did nothing to encourage her presence.
“It’s hard at first,” Emma said, patting him on the back. “Figuring out how to be an orphan in this big city. Everyone gets scared, but don’t worry you’ll get used to it after a while, Monkey Wrench. We'll help you.”
Her company was better than none at all, so Alexander sat silent and let the girl rattle on, while his mind fled down dark paths where no one else could go. Her arm on his brass skin though was curiously comforting.
Chapter Four
A Scottish friend
Verity slipped away from the others and out of the house. Luckily they were all too busy discussing Professor Potts to notice her descending the stairs. She walked the underground tunnel that led from the house to the park that all the houses in the square shared.
Emerging quickly from the tree, she exited the park before anyone got a chance to notice her. The residents of Onslow Square knew nothing of the children living in their midst, and it was best to keep it that way. Verity walked away not meeting the eyes of any of those early risers on the street. Everything was so very tidy and elegant in this part of Kensington, so she didn’t cry, or cause a scene. Even if she wanted to.
Keep walking, keep walking, she told herself. Finally, she turned a corner and found an alleyway out of the stream of traffic. Only there did she let the tears flow. She had become used to the Sound in her head, the rattle of machinery, and the feeling of rhythms bouncing around her skull, but when she’d looked into Potts’ chest plate and seen the green flame, it was another matter altogether. She had heard the voice of her father, her dead father.
One foot in front of each other, little bit. That’s how archaeology and life goes.
It surprised her that she hadn’t just slammed the chest plate closed and screamed. After so much time she’d almost forgotten what he sounded like. Yet staring at the flicking light, it was as if he’d whispered it straight into her ear. That wasn't the kind of sound she expected.
Wrapping her hands over her eyes, Verity tried to get control of her tears. She’d been only eight when her parents had been killed in a fire, leaving her destitute and on the streets of London. In her pursuit of answers as to why, she’d lost sight of the people she’d lost. Her father with his gingery beard that her mother tugged on. T
he way her mother’s mouth twisted at the corner when she laughed. It all came flooding back.
After a few more tears, she rubbed her eyes and took a long shuddering breath.
“Cora and Hugo Fitzroy,” she said to herself, and realised immediately that she hadn’t said their names out loud for a very long time. Just saying them conjured up more memories, but that was alright. She wanted to hold onto everything she could remember.
It also made her think of Uncle Octavius though. He was supposed to have died just before they did while working near the Nile, but he hadn’t. She’d caught a glimpse of him at the Delancy Academy, making off with a part from the Silver Pharaoh’s tomb. Professor Vidmar—or whatever his name was—had been with him, along with his sister who had masqueraded as the headmistress.
That she fell for those deceptions and lost a part of the great machine still stung. On the walls of the pharaoh’s tomb, there were images of a great machine, conquering enemies and bringing death and destruction.
She knew for sure that it wasn’t merely fancy. It was the thing Octavius craved and worked towards, and it was her duty to do what her parents would have; stop him.
“Verity?” Glancing to the entrance of the alley, she found Henry standing there. He always did have the knack of finding her. If she didn’t know better she would have thought he planted another of the Ministry’s tracking rings on her, but she was certain he hadn’t tried that again.
Brushing the back of her hand over her eyes, she straightened. “I just needed a bit of air.”
He nodded, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and leaned against the wall a few feet from where she did the same. “I know how that feels.”
Somehow, since she knew his own past, she found herself telling him about the green flame in Potts chest, and what she had heard in her head. He already knew about the Sound after all… so he couldn’t think her anymore cracked than he already did.
The Mystery of Emerald Flame (Verity Fitzroy and the Ministry Seven Book 2) Page 3