After ascending a flight of stairs, they entered a long room lined with beds. Ikey recognized the room as an infirmary, though there were no patients to speak of. Each bed was made up neatly with linens that bore a few, slight, faded stains. There were no retches, no moans, no thick, putrid odors sliding through the air. The room was empty but for a man with a thick comb of a mustache who sat on the edge of a desk along the middle of the wall opposite the doorway. Beside him stood a woman in a dress, apron, and cap. Her small hands were folded together before her. As Ikey took in the features of her heart-shaped face, she looked away.
“This is our new arrival for the day,” Superintendent Barrett announced as he swept a hand back to Ikey. “Please see that he is fit for work.”
“Only one?” the man on the desk asked.
Superintendent Barrett left with room without a spoken response.
The man slipped off the desk and onto his feet. “Good day. I am Dr. Rolfe Powell, and this is my nurse, Luca. You can call me Rolfe, but call her Nurse Luca. We will be providing you with a cursory physical examination, followed by some routine treatments for common ailments. If you will please begin by disrobing, we’ll get started.”
Ikey blushed as he avoided eye contact with Nurse Luca.
“Never mind the modesty,” Rolfe said as he rifled through a desk drawer. “She’s a trained medical professional.”
Ikey glanced at Nurse Luca as she avoided his gaze. He reached up and unbuttoned his shirt with his right hand as the left hung limp and useless. As he disrobed, Rolfe pulled out a sheet of paper and scribbled upon it as he asked Ikey for his name, age, and augmentation.
Once down to his knickers, Ikey tried not to shiver in the chill room as Nurse Luca examined him. When her attention moved to his face, she shifted her head back on her neck. Her mouth grew smaller. She tilted her chin up and examined his features over the bottom row of scant eyelashes. Did something putrid hang about him?
“I’m looking for someone,” Ikey said.
Nurse Luca brushed his face to the side as she examined his ear.
“I think he might have been brought in here. His name is Cross. He’s tall. Really tall. And wiry. Blond hair. Has a tattoo on his arm of tentacles wrapped around an anchor. Have you seen him?”
“No,” Nurse Luca said. She turned to Rolfe, who continued to scribble at his form.
“Do you wish to assist me in the removal of the augmentation, Doctor?”
Rolfe set his pen aside, then took hold of the mechanical arm. Ikey watched with interest as the doctor lifted it up and out. A deep pull tightened in Ikey’s chest until Nurse Luca unlaced a length of cord that lashed the arm to the yoke. Rolfe then pushed in and up, moving a free hand to the spot before Ikey’s armpit.
The arm clicked, then popped out of a small track built into the yoke. Ikey craned his head over, rolled his shoulder up, and stared at the hooks poking out of his red, swollen flesh. For a moment, he felt disembodied, looking down on someone else’s body. Surely not his own, with this cliff of flesh running down to the sharp peak of a pelvic bone.
“We’ll want to keep an eye on that,” Rolfe said. He prodded at the flesh around the hooks.
Ikey winced.
“Fetch some salve, please,” Rolfe said to Nurse Luca.
Nurse Luca clipped down the aisle between the beds and disappeared through a doorway at the end of the room.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Ikey said.
Rolfe stood up straight. “You didn’t ask for what?”
“This.” Ikey nodded at his shoulder. “The augmentation. I visited the chopper. We asked about it. But we didn’t agree to anything. We were going to talk to some other choppers. But then my friend and I were attacked. I was knocked out. I woke up and had these, and The Old Chopper said I have to work them off, but I never asked for them and I can’t find my friend and could you please tell me that you’ve seen him? That he’s all right?”
Rolfe tugged at the corner of his mustache. “You say you didn’t ask for these augmentations? They were thrust upon you?”
A pit opened in Ikey’s stomach and housed the hope that someone might believe him. He nodded. “You have to believe me.”
Rolfe glanced at the doorway through which the nurse had disappeared. “Your friend. What does he look like?”
After Ikey described Cross again, Rolfe shook his head, then began to undo the series of straps that held the yoke in place. “I’m afraid I’ve encountered no one either matching that description or answering to that name.”
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Ikey said. “I didn’t ask for this.”
Rolfe lifted the yoke over Ikey’s head. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. I am simply the infirmary manager.”
“Where are your patients?” Ikey asked as Rolfe examined the skin across Ikey’s chest and shoulders and back.
“We don’t have many.”
“An infirmary without patients?”
“This isn’t a proper hospital. Convalescence isn’t a service offered here.”
Ikey inhaled sharply. “What services do you offer?”
“Can you touch your toes?” Rolfe asked.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with a proper physical examination. Now, please, touch your toes if you are able to.”
Ikey bent forward and brushed his fingertips across his toes, then performed a variety of actions at the doctor’s direction. Once finished, Nurse Luca led him down the aisle, through the door, and down a hall where she handed him off to a solemn-faced man who clipped off Ikey’s hair, instructed him to bathe in a tub of tepid water, then dusted him with a powder that burned. It offered protection from a lice epidemic, the man explained as he kept Ikey at arm's length. After he was given his uniform, he went back to the infirmary where Nurse Luca applied salve to the remains of his shoulder, and then she and Rolfe reattached his arm.
“You are instructed to end each shift with a visit to the infirmary,” Rolfe said as he snugged the lashes tight. “We want to keep an eye on your augmentation until it heals up properly.”
“When will I be able to use it?” Ikey asked. “The Old Chopper said it might be a couple of days. He offered me a couple days rest. Before I refused to pay.”
Rolfe tugged at his mustache. “When the swelling in the muscles of your chest subsides, you will find your control greatly improved. Were you instructed in its proper use?”
Ikey shook his head.
Rolfe lowered his gaze and mirrored the shake of Ikey’s own head. “Of course not,” he added with a sigh.
The tiny act of frustration bore into Ikey’s chest. He wished to drop to his knees and plead with the man, grasp the leg of his trousers and not let go until he could make the man believe him, see that he had been wronged, and that they had to find Cross before something terrible—or something more terrible—happened to him.
Instead, Ikey clamped down on his teeth and nodded his understanding as Rolfe pantomimed the movements of his shoulder that Ikey would need to control the arm. It looked so ridiculous and effortless. What if the arm didn’t work?
As Rolfe rolled his shoulder up and back, he lifted his arm and bent his elbow. His fingers drew up into a fist until he appeared ready to throw a sloppy punch. Ikey mimicked the maneuver as he thought of his dad, his red face looming, the iron fist flying forward and splitting that angry apple.
The arm clicked as the elbow bent and the arm lifted a few inches.
Ikey’s eyes widened in surprise. His jaw dropped.
“You will want to go as easy on it as you can until it sets,” Rolfe said as he dropped his arm to his side. “Otherwise, if you upset the wires, surgery will be required to remove the old wires and set new ones.”
As they finished with his arm, a young man emerged from the doorway with a shorn head. A drab uniform of a coarse shirt and fustian trousers hung off his body. His eyes were cast to the floor ahead of his plodding f
eet. Ikey looked him over and saw the expected digits and limbs. The young man stepped up to Rolfe, spared a glance at Ikey, and then returned his gaze to the floor. He was hardly more than a boy.
“That will be all for me, gentlemen,” Rolfe said as he took two sheets of paper from his desk and handed one to Ikey and the other to the young man. “These beasts will escort you to the porter’s office. Do not waver, and do not depart from the course. I’m afraid our mechanical friends here have scarce tolerance for either fancy or interruption.”
Rolfe nodded at Ikey. “And I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Off with you now.”
An automaton clamped a hand on each of their shoulders and steered them down the hall. As the automatons marched them along, Ikey struggled to get an eyeful of the one ushering the young man. Over his right shoulder, however, Ikey couldn’t see much beyond the monster’s head and the cylindrical shape of its body. He attempted to twist around for a better look at the companion automaton and find in its spindly legs a potential weakness. But the one behind him shoved him onward. Ikey stumbled a step and fell in line.
Instead of studying the mechanical asses further, Ikey turned his attention to the young man. His expression was appropriate for someone on a path to the gallows.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, I couldn’t help but notice that you have no augmentations.”
The young man turned his face toward the brick wall.
“How did you end up in here?” Ikey asked.
In a tone barely audible over the distant machinery, the young man said that his parents had died. His cheeks reddened and his breaths grew labored and staggered.
Ikey turned his attention to the length of the hall and the brass sconces that studded the passage. Small, sweltering tongues of flames lit the way. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He then allowed the clanking of the iron feet to trundle over his next question, quash it down as they were marched along.
They were led into an office and ushered to a wooden bench placed before a large, ornate desk of dark wood. Behind the desk sat a man who appeared as contented as a captain behind the wheel of a ship.
“Welcome to Marlhewn Workhouse,” the man said. He motioned for the papers clutched by Ikey and the young man. They handed them over. In turn, the man placed each sheet side-by-side on his desk blotter and then smoothed them out like sheets of linen.
“Philip Unwin?” The man asked, then looked up.
Philip nodded.
“I see you are here to pay restitution for the burial of a Margaret Unwin? Well, that’s a simple matter.”
Ikey glanced at Philip. Tears lined the boy’s eyes.
“Work hard, lad, and you’ll pay off her burial expenses in six months as of this date. Today is what?” The man glanced off to his right, to a calendar hanging on the wall. “The 20th, then.” He scribbled on Philip’s paper and slid it beneath the other.
“You must be Ikey Berliss, then,” the man said without looking up. “I see you have a new arm, and a brand new eye.” The man let out a low whistle. “That’s quite a set.”
Ikey straightened his back. “I didn’t ask for any of it.”
“Did you wish for something else?” the man asked the sheet of paper.
“I signed no contract. I made no agreement. This was forced upon me. I’m being held against my will.” His hand tightened into a fist with each word.
“I can see you are going to be troublesome,” the man told the paper. He motioned to a telegraph machine on the edge of his desk. “If you wish, I can call for the constabulary to come down here to take a statement. Once their investigation reveals that you’ve made an unsubstantiated claim against the choppers and filed a false report, you will be arrested, tried, convicted, and brought back to Marlhewn to serve out your prison sentence in addition to your restitution.”
The man lifted his eyebrows. “Shall I send for the constabulary?”
The iron fist clicked. Ikey looked down at the mess of iron rods and complications hanging off his shoulder. He grabbed the iron arm and pulled it up into his lap, then closed his right eye for a clearer look. It wasn’t a bad hand. Solid. Simple. Not as beautiful or elegant as Smith’s, but it offered more function than no arm at all. His flesh fingers teased open the loose, iron fist. Tin plates capped the mechanical fingers. A roughened surface gave the hand a texture for gripping. It was a hand designed for work.
It was his hand. If it took him two years to work the entirety of it and his eye off, they were his. Once Cross showed up, if he showed up, he could reassess the situation then. Figure out what they would do next.
“No,” Ikey said. He glanced down at his hand. “The constabulary won’t be necessary.”
“Glad to hear it,” the porter said. “The sooner you get to work, the sooner you can make restitution. And by my estimation, you can have your augmentations paid off in... twelve years.”
“Twelve years! The Old Chopper said two.”
“Now, now. We were doing quite well a moment ago,” the porter told his calendar. He picked up his pen. “There’s no sense in lying. The terms of your agreement are recorded right here, in ink, for the magistrate’s viewing.” The porter scribbled on the other sheet of paper.
Ikey slouched. He reached up to run his hand through his hair. As his fingertips touched the fresh stubble on his scalp, he let his arm fall to his side.
“These assistants will see you down to the galley. Remember to work hard,” the porter said without looking up.
Ikey stood. The automaton clamped its hand on his shoulder.
Chapter Nine
The automatons propelled Ikey and Philip down a hall and a flight of stairs to the galley. There, a plump man in a stained apron wiped his hands on a threadbare towel and shook his head when the automatons presented their charges.
“You just missed dinner, you did,” he said to the men, then turned his attention to the mule faces of the automatons. “But I’ll take these two for clean-up.”
The automatons took up station in the corner of the kitchen, nothing more than ghastly decoration as Ikey and Philip were put to the task of scraping burnt porridge from the bottoms of pans. As they worked, tears began to leak down Philip’s face.
Ikey leaned over and asked if he had siblings.
Philip looked away, then nodded. “Four.”
“You the oldest?”
Philip nodded again, then wiped the back of his hand over his cheeks. The scraper, still in his grip, dripped cloudy water onto the front of his shirt.
“I had two older brothers,” Ikey said. “They were brave, too, like you.”
Philip hung his head lower and redoubled his efforts to scrape the thick, burnt matter from the bottom of the pan.
“I never thanked them for what they did, all their sacrifices. If your siblings didn’t get a chance to thank you, then I’d thank you on their behalf.”
Philip sniffled.
“Six months isn’t that long. It’ll pass before you know it.”
“My parents will still be dead.”
The scraper slipped out of Ikey’s hand. His knuckles barked against the craggy bottom of the pot. He hissed and drew his hand out. The skin along his knuckles was scraped back. Blood pooled along the scrapes and spread along the wrinkles in his knuckle.
Ikey took a deep breath, then glanced at his companion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Philip turned away a few inches and continued his business in silence until the pots were scraped down as far as possible, to the point where charred porridge and cast iron merged into a single material. Next the plump cook had them sweep and mop the floors. Once they finished, he announced it time to close the kitchen. When Ikey asked for something to eat for himself and Philip, the cook snickered and said that they should have snatched something while they were in the kitchen.
The automatons propelled Ikey and Philip through a series of hallways and into a long, narrow room filled with bunks. At the head of the room, a man sat with
his feet upon a desk, the toes of his boots shining in the glow of a lamp perched on the corner. The man pulled his feet off the desk and told Ikey and Philip to take bunks, to put their uniforms in the baskets underneath, and to be bloody quiet about it. With his instructions delivered, he kicked his feet back up onto his desk and returned his attention to a deck of cards laid out in columns across the desktop. Behind him, half a dozen more mechanical asses stood in silence and stared across rows of double bunks, enough to house a hundred men.
Ikey took a bunk near the door. Once he shucked his uniform, he pulled himself up onto the top bunk to better watch for Cross. Philip proceeded down toward the end of the hall, but then drifted back to the front and took the next bunk.
In the remains of the daylight that fell through the high, slotted windows down one side of the room, Ikey examined his right hand. It was red and swollen. The skin on his knuckles had taken further beatings from the pot bottoms. The start of a blister bubbled up in the crook of his thumb. His joints ached, especially his wrist. By contrast, his mechanical hand appeared fine. He hadn’t been able to use the mechanical hand to clean, but he had been able to loosely grip a mop handle with it, and to carry a bucket of water without the discomfort of the metal handle digging into his flesh.
Though lying on his back made such movements awkward, Ikey maneuvered his shoulder through the series of positions needed to lift the arm up above his chest. A smile warmed his face. He flexed the muscles in his chest to the best of his ability and imagined his chest tightened, his ribs drawn together like a drawstring sack. The mechanical fingers clicked and curled into a loose fist.
The smile cooled. It took effort to use the arm. And he wasn’t sure if there was a way to manipulate the fingers individually, but it was a far better deal than having only one arm. It would hold tools. It was a tool itself. It would allow him to fix things; to do what he did.
Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Page 10