Broken Hero (47 page)

“Good,” I say, “everyone’s here. Now we can—”

But the influx of irate people doesn’t stop there. Stooping through the tight corridor of shelves into the room, comes Hermann.

“Wait…”

And then another Uhrwerkmänn. And another. Four of them. Five. We are rapidly running out of space.

“What the hell?” I’m knee deep in the pile of books I dislodged from the far wall. “What’s going on?”

“Bumped into them on the way down,” Clyde says as if this is the most perfectly natural thing to do on any given day.

But I fix my eyes on Hermann. Fresh plates of metal are welded to his body. The seams still shine fresh. His ruined arm has been straightened, splints of steel bracing the joint. “You didn’t want anything to do with us,” I say. “You told us to go away.”

Hermann snorts. “This is not help. This is not trusting you to do things correctly.” It’s hard to tell but I don’t think he quite meets my eye as he says that.

“
Machen Sie Platz
,” calls a voice from back through the doorway.

“How many of you are there?” I ask.

Hermann shrugs. “All of us.”

Holy crap. It may be small, but I think MI37 suddenly has an army at its disposal.

“Just out of interest,” Clyde pipes up, “but just before this becomes one of those tricks involving clowns and small cars. Like a Mini for example. Pretty quintessential small car, though I do think they use VW Beetles from time to time. And probably some less well known, cheaper vehicles, I imagine. Not that the type of vehicle matters I imagine. Imagine it’s all done with trapdoors really. Unless clowns are all part of some underground magical fraternity, I suppose. Not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Take Morris men for example. Seem totally harmless, then you deflate one’s pig bladder, and good lord, you better be on the move fast. Which is a useful life tip, I suppose, but not what I was aiming to say. Actually more interested in the sort of why and wherefore of the aforementioned cramming. At least I think I mentioned cramming. Us that is. Cramming in here. Still not understanding why we’re doing it. Lovely room as this is, of course. Didn’t mean to cast aspersions on Lang’s decorating aesthetic. Totally fine with aspersions on his political point of view. Total shit of a man. But I do sort of dig this room.”

Finally he takes a breath.

“Nested realities,” I say into the gap before he can get going again. Clyde’s mouth opens but no sound comes out. He twists his head, looks at me.

“An archway,” Hannah puts in. “It opens up right in that wall. Great big bloody thing. Goes to some place full of Uhrwerkmänner. Kept on coming in here and trying to off us, they did.”

“Sort of put paid to them, didn’t we?” I say.

“We did that.” Hannah grins.

Clyde looks at the mutual grins, gasps again. “Doppelgangers!”

“Oh shut up,” I manage.

“It’s not… No.” Hannah is infringing on my ineloquence copyright. “I still quit. It’s just…” She shakes her head. “Look, are we going to put an end to these arse-wipes or not?”

“I should probably mention,” I say, “they’re building the Uhrwerkgerät in there.”

Clyde’s jaw drops.

An exasperated snort bursts out of Hermann. “This is why I do not trust you,” he says. “You take too long.”

“Got a point,” Tabitha says. “The giant metallic arsehole does.”

“Would you mind ever so much just giving me the reality key?” Clyde asks. “I mean, if it’s not too much bother. And presuming you don’t—”

I shove the key into his hands. “Do what you need to do. I don’t understand the bloody thing.”

Clyde turns and twists the key this way and that, a puzzled look on his face. Then suddenly he grins. “Oh,” he says. “You clever bastard.” He twists hard, light blooms, and somewhere deep in my skull reality takes a punch in the nadgers again.

The Uhrwerkmänner stream past me through the archway. Watching them, I realize MI37’s army is a little less than might be hoped for. They’re in a bad way. Some limp. Others drag dead limbs after themselves. Some manage to limit themselves to just jerking and twitching, little spastic movements rippling through their bodies. And yet others mutter to themselves, grumbling and grinding as they move.

They’re breaking down. And that’s how we ended up in this whole mess. Volk and Hermann’s desire to save their people from decline.

Maybe the Uhrwerkmänner aren’t so different from me after all.

Kayla, Clyde, and Tabitha have gone ahead. Hannah and I form the rear-guard. We wait until the last Uhrwerkmänn has passed then turn and step through the archway. The column of robots jerks and shudders its way forward.

“What do you think?” I say to Hannah.

“Me?” She shakes her head. “I think we’re proper fucked.”

I decide that some witty pre-combat banter is perhaps not what I’m looking for after all, at least not here.

I follow the Uhrwerkmänner in silence. We are far from quiet, though. The robots’ combined shuddering and shaking fills the cold stone space with a mechanical sussuration. The sound seems to echo in the enclosed stone space. I wait for a cry from the front, for discovery. But none comes.

The corridor is shorter than I expected. Barely thirty yards from the archway it comes to an abrupt halt, overlooking a large, light-filled space. Sound echoes up. A growing industrial murmur—metal clanging against metal. And maybe it is enough to drown out any noise we might make.

The back of the column no longer seeming like the best place to be, I push forward between massive legs. The smells of oil and grease are thick in the air.

“What’s going on?” I whisper, as I approach Kayla.

“Hush,” she whispers. “Get down.”

I crouch, crawl forward. We’re on a ledge overlooking an enormous cylindrical hall, reaching down fifty, maybe sixty yards into the ground. The corridor we’re in breaks to the right, becomes an open stairway, spiraling down the wall to the ground below.

The space is full of Uhrwerkmänner. They are the source of the sound.

They are building.

They are building the Uhrwerkgerät.

And it is vast.

I can still make out Volk at the heart of it. A blunt coffin shape glowing with dull blue light. But he seems small now, an almost insignificant part of the whole. Other Uhrwerkmänner have been arranged around him. Their inner workings exposed. Pistons and gears laid bare. Bodies fusing. Amputated limbs reattached in a sickening mockery of form. A massive interconnected network of broken anatomy.

It is a horror show for the clockwork robot crowd. A vast depravity. It is a bomb made of corpses. The ultimate expression of Lang’s disregard for his creations.

“Holy shit,” I whisper. “It’s fucking enormous.” I’m never at my most eloquent when faced with imminent death. At least I’m accurate though. The Uhrwerkgerät would dwarf the average four-bedroom family abode. You could walk around in it, climb up its beams, and parade along boardwalks of mechanical corpses.

And there is Friedrich. The architect of this travesty. He stands clear of the bomb near the foot of the curving stairs, pointing and shouting instructions I cannot understand.
Uhrwerkmänner
scurry to obey him, clambering over the corpses of their brethren. They fix vast girders in place, scaffolding to prop up the sheer bulk of it.

“It is too big.” Hermann’s voice is a dull whisper. “It is too much. There are too many.”

We are outnumbered to the most egregious extent. Five to one? More perhaps? And Friedrich’s Uhrwerkmänner, while they may be beaten and scraped, appear significantly healthier than the ones behind me right now. He has so many in fact, not all of them are working on the Uhrwerkgerät. He’s managed to post a ring of sentries around the bomb.

This is not going to be exactly easy.

What’s going on inside those Uhrwerkmänners’ heads? Is it horror? Do they see what they’re doing? Do they think it’s too late to fix it? Or are they sold on this? Are they zealots like Friedrich?

I don’t know. I don’t even know if it matters. They are between us and the machine. We’re going to have to find a way through.

“We cannot do this.” Hermann is hardly hitting the high notes of optimism right now.

“There’s a way,” I say. “There has to be.”

“No.” Hermann shakes his head. “To get to it… they will destroy us.”

It’s true. Most likely they will. But survival was never really an option coming into this fight. Hell, we’re here to ensure a bomb blows up. It’s not like we’ll be heading out for a picnic and a quick game of footie afterwards. But I forget how long I’ve been living with the certainty of my own death. The others still have to disentangle themselves from their own hopes. It can be a painful process.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Hermann. “I wish I could offer you more. But today is going to be a shitty day.” I smile a sad smile. “But what’s the alternative?” I look back down the corridor. And what do I have back that way? A girlfriend on the brink of leaving me. The collapse of MI37. “It’s not going to get any better back there,” I say. “As crappy as this is, it is the best of the bad alternatives.”

Hermann looks back at me. His mechanical face is impossible to read. No emotions are truly capable of making their way through the thick metal of his face. And yet… there is something there, in the dull glint of his eyes. Some pathos? Some empathy.

“We will die today,” he says. A great sadness resonates in his chest. “All of us. We have searched for salvation, but instead we have found this.”

It’s not exactly a positive spin, but on the other hand I’m not sure this is really the time for an inspirational quote about life, and balance, and the importance of mimicking a meditative mongoose climbing an ice cliff.

“We will die today,” Hermann says again, looking back at his thirty or so warriors, his friends, the last of his kin. “But it will not be meaningless. It will not be a slow collapse into dotage and madness. We will die stopping Friedrich. We will die stopping the monster he has become. We will die defeating Lang’s legacy. We will stop it all.” His gaze levels on me. “And you will help us.”

Kayla, always sensitive to the timbre of a dramatic moment, nods to Hermann. “All feckin’ right then.”

Hermann chooses not to bother acknowledging her.

“You know,” says Hannah from the other side of me. “Can’t say I’m totally sold on the whole suicidal charge thing here. No chance we have the slightest bit of a plan this time around, is there?”

I nod, but only slightly. They are not going to like this part.

“So… erm…” I start, filling them with the usual levels of confidence that I inspire. “Yeah, the thing about that is… well…”

“We will destroy the bomb,” says Hermann decisively. “You and you.” He points to the two Uhrwerkmänner who seem to be twitching the least. “You will lead the charge down the stairs. We will follow behind you, forming a spear head to crush the machine.”

The two Uhrwerkmänner take a step forward in unison.

“No! Stop!” I hiss. “We can’t destroy it.”

This proves an unpopular suggestion. Hermann lets out a derisive snort.

“Maybe you cannot destroy it, little man,” he says, “but you do not have the might of German engineering on your side.”

“No!” I splutter. “This is not about German engineering. Or English engineering for that matter.” A moment of national pride makes its misplaced way into the conversation. “Listen,” I say, and slowly I start to lay out the issues I am having with the destruction of the Uhrwerkgerät.

“If it’s destroyed,” I conclude, “before it goes off, then those future echoes become paradoxes. It doesn’t matter if we destroy it or it destroys itself. We have to prevent any paradoxes. If it’s not going to tear all of reality apart, we have to let it go off.”

I still do not seem to have brought anyone around to my way of thinking.

“You are insane, little man,” says Hermann. “We must destroy it. It is the only way.”

“Actually,” Clyde interjects. “Sorry to disagree. Well… I mean I’m not sorry about what I’m saying. Well… I am sorry about what I’m saying to the extent that it does not agree with what you’re saying. Erm… making a hash of this. Look, I agree with what I’m going to say. And I disagree with what you said. That’s true. Got to be clear about that. Wish I didn’t. But, you know, the facts being what they are and all… The thing is if we do destroy it, well, Arthur is right. And therefore, really, following on from that, you know, ergo, et cetera, you’re not. Sounds terrible when I say it out loud, but, well, if we listen to you then we will all be completely annihilated along with the rest of reality. Not what we want at all. And so, I think what we maybe should do is go with Arthur’s plan of not destroying the bomb and instead keeping it very safe indeed. Sort of like a puppy or small child. And not with your plan at all in any way, shape or form. Basically.”

Hermann stares into the wake of this speech. “But…” he starts, more hesitantly than he’s managed so far, “this bomb. It will destroy this city, this country. It could… We don’t know what it could do.”

“Yes,” Clyde concedes. “Potential world destruction is the detrimental aspect of the plan.” The way he says it, it doesn’t seem to bother him perhaps as much as it should. “But, you know, bigger picture, the rest of reality survives. Probably some nice blue-green planet out there somewhere raising sustainable life. I mean, we haven’t found it yet despite the Hubble telescope poking around. Very nosy device is the Hubble telescope, I always thought. Voyeuristic even. Never understood what all the fuss was about. But, well, even if we haven’t found the alien folk, they’re probably out there somewhere. Hopefully hiding behind some sort of intergalactic curtain so we can’t catch them with their pants down. But, you know, yes, they’ll survive. And it’s an admirable thing, I think, for us to save those unknown strangers. They may not really get to appreciate it, but morally, I think we’re getting to take the high ground.”

Hermann shakes his head. “So you want us to lay down our lives for a plan that saves no one, that preserves nothing?”

Hannah grimaces. “To the German fella’s point—” she nods at Hermann, “—this does seem to be a bit of an exercise in futility. I mean what exactly are we hoping to achieve here?”