Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (43 page)

"I hope that isn't true," Sofie said, but Valerian's words chilled her. She pictured that automaton parlor staffed with living people and shuddered to imagine it. Who would agree to such degradation, were they free to choose?

The idea that the automatons might feel anything yet not be free to choose had never previously occurred to her. It made gorge rise to her throat, and she quickly pushed the thought away.

"I won't ask you to come along to the hub of the house," Valerian was saying. "Whatever follows may be even more unpleasant than what's already come."

"I will go with you," Sofie said. He seemed about to argue with her when she put in, "This is our adventure, and I mean to see it through."

He grinned at her and started toward the basement.

Automatons ran on steam, which flowed through pipes and expanded the bags that gave the mannequins speech and powered their turning gears. But they did not run on the power given to them by the steam alone, but also another material known as
azoth.
Azoth looked as though someone had turned a mirror liquid. Bright as silver and poisonous to drink, but when slipping through the bodies of the automatons like blood, it seemed to imbue them with the semblance of life.

In each house of automatons there was a single hub. It held the furnace, where the wood burned, shoveled in by simple metal marionettes, pirouetting over and over again to feed the fire. The hub held the intricate host of commands for the behaviors of the house, scribed by alchemists.

Sofie had never seen a hub before this one. It was black with soot and stank of sulfur, as she imagined hell itself might. Still, she forced herself to follow Valerian.

The automatons that fed the fire were crude. Their faces were misshapen, as though they were badly cast. Mistakes. Discards.

"Would it matter to you if Nicholas loved her?" Sofie asked Valerian softly.

He frowned. "You said he
couldn't."

A shudder ran under her skin. "But if he could. If I were wrong."

"Father would hate it," said Valerian hesitatingly. "There would be a scandal."

"I shouldn't have asked you," Sofie said quickly. She was being ridiculous, she told herself. Her mind was still on the automaton parlors, on the idea of the creatures trapped there having actual feelings. There had been something so sad in the faces of the mannequins tending the fire that for a moment she had fancied they might feel. But that was what was so awful about them, after all. Sometimes they could seem so human.

"Someone will come in and take a look at our automatons. One of the alchemists," said Valerian. "They'll be able to sort out this whole mess. Tell us what's gotten into Nicholas and the rest of them. Sort Amelia out, too — explain to her that everything's all mixed up in her head."

He flipped the first of three switches on the hub, quieting the furnace. It would take a few moments for the thing to shut itself down completely.

"Switch one begins our slumber," said something above them. Sofie started and stepped back. Now she noticed the copper face above the furnace, looming. It was massive and beautiful, like the sculpture of some Roman god.

The wood-carrying automatons stilled, their gears slowing.

Just then Amelia lurched into view. Her face was smudged with soot, and her hair was unbound, streaming around her in loose curls. Nicholas was with her, his hand in hers, but he seemed intent on holding her back.

"Valerian!" she shouted. "I won't let you."

He flipped the second switch. The grinding sounds inside the walls, ones that Sofie had become so used to she barely noticed, ceased. Their absence left an echoing silence. Nicholas, at Amelia's side, turned to look at the brass-and-cloth wire connecting him to the wall. He touched some button at the base of his neck and the wire snapped free from his back.

"Nicholas?" Amelia said.

"I am self-sustaining for a limited duration, my love," the dance instructor told her.

"Sister," said Valerian. "No harm is going to come to any of them. This whole thing's become a bumble-broth. The whole house can't go mad because one of the servants has set his cap for you—let's sort this out when everyone has a clearer head."

"No — I know what that means. I know you will force me to marry Thomas. House, I command you to stop my brother," Amelia said stoutly. "Do whatever you need to, and make certain he doesn't throw that last switch."

"Amelia," Sofie shouted. "You can't mean that."

The automatons who had stopped bringing wood to the hub began moving again. They dropped the logs.

"My love," said Nicholas in his rich, tinny voice, metal fingers on her arm. "Listen to your brother. This is not the way for us to be together."

Valerian's eyes were wide. "Amelia," he said warningly. Then the first of the mannequins was on him.

Its crude hands prized loose his hold on the final switch and threw him against the iron wall of the hub. Valerian threw a facer at the thing, which knocked it back handily, but another took its place. Three of them dragged him out onto the lawn, where an ax was settled against a massive tower of wood.

"Amelia, please," said Nicholas. "No love could withstand what you are about to do."

She turned to him. "You mean you will no longer love me?" Her voice sounded as high as a child's.

"No," he said. "It's your feelings that will change."

"Never," she said.

Sofie cast about for a weapon. There was a poker near the fire, and her hand closed on it. She ran after Valerian and the mannequins, hitting the first of them with all her might. Liquid silver dripped from its joints.

It turned and clasped jointed fingers around Sofie's throat.

Then everything stopped. The automatons froze in place, mere statues. Valerian pushed free of the two that held him and unpeeled the fingers of the third from Sofie. She sagged against his chest, and for a moment, it was only his arms holding her upright.

"What happened?" she whispered, but then she saw.

Nicholas was sprawled over the panel, his hand still on the last switch.

"I told him not to," sobbed Amelia, falling to the dirty floor, her muslins already black at the hems. "I commanded him not to. He can't disobey me. He's not allowed!"

Sofie looked at the automaton in amazement. "You never told him to turn that switch," she said to Valerian, voice low.

"No," said Valerian. "I did not."

The alchemists had come and gone, speaking only with Valerian. Lord Obermann barely knew there had been any interruption of service at all. When he'd heard that there had been some difficulty with the automatons, he'd mourned the days when there were living servants who never broke down and then returned to White's to take his nuncheon along with a game of whist.

The next morning, with everything back and running, Sofie had woken to a mechanized maid leaning over her. She fought down the urge to scream, to upend her boiled egg and cocoa all over the automaton's starched dress. Instead, she stared up into those glass eyes, into the glow of their inner fires.

"If you could wish for anything, what would you wish for?" Sofie asked.

"I want only to be a good and faithful servant," the automaton said.

After the events of two days past, Sofie doubted that was true. She considered ordering the maid to give her a better answer, but knew that defiance was, at the very least, difficult for them. For the first time, she let herself sympathize. Defiance had always been hard for her, too.

She settled down to eat the meal before her. She even let the maid help her into a morning dress without quizzing her further.

On her way downstairs, Sofie spotted Amelia. She was wearing a cap trimmed with cherry-colored ribbon and a lace-trimmed jacket over her petticoat. She looked so proper that it was almost impossible for her to imagine her face smeared with soot, mad with love.

Amelia smiled at her. "I hope we can still be friends, cousin."

"Of course," Sofie said uncertainly.

"Valerian says that he will make sure Father doesn't try to force me into a match. I am to have Nicholas after all, so I am as merry as a grig! No more high ropes for me."

Spoiled,
Sofie thought uncharitably. But for the first time, she pitied Nicholas rather than Amelia.

"Tell me one thing, cousin," Sofie said. "Nicholas serves you. He cannot help putting your desires before his own. Does that not bother you?"

"Does it bother Father that Mother cares for his house, gives parties to his friends, and heaps the table with victuals that are to his tastes rather than her own?"

"I suppose not, but that does him no credit."

Amelia smiled and reached for Sofie's hand. She pressed it once. "I never wished for a life like hers. But perhaps you do."

"What do you mean?"

Amelia only smiled and pointed toward the stairs. "My brother was looking for you."

Sofie climbed them as Amelia turned toward the ballroom.

She found Valerian on the balcony above it, his hand on the railing. When Sofie turned toward him, she noticed that his eyes had a curious softness.

She looked down to see Amelia, twirling with the automaton, his metal fingers linked with hers. They danced over the marble floor with the precision of clockwork gears.

Valerian had always been kindhearted when they were children. He had changed less than she supposed.

"You're glad, aren't you?" she asked.

"Every brother wishes to see his sister happily settled," he said gravely, but then caught her eye and smiled. "Well, perhaps this isn't what I pictured exactly, but, yes, I do wish her happy."

Even after Amelia had risked Valerian's life in her rash, determined rush after love, Valerian still wished her well. He managed the family's finances to the best of his ability, and even though Amelia's refusal to marry would affect him as much as his father, he was still intent on her well-being. All he seemed to want was to take care of his family.

Sofie wished he would let someone care for him.

"Your sister said that you would speak with me." Sofie cleared her throat. "I have been meaning to speak with you, too —about my finances. I know your mother counted on Amelia's marriage to Sir Thomas to settle some debts, and I thought that perhaps I might settle them instead of—"

He blanched and interrupted her quickly. "That is very generous but impossible. Your husband will —" He stopped himself and then started again. "I know my mother has made no secret of her hopes in this regard, but I have informed her that you are to have your season. She will bring you out properly. I am no fortune hunter."

"You think that I am a child," Sofie said hotly, "but I am perfectly able to turn down any offer that I don't like."

"Just because you can refuse doesn't mean one ought to test your mettle. I am perfectly aware of the awkwardness of your situation — being in this house with me and my mother being the way she is." He sighed. "You're a diamond of the first water, Sofie. I don't want you to throw yourself away on me."

"I cannot throw myself away on you," she said. "Since you've never given me the opportunity."

An instant later she realized what she had said and was filled with unbearable mortification. What must he think of her?

Now, even though she had shamed herself grievously and utterly, she would still have to face him today and tomorrow and tomorrow over their — hopefully unbroken — cups of chocolate at the breakfast table.

He might think her unbearably fast, but she would not be a coward as well. She lifted her chin and was wholly overcome by the look on his face.

"Sofie," he said, somewhere between admonishment and affection. "You know your way around a poker and aren't afraid to kiss anyone if it means the salvation of your family —"

"That's not fair!" Sofie interrupted, laughing, filled with incredulous delight.

"Will you consider allowing me to — ?"

"Yes," she said, and proving that a threat to her family was not the only way to provoke her, she kissed him.

[Translated from Mendacius's
True Histories of the Roman Inventors.
]

The lizard of the wasteland, so dazzling to the eye, so rapid to flee or to strike, may grow to its full maturity only in the most brutal of deserts, where no dew falls to drink and where the sun is unrelenting. So, some say, was Marcus Furius Medullinus Machinator, he who first invented the oracle engines; had he not been raised in conditions of tragedy and deprivation, it may be that he never would have built his
stochastikon,
which has brought upon Rome both triumph and woe.

Marcus Furius was not born into such hardship, being the descendant of a respectable branch of the Furii clan, that had several times served as tribunes of the people. It is said that his father's home was of a good size, and that had circumstances not intervened, Marcus Furius might some day have aspired to high office. Some claim that his birth was attended by many prodigies: shields of fire were seen in the air over Bruttium. The Pythian oracle moaned throughout the day of Marcus Furius's birth and would not prophesy, but when she was approached, screeched and hunkered on the navel ofJove like an ape on an urn. One of the decemvirs of Rome discovered that the Sybilline Books, in which all the civic rituals and laws of sacrifice are set out, had, in the night, grown warts. The leaves were shingled, as if taken with a rash. We need not believe such stories, which are always told by the credulous, once they know of the success of one person or another.