Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded Part 17

"It's my..." Edwin almost regretted what he'd said before, about mornings and clarity. "It's my new friend. I made him."

"There's a friend in your bunk? That doesn't seem too proper."

"No, he's...I'll show you."

And once again they played the scene of discovery together-the doctor clapping Edwin on the back and ruffling his hair, and announcing that the automaton was a fine invention indeed. Edwin worked very hard to disguise his disappointment.

Finally Dr. Smeeks suggested that Edwin run to the washrooms upstairs and freshen himself to begin the day, and Edwin agreed.

The boy took his spring-and-gear companion along as he navigated the corridors while the doctors and nurses made their morning rounds. Dr. Havisham paused to examine Ted and declare the creation "outstanding." Dr. Martin did likewise, and Nurse Evelyn offered him a peppermint sweet for being such an innovative youngster who never made any trouble.

Edwin cleaned his hands and face in one of the cold white basins in the washroom, where staff members and some of the more stable patients were allowed to refresh themselves. He set Ted on the countertop and pressed the automaton's switch. While Edwin cleaned the night off his skin, Ted's legs kicked a friendly time against the counter and its jaw bobbed like it was singing or chatting, or imagining splashing its feet in the basin.

When he was clean, Edwin set Ted on the floor and decided that-rather than carrying the automaton-he would simply let it walk the corridor until they reached the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The peculiar pair drew more than a few exclamations and stares, but Edwin was proud of Ted and he enjoyed the extended opportunity to show off.

Before the stairs and at the edge of the corridor where Edwin wasn't supposed to go, for fear of the violent inmates, a red-haired woman blocked his way. If her plain cotton gown hadn't marked her as a resident, the wildness around the corners of her eyes would've declared it well enough. There were red stripes on her skin where restraints were sometimes placed, and her feet were bare, leaving moist, sweaty prints on the black and white tiles.

"Madeline," Dr. Simmons warned. "Madeline, it's time to return to your room."

But Madeline's eyes were locked on the humming, marching automaton. She asked with a voice too girlish for her height, "What's that?" and she did not budge, even when the doctor took her arm and signaled quietly for an orderly.

Edwin didn't mind answering. He said, "His name is Ted. I made him."

"Ted." She chewed on the name and said, "Ted for now."

Edwin frowned and asked, "What?"

He did not notice that Ted had stopped marching, or that Ted's metal face was gazing up at Madeline. The clockwork boy had wound itself down, or maybe it was only listening.

Madeline did not blink at all, and perhaps she never did. She said, "He's your Ted for now, but you must watch him." She held out a pointing, directing, accusing finger and aimed it at Edwin, then at Ted. "Such empty children are vulnerable."

Edwin was forced to confess, or simply make a point of saying, "Miss, he's only a machine."

She nodded. "Yes, but he's your boy, and he has no soul. There are things who would change that, and change it badly."

"I know I shouldn't take him upstairs," Edwin said carefully. "I know I ought to keep him away from the other boys."

Madeline shook her head, and the matted crimson curls swayed around her face. "Not what I mean, boy. Invisible things. Bad little souls that need bodies."

An orderly arrived. He was a big, square man with shoulders like an ox's yoke. His uniform was white, except for a streak of blood that was drying to brown. He took Madeline by one arm, more roughly than he needed to.

As Madeline was pulled away, back to her room or back to her restraints, she kept her eyes on Edwin and Ted, and she warned him still, waving her finger like a wand, "Keep him close, unless you want him stolen from you-unless you want his clockwork heart replaced with something stranger."

And before she was removed from the corridor altogether, she lashed out one last time with her one free hand to seize the wall's corner. It bought her another few seconds of eye contact-just enough to add, "Watch him close!"

Then she was gone.

Edwin reached for Ted and pulled the automaton to his chest, where its gear-driven heart clicked quietly against the real boy's shirt. Ted's mechanical jaw opened and closed, not biting but mumbling in the crook of Edwin's neck.

"I will," he promised. "I'll watch him close."

Several days pa.s.sed quietly, except for the occasional frustrated rages of the senile doctor, and Ted's company was a welcome diversion-if a somewhat unusual one. Though Edwin had designed Ted's insides and stuffed the gears and coils himself, the automaton's behavior was not altogether predictable.

Mostly, Ted remained a quiet little toy with the marching feet that tripped at stairs, at shoes, or at any other obstacle left on the floor.

And if the clockwork character fell, it fell like a turtle and laid where it collapsed, arms and legs twitching impotently at the air until Edwin would come and set his friend upright. Several times Edwin unhooked Ted's back panel, wondering precisely why the shut-off switch failed so often. But he never found any stretched spring or faulty coil to account for it. If he asked Ted, purely to speculate aloud, Ted's shiny jaw would lower and lift, answering with the routine and rhythmic clicks of its agreeable guts.

But sometimes, if Edwin listened very hard, he could almost convince himself he heard words rattling around inside Ted's chest. Even if it was only the echoing pings and chimes of metal moving metal, the boy's eager ears would concentrate, and listen for whispers.

Once, he was nearly certain-practically positive-that Ted had said its own name. And that was silly, wasn't it? No matter how much Edwin wanted to believe, he knew better...which did not stop him from wondering.

It was always Edwin's job to bring meals down from the kitchen, and every time he climbed the stairs he made a point to secure Ted by turning it off and leaving it lying on its back, on Edwin's cot. The doctor was doddering, and even un.o.bstructed he sometimes stumbled on his own two feet, or the laces of his shoes.

So when the boy went for breakfast and returned to the laboratory with a pair of steaming meals on a covered tray, he was surprised to hear the whirring of gears and springs.

"Ted?" he called out, and then felt strange for it. "Doctor?" he tried instead, and he heard the old man muttering.

"Doctor, are you looking at Ted? You remember him, don't you? Please don't break him."

At the bottom of the stairs, Dr. Smeeks was crouched over the p.r.o.ne and kicking Ted. The doctor said, "Underfoot, this thing is. Did it on purpose. I saw it. Turned itself on, sat itself up, and here it comes."

But Edwin didn't think the doctor was speaking to him. He was only speaking, and poking at Ted with a pencil like a boy prods an anthill.

"Sir? I turned him off, and I'm sorry if he turned himself on again. I'm not sure why it happens."

"Because it wants to be on," the doctor said firmly, and finally made eye contact. "It wants to make me fall, it practically told me so."

"Ted never says anything," Edwin said weakly. "He can't talk."

"He can talk. You can't hear him. But I can hear him. I've heard him before, and he used to say pleasant things. He used to hum his name. Now he fusses and mutters like a demented old man. Yes," he insisted, his eyes bugged and his eyebrows bushily hiked up his forehead. "Yes, this thing, when it mutters, it sounds like me."

Edwin had another theory about the voices Dr. Smeeks occasionally heard, but he kept it to himself. "Sir, he cannot talk. He hasn't got any lungs, or a tongue. Sir, I promise, he cannot speak."

The doctor stood, and gazed down warily as Ted floundered. "He cannot flip his own switches either, yet he does."

Edwin retrieved his friend and set it back on its little marching feet. "I must've done something wrong when I built him. I'll try and fix it, sir. I'll make him stop it."

"Dear boy, I don't believe you can."

The doctor straightened himself and adjusted his lenses-a different pair, a set that Edwin had never seen before. He turned away from the boy and the automaton and reached for his paperwork again, saying, "Something smells good. Did you get breakfast?"

"Yes sir. Eggs and grits, with sausage."

He was suddenly cheerful. "Wonderful! Won't you join me here? I'll clear you a spot."

As he did so, Edwin moved the tray to the open s.p.a.ce on the main laboratory table and removed the tray's lid, revealing two sets of silverware and two plates loaded with food. He set one in front of the doctor, and took one for himself, and they ate with the kind of chatter that told Edwin Dr. Smeeks had already forgotten about his complaint with Ted.

As for Ted, the automaton stood still at the foot of the stairs-its face c.o.c.ked at an angle that suggested it might be listening, or watching, or paying attention to something that no one else could see.

Edwin wouldn't have liked to admit it, but when he glanced back at his friend, he felt a pang of unease. Nothing had changed and everything was fine; he was letting the doctor's rattled mood unsettle him, that was all. Nothing had changed and everything was fine; but Ted was not marching and its arms were not swaying, and the switch behind the machine's small shoulder was still set in the "on" position.

When the meal was finished and Edwin had gathered the empty plates to return them upstairs, he stopped by Ted and flipped the switch to the state of "off." "You must've run down your winding," he said. "That must be why you stopped moving."

Then he called, "Doctor? I'm running upstairs to give these to Mrs. Criddle. I've turned Ted off, so he shouldn't bother you, but keep an eye out, just in case. Maybe," he said, balancing the tray on his crooked arm, "if you wanted to, you could open him up yourself and see if you can't fix him."

Dr. Smeeks didn't answer, and Edwin left him alone-only for a few minutes, only long enough to return the tray with its plates and cutlery.

It was long enough to return to strangeness.

Back in the laboratory Edwin found the doctor backed into a corner, holding a screwdriver and a large pair of scissors. Ted was seated on the edge of the laboratory table, its legs dangling over the side, unmoving, unmarching. The doctor looked alert and lucid-moreso than usual-and he did not quite look afraid. Shadows from the burners and beakers with their tiny glowing creatures made Dr. Smeeks look sinister and defensive, for the flickering bits of flame winked reflections off the edge of his scissors.

"Doctor?"

"I was only going to fix him, like you said."

"Doctor, it's all right."

The doctor said, "No, I don't believe it's all right, not at all. That nasty little thing, Parker, I don't like it." He shook his head, and the lenses across his eyes rattled in their frames.

"But he's my friend."

"He's no friend of mine."

Edwin held his hands up, like he was trying to calm a startled horse. "Dr. Smeeks, I'll take him. I'll fix him, you don't have to do it. He's only a machine, you know. Just an invention. He can't hurt you."

"He tried."

"Sir, I really don't think-"

"He tried to bite me. Could've taken my fingers off, if I'd caught them in that bear-trap of a face. You keep it away from me, Edwin. Keep it away or I'll pull it apart, and turn it into a can opener."

Before Edwin's very own eyes, Ted's head turned with a series of clicks, until the machine fully faced the doctor. And if its eyes had been more than gla.s.s bits that were once a.s.signed to a badger, then they might have narrowed or gleamed; but they were only gla.s.s bits, and they only cast back the fragments of light from the bright things in the laboratory.

"Ted, come here. Ted, come with me," Edwin said, gently pulling the automaton down from the table. "Ted, no one's going to turn you into a can opener. Maybe you got wound funny, or wound too tight," he added, mostly for the doctor's benefit. "I'll open you up and tinker, and you'll be just fine."

Back in the corner the doctor relaxed, and dropped the scissors. He set the screwdriver down beside a row of test tubes and placed both hands down on the table's corner. "Edwin?" he said, so softly that Edwin almost didn't hear him. "Edwin, did we finish breakfast? I don't see my plate."

"Yes sir," the boy swore. He clutched Ted closely, and held the automaton away from the doctor, out of the man's line of sight should he turn around.

"Oh. I suppose that's right," he said, and again Ted had been spared by the doctor's dementia.

Edwin stuck Ted down firmly between the wall and his cot, and for one daft moment he considered binding the machine's feet with twine or wire to keep it from wandering. But the thought drifted out of his head, chased away by the unresponsive lump against the wall. He whispered, "I don't know how you're doing it, but you need to stop. I don't want the doctor to turn you into a can opener."

Then, as a compromise to his thoughts about hobbling the automaton, he dropped his blanket over the thing's head.

Bedtime was awkward that night.

When he reached for the clockwork boy he remembered the slow, calculated turn of the machine's head, and he recalled the blinking bright flashes of firelight in the gla.s.s badger-eyes.

The doctor had settled in his nook and was sleeping, and Edwin was still awake. He reclaimed his blanket and settled down on his side, facing the wall and facing Ted until he dozed, or he must have dozed. He a.s.sumed it was only sleep that made the steel jaw lower and clack; and it was only a dream that made the gears twist and lock into syllables.

"Ted?" Edwin breathed, hearing himself but not recognizing the sound of his own word.

And the clockwork face breathed back, not its own name but something else-something that even in the sleepy state of midnight and calm, Edwin could not understand.

The boy asked in the tiniest whisper he could muster, "Ted?"

Ted's steel jaw worked, and the air in its mouth made the shape of a "No." It said, more distinctly this time, and with greater volume, "Tan...gle...foot."

Edwin closed his eyes, and was surprised to learn that they had not been closed already. He tugged his blanket up under his chin and could not understand why the rustle of the fabric seemed so loud, but not so loud as the clockwork voice.

I must be asleep, he believed.

And then, eventually, he was.

Though not for long.

His sleep was not good. He was too warm, and then too cold, and then something was missing. Through the halls of his nightmares mechanical feet marched to their own tune; in the confined and cluttered s.p.a.ce of the laboratory there was movement too large to come from rats, and too deliberate to be the random flipping of a switch.

Edwin awakened and sat upright in the same moment, with the same fluid fear propelling both events.

There was no reason for it, or so he told himself; and this was ridiculous, it was only the old Dr. Smeeks and his slipping mind, infecting the boy with strange stories-turning the child against his only true friend. Edwin shot his fingers over to the wall where Ted ought to be jammed, waiting for its winding and for the sliding of the b.u.t.ton on its back.

And he felt only the smooth, faintly damp texture of the painted stone.

His hands flapped and flailed, slapping at the emptiness and the flat, blank wall. "Ted?" he said, too loudly. "Ted?" he cried with even more volume, and he was answered by the short, swift footsteps that couldn't have belonged to the doctor.

From his bed in the nook at the other end of the laboratory, the doctor answered with a groggy groan. "Parker?"

"Yes sir!" Edwin said, because it was close enough. "Sir, there's..." and what could he say? That he feared his friend had become unhinged, and that Ted was fully wound, and roaming?

"What is it, son?"

The doctor's voice came from miles away, at the bottom of a well-or that's how it sounded to Edwin, who untangled himself from the sheets and toppled to the floor. He stopped his fall with his hands, and stood, but then could scarcely walk.

As a matter of necessity he dropped his bottom on the edge of the cot and felt for his feet, where something tight was cinched around his ankles.

There, he found a length of wire bent into a loop and secured.

It hobbled his legs together, cutting his stride in half.

"Parker?" the doctor asked, awakening further but confused. "Boy?"

Edwin forced his voice to project a calm he wasn't feeling. "Sir, stay where you are, unless you have a light. My friend, Ted. He's gotten loose again. I don't want... I don't want you to hurt yourself."

"I can't find my candle."