Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (33 page)

He pulled up a chair so that he could sit and stare directly into my eyes. His voice became more somber as he said, “But before we continue with your education, I must elicit a solemn promise that you will not go blabbing to others what you learn here. There are many things at the shop that must, for the time being, remain secret. One day,” he said, raising a finger, “yes, one day, we will tell the world and show all, but in order to, ah, obtain funding for my experiments we must keep things under wraps, as they say.”

The professor was in what we called “Lecture Mode,” so I could only nod to show I was listening.

“And I must tell you,” he continued, “there are many unsavory characters who would pay goodly sums to find out about our projects before they are finished. You must guard yourself, young man,
guard
yourself against them. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, realizing that it was time for me to speak. The professor had become more and more obsessed with secrecy over the past week; he reminded us each and every morning before we started work.

“Good, good. Now, on to the reason you are here. I have been working on reducing the size and weight of steam engines. The ones we use here at the shop are quite powerful, but also quite large. I’m sure you have heard or perhaps seen steam wagons moving around the city. Up until this point they have of necessity had enormous boilers, compression chambers, drive mechanisms, and heavy iron cogs and wheels. But what if we could design and build a steam engine that was no larger than, say, a traveling trunk? A completely self-contained power source that could drive gears and wheels and levers and all sorts of mechanical devices. What do you think we could do with such a device?”

Ideas began to swirl around in my head: pumps, not just for mines, but for businesses and homes; machines to lift heavy objects; conveyances of all kinds, big and small, some with wheels and some with legs. I had to shake my head just to stop the pictures.

“Yes, my boy, it is quite exhilarating. Now you know why I often appear so distracted! I have so many ideas and projects that I’m afraid I shall die before I can bring them all to life.

“But there is one project, a very special project, that exceeds all others. One that will bring us not only fame, but also much-needed cash to fund all of my other projects.”

The professor was in his mode and running strong. He had my absolute attention.

“What if you could build
a suit of armor
…powered by steam?”

The professor smiled at my reaction. “Yes, just imagine…full protection from all attacks, and yet able to lift great weights and move around without excessive effort. That was one of the problems with the suits of armor of old. They were heavy. A knight’s armor with chain mail and padding could weigh as much as ninety pounds and took great strength to move about.

“How much, would you think, a sufficiently thick protective suit of armor for today’s soldier would weigh?”

I began to figure in my head. “A hundred…two hundred pounds?”

“A good guess, but remember, we will need joints and levers, cogs and wheels, springs and gears and pistons, too.”

“Three hundred pounds?”

“Now, what about the steam engine itself?”

I thought of the huge steam engine in the shop; there was no way anyone could carry that around. “The soldier would need to be tethered to a cart or wagon just to carry everything,” I said.

“Exactly…unless the engine and boiler assembly was small and self-contained!”

“Have you,” I said, leaning forward, “have you built one?”

“Yes!” The professor seemed delighted that I had asked the right question. “But we are still having a few problems. We are in the testing stage for the Steam Chamber, and although everything hinges on its ultimate design success, we still have gone ahead with building the suit of armor itself. At present, we are in the process of constructing the driving mechanism, and that is
where you come in, my boy. In order to keep the size and weight down to a manageable limit, I have designed some very small and somewhat delicate pieces. So far we have been able to get most of the apparatus to fit together, but some of the attaching screws and bolts are, of necessity, inside the suit itself and require fingers and arms much smaller than my own. Even Corbin is too large for some of this very precise work.”

So that was it! That was why the professor had wanted a small boy like me.

“So now you see why I’ve had you on such a whirlwind tour of our workstations; you had to get practical experience in everything necessary to put together our suit of armor.”

The professor laid a finger alongside his nose and said, “Come along, and remember what I said about keeping secrets.”

He led me out of his office and though the maze of workstations and piles of materials to a special room off to the side. I had watched Algert and the professor and Corbin going in and out of this room but had assumed it to be for storage only. When we entered, I saw in the very center of the room, illuminated from the skylight above, a shining assortment of metal panels, plates, gears, and tubes arranged into a manlike shape. If the professor had not already explained the purpose of this construction, I would have thought he had built a mechanical man.

“As you can see,” the professor said, “we have most of our Clockwork Suit of Armor assembled, the bigger pieces, at least. All the joints work properly when articulated by hand, but we are having trouble getting some of the pistons and various clockwork mechanisms attached. Would you like to take a look?”

“Ye-yes, sir.” I was practically drooling.

I walked over to the apparatus and started looking in and around each arm, leg, and joint.

“Here,” the professor said, handing me a glass-and-brass tube with a thick cable coming out of one end. “Have you ever seen one of these?” I shook my head, my mouth open in wonder. “It’s a Ruhmkorff lamp, a portable electric lamp powered by an
induction coil.” He switched it on, and a golden light shone out from inside the tube. “Light without heat,” he said. “We use it inside the suit to help see into the more hidden parts.”

I took the lamp and guided it up, in, and around the insides of the suit. I could see where several holes were awaiting screws or bolts, or perhaps pipes or cables. It was all very complex, and I could see where someone bigger than me would have a hard time just getting to everything inside. I experimented by guiding my hand snakelike in and around struts and braces, trying to imagine holding a small wrench. It wouldn’t be easy, but I thought I could do it.

I handed the Ruhmkorff lamp back to the professor and he switched it off.

“Well, what do you think, my boy?”

“It’s…wow!” I said, still starting at the lamp. “The…the suit of armor, I mean. And the lamp, too.”

The professor smiled. “Good to hear it. You start work tomorrow morning.”

Bright and early the next day, I began to help with the Clockwork Suit. I had to climb in and around the core, connecting every part that was either hard to get to or just plain impossible for someone bigger. I learned the purpose and function of each piece and how it was attached. I had to become a contortionist in order to get to some of the fittings and then spend sometimes an hour moving the wrench a small fraction at a time until I had the connection tight. It was slow, difficult work, but I loved it…except when Corbin was standing over me.

For some reason, everything I did seemed to get on his nerves. Nothing was good enough. “Hurry up, Dummy,” he said, kicking the hip strut I was lying in. “We got three more pieces to fit and I can’t do nothing till you finish. How long does it take to tighten a damn bolt?”

I was upside down and twisted around like a snake with my arm shoved up as far as I could reach, trying to get enough leverage to push the wrench one more time. “I’m almost done,” I said. “Don’t want…this…coming loose.”

We had been having trouble with some of the screws and
bolts and compression fittings. Even when I was sure that they were tightened securely, the next day, Algert or the professor would find that some of them had somehow worked loose again. Corbin, of course, kept blaming me for it, saying I wasn’t strong enough, or lazy, or stupid.

But after a few days of checking and double-checking every bolt, I noticed that only the ones that were accessible to bigger boys and men were getting loose; the ones that only I could reach stayed tight.

I had just about decided to talk to the professor about it when he came into the special project room and said with a grand smile, “We finally have our appointment with the emperor. We have to get the suit completely operational within three weeks.”

The emperor! So that’s who the Clockwork Suit was for. I couldn’t believe I was working on something intended for the emperor.

“Three weeks!” Algert yelled. He had been working long hours the past few weeks, trying to get everything ready. “But we still haven’t had a successful test of the Steam Chamber.”

“Not to worry,” the professor said. “I’m sure that we are on the verge of great success.”

The Steam Chamber was one of the professor’s new inventions. It was a specially designed boiler that burned oil to heat the steam into a highly compressed state. It only needed a small amount of oil to keep the burner hot. And most of the steam that drove the power assembly was recycled with each compression.

Unfortunately, it had a habit of exploding before reaching the required degree of pressure.

I found out that we also had another problem. Schneider, another inventor with a large workshop, and the professor’s biggest competitor, had wormed his way into the good graces of the emperor and was working on his own suit of armor. But according to the professor, his suit design was greatly inferior, and relied more on magic tricks than science. “Schneider is nothing more than a talented con man,” he told me several times, “and will stop at nothing to secure the large advance offered by the emperor.”

So as the days passed and the time of our appointment grew near, the tension in the shop became as thick as vented steam. Corbin pushed and punched me two or three times a day. Once, I came close to hitting him over the head with a wrench I was holding, but instead, I thought of what Da would say, and how disappointed he’d be, so I just chewed my lower lip and held my anger. The other boys did their best to avoid talking to Corbin and stayed out of his way, but I was stuck in the special room working on the Clockwork Suit and had to take whatever he dished out.

More and more the professor had been staying in his office going over and over his figures, trying to work out the problems with his designs, coming out only when Algert had set up a test of the Steam Chamber.

One night after work, Russell and I were up in our attic room when he asked, “How are you holding up working under Corbin’s boot?”

“He’s really pushing me hard,” I said, shaking my head. “Someday I’m either going to hit him with a wrench or just quit.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Quit?” I said raising my eyebrows. “Nah,” I said with a heavy sigh. “Ma and Da are depending on me.”

“Too bad,” Russell said as he climbed into bed. “Maybe the next explosion will take care of him for us.”

“Yeah,” I said hopefully. “But he’s probably too mean. The whole place could go up and Corbin would still be standing there yelling, ‘Dummy! I told you to watch that gauge!’”

“Or, ‘Bussell! Where’d you put my spanner!’” Russell laughed.

The last week before our appointment, and still without a successful test of the Steam Chamber, the professor decided to go with a less powerful chamber, one that didn’t have to hold as much pressure. Although the suit would function, it would not be as strong, or operate as long. “But,” as the professor said, “it has the advantage of not exploding.”

We checked and rechecked all of the cables and steam pipes attached to the clockwork drive unit, and made sure all the joints worked properly. The professor wanted one last trial before we
secured the final plates of armor. He wanted to make sure that Algert could fit inside and walk around without falling down.

We put the suit on a hand truck and pushed it out onto the main floor. We cleared an area of ten or twelve feet so that Algert could move around. He and the professor filled the small boiler on the back of the suit and lit the burner, then waited for the steam chamber to charge.

When all the dials held steady, and nothing blew up, Algert squeezed himself inside the suit. Russell and I closed the breastplate, and the professor pulled down the helmet and visor.

Even without all the armor plates Algert looked dangerous and spectacular.

The suit really was ingenious; instead of using buttons and levers to operate the various pistons and gears, the professor had pressure plates placed at strategic spots within the armor that corresponded to Algert’s knees, feet, forearms, and more.

Once Algert was all strapped in, he pushed the control to ACTIVE and steam began to hiss out as gears started to whirr and clank. And then the suit began to
move
. Algert’s first step was tentative and awkward, but soon he was walking in a more natural gait. He moved around slowly, picking up various pipes and pieces of equipment, testing his strength, coordination, and balance. When he first tried to pick up something heavy, an axle assembly, he nearly fell over.