Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (11 page)

He took a strand of her blond hair in his fingers and marveled at it; just like real hair. Hesitantly, he brushed her forearm with his fingers. Soft and yielding, just like real flesh. Gideon placed his hand on her chest, between her breasts, and felt the rhythmic pumping of some clockwork engine within. Gideon murmured, “Old Crowe was right about one thing: Professor Hermann Einstein is indeed a genius.”

“Thank you,” said the automaton with the slightest movement of her full, ruby-red lips.

Gideon yelled and rolled backward as the automaton’s kohl-rimmed eyes flicked open and her head rose to regard him. Another of Einstein’s surprises. Just like Bob, the lawnmower man, no doubt, talking with the help of a wax cylinder inside her.

“Not quite wound down, have you?” said Gideon with a smile. “My God, if I lived here for any length of time I would have a heart attack.”

“Imagine what it’s like for me,” said Maria.

The color drained from Gideon’s face. He peered at the automaton, and it blinked back and gave him a half smile.

“You’re really speaking to me?” he whispered.

“I’m really speaking to you,” said Maria.

Gideon was silent for a while, not quite knowing what to do next. He said eventually, “You thanked me. What for?”

Maria put her face down and looked at her hands, folded in her lap. “For not taking up Crowe on his offer.”

Gideon bit his lip. “Does he do that often?”

She nodded sadly. Gideon put his hand to his mouth. “Good God,” he said.

Maria smiled ruefully. “I have no God, sir, save Professor Einstein, who gave me life.” She paused. “Do you have a name?”

“Gideon,” he said. “Gideon Smith.” He awkwardly put out his hand, and Maria placed hers in his palm. He felt the warmth from it, felt it pulsing with life.

“Are you
alive
?” asked Gideon. “Are you
real
?”

“Oil and fluid flow through my copper veins. Clockwork powers my limbs. A self- perpetuating hydraulic engine pumps inside my chest. My skin is the softest kid leather. Not alive, Mr. Smith. Not real.”

“You look like a living, breathing woman,” said Gideon. “Perhaps you have been hypnotized to believe you are a clockwork creation?”

“Are you easily shocked, Mr. Smith?” asked Maria.

Gideon shook his head. “Not any more.”

“Very well,” she said. Maria deftly hooked her thumbs under the shoulder straps of her cotton leotard and pulled them down, revealing her bare torso. Gideon flushed, but she put a finger to her lips. “Hush. And watch.”

Maria put one finger into her navel and Gideon heard a distinct clicking sound. Her stomach shuddered and a hairline crack appeared down the middle of her, from her breastbone to her hips. His eyes widened as the crack became a fissure, and Maria’s torso opened up as though it were nothing more than a set of double doors. Instead of flesh and muscle, she had brass and glass; her veins were rendered as thin, metal pipes through which a dark, viscous liquid coursed. Her ribcage was a steel trap enclosing an intricate mesh of gears and flywheels, whirring and spinning as each muscle in her arms and face moved. There was indeed a box of valves and pistons pumping away, and cables of varying color and thickness that wound around the clockwork and up into the hidden areas behind her breasts and below her waist.

She pushed the doors closed and they fitted snugly together, the seam sinking into invisibility. Maria pulled up her leotard again to cover her modesty and spare Gideon’s blushes.

“You are a wonder,” he breathed. “A miracle. And Crowe has debased you to sate his own perverse appetites. How long has this horror been visited upon you?”

“Since Professor Einstein left, six months ago,” said Maria. “Crowe was cautious at first, merely looked at me for long weeks while . . . while he pleasured himself. Then he would undress me, and touch me. Then, when he became bolder, he would wind me up and have me dance for him. And . . .”

Maria put her face down again, and Gideon was shocked to see a single tear rolling down her cheek. “Did Crowe not know you could speak?”

She shook her head violently. “I would not waste words on that scoundrel. It was better to let him believe I was merely a mute object. He would have merely heaped more insults upon me and enjoyed my pain yet further if he thought I could . . . could
feel
.”

“What is it like, when you wind down?” asked Gideon, after a while. “What do you feel then?”

“It is like sleep, I imagine,” she said. “And sometimes, when I sleep, I dream.”

“Nightmares, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. Scattered, fractured dreams. Faces I cannot name and voices I cannot recognize. Dreams of London.”

“London?” asked Gideon. “You have been to London?”

“I cannot have,” said Maria. “But my dreams are of another life, without clockwork and pipes.” She shook her head. “Cruel illusion.”

“The clockwork and valves I can understand,” said Gideon. “But your speech, your intelligence . . . how does one achieve that with gears and pistons?”

Maria looked at him. “There is another element, Mr. Smith, which I do not understand and cannot show you.” She pointed to her forehead. “In my head there is a machine that powers my thought and gives life to my body. Something Professor Einstein invented, or found.”

He stood and looked out the thin window, just as Bob whirred into life and began to noisily push his cutter across the lawn.

“I am going to London,” said Gideon. He turned and knelt before her. “Come with me.”

7
The Imitation Game

Maria looked startled. “Come with you?”

“What is there for you here? Abuse and degradation?

Come with me. I shall keep you safe.”

Maria blinked. “Keep me safe?”

“I have a mission in London,” said Gideon. “I am to return home to Sandsend at the earliest opportunity, to deal with grave business there. But perhaps I can help you find your Professor Einstein.”

She put her head to one side, the gears and wheels within her whirring. “Give me a moment to dress more appropriately. How shall we travel?”

Gideon punched the palm of his hand. “I have no resources, no money.”

Maria said, “In the parlor there is a bicycle with a hydraulic engine. Take it to the front courtyard and I shall meet you downstairs.”

After checking that Crowe still slept, Gideon quickly pulled on his socks and boots and stole downstairs. The bicycle was heavy and crowned with other junk and inventions, and something crashed with an alarming clatter as he pulled it free. He pushed it out into the warm morning sunshine before heading back inside. He stopped dead in the doorway as Maria descended the staircase with a fluid grace that would have been stunning from even the most well-bred lady. She wore a full skirt and a white blouse, a gray serge cape around her shoulders. Her feet stepped down the stairs in polished black laced boots, and her blond hair was arranged beneath a bonnet. “Maria,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

She took his outstretched hand to step down from the final stair. “The bicycle should get us to the next village. After that, we shall need money,” she said.

She led him into a workroom and pulled open one of several drawers beneath a row of trestle tables piled high with cogs, devices, and test tubes, withdrawing a sheaf of pound notes.

“We can’t,” said Gideon. “It would be stealing.”

“Professor Einstein kept it for emergencies,” said Maria.

“He was somewhat . . . disorganized. He secreted money for when tradesmen called or deliveries were made. I am sure he would be happy for you to take it, under the circumstances.” Gideon nodded uncertainly. “I shall pay back whatever I spend,” he said. He took a book from the table and put the money inside it for safekeeping. He found a cloth bag and stuffed the book and money inside, along with Maria’s brass key.

His heart sank to see Crowe standing in the hall, scratching his nether regions and yawning. He looked at Gideon and said, “Ah, up already? I was just going to put some breakfast on.” Then Crowe saw Maria and frowned. “What are you doing with the automaton? I could have sworn I put it back in the tower.”

“You did,” said Gideon. “And I have removed her. Your abuse of this poor girl is at an end, Crowe.”

Crowe laughed. “Her? Poor girl? It’s a
thing,
Smith. And a thing that doesn’t belong to you. Now leave it be and get out.

I’ll not have you repaying my hospitality with theft, you blackguard.”

“Oh, I’m leaving all right,” said Gideon, taking Maria by the hand. “And she is coming with me. This is not theft, Crowe.

It’s liberation.”

Gideon barged past Crowe, dragging Maria with him toward the door. The old man shrieked and flew at him, and Gideon swatted him off easily. He strode out of the house and toward the motorized bicycle, muttering, “Could have done with a bit more time to figure out how this contraption works.”

“There is a toggle on the box behind the seat,” said Maria.

“I observed Professor Einstein working on the vehicle.” Gideon hit the toggle and there was an alarming judder and a hiss of steam, which settled into a rhythmic vibration.

He hopped on to the seat and Maria wrapped her hands around his chest, murmuring, “I suggest expedience, Mr. Smith. I think Crowe has a gun.”

Gideon released the brake just as the first bullet whistled past his head. The bicycle surged forward, and Maria held on even tighter, which Gideon found most agreeable. The bicycle wavered perilously as it shot ahead at an alarming velocity. “Come back with that clockwork tart!” shrieked Crowe.

“It’s mine! Bring it back!”

As he steadied the bicycle and piloted it along the drive toward the gates of the Einstein house, Gideon called over the noise of the motor, “Are you quite well, Maria?”

“Never better, Mr. Smith,” she laughed delightedly as the drive curved upward and spilled them out on to a country lane. “Never better.”

The bicycle sputtered and died as they came within sight of the village, a small, bustling hamlet called Hawerd. Gideon paid the postmaster from the wad of notes to take the bicycle back to the Einstein house. As he did, he noticed for the first time the book he had stuffed the money inside:
Investigations into the Atlantic Artifact and Experiments with the Aforementioned in Terms of the Animation of Automata.
He put it back in the bag and asked the postmaster if there was any transport headed toward London.

“You’re in luck,” said the man, glancing at his fob watch. “The express omnibus is due in half an hour. Have you in London by lunchtime.”

He gripped Maria’s hand and said, “Let us take some refreshment in the tearooms until the bus arrives.” Then he paused. “Uh, forgive me, Maria, but do you actually eat or drink?”

She smiled demurely. “I don’t have to, but I can. The food is processed within me and mulched down into liquid to lubricate my working parts.”

Gideon grimaced. That somehow took the shine off the thought of a good strong cup of coffee. But his own stomach rumbled and reminded him he had not eaten since the night before.

As the coffee and pastries arrived, Maria said with a distant gaze, “London. Think of it. I can see in my mind’s eye images of the Lady of Liberty flood barrier, the Threadneedle Ziggurat, the airships clustered around the Highgate Aerodrome.”

“Perhaps you read of them in books,” said Gideon. “Or newspaper articles. The Lady of Liberty statue is only five years old; perhaps your professor attended the dedication service when the French presented it to Britain to celebrate the defeat of the Yankee rebels in 1775.”

“I have seen them,” she insisted. “I have watched the airships circling the aerodrome in bright sunshine, seen the cascading foliage down the levels of the ziggurats.” She looked at him. “I do not understand how I could have invented that. How could Professor Einstein have given me memories of things I have never seen?” She laid a hand on his bare arm and his hairs prickled. “Sometimes I wonder where they came from, whose they once were.”

“Did he never speak of the memories and dreams he had given to you?” he asked gently.

She shook her head tightly. “What ever reasons Professor Einstein had for keeping them a secret, he must have thought they were valid. However, he is gone and you have emancipated me from the yoke of dreadful Crowe. Now I can seek answers.”