Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (31 page)

“Tricky stuff,”
Eddie said, picking blue apples off of a branch extending from a bookcase.

“Do you feel
real?” I asked the Doll.

“I'm...not sure,”
she murmured. “Do you?”

“Always and
never,” I said, half-frowning.

“Now
that's
a
dream answer!” Kitt accused.

“Ah!” Gren agreed.
“Pocket's false!”

“You have a lot of
nerve calling me false, Spader! You're half metal yourself!”

Gren retracted,
obviously offended.

“I'm...I'm sorry,”
I said. “I didn't mean that.”

“Sure. Whatever
you say. I'm fine.”

“This is all just
so confusing.”

“Gentlemen! Lady!”
Alexia said, arising. “Let's not bicker. If we're all feeling good and real and
firmly gripping our actuality, then let us assume for the moment that we all
exist outside of this vision and get on with it already.”

“Get on with
what?” Kitt asked.

“With the dream.
The search. The unveiling of a discovered epiphany. Why do you think I
conducted a reading in the first place?” She walked over to the Doll and peered
into her clockwork eyes. “So much to learn,” she then added.

The Doll whimpered
and moved back a few steps in caution. Kitt got up and started pulling books
from the shelves.

“What's he doing?”
Eddie said.

“We're trying to
uncover some sort of truth, right?” Kitt said. “We're in a library. Where
better to learn?”

I looked at the
placard that was fastened to the top of the bookshelf.

MODERN ADVANCEMENTS: TO – YZ.

“That might be a
little over our heads, don't you think?” I said. Kitt threw a book titled
Pessimism
at me. I ducked.

“Well, that one
was over
your
head,” he said.

Come to think of
it, what was
Pessimism
doing under a modern classification? It's hardly
a recent development. Either this was a terribly managed library or Kitt had
conjured the publication out of nothingness for his visual joke. Either way, I
was displeased.

“We are people of
this age,” Kitt said, gripping a yellow-covered book stamped with a cog emblem.
“We should fare fine amongst words of progress.”

He opened the book
and the printed letters spilled from the pages like grains of salt into a lumpy
pile of deconstructed vocabulary at his feet. Kitt picked up a few fallen
consonants and tried to work them around an “EA” that had stuck to his feet.

“Good work,” Gren
said.

“You want to try?”
Kitt snapped, kicking books his way.

Gren rolled his
eyes and made a show of picking up one of the volumes.

“Fine. You want to
get enlightened?” he said, cracking it open. “Let's get enlightened.”

Everything went
pitch black.

“What happened?”
Alexia said in the darkness.

“I didn't do it!”
Gren said.

“Stay put. Don't
move around,” Eddie said.

The lights
returned and we found ourselves suddenly on a large, rotating gear, grinding
away inside of some colossal machine.

“Gah!” Kitt
yelped, losing his balance as the piece turned. He tumbled over the edge and
hung by his fingers between the gaping metal teeth, his feet swaying over a
bottomless abyss.

“Help me!” he
shouted as the gear clicked along, bringing the fox perpetually closer to a
grinding death between the meeting grooves of two connecting pieces. Eddie
quickly moved into action, sliding over the side and grabbing Kitt's arm. He
just about had him up and over when a pressurized spring popped out, caught
Kitt under his jacket, and launched him up into the air. He screamed and landed
on another turning piece, far above our heads.

“Kitt-Kitt!” Dolly
shouted up. “Don't jump!”

“I wasn't going
to!” he shouted back.

We found a greasy
piston pumping upward and attempted to climb it. As we got a little up it, the
lights went out again and we all fell downward. I landed on something soft
beneath my back.

With a quick,
whooshing sound, the world came back into view. We were lying in a crumpled
mass on a large, moving conveyor belt under the copper dome of some great and
hellish factory. Kitt was still above our heads, now sitting upon a high-placed
support beam and signaling frantically at us.

“What?” Eddie said
to him. Kitt pointed and we realized the belt was sending us into a giant,
churning vat of boiling rubber.

“Oh,” Eddie said.

“Run!” Gren
shouted. We unanimously agreed to the suggestion and did just that. We took
off, sprinting against the belt as it pulled us closer to the vat. Before long,
the speed increased and we couldn't keep up. Leaping off of the side wasn't an
option. Nothing but emptiness awaited down there. Before we knew it, we were at
the edge of the scalding mess.

Eddie was the first
casualty, falling into the boil. Gren was next, swearing as he disappeared into
the rubber. I felt the heels of my boots come to the edge.

“Well, ladies,” I
said, about to go over. “It has been a pleasure.”

I saw a frightened
spark in the Doll's eye. She grabbed me and Alexia by the wrist and that spark
became a glow. I felt the world move around us, and then once again, it went
black.

When we could
again see, we found ourselves outside and standing before us was a great
storybook castle built not of stone and mortar but of plating and coils and
rivets, expelling steam and firing gas from its tall towers.

“It's beautiful,”
Alexia said.

A drawn bridge
stood at the entrance and on each side stood Eddie and Gren, frozen statues
held firm in place under a hard coat of black, vulcanized rubber. The striking
monument was separated from us by a swirling, smoggy moat.

“Look,” Dolly
said, spotting Kitt sitting high within a flagged watchtower. He waved at us.

“Stunning
craftwork,” I said.

“What do you think
all of those moving parts are for?” Alexia said.

“No idea.”

We looked at our
reflections in the shiny metal. The Doll had none, Alexia did, and I could see
Tekcop biting his thumb at me.

“Don't feel too
bad about going without,” I said to Dolly.

“Oh,” she said
above a whisper. “So you don't see one there.”

The scene blacked
out and when the lights returned, we were standing in the same place, but the
plating on the castle was now greatly bent and beaten.

“What is going
on
here?” I muttered.

Another great
shadow was cast upon the castle, and the blanketing dark rolled to us.

“Stay within the
light,” Alexia commanded. “Don't let yourself be consumed.”

But it was too
late. We were swallowed up once more and when it again passed we found that the
castle had become even more woebegone, half-covered in rust and popping worn
screws.

“There must be
some reason...” I began.

“Wait!” the
Watchmaker's Doll said, pointing her mechanical arm skyward. “Up there!”

I couldn't believe
it. In the swirled air hung a yellow crescent moon, and sitting perched upon
its   slope was little Iago. Well, not so little anymore. The child
loomed over us on his celestial seat, an amused audience to our fumbling
escapades.

“Iago!” Alexia
shouted, lecturing angrily from the ground. “You come down from the sky this
moment!”

“What's he doing
up there?” Dolly asked.

“He made the moon
come out,” I grumbled.

“What?”

“We were playing
knights before. I'm guessing this is his castle.”

“I knew I
shouldn't have let him stay up,” Alexia said. “Now he's gone and slept and
gotten into the tea dream.”

“Seems to managing
better than us,” I laughed.

“Iago!” she
shouted before shaking her head at us. “We could be in real trouble now.”

“Why?” Dolly
asked.

“Because of
that.
”

Far up into the
sky, the boy pulled out a giant, intricately patterned paper lantern and held
it out over the moon, blocking its glow. The moving darkness again stirred.

“No! Don't—”
Alexia yelped.

Whoosh. All went
black. After a moment in the dark, we heard a low rumbling. The sound built up
to a low roar and when Iago finally removed his lantern, the castle was reduced
to a pile of shiny rubbish. The statues of Gren and Eddie were half buried and
Kitt was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly the cracked earth began to shake and
split. Deep caverns broke open just beyond our feet. Dolly squeaked and
shuffled back behind me.

“All right!” I
shouted to the lantern boy. “I think we've had enough fun, kid.”

“He's not
listening,” Alexia said, moving from the edge. “We have to somehow wake him
up.”

“Wake...” Dolly
repeated to herself.

There was a sharp,
splitting sound as a deep crack cut through the unbroken patch of earth where
we stood. We tried desperately to keep our footing, but our fate seemed
inevitable.

“This session has
not produced the flavor of results that I was expecting,” Alexia said,
balancing on a jagged point.

“Wake...” the Doll
kept repeating. “Wake...” Her eyes then exploded with that same wild glow I had
first seen upon turning her key. Her body lifted into the air, and the
surroundings began to blur.

“Wake,” she said,
her voice a grand echo.

The scenery melted
together as a cold gush of wind blew in over my shoulder. I looked at Alexia.
She was just staring, overcome by awe and amazement.

“I knew it,” she
whispered, a joyous smile of discovery upon her face. “I just knew it.”

The tea lady
dissolved into the glow. Another burst of air propelled me from the ground and
lifted me into the sky.

“Wake?” the Doll
said, smiling at me.

“What are you?” I
managed.

She only giggled
and put a mischievous finger to her lips. “A woman's secret.”

Eternity closed in
around me and, warm in her glow, I moved to the Watchmaker's Doll and took her
hand.

“Time to wake up
now, Mister Pocket,” she said into my ear. “Time to wake up.”

And with that, I
opened my eyes.

“So then what?”

“Then nothing.
That's it. We woke up. I'd slept all night and morning was ready to kick me in
the face. Alexia demanded that no one discuss their dreams, so I never found
out whether or not we actually shared a sleeping fantasy. Still, I doubt it.”

“Hmmm. So if you
swore yourself to secrecy, why'd you just tell me?”

“Oh...yeah...I
did, didn't I?”

“And in pretty
great detail.”

“Ah. Whoops. Well,
no great harm done. Just keep it to yourself.”

“Yes, you have my
eternal silence. Now, what happens next?”

“Next, dear Alan,
I found for myself a moment of absolute euphoria.”

“Meaning?”

I exhaled slowly
and happily as I slid my freshly-cleaned black overcoat over my shoulder.

“You seem
pleased,” the Doll said, passing by.

“Pleased to get
out of those pajamas.”

A day or so had
gone by and we were preparing to take our leave from the tea house. Gren had
left that morning for a small air dock in the area that a few commercial
vessels occasionally used for shipping outside of the city.

“So you're sure
you can hunt down your friend?” I had asked before he left.

“The ship will be
there, and if the ship's there, Jack will be hanging around...possibly drunk.”

At this time of
the morning? No, best not to criticize.

“And you're sure
we can trust him?”

“Jack?” Gren
laughed enthusiastically. “I've known the oaf for years. Trust won't be a
problem. Getting a moment's peace around him, there's your problem.”

“And the rest of
the crew?”

“Solid human
beings. They aren't going to turn you over for something as meaningless as a
wanted poster.”

“Even if it has a
nice number written across the bottom?”

“Trust me, they
don't need more money.”

“
Everyone
needs
more money.”

“Would you have a
little faith in humanity, Pocket? These are good people.”

“All right. Fine.
So what, these merchants have a soft spot for the amateur outlaw?”

“Something like
that.”

Gren returned to
the tea house that evening and announced that his scouting had been successful.

“We leave at
noon,” he said. “Jack's just got to do a little maintenance on the main
boiler.”

“Boiler?” I asked.

“Water boiler.
These ships run on steam engines, Pocket, not hopes and dreams.”

“Don't be an ass.”

“So he'll be
staying with the ship. But one of the others will head over here to collect
us.”

“What's the name
of this ship?” Kitt asked.

“What does it
matter?” Gren said.

The fox shrugged.
“I've sneaked onto a good amount of steamships in my time. Maybe I've been
aboard.”

“It's the
Lucidia.
”

“Pretty name,”
Dolly said.

“Yeah,” Kitt said.
“
Lucidia
...huh. Can't say I place it.”

“I figured,” Gren
said.

Sure enough, right
at the stroke of noon the following day, a pronounced series of knocks, almost
sounding like a tune, came rapping on the front door. I was in the front room,
spoon in my hat, bottle at my side, collapsed turnkey tucked into my coat,
ready to depart. Gren answered the door and called me over to meet the man on
the other side. He was thin and pale, a bit older than me, with a curious smile
placed above a trimmed, red goatee.

“Ah!” I said. “A
pleasure. I'm Will Pock—“

“Try this,” he
said, handing me a small, fat bottle of rum.

“I'm sorry?”

“Try it,” he said,
tossing around a friendly tone.

“Uh...all
right...” I popped the cork and sniffed. “It's rum.”

“Yes, of
course
it's rum, now taste it!”

What an odd
gentleman. Still, nice enough fellow, so...

“Why not?” I said.
I took a quick swig and rolled it around on my tongue. “Huh,” I commented.
“It's sweet.”

“See
that?
”
the man said to Gren. “What did I tell you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gren
mumbled.

“I told you,
didn't I? Sweeter batch. Not so much bite.”

“Eh, it all tastes
the same to me.”

“How could it
possibly?”

“Excuse me,” I
interjected. “Sorry. Are you here from the
Lucidia?
”

The red-bearded
gentleman nodded. He was wearing a long, buttoned, coachman’s coat that went to
his knees.

“I am he,” he
calmly spoke.

“Good. Very good.”
My laundered coat still contained in its depths my calling card, now dried out
and slightly brittle. I felt it and instinctively pulled it out with my
welcoming hand. “Will Pocket.”

The man inspected
my hand, did not shake it, and plucked the card from between my fingers. His
smile dropped into a frown of confusion. “Why did you—“

“Typographical
error,” I cut in. “Ignore it.”

“Mmm...so you're
Mister Pocket, then?”

“Yes.”

“All right then.”
He returned the card and went back to his conversation with Gren. After about
one minute, I realized that I no longer had any reason to be standing there,
and to continue to do so would make me appear quite brainless, so I muttered
something about preparations and slid back into the main room where Kitt was
waiting.

“That man,” he
said aside to me. “He's—“

“Yes. Our escort.”

“Huh,” Kitt said,
looking at the stranger. “Interesting.”

I'd like to take a
moment if I may to talk about first impressions. The rule, as I believe it is
understood in New London, is not to trust them. If a merchant ever approaches
you with the word “Honest” pinned before his first name, the example goes,
never spend a penny on anything he's trying to sell you. The assumption that every
law-abiding, God-fearing servant seems to cling to is that every other
law-abiding, God-fearing servant that he or she may pass on the street on any
given day is most likely a walking lie hiding beneath a very thin set of casual
pleasantries. Therefore by this logic, if a gentleman passes a lady on some
morning, smiles, tips his bowler, and says “a good day to you, miss,” we can
assume that he is most likely using this nonthreatening presentation to lull
the young woman into some sort of unwanted physical encounter. This of course
has made things difficult for the honest, outgoing patrons of the city, who
have since adopted false outward personas so that they don't look like liars.

Keeping up an
impression is as equally exhausting as learning to see through one. When I was,
uh, let's say fifteen, I was for a short time employed by a corner druggist who
had grown so popular amongst his customers that he needed a few extra hands to
fill and tag bottles. The druggist was a nice man, kind and quick-witted, and
spoke with such charm and conviction that anyone who came into his shop quickly
adored him and would buy anything he suggested. Repeat business was never a
problem. Then one day, the druggist died and his assistant had to take over the
shop. He was a bookish, quiet man and therefore severely doubted his ability to
maintain the same commanding presence of his predecessor. Not surprisingly,
profits began to dwindle. People bore fast, and without that element of
captivation, that spark, customers started drifting to less expensive vendors.
Determined to save the shop, the owner started to broaden his horizons. He took
public speaking lessons, read thick books of limericks and anecdotes, improved
his posture. These choices became habits which later became obsessions. In the
last weeks that I worked under him, the owner spent nearly every waking moment
forcing himself to learn, to improve, to change himself into the foregone image
of the late druggist. He began dressing and having his hair trimmed in the style
of his former boss. Each day he was looking paler and hungrier and wearier. His
hair began to turn prematurely white, which only strengthened his resolve.

“Look at that
portrait,” he would say to us, pointing to a painting of the old druggist.
“What color is that great man's hair? The same as my own!”

“But sir,” one of
the workers would point out. “He was a good thirty years your elder.”

“Matters not!
Matters not!” And he would leave it at that.

But then came the
day when he finally broke.

“You, boy,” he had
said to me. “You're always telling stories. Write me something good to tell
outside of the parlor.”

“Outside, sir?”

“Yes! Yes! People
love a good story! Attracts business!”

“I suppose, but
are you sure you're up for—“

“Don't you tell me
what I am fit to do!” he snapped. “If you don't want to write for me, just say
so!”

“No, no,
I'll...sure...I can come up with something.”

“Ah, you're a good
kid, William. You come early tomorrow, help me set up.”

I never showed up
again. I'm still not sure why. I later learned that without my words, he had
gotten angry, grabbed the nearest encyclopedia, marched out into pouring rain,
and started shouting passages. He was eventually hospitalized, beaten down by
sickness in the cold, and the shop closed its doors. I never found out whether
his performance had attracted anyone, but I'd like to think that his collapse
did. Posturing puts a great strain on a man.

But it is my first
impression of the goateed man at the tea house door, polite and pronounced,
that I consider the most interesting, as it has been both my most accurate and
most grossly mistaken.

“You think we're
safe with him?” Kitt asked.

“He looks safe
enough to me,” I said.

The man didn't
offer his name, a move which I couldn't decipher as either an act of seclusion or
absentmindedness. The gent was a tough one to read, to predict, and I at once
admired him for that quality. What true manner, I wondered, lay in hiding
behind his calm demeanor?

We shared
breakfast and introductions. The stranger would set his eyes upon each of us as
we spoke, nodding and smiling with an air of withheld knowledge. I'd figured
that he knew of the mark on my and Kitt's heads, so I eased into the subject.

“So, um,” I began,
a pillar of clarity and confidence, “I don't know if you are aware, but, eh,
Kitt and I are sort of in a bit of a bind...with, uh, the King and—”

“Yes, yes,” the
man said, dabbing his lips with a napkin. “I am aware. Tis no problem.”

“Hmph,” Gren said,
dropping his fork. “Well,
I've
got a problem you need to deal with.” He
flicked a finger against his chest and I could hear the metallic clink of his
boiler plating. “A
construction
problem.”

The stranger
sighed. “What have you gone and done to my work this time?”

“Me?!?” Gren
clucked his tongue. “I suppose it's my fault that I expect a piece of solid
metal to be—“

“No fussing! Not
at the breakfast table. Here, I found something for you. A gift. So, no
fussing.”

“Gift? What is
it?”

“A deck of cards,”
he said, pulling a small box from his coat.

“I make a living
as a gambler. What do I need with more playing cards?”

“Oh, these aren't
for playing. Look.”

Gren opened the
box and slid the top card off of the stack. Two of diamonds. And holding those
two diamonds, rather strategically placed, was a shapely young woman in
considerable danger of catching a cold.

“Naked lady
cards?” Gren said flatly.

“Look at the
aces.”

“Uh...thanks.”
Gren crammed the card back into its case and slid the deck down the table
toward me.

“You're welcome,”
the stranger said, smiling. “And thank you for the warm meal, Miss Alexia.”

“Hmm?” the tea
lady said, her mind elsewhere. “Oh, my pleasure. You know you're always welcome
here.”

We finished the
meal and knew the time had come.

“So!” our escort
said, gently clapping his hands. “Shall we depart?”

“Yes...I suppose
you'd better,” Alexia said, half-frowning.

“Hey!” the
stranger said to Gren as we got up. “You didn't take your cards.”

“Oh, right,” Gren
responded, searching for a line. “Almost forgot because...Pocket, he was
holding onto them for me. Probably trying to get at my gift. Pocket, give me
those cards back.”

“Mature,” I
muttered under my breath. “Here you are, Spader.” I took out the deck, which I
just so happened in the conversation to pick up and pocket anyhow, out of...out
of...

“Courtesy?”

“Exactly!
Courtesy, Alan.”

“Heh. Courtesy
gets a man far these days.”

We gathered what
little we had brought with us and moved out onto the front porch. Alexia and
Eddie joined us, intent on giving a proper send-off.

“Thank you both so
much,” the Doll said, accepting a parcel of muffins and pomegranates that
Alexia had prepared for us. “For everything. We can't ever truly repay—”

“You've paid with
entertainment!” Alexia said cheerfully before turning a bit sullen. “Still...a
shame to see you go.”

“I'm sorry I wasn't
able to provide any deep revelations for you. I mean, during the steam
reading.”

The tea lady
dipped into a long, catlike smile and responded with her usual feline curiosity
and mischievousness. “Oh, ho, ho. Now I wouldn't go as far as to say that.”

“Tea makes steam
and steam makes dreams,” she sang. “In dreams, I see. I find candy.”

“Candy?”

“Tasty bits of
truth, dearie,” she whispered. “And of you...well...”

“What? What did
you see?”

“A tourist.”

“Eh?”

“Alexander will be
disappointed if he finds you, well, partially at least. Because your power is
not what he thinks it is.”

A wind picked up
and the great fog at last began to thin. Trees formed in the distance.