Broken Hero (31 page)

“Speak of the devils,” I say. Two shapes emerge from the factory’s shadowy interior. “Well,” I correct, “the devil and Volk.”

And we really do need to learn more about this tunnel system of theirs. We left Brize Norton at the same time, the pair of them heading off over fields, and yet here they are ahead of us.

Their whole movement around the country confuses me, in fact. How the hell did Friedrich find us? Did he just overhear that we were going to the Himalayas? Or did he find his own path there? Is someone in the Uhrwerkmänner camp betraying us? If so, wandering into their parlor may not be the best idea.

But on the other hand, doesn’t Friedrich want the same thing as Volk and Hermann in the end? Doesn’t he want his people saved? The difference in opinion is on how best to achieve that. If we can show him that there’s another way to stop the madness taking the Uhrwerkmänner, won’t he stop?

There are too many other unanswered questions for me to know. Again, I doubt the wisdom of rushing in here. Except Felicity is already getting out of the car.

“So,” I hear her say, “this is where you’ve been hiding all these years.”

I turn back to Clyde. “You’re sure about this?” I say. One last attempt to apply the brakes.

“Totally,” he says. He’s still staring out the window at Tabitha as she uncurls from the back of Kayla’s car, brown tattooed legs poking from baggy multi-pocketed shorts, unseasonable in the autumn chill.

“You’re talking about saving the Uhrwerkmänner, right?” I say.

“Right,” he says, still sounding distracted, still not taking his eyes from Tabitha.

He gets out of the car. After a moment, I follow.

“Let’s get this over with then.”

The factory’s interior is no prettier than its exterior. Broken tiles, moldering boxes, and mouse shit coat the floor. Old ceiling tiles hang like wilting foliage. Shoulders hunched, Volk and Hermann lead the way through the mess.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Hannah says to no one in particular.

The Uhrwerkmänner lead us from one cavernous space to another. They don’t call a halt until we are deep into the building. The room we stand in is much like the others—large, decaying, and distinctly malodorous. The only difference is a piece of machinery, roughly the size of a three car pile-up, that long ago became an unidentifiable amalgam of rust.

Hermann sets his shoulder against it, heaves. “This way,” he grunts.

With a grinding shriek, the metal hulk scrapes across the floor. It is not, I realize, organic to the room. It was placed here. It is, in fact, a colossal trapdoor. One that would require inhuman strength to move. The sort of strength a massive robot might possess for example.

The machinery shifts to reveal a ragged hole in the factory’s floor.

“Well, that doesn’t look feckin’ ominous at all,” Kayla says.

“Come on.” Felicity is brusque. “We want to get this done.”

Most of us anyway. Some of us still have doubts.

Still, I do my job and am the first one to the edge of the hole. Its edges are serrated—a mess of tattered tile and crumbling cement. I look down into darkness.

“It is not far,” Volk says. “I will lower you.”

Gently he reaches out a hand, grasps me about the waist. His fingers encompass me from thigh to midriff.

It feels remarkably like putting my head in the jaws of a lion. The sense that if he wanted to, Volk could end me right now. But he doesn’t. His grip, instead, is gentle, lifting me slightly, then lowering me down until I am just a few feet from the floor. I drop the last bit, stare into the blackness.

My eyes have started to adjust by the time the rest of MI37 are standing beside me. Hermann jumps down followed by Volk. Their metal feet boom against the concrete floor. Volk reaches up, heaves the rusting machinery back into place. The darkness is complete.

Light gutters above us. A bright yellow flame. The pilot light of Hermann’s flame-spit-thrower thing.

The space is narrower than the room above, shallower. The ceiling curves slightly, a broad, shallow arch. Below my feet, two sets of tracks are set into the flat concrete floor.

“Was this a subway?” I ask. At one point I would have assumed that couldn’t be, that everyone would know about a subway system built in Sheffield. At this point, I’d be surprised if Sheffield doesn’t have a fairly substantial secret history.

“We laid the tracks,” Volk says. “It speeds us.”

Eyebrows arch throughout our group.

Hermann steps forward, forcing Clyde and Hannah to dance out of his way. He puts one foot on each rail of the track.

“It is easiest if we carry you from here,” Volk says. Hermann grunts, but then points to Kayla, Hannah, and Tabitha. “I will take you.”

“Like hell,” Tabitha spits.

“Get on!” Felicity snaps. We all turn to look. She looks a little surprised by her own outburst. Still she does her best to mask it. “There is no time to waste. The lives of the Uhrwerkmänner, and our own teammates are in the balance. We can remove that threat. Move.” And she does it all without even glancing at me. Though I don’t know if that’s enough to fool anyone about her priorities.

Still scowling, Tabitha allows Hermann to pick her up and set her standing on his foot, hands gripped tightly to a plate of metal on his leg.

Volk sets me up on his back, beside Felicity. Clyde he sets standing on his foot, before holding him in place with a large hand.

“This,” he says, “may seem a little disconcerting at first.”

Something grinds in his feet. He shifts his weight. He… grows. Not much. Maybe an extra six inches. But mounted on his back, I am very aware of the change. In the pale light, I peer at Hermann’s feet, try to work out what’s going on.

“Wait…” I say, “do you have built-in roller skates?”

“Oh of course,” I hear Hannah say from in front of me, the sound of resignation in her voice. “Why wouldn’t the Nazi magician build his robot army with roller skates? Stands to bloody reason.”

“Well,” Volk acknowledges, “it is something like that.”

And then we’re off.

The closest thing I can think of is the tunnel under the Himalayas. But instead of water whipping us along, it’s two tons of German engineering and magic. Wind batters at me, the only sense of movement in the all-encompassing dark. Hermann’s pilot light is all but invisible. I think we are going downhill but it’s hard to tell.

And then, seemingly almost as soon as it starts, the trip is over. Yellow, electric light blooms around us. The tunnel opens up. A passage leads off to the side, stairs leading down. Hermann and Volk slow. Sparks spit from beneath their feet, and then they are stepping off the tracks, taking a couple of jogging steps. They set us all down.

“This way.” Volk points to the stairs.

We hesitate. But Felicity is right. We’re committed now. No reason to waste time. Get this over with. Get back to trying to get back to the way things were.

I take the steps two at a time, leaving the light of the tunnel above, heading toward a second source of illumination below.

I can’t quite tell what I’m looking at until my foot hits the final step. And then I stop. Then I stare.

A vast cavern. Massive beyond my comprehension. A cavern the size of a small town. A ceiling a hundred yards above my head. And the space between. It is full of Uhrwerkmänner. A hundred of them at least. And buildings. Thrown together structures of steel and wood. A vast encampment of them.

Behind me the others reach the bottom of the stairs, join me in the gawking session. Volk and Hermann follow swift on their heels.

“Ah,” Volk almost sighs. “Home.”

“Hot bloody damn,” Hannah breathes. “It’s bloody massive.”

She’s not wrong. But it’s not just the space. It’s everything. It’s the scale of the buildings, the streets. It’s like a shanty town for homeless giants. Uhrwerkmänner stamp between massive amalgamations of rusting iron and tarnished bronze.

As I look at them longer, the more I understand Volk and Hermann’s desperation. As beaten up and battered as the two Uhrwerkmänner who accompanied us to Nepal now appear, they are shining paragons of health in comparison to the rest of the crowd. These Uhrwerkmänner walk hunched over. Their limbs shake or simply drag along after them. I see one who stops every three paces and lets out a scraping metallic bark. Another’s head jerks violently back from side to side with every step it takes. Hermann’s bitter despair suddenly makes a little more sense.

We all stand there for a moment, taking it in. The scale of it. The place. The problem.

“OK,” I say. “Let’s get this all sorted out. Tabitha, Clyde, what do you need?”

There’s a pause. People still absorbing everything. It’s an odd sensation to not be the one most disoriented by the shock of the new. “Come on,” I say. “These people need our help.”

And I’m the one hurrying us along now. Because maybe there is hope. Or maybe because even if I can’t believe in a chance for myself, I believe these… people… robots… whatever the hell they are, they deserve a chance. They were dealt a shitty hand, but they’ve done their best with it. We should do our best by them. And we’re here now. So maybe there is the chance of an end to all of it.

“Erm, well, OK, yes,” Clyde says. “Tools. That’s sort of the big one. It’s actually a lot of mechanical tinkering. Shouldn’t need a welder or anything like that. Just pliers, screwdriver, a wrench or two, maybe a cutting tool of some sort.”

“And a volunteer,” Tabitha throws in.

“Oh yes.” Clyde nods. “One of those too.”

There is a pause.

“Is one of those a problem?” Clyde asks. “Probably should have mentioned all that before we got here. Rather caught up in the moment, I’m afraid. But the hammer… well, a lot of things can be used as a hammer. And the cutting tool might not be wholly necessary. The screwdriver might be a dealbreaker, though, so—”

“Why a volunteer?” Hermann’s voice is pitched low, less friendly than even his usual belligerent tone.

“Oh.” Clyde, apparently oblivious to basic social cues, smacks the side of his head. “Probably should have mentioned that too. Would lose my head if it wasn’t attached to my neck. Which, actually, is pretty obvious. I mean clearly some sort of violent decapitation would have to be involved for any other arrangement. No other kind of decapitation actually. Well, is that true? Probably not, though I can’t off the top of my head think of a non-violent method. Lack of imagination on my part, I’m sure.”

Hermann steps toward Clyde. Another step and he’ll squash him. “Explain,” he growls.

“Wait, wasn’t I doing that? Totally meant to. Bit of a preamble, I suppose. Probably not the time or the place. So, yes, this whole volunteer thing. Fairly important. You see the process Lang describes is an internal one. An unlocking of potential he calls it. In a very literal manner apparently. It’s a little hard to tell from individual mentions, but once you see the pattern over the course of some texts all these oblique references start to add up. It’s to do with realigning certain fundamental pieces of gearwork, and repurposing some other material. It’s a little hard to tell to be perfectly honest. But once we get stuck in, I get the impression it’ll all be very straightforward. And there’s a lot of magic involved, which tends to straighten out most kinks. Well, apart from the times when it veers off at a horrible right angle and obliterates bits of the coastline or something. But like I say, very confident about that. And Lang is very clear about that being ‘the solution’ to problems.”

“Wait,” I jump in. “Not the final solution, right?”

“Oh no,” Clyde shakes his head. “He capitalizes that. All sorts of ick.”

“Be fine,” Tabitha says. “Mother bloody hen.”

Again, Hannah’s laugh doesn’t need to be quite that bitter in my opinion.

We’ve started to attract attention, I notice. Uhrwerkmänner at the edges of the shanty town are grinding to a halt. Or at least as much of a halt as they are able. A couple point. The clack of metal vowels in a language I don’t understand.

Volk is staring at them. As sad an expression as he is capable of making etched into his features.

“I’ll do it,” he says abruptly. “I volunteer for you.”

“You trust these, these…” Hermann struggles to find a word. “
Schwachkopf
.”

Well, that doesn’t sound complimentary.

“If they say it will work,” Felicity’s voice is strident, “then—”

Volk holds out a hand, placating, silencing, but he’s looking at Hermann. “I believe that our people are desperate. That I am desperate. Hope is here. Within reach. I will grasp it.”

Hermann shakes his head. “You are
Schwachkopf
.”

Whatever the hell that word means, Volk seems to take it without rancor.

“You must not despair, my friend,” he says. “That is what Friedrich did.”

Hermann shakes his head again, but he holds his tongue.

Volk turns to look down at Clyde. “Come, my diminutive friend,” he says, “do what you need to do. Save me. Save my people.”

Decrepit as they are, the Uhrwerkmänner are pretty resourceful. They’ve produced a vast array of tools: hammers, mallets, wrenches of all possible varieties, a rainbow of screwdrivers. They’ve even jury-rigged some seating, and now crowd the edges of a broad, makeshift amphitheater.

Volk lies on his back in the center of this circle. His chest casing has been peeled back. He did it himself, using his own hands to splay sheets of beaten bronze. Clyde is perched on the Uhrwerkmänn’s midriff, spidery legs bunched beneath him, knees jutting. He wrestles in the chest cavity, his actions obscured by Volk’s jutting bulk. Occasional bursts of oil spurt up, spattering Clyde’s face and hair. He rips out a piece of pneumatic tubing, tosses it to the trash-strewn floor. I can’t help but wince. The audience regards it stoically. All except Hermann, who stalks the edges of the circle. I’m not sure if he looks like he’s looking for an opportunity to attack or escape. Do machines have a fight or flight system?

A disturbance at the edge of the circle announces Kayla’s return. She carries a matte black box. Felicity’s car battery. Clyde swore he’d only need about half the juice in it. Felicity said he could have it all if it would help.