Broken Hero (32 page)

I stand next to her, fold my arms, use the gesture as an excuse to squeeze one of hers.

“Still feeling confident?” I ask. If she is, maybe I will too.

“Still feeling like this is a necessary attempt,” she says. Which isn’t quite the same thing.

“Long shot, or total shot in the dark?” I press.

“Clyde and Tabitha are very good at what they do.” Felicity continues with the non-answers.

“Clyde and Tabitha are in the middle of a huge lovers’ spat,” I point out. “That may not be entirely conducive to their best work.”

She turns to me. Her eyes are pained. “What do you want me to say? We’re always trying for the long shot. Those are the circumstances under which we operate.” Her expression softens a little. “At least we’ve proven we have a pretty good aim.”

It’s a good line. And this is the part where I smile and nod and go along. Except I remember again the mad Uhrwerkmänn’s fist falling. I remember the man who was a tear in reality. I remember inevitability.

But I look around. I see the jittering, twitching crowd. Don’t they deserve a long shot?

So I don’t smile. And I don’t nod. But I shut up, and let things carry on.

Clyde is staring at an oily fistful of cogs. “Erm…” he says and glances at Tabitha.

“Don’t care,” she replies without looking up.

Clyde regards the cogs once more, shrugs. “Ah well.” He dumps them on the floor.

Volk jerks. “This… it… progresses well?” The words drip out of him like leaking oil.

“Oh, erm, yes, totally. Nothing to worry about in the slightest,” Clyde says, lowering almost his entire head into Volk’s chest cavity. A large array of important-looking objects are spread on a table to his right. Approximately a crap ton more than you could ever take out of a person and hope to keep them alive. Volk, it appears, was built tough.

“OK,” Clyde continues. “I’m going to be rearranging a few things.” He glances at a sheaf of notes. “Let me know if anything feels like it’s terribly wrong. I mean, it might be meant to feel that way, I don’t know. But it’ll be good to know if it correlates to something actually going horribly wrong and we have to try this out on someone else.” His eyebrows shoot up. “Not that I expect anything to go wildly astray. Or even slightly astray. Well… OK, I should probably concede that slightly astray is statistically fairly likely. But not incorrectably astray. Just thought I should clarify the sort of astray I mean. Don’t want to be unclear. Though, thinking about it, most of my attempts at pellucidity are what leads to obfuscation, so maybe I should stop that. But what I’m trying to say is that this might feel weird and that you should give me a shout if it feels too weird. Horrible bedside manner that I have. Apologies about that. Though Bedside Manor would be a great name for a doctor’s house. Not that that’s relevant, but…”

He comes up out of Volk’s chest cavity with a fistful of pneumatic pipes. “OK, just need to put a few things back in new places…”

Silence from Volk.

“I say, Volk, are you quite all right?”

Volk’s head lies limply to one side.

“Oh.” From Clyde’s expression that is not a good “oh.”

Hermann stops stalking, advances. “What have you done?” He’s not quite shouting, but he’s close.

“Minor, erm… sort of mass paralysis. Probably.” Clyde peers back into Volk’s chest. “Unless, I… No, that’s still intact.”

“Which you shall cease to be if—”

Kayla, Hannah, Felicity, and me all take a step forward. A group rattling of sabers.

“Calm down,” Tabitha says. She has pried open a panel in what passes for Volk’s waist. “Motor control loss. Will do it to you. Watch you shit oil over yourself. Unless you want to sit down?” She doesn’t bother looking at Hermann either.

Hermann hesitates. Tabitha spins a screwdriver in her palm like a gunslinger at high noon.

Hermann backs away with a grunt, resumes his pacing.

“All right,” Clyde says, still looking around Volk’s chest. “Just put this back in the new alignment.” His arm scrabbles around outside Volk’s form, grabs a tumorous mass of cogs and jabs it back into the body. “Then pull on this.” He grabs something, yanks, grunts. “I say, Kayla, could you lend a hand.”

Kayla rolls her eyes. Then in two leaping strides she has straddled Volk. “Feckin’ show me.”

“If you could just pull—” Clyde starts.

Kayla reaches in, yanks. For a moment cords knot in her neck. Then with a crunch, Volk’s head disappears inside his body.

“Oh,” Clyde says. Still not a good “oh.” “Erm, didn’t expect that, but OK. Now, maybe twist…”

Kayla doesn’t let him finish. Again her muscles bunch. A panel creaks open in Volk’s side revealing a shallow channel. His arm pivots and aligns, lying flat and sunken along his body.

“OK, this is weird.” Clyde consults his notes. “How about…”

He continues giving Kayla directions. She carries on yanking. Slowly Volk’s body reorganizes itself. Panels opening and closing. Sheets of metal extruding and enfolding.

“Like a bronze chrysalis,” Felicity comments beside me.

That’s more poetic than I can manage. To me it looks more like a bronze coffin.

“All right,” Clyde says. “Just need to connect this to… Well, that doesn’t make sense. Tabby, don’t mean to, well, I mean, of course you’re totally sure you wrote this all down correct—”

“Yes,” she says. Apparently no one is willing to let Clyde finish a thought today.

“Well, OK.” Clyde rustles about in the chest cavity. “Just need to wire him up now. Tabby, if you could help me with the battery…”

The large box flies at him with alarming speed. Clyde lets out a shrill whimper, but Kayla snags it out of the air before impact.

I look at Volk again. And this just doesn’t seem right. He doesn’t look right. He looks like an amputee victim or… I don’t know. I mean, this was built into him. Lang designed all this to be possible. But Lang doesn’t strike me as the most charitable of people. He designed the Uhrwerkmänner as soldiers. As weapons. Apotheosis-mode doesn’t seem like something he would have taken the time to build in.

Though maybe… a repair function? That would make sense, I suppose. They were soldiers.

But something about that doesn’t sit right.

But I don’t have any other ideas, and it’s not like I’m the one who has read Lang’s journals.

The solution.
That’s what Clyde said. A solution to…?

Clyde is still talking to himself. “…and that clips on there. OK.” He looks at his notes. “Tabby, terribly sorry to bother you, but this incantation. Is that a
vishnu
or a
veshnu
? Can’t quite make it out.”

Tabitha grunts and walks away.

“Well,” Clyde tells her back. “No worries, I’ll figure it out.”

Alarm bells are ringing in my head again. I step toward Volk, lying there, suddenly seeming small, feeling more
other
than he ever has before. “You’re
sure
, right?” I ask Clyde.

Hermann stops again, lunges toward us. “You said you were sure.” He is accusatory, the threat of violence clear in the set of his shoulders.

“He is sure,” Tabitha says. “Arthur’s not. Ignore Arthur. Not his area.”

Hermann hovers, wavering between the desire to pull the plug and the desire to see this over and done. For once, it seems Hermann and I are of the same two minds.

After a moment’s awkward silence, Clyde breaks it. “Well,” he says, “I’m just going to go ahead and say that spell now.” He clips the wires leading from Volk to a battery, then clips on a second pair. Clyde holds the second set gingerly.

“
Mirehel bal mun keltar bar multarek mel pishtar. Bol gollon el nimtess shin.
” Clyde forces his tongue through the gibberish phonemes of magic. “
Col veshnu bal tenkoo. Al balrat mol collat. Tempra cal.
” Without warning he grabs the live contacts. He manages one more word, maybe another, his head thrown back, howling. A jagged white spark spears out of his open mouth, arcs up, down, strikes Volk.

What is left of Volk begins to emit a dull grinding sound. A painful meshing of gears.

Every muscle in me tenses. I want to move, to push into action, but I have no idea which way to jump. I only know that the need to feels imminent.

Clyde makes another cawing sound. Lightning juts from his jaws, slams into Volk. The grind picks up an octave. Volk’s frame starts to rattle.

Around us the other Uhrwerkmänner seem caught in the moment. Too much rides on this moment. They are trapped by it. Hanging between fear and hope.

Clyde’s scream is awful. He falls to his knees, body convulsing. A thick stream of electricity explodes out of him. He projectile vomits it across the room. It slams into the crowd, blows the seating apart. Robots sprawl, scatter, desperately clambering over each other to escape.

I move half a step toward them, but there’s nothing I can do. I can feel the weight of my pistol in its holster beneath my armpit. But can I really shoot Clyde? This may be victory. This may be an end.

Clyde, jaw stretched wide, turns slowly. The lightning doodles destruction across the floor, approaching Volk.

Hermann is open-mouthed. He lunges toward Volk. The spitting stuttering lightning bolt brings him up short.

He turns toward Clyde.

Clyde’s spasming body finally makes its circuit. He vomits electricity at Volk, connects.

Hermann closes the distance.

The grinding from Volk becomes screaming. A metallic shriek like nails on a chalkboard. His limbless form bounces and crackles. Sparks spit out of him, hit the ground, hit other Uhrwerkmänner. Hermann is a pace from Clyde when one smashes into the side of his head. He is driven wide of Clyde, goes down on his knees.

The solid beam of white that connects Clyde to Volk stutters, blinks in, out, in, out of existence. Volk is glowing. Blue light shines through cracks in his carapace. Seems to shine even through the metal. And yet even as he starts to glow the air around him darkens. He is a single bright spot in a spreading ink stain in reality.

Felicity’s fingers squeeze deep into the flesh of my arm.

This does not feel like victory.

This does not feel like an end.

The lightning blinks out of existence. For a moment it seems like the room has been plunged into pitch darkness. But as I blink away after-images, no… Things are… normal? Not quite. Clyde is on his knees on the ground, still shaking slightly, still twitching. He has dropped the cables connecting him to the car battery. The clamps steam.

The Uhrwerkmänner’s jury-rigged seating is in ruins. Great holes are blasted in it. The Uhrwerkmänner themselves lie in gently jerking heaps, slowly, awkwardly picking themselves off each other. I can’t tell if their hesitance is the palsy in their movements or fear. Maybe it’s both.

Felicity’s grip does not lessen on my arm. Kayla has her sword drawn. Tabitha has taken cover behind a collapsed Uhrwerkmänn. Hannah stands staring with a sort of horrified fascination frozen on her features.

Hermann is on his knees, next to Clyde, staring.

And Volk simply lies there. No more darkness around him. No more blue light. No different from before the spell started. Just that odd bronze box, folded in upon himself. Headless.

The Uhrwerkmänner unfold themselves, find their feet. And Volk just lies there.

Was that it? Was that our big moment? Am I off the hook now? Am I going to live? But I can’t quite put the words into speech yet.

Hermann is the first to talk. “What have you done?” He stands, towering above Clyde. “What did you do to him?”

“W… w… well, we, erm. I… I… I… I mean p… perhaps,” Clyde stammers.

“What it said to do,” Tabitha cuts in, standing. “What Lang’s notes said. We did that. What you asked us to do.” There is not an atom of apology in her.

What Lang’s notes said to do. Lang’s
solution
. Something is very wrong.

“This?” Hermann is caught between mockery and horror. “I asked you to make my friend
this
? I do not remember that request. He wanted to live. He wanted to save. He wanted to—”

“
BECOME
.”

The word booms around the makeshift amphitheater. It seems to fill the whole hidden cavern. It bounces off the Uhrwerkmänners’ shanty-town walls.

Every head turns. Human and machine moving as one. Back toward the cavern’s entrance, the stairway. I shift, trying to see what is coming. And part of me already knows. But I keep telling it to shut up and just be wrong.

But it’s not. It never bloody is.

And, striding into view, comes Friedrich.

Oh shit. Oh balls.

“No,” Felicity says next to me. If she grips me much harder she’s going to break the skin.

But yes. Here he comes. Vast and towering. Dwarfing the Uhrwerkmänner that dwarf me. And his army comes with him. A sleek shining wake behind their flagship, HMS
Asshat
.

They stand in stark comparison to the jittering mob Hermann and Volk lead. Well… Hermann at this point. I’m not sure what Volk is doing. It looks suspiciously like the mechanical equivalent of a coma. But Friedrich’s forces are rigid. Their steel gleams. Their marching is synchronized. Not one of them looks like it’s on the verge of asking if I’m its grandson.

“Volk dreamed,” Friedrich booms. “He dreamed of a better life. A better future. He dreamed of escaping the limits of frailty. Of becoming better. Of becoming more. Of becoming what our father designed him to be.”

“No,” Hermann shouts. “No, you leave. You are not welcome.” It is a futile wail against Friedrich’s massive boom.

“Our father was misguided, twisted,” Friedrich carries on regardless. “His tragedy is all the greater for the goodness that lurked within him—the spark of love that he bore us. Love that he tried to betray, but never fully could.”

He stares meaningfully around the room. His sloping axehead of a face taking them all in. “Lang locked within us all the opportunity to ascend ourselves, our degeneration,” he bellows. “He built within each of us the chance to be perfect.”

He sounds more like a preacher than a warlord. Or a cult leader perhaps. There is a dark charisma lurking in his chest. His voice is expressive in a way that his face can never be.