Clockwork Angels: The Novel (13 page)

But Francesca had been watching
him
instead of the Angels. “I’ve never seen a look of such pure amazement in my life, Owenhardy.” She laughed and bent to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

The Anarchist

The lenses inside of me that paint the world black

T
he Anarchist walked through the streets of Crown City, wearing a standard timekeeper’s uniform, a dark green jumpsuit with three synchronized pocketwatches clipped to his belt. He carried a kit with appropriate tools to adjust the springs and pendulums of the large public clocks. In his pocket were forged work orders. No one would question his presence.

Businesses welcomed the regular inspections of a timekeeper. Clocks did not set themselves. Although time was perfect and unchanging, like the Watchmaker himself, human mechanisms were fallible and needed to be double-checked, every timepiece tuned and adjusted accordingly. If the Watchmaker had his way, every person’s pulse would tick to the same heartbeat.

Nobody noticed him on the streets, because he looked just like everyone else, but he was very different inside.

His intellect and his imagination were a special set of inner lenses through which he could spot imperfections in the Watchmaker’s Stability. Alas, those lenses did not increase the colors or sharpen the focus; instead, they painted the world black and allowed him to see only the rotten heart of too much order, too much oppression. He saw the sad details of mass-produced lives.

In a city like this, he could have walked along the streets with his eyes closed, because everyone moved with mechanical precision, following exact schedules. It was as if the Watchmaker had inserted a key into their backs, wound them up, and set them loose to go about their daily lives. A small part of him—a very small part— envied such people for their blissful acceptance.
Ignorance is well and truly blessed
, as the Angels said.

Inner rage drowned out his other emotions, but he held it inside, gave no outward indication that anything was wrong. He was like a steam boiler reinforced to contain extreme passions.

Even in this work uniform, he wore a seemingly unremarkable pin on his lapel, a misshapen uncut diamond with a reddish tinge. No jeweler would have looked twice at it, but
he
had created the gem. A diamond, a simple, efficient crystal lattice of carbon atoms, tempered with blood,
his
blood, in an experiment that had gone violently wrong. The surgeons had dug the small diamond out of the bone, plucking it from the mangled flesh of his wrist. How could he not wear it as a badge of honor? He touched the pin to remind himself of his purpose as he went to work.

He slipped his burned, scarred hand into a dark glove, but not out of embarrassment. He just didn’t want others to see the evidence of the accident. The
transformation
.

The other hand, clutching the toolkit, had a tattoo, an alchemical symbol that he had chosen from obscure texts he had studied when he was a student at the Alchemy College—something he’d never forgotten. The symbol was an open-ended rectangle that enclosed six dots stacked in a pyramid. Among alchemy students, such a sign indicated a precipitate.
A solid separated from a solution
, as the alchemist-priests taught.
A product resulting from a process, event, or course of action.

He slid his tattooed hand into a glove as well.

All the ingredients of his life had filled an empty part within him, had precipitated a new personality from the neutral, homogeneous Stability—a creature unlike these other sheep. A man who appreciated freedom to its extremes.
I am what my life has made me.

He would never forget that lesson, the
process
or
event
that had marked his left hand: the searing white-hot fire, the acid flames that ate down to his bones. But a part of him had been annealed, which made him strong enough to do what had to be done. The others wouldn’t do it. No one else wanted to make the terrible choice on the price of being free.

The Anarchist had no family to applaud his acts, not even to decry him. He had flung away his name long ago like a man emp tying a chamber pot. That had been his first step toward freedom.

But it was such a burden to be the only one in the world who wasn’t a fool. The Anarchist longed for an ally who had the same perceptive dark lenses, the same drive, even if he had to create such an ally himself. He had already set events in motion, begun preparing a candidate, a blank slate, an everyman . . . hoping to precipitate out another one like himself.

It couldn’t be too difficult. After all, the Watchmaker had created
him
.

He heard a clanging handbell and a hissing, chugging sound. Amidst the metronomic bustle of the city, an old pedlar with a stovepipe hat, twisted gray hair, and an eye patch accompanied an automated cart down the street. The cart was mounded high with unusual trinkets, kegs, packages, contraptions. The old man called out, “What do you lack?” From the tone of his voice, it sounded as if he actually wanted to know.

What do I lack?
What an annoying, ridiculous question! He bit back his answer, keeping the words to himself. He muttered in a low voice for his ears alone, since no one would understand anyway. “I lack freedom. All these people lack freedom. If a man has a perfect life but cannot make his own choices, then what good is that life?” Oh, they had their clothes and their comforts, their families, their pocketwatches and cheap gold, their smiles and their diamonds. But above all that,
he
would choose free will. They didn’t even know what it was.

But the pedlar found no customers in the crowded streets. No one even answered the old man’s question—the Anarchist wasn’t surprised, since the people didn’t have the imagination to wonder what might be missing in their lives.

The pedlar turned to him with a piercing gaze as if he saw something there, recognized him, regardless of the work uniform and disguise. The Anarchist flinched, retreated behind a mask of
normality
, betraying no atypical expression; self-consciously, he tugged the gloves that covered both hands. He sensed something odd about the old pedlar, too, but could not identify it.

“What do you lack?” the old man repeated, seemingly speaking to anyone in earshot, but his words were directed only to the Anarchist.

Far too many things for you to comprehend
, he thought, but at the moment what he lacked was the freedom to speak. Their eyes met, and after a strange moment the pedlar moved on without receiving an answer.

Unsettled, the Anarchist fumed and strode off in the other direction. The people lacked a great deal, whether or not they could see it. Like sheep, they assumed the Watchmaker wanted them only for their wool, when in truth he was hungry for mutton.

In his previous unsuccessful attempts to awaken the populace, the Anarchist had broken steamliner rails, disrupted vital deliveries, thrown ritualized meetings into mayhem. He would strive for greater things. He would wake them up even if it killed them. He had been about his work all day.

He smiled as he entered another clocktower with his toolkit and his timekeeping instruments. It required great effort and attention to detail to keep a city running in perfect synchrony. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Far easier to disrupt it all.

He presented his work order to the building superintendent, who let him up the winding metal stairs to the attic chamber behind the public clock. Whistling without a tune, he set to work with his tools. . . .

Back at the Alchemy College, he’d been a student with such aspirations! Expecting to excel, he had set a goal of drawing the Watchmaker’s attention, maybe becoming his successor one day. He had indeed attracted that attention, too much of it. He had done extra work,
superior
work . . . and he had been punished for it. In the Watchmaker’s Stability, any irregularity—even an obvious improvement—was not rewarded. In a field of poppies, if one flower grew taller than the rest, it would be hacked down to size.

With secret messages of encouragement, notes sent for his eyes alone, the Watchmaker had celebrated the student’s glorious rise. And when that student grew too tall, the Watchmaker hacked him down. Thinking himself special, nudged along by confidential communications, the student had performed his own experiments, tested new elemental combinations, liberated more energy . . . with disastrous results.

The Anarchist flexed his burned hand.

They had drummed him out of the Alchemy College, muttering in a superior tone that he had gotten what he deserved. After his exile, he wandered Albion and fell in with a traveling carnival. He had seen those people as kindred spirits, lovers of true freedom—at first. He stayed with them for a season, performing in their shows and contributing his ideas. They were receptive, until they claimed that he had gone too far.

Now, the Anarchist realized that even the painful accident and its consequences were for the best, because those experiences had made him what he was, had precipitated out his true personality. . . .

Inside the attic clock room, the Anarchist adjusted the swinging and clicking pendulum, inspected the gears, compared the hands of time with the three accurate pocketwatches at his belt.

A simple wrench thrown into the gears would have changed all that, but such was far too crude a disruption, little more than a prank. Unworthy of his cause. Instead, the Anarchist attached wires, connected a complex device of his own making into the intricate machinery of the public clock. His schemes had to rival the Watchmaker’s.

Finished with his work in the clocktower, he packed up his tools and left without speaking to the building superintendent. He had enough time to adjust one more building clock before the appointed hour. Disorder would strike precisely at five o’clock.

After he was finished, satisfied but eager, he bought an apple from a fruit vendor, sat down on a bench from which he could see many of the public clock faces in Crown City. It was the best view to encompass the scope of what he had achieved.

At five o’clock, the towers began to chime in perfect harmony, but the notes suddenly turned into a dissonant jangle. The hands of many clocks crept forward, while others spun backward, marching to an utterly imprecise drummer.

Each one of the clocks he had “inspected” now lurched to different times, some hours off, a few only minutes behind. The death knell was that they were
inaccurate
.

As soon as the people in the city realized what was happening, cries of dismay lofted up into the air like dissonant music from a suicidal choir. Members of the Blue Watch moved through the streets trying to maintain order, but they didn’t know what to do. No one could be certain of the correct time. Even the accurate clocks were viewed with uneasiness and suspicion.

Perfect. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The Anarchist finished his apple and watched calmly for a long time.

O
wen traveled with the carnival as they put on performance after performance for appreciative crowds. He watched, he learned, and he fit in. Even though they became part of his everyday life, he never grew indifferent to the wonders. His optimism was infectious; the carnies laughed with him, teased him, and he laughed right back.

He got to know the three carny clowns—Deke, Leke, and Peke—and was surprised to learn that despite their humorous pratfalls during performances, all three were serious and intelligent men. Before each appearance among the crowds, they would apply their makeup to perfection and stitch fine wires and trip-springs into their costumes for surprise effects. Although the audiences never realized it, the clowns were as adept in their acrobatics as the trapeze performers, but they preferred the reward of laughter to awed applause.

He came to realize how much planning and interaction each performance required, especially the ones that seemed easiest and most casual. For every star performer who evoked whistles of appreciation from the crowd—like Golson the strongman, or Tomio with his fire-eating act, or Francesca’s trapeze feats—ten others helped set up the tents, rig the ropes, build the game booths, take the money, and prepare food for the crew.

The carnies accepted Owen without questions, without permits or dispensations from the Watchmaker. They knew he had run away from his mundane life, and they never inquired how long he might stay. He did not ask to be paid, although Magnusson put him on the payroll along with everyone else.

In one town, trying to show a glimmer of responsibility, he did stop at a newsgraph office and paid to send a message home. By now, his father and Lavinia must be frantic. Since he did not have the money to transmit a full book of his exploits, he merely reas sured everyone that he was safe and happy, told them not to worry. Mr. Paquette would take the printed sheet to the Tick Tock Tavern, brush down his lavish sideburns, and read the message to a room full of eager listeners.

Someday, whenever he did get back to Barrel Arbor, Owen would tell his adventures in full detail. Sitting in the Tavern drinking hard cider—a man, now—he would talk about the Clockwork Angels, the Orrery, the ships in port, the carnival and all its charms, and Francesca.

For a week, he practiced his juggling and bruised more than a few apples, but soon became good enough to impress and amuse spectators (provided they did not have high expectations). Most of the time, though, if he tried juggling while walking among the crowds, he became nervous and blundered badly; few people actually believed he was part of the act.

Francesca spent many hours in Tomio’s private wagon, sometimes not departing until late at night, but she also talked with Owen, ate with him, laughed at some of his fumbling, innocent jokes (he didn’t tell her that he wasn’t always trying to be funny). One day while she practiced her tightrope act, Owen climbed up to bring her a cup of water. She stood halfway across the rope, balanced on her two feet and beckoned him. “Bring it out here to me, Owenhardy.”