Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (34 page)

“Whoa!” he yelled, his voice muffled by the visor. “The suit itself is very strong. I can easily lift this axle”—he tried it again—“but I’ve got to watch the weight distribution. It’s very easy to become overbalanced.”

The professor quickly made some notes, then said, “Anything else?”

“I think it could use some more padding,” Algert said, “particularly around the elbows and wrists.”

Algert moved around for two or three minutes, and then the Steam Chamber began to run out of steam.

“That’s to be expected,” the professor said. “Once we perfect our stronger chamber, we’ll be able to go for a much longer time.”

“How much longer, Professor?” I asked.

“Oh…I should think…at least ten to fifteen minutes.”

I blinked in confusion; that didn’t seem like very long at all. I couldn’t imagine any soldier wanting to wear the suit if it only worked for fifteen minutes. It just didn’t seem practical to me. “That’s not very long,” I said without thinking.

“Long enough, my boy,” the professor said. “Long enough to impress the emperor and get that fat commission. And that’s all that counts. We’ll be in the money for the rest of our lives.”

Suddenly I heard a snapping sound followed by a clank, and the suit began to list to one side. I could see Algert trying to straighten up, but then we heard another
bink
and a
clank
followed by a stream of strong profanity from Algert. “Damn, damn, and bloody damn! I’m froze up. Can’t move a foot.”

“Hang on, hang on,” the professor yelled, “we’re coming.”

We got Algert out of the suit and as I looked inside I saw that several nuts had slipped off the bolts attaching the hip braces and had sprung out, letting the cog wheels fall away from the clockwork drive.

“It’s Dummy’s fault,” Corbin said quickly, pointing at me.

Everyone turned to look at him, then at me.

“He’s too weak to tighten the nuts properly. I told you he was too small, Professor.”

I shook my head in protest. “No, Professor. I checked and double-checked every nut and bolt.”

“Obviously, you did not!” he said, glowering at me. Then he turned to Corbin and said, “He’s your responsibility, Corbin. If this happens again, you’re both out on your ears!”

Corbin looked cowed for a moment, and then he turned his hateful glare onto me. My heart dropped down into my stomach. I knew I would get a beating later.

That evening, after work, Corbin grabbed me by the back of my shirt as I was trying to get out of the workshop. “Not so fast, Dummy.”

I looked around for help and saw Russell standing to the side.
Corbin must have seen the pleading in my eyes because he turned to Russell and said, “Got something to say, Bustle?”

Russell gave me a helpless look, then lowered his eyes and shook his head.

“Then get up to dinner, unless you want some of what I’m going to give Dummy.”

I watched Russell trudge up the walkway toward the main house knowing he felt almost as bad as I did. Once he was out of sight, Corbin shook me hard and said, “Now, you little turd, the professor’s none too happy ’cause of you!”

“I tightened all of my special bolts,” I said in protest. “But those on the hip strut…everybody’s supposed to tighten those.”

Corbin’s eyes grew wide and he cuffed me once hard. “Shut up! You keep your mouth shut. Don’t nobody want to hear anything you got to say. You got this coming and you know it.” He hit me again…then again. Then punched me in the stomach so hard it knocked the wind out of me. I rolled into a ball, making a strange honking sound, trying to catch my breath.

“The next time you cause the professor to even look at me hard, I’ll beat you so you can’t move. Got that?”

Then he walked away without another word.

I lay there, gasping for air, until Russell found me. “Hey, you okay? Come on, let’s stand up so we can take a better look.”

He helped me to my feet and brushed the dirt off. “There, not so bad, no broken bones, no missing teeth. Corbin must like you; he took it easy on you for some reason.”

“Easy?” I croaked.

“Yeah, he nearly killed one lad about six months back, and broke that other guy’s arm. I think they tried to fight back. It was good that you just took it.” Russell looked me over more carefully. “All you got were some bruises.”

“Why does the professor let him do it?” I asked.

“Corbin keeps us in line, makes us work, gets things done, I guess.” He shrugged. “Remember, I told you that the professor wasn’t much better than Corbin. He sounds all nice and cultured,
but he has a mean streak, too. The only thing he really cares about is getting that commission.” Russell shook his head. Then he patted me on the back and said, “Come on, supper’s getting cold.”

As we walked up to the main house, I began to wonder: had Corbin really gone easy on me? It sure didn’t feel like it. Maybe it was because of my size. Maybe he was afraid he would kill me or hurt me so bad I couldn’t work. Still, I didn’t ever want him to beat me again, so I was determined to be even more careful to check every nut and bolt and connection to make sure everything was as tight as I could make it.

The next few days were filled with long hours of rushing about to get ready for the big appointment with the emperor. Everything had to be exactly right, all the plates of armor securely attached, all the cables and lever arms tightened properly, burner and boiler checked for leaks, and the steam compression chamber tested one last time for integrity.

Finally everything was ready; we had done all that we could do. Friday night I was upstairs in our attic room with Russell talking about what we might expect to happen the next day.

“I nearly soiled my trousers when the professor told us me and you were going, too,” Russell said.

“I know,” I said. “Do you think the emperor will really be there?”

“Oh, definitely. According to the professor, he’s really got a thing for clockwork devices and steam engines and such. He wants to modernize the city, the army, the whole country.”

“Yeah, I can see all that,” I said, thinking, “but why a clockwork suit?”

“What do you mean?” Russell asked.

“You know, why build the suit in the first place? I mean, it looks brilliant and dangerous and wonderful and all that, but it will only run for a few minutes before shutting down. And even when it’s working, it’s clumsy and slow; Algert has a hard time just keeping his balance. I could probably push it over by myself. I can’t see it ever being practical in an actual battle.”

Russell got a strange look in his eyes. Then he got up and tiptoed to the door. He looked down the stairs, then came back in and made a point of closing the door quietly. He sat down across from me and held a finger to his lips. “They don’t think I know, but late one night I was sneaking down to the kitchen to get some leftovers when I heard the professor and Algert in the study. It’s all a scam. The professor knows the Clockwork Suit will never be practical, but he doesn’t care. He just wants to get that big commission from the emperor.”

“What!” I said much too loudly, and Russell made shushing motions.

“Him and Algert came up with this plan over a year ago. They’re just after the money. The professor has spent his life savings on this project and needs the money bad.”

“But he’s a professor…he lives in this big mansion…”

“He got kicked out of his university. And the house is not even his anymore; bank foreclosed last month. Everything’s riding on this commission. Once he gets the money, he’ll pay off some stuff, maybe hang around for a few months, make some minor improvements to the suit just to keep the emperor in the game, and then they’ll just disappear with all the money.”

I was too stunned to say anything. The professor seemed like such a nice man most of the time, I couldn’t imagine him doing anything so shady. I just sat there staring at the rough woolen blanket on Russell’s bed. Then I thought of something. I looked at Russell and said, “But what about us?”

He shrugged. “We’ll be out of a job, I guess.”

“No, no! I mean, what do you think the emperor will do to us when he finds out we were in on the scam?”

Russell’s eyes grew wide. “But, but we just—we didn’t—he can’t—we’re just little kids!”

I shook my head. “Not going to matter. He’s the emperor and he can do whatever he wants to us. When the professor hightails it out of here, we’re going to be the only ones left to punish.”

“I never thought about it like that.” Russell sagged down into a dejected heap. We sat in silence for a while, and then finally
Russell said, “Oh…no.” He grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “No, no, no. I can’t go to prison. Donny, we have to do something.”

“Yeah,” I said, prying his hands off me. “But what?”

“We need a plan. We need to…” He started looking around like a rat trapped in a box.

“Maybe we can blame the whole thing on Corbin,” I said, then laughed.

“Yeah! That’s it,” Russell said, joining in. “Let’s blame the whole thing on that bastard. He deserves it.”

“But the appointment is tomorrow,” I said. “I was really looking forward to seeing the inside of the palace.”

“Oh, right!” Russell said, hitting his forehead with his hand. “That doesn’t leave us much time.”

“Yeah….” Suddenly I got an idea. “What if things don’t go so well tomorrow? What if the suit doesn’t work like it should? And the emperor doesn’t approve the commission?”

“What do you mean?” Russell said, his face hopeful.

“I don’t know yet,” I said, the gears in my mind turning faster and faster, “but something’s gotta happen—we have to
make
something happen to the suit. We have to show the emperor just how stupid this whole Clockwork Suit of Armor is. We’ve got to make him see the truth.”

I jumped up and started toward the door.

“What are you going to do?” Russell asked.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out when I get down to the shop.”

“I’ll come with you,” Russell said.

“No, you stay here, I can be quieter by myself.” I started taking off my boots. “I used to sneak out at night all the time back home; never got caught once.”

“Well, okay. I’ll turn out the lamp, but I’ll still be awake. Be careful.”

I eased myself down the stairs, quiet as a mouse, my boots hung around my neck. I didn’t want Russell with me because he was kind of clumsy and would have made too much noise. When I
slipped out the back door into the cool night air, the hinges didn’t creak even once. I put on my boots, then headed on down toward the workshop, but as I got closer, I noticed a dim light moving around inside.
The professor must be up checking things over one last time,
I thought.
He probably can’t sleep, either.

But when I pressed my face against the window, I could see that it was Corbin moving around the suit of armor.
Corbin?
Now, what was he doing down here this late? He had a hacksaw blade in his hand and was climbing into the suit. After a moment, he started sawing away at something. I couldn’t tell what he was working on from where I was looking, and the window was beginning to fog up from my breath in the night air, so I eased the door open a crack and slipped inside.

Corbin had his whole body buried up inside the suit and would never be able to see me, so I tiptoed my way along until I was crouching behind some big wooden crates only a few feet away.

I could hear the saw blade chewing away at something deep inside the suit. I watched Corbin’s back for a moment from the shadows, trying to figure out what he was doing. I had never liked him much, but I had to give him credit for being so conscientious as to work so late at night.

I would have to wait until he finished, but I needed a better place to hide. I started to back away, but he chose that moment to climb out of the suit, so I slid down again behind the crates. He put the saw down and grabbed a small punch on the floor. He placed it against the bottom of the boiler on the back of the suit. Then he lifted a ball-peen hammer and hit the punch hard, as if he was trying to punch a hole in the boiler!

Suddenly I realized that he was doing what I had come down to do. He wasn’t fixing anything; he was trying to wreck the suit. I couldn’t believe it—Corbin was making it so that the Emperor’s Suit of Armor would fail. All the work I had done over the past months, and now I wouldn’t even get to see the suit working as it should. Then it hit me…it had been Corbin all along, going behind me and loosening all those nuts and bolts and compression
fittings. He had set the whole thing up so that I would get the blame!

My temper flared and I could feel steam boiling up inside me. I stood up before I knew what I was doing and said, “Hey, stop that, you stupid bastard!”

Corbin dropped the tools and jumped to his feet. His eyes showed white and round in the dim light from the Ruhmkorff lamp lying in the suit. When he saw that it was me who had caught him, he said, “Dummy! I might have known.”

Three quick steps brought him over to me and he grabbed the front of my shirt with both hands. “You stupid little…” He looked both angry and scared, as if he was trying to decide whether to take off running or start pounding on me. His eyes bulged as he looked around trying to see if anyone else was there. “Where’s Russell? Anybody else hiding with you?”

I shook my head, too scared to speak.

“Always getting in the way,” he said, dragging me out into the night. “Always being so careful to go back and check every single connection.” He pulled me around behind the shop where we ate lunch. “Always telling the professor…everything!”

He smacked me in the head one, two, three times real fast. “Why couldn’t you just…” He seemed to have trouble talking, his teeth clenched so tight I could see the muscles knotted in his cheeks. He shook his head, then smacked me again.

He was hitting me pretty hard, but I had been hit hard my whole life. “Now you’re going to get what you deserve, Dummy.”
Whap!
“I’m going to beat you so bad you won’t be able to talk.”
Smack!
“Then I’m going to tell the professor that I found you down here messing around with the suit.”
Smack!
“And if you want to keep breathing”—
whap!
—“you’ll keep your lying little mouth shut.”
Whap!
“Get me?”