Enigmatic Pilot (44 page)

E
VERYTHING WAS JUST AS BEFORE—THE NIGHT
S
T
. I
VES TOLD HIM
the story about the hand. “You wonder about it, don’t you, boy?” St. Ives asked, and tapped an ash. “How I came by the hand—and how I came to lose my own.”

“Y-yes,” Lloyd found himself saying. “There’s no hiding there’s a story behind it.” Yet there was something different about this scene.
Indefinably different
. Was the boat moving?

“Well put, lad.” The gambler nodded. “And well spoken. Like a gentleman. But I fear if I tell you the truth you will think me mad. Still, you have been an excellent partner. I believe you deserve my trust and may reward me with your discretion.” St. Ives lowered his voice and glanced around to see if any other passengers or crew were within earshot. He had not been wearing a hat the night before, but now he was—and a very stylish hat, too.

“A little over ten years ago I used to be the secretary to a very rich man in the East. He valued my memory and my head for calculations. That may be hard for you to imagine, given your skills, but I took the bait. Phronesis Larkshead, or so he called himself then. But that was not his real name, I am sure. Owner of the Enigma Formulary and Gun Works in Delaware. An inventor, a wire-puller. A formidable figure.

“He had the tinge of some sort of acid burn on his face and wore a flat-brimmed hat pulled down low, with a veil, which he claimed offered protection from all his ‘substances.’ He always kept his skin covered as much as possible in a dark suit without buttons. I used to fancy that his body was riddled with unnatural signs and scars. My initial belief was that one of his experiments had backfired on him. He was forever fiddling with new combinations of chemicals—schemes for weaponry. And other things. Weirder things. He was far, far ahead of his time, was Mr. Larkshead. He had designed and built a mechanical manservant. A sort of butler named Zadoc. What it was powered by I do not know, he would not reveal it—but it was not steam. The device had an almost blank, bland face, but I suspected he had other faces baking. How the thing could see or navigate I have no idea. This was the first of many things I wish I had not discovered, but my fascination got the better of me. His estate was like nothing you can imagine. He called it the Villa of the Enigmas.”

“Go on …” Lloyd said, feeling the hairs on his neck rise. This was like what had happened before—but not the same. Not the same.

“Well … I know this will sound like utter flapdoodle, but he had a colony of live ants from the jungles of South America in a great glass nest. I could not guess why or how he came by them, but I know that he spent a good deal of money keeping them alive in the northern climate … and that, as outrageous as it sounds, he had some notion of communicating with them. I could see that he was at work on a grand scheme. There was a whole wing of the estate I was never allowed to enter—and, frankly, I had no wish to, given what was in evidence around me.”

“How did you
really
come to work for someone such as that?” Lloyd asked. “Such a person would need no hired head for figures.” He had not thought to say that before. But it struck him now.
“Indeed,” the gambler smirked. “I wanted to think then that it was because of my abilities. Now I know I was a fool. I believe I was one of his test subjects, without knowing it.”

“Test subjects?” the boy queried.

“Aye. I believe I was lured to the estate with the offer of employment, but I think I was given drugs—some kind of powerful narcotic that did not disrupt all perception but yet was responsible for visions. I cannot explain the things I saw elsewise. I witnessed a meeting. Whatever they were, or are, I suspect it is the real force behind his company and his wealth—behind a great deal of other things, too. Things we would do well not to know about.”

“That sounds like something far better to know about than not,” Lloyd replied.

“Just the kind of young-headed notion that got me into the mess,” St. Ives lamented. “What I saw was a group … of people, if you like. Who all looked like him. I can’t explain it. There were twelve of them in total! Yet they did not seem like individuals. They seemed as one. They had a kind of diagram they conjured out of the air—a mosaic-like puzzle—and they were engaged in some type of ceremony or strategy-planning session. I swear I have never told anyone else this!”

“Where were you hiding while you were watching?” Lloyd wanted to know.

“Well, this may be the most miraculous part!” the gambler whispered. “I saw the whole thing through a bewitched glass cube I found in the library. I had seen the cube before, but it had always been clear and empty. I had assumed it was just some type of mirror made into an art object. There were so many peculiar artifacts about the place, I gave it no special thought, until that day when it came alive. As the scene unfolded, I could not but conclude that Larkshead and the others were assembled in the forbidden wing of the mansion and that I was somehow eavesdropping on them. The images could not have been
inside
the cube. It was some kind of window.”

“An interesting deduction,” Lloyd said, his mind churning like the river, which was flowing now. “What did you witness?”

“Oh, my young friend … I hesitate to tell you. They took off their hats and veils. They were not men—or women, either. They were … I know not what. Creatures. Ghosts. Their apparent bodies were but masks, camouflage. Their true forms were hideous and impalpable. As absurd as they appeared, there was a malevolence about them … as if their forms were punishment. I felt that malignance radiated through the cube. Their resentment, their envy. Their relentless hunger for other shapes. But I felt that they were still somehow human. Not demons, not inhabitants from some distant star. They were—”

“Shadows of the mind … from out of time,” Lloyd said, as a nightjar sounded in the distance. “Please tell me all that happened next—and I must know
everything
that happened.”

The gambler dropped his smoldering cigar into the river but had regained his composure when he stared at the boy again in the pale light.

“I grew … so hypnotized by what I was observing … I did not hear that repugnant Zadoc sneak up behind me. The machine subdued me with some kind of sedative delivered by a needle … and I was brought before that unholy tribunal … awake but unable to resist or escape. Oh, Lord …”

“As painful as it is to recall,” Lloyd said, squeezing the mechanical hand, “you must tell me everything that transpired. Please.”

“They reinstated their body cloaking,” the gambler answered, staring down at his boots. “I could not stand to look at them without it, and they seemed to understand this. I could not understand their words, but I gathered that my witnessing their congregation had not been intended. It was some mistake. The cube was fetched. Zadoc was disabled. Things beyond my reckoning were transpiring in that secluded wing of the mansion.”

“Be as precise as you can,” the boy pleaded.

“I could not look upon their mosaic puzzle and see it clear and whole, but it was certain they could. It wavered and vibrated like something that was alive. It was like a cyclone … a labyrinth.”

“What happened then? What were you allowed to see—and why?” Lloyd asked with growing impatience.

“
What
I saw was like some jumble of alchemist’s dens, a brewery and an insane asylum. I do not know how to put the rest … machines I have never known. I have the frightening idea—”

“You think they were making people—or what resembled people,” the boy filled in. “You believe you saw a man, with multiples of himself, who was not a man but not female, either, for those gathered were revolting jelly-like forms that you nonetheless regard as human, who were nurturing the growth of some kind of tissue as both a means of concealing themselves to normal eyes and cultivating others—beings who would be taken for people if you passed them in the street but that were not people the way we like to think of them.”

“Exactly!” St. Ives exclaimed, catching himself. “This is the strangest thing of all! That you should know! How is it possible? Have you—”

“No,” Lloyd answered. “We have seen some of the same magic-lantern pictures. But it was no magic-lantern image that took your hand.”

At this the gambler broke down weeping, although he made an effort to stifle himself. “Too right, my young friend! I was experimented on like a dumb animal! I was made to … to … oh!”

“Tell me,” Lloyd commanded.

“I … was introduced to a … woman … an auburn-haired beauty with eyes like sapphires. She was lovely. They wanted me to … to mate with her. They wanted to watch. It was so unthinkable! Because I knew—that they had
made
her. Why I was chosen I have no idea.”

“That may be the most hopeful thing so far,” Lloyd remarked.

“Hopeful! Of what?” the gambler moaned.

“Their technology of survival lags behind their technology of manipulation,” the boy replied, gazing out over the flattening water. “If they have to employ animal methods of reproduction, and yet can project images by stealth over distances, that shows they have vulnerabilities. Somehow they need to maintain form, human flesh. It’s not sufficient to their purposes to influence and direct—they need to manufacture new vehicles, and any manufacturing process is a continual one. They have not perfected theirs. As monstrous as they may seem to you, they are engineers—and that is something I understand. They still have problems to solve, whatever their religion. That is the hope.”

“You scare me, Lloyd. Not like they do—but still … the student has become the teacher,” the gambler gasped.

“We teach each other,” the boy responded. “And some fears are good if they lead to the truth. Now finish your story.”

“I was allowed to enjoy the beauty … and then … they seized me,” the gambler said, wincing. “Their forms were flesh and blood enough for that. I felt them searching my mind. They wanted to know what they looked like to me in their other guise. Then they performed surgeries, Lloyd … they took my hand … and gave me this artificial claw.”

“How did you escape?” the boy asked.

“The most unthinkable part of the whole story!” St. Ives coughed. “Zadoc, the mechanical thing, reactivated. He—it—released me while they were in another chamber one afternoon … perhaps vivisecting some other poor victim, like a rabbit. I was torn. I was bandaged. But I fled, as fast and as far as I could in that state. I owe my life to the mercy of a machine!”

“Machines that have mercy are hard to think of as machines,” Lloyd replied. “The question is, did you escape or were you allowed to escape?”

“I have wondered that myself ever since,” St. Ives rasped, still blinking. “But … are you not horrified by all that I have told you?”

“I see hope in what you have said—as well as horror,” Lloyd replied. “It may be that what happened to you had been planned. Still, it somehow sounds that it did not go quite according to their plan. If things can go against their desires in the heart of their control, that reassures me. And I think it a very encouraging sign that they are worried about physical survival.”

“You, young sir”—the gambler shrugged, and then could not control a crest of emotion—“are the son I’ve never had. Always raising the ante. And then some.”

“You taught me what an ante was,” Lloyd replied.

“Friends always?” St. Ives said, offering up his mechanical hand once more.

“Partners,” Lloyd answered, squeezing down on the metal digits. “This is the biggest mystery of all. Why do you think they gave it to you?”

“Who can say?” the gambler grumbled, a storm of anger and grief filling his eyes. “I would not rule out pure cruelty as their motive. I sensed it in them. Some conspiracy of hatred. A mania. What does your intuition say?”

Lloyd frowned and then stared out across the river to a stand of cottonwoods. “I feel that they are one … a different kind of creature than we are familiar with. Of one mind. I sense this being or beast is some holdover from long ago … and I feel some shadowy sympathy with all that you have related, which raises the question whether I am in fact who I believe myself to be—or as young as I appear.”

“But you are just a child! A boy!”

“Am I? I know how many syllables you have spoken in the last minute. Give me the materials and a bit of time, and I could make this hand. But that is not all. Do you see the dog I am thinking of? Boomer. That was my old dog, buried back in Zanesville. Smell his ragged blanket.”

“Oh …” The gambler shivered, seeing in his mind … smelling … “How did you do that?”

“I cannot say,” Lloyd answered. “It has something to do with the rapport we have. This is one of the reasons we have done so well at the tables. Seeing the others’ cards through my eyes. It is a species of communication like unto the cube you discovered, but the mechanisms that underlie it are obscure to me. I’m now thinking of a number between one and one thousand. What is it?”

“What?” the gambler squawked caught off guard. “Uh, seventy-three.”

“Correct,” Lloyd replied. “The odds are
very
long against you getting that right. I suspect you may have hidden talents, Mr. St. Ives, which is why we work so well. That may have something to do with why you were chosen. And it may provide some hint as to their larger purpose. You said you could not see the gathering’s mosaic diagram whole and clear, yet they or it can. Perhaps the adversary is working to a plan we cannot perceive … and we are a part of that plan. The hunger for human form may be part of the struggle to endure so as to fulfill that plan. What I find puzzling is that your hand is a baser technology than what you described in the female you were offered. If they can cultivate a fully fleshed human, real enough for you to find attractive, why bother with these metal joints and hinges?”

“Well, the hand is useful.” The gambler shrugged. “For years I hid it in a glove and loathed it. Resented the sensation of being able to direct it. I have no idea how I am able to make it work. It is a part of me, though.”

“To graft nerves onto raw metal is no small feat,” the boy agreed. “But this may be another hopeful sign—that they have had to become more mechanically ingenious because of some other lack. In any case, you have not finished your story. I can see that the oppression did not leave you when you fled.”