Hot and Steamy (14 page)

She took his hand, and his fingers felt soft and kind and oh-so-warm.

“I will. Of course I will.”

 

Von Lang put his hands on Zoe's shoulders and massaged the tight muscles along the top of her back. “How's it going?” he asked.

Zoe pushed the magnifier away from her face and pulled her glasses down from her brow. “I've never worked on a micro-motor this small—”

“Nobody has. Nobody even dreamed of it before we did.”

“Before
you
did. I'm just a mechanic.”

“And the best machinist in the world.”

“Anyway, I think we've just about got it. Whether the silicon-based oil you've formulated will hold up to the stress on so tiny a scale, that's the key.”

“I assure you, it will. I didn't make my fortune by screwing up basic chemistry.” He smiled at Zoe and her heart fluttered. In the twelve weeks they'd been working on Project Automata Futura, she'd come to admire Von Lang not only as an inventor but also as a man. Zoe hoped, with a complete lack of certainty, that Victor might feel the same way.

She flashed him a brief, nervous grin and then returned to her work. “And the alloy for the skeleton?”

“The foreman at my foundry says they'll be ready to deliver the first batch by the end of the week. Then things can really get going.” He kept massaging her shoulders.

“That feels w–wonderful,” she cooed.

“I'm glad.”

“But my hands need to be completely steady to finish this delicate work.”

He turned her toward him, swiveling the work stool she sat on, and looked at her upturned face. “Then maybe we should finish the work later.”

Under the gaze of his sea-blue eyes, Zoe's heart melted. She tried to stop herself from quivering as he leaned down and kissed her.

She failed in her attempt, so, still trembling, she threw her arms around him and kissed him back with all her might.

 

“Victor?” Zoe said, sitting up in the bed they'd shared for the past seven weeks.

His side was empty save for the shadows of the window panes cast in a checkerboard grid across the satin sheets.

She rose, naked, and tiptoed to the adjoining master bathroom. Victor's quarters had been a mess when she'd first arrived at the laboratory, but the bedroom had transformed into a clean and sparkling retreat from the lab—as if by magic—the first night they slept together. It had remained neat and tidy ever since.

“Victor?” she called quietly outside the bathroom door.

She gently pushed the door open, but he wasn't there—only darkness.

She took a silk robe from the dresser near the bed and threw it around her shoulders. A dim light shone from beneath the door that led to the laboratory.

A tingle ran up Zoe's spine as she opened the door and padded across the lab floor. She knew where she'd find him: at the drawing board. She and Victor had run into a design problem with powering all the discrete elements in the mechanical skeleton, and he'd been tormenting himself about it for weeks. Often, she would get up in the night and find him working. It wasn't that he didn't love her, or want to be with her; it was just that his work—their work—kept driving him forward.

She tiptoed around the lab tables, the generators, and the machine tools, to the far side of the lab. Sure enough, Victor lay with his head on the drawing board, diagrams scattered around him, exhausted, sleeping. His eyelids twitched with troubled dreams. He hadn't even bothered to dress.

Zoe's heart went out to him.
Poor darling
. She gently stroked his forehead; he felt deathly cold.

She took off her robe and draped it around his shoulders. Then she put his right arm over her own shoulders and tried to ease him off the stool. “Come on, darling. Time for bed.”

He opened bleary eyes and gazed at her. “I have to work.”

“I know,” she said sympathetically. “But not tonight. Tonight you need to rest. Come back to bed. No more work.”

“But I have to,” he said. “Time . . . our time is so short!”

Though the lab was warm, goosebumps prickled Zoe's skin. “Victor, is something wrong? Are you . . . ill? Is there something you're not telling me?”

“I . . . No. I'm fine. It's just. . . .”

She embraced him, pressing his head to her naked breast. “Don't worry, darling,” she said. “I won't leave. We'll see this through right to the end.”

He threw his arms around her, clinging, his body trembling as though he were crying, though his cheeks remained dry.

“Oh, Zoe . . . I . . . I don't deserve you.”

She stroked his hair. “The world won't end if we don't solve this tonight—or even tomorrow or next week. The world's survived without automata this long. It can survive until we get this done.”

He smiled at her, but she could see in his haggard eyes that he didn't believe her.

“And we
will
get it done,
together
,” she said, leading him to the bedroom. “Don't worry. We can start again tomorrow.”

 

Victor was up before Zoe the next morning, and working late again after she went to bed that night. In the days that followed, the pattern continued. She tried to keep up with him, tried to support him, but though they worked practically side-by-side, she felt more distant from her lover each day.

Even after they'd solved the power distribution problem, Victor's mania did not stop. “Now we need to finish constructing the skeleton.”

“But it won't even move without the clockwork brain,” Zoe said, “and we've barely begun designing that yet. Without the brain, the automaton won't walk, it won't move, it won't do
anything
.”

“I have some thoughts about that,” Victor replied feverishly. “Once the skeleton is finished, I will supply the motive force. It will work. It
has
to!”

Her heart ached to see him like this. Yet what else could she do but support him and work as hard as possible?

Over the course of a week, the final form of the automaton took shape. Victor revised the designs as they went, tweaking here and there to make the form more functional. The hips flared out for more leverage and strength. The arms bowed slightly to carry objects. The chest cavity grew larger to house the ion batteries, the large electro-steam generator, and the interlinked series of micro-motors to supply energy to the machine's powerful arms and the rest of its body. Tiny arrays of light-and-shape sensors, like miniature cameras, glistened in the automaton's metallic eyes.

Zoe looked up at the glittering, nearly complete skeleton standing on a curtain-draped pedestal in the machine shop portion of Victor's lab. “I–it's beautiful.”

“Yes,” Victor agreed. “She is.” He looked exhausted but, for the first time in weeks, pleased.

“How long do you think the batteries will power it?”

“As long as the generator has fuel.”

“And if the fuel runs out?”

Victor scratched his chin. “It depends on energy usage. These ion batteries are not like those powering the city's motor vehicles. I've made considerable advances in energy storage since . . . during my seclusion.”

A shadow of bitter memories flashed across his face, so she hugged him.

“The experiment in the cabinet?” she asked.

For a moment, his eyes widened with surprise, but then he merely nodded.

“What's the upper energy storage limit?”

“Three years, perhaps,” he said, glancing toward the curtain-flanked cabinet. “Under optimal conditions, that's the longest I've managed to . . .” He trailed off and looked away.

Zoe smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “You know,” she said, cocking her head to get a different view of the automaton, “our machine
does
look like a girl.” All of the design adjustments they'd made to it the over the weeks had given the automaton the classic hourglass shape of a woman. “I hadn't really noticed it until you said, ‘she.' ”

“Yes,” he replied thoughtfully. “I will call her Hella.”

A chill ran down Zoe's spine. “After your late wife.”

Victor blushed. “It . . . It wouldn't seem right to name it after you. I mean, we're not even married.”

Now Zoe blushed. “Are . . . are you asking me to. . . ?”

Victor turned away suddenly. “No! I mean . . . not yet. I
can't
. I can't, until . . .”

She bit her lip, and tears beaded at the corners of her eyes. “Until what?”

He turned back and embraced her, crushing her body against his. “Not until we're finished. Not until we know whether I've succeeded . . . or failed.”

He felt hot, almost feverish, but she hugged him back, losing herself in the embrace. “Don't worry,” she whispered. “I'm sure it will all work. We'll
make
it work.”

 

“Victor?”

Again, the bed next to her lay empty. Tonight, though, the moon was dark, and only shadows kept Zoe company. A strange, throbbing hum came from the other room.

“Victor?” she said, getting up and pulling on her robe. “We
can't
do this every night.” Anger and worry fighting within her, she threw open the laboratory door and strode inside. Then she stopped, frozen, her wide eyes glued to the far side of the room, where Victor worked.

Every piece of equipment in the laboratory whined and hummed, harnessed in series, their power building to maximum capacity. The cabinet containing Victor's battery experiment stood open. Inside, a strange battery, like a transparent Leyden jar, pulsed with eerie greenish light. It looked like the glow from a radium experiment Zoe had once seen in electro-mechanics class.

Wires, like intricate networks of blood vessels, ran from the humming machines to both the body of the automaton and to the pulsing battery. A heavier wire, the thickness of Zoe's thumb, ran from the battery directly to the machine's head.

“Just a moment longer,” Victor said to himself. “It won't be long now, my darling.”

“Victor!”

He turned, madness blazing in his blue eyes. “Zoe!” he cried. “Get back.”

She walked toward him.

“Don't come any closer!” He threw a big switch on a panel of circuitry next to the automaton.

ZAM! Artificial lightning filled the room, arcing between automaton and generators and pulsing battery. The automaton bucked and shook, twitching like an insect on a collector's pin.

Before Zoe could process any of it, a stray bolt of electricity flashed out and hit her in the chest, knocking her off her feet.

She skidded across the laboratory floor, crashed against the wall, and the world went dark and silent.

 

“Zoe! Are you all right?” Victor's voice. Not manic now, but sane, compassionate. “Get a wet towel, would you? Zoe, can you hear me?”

Something damp mopped across her forehead.

“Good. Now something to drink. There's brandy in the kitchen cabinet—in the usual place.” A vague whirring sound, like distant machinery. Was the humming just in her head?

“Zoe?”

“I–I can hear you, Victor.” Slowly she opened her eyes. She was lying in her bed, Victor's bed. Bright afternoon sunlight streamed through the big bedroom windows. Victor was swabbing her forehead with a cool, wet towel. He smiled at her.

“Pretty bad shock you had.”

“Yes, I . . . Victor, what happened?”

“It worked!” he replied, somehow appearing both jubilant and sheepish.

“It did?” she said, sitting up so fast her head hurt. Then the whole crazy scene of the night before came back to her. “Victor, what were you doing? What worked? Is the automaton—”

Victor beamed. “She's alive, Zoe. We did it!”

“But we can't have! We didn't finish designing her brain. There's nothing to run her control systems!”

“We didn't need a brain, Zoe, because we already had one.”

Zoe's guts twisted, and she suddenly felt terribly cold.

“A
soul
, to be more precise—trapped in my experimental battery.”

“Trapped since . . . since t–the accident.”

Victor's face remained radiant. “She has a body now, and she's back!”

Zoe turned away, tears springing to her eyes and running down her cheeks. “Oh . . . Victor!” She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to shut out the world, trying to shut down her brain.

The bedroom door creaked open and soft, mechanical footfalls crossed to the bed.

“The brandy, Victor,” said a woman's voice. It was sweet, gentle, but it buzzed slightly, like the voice of a singer coming over the wireless.

“Thank you. Here, Zoe, drink this. It will make you feel better.”

Zoe felt a tumbler pressed into her hands. She put the glass to her lips and downed the whole thing, though she knew that—at this moment—nothing would make her feel better. Finally, when she'd drained all the liquor, she opened her eyes.

Next to the bed, beside Victor, stood the automaton, all gleaming metal and softly whirring motors. She looked stunning. Perfect. Venus as a machine.

“Zoe,” Victor said, “I'd like you to meet Hella. My wife.”

The automaton regarded Zoe with shiny, metallic eyes. “Pleased to meet you,” the machine said. “My husband has told me about all you've done for us.”

All?
Zoe wondered.
How . . . open-minded of you
.