Time's Mistress (3 page)

A hush fell over the throng as one of the Magisters raised his hands. Behind him the Palace of Illusion opened. The London fog supplemented the magic perfectly, reinforcing Josiah’s notion that the Mechanicum had somehow conjured it for their own nefarious purposes.

“Welcome to our little show,” the man said, his voice carrying easily across the heads of the crowd. “Consider this a glimpse of the world to come. Please, enter two by two, side by side, so to speak, and gaze upon the wonders wrought by man’s hand alone. Beyond the glass door there is no God, there is only science!”

A quiet hubbub rippled through the crowd, the buzz infectious as it passed from one person to the next.

Josiah Bloome found himself pushing through the press of bodies toward the front, eager to see for himself the wonders the Magister promised. He saw them watching him and wondered if it was self-pity he saw reflected in their eyes, or self-loathing.

He took his turn in the queue, fearing they would not let him in as he was alone. The grim-faced Magister of the Mechanicum nodded and held out his hand to give him something as he stepped past him beneath the glass arch; the arachnoid. Its mechanisms had been unwound, whatever secrets it had learned erased as the components were undone. “Yours, I believe, Josiah?” He nodded, taking it and slipping the dead brass spider into his pocket. “All you had to do was ask if you wanted to know our secrets, brother. You know that we would hide nothing from you. We still grieve with you over sweet Annabel Leigh, and hold out the hope that your mind will heal enough for you to return to us. Six years is a long time to be in exile.”

“Thank you, Balthazar,” Josiah said, surprising himself because he found he actually meant it. It wasn’t some mindless platitude mouthed to move him beyond an awkward situation. Had the Magister forgotten that he had been cast out upon his return from war and his breakdown? Or had Josiah himself twisted the truth in his grief? Or was it all merely the first illusion of the glass house?

“I think you will find today’s unveiling most interesting,” the man said, and then moved on to greet the next soul in line.

He walked into the narrow crystal passage; it was lit though he could not see any light source, and curiously he could not see out. Some sort of translucent skin most likely coated the glass. It was a clever trick, nothing more. The corridor was lined with curious little display cabinets, in one, he saw a mechanical bird, its wings flapping with a crudely mechanical motion, in another there was an elaborate construction of the world and the planets rotating to their orbits on a vast clockwork driven frame. Nothing was overly impressive or worthy of the genius of the Mechanicum, though.

He studied the bird for a while, watching it pimp and preen. It was constructed from thousands of small brass cogs and gears, each interacting to produce the illusion of life. It moved awkwardly, the false motion of machine one of fits and starts as the bird hopped about. He watched as it flapped its wings once, twice, three times as though trying to take flight. The brass bird barely made it an inch off the ground before it tumbled rather ungraciously back down to its wooden perch. The bird was essentially nothing more than a larger version of the spider in his pocket but he heard the awe in the hushed voices of the people as they filed past him on to the next exhibit. The world was more impressive, but again it was less science than it was trickery. Indeed, under closer examination it was little more than an advanced orrery, not so different to the ones built seventy years before, by Pearson. Indeed it bore a striking resemblance to the Mechanism of Hipparchus of Nicaea, the pre-eminent astronomer so ruthlessly plagiarised by Newton. Though, of course, the stone mechanism of the astronomer itself was long since lost to antiquity, the Gentlemen did possess precise renditions of it in their vault, penned by none other than Plutarch. It was over two thousand years old. This considerably more modern version of the orrery rotated on a mechanism that mirrored the orbit of the earth around the sun, where other devices made the sun revolve around the earth. There were tiny mechanisms each individually responsible for the orbits of the sun and the moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the other planets. For all the geegaws of science built into it, it was nothing more than a refinement of Galileo’s universe.

Or so it seemed at first glance. Closer up, he saw that in fact a huge amount of detail had been added to create some kind of troposphere around the earth. He craned his neck to the side, trying to see behind to the gears and guts of the world itself to see how the Mechanicum had contrived to emulate the workings of the world. For a moment he fancied that if he stared intensely enough, closely enough, he might fall into it, down and down until he found a miniature replicant of himself staring into a globe, ad infinitum. It was a peculiar notion but it rather delighted him. For a moment he felt less like himself and more like a god.

After the corridor, he followed the line into a central auditorium. Wooden benches had been lined up in banked tiers around a raised dais. He took his place, finding a seat near the front. He wanted to be able to see whatever it was. He saw Carruthers and the actress take a place a few rows behind him and off to the left. The woman offered him a rueful smile when she saw him looking her way. Bloome nodded his head politely and looked away. The thirteen men of the Mechanicum filed in and took their places around the dais, and then, inconceivably the same thirteen men came into the room to stand behind them. This unexpected twist moved Josiah Bloome to the edge of his seat. He noticed a peculiar aroma in the air. It took him a moment to place it; some sort of pungent grease, like the sort used on axels and gears to keep them lubricated. Considering the clockwork bird and the map of the universe perhaps it wasn’t so out of place after all.

For a full minute neither Magister nor doppelganger moved.

Then, as one, the second set of men, the ones he had taken to be the duplicates, leaned forward and tore the faces from their counterparts. It was a moment of shocking brutality that had the women gathered in the crowd screaming and the men on their feet until they saw the bright shining mechanisms beneath, rotating and revolving and rocking on pivots and gear wheels. These men were not men at all, but perfect clockwork specimens. Quickly the Magisters undressed them, working in silence until thirteen men stood beside thirteen glittering mechanisms on the platform. It was something to see. The fear subsided, replaced by murmurs of curiosity and the occasional self-conscious giggle from the men in their top hats and tails, too proud to admit the sudden shedding of skin had put the fear of God into them.

The fear of God, Josiah thought, that was an apt way of putting it.

Balthazar moved to the centre of the stage and raised his hands, commanding the attention of the gathering. “Imagine a world where we are liberated from the chores of servitude. Think about it, no brothers or husbands forced beneath the ground to mine coal or metal ores, no wives or sisters forced to scrub and clean for the arrogant rich. This is a world to aspire to, is it not?”

There were murmurs of yes, and nodding heads. Josiah tried to imagine it in its almost Marxist purity. He shuddered. There was something distinctly disturbing about this sort of utopian claptrap.

Balthazar took a number of metal disks from his pocket and held them up for inspection. Josiah saw that irregularly shaped holes had been cut into the metal.

“The notion is simple,” Balthazar explained, “Each disk is coded with instructions the brain of the clockwork man interprets, allowing him to act just as we would in given circumstances. The machine can reproduce even the most complicated of movements based upon a number of servos and valves that work in tandem with the gears. You want him to prepare food, the coding is here,” he held up one of the metal disks, “all one needs to do is adapt each encoding for the environment in question, as each house is different and each dish is different, but once the disk is fashioned it will never wear out and you’ll have Bubble and Squeak to your heart’s content. And of course, there are a world of unpleasant tasks that can be taken out of our lives. The mechanisms can function beneath the filth of the Thames as happily as they can in the old tunnels beneath the city. And when they fail, all you need to do is wind up the mechanisms and they will work again, just as tirelessly as before. Bad air will never claim another life. No more will the miners need their Davey lamps and their canaries to tell them it is safe to dig on. No more will ship builders risk life and limb scrambling over rigging to weld in place some rivet. Steeplejacks will be grounded and labourers saved their back breaking work. Indeed, thanks to the Mechanicum we shall become a city of the fat and the drunk, because there will be nothing left for us to do save eat, drink and make merry!”

There was a ripple of laughter at this.

Josiah’s mind raced, grappling with the possibilities … but it wasn’t merely the clockwork construct that interested him, though he could see the benefit to everyone if some lump of brass could be put to use instead of people being forced to risk life and limb. No, there was a second aspect to the design that rekindled something he had thought long dead: hope.

He saw a possibility within the pretend flesh that had fooled them all.

He watched the rest of the demonstration avidly, and was on his feet by the end, applauding the genius of the men who had finally dethroned God and created this artificial life. A man born of brass and grease and the mind that would not wear out and die. It was the ultimate in reincarnation, simply wind him up and he would live again and again and again.

Others around him were in uproar, the good Christians shouting down Balthazar, decrying the arrogance of man as he stood before them with his arms spread wide in the parody of supplication, mirroring the classic crucifixion pose.

The last twist to the reveal came when the last man walked to centre stage; they all knew him, one of the Queen’s Artists, John William Waterhouse, famed for his portraits, and for his recreations of great literature … by his side walked ghosts. There was no mistaking the dead Prince Consort, Albert, nor the very much alive but inconceivably young Queen Victoria. Of course it could not have been Her Majesty any more than Albert could have been raised from the grave. Dead was still dead. Loved ones could not simply rise up.

Josiah peered toward the three of them, captivated by the odd scene. This, this was the genius of the Mechanicum, not some orreries and flapping brass birds. The Queen seemed to have regressed some thirty years or more, to the rather plain young woman she had been, whereas Albert looked hail, if not hearty, and certainly not thirty years dead. They moved with a curious almost staccato courtesy as they walked across the stage.

“My Lords, Ladies, and of course Gentlemen, you see here the culmination of years of study and the perfection of art—and more, a marriage between the Aesthetics and the Mechanicum to prove that there is beauty in lies,” he gestured toward the dead Prince Consort, who on cue inclined his head. The illusion was breathtakingly perfect. He was, to all intents and purposes, Victoria’s beloved Albert, just as the woman beside him was his Victoria as she had been all those years ago. The crowded auditorium was being treated to the spectre of love these royal ghosts famously shared. Josiah felt something stir within him and realised it was jealousy.

Only a man who had studied the brittle Prince could have rendered him so perfectly in … what? What did he use to recreate the flesh? Wax? Makeup?

“I give you the risen Prince Consort! This is our gift to the British People! All hail Victoria and Albert! All hail the Magisters of the Mechanicum and the Artisans of the Aesthetics!”

The shocked silence was broken by rapturous applause as people rose to their feet. It filled the glass auditorium, amplified by the acoustics of the chamber until the glass itself resonated with the harmonics of the clapping.

The Palace of Illusion.

The Glass House of Lies.

It all fell into place. It was the answer to all of his prayers.

He saw Balthazar looking at him, his smile warm. He nodded at the silent message that passed between them. The Magister was right; the unveiling had been of particular interest to him. He was shaking as he stood up, his applause every bit as awed and heartfelt as the applause from anyone else in the room, but more urgent.

He wanted to ask: “Why? Why have you done this?”

But he knew in science there was no why, no because, beyond the straightforward: “Because we can. Because it is there. Because we must. Because all flesh is dust, and to dust returns and we none of us dream of death.”

When all of the Pandemonium had died down and the good people had filed away back to their lives abuzz with the miracle of this mechanical resurrection, Josiah sought out the Magister. He stood beside his clockwork creations, greasing the mechanisms and preparing to box them away for shipping to the next show on their tour schedule, up North. The boxes were disturbingly similar to coffins, he thought, watching them crate up the false Queen.

“Did you enjoy our little performance, brother? A silly question, of course you did. We owe it all to you, of course,” Balthazar said. “It was your loss that set us to thinking: why must we always lose what we love? Why must we grieve? Science cannot grant immortality, the flesh is weak after all, the valves and pumps of the machine we inhabit are weak, fashioned to fail, but …” he let it hang there between them, unsaid.
Imagine a world where the dead could walk on, every day, at our sides, in our lives as more than memory.
All the talk had been of farming out the thankless chores to the automata, but the truth of it was far more sentimental.

“I must have one,” Josiah said simply.

“Of course, brother. She is yours, she always was and now, thanks to us, she always will be.”

O O O

Josiah Bloome provided the Queen’s artist with fifty sepia-tinged photographs of Annabel Leigh, catching her likeness from every angle. In some she was beautiful, in others plain. It depended upon the light and the skill of the photographer and, of course, her mood when the lens had been directed her way. He took the man on a guided tour of the places she loved, explaining what made each special to her in the hope that the man could add her essence to her beauty. It was a curious thing to do, of course, but he asked himself one simple question: what is a woman but the sum of her memories?