Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl Page 7

  6

  The House of Einstein

  In Gideon’s opinion, the mail coach wasn’t worth half of what he’d paid. Pulled by a team of four horses, the battered old carriage was stuffed with sacks of letters.

  Gideon was invited to find a spot for the journey by the coachman, who didn’t speak to him again other than to rouse him in darkness and tell him he was to get out. The driver just laughed when Gideon asked how close to London he was, and the coach rumbled away. Night had fallen and so, now, did a hard summer rain, drenching Gideon. He walked for what seemed like hours through bare countryside, no sign of civilization, nor an inn where he could beg for help.

  Until he saw the house.

  Gideon emerged from a thin copse on a gentle hillside and saw it nestling in a small valley, a large mansion of gray stone, almost invisible in the darkness against the black hills. A single lit window betrayed the presence of someone inhabiting the place. As he drew closer, the building emerged from the night as a rather singular work of architecture, a mashed- together riot of fairytale towers, rickety wooden lean-tos, a glass domed roof, and joists and pulleys swinging in the wind at the eaves. Before the terrace fronting the house there were small lawns, and Gideon saw a figure bent over a lawnmower, as though exhausted. Gideon hailed him, but a clap of thunder snatched his words away; the figure remained motionless. As he hurried closer, he saw the man was certainly some kind of domestic staff, given his tattered garb, but he could not understand why he was cutting the grass in such a storm.

  “Ho,” called Gideon as he neared. “Foul weather.”

  Gideon laid a hand on the man’s arm. It was as hard and unflinching as iron. Gideon frowned and bent closer. He was iron, or metal at least. A life- sized statue, leaning on a lawn mower, dressed in real clothes and boots. How odd. Gideon patted the metal man on his solid shoulder and said, “Think I’ll ask for a bed for the night, before I end up a pile of rust like you.”

  The voice came little louder than a whisper. “The master is not in residence.”

  Gideon inspected the statue’s face. Was there the faintest light behind those glass lens eyes, where before they had been dead and blank? He moved his hand in front of the glass and leaned in close to the rusted mouth.

  “The master is not in residence.”

  “What are you?” whispered Gideon.

  “The master is not in residence,” said the figure, the last word a whine of clashing wheels and freezing gears. Then the dull light faded and the thing was silent once more.

  Gideon hammered hard on the flaking paint of the double doors for a full minute before he heard a shuffling sound from within the house. The wide stone steps were cracked and choked with weeds and dandelions and, up close, the house was in a dreadful state of disrepair.

  “Who’s there, at this time of night?” called a man’s voice.

  “My name is Gideon Smith. I am seeking refuge from the storm.”

  There was another agonizing moment of silence, then Gideon heard the jangling of keys and bolts being slid back. An oil lamp emerged first, followed by the screwed-up face of a man about the age of Gideon’s father, snarling through rows of rotten teeth and with lank, wispy hair crowning his liver- spotted head. He looked Gideon up and down and asked, “What do you want?”

  “Shelter,” said Gideon. “A bed for the night, if there is one.”

  “The master of the house is not in residence,” said the man, squinting beyond Gideon at the storm.

  “I know. The lawnmower man told me.”

  The face creased unpleasantly, and the man laughed. “Old Bob? Nothing but a gimcrack novelty. Not a man at all. Just a toy.” The man chewed his thin, dry lips. “Oh, you’d better come in.”

  Gideon stood in the hall while the man slid the bolts back home in the door. There was a staircase sweeping up, and it would have made a grand entrance were it not piled from floor to ceiling with what Gideon could only term junk: tottering stacks of books, wooden boxes and crates in teetering columns, pieces of machinery, and piles of cogs and flywheels. The man looked down at the floor and tutted. “You’re leaving a puddle.”

  “Sorry,” said Gideon. “I’ve been walking for several hours.” He held out his hand. “I’m Gideon Smith.”

  “Crowe,” said the man, ignoring the hand. He was hunched over, a rough hessian blanket thrown over his shoulders. “I’m the caretaker here.” He appraised Gideon and said, “I’ll get you some clean clothes. The master’s will probably fit you. I’m sure he won’t miss some.”

  “Who is the master of the house?” asked Gideon. “I don’t wish to impose unnecessarily.”

  “You’re here now.” Crowe shrugged. “And this is the house of Hermann Einstein, but he hasn’t been here for six months. No one knows where he is, to tell the truth, so I wouldn’t worry about being an imposition.”

  Crowe led Gideon up the dark stairs to a landing just as bizarrely stocked as the entrance hall, then opened a door into a bedroom. A snowstorm of dust puffed up and swirled at their passage. Crowe said, “There’s a washroom and some towels. You can dry off and I’ll put some clothes on the bed for you. Join me downstairs for a drink and a bite when you’ve finished, if you want.”

  As good as his word, Crowe had laid out a fine meal of steaming meat pie, carrots, and turnips on a small card table in the center of the sitting room. He said, “Fill your boots, lad. You look famished.”

  Gideon was, and he set about the pie with gusto. Crowe watched him intently, still wrapped in his blanket, and said, “You come far?”

  He said through a mouthful of food, “It’s where I’m going that concerns me more. How far from London am I?”

  Crowe cackled. “Depends on how you’re planning to get there. Walking, I’d say you’ll need a new pair of boots. Steam train, barely two hours. Omnibus goes from over the hill.”

  All of which, bar walking, would cost money. He looked around the sitting room. Some of the contraptions he could discern some kind of use for; others seemed foreign in the extreme. “This Mr. Einstein of yours . . . ,” said Gideon. “What is his field of work?”

  “It’s Professor Einstein. And his field is anything and everything,” said Crowe, taking a bottle and pouring amber liquid into two dirty tumblers. “The man’s an inveterate tinkerer.”

  “Like the lawnmower man?”

  Crowe laughed again. “Bob, we call him. Quite remarkable, in a way. You charge him up on the electrification and set him off, and he’ll push that lawnmower right to the end of the turf, then stop before he falls off the edge, turn it around, and come straight back.”

  “It talked to me,” said Gideon.

  “Ner, not really,” said Crowe. “Old Hermann put a cylinder in him, like you might get in a phonograph. He thought it was funny, for when guests came and the like, or peddlers.”

  Gideon took the whisky Crowe handed him and sipped at it, grimacing at its bite. Crowe laughed again, and Gideon asked, “And where is Einstein now?”

  Crowe scowled. “Quite rightly, I’m not meant to talk about it, given the nature of his work and all.” He leaned in closer to Gideon. “Fact is, the old boy’s gone missing. Properly missing. Quite put the wind up some folk in very high-up positions, let me tell you.”

  There was a crack of close-by thunder outside, and the rain pelted the sash windows with renewed vigor. Gideon dropped his own voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “High up? Nature of his work?”

  Crowe looked from left to right, and, satisfied there were no eavesdroppers creeping around the piles of books, he said, “The British Government. Brought him over from Germany, had him holed up here. Working on an engine. For a special dirigible, so’s I understand. A dirigible to the moon.”

  Gideon sighed. “That’s no secret. They’ve had that in the newspapers. Everybody knows Queen Victoria wants to send a party to the moon.”

  Crowe waved him away. “Bluster and propaganda, lad. ’Course, everybody wants to go to the moon. But only Hermann Ein
stein can make it happen, and he’s gone missing.”

  “Is there a telephone in the house?” asked Gideon. He thought to call the offices of World Marvels & Wonders again in the morning.

  Crowe sighed. “We did have one, but it doesn’t work. Old Hermann set this device up, called it a . . . a dizzy rupture, I think. Generates some sort of field, he said, though I’m not sure what he meant. He was always afeared someone would try to steal his work, spy on his ideas. He thought they had ear trumpets like telescopes and could listen in from miles away.” Crowe shook his head. “Paranoid, that’s what they call it. So he set up this dizzy rupture thing, which means the phones don’t work now. A clever man, but a bloody odd one.”

  Gideon barely noticed Crowe refilling his glass, and the old man gave him a curious look. “I’ll show you what I mean. I’ll show you Maria.”

  Crowe made Gideon promise not to open his eyes as he manhandled something heavy and awkward into the sitting room. Roughly pushing books and packages out of the way, Crowe cleared a space near the hearth and told Gideon he could look. He saw an upright, slim creation, covered by a tarpaulin.

  “This is Maria. First we’ll need music,” Crowe said.

  Crowe located a phonograph and selected a wooden tube at random from a heap beside it. “Opus Forty by Camille Saint-Saëns,” he read, then frowned. “Frenchie. Danse Macabre, it says. As good as anything.”

  The speaker of the phonograph issued a dusty, rhythmic hiss and then a harp sounded the same note, a dozen times like the tolling of a bell, with softly rising strings all around, as Crowe dragged the drop cloth off the marvel and took his place in his leather armchair.

  Gideon stared, his mouth hanging open. Standing in front of them was a life- sized woman, with blond hair loosely tied on top of her head and a fine-featured if pale face. She was quite the most beguiling thing Gideon had ever seen. Her eyes were closed and her face downcast. She wore a leotard and tutu in faded, dusty pink, and fishnet stockings holed like the nets of the abandoned Cold Drake. Her feet, shod in ragged ballet pumps, were arranged with the heel of the right against the instep of the left, one thin arm languidly above her head, the other outstretched to the left.

  “Maria,” said Crowe, his eyes glowing.

  “A woman?” said Gideon, not taking his eyes off her.

  “Ah, what’s the word?” asked Crowe, screwing up his face. He snapped his fingers. “Automaton. Now shush; it’s about to start.”

  A violin cried out like an eerie beast, and xylophones rattled like dry old bones. Maria moved suddenly, jerkily, making Gideon jump. Crowe chuckled and placed a hand on his arm, and Gideon watched in amazement as the automaton’s movements became more fluid. She danced in the small space Crowe had cleared near the hearth, moving faster and faster as the music became more frenzied and energetic. She whirled and whirled, kicking her leg repeatedly in the air with the perfect timing only finely tuned machinery could achieve, her hair falling free and swirling around her like a golden halo. She was a gale of limbs, a pink blur, and as the music reached a crescendo and died she fell to the floorboards, one leg outstretched behind her, one leg in front, on which she rested her hands and chin, looking up at Gideon with black-rimmed eyes burning into his soul.

  Gideon dared to breathe and glanced at Crowe, who had been getting more and more agitated throughout the performance, grimacing and twisting on his leather armchair.

  “My God,” said Gideon quietly.

  “Maria,” Crowe said in triumph. “The most wonderful creation in this entire lunatic menagerie. Clockwork. Gears. Flywheels and cogs. Come and look.”

  Crowe ran, hunched, to Maria and commanded, “Up! Up on your feet!”

  Gideon stared at him. “She responds to your words?”

  Crowe grinned as Maria stood and straightened, staring straight ahead. “A bloody wonder, it is.” From on top of a pile of books he took a brass key, the width of two handspans. He roughly turned Maria around and tugged at her leotard, revealing a tiny, dark keyhole in the small of her exquisitely curved back. “You stick this in here, give it a couple of turns, and it’s off. Clockwork.” He saw Gideon staring at the automaton and said quietly. “Have a touch. It won’t mind.”

  Gideon put out a tentative hand and laid his fingers on her bare shoulder, pulling them back as though burned. “She’s warm!” he said. “As warm as you or I! And soft to the touch . . . like real flesh. What is she made of?”

  Crowe shrugged. “Like I told you before, it’s not my place to understand. Just to look after the inventions until such time as Professor Einstein decides to come home.”

  Crowe looked around conspiratorially again, then leaned in to Gideon. “I look after Maria, and it looks after me, too.”

  Gideon frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “It does a special dance,” said Crowe, running his tongue over his tooth stumps. “Just for me.”

  Gideon took a step back. “You don’t mean . . . you make that thing . . .”

  Crowe shrugged. “It’s near as damnation a real woman.” He bared his teeth. “ ’Cept it don’t nag like one. Have a squeeze of its titties.”

  Gideon backed away further. “I think I shall go to bed, Crowe. I plan to be away from here at first light. Thank you for your hospitality.”

  Crowe shrugged and turned back to the automaton. Gideon fled to the room where he had washed, and he lay in bed in the darkness as the sounds of the phonograph started again. Sick to his stomach, Gideon clamped his hands over his ears and begged for sleep to come.

  Gideon was awake before dawn, staring out of his bedroom window at the blue sky and soaking lawns the passing storm had left in its wake. Crowe’s whisky, and his debased abuse of the automaton, had left a sour taste in Gideon’s mouth. The way the automaton’s eyes had met his at the close of that frenetic dance spoke to Gideon of some hidden, secret intelligence.

  Gideon padded barefoot out of his room and along the corridor. He passed an open door from which emitted a groaning, sawing shriek, and he peered in to see Crowe, face down and snoring loudly, the empty whisky bottle on its side by his outstretched hand. Farther on he found a mismatched dark wooden door that, when he tried the round brass handle, swung open to reveal a tight spiral stone staircase. Gideon surmised he was in the fairytale tower that had been added to the west wing of the house, and curiosity drove him up the stairs to another door. As he looked around it, his breath caught in his throat; there was Maria, the automaton, sitting on a chair in a bare stone chamber, her head slumped on her chest. There was a table beside her on which rested the large brass key Crowe had spoken of. Gideon was surprised the old drunkard had summoned the wherewithal to return her to the tower at all. Along one side of the wall was a rail hung with frocks, blouses, and skirts of all kinds; Gideon felt slightly queasy at the thought of Crowe dressing the mannequin to suit his mood. She was still wearing the tattered ballerina outfit. Gideon walked across the stone floor and squatted before her.

  He took a strand of her blond hair in his fingers and marveled at it; just like real hair. Hesitantly, he brushed her forearm with his fingers. Soft and yielding, just like real flesh. Gideon placed his hand on her chest, between her breasts, and felt the rhythmic pumping of some clockwork engine within. Gideon murmured, “Old Crowe was right about one thing: Professor Hermann Einstein is indeed a genius.”

  “Thank you,” said the automaton with the slightest movement of her full, ruby-red lips.

  Gideon yelled and rolled backward as the automaton’s kohl-rimmed eyes flicked open and her head rose to regard him. Another of Einstein’s surprises. Just like Bob, the lawnmower man, no doubt, talking with the help of a wax cylinder inside her.

  “Not quite wound down, have you?” said Gideon with a smile. “My God, if I lived here for any length of time I would have a heart attack.”

  “Imagine what it’s like for me,” said Maria.

  The color drained from Gideon’s face. He peered at the automaton, and it blinked back and g
ave him a half smile.

  “You’re really speaking to me?” he whispered.

  “I’m really speaking to you,” said Maria.

  Gideon was silent for a while, not quite knowing what to do next. He said eventually, “You thanked me. What for?”

  Maria put her face down and looked at her hands, folded in her lap. “For not taking up Crowe on his offer.”

  Gideon bit his lip. “Does he do that often?”

  She nodded sadly. Gideon put his hand to his mouth. “Good God,” he said.

  Maria smiled ruefully. “I have no God, sir, save Professor Einstein, who gave me life.” She paused. “Do you have a name?”

  “Gideon,” he said. “Gideon Smith.” He awkwardly put out his hand, and Maria placed hers in his palm. He felt the warmth from it, felt it pulsing with life.

  “Are you alive?” asked Gideon. “Are you real?”

  “Oil and fluid flow through my copper veins. Clockwork powers my limbs. A self- perpetuating hydraulic engine pumps inside my chest. My skin is the softest kid leather. Not alive, Mr. Smith. Not real.”

  “You look like a living, breathing woman,” said Gideon. “Perhaps you have been hypnotized to believe you are a clockwork creation?”

  “Are you easily shocked, Mr. Smith?” asked Maria.

  Gideon shook his head. “Not any more.”

  “Very well,” she said. Maria deftly hooked her thumbs under the shoulder straps of her cotton leotard and pulled them down, revealing her bare torso. Gideon flushed, but she put a finger to her lips. “Hush. And watch.”

  Maria put one finger into her navel and Gideon heard a distinct clicking sound. Her stomach shuddered and a hairline crack appeared down the middle of her, from her breastbone to her hips. His eyes widened as the crack became a fissure, and Maria’s torso opened up as though it were nothing more than a set of double doors. Instead of flesh and muscle, she had brass and glass; her veins were rendered as thin, metal pipes through which a dark, viscous liquid coursed. Her ribcage was a steel trap enclosing an intricate mesh of gears and flywheels, whirring and spinning as each muscle in her arms and face moved. There was indeed a box of valves and pistons pumping away, and cables of varying color and thickness that wound around the clockwork and up into the hidden areas behind her breasts and below her waist.