Clockwork Souls (14 page)

“He is wounded?”

“A timber knocked him down when the mine went up. The fuses
were faster than we expected.”

“Bring him to my tent.”

Ives continued walking, and Marie went anxiously beside him,
peering at Dominic. He was unconscious. She prayed that he still lived.

“Ives,” said Anthony as they reached the camp, “what
happened?”

Ives ducked his head to enter Marie’s tent as she held the
flap open. Philomène must have heard the voices; she was up and dressed, and
stood back watching with an expression of dread.

“The mine worked beautifully, sir,” Ives said as he tenderly
laid Dominic on Marie’s bed, his feet still marching in place. “But I fear the
troops who advanced were unprepared. They went down into the crater, and are
now being shot like fish in a barrel.”

Philomène made a small, distressed sound, then busied
herself attending to Dominic. Marie placed a hand on his chest. Reassured that
his heart still beat strongly, she turned to Ives.

“You are also wounded,” she said, following Ives out of the
tent.

“I believe so, Madame.” He continued walking, as if unable
to stop moving. He circled slowly around the fire, clanking with each step.

“He can walk,” Malcomb said. “Get him into line with the
battalion.”

“He needs repair!” Anthony said.

“Balderdash. He can move; he can fight. Not as if he’s in
pain.”

Marie turned a look of fury upon the colonel. She knew—she
had seen—what would be Ives’s fate, the fate of all the 1st, if they marched
into that hideous crater. Her hand slid into her pocket and closed around the
small bundle there.

At that moment, a clank was followed by a horrible shriek of
grinding metal. Ives collapsed, his right leg separated from his frame. The leg
continued to flex, as if still trying to walk.

“Ives!” Marie bent to him, catching his hand in hers. It
convulsed slightly, pressing the soft leather glove that covered it against her
palm.

“Never mind me, Madame,” he said. “You cannot help me. Look
to Dominic.”

“Ah, too bad,” said Colonel Malcomb. “Well, get the others
moving.”

“Sir, if we are not ordered to advance, I must protest,”
Anthony said, standing to face the colonel. “To send our men into that breach
would be to doom them to needless destruction.”

“Quite so,” said Ives, gazing disinterestedly at the sky,
where a hint of dawn was growing.

“They are
machines
,” said Malcomb. “Let
them go in and push through the breach. If the Rebels break them, at least
Union blood will be spared.” He turned to Anthony. “You want to be a hero, don’t
you? Now’s your chance.”

“That is not my idea of heroism,” Anthony said.

“No? Well, unless you want to be court-martialed, you’ll
obey me!”

“Enough!” cried Marie, standing. She could no longer bear
the wrath that filled her.

Reaching into her pocket, she took out the charm she had
made and faced Malcomb. Drawing Oya’s sign in the air with the bundle, she
stared into the eyes—into the wicked soul—of the man.

“Let good command evil,” she chanted. “Let right master
wrong. Let evil be
fixed
. By Oya’s wrath, I
banish you!”

She threw the bundle into the fire. A flash of light and a
clap of thunder followed.

She was blinded. Her ears rang.

Slowly, the light faded to darkness and she could see again.
Someone was screaming. It was Ives.

“No!” the automaton shrieked over and over. “No!”

Marie had never heard Ives make such a sound. She stared
down at him. For a second, she thought she saw Malcomb thrashing at her feet,
his face pasty with fear, eyes bulging, red whiskers shaking.

Impossible! Yet . . .

She bent closer and peered into the automaton’s eyes. Eyes
that had housed a kindly soul, one she knew well. The soul that was in them now
was not the same.

“No! No!” he screamed again and again, as if he could not
stop.

He did not see her. He was lost.

She straightened, amazed. This had not been her intention.

Oya had intervened. She was sure of it.

“Sir?” she heard Anthony saying. “Colonel?”

Marie hastened to join him at Malcomb’s side. The large body
lay a little distance from the fire. Knocked back by the concussion, no doubt.
Marie knelt and touched the ruddy face.

The body shuddered, then the eyes opened. Blue, blue eyes.
Once filled with selfish cruelty, now with innocent wonder. “What is this?” he
said in amazement, his voice slurred.

“Look at me,” Marie commanded.

The head turned. The eyes roamed, then focused on her. “Madame?
What is this?”

Marie sat back on her heels, gratitude welling in her heart.
Above, shreds of pink cloud lit the morning sky.

“A new day,” she said.

The result of the mine’s explosion was not what the Union
had intended. Troops that had been trained for the event were held back, and
the uninformed regiments who were sent into the breach were unprepared, and
ended up badly mauled. Then the trained troops were sent in, but by then there
was no hope.

Blame and accusations flew. Bad decisions had been made, and
an unprecedented opportunity to break the Rebel defenses was lost.

Yet in the camp of the 1st Automated Engineers, there was
quiet rejoicing. They had done their duty and done it well, better than any
human troops could have done. Colonel Malcomb, who had suddenly developed a
modest and gracious attitude, praised his soldiers and passed all credit on to
them. He delegated command of the regiment to Lieutenant-colonel Ramsey while
he recuperated from a slight mishap that had occurred in the Headquarters camp.
Anthony graciously permitted Marie to nurse the colonel.

“You will have to go to Boston,” Marie told him, serving him
a bowl of soup and bread hot from the oven. “There are doubtless affairs of
business you should attend to.”

“I have already received a number of letters, Madame. You
are right that I must go eventually, but there appears to be no immediate
concern.” He paused to savor a mouthful of the bread. “How excellent! I never
understood why humans loved food so much. Now I do.”

“You have much to adjust to, while you recover,” she said.

“Indeed. Speaking of recovery, how is . . . Private
Ives . . . doing?”

Marie took a moment to adjust the blanket that lay over
Colonel Malcomb’s body. She still had the same trouble calling him by that name
that he had just shown with his former name.

“I am not involved in the maintenance of your soldiers,” she
said.

“I am certain that you know, Madame. Tell me. Has he
regained his sanity?”

Marie shook her head. “His body was repaired, but he still
raves. He has been declared unfit for service.”

“You could help him, could you not?”

Marie met the blue gaze. “Why would ever I wish to?”

“Out of mercy, Madame.”

She scoffed. “Mercy. He would have given none to you.”

“That does not make it right to let him suffer.”

“What would you have me do? Restore him to his place? I will
not. He would only cause harm to a great many others.”

The colonel drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, his
brow puckered in thoughtful concern. “Do you believe in Heaven, Madame?”

“Not for the likes of him,
cher
.”

“Would he go to Hell, then, if he was freed from his . . .
mechanical form?”

“I do not know.”

“And will I go to Hell,” he whispered, “for staying where I
am?”

Marie set aside the soup bowl and drew herself up. “Your
place in Heaven or Hell is built by your actions in this life. Do good, and you
will earn your way to Heaven.”

“Even though I deny that man his home?”

“It is not you who denies it, but me. I will take the
consequences upon my soul.”

“Ah. How good you are.”

The colonel closed his eyes. Marie laid a cool, damp cloth
across his brow.

“May I ask you a question, Madame?”

“You may. I might not answer.”

“Had you planned the . . . miracle . . .
that occurred the night of the battle?”

“No,
mon cher.
Miracles are in the hands of God.”

“Then I do not know why it happened, but I am grateful for
this gift.”

“Is it better?”

“Worlds better. I can
feel!
The sounds, the smells
and flavors, the
colors!
Truly, Madame, the human body is a wondrous
machine.”

“That it is,
cher
,”
Marie said softly. “But the soul is where true beauty lies.”

“The soul,” he murmured, drifting to sleep with a gentle
smile. “The soul.”

She watched him for a time, then returned to her own tent
and retrieved a charm that she had made some days before. She had been
undecided about using it. Now she lit two candles on her altar, and made her
way through the camp to the repair tent.

It was mercifully empty of all but the one machine. The
automaton called Ives lay restless on his cot, his cries of anguish tuned to a
mere whisper by the medical engineers. She stood over his form for a few
minutes, watching for any sign of rationality, any mote of repentance. She saw
none.

Glancing around the tent to assure herself she was alone,
she drew her charm out of her pocket. It was a folded bit of paper, containing
ashes of several unusual ingredients that she had packaged together in a paper
scribed with the symbol of Ogun and burned at midnight beneath the new moon.
She unfolded the packet and carefully sprinkled the ashes over the chest of the
automaton, where his heart would have been if he had one. The thrashing and the
whispering slowed, then stopped, as Marie blew the last of the ashes out of the
paper.

“Be free,” she said softly, as the light left mechanical
eyes.

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Patricia Burroughs

So. This was Professor Rufus Cornelius
Abercrombie-Stubbins.

She curtseyed stiffly before the Englishman. Gentleman,
truth be told, for gentleman he surely was, despite the smear of oil on his
cheek and his steamed-over spectacles. He whipped them off and wiped them on a
filthy silk handkerchief. “You are from Mr. Claggmarten, I take it?”

“Yes,” she lied. “My name is Eglantine,” she lied again.

“No. You are not to have a name. I do not want you to have a
name. In fact—you are not even what I ordered.” He slid his spectacles back
onto the high bridge of his nose. “I know what I ordered—and you are not she.
Not it. Not—” He snatched up the
Atlanta
Southern Confederacy
newspaper from his cluttered desktop and
shook it at her, showing the headline, “Hood Fails Again; Sherman Advances,”
shown boldly across the top. “Not,” he said, “what I ordered. You are not the
model I saw in Mr. Claggmarten’s place of business. If they have switched my
order at this crucial moment when I have urgent and specific needs—every
previous attempt I’ve made has failed!”

He strode toward her with such ferocity it was all she could
do to hold her ground, keep her chin raised and her gaze placid. He circled
her, his upper lip curled into a disdainful sneer, taking in the dark gray
traveling cloak, the cheap, sensible black shoes that pinched her toes, the
dove-gray hat that didn’t perch quite neatly on her heavy coil of hair, much
heavier than the automaton’s hairstyle which she had copied. She clutched the
heavy carpetbag before her, hoping it had ceased to emit unfortunate noises.

He slapped the packet of papers against his thigh. “I demand
to know why I have been foisted off with a substitute!”

She met his glare calmly, without flinching. “I am endowed
with all of the attributes you ordered.
All
of them,” she added significantly.

“But tonight. He promised me you would be here in time for
my final attempt tonight—and now he has sent me an entirely different model and
I am supposed to take it on faith that you are equal to the automaton I
ordered?”

“Superior.” The familiar rage simmered in her veins. “I am
superior.”

“Well, your appearance is lifelike, I must admit. In fact, I
am certain I have never encountered an automaton quite as—well, as
distinctive
as you—on either side of the
Atlantic.” His eyes flickered up and down her body, paying close attention to
her hands, the bare skin at her throat, her face. “So realistic and unexpected.”

“Mr. Claggmarten will be most gratified by that observation.
He is not only the finest automaton creator in Savannah, but in the entire
South.”

She maintained her stare and repeated the words spoken so
recently to her by the thing she had destroyed and replaced. “I am a Nova-Model
Exquisite Female Automaton, created on the eleventh day of November, in 1864,
the year of our Lord, activated for use on this afternoon for your order. In
addition to the fine array of capabilities all Claggmarten creations bear, I
also have Exceptional and Expanded Abilities of a Discreet Nature—”