Clockwork Souls (7 page)

Something opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air.
Jasmine jumped up and grabbed a stout staff.

The something was large, but it moved softly, with just the
barest click of metal. A raspy voice said, “You’re giving that one fingers.”

She held onto the staff. “It needs to do fine work.”

The creature came farther into the shop, reaching a point
where she could see it by the light of her oil lamp. “It is not yet alive.”

The being was tall, bigger than most humans, never mind most
metalmen. Jasmine fought an urge to back away. “I want the fingers in place
first, so I can see how they work. I’ve never done them before.”

“Reasonable. When you figure it out, maybe you could make me
some.” It held up hands; they looked like drills. “I was made to dig holes in
mountains,” it said.

“You’re Preacher,” Jasmine said. She set the staff down,
though left it in reach.

It nodded. “It would be nice to have hands with fingers.”

Bess had said Preacher was crazy, but it seemed kind, almost
gentle despite its size. Its maker had given it a face, with a mouth that moved
and eyes that stared at her so intently she was sure it could see. But how?
Jasmine’s metalmen could sense things around them, but they did it by picking
up waves. She hadn’t given them eyes; for all that she felt they were more than
machines, she balked at the idea of making them look like people.

But looking at Preacher, she began to think she was wrong.
Maybe she should make eyes and mouths for them. Maybe if she looked at Preacher
carefully, she could figure out how to make such things work. If it would let
her.

“I’ll make you some hands with fingers, if the ones I’m
making for this new one work out.”

“And will you give that one eyes to see, ears to hear, and a
mouth to speak? I would love it if I could listen to another of my kind.”

“I will, if you will help me figure out how your eyes and
ears and mouth work. I’ve never done that. The ones I make can take in
instruction and sense things around them, but it’s not real hearing or vision.”

“The old woman was right. We can help each other, you and I.”

She wanted to ask him about the souls, but she hesitated.
Something told her it wasn’t time yet.

Without any discussion, Preacher took up residence in her
workshop. A few days later, it accompanied her through a driving rain to the
tower and watched as she hooked up the one with fingers and several others to
the lightning rod. The thunder boomed outside, but both of them still jumped
when the lightning flashed down the rod and into the waiting metalmen. As she
removed the fingered one from the device—quickly, before another strike—she
watched it curl the fingers. They worked.

Preacher sat down on a box. Jasmine thought that if it could
have cried, it would have. “Make me some real hands like that one’s, and I will
help you build the rest of your metalmen.”

It took her less time to make the fingered hands this time.
But when the time came for her to remove Preacher’s drills to replace them,
both of them were frightened. “I’ve always been this way,” Preacher said,
explaining its fear.

“I don’t want to harm you,” she said, explaining hers. But
she had learned the right way to do it on the first creature, and setting up
Preacher’s working hands went smoothly.

By the time Calvert returned from his mysterious errand in
Washington City—an unsuccessful venture, according to the slaves who had
accompanied him—Preacher was working alongside her in the workshop. It wore a
cover over its eyes and did not speak in the presence of anyone else.

“The fingers worked out so well that I made two metalmen who
can make others,” she told Calvert. “That way I will be sure to get the work
done quickly.” He took her at her word and indeed, it was almost true. She had
made Preacher’s hands.

The trust between Jasmine and Preacher grew, but she still
did not mention ensoulment. Late at night, when no one else was around, she and
Preacher worked to give the other fingered metalman, whom she had taken to
calling Maker, the ability to see, speak, and hear. On the night when Maker
croaked out its first sound—unintelligible, but a definite attempt to
communicate—Preacher sat down heavily on a chair. Its face could not change
expression, but Jasmine could tell how moved it was.

Preacher sat talking with Maker all night and by morning the
new creation was speaking in sentences. It understood far more than it could
say, but it was learning rapidly.

“With hands and voices, nothing can hold us back from our
destiny,” Preacher said. “You must give all these metalmen those things.”

“I cannot,” Jasmine said. “We must keep your abilities a
secret, at least for now. Calvert would have you and all the rest destroyed, if
he found out what you can do.”

“And he wouldn’t free you. Which is the most important thing
to you, isn’t it?” Preacher’s voice was angry, for the first time. “You are
just making more of us to buy your freedom, aren’t you?”

She had grown so accustomed to him that she had forgotten
how frightening he could be, forgotten that Bess had warned her about him. He
stood next to her, a huge, menacing figure.

But she got her fear under control. “Yes, I want my freedom,
but I also want to ensure that these metalmen have theirs as well. That is why
I reached out to you. I heard you could give these creations souls.”

“Souls. Bah. Do you think they need them? Does Maker need
one? You can hear it speak, know it needs nothing more to be as good as a
human. Or better.” Preacher moved toward her.

It was Maker that stopped it, Maker that put a hand—a
fingered hand—on Preacher’s arm. It croaked, “Hear her out.”

Preacher stopped. “Well?”

“The white people, those with the power, will only recognize
metalmen as living beings if they have souls. Didn’t Bess tell you that, when
she told you to find me?”

“That crazy old woman doesn’t talk to me like people. I’ve
never met her. She sent me a vision of you and I came. What is this about the
power people recognizing us?”

“They’ve already done it in the states in the rebellion.
They are freeing the human slaves and the metalmen with souls. Both free and
slave here believe that the law will apply to us, once the war ends. That’s why
Calvert wants me to make as many metalmen as I can, so he can keep them as
slaves once he has to free us.

“I was told—Bess told me—you could give them souls. That
would protect them. Can you do that?”

Preacher sat down. “Did she tell you how I can do that?”

Jasmine shook her head.

“I killed my maker,” Preacher said. “The bastard made me to
blast through mountains, but for fun he made it possible for me to see and hear
and talk. I might have killed him anyway. Even those of us who cannot speak can
think and feel, though we are seen as machines. There was such mockery in my
ability to see how I differed from humans even when I could outthink them. So I
stuck my drill into him, and as I did, I could feel his soul leaving his body.
And I just grabbed it, felt it move through my body.

“It didn’t like being there, held by his murderer, but I
liked having it. I still have it. I keep it shut down, most of the time, but
every once in a while I let it see what I do. It hates me. I don’t need it for
anything. I keep it for revenge.” Preacher stood back up.

Maker again put its hand on Preacher’s arm, but Jasmine knew
there was no threat now. “You are telling me that we will be treated as people
if we have souls.”

“I am telling you that metalmen with souls will not be held
as property, once people like me are not. I don’t know that it means either of
us will be treated like people. That’s why I was told not to put souls in these
metalmen. I would never have thought about it otherwise. I know that metalmen
are more than machines, that they don’t need human souls.” She looked at
Preacher. “You put a soul in yourself. Can you put one in Maker? Can you put
them in the others?”

Preacher opened its mouth in what might have been a smile. “Oh,
yes. I’ve put them in others, in my fellow beings that I’ve rescued from
misery. I’ve given them their own souls to torment as they see fit, the souls
of those who tormented them. I can give one to Maker. Perhaps I should give it
the soul of your owner.”

“No,” she said. “Give it a stranger’s soul. Let Calvert live
so that when the day comes that all must be freed, he will know what has
happened to him.”

“Ah. You, too, understand revenge. But why not give all of
these ones you are making the ability to communicate and make for themselves?”

“It’s too risky. They must seem to be soulless machines
until such time as they can be free. After that happens, I will fix them, fix
them all, so that they can do many things, not just work in fields. I swear
that, by my daughter.”

“I will trust you.” Preacher turned to Maker, laid hands on
its shoulders. “Here is the soul of a woman I found as she died. It’s a gentle
soul. Perhaps you and it can coexist.”

Maker shook as the change came over it. Jasmine could see
something shift in its presence. “Will the soul be obvious to all?”

“Only those who know where to look,” Preacher said, showing
her a mark that had appeared on Maker’s chest, near where its heart would be,
if it had one. “Since Maker can speak, it can also let its soul tell others
that it is present.”

“I will not, until it is time,” Maker said.

“I do not have enough souls stored within me for all the
metalmen you are making. I will share the few I have and then go out and
harvest some more for the rest.”

“Where do you get them?”

“There’s a war raging out there. Souls can be found
everywhere on a battlefield.”

Jasmine finished the metalmen on schedule and Calvert kept
his word, giving her both a paper verifying that she and her daughter were free
and a small sum of money. She and Alexandra moved into Washington City, where
she rented a house and workshop near the center of town and set up a business
doing machine repairs. Some people objected to a woman—and one of color at
that—doing such work, but the war had taken away many skilled men and her
services were needed. It was only when her first customer—an old delivery
driver who’d needed repairs to a wheel on his wagon—pronounced himself
satisfied with her work and handed her a few coins that she realized how much
her life had changed.

That autumn, the white men of Maryland began to discuss
whether to free their slaves, as Davy had predicted. He and others began to
make plans. Jasmine helped by finding places people could live and work once
they were free. The debate over freedom dragged on, which gave them time to
find more opportunities, but also increased suffering.

Benjamin died during this time. Jasmine did not hear the
news in time to travel to his funeral, a fact she sore regretted. She cursed
those who continued to ignore the inevitable end of slavery. Benjamin had
deserved to live out his days in freedom; she had planned to give him a home.

In the last quarter of 1864—a time when it had become
obvious that the Union would eventually prevail in the war—a bare majority of
the white men of Maryland voted to outlaw slavery. Emancipation was set for
November 1.

Olivia and several others arrived at Jasmine’s house on
November 5, having taken a circuitous route to avoid those who still opposed
emancipation. The trip was made more complicated by boisterous rallies around
the pending presidential election.

Jasmine had found them homes with people in her neighborhood.
Others had gone to Baltimore City and Annapolis, and a few were traveling to
the mountains of western Maryland, where some earlier freedmen had set up a
farm. Thanks to their planning, all the former slaves on the Calvert place had
someplace to go.

But they brought no reports of what had become of the
metalmen. Jasmine wondered and worried. Would Calvert come after her when he
discovered his metalmen had souls? It was possible. She had built extra
fortifications into her doors and windows, and had procured a gun, but she knew
those things might offer little protection from a powerful white man.

Five nights later, an hour after midnight, she heard a light
knock at the front. Peering out through the view panel she’d put in, she caught
a glint of metal by the light of the almost-full moon. She opened the door to
Maker.

“I’m here to let you know what has happened,” it said. It
sat on a chair, as if it were human. Jasmine felt the urge to offer it a cup of
tea.

“Preacher?” she asked.

“Dead,” it told her.

The word startled her. Decommissioned. That’s what people
usually said about metalmen when they no longer functioned. “Did you bring it
with you? Perhaps I can fix it.”

“No. Preacher cannot be fixed. The spark is gone and
everything that made it whole is gone. If you put the parts together again, you
would get someone else. We buried it out on Somervelt’s Island, when I took the
rest of the people out there. It’s safe there for us, at least for now.”