Heart of Steel (16 page)

“Okay,” she said quietly. The only thing she could see was the green glow of his mechanical eye. “Now what?”

He cleared his throat and reached around her. “Um. I’m going to need you to step forward a bit.”

She reached up, trying to get an idea of how much space was available. Her hands hit his chest almost immediately. “I don’t have a lot of room to work with here, Alistair,” she returned, acutely aware of their current proximity. At most, six inches of space separated them.

“I understand that,” he replied. “However, your back is currently against the control panel I’ll need to access to recalibrate the shaft so it can lift both of us.”

Her pulse quickened. “Right,” she whispered.

“So, if you would just... step forward just a bit?” He shifted his balance, leaning a few inches sideways. “Just stand on my feet and... squeeze in the best you can. So I can work behind you. Once everything is adjusted I’ll be able to carry you up with room to spare.”

She drew in a slow breath, and let it out. There were so many things about this that sounded like the setup for a cheap thrill—but that didn’t exactly jibe with what she’d seen of Alistair. He’d been a gentleman to her more or less the entire time she’d been here—a slightly quirky gentleman with a near-mania for mad science, like he was getting his mannerisms out of a Jules Verne novel, but a gentleman nonetheless. And he’d saved her life at least once that she could be certain of, guided her to safety through pitch darkness, and put his life on the line for her.

And on top of—or because of—all this, she discovered that she was growing fond of him. Clearly she had some
weird
taste in men.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s do this.”

Slowly, carefully, she eased herself forward, settling her bare feet on top of his cold metal ones and pressed herself close against him. Once again, she felt that diagonal seam across his torso, and now noticed through his lab coat the presence of normal body warmth above it only. Below he was as cold and unyielding as his left arm, and she found herself wondering again how much of him was made of metal.

She heard his breath catch as she squeezed in, and for a few seconds he stood frozen, like a man who has been informed that a venomous snake is coiled near his foot. His breathing came faster now,

and she was pretty sure that if she pressed her ear to his chest she would hear his heart beating like a jackhammer.

After all, she could feel her own heart pounding right now.

Well, as long as they were right on top of each other, this last would be easy enough to confirm.

As he reached around her again and started doing something complex with the control panel that involved a lot of rapid beeping, she rested her ear against the center of his chest, just to the left of his sternum, listening for the familiar
lubb-dupp, lubb-dupp
of a heartbeat.

She heard nothing of the sort. Instead, she heard a low, rhythmic whirring where his heart should be:
thrumthrumthrumthrum.

“Alistair?” she asked.

“I’ve almost finished reconfiguring the access shaft,” he said.

“Should.... I be worried that I can’t hear a heartbeat?”

He paused for a few seconds.

“No,” he said. “That’s normal for me.” He finished making a few final adjustments. “There. Now... stay as you are. This is going to be... a bit fast.” With that, he held her close, one arm around her waist, the other hand cradling her head against his chest. In response, she put her arms around him and held on tight.

And they rocketed upward into the darkness.

***

She
had
to know the effect she was having on him, being this close. Her proximity was distracting—not unpleasantly so, by any means, but he was going to have to concentrate on the matter at hand if they were both to get out of this alive. Of course, the problem was that they were two people in an access shaft built for one, and if he let his attention flicker too much they might bounce off the walls, with disastrous results.

Instead, he cradled her close, distantly aware of the speed at which his cardiac pump was cycling and acutely aware of the gentle weight of her head against his sternum and the sensation of her arms around him. To be fair, he could only feel her embrace across the ribs of his right side, but the thought was there.

Man alive, was it
ever
there.

Concentrate
, he chided himself, and he was immediately chilled by how lonely the thought was without Arthur to share it. He shuddered.

Julia gave him a brief squeeze, as though sensing the root of his unease.

In slightly less than three minutes, the two of them slowed to a halt, and Julia lifted her head from his chest. The access door slid open with a soft hiss.

“Hold on tight,” he said, and then unclasped his arms from around her so he could grasp the door frame and pull the two of them out of the levitation field. Her legs moved with his—awkwardly, but at least she tried—and soon enough they were back on solid ground and, to his mild regret, she released him and stepped away, looking around.

The room in which they now found themselves was dimly-lit  and  small without being overly  claus-

trophobic, though the racks of servers and storage devices that lined two of the walls ate up some of the elbow room. On a desk sat a flat-screen monitor with a darkened screen. As they made their way further into the room, however, something beeped softly and the monitor came on.

Mechanus turned and saw words appear on the screen:

> Hello, Dr. Mechanus.

“Looks like we’ve found him,” Julia said.

“A very basic version of him, yes,” Mechanus replied. Relief unwound the tension that had bound his chest cavity since this whole thing started. “I’ll need to locate and recompile all of his various components if he is to be restored, but... it’s good to know that he’s okay.”

He pulled out a keyboard on a tray and typed:

> Hello Arthur. How are you faring?

The reply was immediate.

> I am afraid. I am small and I am afraid.

Mechanus smiled fondly. Of course he was small and afraid. He hadn’t been a raw kernel in... how long had it been? Nearly a decade.

He turned to Julia, who was leaning against the corner of a server rack and massaging one of her bare feet. She flexed her big toe, and he heard it pop.

Shoes,
he recalled with quiet dismay.
She’d wanted shoes.
For a few moments he couldn’t quite

tear his eyes away from her bare feet, even though he knew they must be hurting after running all over creation. He pushed the wheeled office chair from its position in front of the terminal over towards her.

“Have a seat,” he said as she looked up at him. “I need to have a chat with Arthur.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

“Not just yet, but I may call upon you to check indicator lights on the storage units. For now, however, just relax.” He sighed. “This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

Julia sat on the offered chair with a groan of relief and set to massaging her other foot.

Mechanus watched her for a time, unable to immediately tear his eyes away from the process. She no longer seemed to regard her transplanted leg as though it were a foreign part of her body, and for its part it had followed its design and shifted to fully match its native counterpart. It seemed almost a shame to cover them—as he must, for he had promised her footwear, and her feet needed protection in any case—as, like the rest of her, they were fascinating in a way he could not yet define.

Perhaps, later on, he might offer a foot massage.

A quiet beep from the terminal drew his attention. A new line of text had appeared on the screen:

> You’re staring, sir.

He felt the heat rise in the right side of his face as he typed his reply.

> Yes, about that… what on Earth possessed you to threaten to kill Julia?

The cursor blinked thoughtfully, almost guiltily, at him.

> It was not a death threat, sir.

Mechanus frowned and typed.

> Explain that.

The reply was immediate.

> It involved disassembly, not necessarily death, and it was less a threat than an absolute promise.

> ARTHUR!

Mechanus’s fingertips banged a bit more loudly on the keyboard than he’d intended, but he considered the point made. Yelling at someone in a text-only environment was, after all, a fine art.

> At the time, I believed that she still intended to escape. I wished to forestall that and protect you from the inevitable emotional trauma.

Mechanus regarded Arthur’s statement at length before typing his reply.

> Your concern is appreciated. Your disassembly threat is not. Cut it out.

There was a long pause. Mechanus frowned and typed further:

> I mean it, Arthur. No further threats and/or promises of bodily harm and/or death. Understood?

There was another long pause, and then:

> Understood, sir.

Mechanus sighed before resuming his typing.

> Fine. Are all of your components intact?

> I believe so, sir. I was able to move them to this storage facility, but several of the drives are reporting errors, and I cannot compile myself.

> Not a problem, Arthur. Let’s get started.

Mechanus straightened up, rolling his right shoulder and flexing his fingers to loosen himself up. This was going to take a lot of typing—something he

hadn’t had to do for a long while. Manual compilation of code wouldn’t exactly be a walk in the park on its own, but trying to do so with cramping fingers would be nigh-impossible.

“Julia,” he said, and she glanced up from her left foot. “I need you to check the server racks and let me know if any of the drives have red or orange indicator lights. I want them all to be green before I get started.”

The next forty minutes amounted to a game of digital Whack-A-Mole, with Julia pointing out errors on one hard drive and Mechanus troubleshooting and eliminating them, only for further errors to crop up on another.

His head was starting to ache when Julia fell silent. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, and then flexed his fingers several times to work out the developing cramps.

“Julia?” he asked. “Any further errors?”

“Hold on,” she replied, and he heard the casters of the office chair rumble across the floor behind him. Mechanus held his breath, waiting. “No,” she said finally. “Looks like we’re good to go.”

He exhaled slowly, wiping the sweat from his brow with his remaining sleeve. “Excellent.” He returned his attention to the keyboard.

> Arthur, is everything in order now?

> Yes, sir. All components are present and accounted for.

Mechanus smiled. “Everything is ready from Arthur’s end,” he reported to Julia. “And he’s prom-

ised not to threaten grievous bodily harm on you again.”

“What will you do if he tries anyway?” Julia asked.

Mechanus turned to look at her. She had stood up and presently drew level with him, peering at the monitor that still bore dozens of troubleshooting commands. “He won’t disobey me,” he said. “And right now we need him more compiled than deleted.”

“If you’re sure,” she said.

“I am. Trust me on this.”

She bit her lip, still staring at the monitor, and said nothing for the better portion of a minute. When she finally spoke, her voice was just above a whisper.

“Let’s do this,” she said.

Mechanus smiled, typed in a final command, and hit ENTER.

> Compiling…

appeared on the screen, and Mechanus took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

“Now,” he said, “We wait for it to compile.”

Julia nodded sharply. “How long?” she asked.

“Two hours, give or take,” he estimated. It had been a
long
time since he’d completely recompiled Arthur.

“Great,” Julia said. “Now let’s find a place for you to lie down and get some sleep.”

He turned to her, opening his mouth to protest, but her jaw was set.