My Clockwork Muse (35 page)

Whoosh!

"'I have not been...'" Now filling my
left.

Whoosh!

"'As others were...'"

"Fiend!" I cried. The blade was two feet
above my chest. Could the steel slice my restraints, I wondered,
without touching my skin?

Whoosh!

"'I have not seen...'"

Oh, to be mocked by my own words. It was
intolerable! I thrashed my head. To be free of my bonds? No! But to
rid my ears of the terrible sound of his voice.

Whoosh!

"'As others saw...'"

"Damn you!" Perhaps as the blade descended, I
could puff out my chest slightly to place my restraining bonds in
the path of the razor's edge. Since I perceived that it was but a
single strand coiled tightly about me, the whole would become
quickly detached—

Whoosh!

"'I could not bring...'"

"Ahhh!"

"'My passions from..."

The strand would, perhaps, with the sudden
release of tension, unravel of its own accord. I would have but a
fraction of a second to roll out from under the returning
blade—

Whoosh!

"'A common spring!'"

"Devil!" I cried. "Torment me no more!" My
pleas rang hollow in my ears, as hollow as my only hope for escape
now seemed to me. I was filled with despair. What chance had I of
slicing away my bonds without also feeling the steel crescent's
deadly bite?

Worse, I saw that my plan—could I even summon
the courage to try it—would have to be put into action sooner than
anticipated. For clockwork Poe was now laughing and jumping upon
the blade, forcing it downwards not an inch at a time but now
inches
at a time.

I would know within moments whether I would
live or die. The span of my life was now measured in seconds.

Clutching the pendulum arm, my lunatic twin
was jumping and screaming at the top of his lungs, making a mockery
of my final moments.

"'Out!'" he cried, hopping forcefully, the
blade plunging. "'Out are the lights! OUT ALL!'"

A sharp crack filled my ears. I feared the
pendulum's supporting arms had given way and the entire apparatus
would come plunging down upon me. I closed my eyes, expecting to be
crushed.

When I was not, I opened them again to see
Poe hurtling from his perch upon the swinging blade. He flew
through the air and fell with a thud to the floor. I realized the
crack I heard was not of snapping timbers but that of a
gunshot.

I strained to see behind me. There on the
landing atop the stone staircase stood Olimpia. She was still
aiming my pepperbox revolver, steadying her gun-hand by clutching
her wrist with her other. At fifty yards against a moving target,
it was a masterful shot!

But unless she had managed by chance to
strike some vital portion of clockwork Poe's artificial anatomy, I
knew he would be back on his feet in seconds. In addition, while
the blade had resumed its normal rate of descent, I still had not
much time before the steel found my breast.

"Olimpia!" I cried. My chest did puff out,
after all—not in the implementation of my doomed plan, but in
happiness and love. Olimpia was not dead! But how was it possible?
I had witnessed her incineration with my own eyes. As happy as I
was to have her back, I knew that unless she could loosen my bonds
within the next minute, we would again be parted—no less than I
myself most certainly would be; that is, my upper half parted from
my lower.

Lifting her skirts to prevent her feet
becoming entangled in them, she dashed down the steps and rushed
across the floor towards me.

"Oh, Olimpia!" I cried. "We haven't a moment
to lose! The blade! It is descending upon me!"

She sized up my situation quickly, glancing
up at the ceiling and then down at the cord that bound me to the
table. A knife, of course, would put an end to my predicament at
once. But I saw in her eyes that there was to be no such simple
solution.

"Hold still, Eddy!" she said. She tugged on
the table. Yes, a solution even simpler than a knife. My hopes
soared. But then flagged again when I saw her straining against an
immovable object and I realized that the table had been bolted to
the floor.

She looked frantically about my person for
the knot that secured the cord. But the strap had been twined
around me by such a profusion of intricate convolutions that the
location of the knot was not easily discerned. It could be hidden
anywhere within the baffling complex of coils. She ran her hands
over my chest, searching for it by feel. I shivered when I saw the
blade pass but an inch above her delicate fingers.

"The lever!" I cried at last, remembering the
words of the clockwork Poe. If I raised my head, I could see it on
the other side of the table from where Olimpia stood, a chromium
plated iron rod with some sort of trigger mechanism on the handle.
"It controls the pendulum. Quickly!"

Olimpia rushed around the foot of the table
towards it. I only hoped its operation was self-explanatory. But
who knew what combination of pulling, pushing and triggering would
cause the pendulum to stop? Any action we took might just as easily
increase its speed or rate of descent, our efforts serving only to
hasten my demise.

But the desperation of the moment allowed no
time for prudence. Olimpia made to grasp the lever. "Pull it!" I
cried, lest she entertained the same reservations that had entered
my mind. "Pull it! Pull it!"

The clockwork Poe had risen from where he had
been lying stunned on the floor and now stood between Olimpia and
the lever. I saw the hole in his coat where the bullet had entered
him. His waistcoat beneath was smeared with a red-tinged fluid that
I knew was not blood. Olimpia's shot had taken him in the stomach,
a fatal wound for any man but a mere nuisance to one of Coppelius'
devilish creations. As she reached for the lever, Poe grabbed her
by her wrists, forcing her hands up. My heart sank. Even armed,
Olimpia could not hope to overcome his strength.

"'And this maiden'," the villain began with a
vile sneer, "'she lived with no other thought than to love and be
loved by me.' Say good-bye to your precious Eddy, my dear. For you
are mine now."

No sooner had the fiend spit out his words
than Olimpia wrenched herself free and twirling like an acrobat
delivered a roundhouse kick to the machine's mouth. I heard a loud,
wet-sounding crack and I knew that whatever material formed his jaw
had shattered into a million pieces. He went flying across the room
as though he had been kicked by a horse. I was astonished.

Unfortunately, the force of her effort had
driven her to the floor—and my time was up. Not knowing what else
to do, in desperation I inhaled deeply thereby expanding my chest
to gain the fraction of an inch necessary for the sweeping blade to
just barely kiss the cord that bound me.

Whoosh!

The blade swept upon its course. The world
seemed to pause and I saw in stark clarity that the razor's edge
had sliced a single strand halfway through its breadth. I had only
to expand my chest further to snap the bond, but I could breathe in
no more. I had not even time to exhale, when I saw Olimpia's hand
appear on my chest. She clutched a handful of the coils, including
the broken one, and pulled. As expected, my bonds began to unravel
like the uncoiling of a tightly wound spring. The cord snapped and
the severed ends lashed the air like whips, releasing me from its
deadly embrace.

I made to roll away, but felt myself
restrained by the shoulders. Poe had grasped me from behind,
determined to hold me down for one last pass of the blade. The
damnable murderous creature! I in turn grasped his wrists, twisted
around and pulled with all my might. I had taken him by surprise
and this, coupled with my fury-enhanced strength, was sufficient to
haul him headlong onto the table. He realized his peril at once. He
looked up at me, his jaw from Olimpia's kick a shattered ruin. Gone
was his expression of sneering contempt. It was replaced by a look
of genuine fear as sweeping down upon us was a clear premonition of
the fiend's demise born on a glittering blur of burnished
steel.

Without pity, I looked him straight in the
eye.
"'A dirge for you the doubly dead!'"
I shouted, just as
the blade swept past me.

With the sudden lessening of the automaton's
weight, I fell backwards off the table. I landed on the floor,
still holding the clockwork man's arms, head and chest.

I released them with a shudder, as though I
had found a cockroach in my soup.

Olimpia had not escaped the blade. She had
freed me from my bonds but in so doing had failed to withdraw her
arms in time to avoid the razor's edge. I had been vaguely aware of
it at the time, but so intent was I on surviving my struggle with
the clockwork Poe that I had had no opportunity to react. She had
somehow managed to halt the pendulum. Now, I saw her sitting on the
floor with her back to me. She sat in the shadow of the lever
cradling her poor arm. As I scrambled to my feet to tend her, I
fully expected the worst.

But as I approached, she turned her shoulder
to me, hiding her injury from my sight.

"No, Eddy, please don't look. I don't want
you to see it."

"But I must if I am to help you. Olimpia,
please." I knelt beside her, my mind racing. I struggled to recall
whatever simple medical procedures that might have been within my
power to perform. I was already removing my tie to make a
tourniquet when I peered down into her lap—where I fully expected
to find her severed arm laying in a bloody pool—only to find no
blood at all. One of her arms was as unblemished as ever. She was
cradling her other in it, her hand covering a spot on the forearm.
I reached down gently. She resisted at first, but then allowed me
to pull her hand away.

I would have said the blade had sliced her
arm to the bone—if there had been a bone. Where I was expecting
severed muscles and tendons and spurting blood I instead saw the
twisted ends of tiny snapped cables and broken lengths of brass and
copper tubing seeping the red-tinged fluid I knew was not blood.
The blade had inflicted what would have been a frightful wound on a
human; but I was stunned to see that Olimpia was not human.

My hands recoiled from the gash.

"Please don't hate me, Eddy," Olimpia said
with such heartfelt emotion that I immediately got a lump in my
throat. "As you can see, I am my father's creation."

I didn't know what to think. All of her
father's other creations had tried to kill me in recent days. I had
developed an aversion to them, only to discover that the woman I
loved was one of them. I was at a total loss.

"But I won't be forever," she added
hopefully.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm becoming real, Eddy."

I remembered Pluto. Unbeknownst to Coppelius,
his clockwork creation had been well on its way to becoming a real
cat, a process arrested only by my killing it. Real sinews, organs
and vessels had grown up around the machine's gears and springs
like jungle vines reclaiming the ruins of Man's conceit. Poe
himself was driven by his desire to become a real man—me. Coppelius
had foreseen none of it and had devised his new serum in haste to
halt the process.

"Then Coppelius was trying to prevent you
from becoming real?" I asked.

"Yes."

"That was the purpose of the needle
machine?"

"Yes."

"And you are now on your way to becoming a
real woman and the process is irreversible?"

"Yes!" I saw the beginnings of a smile creep
over Olimpia's face.

I thought back to the girl as I had first met
her, sitting silently until the wee hours at Virginia's bedside. I
remember thinking her an odd girl, barely capable of speech, but
seeming to gain faculties every day. She had always seemed to me a
tender soul—if such terminology were possible of one born in a
workshop—but somehow not of this world. Now I knew why.

I took her arm in my hands and examined the
gash. "Can this be repaired?"

"Oh, yes," she said with confidence. "I can
do it myself. I have assisted enough—"

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked her
abruptly.

"I was afraid," Olimpia replied. "My memories
come and go, Eddy. It is like waking from a dream. Not just in the
morning, but all the time. I'm hoping that when I'm ... fully
formed ... that I will..."

"That you will what?" I urged.

"That I will not remember my past at all, and
I can simply be me."

"But who are you? That is to say, whose blood
runs in your veins?" It had taken all of my courage to ask. I had
none left to hear the answer.

"Virginia's," Olimpia said after a long
pause. For a moment, I felt light-headed. Tears welled in my eyes.
Olimpia grasped my hand. "I believe it is why you love me," she
said.

"God help me, I do," I answered.

I heard a scuffing of hard-soled shoes on the
stone floor. Fearing some new Coppelian horror, I scanned the
chamber and quickly found the source of the noise. It was Poe; or
rather, the lower half of Poe, legs and hips alone. I had last seen
it draped over the head of the table to which I had so recently
been bound. It was now attempting with some effort to push itself
upright. Without arms, the thing was having difficulty gaining its
feet. Once it did, it began running in crazy circles. It banged
into the table leg and then turned and dashed blindly across the
floor. At length, it slammed into the wall, whereupon it sat down
heavily and began almost comical exertions to regain its feet. How
it was possible for the thing to move at all was beyond me. Had I
not known who the legs belonged to I might have laughed. As it was,
I found the creature's exertions grotesque and obscene.