Arachnodactyl (2 page)

A
t the bottom
of the hill, Ikey hustled across the yard, past the two-room house they lived in, and on to the weathered barn where he and his uncle had a small workshop.

As they passed through the door, Ikey’s dad looked up from a mug he was filling from a small barrel of beer. “What the hell happened to you? Fall into a pit, did you?”

“My word,” Admiral Daughton said from the bench at the work table. He lifted his mug of beer to Ikey. “Is that how you get him around?”

Ikey carried his uncle over the hard-packed earth of the barn floor, then settled him into a chair fixed with wheels.

Ikey’s dad handed a mug to Smith, who accepted the drink with a nod and a fresh puff of smoke. “We make do out here,” Ikey’s dad said.

Once Ikey secured Uncle Michael in the chair, he pushed it towards the workbench. Uncle Michael held his hand out to Admiral Daughton. Ikey steered him in that direction. “Michael Lynch, at your service, sir.”

“Admiral Richard Daughton, retired. This here is my coachman Smith.”

Smith stood, gave a nod and a puff of smoke, then sat back down.

“You’re the gentleman with the mechanical arm, are ya?” Michael asked as he leaned forward.

Smith nodded again.

“What seems to be the trouble?”

Smith clenched the pipe between his teeth and stood. While the mechanical hand hung limp, his remaining hand unbuttoned his coat.

“Blasted thing gave out on him,” Admiral Daughton said after a swallow of beer. “Flaccid as can be. Damn near turned the coach over when he ran it into a ditch, he did.”

Smith began to shrug out of his greatcoat. Ikey stepped over to help him.

“Watch yourself,” his dad said. “Don’t get any mud on his coat. For the Lord’s sake, did you two roll down the bloody hill?”

Ikey flushed and took Smith’s coat. Holding it away from himself, he carried it across the barn and hung it on a hook next to several shelf cases filled with Uncle Michael’s books.

“We were on our way back to Whitby,” Admiral Daughton continued.

“Whitby?” Ikey’s dad interrupted. “From where?”

“I met with some gentlemen in Kendal.”

“Kendal? What the hell are you doing out here, then? Should have stayed south, gone through Leyburn.”

With a jerk of his head, Admiral Daughton insisted Smith knew where he was going.

Ikey’s dad took a swig from his mug, then shook his head. “Bah! You should have stayed south. Gone through Leyburn. Could have picked up the highway on the other side of Northallerton.”

While Ikey’s dad and Admiral Daughton discussed the best way to get to Whitby, Ikey helped unbutton Smith’s waistcoat and shirt. As Ikey pulled the shirtsleeve down the length of the mechanical arm, he stared, transfixed. Tin plating covered it. A fine scroll work of trailing vines, leaves, and blooming roses decorated the plating like a tattoo.

A series of straps held the arm to a canvas yoke that encircled Smith’s chest. A metal bar rested on his shoulder like an epaulet. At the end of the bar, a hook secured the arm to his shoulder. Ikey glanced at Uncle Michael to make sure he was watching.

Smith’s fingers tugged at the straps and buckles that crisscrossed the right side of his chest. Once he had them free, he grabbed the tin wrist and lifted the arm up. Ikey gripped the cool metal and joined him in lifting. He saw where an eyelet rested over the hook. His hands reported back a slight upward movement as the arm slid along a track. From there, it lifted off the shoulder and exposed a metal plate studded with holes, out of which poked a series of hooks.

“That’s an interesting contraption,” Uncle Michael said.

“Careful,” Ikey’s dad added. “Don’t you dare drop that.”

Ikey laid the arm on the table with all the care deserved by delicate glass.

“Cost a mint,” Admiral Daughton said. “The whole package. He had it done down in Kerryford.”

Uncle Michael let out a low whistle.

“Kerryford?” Ikey’s dad asked. “Where’s that?”

“East of London.”

Ikey sat at the workbench, unslung the satchel from his shoulder, and laid it on the table. After a quick examination, he located the small collection of screws that held the plating on at the shoulder, and again at the elbow. Ikey reached into the satchel. His fingers landed on the handle of the appropriate screwdriver, then pulled it out of the tool roll.

“How does the arm work?” Uncle Michael asked.

Smith sat down opposite Ikey and puffed at his pipe, though the volume of smoke and the aroma of tobacco had begun to thin out.

“It’s a rather ingenious solution,” Admiral Daughton said. He pointed at the hooks poking through the plate that hung where Smith’s arm used to be. It made the coachman appear artificial, like an automaton. “There’s a type of surgery in which wires are planted among the muscles of his chest. As he manipulates the associated muscles, the wires transmit the intended action to the machinery inside the arm. By flexing various muscles and rolling his shoulder, he can control the mechanical arm nearly as well as his other. When it works, that is.”

“Can nothing be done for his voice?” Ikey’s dad asked.

Smith arched an eyebrow at Ikey’s dad. He slipped the stem of the pipe from between his lips, held it for a moment as if to speak, then snapped it back into place with a click against his teeth. A puff billowed from between his lips before a stream of smoke charged down from his nostrils and obliterated it.

Admiral Daughton chuckled. “I suppose there is. I’ve been endlessly impressed with the inventions coming out of Kerryford these days. The wonders they can do are extraordinary. But a proper coachman needs only two arms to steer by and an ear to hear the destination. The tongue is hardly necessary, if one knows where he is going, and doesn’t need to bother for directions.”

The plating over Smith’s arm popped as Ikey pried it off the arm.

“You break it?” Ikey’s dad asked. He stepped away from the small keg and stared over his son’s shoulder.

“What’s it matter?” Uncle Michael asked. With his good leg, he scooted his chair over to the end of the table. “He breaks it, he’ll fix it.”

“I’m not getting paid for him to fix his own mistakes.”

“I’ll take a beer,” Uncle Michael said. He gripped the edge of the table with his hand and pulled the chair up to the end of the work bench.

“Help yourself,” Ikey’s dad grunted.

Smith slid his mug over to Uncle Michael. Each exchanged a nod.

Ikey stifled a grin. He then took a moment to peer over the inner workings of Smith’s arm and marvel at the mechanisms inside. It held the grace of a watch, but the power of a small engine. The workmanship was fantastic and new to him, and so he took a few minutes to poke around and examine each piece, study its shape and the movements it made and the function it introduced as it interacted with the other pieces to form mechanical systems. As Uncle Michael had taught him, Ikey built models of the systems in his imagination and pictured how they worked together, how each one delivered a function dictated by the form. One only needed to know the shape of a thing to know how it behaved. Once he understood how the arm was to function, finding the broken component became a matter of finding where the function broke down.

Admiral Daughton took a drink of his beer, then leaned forward. “You might want to consider a trip to Kerryford yourself,” he said to Uncle Michael. “Might get your leg fixed up.”

Ikey’s dad snorted. “Then he’d have no excuse to avoid work.”

“He looked busy to me when I got here,” Admiral Daughton said. “I doubt any man with sense takes his leisure beside a busted tractor in the rain.”

“Any man with sense.”

Ikey’s grip tightened around the handle of a pick. His dad was antsy, more agitated than usual. It wouldn’t bode well for him and Uncle Michael this evening, after Admiral Daughton and Smith left.

Ikey set the pick aside and plucked a pair of needle-nose pliers out of the tool roll. He fed the point into the works, testing the parts and making sure they moved as their shapes suggested they should.

“Do you and this young man repair a lot of mechanical items?” Admiral Daughton asked Uncle Michael.

“Aye, that we do. But this one here, he’s the one fit for the task. Never seen anything like it. It’s like the machines talk to him.”

Ikey stifled another smile, though they’d both be damned if Uncle Michael didn’t stop goading his brother-in-law.

“That’s good to hear,” Admiral Daughton said. “I was rather surprised to find that anyone out here had any mechanical skills at all.”

Ikey’s dad sucked at his teeth. “It’s these new machines. Cost of labor goes up as all the men either go off to war, or on to work in the cities. No one’s left to work the estates, so the lords get these machines, thinking they’ll replace all their hands. But then the machines break down and no one’s around to fix the blasted things.”

“Well, how fortunate for you two. Your services must be in high demand,” Admiral Daughton said. “But how is it you can go from working on farm machines to contraptions like this?”

Uncle Michael adjusted his posture in the chair. “When words gets around that you fix things, people bring you all kinds of things to fix. There’s more money in fixing their stuff than there is in turning them away. Besides, the principles are the same. Same rules that apply to tractors also apply to watches, and dare I say, mechanical arms.”

“Brilliant,” Admiral Daughton said. “How fortunate for us.”

He turned to Ikey. “Do you believe you can have this finished before dusk?”

Ikey nodded. Fortunately, they were far enough into spring that the sunset was a distance off.

“He’ll have it done,” Uncle Michael said. “You can count on it.”

“Brilliant,” Admiral Daughton repeated. He took a drink, then regarded Uncle Michael’s chair. “Say, what happened to your leg?”

Ikey dropped the pliers. They clattered to the table. His dad smacked him on the back of the head.

“Careful, you dolt!”

“Fell off the loft,” Uncle Michael mumbled.

“How unfortunate. Smith here lost his arm in the Battle of Talana Hill. Poor soul charged up the hill. Boer rifle fire took out the men on his left and the men on his right. When he finally got to the top of the hill, he was greeted with British artillery fire.”

“Is that how he lost his tongue?” Ikey’s dad asked.

“No. He just can’t speak is all.”

“And he was in the service?”

“He could speak at the time. What about you, lad?” Admiral Daughton asked Ikey. “You look old enough for the service. Are you ready for your call-up?”

Ikey hunched over the arm and pretended to duck under the ability to hear the question.

“He’ll get it soon enough,” Ikey’s dad said. “His brothers got theirs when it was their turn.”

“Oh? You have sons in the service?”

“Had.”

Ikey glanced at the admiral from the corner of his eyes. He looked over at Uncle Michael, who looked down into his beer.

Admiral Daughton straightened his posture. “Their sacrifices will not be in vain, my good man. There is no higher honor to an Englishman than to die in defense of the crown.”

Ikey’s dad took a swallow of beer. “Defense?” He snorted again. “It’s not Germans, but creditors who’ll take my farm when this one leaves for the Continent. He may not know hard work, but he keeps that one out of my way so that I can. I ain’t a bloody nursemaid.”

“Be that as it may, it is the sacrifices of our youth that have kept the Germans at bay, down on the Continent.”

“And the airships?” Ikey’s dad asked.

Ikey looked at the admiral for his response.

“Not a single German airship has landed on British soil—not intact, anyway—and none shall.” Admiral Daughton glanced at Smith, then to his own beer. He picked it up and took a long swallow.

“It’s not the landing that causes the trouble, or so I hear,” Ikey’s dad continued. “It’s what they toss overboard as they sail along.”

“Rest assured,” Admiral Daughton said to the last of the beer in his mug, “British ingenuity will prevail. We will soon have a weapon at our disposal that will turn the tide of this war and send the Germans fleeing back across the Continent.”

“What kind of weapon is that?” Uncle Michael asked.

Ikey watched the admiral from the corner of his eyes. A slight flush of color rosied his cheeks. His jaw clenched and his jowl bulged as if the details rested there, stuck in his crop.

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say,” Admiral Daughton said, then glanced over at Smith. “But rest assured, as sure as I am sitting here, the sun will never set on the British empire. We shall prevail.”

In the arm before Ikey, one of the rods he teased with the pliers failed to deliver a corresponding action. He traced the rod’s path and found a broken face gear at the end of it. He pointed to it and nodded to Uncle Michael.

“By jove, that’s it,” Uncle Michael said. “And what does that gear do?”

Ikey glanced at the gear and the connecting rod and the gears that fed off of it. “It transfers motion to the elbow joint, then along the shaft of the arm to the wrist.”

“And so without it?”

Ikey shook his head. “Nothing moves. No motion goes through.”

Uncle Michael sat back in his chair and smiled. “Excellent work.”

“Yeah, but can you fix it?” Ikey’s dad asked.

Ikey nodded. “I’ll replace the gear. There’s one around here somewhere.” He gestured at the stacks and racks of crates around the end of the barn, each filled with cast-off parts scavenged from various sources.

“Brilliant!” Admiral Daughton said and clapped his hands together.

Smith knocked on the table with his knuckles and nodded at Ikey. The men’s admiration fell on him like sunshine.

Within fifteen minutes, Ikey had found a fitting replacement for the stripped gear and had it installed. A moment later, the arm was back in one piece. As he helped Smith don it again, Admiral Daughton set his second beer down and announced that he had an important project for Ikey to assist with.

Both Ikey and Smith turned their attention from his shoulder to the admiral.

“What sort of project?” Uncle Michael asked.