Sinister Sentiments (9 page)

“This cannot be so,” I declare, scrambling to my feet. “This is Metero’s doing, and I’ll fix it, Annette, I swear.”

The beast lumbers back across the room, hopping up onto the wide bed to curl in a ball. She is hiding her face from me again, one huge paw atop her muzzle, but I can see the wetness of tears in her fur. The weathermaster has turned her into an animal, but left her the human ability to cry about it. When I pull a blanket up over the lower part of her body, Annette retracts her paw and gives me another sad look. It hurts me to remember how beautiful her face was that very same morning, and it stabs at my heart to know that she is still the woman I love within this hideous casing.

“I’m going back to the factory at once,” I tell her. “I’m going to find a way to reverse this.”

The maids and the cook’s assistant refuse to believe what has happened, but they take their orders from me nonetheless. After I’m certain that food and water has been provided for Annette, I leave again for the factory in the first coach I can flag down. The labourers on the bottom-most floor of the factory work around the clock, in shifts to keep the sky engines firing, and I spot a door that must have been left open for ventilation. I cross the lawn, veering from the usual path that I have taken for so many months at this place, slipping into the doorway to access the worker’s floor.

Smoke, steam and the glistening of turning gears fills my senses. The strongest of the labourers turn cranks and push giant wheels in constant circles, whilst others stoke the great central fire with a never-ending stream of coal. It is hard to find someone who isn’t totally occupied by their duties, until I spot a sleeping figure by a gold and glass contraption in the corner. The lift-operator is still here, taking a break from the hand-operated pulleys and cranks.

“You there,” I say as I reach him, prodding the man in the shoulder.

His heavy-lidded eyes flicker open, observing me with dark, dilated pupils.

“Take me to the third floor,” I demand.

He makes an indignant scoffing sound, folding his thickset arms.

“Only Mr Met’ro goes to’t third floor,” he counters.

I stand at my full height, looking down on him with my best sneer of derision.

“I am Mr Metero’s temporary replacement,” I tell him. He remains unresponsive. “My name is Khazran Steed.”

At this last utterance, the labourer finally gets to his feet.

“Khazran Steed,” he mutters as he crosses to the lift controls. “Well, Sir, that’s a differ’nt matter, in’t it?”

I am pleased, at least, that he knows my name, but it does make me wonder why he’s heard of me. I step into the glass-fronted lift box, holding on to a gilded handle as the labourer gives the mechanism its first hard crank. With a shunt that sends a sick shiver up through my spine, the lift begins to ascend through the empty floors where the clerks and architects work during the day. The aubergine corridor of Metero’s private floor is bathed in shadows as the lift comes to rest beside it. I step out into the darkness, grateful that the glass ceiling ahead offers me a little light from the clouded moon outside.

The huge expanse of the roof space is eerie as the gathering dark settles in. It seems to me that this street is darker in atmosphere than all the others around it, and I wonder if Mr Metero is able to control the moonlight as well as the clouds. My footsteps echo among the metallic hum of the dormant weather pipes, and I weave amongst them until I reach the weathermaster’s desk. He told me that emergency instructions were somewhere in the bureau. I hadn’t thought to explore them until now, but I’m hoping there’s some way to contact him within those notes.

Ripping through drawer after drawer, I don’t end my furious search until loose papers, trinkets and stationary are scattered everywhere around me in the darkness. Nowhere in the mess can I find anything marked with words like ‘protocol’ or ‘emergency’, but I scan every paper with the hope of finding a telegram address for Africa. Metero might even have arrived there already if he elected to take his airship this morning. Again, I find nothing that can help me, moving to the very last scrap of paper with fading hope fuelling every nerve. I run my eyes over its message:

Lesson the third: There is beauty in everything, if only one has vision enough to see it.

This is meant me for me, I know by Metero’s quaint phrasing and the matching, cursive script to the note Annette had been given.

“You planned this,” I whisper. “You evil rotter, you heartless cur, you-”

“That’s quite enough of that, dear boy,” a frail voice interjects.

Jumping to my feet, I search the shadows for the old man whose voice I know. A pinkish glow greets me to the left, where the outline of the floating rose comes into view. Two liver-spotted hands hold the rose’s glass dome, and Metero’s face is cast into shadow by its crimson light. His glossy eyes sparkle as his thin lips expand into a greedy smile.

“My employees are very important to me, Khazran,” he explains, “as is the very ethos of my beloved factory.”

I watch his skeletal face as he approaches.

“You should be in Africa,” I say weakly.

The old man chuckles. “There was no appointment in Africa,” he chides. “Don’t you see yet, Khazran? It’s a test. Do you honestly think I’d leave the most destructive technology in the nation in the hands of the likes of
you
?”

The last word expounds from his tongue as though it is laced with poison.

“A test,” I repeat, my brow furrowed. “A test of what, may I ask?”

“Perspective,” the old man replies. “You find thunder and rain to be hideous things. You wished the sight of a dying bloom to be removed from your vision.”

I look down at the note in my hands again.
There is beauty in everything.

“So you altered Annette,” I conclude. “You have made her ugly so that I might learn that beauty isn’t everything.”

I walk to meet his stride, looking down at the glowing rose between us. A smile of sheer relief crosses my face as I watch the bright flower hovering there.

“So what happens now?” I ask, pointing to the flower. “When I learn to appreciate the thunder and the beasts and the ugly things of life, you’ll release her beauty again from this jar?”

Mr Metero passes me by, setting the rose down on his desk. He settles into his chair, removing his top hat as he reclines to observe me. Not even a hint of a smile passes over his lips.

“No,” he says plainly.

Something heavy forms in the pit of my stomach.

“What do you mean?” I plead.

“Lesson the fourth,” the old man begins. “A deal once brokered, cannot be undealt.”

I take his meaning, but I cannot accept it. The vision of Annette’s hazel eyes, surrounded by dark fur, sends a retching shudder through my bones. The old man raises his palms, his narrow shoulders rising in a shrug.

“This isn’t some fairy-tale, dear boy,” Metero whispers. “I need all my employees to appreciate the darkness and obscurity of this world as much as the pleasantries and the light. Annette will remain as she is for the rest of
your
natural life.”

“My life?” I ask.

The old man nods. “I suggest you learn to love her all over again,” he says, “because if you turn on her now, she might just end you in order to reclaim that which you bartered away. She knows all about the terms of what you did; I visited her shortly after the transaction took place. The fact that she hasn’t killed you already suggests that she loves you very much, Khazran. It is my hope that her devotion is not deeply misplaced in you.”

I walk home in the semi-darkness with the odd feeling that the moon is lighting my way, but I try to ignore the prospect of the absolute control that the weathermaster now has over my life. My life with the beast. Annette is condemned to her fur-and-claw prison for as long as she loves me, and I am challenged with the prospect of loving her back. For my life, my job and my own sanity, I can do nothing now but try and live by the lessons which Metero has set me.

When I return to my top-floor bedroom, my wife lies sleeping in a heap, beneath the blankets where I left her. Her arched back heaves with every breath, fur sliding against the sheets to make a peculiar scratching sound. Someone has opened the bedroom window, and a trail-shaped clearing in the broken glass leads towards the empty frame of my prized mirror. I stand before its lack of reflection, glad that I cannot partake of the vanity which has made me a victim in Metero’s game. A final letter is secured to the gilded top-edge of the ruined mirror, and I pull it down and unfold it with a snap. Annette gives a sleepy yowl behind me as I read the curling writing by the light of the moon.

Lesson the fifth: he conquers, who conquers himself.

Galile
o’
s Mistake

“
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
” – Galileo Galilei

Hearts have feelings and minds have memories long after they allegedly die. At least that’s what I’ve discovered. If Silas knows it too, then he’s not letting on. He just walks beside me down the foggy pavement, cane at his side. The golden spiral around the polished oak whirrs with the click of cogs and gears, sending out subtle vibrations as it assesses the path before us. The signals return to his palm in calculated waves of volume and size. The cane tells him when to stop, when to go, when to turn and, perhaps most importantly, when to run. A black-skinned man in 1894 knows a lot about running. These murky cobbles, lit by the dim yellow glow of fetid gas lamps, they’re leading us to Oxford Street. It’s not a place to which persons of colour usually go.

That’s why Silas wants me here: just in case his midnight jaunt goes awry.

He only emerges to walk at night, taking air when London is at rest and the fumes of the factories that surround us are reduced, their dark chimneys only letting faint wisps escape, echoes of the production that occurs when the sky is bright. There is no sound of moving mechanisms now, save for Silas’s humming cane and my own four legs as they skip in step with his wide strides. Silas breathes contentedly in the summer air, humid in the centre of the city even at this late hour. All I can think is that it’s going to cause me to rust. My master brushes the reddish stains off as wear and tear, shining me and patching me up until I’m silver once more, but the rust causes me pain in the parts of me that are still the old me. I don’t think he knows what being part machine really entails.

Silas Obadiah is a man with a fancy for all things mechanical, a fact which hasn’t changed since the sudden removal of his eyeballs occurred last winter.

Once upon a time, I belonged to a grand old lady from a grand old house. She had skin pale as death but a kind, withered smile and a penchant for science books and all things dark and furry. One such furry thing was me, long ago, when my coat shone like polished obsidian and my eyes were bright and brown as cocoa. Milady supped tea in the parlour of her Kensington town house. with me at her heel as she read great works by great men. But I grew tired of the stuccoed white walls and the periwinkle china in her bony old hands. When time allowed, I escaped to other parts of her grandiose home, exploring the lavish furnishings until I found my way to a simple, wooden staircase that seemed terribly out of place.

I worked my way up, discovering that there were people in the house I had not previously known of. Milady kept me away from the servants and their quarters, lest their black-as-coal skin should startle her precious companion and send him into a wild froth of teeth and barking. Neither of these things happened when I beheld Silas. He was in the process of repairing the hand crank of a large brass sewing machine, an implement I understood not to get in the way of, lest my tail become attached to one of Milady's finest drapes. I marvelled at the deepness of his eyes, the same shade as my own. He worked with such intent and focus, his giant dark frame so gentle and precise.

When he noticed me standing before him, he did not cower. He extended a hand that I moved towards, scratching behind my ear with his long fingers. The delicacy of his touch was astounding for hands so large. I stayed with him that afternoon until Milady came to know that I was missing, at which time her sallow butler, Robertson, found me loitering and yanked me by my collar back downstairs where I belonged. We repeated the process often after that; my visits to watch Silas at work were far more important than a few bruises and some loss of fur around my neck. But when Milady became aware of the soreness at my throat, she started coming to seek me out herself rather than let her brutish butler manhandle me away.

So it’s my fault, really, that Silas lost his magnificent eyes.

My misbehaviour began what was to be their lifelong friendship. Upon seeing the scientific skill that Silas possessed, Milady called upon him almost daily to improve the other aspects of her home. He installed for her a telephone, the most-sought after of society toys. After Silas’s alteration, it gave such a perfect sound when in use that Milady’s acquaintances seemed to never stop calling her upon it. When she noticed Silas’s ripped cotton trousers and his creased shirts, my mistress ordered him some hardy waist overalls directly from Strauss and Davis in the United States. Silas was proud to wear the thick blue denim as he continued his good work. He still wears the infernal things now. I resent them, not because he loves them so, but because they made him different to the other black-skinned servants. He was already hated by the white ones, but the denim made him an enemy to his own kind too.

Caught between worlds. I suppose now I can relate better to how that feels.

Servants and society alike were nothing short of sickened by the friendship between Silas and Milady. She looked upon him as a thoughtful son; perhaps she’d never had one of her own, for none ever came to visit. Silas was respectful and pleasant, and most of all, he loved me as dearly as Milady did. I confess I loved him more than I did my mistress. I remember that love, how it pulsed through my veins and filled me with excitement whenever he called me by name. Most of my body doesn’t react that way now, it’s not designed to, but my heart still feels like it’s swelling against the steel cage that holds it in place. Silas can’t see any of that; all he knows is that he calls and I answer.

Resentment among humans is most hard-felt when an opportunity to act presents itself. Once again, it was my fault that such a chance occurred. I did a rather foolish thing on an outing to Hyde Park.

I died.

Milady liked to present me, fine specimen of the German Shepherd that I was, parading me for all the other society people to view. It was autumn when we took our usual circuit, with Silas waiting in the carriage for our return. I saw a pile of crisp, reddened leaves that had dropped from an oak at the very edge of the grounds. I ran for them, breaking away from Milady too fast for her to catch my lead. I absconded wildly and threw myself into the leaves, rolling joyously and evading her attempts to regain control of me.

In my evasion I burst out into the road. The horse leading the carriage reacted before its driver, but the heavy beast couldn’t find my dark form beneath it enough to evade me with its hooves. One great stamp, and my neck snapped in two. I lay, barely breathing, listening to Milady’s cries, the last sound I thought my ears would ever receive.

But I awoke.

I knew that I was dead, that the body I now possessed was not my own, but somewhere inside I was still me. My eyes were sharper, now glowing yellow with electric lights and receptors where my cocoa irises had once been. Silas beamed down at me when they opened, but the eyes were not fully in my control. They were already taking in the colourful schematics behind him on the wall of his attic room. Something that looked like my brain was drawn inside a cage of wires and dials. A red mass in the shape of a heart donned a similar garb, though it now bore something attached beneath that resembled a battery, connected by gears and cogs that ran onto pistons and shafts where my four legs extended. I rose on them and looked back to Silas, a new understanding that I had never before experienced coursing through my structure.

“Galileo?” he asked. “Do you hear me, boy?”

My bark was not the bark it had once been. I clenched my steel jaws and made a sound like a knife scraping along a plate. Silas winced at it, but he laughed and patted my head all the same. It didn’t feel like it used to, his skin was warm against the metal plate where my fur had once been, but the delicacy of his touch was lost to me.

“We shall have to work on that,” he said.

And he did. Silas worked on me night and noon for three rotations of the sun, since the autumn day when I had left this world. On the fourth day, he presented me to Milady. She was dressed in black with a mournful look as I stepped into the room, listening to the thump of my own heavy steel paws as they padded atop her plush rugs to reach her. At first, I thought she would shun me, her eyes welled with terrified tears. But when she saw me lie down at her feet as I had for so many years before that moment, her fears became still. The bark Silas had arranged for me was pleasing to her ears. She had slowly begun to transform into a true woman of science through her friendship with Silas, and now she had proved the transition was complete.

“One thing, my dear fellow,” she told him with a bony, pointed hand. “I don’t care for his heart being on display like that. You must cover it up.”

Robertson, the beastly butler, saw me before Silas had had the chance to do so. He had left my chest open for Milady to see that it was still me in the mass of metal somewhere, but in doing so the resentment the other servants felt finally had cause to break loose. I was an abomination. A sin against God and life itself. Silas had done what no man had right to do in returning me from the grip of the Almighty. And he would pay for his sins.

They came when the first snow had mixed with the grime of the London streets. A mob, some hundred strong, led by Robertson and the people of our house, many of those who had once adored me and fed me their scraps. I saw them first from my post at the window, barking to alert my mistress and her technician. She pleaded with Silas to run, but he stood tall and imposing in his denim and his dark boots. He was no man for running, not back then. The mob burst in through the doors of the fine townhouse, tearing through Milady’s elegant furnishings until they found us in the study. There Silas held up his fists, his eyes roving over their knives and sharpened implements from their gardens. My gears ground with furious, unoiled creaks as they pointed at me and him in their rage.

Milady was wrestled aside and held back. As a woman of society, they assumed her mind had been turned by the dark menace she called her friend. Once she had witnessed the penance for his wickedness, they were sure she would be well in her humours once more. It didn’t quite turn out like that. She watched in horror as her trusted butler stepped towards us, his sallow face alight with fear and revulsion. His hand rose to single me out, bolstered by the kin crowding behind him to try and access the room and the culprit within it.

“By the will of God, this beast must be still.”

“And yet it moves,” Silas said with a shrug.

His candour was enough to incite them. A crowd moved upon him that I couldn’t penetrate; other rioters with spades and pitchforks smacked at my plating to hold me back. The heart within my mechanism swelled as I heard Silas give a sickening cry of pain. He choked out sobs and screamed an unholy howl that mastered any animal sound that I had ever made, before or after the end of my life. Milady screamed too when the crowd parted to show us its good work.

Empty sockets. The eyes of the unbeliever removed as penance, so that his mechanical monstrosities would come to an end. He could not weep for how his sockets bled; the sight was purely wrong, impossible for me to comprehend in my shock. But Milady wept for both of us. And then, slowly, the sight of him sank in. Something happened in my head, a surge of gears and clicks and whirs over which I had no control. I leapt for Robertson, my steel jaw catching his throat beneath that gloating smirk he was wearing. I thanked an unseen spirit that Silas had had the presence of mind to still give me teeth.

I had killed too many of that mob to count before the rest made their escape. Fuelled by vengeance and my own newfound strength, it took me far too long to notice both my maker and my mistress on the floor. In the shock and the gore of it all, Milady had died of fright. Her heart did not beat when I rested my metal ear over it to listen for signs of life. Whether it was the sight of Silas’s punishment that had done it or my outburst in response, I did not know. All I knew was that Silas was already a pariah, and a dead mistress would only lay further blame upon him. I took him by the arm and dragged until he forced himself to his feet, shielding his empty eyes with one arm, a feeble attempt to placate his pain. I guided him to my lead and we fled into the frozen night.

Time had not meant much to me when I was first alive, but in my new incarnation I finally saw its wonder. Silas had been irrevocably damaged by the mob, but being the progeny of slaves had certainly taught him to work with what he had remaining. Our dwelling was nowhere near as grand as it had once been, but to him it was a paradise of whirring gears and clinking cogs, the tick and the tock of the old clock tower brought him solace. We were perfectly concealed, so long as we left it only by night, which suited Silas perfectly, though he did look rather odd walking dark streets in black-lensed spectacles.

He looks odd now as we stare into the window display of the huge department store on Oxford Street. Its owner has been boasting in the dingy local pub for weeks about its upcoming display of the latest photographic equipment, a fact that caught my master’s attention a few nights ago. Silas cannot see the lenses and lights the store is using in its window, but he knows by my sudden stop that he has come to the right place. He raises his cane, still whirring, and turns his head in my direction.

“Anyone about?”