The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (7 page)

“It was Zacharius’s
vanity, not his soul, that was embodied in the mechanism — and it was his vanity,
not some diabolical bargain, that struck him dead. My wife would never believe
it, though, and she will swear to her dying day that she saw the dwarf
Pittonaccio disappear into the bowels of the earth with the spring in his
grasp, bound for the Inferno. She believes that she and I were cursed on the
day he died, and that all the force of her constant prayers — and mine — has
only served to keep the curse at bay. Your father is an exceedingly devout man,
and I do not criticize him for that, but you must make up your own mind what to
believe, and there are better fates than to live in fear.”

Jehan had taken his
grandfather’s word over his grandmother’s, far more determinedly than his
father had, and had tried very hard not to live in fear. Aubert Thun had not
lived to see the death of his son on St Bartholomew’s Day in 1572, and Jehan
driven into exile — but Jehan knew that Aubert would have been adamant that it
was the way of the world that had brought that evil day about, and that Jehan’s
printing-press was no more to blame for his father’s death than the residue of
any curse that had once attached to the Clock of Andernatt. Jehan Thun’s
grandmother had, however, carried the conviction to her grave that she and her
son were cursed — and now that Jehan had seen the cellars and inner rooms of
the Château of Andernatt, he understood far better how she might have witnessed
the broken spring being borne into the hollows of the mountain, whether or not
it was bound for Hell.

Jehan asked the dwarf
about Zacharius’s broken spring, but the present Master of Andernatt told him
that it was long discarded, replaced by a far better mechanism.

As the dwarf had said,
the clock was not quite finished, but very nearly so. The parts scattered on
the floor of the room were all tiny, and they all required to be fitted into the
narrow space above the rose-window, behind the part of the facade that
resembled a bell-tower — an awkward task, hampered by the casing of the wheel
bearing and concealing the motto-engraved plaques.

“The face of the tower
can still be removed,” the dwarf told Jehan, “and I can compensate for my lack
of stature by standing on a stool, but I don’t have your slender fingers or
your delicate touch. Even if you have not dabbled in clockwork since you were a
child, your own work must have maintained your dexterity; my escapement is not
as delicate as a fusée. You could complete the work in a matter of days.”

“I don’t understand the
mechanism,” Jehan Thun objected. “I’ve never seen its like.”

“It’s simple enough,
once explained,” the dwarf assured him.

Jehan Thun’s gaze
redirected itself then to the blank copper plate that would presumably be
eclipsed by a plaque if the mechanism were actually to prove capable of moving
the hands and activating the chimes.

“You need have no fear
on that score,” the dwarf said. “I’ve replaced the maxims that caused your
grandmother such distress.”

“With the original set?”
Jehan Thun asked.

“Those were discarded
long ago. I made my own replacements. They’re all in place, but now that the
casing is sealed they can’t be seen until the clock is completed and started. I
trust that you didn’t come here with no bolder hope than to melt down the
remains of the mechanism and separate out the precious metals therefrom. You
did say, did you not, that you are no bandit?”

“I expected to find the
clock in ruins, like the château,” Jehan Thun said, hesitantly. “My grandmother
told me that the place was considered accursed, and that no one would be living
here.”

“Calvin redoubled the
fear of the Devil that the good people of Geneva already had,” the dwarf told
him, “but there are always men who are careless of curses. Had I not been here
to hide and stand guard over the pieces of the clock they’d have been looted
long ago. Even I could not resist a whole robber band — but it’s a clock, after
all, not a gold mine. You wouldn’t have come so far just for a little metal, I’m
sure — but I’m equally sure that you haven’t come in the hope of reclaiming the
spring that might or might not have been the soul of Master Zacharius.”

Jehan considered the
possibility of telling the dwarf about his grandmother’s sorrows and delusions,
and how she had begged his father to make the journey in order to destroy the
last remnants of the clock and lift the family curse with prayer, but he did
not want to do that. “I came to examine the fusée,” he said, eventually,
although he was not entirely certain that it was true. “One of the few things
on which my grandparents agreed, save for the fact that they loved one another
very dearly, was that it was a new type, better than any previously used in a
spring-driven clock. Aubert thought that he could reproduce it, but he never
contrived to do it, and came to believe in the end that he had misremembered
some small but essential detail. Alas, he was in Paris by then.”

“You came to study the
fusée?” the dwarf repeated, in a tone that had a strange satisfaction in it as
well as a certain scepticism. “But you say that you’re not a watchmaker, Master
Thun — merely a printer.”

“There’s nothing mere
about printing,” Jehan retorted. “Had printers not put the word of God directly
into the hands of every man who can read there would have been no Lutheran
armies, no Calvinist legions. Printing is changing the way that men think,
believe and act — but I’m a printer without a press, and there are hundreds of
clock-makers in every city in Europe eager to discover a better escapement for
watches. Is that escapement the one my great-grandfather built to regulate the
missing spring?”

“No — but your grandparents
were mistaken about the originality of the first escapement. There was only one
thing new about the fusée I discarded, and that was its material. It was brass,
not iron; it did not rust, but if it worked any better as a regulator than any
other it was by virtue of the quality of its workmanship, not the detail of its
design. The one I have made is better adapted to its own mechanism; it could
not regulate a watchspring any more than a pendulum could drive the hand of a
watch. On the other hand, what you say is perfectly true: there are a hundred
clockmakers in every city in Europe who would be eager to know what might be
done with my mechanism, and you shall share in the profits that will accrue
from the dissemination of the secret if you will help me finish my work. Once
we have completed the clock, you will be better equipped than you could have
hoped to spread new knowledge throughout the continent — and beyond, if you
care to. The world is, as you doubtless know, a sphere, and there is always further
to go in every direction than the cities we already know. There’s a new world
now, beyond the Atlantic Ocean, and a vast number of undiscovered islands in
the far Pacific.”

It did not seem
remarkable to Jehan that the dwarf’s comment about the world being a sphere was
echoing a statement he had made the day before, in another place. “Very well,
then,” he said. “I shall fetch my grandfather’s tools. If you will explain what
needs to be done, I shall do my very best to carry out your instructions.”

Jehan Thun was as good
as his word, and so was the dwarf. Working to instruction, Jehan’s nimble hands
pieced together the last parts of the mechanism, although it was no mere matter
of assembly. There was a good deal of drilling to be done, a great many threads
to be worked, and an abundance of accurate filing, as well as a certain amount
of casting. Fortunately, the dwarf possessed a crucible and a vice, and a good
stock of charcoal with which to charge his furnace. The dwarf’s own fingers
were thick and gnarled, and he could never have done the delicate work that
Jehan did, but he was a clever man with plans and his strong arms could
certainly work a bellows hard.

Once Jehan had set to
work the hours seemed to melt away. Because there was no natural light in the
room where the clock was kept, Jehan did the greater part of his work in a
different one much higher in the château’s hidden structure, but he soon became
used to shuttling back and forth between the two. He worked long into the
evening, conserving that fraction of his labour that did not need good light,
but the dwarf was conscientious about interrupting him, not only to make meals
but also to explain the new mechanism he had built for the clock.

“It’s a secret that no
one else has discovered,” the little man bragged, “although it’s obvious
enough. How long have there been slingshots and other devices in which solid
objects swing freely at the ends of cords? At least since David slew Goliath.
Children play with such devices — and yet no one has observed, as I have, the
isochronism of the freely-swinging weight — or if anyone has, he could not go
on to the naturally consequent thought, which is that a pendulum might do as
well as a system of weights or a mere spring to regulate the motions of a
clock. Just as the descent of weights requires refinement by escapements, so
does the swing of a pendulum, so I devised one appropriate to it.

“I have tried out my
pendulum in humbler boxes with elementary faces, but never in a clock with two
hands, let alone a masterpiece like the Zacharius Machine. I could have got it
working, after a fashion, but a masterpiece is a masterpiece, and it sets its
own standard of perfection. I might have gone to Geneva in search of a skilled
clock-maker, but how could I dare, given my appearance? Even before Calvin
came, Master Zacharius was remembered by many as a sorcerer, and those who hold
such opinions are always among the first converts to any new fad — including
Calvin’s philosophy. Of all the cities in the world, why did Andernatt have to
be placed so close to Geneva? No one actually casts stones at me in Évionnaz,
or any other village within hiking range, but the way they look at me informs
me that it would not do to linger too long in any such a place, let alone make
any attempt to settle there. I was a wanderer before I came here, although I
did not want to be. I am a recluse now, although that would not have been my
choice before I realized how fearful people are of anything out of the
ordinary. Dwarfs are not rare, you know, and they cannot all be the Devil in
disguise, but men who do not travel far do not realize how many kinds of men
there are.”

“Noblemen employ dwarfs
as clowns and jesters in France, Italy and the Germanic states,” Jehan
observed. “They like automata too, to strike the hours on church clocks or
merely to perform mechanical acrobatics for credulous eyes.”

“I am not a clown,
Master Jehan,” the dwarf said. “Nor am I a jester. I am the man who discovered
the isochronicity of the pendulum, although I would wager that history will
give the credit to a taller man — perhaps to you.”

“History often makes
mistakes,” Jehan assured him. “Master Zacharius never received credit for the
fusée, because there
was a man named Jacob the Czech who worked in
Prague, and Prague is a far better source of fame than poor Geneva. I do not
charge this Jacob with theft, mind, for the device is obvious enough once a man’s
mind turns in that direction, just as your pendulum-clock might be. There may
well be another man who has already made the discovery — in Florence, say, or
Vienna — whose discovery has not yet been communicated to the other great
cities of Europe: I think that luck has more to do with matters of reputation
than height.”

“Yet Pittonaccio was
reckoned an imp,” the dwarf reminded him. “Had he been as handsome as you, he
might have been reckoned an artificer himself, and your great-grandfather might
never have gone mad. But Pittonaccio’s long dead, for men of my kind rarely
live as long as men of yours.”

“My father might have
lived a while longer,” Jehan said, sombrely, “had he not been a Protestant in
Paris at an unfortunate hour. Hatred is not reserved for those of strange
appearance; it thrives like a weed wherever faith puts forth new flowers.”

The dwarf allowed Jehan
to have the last word on that occasion, perhaps because he did not want to
offend his guest in advance of the clock becoming workable. On that score, he
did not have much longer to wait, for Jehan still felt that he was more
automaton than man, and the work that he did allowed him to conserve that
placid state of mind, absorbing him completely into matters of technical
detail. The hours sped by, and the days too — six in all — until he arrived at
the time when the last piece of the puzzle was correctly shaped, and ready to
be fitted.’

When he had set it in
place, Jehan Thun stepped back, and looked at what he had done.

It did not seem, now
that he had finished, that it was his work. He was a printer, after all, not a
locksmith or a clockmaker. He had played at being a locksmith and a clock-maker
when he was a child, using the very same tools that had served him so well now,
but it had always been play rather than work. Clockmaking had never been his
vocation, even though circumstance seemed to have turned him into something
more like clockwork than flesh, at least for a while.

He watched the dwarf set
the hands of the clock.

He watched the pendulum
swing back and forth, with a regularity that was quite astonishing, in spite of
its utter obviousness.

“If only the world were
like that,” he murmured.

“It shall be,” the dwarf
assured him. “We have the example now, far better than any commandments from on
high.”