Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“Really?” Hayes turned to one of the nearby guards. “What about you?” he asked. “You ever kill a man for Tazz? Ever beat him till he stopped breathing?”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Tazz quickly.

“Why not?” Hayes asked the guard. “Why wouldn’t you answer?”

“He wants to infuriate you,” Tazz called. “Wants you to hurt him. To prove you’re like him.”

Hayes and the guard stared at one another. He was a huge man, thick and bearded with eyes set far apart. He swayed slightly as though drunk and the wrench in his hand tapped softly against his thigh. “I never killed a man,” he said softly. “But I sure would like to sometimes.”

“You’re lying,” said Hayes. “Have you ever even worked in a factory? Or was your employment down on the street?”

“I don’t need to work in a factory to know it ain’t right,” said the guard.

“No factory? No factory, is that right?” Hayes called to Tazz, stepping away.

Tazz’s thumb returned to his chin. He thought for a long time before saying, “Would you say that all the poor in this city suffer just because they have no spot on a line, Mr. Hayes?”

“No. But I know a soldier when I see one. These men around me, they aren’t organizers. They aren’t the defenseless poor. And they aren’t missionaries.” Hayes tapped the side of his head. “Trust me. I know. These men you lead, they don’t want a peaceful revolution. They just want what they’ve been denied, and then some.”

“Even if they did fight, it would be a cleaner fight than the one your owners wage now,” Tazz said. In the distance Samantha thought she could see a faint line of sweat around his brow, and he licked his lips after each sentence. “With their monster roaming the streets, killing at their bidding.”

“McNaughton doesn’t have a fucking monster,” said Hayes, supremely condescending.

“Really? Do you honestly think you’re the only scientific oddity they have at their disposal? How could you seriously think such a thing?”

Hayes merely shrugged. But Tazz stopped and thought for a moment, and then stooped to the lantern at his feet. “Would you like to see?”

“See what?” said Hayes.

“See what they’re really making. See what’s really going on down here in the dark.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there are things hidden down here you can’t imagine. Things the city above has never dreamed of. I can show you, if you like.” He began turning up the light on the lantern.

“If you want.”

“Oh, I very much do,” said Tazz. He picked up the lantern and strode to the railing at the side of the pathway and stopped. “You may find this a little shocking,” he said softly, and held the lantern out.

It took their eyes a moment to adjust to the light filtering through the darkness, but then they saw it. It took Samantha a moment to understand what she was seeing, as if her mind was unable to translate the reality before her, but then her jaw dropped and she heard herself gasp.

To say it was a machine would be wrong, because that would mean that the enormous thing in the room with them had once been made, and she was unable to accept such an idea. It was too enormous, too intricate, too fantastic to have ever been designed and constructed by men. Huge, arcing pistons like cathedral buttresses stood frozen in the shadows, their long, slender arms reaching halfway from ceiling to floor. Turbines huddled behind them, silver shining through coke and grease, each one the size of cars. Exhaust lines curled out from somewhere in the machine’s innards and slid along the wall before disappearing into the cement. In between gaps in the thing’s plating she could see bundles of copper wiring thin as moss that linked one section to another, and upon what she thought of as the machine’s boiler the wiring gathered to a brassy forest. The boiler itself was a strange and curious thing, a mass of sloping iron and brass piping and thick blue glass that clutched to the machine’s belly like an offspring to its mother. It was so thickly armored and well hidden that whatever heat it bore in its belly had to be immense. And yet even though she could identify each part of the mammoth construction as some piece of machinery she’d seen before, only magnified to huge sizes, when she looked at the whole she could not comprehend it. It seemed wondrous and terrifying and somehow alive, alive and ancient. This thing could not have been made, she thought. It must have always been. It must have sat down here, waiting for them for so long.

Hayes did not seem as affected as she was. Instead, she saw he was staring at one distinct part of the machine: a large lamp-like structure set in the top corner, with what looked like a twinkling glass chimney set in the center. “Won’t be out for a year, my fucking arse,” he whispered to himself. Then he seemed to remember himself, and asked, “What is it?”

“You don’t know?” asked Tazz.

“You very well know I don’t.”

“Hm,” said Tazz, pleased. “I don’t know, exactly. I doubt if it’s one of Kulahee’s originals, though. But I have my suspicions. Have either of you heard of the Spinners?”

Hayes made a small hmph of surprise and turned to look at Samantha. “I have. I doubt you have.”

“What?” she said. “What do you mean?”

“The Spinners, Miss Fairbanks,” said Tazz. “One of the latest big projects. Though it’s been a very private one. They’re power generators, you see. But ones built deep under the ocean.”

“Under the ocean?” she said. “Why?”

“To catch the ocean currents. They’re like giant windmills, planted around ocean trenches and all along the bottom of the sea. They’re unmanned, just blind devices spinning silently down there, but they generate enormous power. McNaughton has been in the testing phases of the devices for some time, or that was the word among the other workers. They’ve managed a way to draw power from the sea for their factories, and their factories alone.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Hayes, staring out at the machine. “I’ve only seen how their maintenance alert works. Whenever one is in need of repair it sends up a little tethered buoy that flashes white. I’ve heard stories of strings of flashing lights out on the waves, waiting for someone to come service them. Nearby sailors thought they were the souls of the dead.” Hayes looked at Tazz. “You think this machine is part of the production of the Spinners?”

“No,” said Tazz. “I think it controls them.”

“From here?”

“Yes. And I know you must think me mad, that it must take miles and miles of cable to do that, but it’s true.”

Hayes’s eyes flicked back to the large lamp on the corner of the machine. “Is it?”

“Yes. This is the only machine of its kind that I’ve found, and I’ve been studying it for some time. It regulates them, calibrates them. I’m sure of it. Even from this far away. Or at least some of them. Maybe no more than a few.” He looked out at the machine and seemed to lose some of his spirit. “This is the least of them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because they abandoned it. Why would they do that, unless they had more of its kind, and better ones? Or machines that perform even more important functions? I don’t know. They built this off the new trolley lines, and when those flooded they felt they could cut their losses and leave this machine lying dead or dormant with the rest of the workers.”

“How did they build it? Surely word would have gotten out about such an undertaking.”

“I can’t say,” said Tazz. “It was not built by any worker I know, and as you can suspect I know quite a few. We just stumbled across it. How it got here is beyond me. Yet I believe there are many more like it under the city.”