K Jeter: Infernal Devices

The purpose and function of some of the devices brought to me were unfathomable, and an odd secretiveness prevailed among my father's former clients. Amateur scientific pursuits had long been a preoccupation with serious-minded gentlemen of property and leisure, but the ones who came to me were often as uncommunicative as the devices they wished to be repaired. Sextants that divided the sky into angles not found in the usual geometries, microscopes whose hermetically sealed lenses distorted the viewed object into shimmering rainbow images, other instruments whose complexity and manifold adjustments quite overwhelmed my powers of speculation as to their use – all of these had in time been brought into the shop. With Creff's assistance I had managed the simpler repairs, a hair-thin chain slipped from its proper place or a minute cogwheel grown toothless and replaceable with a duplicate from the vast jumble of parts and half-assembled machines left in my father's workroom. The well-heeled clientele for whom I performed these services paid handsomely enough. Other devices, where the malfunction was as mysterious as the function, I was forced to return to the distraught owners with my apologies. I fear it was from the growing number of these admissions of inadequacy that my trade had fallen off, the word passing among the cognoscenti that the son was not the equal of the father. The disastrous episode of the Patented Clerical Automata, who completion and setting into motion in a London church I had undertaken while my confidence in dealing with my father's creations had not yet been sufficiently discouraged, had been suppressed from public notice, else the notoriety would have ended my trade once and for all.

Such were the well-worn reveries that weighted my thoughts as I bent over the cabinet. As needful as my personal accounts were of replenishing, I feared that this was not to be an occasion of profit. I turned the flame up on the bracket behind the counter and, while my visitor continued to regard me with his slitted stare, bent over the device with magnifying glass in hand.

My study revealed nothing of the machine's purpose, though any question of its origin was dispelled. Under the glass I discovered the floating escapement with ratcheted countervalences that my father had invented, though in this instance of a smaller size than I had ever encountered before, and linked in parallel to a train of duplicates disappearing into the brass innards. Other features were of such minuteness that the magnifying glass, no matter how I squinted through it, failed to yield the details of the device's workings. One section, brighter than the rest, appeared to be made of finely hammered gold leaf, the sheets of which were folded upon themselves in various asymmetrical patterns. Simple set-screws in the corners of the box showed where the device could be removed from its mahogany housing. A number of incomplete linkages around the sides, with signs of wear marking the collars at the ends of protruding shafts, indicated where the workings could be connected to other, larger devices.

"It appears to be some sort of regulatory mechanism," I mused aloud. I looked up to see the Brown Leather Man's eyes still fastened upon myself. I shrugged, made uneasy by his intent scrutiny. "For a clock, perhaps, with various other functions combined?" I knew that the device was far too complex for such a simple purpose.

Brown Leather nodded. "A regulator… yes. That is so. You are familiar with devices such as this?"

"I know much of my father's work," I said. "But this in particular – no. I'm sorry."

"But to repair it." His narrow gaze seemed to sharpen as he looked at me, as though the glint in his eyes were the points of needles. "You are capable of such a task?"

As with most tradesmen, avarice outweighed prudence in my nature. There was nothing to be lost in an attempt to remedy the device, however unlikely the chances of success. But the man's eyes unnerved me, arousing a taste of the fear that Creff had felt, and moved me to honesty. I closed the mahogany lid and pushed the cabinet away. "I think not," I said. "Some of my father's creations are beyond my skill. I believe I would only damage this further if I meddled with it."

My candour enabled me to look the gentleman directly in the eye. For a moment he was silent, the small points of light behind the slitted lids reading deeper past my own face. "Your warning I accept," he said at last. "Nevertheless, worthwhile will I make it to attempt what you can."

"I cannot guarantee any results."

"Please." The brown hands folded along the sides of the cabinet and slid it towards me. "Even the attempt is valuable to me."

"Very well." My fingertips briefly touched his as I drew the device back to me; a deep chill flowed from the dark skin, drawing a heartbeat's warmth from my own. "I am, ah… uncommitted to any other projects currently. If you'd care to return in a week's time? Perhaps by then. Let me write you a receipt." I took a sheet of paper from beneath the counter. "Received from…?"

He ignored me, his gaze broken away from me and now sweeping about the shop's contents. Each clock, simple or elaborate, fell under his inspection.

"Is there something else with which I can assist you?" I asked. Free of his searching gaze, I had been able to dismiss my moment of dread as foolish. Perhaps a solider bit of business could be transacted.

Brown Leather turned back to me. "Your father's workroom," he said. "I would like to see it."

The request caught me by surprise. I blinked at him before I found my voice. "Why?" I said simply. "There's nothing-"

"Your father, Mr Dower; perhaps he left behind some articles, the use of which is puzzling to you? Mechanisms not exactly as this, but similar in part. Or even wholly different, but still of a function to you mysterious. If such are still in his workroom, I would like to examine them. They might be" – his voice arched, intimating – "valuable to me."

His surmise as to the contents of my father's workroom was completely accurate. When I had first come to London to claim my inheritance, I had been astonished at the mechanical chaos that filled the large windowless room at the back of the shop. Tottering clockwork mountains, eviscerated timepieces of every size from pocket watches with dials as small as thumbnails to the massive gearing of tower clocks with hands thicker about than a man's wrist, brass skeletons of automaton figures with the round orbs of porcelain eyes staring from the unfleshed faces, scientific apparatus with dusty lenses peering only at darkness – a whole, universe caught midway through its moment of creation, and frozen there by the death of its Creator. My father apparently had worked on a score of projects simultaneously, and only his fervid brain had been able to sort out the interpenetrations of each with each in the crowded space. In my brief tenure there, the disarray had been increased by the natural decay of Time, and by my own admitted carelessness in clearing enough room for my own work at my father's bench. In addition, my practice of facilitating a number of repairs by scavenging bits and pieces from the partially assembled devices had the unfortunate effect of hastening the general disintegration.

My reluctance at allowing a stranger to see the embarrassing muddle into which my legacy had fallen was overcome by the prospect of turning a profit on some conglomeration of gears and springs on which I had never expected to receive anything other than scrap value. "By all means," I said, gesturing towards the door behind the counter. "If you'd be so kind as to step around, I'd be pleased to have your inspection."

I guided him down the hallway and the short flight of stone steps to the workroom. There being no gas bracket, I lit the lamp I kept on the bench. The flame, even adjusted to its highest, cast a light barely penetrating to the corners of the room, had they been visible behind the disordered masses of my father's abortive creations. The glow picked out highlights of brass gears and little more.