K Jeter - Infernal Devices

Looking up, I saw him savouring my astonishment: "Yes," he said, smiling. His hands restored the metal covering, and buttoned the shirt over it. "The man who made me – the man who made you – he was a genius, wasn't he?"

"It's-" Words failed me. "It's impossible-"

His eyes seemed to flash, as though in anger. "Oh? Is it?" The voice took on a sharper edge, cutting through the affected humour. "And if I were to open you up – would you see anything less remarkable? Less intricately dazzling, in its squelching, spongy way? Lungs and heart and spleen, and all the rest – ticking away, as it were? Yet you walk down the boulevard, and pass any number of such wonderful devices, all ticking away as they walk, and think it no great marvel."

The vigour of his outburst caught me off guard. "But but human beings-" I stammered. "They're not made; except, perhaps, by God." No sooner had I spoken it, than I regretted the mawkish-sounding religious sentiment.

The Paganinicon seized on it: "Ahh! You find it possible to believe in an invisible Creator; but one that you could have seen, and talked to, while he was alive – that's beyond you, is it?" He smiled triumphantly, pleased with his rhetoric.

A little while ago, I had been running for my life through the marshland, and now I was debating theology with a clockwork violinist; my brain was not so much whirling with events, as it was drifting free of all moorings to reality. I struggled through my exhaustion to assemble a riposte. "The operations of an invisible Creator are meant to be beyond our comprehension; such are Mysteries. But clockwork – gears and wheels and springs – that is another matter."

He gave a scornful laugh. "Don't try to split that sort of hair with me, Dower; I know as well as you do that the simplest watch is as much a befuddlement to you as the workings of the heart that beats inside your chest. It's all a mystery to you, isn't it?"

I felt a sting of resentment at his insinuations. "I can't imagine," I said stiffly, "on what grounds you make that assertion. I run my father's business, as he did-"

"If you please." The Paganinicon winked at me. "We know the truth about that one, don't we, now? "Run my father's business," indeed – run it into the ground, more like. You don't know the first thing about those gimcracks that the old boy left behind."

"How – how would you know that?"

He leaned close towards me. "Because, Dower, my somewhat brother – we share the same brain. Don't we?"

The carriage's interior seemed much closer around me; the smug, knowing gaze of two pairs of eyes weighed heavy against me, as we continued to rattle towards an unknown destination in the inky night. "I… don't know what you mean…"

"Oh, tell him," cooed Mrs Wroth at the Paganinicon's ear. "Stop toying with him; you're so cruel." Her eyes narrowed in a species of rapture as she spoke the last word.

"Very well." Though he bore my face, its outlines were filled with a sly knowledge, rather than my continuing bafflement. "Now listen very closely, Dower; do try to make elastic these petty definitions of possible and impossible that you entertain." He settled back and regarded me. "Thus: I am a thing of clockwork. Your scepticism does not outweigh what is. You have seen my jewelled heart. Yet, admittedly, I am no clanking mannikin, pivoting a fixed smile and glass eye on the world. Behold." He held his hand palm upward and flexed it through a sweeping gesture similar to a magician's. "I have subtlety of movement, rather better than yours, in fact; I could play the violin, if one were here. No, my future audiences will not be disappointed in my skill. Everything that human beings of flesh and blood are capable of, is within my power."

"Everything," said Mrs Wroth. She gazed raptly at him.

"Yes; yes, that's true." The Paganinicon nodded. "There will be no disappointments in that aspect, either…"

"I've already made sure of that," she said smugly.

"… for, of course, that is where the, ah, fire springs from, is it not? The passion that goes into the music? And how, I ask you, could I perform like the great virtuoso Paganini, if I were not… equipped in all ways like the original?"

"I couldn't imagine," I said frostily. Even in my fatigued state, and under these strange circumstances, my companions' sordid references were clear to me.

The Paganinicon raised his finger towards the carriage's roof. "Yet surely it must puzzle even such a stolid nature as your own, my dear Dower, how this is possible. Those crude forerunners that your father – our father – devised, those Clerical Automata back in London… you know yourself what an intricate assemblage of gears and springs is in those devices, all to propel them through the simplest, repetitive gestures and squawkings. How much more must then be necessary, eh? – for a masterwork such as this!" He slapped his chest with a bravura flourish; it gave a dull metal thud. "What possible mechanism could govern a range of motion, speech… everything, exactly human in every respect? Eh, Dower? What could it be?"

His voice had mounted from enthusiasm to mania. "I have no idea," I said carefully, drawing back.

"What else but a human brain! Of course! It's obvious!"

I studied him for a moment. "Are you saying… that you have a human brain inside you?" It seemed a grisly notion; I had an involuntary vision of one sloshing about in a zinc-lined tank behind his eyes.

He reached across and tapped me on the brow. "No… but you have one inside you." His smile grew wider, revelling in the perplexity he generated.

I admitted defeat: "I'm sure I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

He folded his long hands – the duplicates of my own beneath his chin. "Let us examine," he said in scholarly parody, "the principle of sympathetic vibrations. You are familiar with the concept? Good. Let us say… a violin string is plucked; across the room, a violin string tuned to the exact same note – not the least shade higher or lower vibrates with the first, though no hand has touched it. A commonly observed phenomenon. It is most often seen with musical instruments, as the nature of their construction makes them especially resonant; yet all things are resonant to some degree; it is merely a matter of finding the particular vibration that would make, say, a stone vibrate in tune to it. These vibrations with which we are commonly familiar are vibrations in air; yet other media exist which are capable of transmitting vibrations even more subtle than the sounds a plucked violin makes. Some vibrations are so rarefied – yet real – that they are beyond our modes of perception; that is to say, perceptions of which we are aware. These vibrations, and the media in which they travel, surround us, penetrate us, even shape our very thoughts and existence – yet we know them not, much as a fish would be unaware of the water in which it swims. Do you follow me?"

"I suppose so," I said, shrugging. "Though I can't see the point in conjecturing about things that can't be perceived. You might as well assume they don't exist at all, and be done with them."

"Well, well – this from the man who was invoking God a moment ago; I admire the flexibility of your logic, Dower. But no matter. This medium of which I speak, and the subtle vibrations that pass through it – it can be rendered perceptible, and useful for those with the necessary skill. You see, it is the medium in which the fine vibrations of the human brain radiate from inside every human skull. Each brain is tuned, we may say, to a particular note in this medium, just as an infinite number of violin strings may be tuned to an infinite range of pitches sounding in the medium of the air. All that is lacking is a means of sensing those vibrations, and tuning another object to their pitch, for a resonance to ensue, exactly similar to a violin string sounding along to another string's note." The Paganinicon's voice dropped, the hush of secrets being imparted. "That, my dear Dower, is what your father accomplished."