Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

“Peasant uprising,” he said.

“Dangerous?” Sofiya asked.

“You know as much as I do.”

“Danger,” echoed Dante. “Death, doom, despair.”

“Your bird is so cheerful,” Sofiya said.

Dodd pulled open the door at the front of the car. He wore an everyday jacket, but he had snatched up his scarlet top hat and cane. Behind him came a tall, lean man in an Aran fisherman’s sweater and cap. He had deep red hair and carried a bag of juggling equipment. This was Nathan Storm, the manager who had recently returned to clowning.

“Piotr!” Dodd said. “I need you outside with me. Tortellis, you too! Where’s the Great Mordovo?”

“What is it? Please explain, Ringmaster,” Mama Berloni called out from her seat.

“Poor peasants. Desperate. They think we’re carrying tax goods and money to the landowner, and they want it back.” Murmurs rushed up and down the aisle. Dodd put up his hands. “Keep calm. We’re going to put on a little show out there, just for them, and prove we’re just a circus. Nathan, you and Hank begin with that team juggling act and the Tortellis will follow with some acrobatics. While they’re doing that, Mordovo, you fetch some of your magic equipment from the boxcars. Everyone else wait here. Move quickly, please! Everyone loves a circus, but not when they have to wait for one.”

In moments, Dodd and the performers he had named were gone. Everyone else remained in their seats in a cloud of tension.

“Is it all right?” Nikolai asked in a small voice.

Thad stuck his head outside again. Already Nathan and Benny, another clown Thad barely knew, were juggling clubs and flipping them back and forth at each other. Dodd stood to one side, his ringmaster’s grin on his face. Piotr hulked near him, either to translate for him or guard him, Thad wasn’t sure which. The enormous crowd of Russian men, easily three times the number of performers and roustabouts aboard the train, stood near the engine and watched. They carried pitchforks and scythes, and Thad hadn’t noticed until that moment how dangerous such implements looked, especially in the hands of hard-muscled men who knew how to use them. Thad glanced in the other direction. Far down the way, past the brightly colored circus cars, lay the two drab boxcars of Mr. Griffin. Thad thought fast, then pulled his head back in.

“Everything will be fine,” he told Nikolai. “You stay here with your-with Sofiya.”

“Applesauce,” said Dante from his perch above the seat.

“And where are you going?” Sofiya asked sharply.

“To get some air.” He nipped out the passenger car’s rear door before she could respond further, leaving Dante behind as well.

With all eyes on the performance near the engine, Thad was able to jump unnoticed to the ground on the other side of the tracks. He trotted down beside the line of cars in the dim light. The setting sun and dark clouds dimmed the light considerably, giving him cover. He passed the animal cars, pungent with exotic manure and loud with restless roars and shrieks. No spiders were in view.

He reached the first drab car. The sliding cargo door lay on the other side, and Thad knew better than to bother with it-noisy to open, very noticeable. Instead, he skinned up the ladder bolted to the metal siding. Just under the eaves of the car was a vent with crisscross bars. Cautiously, Thad pressed an ear to the chilly metal beneath it. Nothing. He slowly brought his head high enough to peer through the bars. Blackness lay beyond. He inhaled through his nose and got smells of wood and engine oil and metal shavings and paper, all smells he associated with a clockworker’s work space. If there was a man in there, however, he was remarkably quiet and willing to sit in complete darkness.

Thad climbed down and slipped along to the second car. What kind of clockworker was Mr. Griffin? Why did he need Thad and Sofiya? Thad also remembered quite clearly the way Mr. Griffin had asked about Nikolai. In Thad’s experience, clockworkers never did anything by accident. What appeared to everyone as insanity was actually extreme intelligence. Everything they said and did would make perfect sense to anyone who could understand it. Unfortunately for the people around them, clockworkers were able to convince themselves that nothing mattered but their own goals and research, which was why they treated other humans with such casual cruelty and disdain. To a clockworker, all life was absolutely equal-a rat, a stalk of wheat, a tree, and a little boy were all the same. Thad had heard of some religious philosophies that taught compassion to all life based on this idea, but clockworkers ran the other way-all life was equally useful for experimentation.

Mr. Griffin didn’t care in the slightest about Thad or Sofiya or Nikolai themselves. He only cared about gaining knowledge or completing his experiments or finishing his grand plan. Mr. Griffin’s plan or experiment must be enormously important to him if it meant keeping Thad around-Griffin had to know Thad was working out a way to kill him. If Thad could figure out what Griffin’s plan was, he would have a leg up in ending the creature’s life.

If only he had access to some explosives. A stick of dynamite beneath the boxcars would end Mr. Griffin’s career rather quickly. But this wasn’t America, where dynamite was easy to come by. Thad ran his tongue round the inside of one cheek. He was caught in a race. The moment Mr. Griffin finished whatever he was working on, Thad would no longer be important, and Mr. Griffin would no doubt kill him as a threat. And who knew what he might do to Sofiya and Nikolai?

He shook his head and climbed the ladder to the second car. What happened to Nikolai didn’t matter. Automatons didn’t matter. Machines didn’t matter.

So why did it seem like he could still feel Nikolai’s little head pressed into the side of his arm?

Because he reminds you of David, he told himself firmly. His memory wheels make him act that way in order to ensure his continued existence. If you like him and view him as a little boy instead of as a mere machine, you won’t destroy him. He acts like a little sweetie so you won’t kill him.

Another treacherous voice whispered, Isn’t that what all children do?

Faint cheers and applause came down the track. Apparently the little performance was having a positive effect. Thad pulled himself up to the vent of the second car and listened a second time. This time he heard a soft chugging sound and the burble of liquid. No voices, however. He peered through the vent. The interior of this boxcar was lit, but all Thad could make out through the bars were some odd shapes of metal and glass. The glass especially drew his eye. It curved like an enormous wine-glass turned upside down, but Thad could only see a tiny part of it. What the hell was Griffin doing? And where was the man himself? What man would subject himself to traveling in a boxcar through dangerous territory? That didn’t seem likely even for a clockworker. Maybe all this was just his equipment, and Griffin was coming to Saint Petersburg another way, by ocean steamer or airship. The more Thad thought about it, the more sense it made. Mr. Griffin wasn’t on the train at all.

Still cautious, however, he crept up to the roof. The curved top was clear but for the bump of the covered vent in the middle. His heart beat at the back of his throat from both nervousness and, he had to admit, excitement. He was a hound on the chase, a hunter on the scent. He had the power to stop a monster before he hurt more people, people like David or Ekaterina or Olga. It wasn’t a life he had chosen, but now that he was doing it, he did find a certain grim satisfaction in doing it right.

Thad slid quietly across the boxcar roof to the covered vent. A heavy padlock secured the lid. Of course. At least he didn’t see any alarms or nasty little traps. He produced his lock picks and set to work. The lock was tricky, but so was Thad, and just as his hands began to get cold, it popped open. Another cheer went up from the front of the train.