Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

Another mechanical hand snapped out and grabbed for Thad’s wrist, his brass one. Thad twisted around and grabbed the mechanical wrist instead. With a wrench, he snapped the machine’s hand off and flung it straight at the central spider. It bounced harmlessly off the spider’s body.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Thad shouted. “I just want Nikolai. Let him go!”

“THE BOY GIVES US FREE THOUGHT. THE BOY GIVES US LIFE. HE BELONGS WITH US. YOU DO NOT OWN HIM.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

“Applesauce,” squawked Dante from the floor. Maddie and the colt hovered in the doorway beneath the portcullis. “Nine minutes. Nine.”

“You can’t keep him prisoner here,” Thad said. “I won’t let you.”

Another hand smashed down, forcing Thad to dodge out of the way.

“HE IS FREE TO GO WHENEVER HE WISHES,” said the machine. “WE DO NOT TREAT AUTOMATONS AS SLAVES OR PRISONERS.”

“Look out!” Nikolai shouted.

A hammer swung at him. Thad ducked beneath it, but it clipped his shoulder and flung him onto a conveyer belt, which swept him toward a hopper that gnashed like a metal shark. Thad rolled aside. The hopper clamped on empty air. Shoulder afire, he scrambled to his feet. Noise was coming down the corridor-a stampede of footsteps. Thad reached the doorway and spun a wheel set next to it. Maddie and the colt leaped forward in time to miss the portcullis, which crashed into place. A moment later, the twisted Nikolais and the havoc spiders reached the iron grate. Fingers and claws reached through the spaces, but they couldn’t get through. Thad swallowed. He had kept them from getting in, but now he couldn’t get out.

“Eight minutes,” said Dante. “Eight.”

“Mr. Sharpe! This I failed to calculate.”

The sound of Mr. Griffin’s voice in the room stilled everything. The mechanical hands and tools stopped reaching. The machinery slowed. Even the automatons in the hall calmed.

Thad automatically looked around for a brain in a jar, then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Griffin was back in his lair across town, speaking wirelessly, just as he did with the speaker boxes in the city upstairs.

“Griffin!” Thad said. “What are doing with Nikolai? Let him go. Let us go, and you’ll never hear from me again. I swear to you.”

“It isn’t up to me, Mr. Sharpe. It’s up to my machines. Their choice. They only obey me out of love.”

Clockworker logic again. Thad had never loathed it more than at this moment. “How much choice do they have if they can only do as you say?” he countered, pretending to talk to Mr. Griffin, but actually addressing the machine. “You say you want your machines to have free will so they can make decisions on the battlefield, but really you’ve only created slaves who obey your orders.”

“Nikolai isn’t bound,” Griffin said. “He can walk out anytime he pleases. That’s the genius of it, you see. I built one machine that can copy other machines-more or less-but can’t think for itself. Havoc built another that can think for itself but can’t make copies. Bring the two together, and we have a third machine that creates a self-aware army with exactly as much free will as Nikolai there has. As long as he wants to love and obey, the others will love and obey. And Nikolai wants to love and obey. You’ve taught him well, Mr. Sharpe.”

“Father loves us,” Nikolai said. “I hear his voice in my head and on the speaker boxes. I have to do what he says. We all do. Love is obedience.”

“…obedience,” said the automatons behind the portcullis.

“That isn’t free will,” Thad snapped.

“They choose to obey,” said Mr. Griffin. “Just as Nikolai does. The boy will stay. I have calculated a ninety-”

“Shut it!” Thad ran to the chair. The machine didn’t stop him. The chair sat on a platform that put him at eye level with Nikolai, and Thad put his hands on his rigid metal wrists. Thad’s brass hand clanked against Nikolai’s. He pulled with all his strength, but the little automaton didn’t move. He tried to grasp the cable, but a spark snapped from it, jolting Thad hard, and he pulled his hand away. “Nikolai, stand up. You can do it.”

“I can’t,” he said softly. “He loves me and I will do what he says.”

“…do as he says,” the automatons from the hall repeated.

“You can choose, Nikolai.” Emotion welled up in Thad’s chest, making his voice thick. “Come on! I know you can. I’m right here!”

Nikolai’s voice was faint now. “I can’t.”

“…can’t.”

“Seven minutes. Seven.”

“That’s not true, Niko!” Thad said desperately. “You can stand up! You’re more than just your memory wheels and the signal in your head. You can choose. You were made to choose, just like me. All you have to do is stand up.”

“All I do is mimic you,” Nikolai said. “I try and try to do something else, but I’m just a copy. I’m not real, just like you said. I’m just your little shadow. Just a machine. Father loves me, and I will do as he says.”

“…a machine.”

Guilt crushed Thad like a granite hammer. “No, no, no, Niko. I was wrong. I was trying to push you away because I thought…because I didn’t believe it was possible for you-for anyone-to be…” He trailed off.

“There, you see?” said Mr. Griffin almost gently. “You can’t say it. I calculated you could not. And you might as well tell that parrot to stop counting down. In just under two minutes, the weaponry we have built will be complete, and I am sure my children will choose to fire on the Peter and Paul Fortress. Once that is leveled, my children will take the city of Saint Petersburg quite handily. You can’t stop us.”

Thad whirled, though there was nothing to whirl on. “You’re going to kill thousands-millions-of people.”

“Not all of them. I need a few left alive, Mr. Sharpe. You continue to be useful even now, so I think you’ll be one of them, though Miss Ekk will have to go.”

“Six minutes. Six.”

Thad turned back to the chair. Once again he was in a cellar with David, trying to save his life, and once again he was failing. “Nikolai, please stand up. I believe in you.”

“I can’t. Father loves me, and I have to obey.”

“…obey.”

“You’re not David, Nikolai! You’re not going to die here!” Thad was weeping now, and he didn’t care. He faced Nikolai, this little machine that had created so much havoc in his life, and he knew that it didn’t matter how much chaos or trouble or pain Nikolai brought; he would willingly go through it again and again and again. “Griffin is not your father, Nikolai. I am. You’re my son. Always my son.”

And then Nikolai was out of the chair and in Thad’s arms. It wasn’t at all like embracing David. It was embracing Nikolai, and that was what mattered.

The cable dropped to the floor. When it separated from Nikolai’s ear, all the automatons in the hallway, spider and human, froze still as metal sculptures.

“You can’t have done that!” Griffin boomed from the speaker boxes. “It goes against the calculations! I’m never wrong!”

Thad held Nikolai close a moment longer and Nikolai clung hard to him, ignoring the rant from the boxes.

“Years of planning! Thousands of rubles!” Griffin’s voice was becoming more and more enraged. “You’ll pay for this, Sharpe. I still have my own spiders. That circus you’re so fond of will-you! What are you doing here? I-”

The voice snapped off.

“I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAS HAPPENED,” said the machine. “THE FATHER’S VOICE HAS ENDED. HE NO LONGER GIVES ORDERS.”

“I don’t know.” Thad was still holding Nikolai, though he was growing heavy. “We have to run, and we have to run now.”