Rachel Caine - Carpe Corpus

“Perfect.” She sighed. When she finally reached the edge, she peered down, but it was pitch-black . . . and then there was the sound of a scratch, and a flame came to life, glowing on Myrnin’s face a dozen feet down. He lit an oil lamp and set it aside. “Where are the stairs?”

“There aren’t any,” he said. “Jump.”

“I can’t!”

“I’ll catch you. Jump.”

That was a level of trust she really never wanted to have with Myrnin, but . . . there was no sign of mania in him, and he watched her with steady concentration.

“If you don’t catch me, I’m totally killing you. You know that, right?”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but didn’t dispute that. “Jump!”

She did, squealing as she fell—and then she landed in his strong, cold arms, and at close range, his eyes were wide and dark and almost— almost —human.

“See?” he murmured. “Not so bad as all that, was it?”

“Yeah, it was great. You can put me down now.”

“What? Oh. Yes.” He let her slide to the ground, and picked up the oil lamp. “This way.”

“Where are we?” Because it looked like wide, industrial tunnels, obviously pretty old. Original construction, probably.

“Catacombs,” he said. “Or drainage tunnels? I forget how we originally planned it. Doesn’t matter; it’s all been sealed off for ages. Mind the dead man, my dear.”

She looked down and saw that she was standing not on some random sticks, but on bones. Bones in a tattered, ancient shirt and trousers. And there was a white skull staring at her from nearby, too. Claire screamed and jumped aside. “What the hell, Myrnin?”

“Unwanted visitor,” he said. “It happens. Oh, don’t worry; I didn’t kill him. I didn’t have to—there are plenty of safeguards in place. Now come on, stop acting like you’ve never seen a dead man before. I told you, this is important.”

“Who was he?”

“What does it matter? He’s dust, child. And we are not, as yet, although at this rate we certainly may be before we get where we’re going. Come on!”

She didn’t want to, but she wanted to stay inside the circle of the lamplight. Dark places in Morganville really were full of things that could eat you. She joined Myrnin, breathless, as he marched down an endlessly long tunnel that seemed to appear ten feet ahead and disappear ten feet behind them.

And suddenly, the roof disappeared, and there was a cave. A big one.

“Hold this,” Myrnin said, and passed her the lamp. She juggled it, careful to avoid hot glass and metal, and Myrnin opened a rusty cabinet on the wall of the tunnel and pulled down an enormous lever.

The lamp became completely redundant as bright lights began to shine, snapping on one by one in a circle around the huge cavern. The beams glittered off a tangled mass of glass and metal, and as Claire blinked, things came into focus.

“What is that?”

“My difference engine,” Myrnin said. “The latest version, at least. I built the core of it three hundred years ago, but I’ve added to and embroidered on it over the years. Oh, I know what you’re thinking—this isn’t Bab bage’s design, that limited and stupid thing. No, this is half art, half artifice. With a good dash of genius, if I might say so.”

It looked like a huge pipe organ, with rows and rows of thin metal plates all moving and clacking together in vertical columns. The whole thing hissed with steam. In and around that were spaghetti tangles of cables, tubes, and—in some cases—colorful duct tape. There were three huge glass squares, too thick to be monitors, and in the middle was a giant keyboard with every key the size of Claire’s entire hand. Only instead of letters on it, there were symbols. Some of them—many of them—she knew from her studies with Myrnin about alchemy. Some of them were vampire symbols. A few were just . . . blank, like maybe there’d been something on them once, but it had worn completely off.

Myrnin patted the dirty metal flank of the beast affectionately. It let out a hiss from several holes in the tubing. “This is Ada. She’s what drives Morganville,” Myrnin said. “And I want you to learn how to use her.”

Claire stared at it, then at him, then at the machine once again. “You’re kidding.”

And the machine said, “No. He’s not. Unfortunately.”

Claire had seen a lot of weird stuff since moving to Morganville, but a living, steam-operated Frankenstein of a computer, built out of wood and scraps?

That was just too much.

She sat down suddenly on the hard rocks, gasping for breath, and rested her head on her trembling palms. Distantly, she heard the computer—that was what it was, right?—ask, “Did you break another one, Myrnin?” and Myrnin answered, “You are not to speak until spoken to, Ada. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Claire honestly didn’t even know how to start to deal with this. She just sat, struggling to keep herself from freaking out totally, and Myrnin finally flopped down next to her. He reclined, with his arms folded behind his head, staring straight up.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

“I don’t,” she said, and wiped trickles of tears from her face. “I don’t want to know anything anymore. I think I’m going crazy.”

“Well, it’s always a possibility.” He shrugged. “Ada is a living mind inside an artificial form. A brilliant woman—a former assistant of mine, actually. This preserved the best parts of her. I have never regretted taking the steps to integrate technology and humanity.”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t. I have,” Ada said, from nowhere in particular. Claire shuddered. There was something not quite right about that voice, as if it was coming out of some old, cheap AM radio speakers that had been blown out a few times. “Tell your new friend the truth, Myrnin. It’s the least you can do.”

He closed his eyes. “Ada was dying because I had a lapse.”

“In other words,” the computer said acidly, “he killed me. And then he trapped me inside this box. Forever. The fact that he doesn’t regret it only proves how far from human he is.”

“You are not trapped in the box forever,” Myrnin said, “as you well know. But I still need you, so you will simply have to stop your endless wailing and get on with things. If you want an escape, research your way out.”

“Or you’ll what?”

Myrnin’s eyes snapped open, and he bared his fangs—not that he could bite the computer. It was just a reaction of frustration, Claire thought. “Or I’ll disconnect your puzzle sets,” he said, “and you can read the works of Bulwer-Lytton for entertainment for the next twenty years before I take pity on you.”

Ada was notably silent in response to that, and Myrnin folded up his fangs and smiled. “Now,” he said to Claire, “let me explain Ada. She is the life force that powers the town, of course; without her, we could not operate the portals, and we could not maintain the invisible fields that ensure Morganville residents stay put, and suffer memory loss if they manage to make their way out of town. The drawback is that Ada is a living being, and living beings have . . . moods. Feelings. She has been known to grow fond of people, and to sometimes interfere. Such as with your friend Michael.”

“Michael?” Claire blinked, intrigued despite everything. She didn’t want to know more. . . . Oh, hell, yes she did. She really did. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Ada interceded to keep Michael alive, because she could. Ada’s presence is most felt in the Founder Houses, which are closely linked to her; she can, with enough of an effort, manifest in them, or anywhere there is a portal, for short periods of time. In Michael’s case, she chose to save his life by storing him in the matrix of the Glass House rather than allowing him to die when Oliver attempted, and failed, to turn him into a vampire.”