Devon Monk - Cold Copper

Hink strolled up next to her and peered into the box.

“What the hell is that thing?” he asked.

Rose shook her head. “I…I don’t know. The glass is broken now. They called it a battery?”

“For what?”

Neither of them was touching it. Rose knew if she did, she’d lose what was left of her wits to its song.

“I don’t know. This is like the crate Margaret was carrying. With the initials of VB,” Rose said. “That coffin over there has the same initials.”

“Bring a lantern.” Hink walked off into the dark, and Rose checked for a lantern.

There was one on the floor, the one she’d held before, tipped over and leaking. She hoped it had enough oil to hold a flame. She picked it up, and dug in her pocket for a striker.

Careful to lift the glass, Rose struck flint to steel and sparked the oil-drenched wick, catching a yellow flame there.

She and Hink stood next to the coffin. “See there?” Rose said, pointing at the side of it. “VB.”

Hink brandished the pry bar. “I see it. Now let’s see what’s inside.”

He set the bar in between the lid and case and pulled. The coffin lid rocked up, locks breaking. Hink pushed the lid full open.

“Hellfire,” he swore. “Rose, don’t look.”

But it was too late. Rose had already seen the contents.

A body. Not whole like a person, but pieces and bits. One leg, an arm, and a torso. There wasn’t even a head.

“Oh, God,” Rose breathed. “Why?”

Hink turned so the bulk of him blocked her view, but it didn’t do much good. She couldn’t unsee what she’d seen.

“Lot of strange folk in the world,” he said. “Or maybe this was all that was left of him to bury and his family wanted it home.”

“There’s no smell,” Rose said, her mind suddenly working on the puzzle of how to fit what she’d just seen into the here and now of the world. “Death has a stink. Death always has a stink.” She tipped her head up, searching Hink’s face.

He nodded. “There are some solutions that can take care of that,” he said. “And those bits aren’t all hooked up, so a more thorough cleaning might have been done. Still…”

He turned back around, but was still positioned so she couldn’t see past his width. He reached into the coffin.

“Huh,” he said.

“What?”

“This isn’t living.”

“You just noticed?” Rose asked.

“I mean it wasn’t ever. Living.” He shifted so she could step up to the coffin again.

He lifted the arm up a bit. “Bring the light closer.”

Rose held the lamp inches away from the severed limb.

“Wrist and elbow move like they’re on a hinge.” Hink once again shifted the arm and it gave a slow, dead wave. “And this skin? It’s animal. Fine tanning, but not human. Not soft enough for meat to be underneath it either. Wood, I think. Maybe metal.”

“It’s pieces of a…a puppet?” Rose asked. The twist in her stomach screwed down to dread. It was very lifelike for a puppet and fully the size of a grown man, or pieces of a man, in any case.

Hink frowned. “Heavy for a puppet.”

Rose looked from the arm in his hand, which was topped off with a fully articulating hand on one end and strands of thin, veinlike wires coming out the stump where the shoulder might be.

Those wires reminded her of something. They reminded her of the copper and glass device. “Is there a, um…hole in the chest or back?” she asked.

Hink set the arm back in the coffin and tugged on the shoulder, leaning the torso forward. No blood, no meat in the severed neck, but if Hink hadn’t told her it was leather and metal or wood, Rose would have sworn it was the upper half of a man sawed in two.

“This is the back,” Hink said, nodding toward the part facing them. “Whoever packed it put it in chest down.”

Rose slid right beside Hink, so close she could feel the slight heat radiating from beneath his coat, could once again smell the tobacco on his breath as he exhaled steam into the cold railcar, and could sense the tension in him.

He had some idea of what this thing was meant for.

And then she saw it. Where the heart should be was a hole. Cut clean on every edge and fitted with a copper band along the inner walls about four inches wide.

“Something’s meant to be set in there,” Rose whispered. Then: “Oh. Oh! I think it’s the copper piece. The copper piece was built to hold something in the glass, like water or a solution. To contain, and to…generate power of some kind to run like a matic?”

“You’re saying you think this puppet runs on steam power?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why it would,” she said. “Do you?”

He held his breath for a moment. “I do. I think I do. Hold this.” He moved just enough that Rose could grab the shoulder and keep the torso propped up.

He headed back to the crate and lifted the broken copper and glass device out of it.

“Cold,” he noted as he carried it over to her. “Even through my gloves.”

“You’re not going to put it in there, are you?” Rose asked.

“Just to see if it fits. Can you prop it up a bit more?”

Rose leaned back and pulled the torso up so that it was balanced on the hips. “Why aren’t all the pieces here?”

Hink shrugged. “Lots of crates. Might be the rest is packed away. Might be this is just a test sort of thing.” He took a moment to glance between the hole in the torso and the device in his hand and then turned the device so that what was left of the shattered glass globe was facing outward.

“Like this, I’d say.” Hink placed the copper and glass device into the torso, then twisted. It fit into place with a snick .

Nothing else happened. No lights, no movement, nothing but a disembodied torso with a contraption of copper filling the hole in the chest.

“That’s disappointing,” Hink said.

“What did you think it’d do?” Rose asked.

“It should have…” He glanced at her, then shut his mouth. “I don’t know.”

“Yes,” Rose said. “I think you do.”

“All right, yes. I think I do too. There have been rumors about a new kind of matic being built. A thing that can labor in factories or in the fields. There’s also been rumors of a weapon coming out of Chicago. Could be this is part of it. Or none of it.”

“Do these rumors give it a name?”

“Homunculus.”

Hink twisted the copper piece and it fell out into his hand. “Set that back down,” he said. He slid the copper piece into the inside pocket of his coat, then helped Rose get all the body parts arranged and the lid fit back into place.

“But you think it is part of…part of something dangerous?” she asked. “The copper device? The, um, homunculus? The coffin?”

“Not a good place to talk it over. Best we button this up and get moving.”

Rose helped put the crates in order, then extinguished the lantern. By the time Hink opened the door to the passage between the train cars, Rose’s stomach was in a knot. She didn’t like the idea of Hink keeping that copper device. They didn’t know what it could do, even if it was broken.

They crossed between the railcars in silence, since talking would mean shouting over the wind and rain. By the time they finally reached second class, Rose was soaked, cold, and tired.

Hink paused by their seat and gave a couple of the young boys lounging there a hard stare. They scuttled away, back to their families down the car a bit.

Hink removed his hat, brushed his fingers through his hair to get it in place, and then stood aside so Rose could take the seat.

Rose thought about the Pullman car and Thomas waiting for her with tea and a book. It would mean getting wet again, more than once, to reach first class. And it would mean sussing out that sudden anger he had showed.