This Monstrous Thing(19)
“Alasdair, what do you think?” Geisler glanced in my direction as though hoping I would disagree, but all I could think about was sleep.
“I’d like to get some rest,” I replied.
“Ah. Well, that’s understandable.” He looked a bit disappointed, but he replaced the teapot and slid the drawer closed with his knee. “I’ll take you to my home, then. We can have some supper, and you can rest, and we’ll leave the business for later.”
I still didn’t have a guess at what that business was, but I nodded. Geisler retrieved his coat from the door and the three of us started back the way Clémence and I had come, across the courtyard, toward the university gates. I had the sense that he wanted to ask me something—many things, perhaps—but he kept his gaze forward, only tossing a few furtive glances in my direction. Beside me, Clémence stared up at the sky with her hands deep in her pockets. I looked up too, and noticed fat clouds, gray and thick with the promise of snow, shuffling in front of the sun. “Bad weather coming,” she murmured.
“Thank you, mademoiselle,” Geisler replied tersely. “Now we all have a firm grasp of the obvious.”
Clémence buried her mouth in the collar of her coat and fell silent.
“Ingolstadt is lovely in spring,” Geisler said to me as we crossed the snow-spangled courtyard, Clémence a few steps behind. “The winters can be bleak, but when the flowers bloom in April, it’s a sight.”
“How . . . nice,” I said, unsure what response he was chasing.
“We should talk about your application while you’re here.” He looked sideways at me. “Your father told me once you wanted to study at the university. Is that still true?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Medicine or mechanics?”
“Both, if I could.”
“Ingolstadt’s one of the only schools in Europe where you can. You’d do well here, I think. I should introduce you to the head of my department. Make sure he knows your name. Lectures are nearly finished for the term or I’d find some for you to sit in on. And when your application comes in, I’ll be sure to put in a good word.”
“That’s . . .” I had one moment of delirious happiness before I remembered the whole reason I hadn’t applied to begin with. “That’d be brilliant, sir, thank you,” I finished, trying gallantly to infuse my voice with some of the excitement I’d felt before I thought, yet again, of Oliver.
Geisler nodded at a pair of students passing in the opposite direction. “And what’s the news out of Geneva these days? I heard the clock tower is finished.”
“Yes, sir. The clock will strike on Christmas Eve.”
“I’ll bet it’s a sight. I wish I could see it.”
I glanced sideways at him, trying to work out whether he meant it in earnest. The reason Geisler had gone to Geneva was that the city hired him to oversee constructing the tower clock, then had him arrested when they found out he was using their money and the room behind the clock face as a front for his own research. I couldn’t imagine he harbored much fondness for the clock tower after that, but perhaps we were alike in thinking that all mechanical things—even the ones with jagged memories attached—were magnificent.
“And how are your parents?” Geisler asked as we left the campus and turned onto the cobbled street.
Clémence coughed in what I assumed was a too-late attempt to sidestep the topic. My stomach clenched.
“They were arrested,” I said, “the night your assistant came to collect me.”
“God’s wounds.” Geisler stopped walking. Clémence smashed into him, and he cuffed her on the ear before turning to face me dead on. “I didn’t know. Alasdair, I’m so sorry.” He rolled his lips into his mouth for a moment and released a heavy breath through his nose, sending steamy clouds rising above his beard that reminded me of a dragon. “I never thought they’d get your father, he was so sharp about staying hidden. And your mother, did they arrest her as well?”
I stamped my feet, less to keep warm and more for an excuse to stare at the ground. “I don’t know.”
“What about your brother?”
I gave him a moment to realize his mistake, but he didn’t, and when I met his gaze, he looked so unapologetic and earnest that it frightened me.
“Oliver’s dead,” I said.
“Yes. Of course. How foolish of me.” He pivoted sharply and started again up the sloping road, Clémence and I following as the clouds sank across the rooftops, draping the street in shadows.
Geisler’s home was outside the city limits and shielded from the road by a grove of towering black pines. It was larger than most of the slender town houses along the main streets, with a yard behind it outlined by a trim fence. We stopped on the doorstep, and Geisler fumbled through his bag for a while before swearing under his breath. “Must have left my keys in the office,” he mumbled. “Never mind.” He knocked on the door, and I heard the sound echo through the house. I thought it strange he hadn’t asked Clémence for her set, but one look at her tight jaw told me she had yet to be trusted with her own.
There was a shuffling creak from the other side; then, a moment later, the door was flung open. I gasped aloud before I could stop myself. On the threshold stood a man made entirely of gears and bars and metal plates, but walking, upright and of its own accord. Its eyes were glassy and its mouth a rigid, lipless rectangle that I couldn’t have fit a finger through. It stepped back from the door to let us in, each step stiff-kneed and ticking.