This Monstrous Thing(25)

“We need good men for our cause,” Geisler continued. “But I’d rather have clever men, and I find that most are one or the other. You’re either good, or you’re clever.” He smiled as he took another sip of tea. “Now, your brother, he was clever. Not with machinery—he was never interested in that—but certainly clever. He wrote well, thought deeply. When I heard that he’d died . . .” He trailed off and ran a hand over his beard.

It had never occurred to me what I’d say if Geisler asked for the details of Oliver’s death. I couldn’t use my rehearsed story about the accident in the clock tower—the only living person who could say otherwise was sitting across from me.

But he didn’t ask. Instead he finished, “I was devastated. I was very fond of him.”

I almost laughed. Oliver hated Geisler, even before he thought him responsible for his death, and from what he’d told me, they’d never gotten on. The only reason Oliver hadn’t been at the workshop the night Geisler was arrested was that they’d had a row and Oliver had come storming home early. But I didn’t correct Geisler. I just let him sigh for a minute until he said, “I still wonder if I could have done anything to prevent it.”

“Nothing,” I said. “You couldn’t have done anything.”

“If I hadn’t asked you to go back for those damn journals.”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” I repeated. My insides were in hard knots.

“But you found them—my journals?” I nodded. “What happened to them?”

“I don’t know, sir. I think the police got them when they cleaned out the workshop.”

I thought he’d be angry about this—perhaps he’d called me here hoping I could reunite him with his research, but I’d abandoned them in the clock tower once we took Oliver to the castle and never gone back—but instead he smiled. “But not before you put them to good use.”

My heart made a sudden hurtle into my throat. “Sir?”

“Did you read them?”

I tugged at a stray thread on my trousers and focused on keeping my face blank. “A little.”

“So you saw the problems. The holes. The gaps where my work fell short. I’ve never been able to surpass the research I conducted in Geneva, or even duplicate it. Even then, at its best it was flawed. There were too many problems I could never puzzle out.” He looked up at me, firelight glinting off his spectacle lenses so that he seemed to be staring at me from brimstone pits. “But you did.”

My heart kept up its frantic rhythm, but I said nothing. I wasn’t certain I’d have been able to get words out if I had tried.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Geisler continued, still watching me. “Your father isn’t clever enough, but you are.” He sat up a little straighter, bringing his eyes back into focus. “Oliver is alive,” he said, and it was hardly a question, “because you brought him back from the dead.”

It seemed pointless to deny what he had already guessed, pointless to continue carrying this heavy load on my own any longer. My heart sank back to my chest; muscles I hadn’t realized I’d kept clenched for two years loosened as I handed the weight of Oliver over to him. “Yes,” I said.

Geisler sprang up out of his chair—he seemed to be resisting doing some sort of jig or pulling me into a hug. “And he’s all right, is he? Still alive, clockwork heart still ticking two years later?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s hiding in Geneva.”

“You are a wonder, Alasdair Finch, an absolute wonder!” he cried as he sank back into his chair. I wasn’t sure what I was meant to say to that. I expected him to press me for more details of the process itself—the exact weight of the copper I had used, the circumference of the gears and the placement of the mainspring. But instead he said, “How difficult that must be for you, keeping your brother’s life a secret.”

“It is,” I said, and admitting it felt like taking a deep breath after being underwater. “I think I did something wrong when I brought him back. He lost parts of himself.”

“Speech? Memory? I thought that might happen.”

“It’s more than that. He’s not the same as he was. He’s wild. Impulsive.”

“He was like that when he was younger.”

“But it’s sharper now, it’s different. He’s . . . wrong. I must have done something that ruined him.”

Geisler pressed his fingers together and surveyed me over the top of them. “And your parents know nothing?”

“No,” I said. “I never told them.”

“Perhaps I can offer you some assistance that you so clearly need.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What if you were to begin at the university in January? If I were to give my department head a recommendation on your behalf, you’d be allowed to start classes in the new term without having to bother with an application.”

“What about Oliver?” I asked.

“Bring him with you,” Geisler replied. “The German Confederation is far kinder to clockwork men than France or Switzerland or any of the cities where your family has worked. And in a town like Ingolstadt, a progressive university town that values research . . . well, he may not be wholly accepted, but he will not have to hide like he does now. He could attend some classes at the university himself. He was fond of poetry, wasn’t he?”