This Monstrous Thing(32)

As the storm outside continued to swell, I kept mostly to my small room, sick with the mystery of it all and growing sicker with every page I got further into Frankenstein. Victor returned to Geneva, where he and his creation were reunited. Then it was the monster’s story. He told Victor how he’d survived in the world he didn’t understand and that didn’t want him, having no memories or language or understanding of himself or anything around him. How he suffered at the mercy of his clockwork body, the gears that shredded him from the inside, the scars and sutures that twisted his skin; how no other man he met could bear the sight of him and he was thrown out of every place he went. But he was strong and fast, with the power of both metal and man, same as Oliver. I kept hearing the words in his voice: When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?

And when the world had turned away from the monster, he turned his back on it. Burned a house to the ground. Murdered Victor’s friend Henry. Victor’s bride, Elizabeth. And his brother.

I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, Victor said. Had he not murdered my brother?

I shut the book hard around those words, tossed it onto the floor, and stood up. I had done nothing but read since we arrived, and I was starting to feel restless. My hands were itching after days without clockwork, and I was certain if I had to read a page further in Frankenstein, I’d throw up.

I searched the house for Geisler to ask if he had any projects I could muck about with, but I found his bedroom door closed and got no reply when I knocked. I was too impatient to wait for an answer. I rescued several of the antique clocks from around the house, including the ones in my room I had gutted, and took them out to the workshop in search of tools. The wind was gusting, and even the short walk across the yard was a fight. Fresh tracks stretched between the house and the workshop, and I tried to step into them to keep the snow from falling down my boots. I was ready to pick the lock if I needed to, but it was unlatched, and I let myself in. The wind slammed the door shut behind me.

The workshop was built like a coffin, long and narrow with bare walls and a wood floor. The fireplace was empty, and the room was cold enough that my breath clouded before my face. I had hoped for some half-assembled project of Geisler’s that I could study, but Geisler had spoken in earnest when he said he hardly used the place. It looked abandoned. There was a neat worktable with an unlit Carcel burner resting on one corner and a few tools arranged in a straight line across the wall. When I picked one up, it left an imprint in the dust. There were drawers full of gears rusted together, and a few steel rods propped in one corner, but it was altogether disappointingly empty.

I set my clocks on the workbench, selected tools from the slim lineup, and started in. It was dull work—once you’ve fused cogs to skin and bone, pure mechanics is hardly a challenge. I had the clocks reassembled in under an hour but I didn’t want to go back to the house, so I started taking them apart and putting them back together again just for something to do. I worked until my fingers were clumsy with cold and I decided to start the clocks again and go back inside.

I found an old pair of pulse gloves in a drawer, their metal plates rusted red around the edges. It took a long time rubbing them together before I got a charge built and pressed them against the exposed mainspring of the first clock. There was a snap of blue light like the center of a gas flame, then the gears began to turn. The clock hands did a full rotation, and a small cuckoo jutted out, shrieking. I watched it for a moment, letting it run its paces before I reached for the next one.

A hand fastened suddenly around my wrist, and I yelped in surprise. I twisted around to see who had me prisoner, but all I needed was a glimpse of the silver cogs to know it was one of Geisler’s automatons, head rotating slowly so its glassy eyes were fixed on me. “Let go of me!” I shouted, but it didn’t make a damn difference. I tried to slide out of its grip, but its fingers felt strong enough to snap bone. As it dragged me to my feet, I clamped my free hand around its forearm, trying helplessly to pry it off.

Blue light leapt from my pulse gloves and into the automaton. A bright shock traveled through its whole body, then its grip loosened and it stilled, head nodding forward against its silver-plated chest.

I stared, waiting for it to spring back to life, but it didn’t move. Either the pulse had overwhelmed the clockwork and the automaton was out of commission for good, or it had tripped an automatic shutdown before something blew and another pulse would restart it—Father and I had built systems like that into some of the more complicated limbs we’d made to prevent the circuit from burning up. Curiosity started to creep through me as my heartbeat slowed. As horrified as I was by the metal men, the mechanic in me was dead keen to know how Geisler had designed them to handle a burst of current.

I reached out experimentally and pressed my palm flat against the conducting plate on the automaton’s shoulder. There was another flash and it sprang back to its feet, system restarted and hand shooting out toward me again before I could properly dodge it. I stumbled backward and tripped on the edge of the workbench, but the automaton seized my collar before I fell and I was hauled back to my feet. I cursed aloud, though there was no one to hear, and tried to zap it again, but the charge had gone from the pulse gloves. Before I could get them going, the stiff clockwork hands closed around my wrists, wrenching them apart and jerking me toward the door. I dug my heels into the floor, but they slid like I was on ice.