The Clockwork Man (23 page)

I am, by a series of events I will recount momentarily, back in the garage, as it is the only place containing the tools necessary for my repair. Since the altercation I have attempted to recuperate as best I can; after I have regained enough motion I will decide what course to pursue next.

The meeting occurred by random chance. At exactly 4:05 yesterday morning, I had left my note for Herr Greeley and begun my trek toward the river, where I intended to take my last look at open water. My eyes fell upon a long bridge over a silty, churning river, with twin white spires that shot up into the dark predawn sky, dotted with electric lights—a beautiful sight, like the Iron Bridge cast in brilliant light. Across the river, partly illuminated by the light from the bridge, were a number of former warehouses and factories which, if the signs are accurate, will soon be transformed into fashionable luxury apartments.

Only two vehicles passed in that time, and neither slowed or strayed from their course as they came in sight of me, their drivers too drowsy or preoccupied to notice a mechanical man strolling down the sidewalk.

Unencumbered by Greeley’s hobbling gait, I quickly reached the bridge. The streets on either side were empty, and I slowly made my way down an asphalt ramp to the narrow walkway beneath the bridge. The water was high, the current strong, carrying bits of refuse to some deep and distant end. There, invisible to any on the surface, I confess I was again tempted to hurl myself over the thin rail meant to preventpedestrians from falling in. I held little hope that my new master would deliver this volume into the hands of its intended recipients, but at the last it was all I could do to restore Herr Gruber’s grand legacy.

No sooner had I reached the rail than I heard the sound of a large automobile overhead on the bridge slowing as it descended the incline leading toward the river. Nearby there were hurried voices and heavy fumbling, then an unmoving human form wrapped in a heavy blanket rolled over the weeds and rocks lining the bank, flopping into the water with a tremendous splash. I looked up, catching a momentary glimpse of a man’s face, staring out at the water as the wrapped form drifted away. Instantly I recognized the face of the murderer: a wide, bony, beardless face, the deep-set eyes framed by wire-rimmed spectacles. For but a fraction of a second his eyes met mine; he muttered an expletive and withdrew. I attempted to follow.

I had taken but a few steps before I was confronted by a large man with twin blue dragons tattooed on his arms, short spiky hair, and a sparse bristly beard. The ringleader himself, along with his other accomplice, descended on the opposite side, trapping me.

“Sorry, pal,” said the tattooed man. “Wrong place, wrong time.” He immediately thrust at me with a rather large knife, which pierced my tweed suit and the layer of suede skin over my chest, but bent against the hard nickel of my inner shell. For a moment our eyes met in the shadows, the man still holding the knife against my chest and attempting to push it in. “What …?” he said, but I did not allow him to finish his thought.

Again I feel it necessary to qualify my actions; though the Master taught me a strong disdain for violence, he also stated unequivocally that in certain instances—namely, self-defense or theprotection of his children—it was necessary, and he would certainly have deemed these men worthy of it. Before he could pull his hand away I snatched him by the wrist and twisted the knife from his hand, forcefully enough to cause a light crunching sound. He tried to back away, but I held firm, and the moment the dim light caught us and he saw my face, he began to scream.

The florist and his other associate stepped back, as if uncertain about what was happening. The big man struck at my face and head with his uninjured hand, drawing it back in pain when it clanged against the metal beneath my skin. I grasped his shirt front and flung him roughly into the cement wall of the bridge. The other accomplice rushed at me with a thick metal bar, but I caught it before his blow could connect and twisted it from his hands, letting it fall on the walkway. I then grasped his collar and hoisted him high in the air, his neck and shoulders colliding with the concrete overhead. (This was an accident, and despite his crimes, I did not mean to seriously injure him.) He crumpled to the pavement, clutching his neck.

It was then, in the first gentle light of morning, that the spectacled man finally saw me full on. He muttered another expletive and began to run, but I reached out and seized the back of his jacket. “What the hell are you?” he screamed, and tried to squirm out of my grasp, kicking at my knees and shins.

“Surrender,” I said. My memory again began to flicker, and for a moment I believed I was looking into the eyes of the butcher on the Iron Bridge. The timing was unfortunate. Behind me, metal scraped against concrete, and I became aware of a heavy impact against the back of my head. The blow was not crippling, but it was jarring enough that I lost my grip, and my quarry priedhimself from my grasp. A second blow struck me across the neck and shoulders, and I was aware of several small internal parts loosening, a light rattling in my neck and chest. I turned to ward off the next blow to find that the big man had regained his footing and, with his left hand, was brandishing the large metal bar I had taken from his companion. I moved to intercept the weapon, but he was quick; another blow struck my right knee joint, knocking loose the bolts holding it in place, and I collapsed onto my left knee. He struck me several times more, across the head and chest and legs, and in the end I lay motionless, my ticking the only sign that I remained animate. Had I been composed of flesh and blood I would certainly have been killed.

“Jesus Christ, what is that?” the smaller accomplice said. “That a mask or something?”

“Is it dead?” said the one with wire-rimmed glasses, creeping closer.

The big man wielded the bar like a spear and brought it, point down, onto my face, shattering my monocle and slightly cracking my left eye. “Is now.” He dropped the bar and began swearing loudly, rubbing his injured wrist.

The spectacled man leaned over me and peered at my face. “Toss it in the river.” Were I able to move I would certainly have bludgeoned him with my fist, but my damaged body would not cooperate. The two accomplices attempted to lift me—the big man under my shoulders, the small, thin one taking hold of my legs—but I am quite heavy, and both were injured; they were unable to move me, much less heave me over the rail. In retrospect, I find it odd that I should object to their carrying out the very plan I had been tempted to enact, but it has been my experience that attitudes can changeabruptly, and at that moment it was my fervent wish to lift myself off the ground and resume my attack upon them. After two more attempts they grew hurried, and the florist instructed them to leave me where I lay. They quickly scrambled up the embankment and into their vehicle. I looked up once more, seeing only the top half of their automobile. My first thought was to try to follow, crawl after them if necessary, but the tires screeched and the vehicle sped away.

Considering my initial plans, it would not have been out of the question to remain there until I wound down. But I had witnessed yet another atrocity, and felt I could not simply abandon future victims to such a cruel fate. My left arm had come detached inside and was thus useless, my right leg also immobile, and so I had no alternative but to grasp at cracks in the pavement to pull myself forward.

I had gone but a few feet when my surroundings flickered, the cold concrete giving way to grass, roots, and fallen leaves, and broken, spindly branches of an elm tree in my hands. I immediately recognized my surroundings: the park near the Iron Bridge where I had fallen from a tree attempting to retrieve Jakob’s kite. Somewhere behind me his mocking laughter rang out as if from a great distance. Of course I knew this was another effect of my presumed glitch, perhaps made worse by the bludgeoning, and I wondered if I would emerge from it or be trapped in the memory until my body wound down and stopped altogether. In hindsight I do not know which I would have preferred.

I looked up; Giselle knelt in front of me, concern in her glowing face, the light wind taking up the strands of hair like fiery streamers. She reached down and gingerly caressed my cheek. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”

Jakob’s laughter continued, though I was unable to see him. “Ha-ha,” he called out. “You fell.”

Giselle (or the approximation of her) glared off somewhere behind me. “Go away, you cruel thing,” she said, and the laughter suddenly stopped, the only sound the wind rustling through the dead leaves. She took my hand, helped me roll onto my side. “You’ve done it now. Father would be furious if he knew. Are you badly hurt?”

“Yes.”

She leaned over and kissed me. “You could have hidden if you’d wanted to. They would have gone away.”

I must confess that, for an instant, I had forgotten I was in the midst of another hallucination—a most pleasant sensation while it lasted—but her comments brought me back to my present condition. “None of this is real. It happened a long time ago.”

She smiled, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “Of course it did. I don’t know why you keep coming back here.” She lifted her head, ran a palm across my chest. “You can stop now, if you want to. You did all you could.”

“But I can still find them.”

“Father never intended you for this. What was it Fräulein Gruenwald called you? A ‘gentle soul’? She was right.”

I attempted to raise myself, but my damaged body would not obey. “He asked me to protect you. I failed him and you and those women.”

She sighed, shook her head sadly. “Stopping those men won’t change what happened.”

“I know that.”

“No, you don’t. Not really.”

“But I can stop it from happening again.”

She sighed quietly. “Right now you can’t even get up. You need help. As for going after those men—is this what
you
want, Ernst? Or what you think Father would have wanted for you?”

I considered the question for some time. Since my awakening I have done my best to conduct myself as the Master would have wished—or, at least, as much as circumstances allowed. But he is no longer here to provide counsel, and the prospect of deciding my own fate is … daunting. Finally, I looked up at her. “I do not know.”

“I know it’s hard,” she replied, her voice softening. “But you have to decide for yourself.” She again leaned over and kissed my cracked eye. “You should go back to your friend now. He’ll be worried.” Then the vision flickered out, and I was alone on the cold pavement.

I reached out once more, grabbed the nearest handhold, and began to drag myself forward. Thus impaired, it took me thirty-five minutes to hoist myself up the embankment to the bridge’s edge. I was, at that point, exposed and vulnerable, but luck was with me, and the low-hanging moon was covered over by clouds. The wash station was eight blocks away, and I crawled across streets lined with bits of gravel and broken glass to reach it. I might easily have been struck by a passing vehicle and crushed into a twisted heap, but due to the early hour this part of the city was empty. One vehicle did slow as it approached me, and I pulled myself toward a short hedge lining one of the parking lots. Its driver briefly stared out the passenger-side window, but soon went on his way, perhaps mistaking me for an animal.

After two hours, thirteen minutes I finally reached the door of the facility. Unable to reach the handle, I instead balled my remaining hand into a fist and punched at it until it swung open, and began to drag myself through the entryway.

The commotion apparently awakened Greeley, who burst through the office door. Upon seeing me his eyes widened and his face lost all expression. “God almighty! What happened?”

“The killers. Please help me.”

“Aw, hell! You look like shit!” “Help me inside.”

He slung my remaining arm over his shoulder and, grunting from the strain, helped me through the door and into the nearest washing bay.

“Man, you all messed up,” he said, shock and disbelief in his voice. “What do I do?”

“I am not sure. I have never been this damaged before.” At that moment I feared I might be permanently incapacitated, in which case I would have requested that Herr Greeley abandon me and allow me to wind down.

“Ain’t there some way to fix you up?” He seemed absorbed in thought for several seconds; then his face crinkled into a frown. “The garage. I seen some tools and stuff in there. You just tell me what to do and I’ll take care of everything. You with me?”

I was, in fact, uncertain if I had the knowledge to guide him through my necessary repairs, and even less certain that the old garage would contain all we needed for the task, but I thought it worth the attempt. “I believe so.”

Greeley smiled, his large yellow teeth gleaming against the backdrop of his dark skin. “All right, then. You just hold on, and ol’ Greeley’ll be right back.” He briskly hobbled out the door, his lurching footsteps scraping across the pavement. I did not know where he was going. In the meantime I pulled myself over to thebench where I had set my note, and with some effort reclaimed it. (I did not believe Greeley would take kindly to finding it.)

Some distance away I heard glass being smashed, a door being fumbled open, muffled swearing. Twenty minutes later, an engine sputtered to life, and within a few seconds a set of tires screeched against the pavement outside. Through the half-open door I saw Greeley running in, casting wary glances about him. He struggled to help me into the backseat, then took the wheel and sped away. The interior was red, and ripped in many places, a pair of plush dice hanging from the mirror in front.

“Sorry ‘bout the holdup,” he said, his mouth still curled into a wide smile. “Almost forgot how to do this. Damn wires all look the same nowadays.”

“You stole this vehicle.”

He shook his head and sighed. “I’ll give it back. You want me to fix you or not?”

“Yes.”

“Then shut up and hope we don’t get pulled over.”

Once we reached the garage he helped me inside, then at my insistence disposed of the automobile. Whether or not he returned it to its rightful owner I do not know, but he hobbled in twelve minutes later, carrying my arm, kicking at the few abandoned, rusty tools on the floor. “Okay, then. You just tell me what you need and I’ll find it.”