The Havoc Machine

Chapter Seventeen

Red headquarters was in chaos. Zygmund Padlewski and the other men rushed about in all directions, some with grim determination, others shouting and gesticulating at one another, and yet others busying themselves with boxes and crates. Flatbed carts and hand lorries were piled up at one of the tunnel entrances. The spiders-Mr. Griffin’s spiders-ran in all directions too, most of them carrying bits of equipment. The clockworkers had varying reactions to this. Two continued to work. Two sprawled on the floor in a drugged sleep. And two more had apparently decided to join in the fun and scamper about. Nikolai held Thad’s hand tightly at the top of the high tunnel Thad had used the first time he visited Mr. Griffin’s lair.

The brain, the jar, and the machine that made up Mr. Griffin still took up a great deal of the floor space, and the machinery added its noise to the turmoil. Thad didn’t know what to make of any of it.

“Stay here,” he said to Nikolai. He had waited quite some time for Sofiya to return, and the longer he waited, the harder it had been to sit still. He had no idea where she’d gone and couldn’t follow her. The only thing he could think of was to come and talk to Mr. Griffin, who clearly knew more than he was letting on, but after the havoc spider attack, Thad had been unwilling to leave Nikolai alone or with anyone at the circus. He hadn’t counted on such disarray here underground.

“I want to stay with you,” Nikolai said. “It’s dark up here.”

“Pretty boy, pretty boy,” said Dante on Thad’s shoulder.

“You shouldn’t go down there,” Thad replied, but he was wavering. “I probably should have left you with Mama Berloni, but-”

“A son stays with the papa,” Nikolai stated firmly.

It was the wrong thing to say. “Stay here,” Thad barked, and climbed down the rungs to the main room without another word. Mr. Griffin, through what ever mechanism gave him sight, noticed him immediately.

“Mr. Sharpe!” he said smoothly. “Excuse the disorder. Everything is happening so quickly, and you’re here a little early. Master Primeval! I need you again.”

The clockworker with all the plants looked up from his work. “But my plastids are nearly-”

“Now!”

Primeval sighed, picked up a beaker, sniffed the contents, and set it back down in favor of a corked test tube. He held it up and grimaced.

“How can I be early when I wasn’t even planning to arrive?” Thad asked. Alarms were blaring in his head. “Perhaps I should just come back later, when I’m not disturbing-”

Primeval threw the test tube at him. Thad automatically twisted out of the way, and it shattered on the stones at his feet. Sweet-smelling dust puffed in a small cloud. The room rocked around Thad. Dizzily, he tried to keep his feet, but he was already on his knees.

“Later,” said Mr. Griffin from a long ways away, “can have so many meanings.”

* * *

“Pretty boy! Pretty, pretty boy! Doom!”

Dante’s voice pierced the darkness surrounding Thad, though his eyes were heavy. Something hard forced its way between his lips, and a cloying, licorice-tasting liquid trickled down his throat. The darkness sucked itself away from his brain and he bolted upright. The spider on his chest clattered away. He was lying on the floor where he had fallen.

“What the hell?” He spat out the rest of the liquid. Absinthe.

“It does taste dreadful, I know,” said Mr. Griffin. “Or rather, I vaguely remember. I haven’t actually eaten or drunk in years. It’s tremendously freeing in some ways, but there are times when I miss it.”

Thad got to his feet. A lot of the machinery in the room had been shifted about. Most of it was in wheeled crates with cables snaking from them. The clockworkers and their equipment were gone entirely, even Primeval’s plants. Zygmund and his friends, however, were still at their desks. Zygmund was speaking urgently into a wireless microphone, and one of the other men was tapping out code on a telegraph sender. Dante sat poised above Thad’s head on a high crate, which was scarred with fresh beak marks. Next to him were two spiders, bent and broken.

“Applesauce!” he squawked, and fluttered brass feathers. Thad put up an arm so Dante could climb down to his customary shoulder perch. With a sudden stab Thad thought of Nikolai. He whirled and looked up at the entry tunnel. Nikolai, half in shadow, looked down at him. He hadn’t moved. Thad breathed a sigh of relief.

All right, he thought. Niko is still here, and I’m not dead. That means Griffin wants us both alive. The question I have to ask is, why? And why did he say I was early?

“As you can see, we’re in the final stages now,” Griffin said from his speakers. They were now mounted in front of his jar. The pink brain tissue sat in the liquid, unmoving. “I apologize for drugging you with Primeval’s pollen, and regret that the antidote is absinthe, but a soporific is handy to have about. It lets me move the clockworkers with minimal fuss.”

“How long was I asleep?” Thad demanded.

“Only a few hours. It’s nearly sunset up top. And now we’re on schedule. The peasant uprising is about to begin!”

This wasn’t the response Thad had been looking for. “You can’t be serious! This is the wrong time. No one has arms, you don’t have enough organization, you don’t have-”

“This is the perfect time. We must move before the tsar can turn this anger into more hatred against clockworkers. The army lost its commanding officer and has fallen into chaos after that spider attack. The Field of Mars will be the perfect staging ground.”

“The circus is there!” Thad blurted. “People will be hurt!”

“It’s a revolution, Mr. Sharpe. Many people will be hurt. But in the long run, everything will be better.” He paused. “I noticed you did get Nikolai out of the way. He’ll be safe, at least.”

Thad glanced up at the tunnel entrance. Nikolai was still sitting dejectedly at the mouth. “Why is everyone running about so? Where are the clockworkers?”

“Mr. Padlewski there is making speeches on the wireless to incite riot, and his friend is sending telegrams to our supporters who are waiting for just this moment. My other allies are delivering equipment to the masses, weapons my clockworkers have invented.” The pink brain seemed to pulse with excitement, though Thad knew the idea was ridiculous. “Some of them are becoming quite mad, I’m afraid, so I had to anesthetize them as I did you. We are-or rather, my revolution is-on the move!” He switched to Russian. “Long live the revolution!”

Fluid gurgled through the pipes and washed through Mr. Griffin’s jar. Everyone at the other end of the room paused in what they doing. “Long live the revolution!” And they went back to work. The spiders carried off the other sleeping clockworker.

“I’m telling you,” Thad said, “this is-”

“Thad!” Sofiya burst into the room at the top of tunnel. She rushed past Nikolai with barely a pause and tumbled down the rungs. Her hand was wrapped in a bloody rag. “Thad! It’s been hours! I have searched everywhere!”

“Are you all right?” A finger of warmth went up his spine at her entrance. She was a good and familiar sight in this awful place, and he was happy that she seemed to be all right, though her hand concerned him. He reached for it, but she pulled away. “What happened?”

“Miss Ekk,” Mr. Griffin said. Sofiya ignored him.

“The havoc spiders,” she said. “You won’t believe it, but it is true.” With quick, succinct sentences, she explained. The more she spoke, the more unsettled Thad became. When she got to the part about the twisted versions of Nikolai, he was staggering beneath the weight of her words, and had to catch himself against a crate.

“Don’t lean on that,” Mr. Griffin warned. “Delicate.”

“The bridge has burned and the havoc spiders are trapped on Vasilyevsky Island,” Sofiya finished, “but we have to move quickly if we want to stop them from…from…whatever it is they’re trying to do. Whatever it is involves Nikolai. It’s good you didn’t leave him up on the surface.”

Thad’s mind whirled with the new information. He stared around the chaotic chamber, a mirror of the one Sofiya had just left. He stared at his hand, a mirror of Mr. Griffin’s jar. He stared up at the shadowy tunnel entrance where sat Nikolai, a mirror of the one on the island. A number of ideas slammed together. Thad turned to the brain, complacent in its unbreakable jar. He felt cold and alone, even with Sofiya there.

“It’s you,” Thad said. “Everything leads back to you.”

More fluid dripped and blooped through the pipes. “Is it?” Mr. Griffin said.

“You are the one…man that holds everything together. You sent me to Havoc’s castle to get the machine. You forced the circus to bring you here. Now, by sheer coincidence, you’re fomenting a rebellion in the same city where everything is happening. And you’re always interested in Nikolai. You have been from the very beginning. You didn’t want just that ten-legged spider from Havoc’s castle. You also wanted Nikolai. That’s why you sent me in there. You knew I had lost a child and that I probably wouldn’t destroy an automaton that acted like one.”

“There was a ninety-four point six two eight percent chance that you would both rescue the automaton and keep it with you,” Mr. Griffin agreed.

The walls were closing in on Thad now, invisible walls that had been there all along but he was only now starting to see. He was nothing more than a puppet at the end of a string, an automaton following a program within its memory wheels. Was this how Nikolai felt all the time? Perhaps even now, his words were predicted, scripted, pulled out of him with no choice of his own. A puppet who could see the strings still had to dance.

“That’s why you insisted I hire the circus for you and why you wanted me to continue working with you,” Thad said. “Because you knew Nikolai would attach himself to me and would stay in the city as long as I did.”

“A ninety-one point seven five percent chance there. And an eighty-nine point two percent chance the tsar would command a performance once he heard of Sofiya and her horse, which would keep the circus and Nikolai in Saint Petersburg. Alexander does enjoy a beautiful woman.”

“Why?” Thad asked.

“It seems to be a failing among men. The tsar, in particular, has numerous mistresses who-”

“Why are you doing this?” Thad shouted.

Zygmund looked up from his wireless, and the man at the telegraph paused. Were they puppets, too? Could they see the strings?

A flurry of movement came from behind the machinery where Dante had disappeared a while ago, but Thad was too intent on Mr. Griffin to take much notice. “Doom!”

“I am not a fool, Mr. Sharpe,” said Mr. Griffin. “Normal clockworkers, foolish clockworkers, reveal their plans in long, maniacal monologues, but I am above that.”

Frustration and rage tinged Thad’s vision. He wanted to leap over the stupid machines and smash that glass jar to pieces. Instead, he forced his voice into a reasonable tone. The puppet might be controlled by his strings, but those strings led inevitably back to the puppeteer.

“Of course you’re a fool,” Thad said easily. “Good God-ninety-one point one two percent chance. Naturally.”

“What are you-?” Sofiya began, but Thad stepped on her foot.

“Point seven six,” Mr. Griffin corrected.

“Whatever, whatever.” Thad waved. “As if anyone could predict human behavior to that extent. It’s quite impossible. Everyone knows that. Even Sofiya here.”

He nudged her foot again. Sofiya blinked, then said, “Yes, of course. Completely impossible.”

“I assure you, it is quite possible. The proof is that you are both standing here, and there’s a revolution beginning up there.”

“Ex post facto,” Thad replied airily. “You’re merely taking credit for something that would have happened anyway. You don’t have a plan. You’re just trying to trick me into working for you for free. I can’t believe I followed a brain in a jar all the way across Europe. There’s the fool.”

“I HAVE A PLAN!” Mr. Griffin thundered from his speakers. The men in the room jumped, and Maddie quivered on Sofiya’s shoulder. Thad kept his expression bland.

“Naturally, yes, yes,” he said with blatantly false placation. “Never mind-I believe you.” He turned to Sofiya. “He does have a plan. We should believe him. Absolutely!”

“You don’t believe me.” Mr. Griffin’s voice was icy now, and Thad recognized the stage. “My plan is brilliant.”

“Tell us some other time. We should go join the revolution.” Thad took Sofiya’s hand, the uninjured one, and looked around for Dante. “As you said we should.”

“I knew from the start that Havoc’s machine would survive your attempt to destroy it,” Griffin said, “because I was the one who created it in the first place.”

That got Thad’s attention. “Did you?”

“Havoc was one of my clockworkers here in Saint Petersburg. Didn’t that occur to you? No, of course not. You don’t have a clockworker’s intellect. Havoc was a genius at understanding how the brain works. He merged brain tissue with machinery, and from there worked out wonders with memory wheels alone and got machines to appear to think. He even learned how to make a machine that could make itself more intelligent by adding memory wheels to itself. Meanwhile, I myself invented a spider with the ability to make copies of itself, though the initial prototype was flawed and merely walked about eating everything in sight in order to make materials for more copies, and I was forced to shut it down. Havoc became fascinated with my machine. Obsessed. He combined my designs with his own, and created a machine that was intelligent enough to improve itself and make intelligent copies. And that gave me my plan.”

“It doesn’t sound like a plan,” Thad scoffed. “It sounds like you stole someone else’s work and took credit for it.”

“Havoc was a mere tinker,” Griffin snapped. “He didn’t see what our work could do. The idiot stole the machine one night to keep me from realizing its true potential, vanished right out of this very laboratory. It took some time to make arrangements to chase him, and that was when I learned of Miss Ekk. I hired her just for it, kept her ignorant-that was easy-and we went to Lithuania to hunt him down. Originally I had planned to use her to regain my machine, but you happened along instead, and that made everything easier.”

“Why didn’t you just rebuild the machine?” Thad asked. “Or use your wireless signals to call it back to you?”

“Havoc wasn’t stupid. He kept the spider in a box designed to keep my signals out until he reached a stone laboratory that they couldn’t touch, either. As for rebuilding it, I needed Havoc for that,” Griffin admitted grudgingly. “Just as I needed him for the other half.”

“Other half?” Thad echoed, as he knew Griffin wanted him to.

“The other half of the machine. You said our revolution isn’t armed, Mr. Sharpe, and that is not quite true. We are-I am-creating an army.”

“You’re going to make an army of spiders to fight a revolution?” Thad said. “That won’t begin to work. Spiders can kill a lot of people, true, but the tsar’s army will crush them in no time at all, once they recover.”

“And those new spiders are destroyed by water,” Sofiya pointed out. “This is a significant weakness.”

Griffin’s machines bubbled very like the sound of frustration. “We are making an army of human automatons.”

Thad felt sick. Sofiya gave a false laugh that didn’t touch her eyes. “Those twisted things? Don’t be silly. They couldn’t fight a fly.”

“And how would you control an entire army?” Thad said. “Radio signals? I’ve seen you and that machine give simple tasks through…wireless radio waves, is it? Your spiders require constant attention to deal with relatively simple tasks like keeping your equipment in good repair. Even a clockworker doesn’t have the brain-power to control an army of complicated human automatons with weapons, with strategy and tactics and adapting to situations in combat. Soldiers need both to follow orders and think for themselves.”

“Yes,” Griffin said.

This caught Thad completely out. The room rocked and he surreptitiously put out a hand to steady himself on the engine cover again. “Think…for themselves?” he said.

“We-I-need an army that can grow, reproduce, and think,” Griffin said. “The new spider can reproduce. The other half of Havoc’s machine can think and grow.”

“Nikolai,” Sofiya whispered.

“Indeed,” Griffin said. “As you said, Mr. Sharpe, I needed Nikolai in Saint Petersburg, and you very nicely rescued him from Havoc’s castle and brought him here for me.”

“Good God.” Thad spun to look up at the entrance tunnel, expecting Nikolai to be gone. But he was still there at the top of the rungs, sitting with his knees pulled up under his chin. Relieved but still unnerved, Thad edged toward the ladder.

“You ordered the new machine to flood the city with its spiders. It was supposed to find Nikolai and copy his design,” Sofiya was saying, “but it didn’t work.”

“It worked well enough. Once I combine Nikolai’s unique brain with the machine’s capabilities, it will spread and devour everything in its path. It will produce an army of free-thinking automatons who will fight for me like good sons obey their father. The machine and the automatons will grow and reproduce and grow and reproduce until we have spread over Saint Petersburg, and then Russia, and then the world.”

“The world?” Thad said.

“Doom!” Dante had clambered to the top of a cabinet with a bent spider leg in his beak and leaped to Thad’s shoulder.

“We will supplant all human life with automatons,” Mr. Griffin said reasonably. “Russia’s hatred for clockworkers will end.”

“Because there will be no humans to hate them,” Sofiya said.

“Not entirely. I do need a supply of cerebrospinal fluid.” Mr. Griffin’s speakers gave a little chuckle, and a few bubbles coruscated across his brain.

Thad was at the ladder now. “Zygmund and his friends over there haven’t figured out your plan, have they? They think you’re working on a real revolution. What’s to stop us from revealing your little plan and letting him and his friends destroy you now?”

“My spiders and the ninety-nine point four percent chance that you will flee this chamber within the next sixty seconds,” Mr. Griffin replied, unperturbed. “I have arranged another task for you. And if you want to survive my revolution, you will return to work for me afterward.”

“Why,” Thad said through clenched teeth, “would I return to-”

“Dante,” Nikolai grunted above him. “Thaddeus. Sofi-ya.”