Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Read online

  As Rolfe turned around, Ikey caught sight of a framed photograph sitting on one of the shelves. In the photograph, Rolfe and a woman sat next to each other, both dressed in their finest. A girl of seven or eight sat propped in the woman’s lap, her head lolled against the woman’s shoulder and neck, eyes closed. Her legs were extended across Rolfe’s lap, and in his hand, he clutched the girl’s. Her other hand, tiny and pale, hung limp between the woman’s knees. The expressions on the faces of Rolfe and the woman were stern, broad dams against something they worked hard to conceal. Dark bags slouched under the eyes of the woman. Rolfe peered away, off to the camera’s left and out toward something along the horizon.

  “Who is that?” Ikey asked.

  Rolfe glanced back at Ikey, then followed his nod to framed photograph.

  “None of your concern,” he said, then blew out the candle. He ushered Ikey into the hallway, then tucked the book under his arm as he locked the office up again.

  Without explaining the book, Rolfe led Ikey to the other side of the infirmary. As they passed David and Gavril, Ikey looked the two over. Each slept in his own bed. It was odd to see them apart. David appeared to be himself, but pale. His breathing sounded ragged and ready to blossom into a snore. A fresh, growing bruise encircled his neck and disappeared beneath the bed sheet draped over him.

  Gavril looked the worse for wear. His color had returned to pale as well, but new bruises were enveloping his face, the left side of which was swollen and dark. His eyelids were puffed up to the point that they looked like a boil that would rupture under the slightest nudge.

  His arm lay tucked under a sheet as well.

  At the end of the infirmary, Rolfe slid back one of the aluminum-framed screens. He approached a bed and reached for the sheet that covered the large object. Ikey knew it was a mechanical ass, and as Rolfe whipped the sheet back, he confirmed Ikey’s suspicion. The vacant, black eyes of the creature stared into the space above them.

  Ikey pointed to the creature. “You want me to fix that?”

  Rolfe nodded.

  “And I suppose there’s a good reason that you can’t have it fixed by the workhouse maintenance man?”

  “It’s a jot more complicated than that. I need this one not only repaired, but equipped with a special set of instructions.”

  Ikey attempted to cross his arms over his chest, then recalled that he had only the one. He slipped his fingers into the pocket of his trousers.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Ikey asked.

  Rolfe turned his head to the prone machine. “I can’t say. It was sent to a storage room for safe keeping. Parts and such, as I understand it.”

  “What instructions do you want me to give it?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say at this time.”

  Ikey shook his head. “Fixing a broken machine is one thing…”

  Rolfe handed over the ledger book.

  Ikey took it, sat on a nearby bed, and then settled the book on his lap. As he paged through it, it appeared to be nothing more than what it was. Neat rows of entries and numbers marched across the ruled pages and thin grids. After a dozen or so pages, however, Ikey found tight, scrawled script that appeared to be copied from a guide for troubleshooting and repairing the Wellington-Hammerman Automaton.

  Ikey paged through and found detailed diagrams in addition to the hand-copied text. It appeared to present more than enough information to figure out the automaton.

  He looked up at Rolfe.

  Rolfe cleared his throat. ”Needless to say, this book came at great personal cost to myself. I’ve tinkered with this beast in my off time, but I daresay that I lack even the most rudimentary mechanical knowledge. When I heard that you had a knack for such things—“

  “I’ll need my arm repaired,” Ikey said as he folded the cover back over the book. “I can do it with David's and Gavril’s help. Between the three of us, we might come up with two useful hands. But I can’t do it and still work down on the factory floor.”

  Rolfe waved his hands before himself. “I wouldn’t dare dream of it. Consider yourself and your friends on indefinite medical leave. For one week.”

  Ikey raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound indefinite.”

  Rolfe’s mustache twitched. “No, it does not. As far as the superintendent is concerned, that is your status. But I’m afraid I must insist that you have this thing up and doing my bidding by the dinner bell six days hence.”

  Ikey leaned over the automaton and hovered his fingertips at the latch in the thing’s belly. As he snapped the latch back, he half expected the monster to bolt upright, grasp Ikey’s arm, and snap it like kindling.

  Instead, it lay flat and motionless and absurdly ridiculous.

  Ikey lifted the panel. It swung back on hinges and revealed layers and layers of gears and springs and things Ikey didn’t recognize. There was not enough of the creature’s inner workings revealed to even begin deciphering the mechanism inside. He’d have to take the covering off. It would hardly be possible with David’s help and one hand.

  Ikey shook his head and stood upright. “Six days isn’t enough. It’ll take me two or three to fix my hand and David’s. Then it’ll take me six more days to figure out how this thing even works.”

  “But you have six days.”

  Ikey shook his head again and snapped the automaton’s panel shut. “I’m telling you, six days isn’t enough. Maybe if I had two functioning arms—“

  “I know you can do it,” Rolfe said. “I’ve heard of your talents.”

  Ikey smirked. “Fixing augments is not—“

  “I’ve heard a great deal about your talents from a man named Cross.”

  Ikey swung around to Rolfe. He reached for the lapel of the man’s coat, then let his hand drop. “What do you know of Cross? Where is he?”

  Rolfe straightened his back. “He is in delightful shape. Currently, he is being hosted by an associate of mine—“

  “I want to see him.”

  Rolfe held up his palms and shook his head. “In due time. Due time.” He nodded to the automaton. “After this thing completes its designated task on its deadline, I will make sure you and Cross are reunited. But not a moment before.”

  Ikey ground his teeth. “I need more than six days.”

  “You haven’t got it.”

  Ikey glanced at the automaton, then back to Rolfe. “Where’s my arm?”

  “I’ve taken the liberty of forwarding it on for repair. Nurse Luca has taken your yoke out for cleaning. I suggest in the interim, you either get some rest, or start studying this material,” Rolfe said with a gesture at the book on the bed.

  Ikey turned back to the mechanical ass. He ran a hand over the patchy down of his scalp. Six days.

  “What’s in six days?” Ikey asked.

  “That’s the day you have this automaton up and taking orders.”

  “Why? What’s so important about six days?”

  “It’s no concern of yours.”

  Ikey scratched at the back of his head. Six days. “Things would go a lot faster if Cross was here to help me. He’s a mad genius with mechanics. More so than myself, even. Between the two of us, we’d have this thing dancing vaudeville by the third evening.”

  Rolfe’s mustache twitched. “As much as I’d like to see that, I’m afraid I can’t accommodate you.”

  “How do I know you have Cross?” Ikey asked as he reached over and clutched the jumble of ribs in his side.

  Rolfe’s mustache jerked to the left, and then the right side drooped as if it broke a suspension spring. “I suppose you don’t.”

  Ikey sighed. “Can I get a cup of tea? Maybe a biscuit, even?”

  Rolfe’s mustache lifted in a grin. “You are asking for quite a bit in this place.”

  “Am I? I figured asking for a finger of scotch would be asking for a lot.” He motioned at the ledger. “But a cup of a tea and a biscuit would help me focus on my task.”

  Rolfe nodded once, then threaded
himself through a part in the screens and disappeared. His shoes clipped and echoed around the empty hall as he crossed to the other end of the infirmary.

  Ikey sank onto the bed opposite the automaton. He rested his elbow on his knee and took in the bare slope of his left shoulder. His head drooped and wagged slightly at the thought of Cross. At least the man was alive. Alive and not on the Continent, the tallest soldier in the trenches.

  That is, if Rolfe was telling the truth.

  He examined the automaton again and passed an exasperated breath through pursed lips. Six days. Peering into the belly of the beast hadn’t been as intimidating as trying to dissect one of Cross’s infernal music boxes, but it was a complicated setup. Much more elaborate than the augments or simple machines he was used to.

  And what of the instructions he was expected to give the thing? Ikey drew the book closer to himself until its spine pressed against his thigh. At least he had that one advantage. If he could figure it out, he’d know how to instruct the beasts. At that point, Rolfe would have to tell him what he wanted it to do. That might be his bargaining chip.

  A smirk creased Ikey’s face as he looked to the ceiling. He knew the name of the saboteur. If David was right, Ikey could trade the name for a pardon, walk out of Marlhewn, and head back to Whitby with his arm and his eye. Maybe Rolfe was lying about Cross. Maybe he wasn’t.

  Either way, that wouldn’t help David or Gavril. And it wouldn’t help Philip or those who came into Marlhewn and faced the terror of The Alligator.

  The book’s cover creaked under Ikey’s grasp.

  Six days. It would have to be enough to figure out how to save everyone.

  Chapter Twenty

  As Rolfe carried a chattering tea cup and saucer across the infirmary, Ikey drew the ledger book into his lap and paged through to the text. He examined the script and the hastily copied diagrams. He’d rather see more of the inner workings of the beast, but until he had his arm back, he’d have to be content with peering through the open panel on the abdomen to better understand the construction.

  While Ikey worked, Rolfe perched on the edge of the next bed. He sipped a cup of tea and read from a small book produced from his back pocket.

  Ikey sat back and sighed in exasperation, unable to see what he wanted to see in the automaton. He turned a few pages of the book in search of a better diagram, then flipped the cover closed with a snap. He pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed at the corners of his eyes.

  “You’ll get it,” Rolfe offered.

  “Why do you send people on to The Old Chopper?” Ikey asked.

  “It is expected that I do so.”

  Ikey glanced at Rolfe, then shook his head as he looked back to the automaton. “That’s not an answer.”

  “I beg to differ. It is the simple truth.”

  Ikey smirked. “It makes it worse, somehow, that you keep me and the others here, that you can be a doctor to these people, yet you choose to send them on like they're nothing more than machines to be refitted and repaired.”

  “You would rather I have sent the three of you on to The Old Chopper? Is that what I'm hearing?”

  Ikey glared at Rolfe. “Don’t make light of this.”

  “And why would I? It’s all very serious, isn’t it? Very serious indeed.” Rolfe sipped at his cup and leaned forward as if the automaton was a fire they sat around.

  Ikey picked up the ledger again and settled it in his lap. After a moment of staring at the pages, he returned his attention to Rolfe. “Was that your daughter? The one in the photograph?”

  Rolfe stifled a slight cough. He set his saucer and cup aside, then produced a velvet pouch from inside his coat. “It was. Yes.”

  “What happened to her?” Ikey asked.

  From the pouch, Rolfe removed a gleaming mahogany pipe, and a smaller, leather pouch. From the leather pouch, he pinched out wads of tobacco and packed them into the bowl of his pipe. “She died.”

  “What of?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Ikey looked back to the automaton. “I was just making conversation.”

  “Perhaps you should be making repairs instead.” Rolfe placed the pipe between his lips, struck a match, and held it to the bowl of the pipe. Smoke puffed up in billows.

  “If she had been an inmate here, would you have sent her on to The Old Chopper?”

  “That’s a daft question.”

  “Yet you would send on the children of others,” Ikey said.

  “Your point?”

  Ikey locked eyes with Rolfe. “The man I spoke to originally, the one who told me that you needed something repaired, he said you wanted to make places like Marlhewn unprofitable to the point that the inmates would be turned out. I’m trying to reconcile that with the man who would send others on to The Old Chopper.”

  Rolfe sat up on the edge of the bed and pulled the pipe stem from his lips. “What would you have me do instead?”

  Ikey peered down at the book.

  Rolfe cleared his throat. “How long would I last in my position if I didn’t see to my duties?”

  Ikey shot a glance back at Rolfe. “How can you last for a minute here? Have you not an ounce of sympathy for those in this place? You see their bodies mangled, spirits crushed. How can you look at us and dismiss our suffering so easily?”

  “I dismiss nothing.” Rolfe gestured at the automaton. “This machine is a tool that will help me end the suffering of those imprisoned in Marlhewn. I regret having to fulfill my role as it stands. It causes me suffering as well. As you have to live with not being able to save Philip, I have to live with not being able to save those I pass along to the chopper.”

  The comment regarding Philip snapped and spit. Ikey turned away from Rolfe, then looked to the ceiling. He heard the crackling of Philip’s bones, but in his mind’s eye he saw writhing hoses crawling with flame. It seemed that there should have been so much light in the engine room of the Kittiwake, as everything was on fire. But instead, everything darkened, faded away as if light itself was being consumed by the flames.

  Down inside him, toward the back of his existence, back in the space David had spoken of, there was the tiniest sense of disappointment. It seemed that watching a man die should have revealed more. That Ikey should have seen something monumental and remarkable when the admiral’s soul left his body. But there had been nothing. The pop of his ammunition exploding, and then his body dropped to the floor like the pile of roasting meat that it was.

  And that made it all the worse to have failed Philip. Life was gone as if it never was.

  Springs creaked as Rolfe stood. “I can see that something I said has had an impact on you.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Ikey asked.

  “I thought we covered that,” Rolfe said around the stem of his pipe.

  Ikey shook his head. “What’s in it for you? Why is this personal to you?”

  Rolfe pulled the pipe from his lips and peered into the bowl as if the answer might be tucked inside. “Does it matter?”

  “To me.” Ikey gestured at the mechanical ass. “I like to know why I’m doing things. What for.”

  Rolfe lifted an eyebrow. “I find you misguided, Ikey. You are not here for any reason other than yourself.”

  “That’s not true,” Ikey said as Rolfe turned and started to walk away. He stood again.

  Rolfe slipped out between two of the dividers. The man’s footsteps clipped across the infirmary, his pace firm and measured like a doctor off to visit his next patient. Ikey stepped up to the part in the screens. Rolfe disappeared into his office. When he failed to come back out, Ikey glanced back at the ledger lying on the bed, then looked out over the sleeping forms of David and Gavril.

  Rolfe was an odd one, but if he had something up his sleeve that could make things easier on those left behind... Ikey’s back stiffened. If he left, and he got Gavril out with him, their positions would be filled immediately, just as Philip’s place had.

  Ikey turned back t
o the ledger.

  Later that evening, as Ikey studied the ledger, he heard bed springs groan, and then the sound of bare feet on the floor. He set the ledger aside and went to peer through the crack. David stood beside Gavril’s bed. He peered down at the other man through red-ringed eyes. His one, remaining hand rested on the edge of the bed. With the stump of his right arm, he touched Gavril’s bare shoulder. He drew the tip of his stump along the pale skin, over the knob of the shoulder and down the arm to the edge of the top sheet. There, the stump of David’s arm slipped over the sheet’s hem of threadbare cotton. He tried once again to brush the sheet aside with his stump, then sucked in a small breath. With the fingers of his left hand, he pulled the sheet down until he exposed the splint bracing Gavril’s arm.

  A wave of agony wrenched David’s face, curdled it, blistered it red. It appeared fit to split like an overripe fruit, spill and splash around his feet.

  Ikey stepped aside to give David a moment of privacy. As did so, his shoulder brushed the privacy curtain. The aluminum frame clicked as it rocked against the floor.

  “Who’s there?” David asked. His voice trembled. He cleared his throat.

  Ikey cleared his head with a deep breath, then stepped out around the curtains. “I thought you’d bloody well sleep all week.”

  David grinned. His whole face relaxed a second, and then he glanced back to Gavril. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ikey said with a wave of his hand.

  “How long before the porter’s wagon?” David asked. “Do you know?”

  “No wagon for us. Not this time. Not for him, either,” Ikey said with a nod to Gavril.

  “But his arm…”

  “I struck a deal with Rolfe. He will allow Gavril to heal on his own. And our own augments are out getting fixed now.”

  David laid his stump against Gavril’s shoulder again. The man stirred, but did not wake.

  “At what cost?” David asked.

  “I have to fix something for Rolfe. An automaton. One of the mechanical asses.”

  David’s brow furrowed. “Whatever for? Is he in need of a new nurse?”