"Clockwerks" by Garon E. Whited

Even the heat of the forge could not dispel the chill of an English winter; the cavernous space greedily drank the heat.  Worktables, row upon row of them, stood in orderly ranks beneath the jets of the gas lights.  Each table held its own gleaming array of pieces, careful designs of mysterious parts.  Gears and cogs, springs and coils, levers and wheels, all lay in neat patterns, as though an infinitely complex engine had been dissected and laid out for examination.

Outside, wan faces drifted through the dusky evening, following the golden light of candles over the snow.  They floated, pale and ghostly, past the narrow windows of the building.  The faces were silent as they passed but for the faint crunch of snow beneath booted feet, a slow procession of false phantoms.  Eyes glanced at the structure almost furtively before turning quickly away. 

The light inside the house swelled brightly as the furnace door opened.  Daniel, glowing in the yellow-white light, licked his lips and narrowed his eyes.  Tongs reached into the yellow-white blaze of heat and drew forth the vessel of molten metal.  It poured like glowing water into the mold, ran rivulets of bright fire in the narrow channels of the form it was meant to take.  He reached into the forge’s heart and replaced the container.

“Robert!” he shouted, over the rush of air and fire, “ close the door!”

A manlike figure in the shadows of the heavy door moved, swung the thick ceramic-and-steel portal closed with one hand, turned the wheel to lock it.  With the door closed, the gas mantles still made it gleam.  Manlike it was, but not a man.  It had arms and legs like a man.  It had a face like a man.  It had eyes to see with and a tongue to speak.  And yet, its entire form was drawn from metal and glass, bronze and brass, polished copper and shining steel.  It was a man all of metal with emerald lenses for his eyes.

“Robert,” Daniel said, without taking his eyes from the delicate mold of molten metal.

“Yes, Father?”  When it spoke, it was a pleasant sound.  A voice modulated and pitched so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from that made by a human throat.  It was lilting, gentle, soothing.  Yet for all of that, it was not a human voice.  It was too mild, too gentle and soft and dry.  It varied neither in pitch nor stress, but spoke only as sounds made in the air, without a soul to give them true meaning.

“Pump the bellows, Robert.  I’ll have the fire up high for when I temper the mainspring.”  Daniel wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.  His once-white shirtsleeves were grimed with labor, sweat, and soot.  The heavy apron he wore over the trousers and waistcoat had shielded his body from the occasional sparks, but his sleeves were burned through in places.

While Robert moved to turn the cranks that would force air into the forge, Daniel moved to a low sink and drank deeply from the carafe within.  Cold water spilled down his chin, but he paid it no mind.  He was close.  Close!  In a matter of hours, he would be finished with his greatest project, his finest triumph.  She would be whole.

Outside, distantly, almost drowned within the rumbling hiss and roar of the forge, he heard the sounds of singing.  He paused, carafe still in hand, and cocked his head to listen.  Distant carolers again, singing joys into the world with the spirit of Christmas.

“Carolers,” he whispered.  “Perhaps we’ll go caroling.”

Robert made no reply, cranking the air into the forge.

Daniel shook himself and moved to take up tools.  Unlike the forge’s hammers, these were finer, smaller, fit for a jeweler or watchmaker.  Indeed, the device he labored upon was fit for the finest of fine watches.  Smaller than a woman’s fist, it was filled with gearing of such dizzying complexity that even its designer worked upon it with trepidation befitting a surgeon operating on his firstborn.  He donned thick glasses for his task, lenses that magnified many times; then he seemed to grow still as the tools touched the mechanism, like a man removed from the bitterest cold of the Pole to thaw in the warmth and light.  But his hands did move, imperceptibly, as smoothly as a man of ice might melt, drawing finer and finer the thin wires within.  He scored and cut, affixed and turned, screwed and bolted and twisted, all with movements so fine that the human eye could not mark them unaided.  And the miniscule parts with which he worked were often of a thickness not even equal to that of the finest human hair.

When he sat back and rested, the first grey light of dawn was teasing the eastern sky.  He stretched and crackled, wincing at the lancing pains in his neck and shoulders.  But he took no real rest; he moved almost immediately to the forge and began several delicate and complex operations upon the metal he drew forth.

The white heat of the forge had marked this metal, but even that infernal heat had failed to melt it.  Where steel had run like water in the dead of night, the greatest fury of the forge had but softened this alloy.  Daniel placed it on the anvil and began to hammer upon it, shaping it blow by blow, slowly.  It was almost done, that much was obvious; with every hammer-stroke the metal altered subtly, the changes wrought within it and upon it all but invisible.

How many blows had he struck upon its adamantine surface?  How many hours had he spent in the heating of it?  How many nights had he persisted, human will and blind determination pitted against obdurate metal?  He had lost track, nor did he care; all that mattered was the final, finished product.  Whatever time it took, he would give.

Into the fire, back to the anvil, the hammer rises and falls again and again, then back into the fire….

If the master is truly so, there comes a time when the work of his mind and heart and hands is perfect.  There comes a moment of supernal clarity when the creating has ended and the creation is.

The strange, hard alloy was a thin, flat strip in a tight, tiny spiral.

Daniel quenched it.  Drawn from the earth, bathed in fire, baptized in water, christened by blood and tears and sweat, the small spiral was then laid upon the surface of the anvil to rest.

Robert ceased turning the bellows-cranks and stepped close to look, the India rubber layer on his feet silent against the stone floor.

“Have you completed the Mainspring, Father?”

Daniel nodded, his eyes never leaving the coiled bit of metal.

“Does this mean that I will have a sister?” Robert asked.

Daniel flinched and then turned to Robert with a look of black fury.

“You will not have a sister,” Daniel hissed, his fists clenching.  “You are a prototype, an experiment, a rough draft!  She will be my daughter!  You are a mechanism!”  He pointed a trembling finger at the mechanical man.  “Never forget that!”

“Am I not your son?” asked the uninflected, monotone voice. 

“I created you.  I built you.  But that does not make you my son!”

“I do not understand,” Robert observed, still quiet, still mild.

“You do not have to,” Daniel replied briskly, turning away.  “Just do as you are told.”

“Yes, Father.”

Daniel took the tiny spring in a pair of fine tongs and moved to the device upon which he had so recently labored.  There he donned his magnifying glasses again and delved into the secret places of the innermost workings.  His once-brawny frame, now gaunt, hunched over the intricate clockwork as though he might coax even greater skill from his gifted hands.  For long minutes he stayed focused, rapt in concentration.  Then, with the faintest snick of a closing aperture, he sat back again.

“At last,” he breathed.

Immediately, he divested himself of goggles and apron.  He took the egg-shaped device in his hands with exacting care, as though he handled something so fragile and so precious that the world might be brought to its end if he were to tremble.  With careful steps, he moved across the workshop to a lone table draped over with a sheet.

“Uncover her,” he whispered.  Robert moved to obey, lifting the sheet with delicate, precise grace and withdrawing it from the form beneath.

It was a young woman.  Her appearance was that of one just at that age when her girlhood was past, but her womanhood not yet full-flowered; a maiden with hair the color of molten gold and skin like alabaster or porcelain.  She wore a dress as any respectable young lady might wear, a sky-blue color with a white apron, and black leather shoes, complete with polished buckles.  Her fine-fingered hands were folded on the center of her body, between and just below where her just-grown breasts disturbed the flat line of her blouse.

“Open the throat,” Daniel ordered.  Sweat stood in beads upon his brow and his skin was grey; but for all that his hands were steadier than the Earth in all her quiet patience.

Robert drew the neckline of the dress down with one finger, precisely.  The other hand touched her throat just so, exactly at the place between her collarbones, and a portion of it folded outward to reveal the hollow cavity within.  Metal gleamed and revealed the maiden—the perfect, lovely doll—for the construct that she was.

Daniel stepped closer, ignoring the tightness in his chest, and gently, as a mother lays her babe in the cradle, laid one mechanical marvel inside another.  It slipped sweetly, perfectly, into the hollow of her throat.

“Father, your appearance indicates an issue of health—” began the mechanical man, but Daniel waved it imperiously to silence. 

Daniel’s eyes were fixed upon the face of the girl as he closed the small, pale place in the hollow of her throat.  The door closed, merging seamlessly with what appeared to be flesh, hiding once more her true nature.

“Wake up, daughter,” Daniel said, voice husky and rasping.  He struggled to take a deeper breath.  “Wake up!”

The faux maiden lay silent, unmoving.

Daniel leaned on the table, eyes brimming with tears.  His chest was tight and painful; his left arm was growing numb.  He couldn’t think… everything was right, everything!  He had worked miracles in metallurgy, chemistry, metaphysics… she should be alive.  She should be alive!

She lay there, silent testament to genius, love, and to failure.

Daniel leaned over her and whispered, “Please?”  A pair of tears streaked his stubbled cheeks before falling on the smooth curves of her face.

“Please, daughter?” he pleaded, softly, supporting himself on his right arm.  He felt weak, shaky, tired.  “Please wake up for Papa?”

She remained still.

Daniel felt the bolt of pain in his chest like a hot dart, flung from his heart to the fingertips of his left hand.  It left him gasping in agony, but his thoughts were clear again.  He would never see her rise.  He would never feel her holding his hand.  He would never get to sing her to sleep.  He would die a failure.

He leaned close to her, struggling to remain upright for a few seconds longer.

“Sleep if you must, baby girl,” he whispered, and kissed her gently.  “Daddy loves you.”  Then his knees folded and he slid gently to the workshop floor.  “Daddy,” he whispered, “will… always….”

Robert stood mute and unmoving while Daniel crumpled.  He stood there as Daniel breathed out in a soft, almost noiseless sigh.  And he remained unmoving even after Daniel grew utterly still.

The maiden licked her lips.  It was a perfect simulacrum of a living girl, even to the moisture of the tongue.  She blinked, her lashes fluttering slightly, and opened eyes that seemed almost too real.  She sat up, a perfect replica of life.  She turned her head, hair falling about her shoulders, and looked around the workshop.  When she spoke, her voice was that of a young, somewhat frightened woman.

“Where am I?”