The Liberation Page 22

Where had the attackers gone? They controlled the city. Why, then, did they hide?

  Just south of the Amsterdam Veerkade, a rough collie with a matted sable coat barked at the passage of Anastasia’s horse. It darted from beneath the stairs of a pedestrian canal bridge to snap at her mare’s fetlocks. The horse whickered. For a moment Anastasia thought she was destined for a cold splash, or a concussion on stone pavers, but a few moments of desperate horsewomanship proved sufficient to keep her seated. The dog gave tireless commentary throughout.

  “Shut up,” she hissed. That the occupiers weren’t openly slaughtering people in the streets didn’t mean she wanted to draw their attention. Nobody wanted their attention.

  Her mare launched into a trot. It wouldn’t slow; not with the dog in tow. The octagonal apse of the Nieuwe Kerk came into view on her left; to the right, the old brewery and vendor stalls lined the ancient Turfmarkt Canal. The Turfmarkt and Houtmarkt predated Het Wonderjaar, although the old quays had disappeared centuries ago. (Nobody burned peat any longer: Alchemy and heating oil had consigned it to the primitive past.) But now instead of peat and timber, consumers bought food, furniture, art, musical instruments, hammers, and anything else itinerant traders hauled along the so-called Peat Canal. It wasn’t the Grote Markt, the Great Market, but it always promised a diverting afternoon. Anastasia’s mother had made a point to stop here during their special visits to The Hague, just to see what oddments had arrived from the far-flung corners of the Empire. She still had an Irish tin whistle from her very first visit to the Houtmarkt, and it remained the only instrument she could play. The memory should have hung a wistful smile upon her lips.

  But today Anastasia glimpsed less than half a dozen people at the market. A man and woman were crossing the street with a wicker basket slung between them. They dropped it—glass shattered—and sprinted for cover behind an empty merchant stall when Anastasia approached with barking dog in tow.

  The entire human population of the city scurried when it used to walk, hunched when it used to stand proud, looked to its feet when it should have looked up, across the globe. These men and women who’d strode the world like titans now cowered like mice cornered in the wainscoting: They’d seen the cat, its claws stained red, and now shivered in dread of the paw poised to drag them to their deaths.

  The dog kept barking. “For God’s sake, shut up!”

  Curtains twitched in dark houses; answering barks echoed from nearby streets. When the collie reared momentarily on its hind legs, she glimpsed the contours of its ribs between clumps of matted fur.

  Her fingers snaked into the folds of her shawl where, out of habit, she kept a tin of mints. Was mint poisonous to dogs? She should be so lucky. Anything to distract the mutt. She had to drop one rein to pry open the tin, but it was for naught. The tin was empty. The last mint had gone under her tongue long ago, and of course she couldn’t buy more. The machines were bringing food into the city, basic sustenance for their human prisoners, but the obliterated harbors made clear their stance on luxury items.

  She flung the empty tin aside. The dog chased it. Anxiety dissipated, the mare slowed to a walk.

  She was still leaning forward with precarious balance, grasping for the damn rein she’d dropped, as she passed the canalmaster’s hut for this stretch of the Spui. No smoke puffed from the chimney. As with everything else, the inbound and outbound towpaths had fallen into disrepair. Dead leaves, windblown paper, dog and horse leavings fouled what used to be pristine walkways of raked gravel; the blackened husks of burnt tow-barges sat skewwhiff on the canal bottom like so much flotsam. Severed mooring lines dangled in the water. The canalmaster was probably dead, the victim of an orgiastic slaughter. Anastasia remembered the moment when her world turned upside down, the moment she realized the mechanicals weren’t escorting their masters but hunting them—

  Two servitors emerged from the hut. She bit her tongue. The iron tang of blood warmed her mouth and slicked her teeth.

  They’re feeding us, she reminded herself. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t want us alive. Just go about your business and they won’t interfere.

  Her hands curled into fists. Don’t glow. Don’t shine. Not now. Please, not now.

  They saw her. Oh, God, they saw her. She could hear the bezels ratcheting as four crystalline eyes swiveled in perfectly machined sockets to track her. She couldn’t breathe. She had to urinate. She gulped. Blood curdled in her stomach.

  Don’t run. Don’t draw attention. Don’t look like somebody with a reason to run. Don’t look like a Clockmaker fleeing to the Ridderzaal. Don’t make them chase you.

  Should she turn? Divert through an alley? Or would that be conspicuous? Was it safer to bull forward and pass practically within arms’ reach of that deadly magic?

  No. Stay the course. Show them you’re beaten. Show them your obedience.

  She bowed her head, concentrating on the frayed stitching of her saddle until her vision blurred. She clenched her eyes to forestall a rain of traitorous tears. Nothing, not even the preternatural strength of a servitor, could have contained her dread. Her trembling fluttered the reins and confused her mare. It sensed her anxiety, and that tension flowed back into Anastasia. A feedback loop with no regulator.

  “Ho, citizen,” said an inhuman voice. “Where are you going in such haste?”

  She flinched hard enough to jangle the stirrups. The mare snorted. Oh God, oh God, please don’t act up, please don’t dump me here…

  “And why on that poor beast?” asked a different, yet identical, voice.

  She dropped her head lower, concentrating on controlling the horse and not landing in the canal. She tightened her fist. Deactivating sentries beyond the city limits was one thing; if she tried the same tactic here, surrounded by an unknown number of corrupted machines who might be watching even now, she’d be overrun in seconds.

  “Are your feet baby soft from a lifetime of pampering, perhaps?”

  Metal feet clanked on the pavers, easily keeping pace with Anastasia. The corrupted machines flanked her.

  “You haven’t answered our questions.”

  It took several tries before she could speak. She voiced the first lie that sprang to mind. “I’m delivering this horse and saddle to my father in the Statenkwartier. His gout prevents him from walking to church.”

  “How curious.” A servitor hand shot forward to grab the bridle. The horse tried to dodge, but the other machine grabbed its haunches. The mechanicals were, of course, stronger than any horse. “Doesn’t your father know the purpose of pain isn’t to prevent one from doing as one wishes but to ensure one does as others wish?”

  They stared at her, clicking, as if awaiting an answer. If so inclined, they could stand here until the mare dropped dead, until wind and sun bleached Anastasia’s bones.

  “Please,” she said, and hated herself for meaning it. The servitors released her horse.

  “Go to your maker, then.”

  What an accursed existence when every mechanical on the street was an object of abject terror. She’d once told somebody that the Verderers had considered resurrecting the old porcelain mask idea, but decided in the end it was for the best if the general population feared the Stemwinders. How flip she’d been, she who’d never known true fright. She’d never made its acquaintance until the day the plague ships arrived.

  Anastasia made it to Huygens Square without further incident. The others, minus Malcolm, converged on the Ridderzaal throughout the afternoon, via different routes.

  The subsequent wait for the wagon was just long enough to precipitate an argument between Euwe and Tove as to whether or not the rogues had intercepted it, and who was going to venture outside to try to catch wind of any such news. But it arrived in the early evening, its illicit cargo intact, hidden beneath a mound of cabbages. It came to a side door used for deliveries rather than the grand ceremonial doors facing Huygens Square.

  But they didn’t let it inside. A single Trojan Clakker could devastate t
he Guild and with it any hope of stabilizing the Empire. The wagon’s long, unescorted passage back into the city meant no end of opportunities to infect the machine straining at the yoke. The apparent adherence to its assigned task could be a ruse. So Anastasia had a squad of servitors erect a temporary shelter just outside the delivery door, lest any machines prowling the high windows or rooftops of the Binnenhof tried to spy on them. Then she called up a pair of Stemwinders to stand guard while a team scrutinized the wagon hauler and the deactivated sentries.

  Anastasia sweated in a laboratory overlooking the Forge. Salt stung her eyes. The windows were specially treated to reflect most of the heat. But they were cracked and pitted, a legacy of the wretched day it had rained mechanicals into this chamber. The damage to the Forge had also compromised the cooling system that kept the laboratories comfortable. She ran a sleeve across her brow, tightened her grip on the screwdriver, and removed the last screw (three thirty-sevenths of an inch, trapezoidal head) from the first rogue’s skull. She laid the access plate on the bench and set about extracting the corrupted machine’s pineal glass. Normally a technician would have done this, as it wasn’t a job for a Verderer, much less the Tuinier herself. But the technicians were busy repairing the Forge.

  She donned a chainmail glove before plunging her hand into the mechanical’s skull. The mass of needles at the center tinkled against the armor. Her fingers brushed something round. She removed the almond-sized bead of alchemical glass and dropped it into a transparent dish held by Tove.

  To Anastasia’s surprise it didn’t shine, didn’t glitter, didn’t blaze with magical portent. But the malformed attackers, the infectious machines capable of corrupting others, held something luminous within their skulls. She’d expected to find a similarly beautiful peril here. But to her naked eyes, this glass appeared perfectly normal. Indeed, if a layperson were to see this glass lying in the gutter, they wouldn’t even stop to pick it up. How unassuming, this hub around which the entire world spun.

  She activated a lamp beneath the dish. A soft raspberry light illuminated the pineal glass while the dish oscillated in slow circles. The Guildwomen watched for caustics and sharp-edged shadows on the ceiling but saw no evidence of internal fractures. The glass was intact.

  When the third military rogue lay in pieces, its mechanical mind laid bare, Anastasia gathered all three pineal glasses in her unarmored fist. Tove followed her from the laboratory to an annular corridor encircling the Forge chamber.

  The Tuinier accosted a group of early-career Clockmakers. “There are three disassembled military models in that laboratory. Take the heads for recycling and cart the bodies to a reassembly bay. And do take care to note the variation in construction lots.”

  (The sheer perversity of it, using human labor for such menial tasks. And within the Grand Forge, of all places.)

  Doctor Euwe met them outside an iron door opposite the Forge. He’d gone to the archives for the key. Fusty but cool air ruffled Anastasia’s hair when he cranked the door open. Compared to the laboratories, the Cartesian Camera was blessedly brisk.

  It was dark inside. But Forgelight spilling from the corridor was sufficient to show an octagonal chamber painted midnight black and topped with a high hemispherical dome the color of fog at sunrise. Sixteen reclining chairs were arranged in two staggered rings of eight.

  Euwe asked Tove, “Have you been in here?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve only heard of it.”

  The chamber was a camera obscura similar to those used centuries ago by some of the great painters of the early Golden Age. But instead of being a place for projecting landscapes and portraiture models, it was a place for projecting the logico-alchemical grammars embedded within a mechanical’s pineal glass. Here somebody sufficiently fluent in the symbology of mathematical and alchemical compulsion could read the live hierarchical metageasa embedded in a particular pineal glass. This was the only place on the planet where it was possible to stand inside what was, crudely put, a mechanical’s “mind.”

  For that reason everybody called it the “Cartesian Camera.” It had an official designation—Room 101—but nobody called it that. Clockmakers never passed up an opportunity to take a dig at René Descartes, the Roman Catholic philosopher who had expounded quaint belief in the soul as the seat of conscious thought and Free Will. He’d been a contemporary of the young Christiaan Huygens, even lived in the Republic for many years, but he’d died a quarter century prior to Het Wonderjaar. Anastasia considered that a pity; had he lived long enough to witness the first Clakkers, he would have disavowed his Manichean claptrap overnight. And that would have saved the world centuries of strife: The French embraced Descartes and his misguided musings with the zeal typical of idolaters.

  The soul didn’t vibrate to the music of the spheres in some intangible realm of pure thought and concept. It didn’t exist. There was nothing but mechanism. Mechanism of brass and steel, mechanism of meat and bone, even mechanism of mind. The ancient atomists—Leucippus, Democritus, Lucretius, and their wine-swilling ilk—were correct. All physics was mechanism. There was no metaphysics.

  But religion was useful. So the Guild never pushed that last point very hard.

  Anastasia told the others, “Take a seat.”

  Then she opened a chamber in the wall opposite the open door. It was the size of her bathroom medicine cabinet but gently illuminated by an alchemical lamp recessed in the ceiling. It contained what looked like a multi-axis armillary frozen in midrevolution, a model of the immense machine that filled the chasm across the corridor, but barely the width of a pianist’s outstretched hands spanning two octaves. It was empty. The concentric rings of gold, platinum, and brass awaited a sun to orbit; the miniature clockwork universe awaited a Prime Mover. She dropped the first of the belligerent military mechanicals’ pineal glasses into a cradle at the center of the machine.

  The lever resisted her a bit. It succumbed to a solid yank, but not without screeching. It needed lubrication. She shook her head in disgust. Even the simplest maintenance fell by the wayside as their labor force contracted.

  But with the ticking of a pocket watch the armillary began to move. The golden ring tilted forward like a wheel beginning a slow roll toward Anastasia, while the innermost loop, the brass one, rolled backward, as if retreating from her. Simultaneously, the platinum band started to rotate like a top. The ticking accelerated. In moments it became impossible for her to track the multiaxial revolutions. She closed the chamber.

  This activated the entryway to the Cartesian Camera. The door closed automatically on recessed hinges, ratcheting into place until the camera perimeter was a seamless octagon. Mine-shaft darkness enveloped the Clockmakers. Another clicking joined the slightly muted hum from the whirring machine. Anastasia couldn’t see anything in the darkness, but she knew this was the sound of shutters retracting. She took a quick step to the right.

  “Tove, I suggest covering your eyes,” she said, doing the same.

  A fisheye lens in the cabinet door erupted with aquamarine light. It blazed like a gemstone sun, like a burning beryl, bright enough to shine through her eyelids. Tove gasped. The muffled clockworks rose in pitch. After a moment the incandescence faded to a level just shy of eye-watering. Anastasia cracked open one eye, gingerly. The illumination assumed variegated shades that twirled about the room like the shadows from a carousel.

  She said, “It’s safe now.”

  The illuminated patterns dancing on the walls and ceiling dome were sigils: the atoms of metageas. They twirled about the trio of Clockmakers like the gears of an ethereal clockwork. Euwe chewed a fingernail. The Norwegian Guildwoman gaped at the ceiling dome where shone the adamantine edicts at the bedrock of the Empire. They glided around the camera like sharks in Amsterdam’s great aquarium and left zigzag meteor trails in the darkness. The expression of humans’ indomitable willpower imposed on the world.

  Though her eyes ached, Anastasia felt a great sigh of relief. She’d feared the cam
era would reveal a machine devoid of any metageasa whatsoever. A true rogue.

  But this machine had been constrained by metageasa after all. Did that mean Euwe was correct? Were the invaders operating under some variant of “folded hands”? Or had these metageasa been altered?

  The whine of the armillary and the thrum of the machinery driving it leveled off to a constant pitch. The luminous sigils slowed in their orbits; meteors became planets, then fixed stars. In a transformation that seemed both gradual and abrupt, the text stabilized. Above them blazed every detail of a mechanical’s operating precepts.

  Tove whispered, “Oh my God.”

  “It’s quite something,” Anastasia agreed.

  “Yes, it is,” Tove said, “but that’s not what I meant. Look at that.” She pointed. “This… this is wrong.”

  Euwe spat. Anastasia writhed in the semidarkness, imagining a ragged fingernail hitting the floor. “Huygens’s balls. She’s right,” he said.

  There, in one corner of the camera, the sigils weren’t the sharp and soothing aquamarine of an orderly universe. Instead, they were a slightly blurry vermilion. It was a pimple marring the smooth and featureless complexion of the Clockmakers’ great work.

  That was the watershed. They quickly identified more aberrations. This machine’s rules for interaction with the world were thoroughly corrupted. And the aberrations weren’t random or unrelated. The metageasa had been systematically perverted.

  This soldier had been beholden to a set of bedrock rules. But not the Guild’s rules. Its fealty had been to somebody else.

  “No,” Anastasia gasped. She’d hoped, fervently, for anything else. Even “folded hands.”

  The Verderer’s Office had failed.

  Anastasia paced in the sickly light of evil metageasa. “Get a team to study this. Tove, work with them. We need a complete analysis of the alterations. Extract every crumb about the person or persons who instigated the changes, and their goals.”

  Then she removed the pineal glass from the cradle and replaced it with the second soldier’s glass. The result was not the same.