The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

  Drawing on the remarkable reservoir of strength that had seen him through so many adventures, the king's agent took off across the lawn and skidded into cover behind the machine. He moved along its side, ducked under a folded wing, and leaned out to look past it at the front of the priory.

  The front doors had opened and light shone from within. The Steam Man clanked into view. Bells chimed: Brunel's odd and almost incomprehensible mechanical voice. Burton, with his extraordinary ear for languages, was able to discern the words: “Come in out of the rain, Captain.”

  “So much for concealment,” he grunted.

  Straightening, he trudged across to the entrance. With a puff of exhaust fumes, Brunel stood aside.

  “Do not be concerned for your safety,” the engineer rang as Burton stepped in. “Come and warm yourself by the fire. There is someone I want you to meet.”

  The interior of the building had been completely refurbished to accommodate Brunel's size. Originally, it had been a three-floored property. Now only the upper level survived. The bottom two had been knocked into one enormous space, punctuated by tall iron braces that replaced the supporting walls. A narrow staircase, lacking a banister, ran up the wall to Burton's left.

  Off to his right, behind wooden screens of Indian design, he could see items of ornate furniture standing on patterned rugs, and a big inglenook fireplace in which flames flickered invitingly. It was to this area that one of the Steam Man's multijointed arms gestured.

  “Where are the diamonds, Brunel?” Burton demanded.

  There came a whir of gears and another arm lifted. The clamp at its end held a number of flat jewel cases.

  “Here. An explanation awaits you by the fire. I insist that you go and dry yourself, Sir Richard. If you refuse, you'll catch your death.”

  The threat was unmistakable.

  Burton turned and walked unsteadily to the furnished area, passing benches strewn with small items of machinery, tools, drills, brass fittings, gears, and springs. He stepped around the screens and looked down at an elderly man seated in a leather armchair. Bald, shrunken, hollow-eyed, and with pale liver-spotted skin, he was unmistakably Sir Charles Babbage.

  “By the Lord Harry!” the old inventor exclaimed in a cracked and raspy voice. “Are you ill? You look all in! And you're sopping wet, man! For heaven's sake, sit down! Pull the chair closer to the fire. Brunel! Brunel! Come here!”

  Burton placed his cane to the side of the hearth and collapsed into an armchair.

  The Steam Man thudded over and lifted a couple of the screens away. He loomed above the two men.

  “Where are your manners?” said Babbage. “Get Sir Richard a brandy!”

  Brunel moved to a cabinet and, with astonishing delicacy considering his great bulk, withdrew from it two glasses and a crystal decanter. He poured generous measures, returned, and held them out—one to each man. Burton and Babbage accepted them, and Brunel took a few paces back. With a hiss of escaping steam, he lowered into a squat and became entirely motionless but for the rhythmic wheezing of his bellows.

  “Creak creak! Creak creak!” Babbage observed. “Abysmal racket! On and on it goes. And all evening, the rain on the windows! Pitter-patter! Pitter-patter! How is a man supposed to think? I say, drink up, Burton! What on earth's the matter with you?”

  Burton gulped at his brandy. The edge of the glass rattled against his teeth. He pulled the stained handkerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe the blood from his face, dabbing at the cut on his nose.

  He sighed, threw the reddened square of cotton into the fire, and muttered: “Malaria.”

  “My dear fellow, I'm so sorry! Is there anything I can do?” Babbage asked.

  “You could explain, sir.”

  “I can explain, Sir Richard, and when I do, I'm afraid you'll find that your pursuit of Brunel and your wanton destruction of three of my probability calculators was a grave misjudgement.”

  “My actions were prompted by the fact that Brunel, the great engineer, seems to have stooped to common burglary.”

  “I can assure you there was nothing common about it; that I was willing to sacrifice one of my calculators as a decoy is indication enough of that, don't you think? Let me ask you a question: does the theft of diamonds qualify as a crime when millions of people—in fact, the entire Empire—will benefit from it? Before you answer, may I remind you that a similar question is frequently employed by the British government to justify the pillaging of entire countries?”

  Burton held up a hand. “Stop. I myself have argued that the spread of so-called civilisation is little more than invasion and suppression, looting and enslavement, but for the life of me I can't see how it relates to the squalid burglarising of a diamond dealer's shop!”

  Babbage chuckled. “There you go again. Two men crowbarring a door and coshing a policeman, that I will accept as squalid, but a mechanised genius leading three clockwork probability instruments? Tut-tut, Sir Richard! Tut-tut!”

  “Answer the—” Burton stopped and groaned as a tremor overwhelmed him. The glass dropped from his hand and shattered on the edge of the hearth. Babbage flinched at the noise, then recovered himself and made to get up. Burton stopped him with a wave of a hand.

  “Don't! I'm all right! So tell me, how does the good of the Empire relate to tonight's burglary?”

  The Steam Man clanked into action, moving back to the drinks cabinet.

  “I must share with you a vision of the future,” Babbage said. “I want to tell you what is possible—the kind of world we can start building immediately, providing I survive.”

  “The diamonds have something to do with your survival? I don't understand.”

  “You will.”

  Burton took the replacement drink offered by Brunel.

  The Steam Man resumed his former position. A small hatch flipped open in the front of his body and a pliers-like appendage reached in and pulled out a long, thick cigar. The hatch closed and the roll of tobacco was fitted into a small hole located a few inches beneath the bellows. Another arm rose and the blowtorch at its end ignited and lit the cigar. The bellows rose and fell. The cigar pumped blue smoke into the air.

  Old habits die hard.

  Burton sipped at his drink. It was gin. Good choice.

  Babbage leaned forward. “Burton, what if there was no longer a requirement for the working classes?”

  The king's agent looked down at his shoes, which were steaming before the fire.

  “Keep talking,” he said. He felt weirdly disjointed, as if the world he inhabited were something he might awaken from.

  “Imagine this: from one end of the Empire to the other, mechanical brains control the day-to-day necessities of human life. They cook our food. They clean our homes. They sweep our chimneys. They work in our factories. They deliver our goods. They monitor and maintain our infrastructure. They serve us absolutely, unquestioningly, uncomplainingly—and require absolutely nothing in return!”

  “You mean the babbage devices?” Burton queried, his voice thick and slurring.

  “Pah! The probability devices are mere prototypes. They are nothing compared to what I can achieve—if I live!”

  “If you live,” Burton echoed. “And how do you propose to do that, old man?”

  “Come with me.”

  Babbage pushed himself out of the chair, took a walking stick from beside it, and shuffled out beyond the screens.

  Weakly, Burton retrieved his cane and followed.

  With a whir, a clank, and a plume of steam, Brunel fell into pace behind them.

  They crossed to the centre of the workshop, where a plinth stood, draped with a thin cloth.

  “Please,” Babbage said to Brunel.

  The Steam Man extended an arm and pulled the material away.

  Burton looked bemusedly at an intricate contraption of brass; a fantastic array of cogwheels, springs, and lenses, all contained within a brain-shaped case. It was delicate, confusing, and strangely beautiful.

&n
bsp; “A babbage?” he asked.

  “Much more than that. It is my future,” the scientist responded. “And thus, also the future of the British Empire.”

  Burton leaned on his cane and wished Detective Inspector Trounce and his men would hurry up.

  “How so?”

  The elderly scientist gently brushed his hand over the device.

  “This is my latest creation,” he said. “A probability calculator designed to employ information held in an electrical field.”

  “What information?”

  “Everything in here,” Babbage replied, tapping the side of his cranium with a bony forefinger.

  The king's agent shook his head. “No. The brain's electrical activity is so subtle as to be immeasurable,” he said. “Furthermore, the brain is mortal, not mechanical—when it dies, so does the field.”

  “As far as measurement goes, you are wrong. With regard to death, you are right. However, there's something you haven't taken into consideration. Would you show us, please, Brunel?”

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel lowered himself and placed the jewel cases on the floor. There were six of them, all removed from Brundleweed's safe. The Steam Man's arms flexed. Clamps held the cases steady while fine saw blades slid through their locks. Gripping devices took hold and pulled the containers open. Five of them were pushed aside. Pincers moved forward into the sixth. One by one, five large black stones were separated from the rest.

  “The Cambodian Choir Stones!” Babbage announced.

  “What about them?” asked Burton, impatiently. His eyelids felt heavy and his legs weak.

  “My greatest technical challenge, Sir Richard, has not been the gathering, processing, and dissemination of information, but the storage of it. It is relatively easy to make a machine that thinks, but to make a machine that remembers—that is quite another thing. Pass the gemstones to our guest, Brunel.”

  The famous engineer obeyed, dropping the black diamonds one by one into Burton's extended palm. The king's agent looked at them closely, struggling to keep his eyes focused.

  “You are holding in your hand the solution to the problem,” Babbage said. “These diamonds were retrieved from a temple in Cambodia by a Frenchman, Lieutenant Marie Joseph François Garnier. There were seven in total. They've been known in that country as the Choir Stones since their discovery in 1837 on account of the fact that they occasionally emit a faint musical hum.

  “François Garnier gave two of the diamonds to his colleague, Jean Pelletier, and kept the remaining five for himself. Pelletier happened to be a committed Technologist. He knew we were on the lookout for such stones. We'd heard that something of the sort existed and suspected they might possess unique qualities. When he brought his two to my attention, I experimented with them and was intrigued by the possibilities offered by their rather unusual crystalline structure. I made a prototype device into which to fit them. Unfortunately, before I finished my work, Pelletier suffered a heart attack, and when his body was found there was no sign of the stones. No doubt a member of his household staff made off with them. You can't trust these lowly types. My prototype was useless to me without them, so I gave it to Darwin, who had it fitted to a man I believe you are acquainted with—John Speke.”

  Burton gave a gasp of surprise.

  “Without the two diamonds fitted into it, the device didn't function as I had intended but it enabled Darwin to gain some measure of control over the poor fellow,” Babbage continued. “Though why he should want it, I don't know. Nor do I care.”

  “But surely he gave some indication why Speke was important to him?” Burton asked.

  “Maybe. I forget. It's beside the point. What matters is that the Pelletier diamonds were just two of seven, and the remaining five recently appeared in London. Obviously, by hook or by crook, I had to have them—the François Garnier Collection.”

  “So you chose by crook.”

  “I selected the most efficient and immediate method,” Babbage answered. “These black diamonds, you see, Sir Richard, can contain and maintain an electrical field, no matter how slight it may be. Do you understand the significance?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I shall put it into simple terms. At death, there is a surge of electrical activity in the human brain—a transmission, if you will. The Choir Stones are so sensitive that, if they are close enough, they will receive and store that transmission. Memories, sir—they hold memories. I intend to die in their presence. My intellect will be imprinted upon them. Brunel will then set them into the machinery of this probability calculator, which, like its predecessor, is designed to process the information recorded in their structure. In other words, the essence of Charles Babbage will live on—or, rather, think on—in this device.”

  Burton laughed mirthlessly. “You mean to achieve immortality?”

  “I mean for my intellect to survive.”

  “And your soul?”

  Babbage clucked with irritation. “Pshaw! I no more believe in that superstitious claptrap than you do! I refer to my thought processes! The quintessence of myself!”

  “Nonsense! A human being adds up to far more than the electrical field generated by, or contained within, the spongy matter of his brain. What about the heart, sir? What about emotion? What about how he feels about his memories—his triumphs and regrets?”

  Now it was the elderly scientist's turn to laugh. “Firstly, there is absolutely no empirical evidence that emotion is housed in the heart,” he said scornfully. “And secondly, even if it was, it is eminently disposable! What good has emotion ever done except to wound and anger and weaken and give rise to humanity's most primitive and animalistic urges? Surely you're not going to lecture me about the majesty of love?”

  “No, I'm not. I do say, though, that there are certain decisions a man is called upon to make which transcend the dictates of reason.”

  “Balderdash! Those are simply occasions where a lesser intellect struggles; where intelligence gives up and submits to emotional impulses. I design machines that decide the best course of action based upon logic.”

  Burton fought to keep his mind focused, his head from nodding. His fever was raging now. The room was spinning and Babbage's voice seemed to echo from a long way off. He was aware of Brunel's bulky presence a few paces behind him.

  “No, Sir Charles, it won't do,” he rasped. “You have overlooked the fact that a mind separated from the heart entirely eliminates ethics and morality. Look at what you and Brunel have done tonight. You have stolen! You've performed what to you is merely an act of logical necessity—but did you for one minute consider the consequences for Mr. Brundleweed? In a few hours from now he'll awaken to find his business in ruins. His reputation will suffer. His income will be devastated. He and his family will be penalised for your actions.”

  “Irrelevant!” Babbage jerked. “The man is nothing but a common merchant.”

  “And what of his son or his daughter? Do you know their destiny?”

  Babbage licked his lips. “What are you talking about? I don't even know whether he has a son or daughter. I know nothing about the man!”

  “Exactly! You know nothing about him, yet you judge him dispensable. What if one of his children was destined to discover a cure for influenza, or the secret of perpetual motion, or a system by which poverty could be eliminated? What might you have deprived us of?”

  The old man looked disconcerted. “None of that is certain,” he protested. “And since they are a lower class of people, it is highly unlikely.”

  “Your disdain for the working classes is well known, Sir Charles. Perhaps that is why you seek to replace them with thinking machines. But your contempt does not eliminate the possibility that someone in the Brundleweed family might one day play a crucial role in our social evolution.”

  The king's agent fought the impulse to vomit. An unbearable hammering assaulted the inner walls of his skull.

  “It's a very simple equation,” Babbage grumbled. “A matter o
f probability. We can state that maybe Brundleweed's children will become an important influence to future generations, but we can also state that I, Charles Babbage, am already an important influence and will continue to be so.”

  “Conceit!”

  “Fact! I can certainly make the world a more efficient place!”

  “But maybe,” Burton whispered, “efficiency isn't all it's held up to be. Maybe it's the inefficiencies and mistakes that give us the best impetus to change and grow and improve!”

  “No! Miscalculations slow us down! I don't make them. I deal only with the proven and the certain, yet who can dispute that I am evolved? Hand me the diamonds!”

  Burton passed the five black gemstones to the old man.

  “You can kill me now,” Babbage said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Kill me, Sir Richard. Brunel will do the rest.”

  With a shaking hand, Burton pulled the blade from his swordstick.

  “Are you sure? You really want me to kill you?”

  “Of course I do. Get on with it, man! I have work to do!”

  “You are absolutely certain that your memories will be transferred to the diamonds?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then you illustrate my argument admirably. Nothing in life is certain, Sir Charles. The diamonds are fakes.” He stepped forward and plunged his rapier into the scientist's heart. “Do you now get my point?”

  Babbage whispered: “Fakes?”

  He died. His corpse slid from Burton's sword and crumpled to the floor.

  The king's agent turned and faced the Steam Man.

  The hulking machine stood motionless but for the bellows on its shoulder, which scraped up and down incessantly. Little more than an inch of the cigar remained.

  Bells chimed: “The François Garnier Collection is not genuine?”

  “The stones are onyx crystals.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Look for yourself.”

  Burton stepped back. Brunel lumbered past him and retrieved a stone from Babbage's hand, holding it up with a pincer while another arm held a magnifying tool in front of it.