Maybe I was just born too late.
Looking back at the innocent doll, her face radiant in the lamplight, I sit up straight and lean closer. Clamping my fingers on the probe, I push back into her body and inspect the cavity one more time.
“Damn,” I whisper.
A few bright gashes mar the metal. The marks haven’t oxidized, which means this happened recently. I turn the doll over and she smiles up at me, unperturbed. Her cheeks and pursed lips shine a faded red. But whatever makes her work is gone. Someone has come here and cut out her heart. My mind strays back to the odd word the Old Believer used: wolves.
I drop the probe and penlight on the desk.
“She’s been modified,” I say to the room. “Someone damaged her.”
At the door, the Old Believer launches into a quiet prayer.
The faithful would never mutilate their own artifact. This commune immigrated here from Brazil more than a hundred years ago, along with their rare books and treasures. Lately, the Old Believers have taken to digitizing their collections, instead of copying and recopying them. But the items in this alcove are just as precious to the church now as they were three hundred years ago.
The Old Believer stands near the doorway, eyes lost in shadow above his beard. He doesn’t seem to notice me anymore. Beard twitching as his lips move, his chanting is absorbed by the thick carpet and curtains, by walls stacked floor to ceiling with books.
“Who was here?” I ask him. “Who could have done this?”
Lightning brightens the sky outside, somewhere far away. The windows quiver in their frames as thunder growls through the forest.
I clasp my hands together and take a deep breath.
“Miss June?” asks Oleg. “Is it okay?”
The small man watches me, nervous. He stretches pale lips over nicotine-stained teeth, trying to reassure me. I push a lock of stray hair over my ear and lift the porcelain doll to show Oleg the gaping hole in her back.
“Ask him if this is new damage,” I say, looking over Oleg’s shoulder to where the Old Believer stands, rocking as he prays.
“Hey? Is this new?” I call to him.
The Old Believer takes a step closer.
“Who did this?” I ask. “Did someone else come here?”
The man’s eyes widen over his bushy beard.
“Nyet,” says the Old Believer, shaking his head. “Nyet, nyet, nyet.”
With one hand he covers his face, making the sign of the cross over his chest with the other. He lumbers over to the row of high windows. Begins to tug on the brass poles that open them, shaking them to make sure they are locked. Raindrops thump into the glass like fat moths, the room quiet and stuffy under the sharp smell of ozone.
“That’s not good,” says Oleg. “He doesn’t know.”
“Grab my big duffel bag from the pews,” I tell Oleg.
Oleg flashes me a doubtful look, then turns and goes.
I drag a spidery black surgical headlight from my tool roll, pulling it onto my forehead as Oleg lumbers back into the room. He drops the heavy black bag at my feet, emblazoned with logos from the Kunlun Foundation.
“Whatever you do,” he says, “you should hurry. They are…upset.”
The Old Believer has finished checking the windows. Now he is reaching for Oleg, complaining urgently to him in Slavic. Oleg turns back to the man, both of them gesticulating and speaking in loud whispers.
The hole inside the doll’s chest cavity is ragged around the edges. Whoever did this clearly wanted to remove one part only. I jam a spreader tool between her ribs and pump the handle until her interior is better exposed. The machinery appears undamaged, well preserved these hundreds of years. The missing piece must have supplied power to the rest of the machine.
But there are ways to substitute for a motor.
Ignoring the arguing men, I drag three small plastic cases out of the duffel bag. Cracking the cases open, I array three compact, battery-powered tools on the broad table: a wand, a printer, and a drill.
Kunlun paid for these expensive tools, but they’d never imagined I’d use them like this.
I snatch up the wand-like device and flick a protective plastic nub off its red probe tip, then flip two lenses over my eyes and click on the head-mounted spotlight. The terrain inside the automaton’s chest springs into view, every detail magnified and bright.
The probe enters the hole in the doll’s back, as big as a crane in my lenses. The wand clicks, each tick stumbling over the next like a Geiger counter until finally the steady spatter of clicks indicates the probe has found a scannable area.
I close my eyes and press a button with my thumb. A laser range finder in the tip of the probe spins up, spraying the interior of the doll’s chest cavity with invisible light. It only takes a millisecond and then I’m yanking the headlight off and pulling the thumb drive out of the wand.
“Okay, time to go,” says Oleg, tapping my shoulder.
I shake Oleg’s hand off and jam the thumb drive into a portable three-dimensional printer. Scowling at Oleg, I rest my fingers on top of the rectangular piece of technology. As the surface heats up, I know the device is working.
“One minute,” I say to Oleg. Then, aiming my voice over his shoulder: “I’m packing up, okay? I’m leaving. I’ll finish my work from the pictures.”
With the right fit, I can interface with the gear tooth system inside the automaton. Regardless of whether the power supply is present, this little girl can be activated. She was created before electricity was discovered. Her limbs run on mechanical power—the same kind of good old clockwork stored in a tightened spring.
Or the motor of a drill.
The printer finally spits out a gear-shaped drill bit. I pick it up and rub the plastic between my fingers to get rid of the chaff. I blow on it and the shavings spiral away like cottonwood fluff.
The Old Believer shuffles out of the room.
“Now,” says Oleg. “We go now.”
“Almost,” I say.
Oleg curses in a language I don’t understand.
I pick up the electric drill, a smooth black piece of the future, oiled and heavy in my hands. The freshly printed gear mounts easily on the bit with a twist of my wrist. Pulling the trigger, the drill grinds, humming to itself, rotating the intricately carved artifact in a slow, smooth circle. It took someone months to hand-file this piece three hundred years ago, and thirty seconds for me to re-create it with technology that came out three months ago.
It’s time to meet this little girl face-to-face, wolves or not.
The air pressure shivers as the door to the alcove is yanked open.
The Old Believer has returned with another, even older man at his side. Both are talking rapid-fire, voices rising. Oleg leaps off his chair to deal with them. But I’m not paying any attention. I’m with her, working my way through every gear and lever. I can feel ancient fingerprints on her.
Immersed in the complexity of the doll, I wonder again why people assume the most advanced technology is yet to come. Two hundred thousand years of human history lurk in the darkness behind us; unknown knowledge, gained and then lost. And then, just maybe, regained.
The drill bit clicks into place.
Keeping the drill steady, I lift the doll into sitting position. Her arm is skeletal, reaching out like a dead tree branch. Her porcelain fingers are clasped together like pincers. With my free hand, I drag the elastic hair tie from my ponytail and wrap it around her small fingers, securing a pen to them. I slap down a sheet of paper.
“Here we go,” I whisper.
I pull the trigger on the drill, with the motor set on maximum compliance. It jams, clicking on a sticky gear. I set the torque one notch higher and squeeze again. Slowly, the motor turns. A clicking comes from inside the automaton’s chest. The metal arm shivers, shudders, and then begins to move. The hand dips three times, filling a nonexistent quill pen with ink. Then it moves to the left and drops like the needle on a record player, scribbl
ing in the air.
I push the doll’s body forward so the pen hits paper.
Writing emerges in short, rough strokes. Russian Cyrillic script. Eighteenth century. Now Oleg stands over the desk, breathing heavily, watching in disbelief. More Old Believers have gathered at the door, murmuring to each other in hushed voices.
“Can you read it?” I ask Oleg.
The man’s face is gray.
“I can’t believe you got it working,” Oleg says.
“Read it,” I say again.
With a shaking voice, he begins to speak out loud: “ ‘Pyotr Alexeyevich,’ ” he says. “ ‘Tsar of Moscow, Emperor of Rus,’ honors the formation of a Holy Synod to administer the wealth of God to the Russian people. To honor this occasion, he bequeaths to you this machine, made in the image of man, but with a heart of stone. Let her existence be an eternal reminder to the holy men of the West: all who breathe do not live; all who touch do not feel; and all who see do not judge. Behold the…’ ”
“The what?” I hiss.
“ ‘The avtomat,’ ” he says, lips scarcely touching.
Avtomat.
It’s a uniquely Russian word, meaning “automatic,” but it also means “machine.” Maybe the closest analogue in English is the word robot.
Clack!
The arm reaches the end of its rotation and something snaps. Darkness swallows my peripheral vision and an Old Believer is reaching, his rough hands pulling me away. Muttering a prayer under his breath, he snatches the paper off the desk and jams it in the pocket of his robe. Another priest lifts the doll and carries it away, my drill motor ripping out of her back. A cascade of brass clockwork rains onto the thick carpet.
“Go,” the Old Believer says to us with a heavy accent, eyes burning over his beard. “Go now. Go, please!”
I snatch my camera from the desk, toss the drill and other equipment into the duffel bag at my feet, and shoulder it.
As I’m pulled away, I glimpse the automaton’s face again under the lamplight, her eyes pointed mindlessly at the ceiling. A patient survivor of the ages, she has finished sharing her message. But I know there are others like her. Other messages are waiting to be found—other doorways to the past.
The Old Believer slides between me and the automaton, ushering me out of the room. Oleg’s firm hand settles around my shoulder. The priest continues to urge us hoarsely to get out of the church and I shuffle along without complaining. Only as I’m leaving does it strike me—the old man doesn’t sound angry.
He sounds afraid.
4
MOSCOW, 1710
The doll is bright, pretty, and hard.
I have grown used to watching her where she sits at a writing table in Favorini’s workshop. Her face is a pale oval, lips pursed, expression lost in the folds of her lace gown and strands of black hair. She is a thing, like me, and I am reassured by the clockwork cadence of her movement.
In the weeks after I come into being, Favorini keeps me confined to his dim laboratory in what he tells me are the depths of the tsar’s palace in the city of Moscow. At night, as the old man works, I lie silently on the table where I was constructed from mysterious parts. I close my eyes, feeling the hard slab of wood on my back, lingering in the warm air as incantations roll off Favo’s lips.
This world is sometimes overwhelming, but I am patient.
Each morning, Favo sends me to stand beside the doorway. I listen as a tutor drags a stool to the other side of the closed door. I can hear his knee joints popping and I surmise he is a very old man. Favorini must have chosen him because he is hard of hearing and his sight dim. The hidden teacher recites my lessons like a confession and then leaves as soon as he can.
A man who has lived such a long time must have learned not to ask questions.
“Never reveal your nature to a human being,” says Favorini. “You are not of our time. People cannot understand your existence.”
So I stand and I listen to my lessons. I speak only to answer questions, and then I do so quickly and with my ringing voice muffled by the door.
“We will make you better,” Favo says, patting my brass-plated chest. “We can replace some of your parts. You will come to look more like us. Sound more like us. But it will take time. Perhaps centuries.”
Centuries.
“Be patient,” he says, not realizing I have the patience of a mountain. Or perhaps, when Favo says this, he is speaking to himself. “None live who remember the art of creation. Your body I found and was able to restore, but the anima inside you was stamped with the Word long ago. It is what binds you to serve the tsar, and allows you to think, perceive, and feel.”
One morning I return from my lessons to find the doll is missing from her perch at the small writing table. A few stray pieces of her body, inside and out, are scattered grotesquely over the wooden table. It causes me…distress.
The doll is my touchstone. Her presence softens the boundaries of my solitude. My first sight and the most reassuring, she is the closest thing I have ever known to myself.
And in the darkness, I hear a whisper.
“What is the first thing?” asks Favorini. “What is your Word?”
It is a question I have heard before…but this time he is not asking me. This time the question goes out into the flickering gloom, to walls lashed by candlelight. I hear no response, not yet.
Approaching silently, I see the doll sitting on the velvet cushion of a high-backed wooden chair. Her back is straight, knees lost in the frills of her dress, tiny shoes dangling over the floor between chair legs carved into griffin talons.
On his knees, Favorini seems almost to be praying to her.
I am about to retreat back into the darkness…until I notice a fluttering at the throat of her dress—the golden pulse of moving clockwork. A gear in her neck clicks audibly and I pause, watching.
Neck creaking, the doll turns her head to face Favo. Her porcelain eyelids click shut and open again to reveal black eyes. When she speaks, her voice is high-pitched, lilting, like the tinkle of harpsichord keys.
Somehow, it is the voice of a child.
“The Word?” she asks, and within her voice I hear the half-remembered chiming of silver bells and the singing of birds and the burbling of clear streams.
Click. Her eyes blink again.
“Logicka,” she says. “I am the purity of reason.”
Favorini chuckles, delighted.
“Yes, yes!” he says, clapping his hands together.
“The mind,” says Favorini. “Evidence, inference, and cold truth. These are the principles you are devoted to. You seek order in the chaos—”
A board squeaks under my weight. Hands still clasped together, Favorini cranes his neck to peer up at me. I step forward, a hulking shadow emerging into feeble light. Fear skates over the old man’s face.
“The doll who writes?” I ask, and my voice is the crash of waves on rock. Both faces before me are ashen, one of ceramic and the other flesh. “Is this…her?”
“Y-yes and no,” says Favorini. “I have taken her apart and put her back together again. She is something different now. Someone different.”
My porcelain doll—my touchstone—is gone. Unbidden, my fingers fall together into fists. I do not understand how I know what I know, or why I feel what I feel. But the doll is precious to me, and I will not see her harmed.
“Who gave you the right to take her…parts?”
Favorini stands, hunched, his long hands flapping at me like bird wings. “Do not be alarmed, my friend. All is well. Some of her parts were used to create a simple writing doll. A gift for the pope from the tsar. But your porcelain girl, she is still here, with us. Look!”
I look at the childlike machine, recognize the curve of her cheek. She seems larger away from the desk, perhaps the size of a twelve-year-old human girl.
“This is a very special day,” says Favo, his beard twitching with a smile. “I have worked long and hard for this day.”
> The doll-girl sits on her velvet cushion, not moving, blank face turned to the darkness. Her voice could almost have been an echo of a dream—a phantom chorus conjured in the unknown workings of my mind. Still and silent, she rests like a toy left abandoned on the chair by a capricious child.
“I meant no harm,” I grumble to both of them.
I take a heavy step back.
And the doll moves. Her arms lift and pat down the ruffles of her dress. She cranes her neck to take in my full height. Her wig of false hair shivers over a porcelain mask. But behind her carved face I can sense thoughts, dropping into neat slots in her mind as her gaze lingers on the rough leather of my cheek. Though her eyes are two black nothings, I feel an understanding in them. An appreciation.
This girl knows what is beneath my skin—what we hold in common.
“Who are you?” I ask.
Favorini responds for her.
“S-she is your counterpart,” he says. “You were found together among the spoils of a broken sheikdom on the far steppes. I suspect those barbarians stole you in a raid from somewhere else, perhaps from the ancient ones beyond the Great Wall.
“Tsar Peter discovered your remains in the palace armory, where they had lain for ages. Catherine insisted on your destruction, but he denied her and insisted on your resurrection. Though I may have rebuilt you, the tsar is your patron and father.”
I step forward and crouch, squatting. Her gaze follows me. No emotion is betrayed by her expressionless face, but her clockwork pulse quickens.
“Why is she made to look like a child?”
Favo gestures to two small stiletto-like daggers lying on his workbench. They are both made of dull steel with bone handles, child size.
“She was found with these daggers. Perhaps she was an assassin? Much knowledge has been lost, but her form itself is illuminating…you share many features. By studying her smaller frame, I was able to bid you into this world. And now…now she joins us as well.”
“Is she simple, like a child?” I ask.