“What I saw was like some jumble of alchemist’s dens, a brewery and an insane asylum. I do not know how to put the rest… machines I have never known. I have the frightening idea-”
“You think they were making people-or what resembled people,” the boy filled in. “You believe you saw a man, with multiples of himself, who was not a man but not female, either, for those gathered were revolting jelly-like forms that you nonetheless regard as human, who were nurturing the growth of some kind of tissue as both a means of concealing themselves to normal eyes and cultivating others-beings who would be taken for people if you passed them in the street but that were not people the way we like to think of them.”
“Exactly!” St. Ives exclaimed, catching himself. “This is the strangest thing of all! That you should know! How is it possible? Have you-”
“No,” Lloyd answered. “We have seen some of the same magic-lantern pictures. But it was no magic-lantern image that took your hand.”
At this the gambler broke down weeping, although he made an effort to stifle himself. “Too right, my young friend! I was experimented on like a dumb animal! I was made to… to… oh!”
“Tell me,” Lloyd commanded.
“I… was introduced to a… woman… an auburn-haired beauty with eyes like sapphires. She was lovely. They wanted me to… to mate with her. They wanted to watch. It was so unthinkable! Because I knew-that they had made her. Why I was chosen I have no idea.”
“That may be the most hopeful thing so far,” Lloyd remarked.
“Hopeful! Of what?” the gambler moaned.
“Their technology of survival lags behind their technology of manipulation,” the boy replied, gazing out over the flattening water. “If they have to employ animal methods of reproduction, and yet can project images by stealth over distances, that shows they have vulnerabilities. Somehow they need to maintain form, human flesh. It’s not sufficient to their purposes to influence and direct-they need to manufacture new vehicles, and any manufacturing process is a continual one. They have not perfected theirs. As monstrous as they may seem to you, they are engineers-and that is something I understand. They still have problems to solve, whatever their religion. That is the hope.”
“You scare me, Lloyd. Not like they do-but still… the student has become the teacher,” the gambler gasped.
“We teach each other,” the boy responded. “And some fears are good if they lead to the truth. Now finish your story.”
“I was allowed to enjoy the beauty… and then… they seized me,” the gambler said, wincing. “Their forms were flesh and blood enough for that. I felt them searching my mind. They wanted to know what they looked like to me in their other guise. Then they performed surgeries, Lloyd… they took my hand… and gave me this artificial claw.”
“How did you escape?” the boy asked.
“The most unthinkable part of the whole story!” St. Ives coughed. “Zadoc, the mechanical thing, reactivated. He-it-released me while they were in another chamber one afternoon… perhaps vivisecting some other poor victim, like a rabbit. I was torn. I was bandaged. But I fled, as fast and as far as I could in that state. I owe my life to the mercy of a machine!”
“Machines that have mercy are hard to think of as machines,” Lloyd replied. “The question is, did you escape or were you allowed to escape?”
“I have wondered that myself ever since,” St. Ives rasped, still blinking. “But… are you not horrified by all that I have told you?”
“I see hope in what you have said-as well as horror,” Lloyd replied. “It may be that what happened to you had been planned. Still, it somehow sounds that it did not go quite according to their plan. If things can go against their desires in the heart of their control, that reassures me. And I think it a very encouraging sign that they are worried about physical survival.”
“You, young sir”-the gambler shrugged, and then could not control a crest of emotion-“are the son I’ve never had. Always raising the ante. And then some.”
“You taught me what an ante was,” Lloyd replied.
“Friends always?” St. Ives said, offering up his mechanical hand once more.
“Partners,” Lloyd answered, squeezing down on the metal digits. “This is the biggest mystery of all. Why do you think they gave it to you?”
“Who can say?” the gambler grumbled, a storm of anger and grief filling his eyes. “I would not rule out pure cruelty as their motive. I sensed it in them. Some conspiracy of hatred. A mania. What does your intuition say?”
Lloyd frowned and then stared out across the river to a stand of cottonwoods. “I feel that they are one… a different kind of creature than we are familiar with. Of one mind. I sense this being or beast is some holdover from long ago… and I feel some shadowy sympathy with all that you have related, which raises the question whether I am in fact who I believe myself to be-or as young as I appear.”
“But you are just a child! A boy!”
“Am I? I know how many syllables you have spoken in the last minute. Give me the materials and a bit of time, and I could make this hand. But that is not all. Do you see the dog I am thinking of? Boomer. That was my old dog, buried back in Zanesville. Smell his ragged blanket.”
“Oh…” The gambler shivered, seeing in his mind… smelling… “How did you do that?”
“I cannot say,” Lloyd answered. “It has something to do with the rapport we have. This is one of the reasons we have done so well at the tables. Seeing the others’ cards through my eyes. It is a species of communication like unto the cube you discovered, but the mechanisms that underlie it are obscure to me. I’m now thinking of a number between one and one thousand. What is it?”
“What?” the gambler squawked caught off guard. “Uh, seventy-three.”
“Correct,” Lloyd replied. “The odds are very long against you getting that right. I suspect you may have hidden talents, Mr. St. Ives, which is why we work so well. That may have something to do with why you were chosen. And it may provide some hint as to their larger purpose. You said you could not see the gathering’s mosaic diagram whole and clear, yet they or it can. Perhaps the adversary is working to a plan we cannot perceive… and we are a part of that plan. The hunger for human form may be part of the struggle to endure so as to fulfill that plan. What I find puzzling is that your hand is a baser technology than what you described in the female you were offered. If they can cultivate a fully fleshed human, real enough for you to find attractive, why bother with these metal joints and hinges?”
“Well, the hand is useful.” The gambler shrugged. “For years I hid it in a glove and loathed it. Resented the sensation of being able to direct it. I have no idea how I am able to make it work. It is a part of me, though.”
“To graft nerves onto raw metal is no small feat,” the boy agreed. “But this may be another hopeful sign-that they have had to become more mechanically ingenious because of some other lack. In any case, you have not finished your story. I can see that the oppression did not leave you when you fled.”
Rage gripped the gambler’s face. “Too true,” he said, sighing. “I went to Boston and into hiding. Two weeks later, I read that an enormous conflagration had swept through the estate. Whether it was an accident or a strategic retreat I cannot say. And what would provoke the need for retreat? It seems like an extravagant price to pay to withdraw, but who knows what resources such an organization or entity has at its disposal?
“Not long after, I learned that the Enigma Formulary and Gun Works had been acquired by a European consortium based in London calling itself the Behemoth Innovation Company. They have empty offices in several American cities, but there is no information about any of their directors. I poked and sniffed around a bit-made inquiries and checked records-but there were so many bank ledgers and writs and decrees, deeds and lawyer’s gobbledygook, there was no way to find the end of the knot. I withdrew and took up banal bookkeeping for the most colorless mercantiler I could find in Boston, where no one knew me, and I kept the hand concealed as much as I could. In time I came out of hiding enough to migrate West, using what wits I still had left to pursue the trade you found me in. I came to make peace with the hand, though it is an abomination and a constant reminder of the brutality. But it has often saved me from harm, as you have seen, and so it may be an unexpected and unintentional gift.”