Chapter Forty

My name is what I make.  Remember that.  Got to remember it.  Don’t have a damn thing to write on down here.  At least I’ll have my memoirs memorized by the time I get out.

The inventor would have found a visual description of his workshop almost fantastical.  He had never seen it properly himself, and after this long he was more comfortable working in the dark.

They put things in my paws.  They ask me what I need and I had better answer quick, or else it’s pain again.  Always have a ready answer and don’t get personal.  Don’t try to figure out which one of them it is asking this time. 

The casing felt like an oversized beach ball made of honeycomb.  A mathematician, maybe, would have found a certain beauty in the object until someone told him or her what it was.

Just ask for the materials and turn them around quick, put them together and send them out.  Don’t even know when it’s dark any more, but I hear them take the lid off and the eyes hurt.  When I give them their toys and they go away, they take the light with them and some of the pain, so work well and work quick.  That’s what I have, quick paws and a moment’s peace when I’m done.

The Commander had never ordered anything on this scale, or quite so complex, before.  It was more complicated than it needed to be, but quiet and lethal.  Tests of the scale model put the damage, as far as the inventor could pick from his captors’ fevered glee, at a resolution of “impacts per square inch”.  This at twenty paces.

Almost forgotten what it’s like to make something I can see, something for myself, something I can work on until the rough edges are off.  This is a one-time-use project.   Pride in craftsmanship?  Pfeh.  Pride is for the free.  No, for me it’s piecework.  If I were paid by the piece this would be a legendary payday.

I wonder if I hid the defect deep enough?  Will He find it this time?

In his mind’s eye, the inventor saw his clockwork globe as lines of wire, compressor cylinders, triggers and relays.  He mentally spun it around and pulled off a few layers.  A master electrician, working with a skilled watchmaker perhaps, might have noticed a speck of insulation rubbed off a choice wire, an extra gear.  The inventor had been caught before trying something like this; a broken leg left to heal at an unnatural angle had been partial payment for that trick.

Well, at least when this one fails, it’ll fail in a spectacular fashion.  A few extra seconds for the target to react, and a nasty surprise for whoever triggers it.  If I broke it right.

I wish they’d come down here and cut my fur.  It impedes my efficiency when my fur catches in a spring or a rotor.  I would honestly rather be shaved than work under these conditions.  I will ask to be drugged, I think, and perhaps they will shave me then.  They remember the last time someone came down here to try--took the shears away from him, didn’t I?   I can still smell the blood on hot days.  That was probably the last time I really felt like myself, but they’re more careful now.

The inventor reached into a recess, the one feature breaking the seamless pattern of the globe’s surface.  He did not press the first button his pawpads found (that would have been very painful, and stupid besides).  He skittered his way past that one and pressed on a perfectly normal-feeling, smooth plate, almost out of reach deep inside the machine.  He withdrew his paw, stepped as far back as his shackles would allow, and waited for five seconds.

The darkened workshop was filled with several thousand targeted jets of air, making the inventor’s leg-shackles and chains rattle with the force of their passing.  Spare parts rocketed off the workbench and a wrench embedded itself in the wall.  The inventor winced as he tugged a rubber washer out of his whiskers (it had crushed half of them and become entangled in the survivors).

Should have cleared up better first.  Damn lucky the thing wasn’t loaded yet.

Can’t help thinking.  Plenty of time for it.  I still do think about a lot of things.  I’m not a robot, not yet—I am not just arms that move and paws that make.  They have taken everything from me except the chance to create.  The chance to make awful things that should stay in the dark and not be taken up to the world of the light and the living.  Well, let them choke on this one awhile.

“What the hell is all that racket down there?!” thundered a voice through a crack that appeared in the darkness.

Shying away from the light, the inventor knew the right answer by now.  In the most pitiful tone he could muster, he trembled a mournful reply.  “I w-was t-testing the device and I’ve hurt myself...”  He cowered and limped and hoped he looked a wreck.

The guard above hummed in a satisfied way.  “Good,” he said, and dropped the lid back.

The inventor stood straight again as though nothing had happened.

Don’t want to know what they use my toys for, but I can guess..  Some kill at a distance, killing quick.  Others hurt, up close and slow, meant for someone when you’ve got them in a hole like this one.  I used to send my contraptions up obviously broken, half-working, but then He would come down here, the Commander, and choke me just enough to make his point.  Hissing into my ear, “you’re better than that.  Make it work.” 

Once they brought me a broken water pump.  Desktop fountain or a small aquarium, originally.  To do my job I sometimes have to know what the machine is used for, so I asked.  They beat me around the shoulders (never the head, never the paws—Commander’s orders). “To pump water, you sniveling idiot!  We’re thirsty!”  I broke down and wept—they probably thought it was from their beating, but it was from the sheer joy of working on a machine that would not kill.

In another life, perhaps, I will mend a gate.  Fix some plumbing.  Won’t fly an airplane again, not with these eyes, but I’ll ride.  My daughter—give her popsicle sticks and a rubber band, and she was airborne.  She’d be old enough to sit up front by now.  Oh, God, let there be another life far from this one.  So little gives me hope, and when I get a little hope I never dare to believe in it.

The inventor crouched and slid to one side where he knew a mattress lay.  Tools from the workbench had flown far enough to nestle in its surface—half sitting, he picked them off carefully and piled them aside.  He wrenched around painfully in his shackles, folding himself into an improbable shape before getting a proper lie-down.  His captors had not made rest an easy prospect.

The Growler gave me a bit of hope last week, it’s what set me thinking again.  Shook me up out of drone mode and back to myself.  Unexpected person to give me hope.  A very large rat, of course I’ve never seen his face.  He crowds and looms when he’s down here, asks more questions than any of them, and has more of a temper than most.  He’s unpredictable, all bluster and threats when he comes here with company, but downright polite when he comes alone.

He’s given me a scar or two, putting the squeeze on me.  Don’t think it’s all his fault; I hear his claws clatter on anything he picks up, and I know they’re sharp.  I know he’s also sharper upstairs than anyone, especially the Commander, gives him credit for.  He’s got plans within plans, that one.  “I’ve got someone important,” he whispered to me last time he was here.  “Someone on the outside.  Someone who knows how to break your toys.”  One of my guards called down to him and he left in a hurry.

He left me quite a puzzle.  I know he hates the Commander, they all do.  There’s something missing with the Growler, though.  He has absolutely no fear or respect for the murdering bastard.  Mostly though, I wonder what he means by “I’ve got someone”.  Does he have an ace in the hole, quite literally, like the Commander has “got” me?  Is there any real good in the Growler, or is he just better with words?

The Growler likes my quick-killing toys better, though I hear no pleasure in his voice when he comes for any of them.  Perhaps he is a monster with less malice in his blood.  Maybe he will let some air into the Commander before he uses my devil’s beach ball.  Perhaps soon I will be taking orders from the Growler instead, and maybe he will give me a few minutes a day above ground.

The inventor closed his eyes and his world looked exactly the same.

Perhaps he will be dead the next time I hear of him.

Button images by Keith Elder