The Immorality Engine

CHAPTER
5

The garden was alive with activity. A red squirrel scrambled up the side of a nearby bush that had been elaborately shaped to represent an ancient god: Poseidon, thrusting his trident triumphantly towards the sky. Other gods surrounded him, looking on with austere, unwavering gazes: Ares, Zeus, Hades, Aphrodite. The entire pantheon was there, silent in their evergreen vigil.

Elsewhere, birds described wide, concentric circles in the sky, or dived elegantly towards the lake, skimming the surface of the water as they attempted to plunder its murky depths for small silvery fish.

Amelia Hobbes pressed her fingertips against the cold glass of the windowpane, as if trying, unconsciously, to touch the world outside. She’d been locked in her room for days, cooped up like a bird, wings clipped and useless. She longed to inhale the fresh spring air, to walk about on her own two feet-anything but being perpetually confined to this uncomfortable wheelchair.

She sighed, pushing herself away from the window. The wheels of the chair creaked and groaned in protest. She was only torturing herself. Soon she would be able to walk outside again, to see other people. That’s what she had to focus on. Soon. At least, that’s what Dr. Fabian had told her.

Amelia turned the wheels of her chair, rolling slowly back into the gloom of her small room. She felt better than she had in months-years, even-and Dr. Fabian finally appeared to have found a means of suppressing her episodic fits, those brief, harrowing spasms in which she was able to see, momentarily, into the future. The last episode had been over two weeks ago, the end of a horrendous period of almost constant seizing, from which she recalled only the briefest moments of lucidity. That was when the doctor was experimenting with the dosage of the new drug he had prescribed for her-an anticonvulsant, he had explained, to put an end to her nightmares.

While his methods were clearly extreme-keeping her locked in her room with no visitors, for a start-Amelia had no real reason to fault the doctor’s regime. She was showing signs of improvement. She felt her strength returning. She’d gained weight. She’d taken a few tentative steps on her own, when she knew she wasn’t being observed. And most important, the seizures had stopped.

All of this, she knew, should have left her feeling revitalised, uplifted. But she couldn’t shake the persistent sense of melancholy that had stolen over her. Melancholy and… fear. Fear of the future, of the things she had borne witness to in her dreams. Fear of the unknown, too: the things she hadn’t seen. And more acutely, more urgently, fear of Mr. Calverton, that deranged, frightful assistant of Dr. Fabian’s, that thing with all the qualities about him of a creature from a nightmare and none of anything right and sane.

From what she had managed to glean from snatches of conversation with the doctor, Mr. Calverton had once been a normal man, but lost his legs “in the course of duty.” Dr. Fabian had personally crafted machine replacements for him, steam-powered pistons that operated in a bizarre parody of their biological counterparts, enabling him to walk with a juddering, almost comical gait. His face was hidden behind a smooth porcelain mask, leaving only his vacant, watery eyes on display. And he always wore a black velvet evening jacket, a cravat, and white gloves. He seemed unable to speak, for in the few months she had been at the Grayling Institute, Amelia never heard him utter a sound. She wondered what terrible fate had befallen him to reduce him to such a state.

Amelia turned her head, glancing toward the door. She was expecting him at any moment: the click-clack of his metal feet on the tiled floor, the scraping of the key in the lock, and then those strange eyes, boring into her from across the room.

She shivered. In other circumstances, she might have been differently disposed towards the man, but she had had glimpsed his future and knew his story was still unfolding. The truth of Mr. Calverton had yet to be uncovered.

Well, it wouldn’t do for him to know of her fear. She should look busy when he arrived. Amelia leaned back in her wheelchair and reached for a book that she had left, upturned, upon a side table. It was a romance of sorts, the tale of a rich landowner who had fallen in love with a girl from the village. She knew it was nonsense, of course, that it was a reflection of desire rather than reality, but nevertheless she’d been enthralled by the tale. It was her one source of contact with the outside world, the means by which she could reach out and touch something other than the drab, day-to-day existence of her life inside the Grayling Institute.

Amelia parked her chair beside the fireplace and turned the pages of her book, drinking in the colourful fictional world, imagining the garden of the manor house in the story to be filled with the same topiary and scampering animals she had seen from her own window that morning. Imagining herself in that place.

A short while later, Amelia became aware of the clanking steps of Mr. Calverton in the passageway outside her room. She stirred, realising she’d been dozing in her chair. Hurriedly, she reclaimed her book from where she’d let it fall on her lap and flicked the pages, trying to find her place. The key scraped in the lock and slowly the mechanism turned with a metallic click.

Amelia didn’t look up as she heard the hinges creak open. Instead, she kept her eyes on the book, scanning the same line over and over, never actually taking it in. Her mind was racing. The sheer presence of the half-mechanical man made her skin crawl. Something about his blank, featureless face, his rasping breath, his perpetual silence. And those eyes: always watching, gazing down at her, drinking her in. She couldn’t help but imagine a lascivious sneer hidden away behind that porcelain mask. She attributed all manner of deplorable thoughts to him, murderous thoughts, deranged, deviant thoughts. But she had no way of knowing the truth. She could only put her faith in Dr. Fabian and the knowledge that he was doing his best to make her better.

It didn’t mean that she had to trust the mechanical porter, however. She’d just have to keep her wits about her in his presence.

Amelia pretended to finish the paragraph she had been reading and looked up, placing her book facedown on the coffee table. “Is it that time already, Mr. Calverton?” She said this brightly, without a waver in her voice, as if the idea of being escorted by the strange man-machine into the bowels of the great house were not at all a terrifying prospect.

Mr. Calverton cocked his head to the left. His eyes remained fixed on her face. No sound was forthcoming other than his wheezing breath and the hissing release of steam from the pistons in his thighs. But she had learned to take this movement of the head as an affirmative.

“Right, then. Time for my treatment.” She folded her hands on her lap and sat back in her chair. “Come along, then, Mr. Calverton. We don’t want to keep Dr. Fabian waiting.”

The man’s head remained cocked for a minute, entirely still. Then sharply, decisively, he changed his position, his head snapping back into place. He entered the room, the pistons in his thighs hissing and venting, and maneuvered himself around to stand behind her, gripping the handles of her wheelchair with his gloved fists. Gently, he moved the chair around so that Amelia was facing the door, and then they began the ponderous decent to the treatment room.

The walk would take them fifteen minutes, weaving through the corridors and passageways of the old house, down through dank, dimly lit tunnels that seemed to descend forever, until finally they arrived at the treatment room. It was a stark, fearsome place, filled with the great machine that was somehow curing her of her seizures. And of course, Dr. Fabian, who would be waiting for them with an expectant grin.

They had made the same short journey once a day for the past few months, and Amelia could have followed the route with her eyes closed. But she did not have the strength to make the journey alone, and suspected that even if she did, Dr. Fabian would not allow her the run of the house. Whilst he assured her that it was only to aid in her recuperation that she was kept locked in her room-and judging by his successes, she had no reason to doubt him-she still could not help wondering if Mr. Calverton was as much a minder as he was a porter, assigned to keep a watchful eye on her and report back to his master. Perhaps she was being too fanciful. Nevertheless, the doubt continued to gnaw at her. She wondered what she might find if she were ever able to explore one of the side passages that branched off from the tunnels she took with Mr. Calverton, see what lay in the darkness beyond. And she wondered when Mr. Calverton’s time would come, and how long it would take before her vision of him became a reality.

Today, however, she was grateful for an uneventful journey to the treatment room. It was a vast underground space, a cavern carved out of the bedrock and filled with the strange mechanisms of the Queen’s physician. It smelled of oil and soot. And just as she had anticipated, Dr. Fabian was already there, waiting for them, glancing pointedly at his pocket watch to signify his displeasure at their late arrival. She wondered if Mr. Calverton would be berated for that later.

“Good morning, Amelia. How are we today?” The doctor poked his wire-rimmed spectacles back up his nose with his index finger-a nervous tic that she had noticed him enact a thousand times before. He was a short man, balding, with only a few trailing wisps of dark hair around the temples. She’d placed him in his early fifties, but she could have been wrong-she found it very difficult to be sure.

She offered him her best beaming smile. “I feel well today, Dr. Fabian. Better than I have in months. I think if only I was able to go into the gardens for some fresh air, then I’d-”

“Amelia, Amelia.” He cut her off with a sad expression that suggested he was tired of going over the same ground with her, day after day, week after week. “I know Dr. Mason had very different ideas about your physical well-being, but I assure you, it would set you back enormously if you were to catch a chill. It’s simply not worth the risk.” He approached the wheelchair, his hands held out in a placatory fashion. She noticed a series of tiny puncture marks on his left wrist, where she assumed he’d been self-medicating. He dropped into a crouch before the chair. “Soon, my dear. Soon we shall have you up and about. You’re doing so well. Let’s not spoil it now by getting ahead of ourselves, hmm.”

Amelia nodded, biting back her frustration. She knew he was wrong, about this at least. She longed for the cool breeze on her skin, the fresh air in her lungs. She could take precautions not to catch a chill. She knew there was another reason why he would not let her out, but she couldn’t even begin to fathom what it was.

It was pointless arguing with him, though. She had tried that before, and it had got her nowhere, and at least he had her best interests at heart. She believed that much.

Dr. Fabian stood, clapping his hands together to signify they had reached the end of their discussion. “Well, then. If you are ready, Miss Hobbes, we shall begin.”

“I’m ready,” she said, although in truth she was never ready for what came next. She looked up at the huge brass sphere that dominated the entirety of the treatment room. It was the size of a small house and looked more like a furnace than like anything medical. It was fed by an array of pipes and shafts that gleamed in the bright electric lights, like a spider at the centre of a shining web. In its belly was a small brass door, the door through which Amelia would be taken for her daily treatment. She felt a knot tighten in her gut. If only there was another way…

Dr. Fabian turned to Mr. Calverton, who was loitering in the shadows of the great machine. “Mr. Calverton, could you please escort Miss Hobbes to the treatment bay?”

Mr. Calverton stomped forwards, his metal feet tapping out a harsh rhythm on the stone floor. He took the handles of her wheelchair once again and slowly rolled her towards the gaping mouth of the brass door.

Amelia fought the urge to leap out of the chair and flee. She knew it would be over with soon, and she would feel better again in a couple of hours. The pain didn’t last. Not for long.

Mr. Calverton parked her wheelchair before the threshold of the sphere and stooped over her, gently placing one arm beneath her knees and the other around her shoulders. Carefully he lifted her out of the seat, all the while keeping his strange and unblinking eyes on her face. She smiled weakly as she wrapped her hands around his neck, and together the two of them entered the bizarre treatment machine.

Dr. Fabian, in his more whimsical moments, was prone to referring to the sphere as his “engine of life.” Amelia always thought that sounded like self-aggrandizing nonsense, and had asked him on more than one occasion to explain the actual purpose of the machine. But, full of his usual bluff and pomposity, the doctor simply told her not to concern herself with it-that his miraculous contraption would make her better, and that she needn’t worry herself with the details. She should simply lie back and accept her treatment like a good patient, and then revel in the results.

At first she’d found this patronising and troubling, but she’d grown accustomed to the doctor’s offhand manner, and she had, indeed, found herself able to revel in the results of his ministrations. She was alive, for a start, and that was something she had never expected. Dr. Mason had warned her that she was unlikely to see the summer. Yet, thanks to Dr. Fabian, here she was.

Inside the brass sphere, Mr. Calverton’s metallic footsteps echoed like miniature detonations. Amelia tried not to look up. She didn’t want to see the cluster of apparatuses that hung from the ceiling on long multijointed arms, the needles and the masks and the blades and the throbbing lights. Nor did she want to look up into Mr. Calverton’s burrowing eyes.

Instead, she focused on the chair. It was mounted on a platform at the centre of the sphere, up a short flight of steps. Mr. Calverton took them slowly, careful not to jolt her with his sudden, jarring movements. The chair itself was similar to a dentist’s: black leather, with a footrest and a deep angle that meant lying almost horizontally. Only, unlike any dentists’ chairs she’d encountered, this one came with arm and leg restraints.

Mr. Calverton approached the chair and laid her, almost reverentially, upon it. He was labouring for breath.

“Thank you, Mr. Calverton.”

The faceless man cocked his head in acknowledgement and then turned his back on her, descending the short stairway and exiting the sphere the way they had come. The door slammed shut behind him with a loud clang, and Amelia heard dead bolts sliding into place.

Dr. Fabian’s monotonous voice echoed around the interior of the sphere, piped in through the brass speaking tube that connected the contraption to his workstation outside. “Try to relax now, Amelia. It’s time for you to undress.”

Amelia sighed. She hated this bit. She sat up and unbuttoned the back of her nightgown, slipping it over her head so that her modesty was protected only by her undergarments. She knew that no one except Dr. Fabian could see inside the sphere-through a sequence of adjustable mirrored panels that allowed him to observe the progress of the treatment-but she couldn’t help imagining Mr. Calverton lurking in the shadows, watching her undress. She shivered, and it was only partly because of the cold. She draped the nightgown over the stand beside the chair.

“Very good, Amelia. Now, lie back and try to remain calm.”

She did as she was told, placing her wrists and ankles in the metal brackets. They snapped shut, seemingly of their own volition, to hold her in place. She felt her heart thudding against her ribs.

There was a grating sound from above as the mechanical arms swung into motion, creaking in their sockets. Amelia flinched involuntarily in anticipation of what was to come. She looked up and saw the pod of needles descending.

“This won’t hurt, Amelia. Just lie back, close your eyes, and think of something else.”

She tried to think again of the gardens at the rear of the institute, the topiary sculptures, the darting animals, the sunshine reflecting on the lake. But as the machine descended, she couldn’t repress her scream. She bucked against the restraints. Her voice was raw, as if the sounds were being ripped from her throat. She wanted only to be away from there, from the chair and the sphere and the pain.

Above her, the pod of needles opened like a cluster of fingers, and then they were upon her, stinging as they punctured her flesh, pricking holes in her face, arms, chest, thighs, feet. Her body was alive with pain. Crawling with it, as if all her nerves were suddenly, simultaneously on fire. She screamed again, her body racked by the violence of her torment. Miniature pistons fired as the needles continued to sink into her flesh. She heard them, hissing with escaping air. Dr. Fabian was talking again in the same monotonous voice, disembodied and echoing throughout the room, but she could not discern his words. All she could think about was the pain, her screaming, and the intense white light that was blinding her, preventing her from seeing what was happening.

Another needle slid into her throat. Something warm flushed through her body. She bucked again in the treatment chair, and then, after a moment, she was still.