Shadow Conspiracy (32 page)

“There’s the bell, and mighty soon. Master must not be talking too much tonight. Is the tea tray ready?

“It’s not he doing the talking. It’s that Clewis. Is the tea ready, Cook?”

“That it is, Mr Soames. Ileen, do you take the tray into the drawing room. Why, whatever is the matter, girl? You’re trembling!”

“It makes nothing, Cook.”

“I promise you, Ileen, I will be watchful. He shall not harm you.”

“Soames, more brandy here. And see if you can run Ileen to earth. I’ve been ringing these past five minutes. Clewis wants a closer look at her arm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then while we’re waiting, can you direct me to—?”

“The necessary is under the stairs, sir.”

“Flushed by our very own water tank, Clewis.”

“On the roof?”

“Precisely.”

“Admirable. I shan’t be a minute.”

“Mr. Clewis, sir, permit me. The necessary is
this
way. That door leads to the back stairs.”

“Oh, does it?”

“Sir! Mr. Clewis!”

“There’s the bell again, Soames. Better go see what your master wants.”

“Er—sir—”

“Don’t scream, Princess Elena. You’ll be very easy to kill.”

“Let go of me!
Non
!
Docteur
Penderby will not permit—”

“Dr. Penderby will lick my boots when I explain he’s been harboring an escaped, half-baked Promethean.”

“Madame Penderby will not permit! She knows! She is my protectress!”

“Then we’ll just take a little walk down the back stairs to the mews, and Penderby can lick her boots instead. Come along! Don’t squeak so, dammit! Hell, what
is
that?”

“
D-docteur
Penderby’s orangutan.”

“What’s it doing on the servants’ stairs? Christ, look at those teeth. Where does this door go? Ballroom? All right, through here, and quick.”

“Unhand her, you villain!”

“M’sieur Soames! Thank God you have come!”

“Dr. Penderby has sold this Promethean to me, Soames. We discussed it when you were out of the room.”

“You lie, sir. I must respectfully demand you release her.”

“Always a good servant, eh? I don’t think you can stop me, Soames. Get back! I say, put down the sword!”

“Sir, I must insist.”

“Aaaagh! The bitch bit me!”

“Save me, Soames!”

“Get behind me, Ileen.”

“Did Penderby teach you to fence, mechanical man?”

“En garde,
sir.”

“Oh,
mon Dieu
, shall I fetch the mistress?”

“Perhaps it would be—ugh!—well—ah!—go, Ileen! I can hold him!”

“Not bad fencing for a box of gears and stale meat, Soames. Ow! Dammit! Now listen—ah—you haven’t a legal leg to stand on, you know—ugh!—I created and I own the girl just as your master created and owns—ow!—owns you! *pant* Will you just slow down and
listen?”

“Not quite, sir. Dr. Penderby built me from scratch, sir. A box of gears and, as you put it, stale meat.
You
began with a human being—ah!—who was also—”

“Soames! Ileen told me you were—
what
is going on here?”

“It’s run mad, Mrs. Penderby. Ow! Damn! Where’s the off switch? I can’t hold it off much longer!”

“There isn’t one, Mr Clewis. We don’t put an off switch on persons in this house. But Soames, what are you about? Someone will get hurt!”

“Just like that fool Penderby to animate something and leave off the dead man’s switch. Ah! Take that!”

“A good hit, sir. Fortunately—ugh—not in a vital spot. In fact, Mr. Clewis, you found a body floating in Lake Geneva that stormy night and you—ugh—made use of it, didn’t you? Where did you find an arm to replace the one she lost to the steamboat paddle?”

“What does it matter? She was dead! She
is
dead! And she’s mine!”

“I
beg
your pardon? Mr. Clewis, Ileen is far from dead, and she is no one’s property.”

“It’s just a housemaid.”

“Ah!—she is a princess of Wittgenstein, sir, as I suspect you knew—ugh—if not the night you pulled her from the lake, then surely—ah—the following morning. Every village round the lake was in mourning for her, and searching for her body!”

“Ileen! Is this true?”

“Madame, I do not know. M’sieur Soames is convinced.”

“Soames—”

“Oh there you are, Soames, where the devil is that housemaid—Clewis! What’s to do here? Gwendolyn?”

“Horace, stop them! Soames says Ileen was a princess before she died, and Clewis put her in his laboratory.”

“Sir, I found him trying to smuggle Ileen out of the house.”

“But is it true, Horace?”

“So Soames tried to tell me. Put down the sword, Clewis. You can’t hurt Soames, and you—I say, old fellow, have a care—augh!”

“Horace!”

“But Soames is bleeding!
Docteur
Penderby, he most certainly can be harmed!”

“I thought—but, Horace? Soames is an automaton, isn’t he?”

“Er, not entirely.”

“You see, Mrs. Penderby—ah!—your sanctimonious husband—argh—has been working with stale meat for a long time! Ah—that hurt, didn’t it, mechanical man? Ah-hah!”

“Only—only a trifle—ugh!”

“Horace, you didn’t! Oh, Horace, is that why Soames looks so lifelike? You’ve been animating
corpses?”

“Only bits, Gwendolyn. The autonomic systems. I’m so sorry. I meant to tell you when I finally succeeded! But by then—your hostility to reanimation—I felt sure you would hate it. You surprised me with your championship of our Ileen.”

“You successfully integrated organic systems with automated ones at last? How splendid! Horace, you should have told me!”

“I wanted you to see how well Soames worked. But by the time you accepted him, the habit....”

“It works bloody well, Penderby, and I’m so
pleased
—augh!—for your improved relations with your
wife
—argh!—but can you call it
off
now?”

“I don’t know, Clewis. I’m beginning to think the best way to settle this is to alert the royal family of Wittgenstein to the whereabouts of their missing princess.”

“She’s dead, you fool! Just clay now!”

“I doubt they would see it that way. You’ve desecrated a royal corpse—attempted unholy practices on it. They’re awfully primitive thinkers in the smaller duchies, eh? We can deal with this the civilized way.”

“Damn you! I’ll take my stale meat home and pull the plug and—argh!—if you come to your senses, we can correspond more about your methods—”

“Damn
you,
sir, you blackguard! You shall not speak of her so!”

“Horace, stop them! Where are you going?”

“Hah! He’s getting out of the way, dear lady, as you should—ugh—do too! A-
hah!”

“Ileen! Flee! I can’t hold—”

“Ah!
Hah!
Damn you, why don’t you
die?”

“Soames! Ah, my Soames, he has killed you!”

“Hey! What—Penderby, is that a boat hook? You ass, your butler could fence better than you can.”

“It’s a crocodile hook.”

“Crocodi—
AAAAAAHHHHHH!”

“Soames! My Soames,
mon Dieu, mon Dieu!”

“Horace!”

“Sorry, love, but he was right. I couldn’t have beat him with a saber.”

AUGHHHHH! HELP! ARGH—ARGH—AIIEIEEEEE!”

“He’s—it’s
eating
him.”

“‘Myes. Bit of a mess.”

“But—but won’t you want him for parts?”

“And risk having his soul hang about in the tissues? No thanks.”

“I don’t know that it would.”

“My dear, I’ve been working on this for months. I think I know more than you do about the process.”

“But Horace, look at Ileen. She remembers nothing about being a princess.”

“And yet she behaves regally.”

“Is this how a princess mourns her—her
chevalier blanc, Docteur
Penderby? With rage, not tears? You let him
die!”

“Not yet, I fancy. Gwendolyn, help me get him up on the slab.”

“Ileen! He didn’t steal you!”

“Oh, my Soames, you survive!”

“My autonomic nervous system is flesh, but my heart is mechanical. If he killed me, how—?”

“
Docteur
Penderby set the crocodile on him.”

“Soames, I have reconsidered my position on the ensoulment of automata. Mrs. Penderby suggests that your recent heroism could not have been performed by the butler I mandated you to be.”

“I have devoted some thought to the matter myself, sir.”

“And you conclude, Soames?”

“That the higher vital processes, by which I refer to those acts of volition which ordinary persons—even servants—perform on a daily basis, bring one inescapably into a condition of conflict between two things one ought to do. One’s duty must, inevitably, war with itself. Out of the strife, a soul arises.”

“So to suffer is to be ensouled, eh? Do you fancy this applies to reanimated, er, flesh as well as to a more synthetic construction?

“You refer to me,
Docteur
Penderby.”

“More like a princess every moment, Horace.”