The Marriage Machine

The Marriage Machine

The Londo Chronicles [1]

Patricia Simpson

Lucky Publishing (2011)

Rating: ★★★★★

Tags: Literature & Fiction, Romance, Marriage, Fantasy, Historical, london, Dystopian, 1880

In a handful of days, Elspeth Shutterhouse must step into the marriage machine, which will dull her ambitions and join her forever to a complete stranger. She would rather be sent to the Norsea work camps than be turned into a baby-making drone. Instead of following the dictates of her repressive society, Elspeth puts everything on the line to destroy the contraption...never guessing she will come face-to-face with the one person who could stop her:  handsome Mark Ramsay, the scion of the family that invented the machine.

Jules Verne collides with Jane Austen in this truly different novella by award-winning author Patricia Simpson as she introduces her new series, The Londo Chronicles.

The Marriage Machine

The Londo Chronicles I

Patricia Simpson

A Steampunk Novella

Smashwords Edition

25,000 words

Copyright 2011 Patricia Simpson

Lucky Publishing

United States of America

Chapter One

Elspeth Shutterhouse pedaled fiercely down the rain-slick alley, dodging puddles and potholes in the dark as she searched the lane for landmarks. It was difficult locating an address in the rain, and dangerous to be out in the dark alone. But the alley route was part of the instructions she’d been given an hour ago.
Cycle to 17 Charing Cross, don’t let anyone see you, and don’t stop, eat or sleep until the repair job was finished.

As she sped through the rain, the silver envelope she’d received earlier that day and stuffed in her chest pocket jabbed the top of her arm. She ignored the stab just as she planned to ignore the social obligation the envelope held.

Black door, brick archway, freight delivery door.
She had arrived at her destination.

Elspeth jumped off her cycle, stashed it behind a stack of crates, locked it to a pipe, and splashed to the door she had been told to use.

She knocked and then chafed her frozen hands together. Her leather jacket and leggings had kept her warm during the ride through Londo City, but her hands were like icicles.

Light oozed through the crack under the door as someone approached with a lantern. Elspeth swung her heavy backpack off one shoulder and down her arm, just as the door opened. A tiny man with a bald head peered up at her through lenses set in a pair of brass goggles. He reminded her of a lizard she’d seen in her great aunt’s ancient and totally forbidden
Encyclopedia Britannica
text
, Volume G-H,
entry
Galapagos Islands
.

The man lifted the lantern to get a better view.

“SteamWizards,” Elspeth announced, pulling out her badge to display her credentials. “Citizen Shutterhouse.”

“Right this way,” the man swung open the door and motioned her in. His leather robe failed to conceal his thickening middle. Economic sanctions would be coming his way if he didn’t do something about his physical condition.

Overindulgence today starves the infant on its way.

Elspeth shut off the dogma. She had always scoffed at the indoctrination of her childhood and did her best to live under the radar of the Overseers, but sometimes the slogans seeped into her psyche anyway.

She followed the man down a shadowed hallway, hoping she would be given a glass of ale after her ride, but the man made no such offering and ushered her through a door on the right. He reached for a control on the wall and turned up the gas lamps. Light bathed the huge bay beneath the house, illuminating the lines of a monstrous juggernaut of metalwork and gears, topped off by a fantastic filigree of wrought iron vines surrounding a sculpture of two gilt swans set beak to beak.

Elspeth stopped in her tracks, thunderstruck.

“It’s the Marriage Machine!” she gasped.

She rarely ever gasped.

The bald head rotated her way, and the goggles found her face. “Never mind what it is. Can you fix it?”

Of course she could fix it. Elspeth could fix anything. That’s why she had been singled out for the job. She might be young, but she had a special knack when it came to mechanical objects. Her father had noticed her aptitude early on and had taught her as much as he could before his untimely death.

She edged closer. “What’s going on with it?” she asked, as she surveyed the complicated mass of wheels and belts.

“We have no idea. It won’t start up. We’ve sent word to the manufacturer, but apparently the owners of the patent are the only ones who know how to fix the machine. They hail from the Outer Islands. It’s a long journey. And with the holiday the cyclones always start, you know. So it’s hard to predict when someone will actually get here. That’s why I called the SteamWizards.”

Elspeth had quit listening to his chatter at the first mention of the term “owners.”

“A Ramsay?” Elspeth stared at the small man. “Is coming here?”

“You know of them?”

She nodded. Of course she knew of them. In a household of mechanics, you either loved or hated the plutocratic Ramsay family. She hated them. To her way of thinking, the Ramsays were responsible for the numbing and dumbing down of the entire female population of Londo City—and had made a profit on it in the bargain.

She studied the machine in which the “lucky” women exchanged marriage vows with preselected strangers and were never the same again. The Marriage Machine was usually displayed as a wedding bower, with its inner passage draped in velvet and fringe, its outer workings concealed with silk ferns and orchids, and its dark influence invisible to all who ventured inside.

Elspeth had always wondered how the Marriage Machine worked. And now she was about to find out. She could actually discover what made the Marriage Machine tick.

And then she could destroy it.

Talk about perfect timing.

Elspeth placed her backpack on the floor, and the tools clanked as they settled upon the wooden planks of the stage where the machine had been installed. Then she straightened and placed her fists on her hips. “I’ll need to see the schematics,” she said, sure that the Ramsays guarded the secret of their machine from all but their inner circle, but hoping she might get her hands on a diagram if she bullied her way forward.

“I don’t have any,” the bald man said. “The machine’s been operating for nearly two hundred years. My predecessors didn’t keep the documentation.”

“Parts list?”

“Nothing.” The man shrugged. “It’s never had a problem until now. It’s got a lifetime guarantee.”

“Whose lifetime would that be?” Elspeth walked around the chassis of the machine, sizing it up, looking for leaking valves and broken lines. It took about five minutes to see that a hole had been poked in a slider valve supply line. She could repair such a problem with her eyes closed.

“I have ten weddings lined up for tomorrow and twenty more on Friday. I can’t tell you what a travesty this is. It’s the holiday season. I could lose my job.”

Elspeth frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know, citizen—“

“Davies. It’s Citizen Davies.”

“I don’t see anything wrong right off the bat, Davies,” she lied as she reached for a lever topped with a black onyx ball. “Is this how it’s turned on?”

“Yes.”

Elspeth yanked the brass arm downward. She heard a burst of air, a wheeze, and then nothing.

“See?” Davies motioned toward the machine. “That’s all it does.”

Elspeth crossed her arms over her chest as her future closed around her like a dark tunnel. She had decided long ago that she would rebel against the preordained future if she ever received a silver envelope. Well, she had received the dreaded envelope just that morning. But this Marriage Machine development had increased the implications of her personal rebellion a hundredfold. She had more than just
her
future in her hands now. She held the future of all the women of Londo City.

If she decommissioned the Marriage Machine, her career would be ruined. She would be ostracized from society, and would probably be sentenced to life in the work camps. But the authorities would have to catch her first. And whatever freedom she knew on the run, even if was only a handful of days, would be worth it. This was her seminal moment.

But finding the key to complete system breakdown would take some time.

“I need to perform a series of diagnostics.” She reached inside her pack for an apparatus she had made for herself, a portable light she could hold in her hand, with a powerful beam produced by a magnesium ribbon. It was only a prototype, held together with a clumsy set of clamps and topped by a crude lens, but it was perfect for small dark spaces. That’s where she usually worked.

“What is that thing?” Davies asked, peering around her elbow.

“Something I’m developing. I call it a hand-torch.” She switched it on. “Now if you don’t mind, Citizen Davies, I prefer to work alone.”

“Of course.” Davies backed away. “Summon me if you need me. I won’t be able to sleep anyway. The PneumoSpeak is by the door.”

As soon as the man disappeared, Elspeth ducked into the chamber of the Marriage Machine to begin her search for the heart and soul of the beast.

The block clock tooted out twelve blasts muffled by fog just as Elspeth found the heart of the Marriage Machine. She had labored six hours disassembling countless housings and gears, all arranged in neat rows behind her in the order in which she had unfastened them. By midnight, she was exhausted, and had begun to wonder if sabotage was even possible. But at the last stroke of midnight, the beam of her hand-torch found the innermost secret of the machine, and all fatigue vanished.

“Helloo!” Elspeth whispered, awestruck.

Suspended at eye level in a frame of brass was the largest ruby Elspeth had ever seen. In fact it was the
only
ruby she had ever seen. Respectable citizens didn’t wear jewelry or colored fabric or anything that could be considered superfluous adornment. In these hard times, there were more important things to concern oneself with—like merely surviving.

She traced the gem with the tip of one finger as she studied the surrounding machine works. The jewel was at least six inches in diameter and glowed with an otherworldly luminescence. Light must be refracted through the gem’s faceted depths, passed through the human body, and was somehow able to affect a person’s reproductive system and mental outlook. She felt for the heavy nuts that held the frame in place on the backside of the jewel. She estimated it would take her a good half hour to free the ruby from the intricate frame, and would probably ruin her knuckles. She reached for a wrench.