My Clockwork Muse (32 page)

The original
. It struck me that there
must have once been a real Dansby. That Coppelius was so willing to
throw these lives away in pursuit of his machines showed just how
truly evil he really was.

"When I put it to him, Dansby didn't like
being called a machine."

"Oh, he didn't like a lot of things, Edgar.
But in the end, he did what I told him to do."

Coppelius' good eye was piercing as he
continued to aim the blunderbuss at my chest. His bulging clouded
blue eye however seemed to peer somewhere past me. His aim would
result in either a lead ball tearing through my heart or flying
three feet over my shoulder. I still didn't like the odds of
rushing the loaded barrel. Perhaps if I kept him talking, an
opportunity would arise.

Then I remembered Gessler. Where was the man,
confound him!

"You told him to kill me—and he didn't do
that."

"Ah, but not for lack of trying. You see, all
these machines like to assert their independence after a while,
Edgar. That's how you caught me, you know. Oh, to fool the great
master of ratiocination! That was my goal."

"If that was your goal, then you failed. You
said it yourself: I caught you."

"Well, judging from the direction the barrel
of this loaded pistol is pointing, it rather appears that I have
caught
you
, Edgar." He cackled with a laughter that devolved
into a hacking fit. Seeing my chance, I took a step towards him,
but he recovered at once, re-leveling his gun. "Please don't do
that, Edgar. I don't want to hurt you."

"What are you doing to Olimpia, you monster?
What is that damned machine doing to her?"

"Oh, this? Charming, isn't it?" He patted the
copper cylinder, burning his fingers. He shook his hand to cool
them. "At the moment, it is doing nothing to her. That's why I say
you are just in time. It will be your privilege to see it in
action. As soon as I fire it up, so to speak, you can see how I
correct a mistake. Yes, for even I make them, on occasion."

At the moment, the machine was doing
nothing—apart from piercing Olimpia's heart with a dozen needles.
Still, I wanted to shout with joy. I would give my life to prevent
Coppelius "firing it up."

"What mistakes?" I asked.

"The revenant creatures, for one.
Unfortunately, I had not foreseen that. You see, in order to make a
Dansby or a Billy Burton, for example, I had to produce a serum
from the living bodies of their biological counterparts. This is
what makes them ...
alive
. To my dismay I found that it also
makes the living quite dead, at least for a while."

I had always known the man was an eccentric,
but now I knew he was mad.

"But why?"

"Because I could, Edgar. And the more that I
found I could, the more that I found I wanted to. Oh, it was grand
sport! You couldn't distinguish between the real Burton and my
version of him, could you? Of course not, no one could. Not even
when your very life depended on it."

"So it was you who set up the Amontillado
murder to make it appear that it was my doing."

"And the Rue Morgue, yes. Mr. Burton was
instrumental in assisting me with both of those. Of course, by the
time of the Amontillado set-up, I had no further need of the real
Mr. Burton. I tell you, when I chained him to that wall ... I don't
think he ever did truly understand that he would not be coming out
again."

"But he did come out again," I said.

"Yes. An unavoidable by-product of my serum,
I'm afraid. The same with your damned little cat."

"You made the clockwork Pluto."

"Of course. And you would have been none the
wiser if the original would have stayed dead. Still, after my
success with the cat, it began to occur to me that what had begun
as a pleasurable little hobby could become so much more. I decided
I could find some good use for my creations. If I could re-create
cats, I could re-create people. Perhaps I could re-create great
people. When I followed my thoughts along this path, I could see
that I would, in essence, become those great people, by proxy. I
could perhaps even become the President of these United States,
couldn't I? You can see where this is leading?"

The depths of his madness sent a chill
through me. "You mean Polk?" I asked, not believing it possible. I
glanced at Olimpia. As she tugged at her restraints, Coppelius laid
a calming hand on her forehead, which seemed to have the effect of
soothing her. My skin crawled.

"Polk is small potatoes, Edgar. A gift such
as mine is intended for, shall we say, a larger stage, a bigger
man."

"But if not the current President, then who?
Surely I see no advantage in impersonating any former occupant of
the office."

Coppelius gave me an almost whimsical look
before shaking it off. "It's irrelevant, Edgar. For at this stage
in my thinking, I realized that my ambition had far outpaced my
capabilities. I needed an entirely new formula. How could I get
close enough to the President to create a serum from his fluids?
The answer was simple: I couldn't. So my first challenge was to
formulate a solution that did not require my procuring it from any
particular individual. Once I had applied my mind to it, this
problem was easily overcome. But the real flaw in my serum was
something I discovered from your cat—"

"They weren't the same," I said, realizing at
once the implication. I thought back to our dissection of the
clockwork cat and what we found inside. Coppelius had seemed
sincerely puzzled. Even the master of deceit had not been able to
mask his genuine surprise.

"What's that you say, Edgar?"

"I say, they were not the same. The cats.
Pluto, the real one, hated me, ever since I had plucked its eye
from its head. Your version of the cat loved me. And when we opened
it up, we saw that it was becoming—"

"Real," Coppelius finished for me. "Very
good, Edgar. The same was happening to Mr. Burton and ... others as
well. This I could not allow. My whole plan hinged on my absolute
control over my creations. But instead I found them ever more
developing wills of their own. Mr. Burton investigating the Rue
Morgue scene with you was an example of this. I never would have
condoned such a thing."

"And the man who tried to kill me, the masked
swordsman?"

"That was another, I'm afraid. Completely
outside my control. Insubordination continues to plague me. It is
unacceptable. But now, I will overcome even that obstacle. I have
perfected my serum, Edgar, as you shall soon see."

"What do you mean?" I felt I was getting
close to the moment of truth. Coppelius had been very careful all
the while to keep the muzzle of his pistol pointed directly at my
chest. There had been no opening to attack him. Now, I was afraid I
would have no choice but to charge the guns...

"Loaded into this machine," Coppelius began
proudly, making to pat the copper casing once again, but
remembering his singed fingers, drawing back, "is my perfected
serum. It does not depend on anyone's biological counterpart. This
particular batch comes from Mrs. Landor, in fact—whom I believe you
have met."

"Then what of my beloved Virginia?" I asked.
As I contemplated his murderous arrogance, my fury began to rise.
"What of the mark on her neck? Is there a clockwork Virginia
somewhere? And what of this?" I yanked down my collar, exposing the
puncture wound through which Coppelius had been drawing my blood
and injecting his vile poison into my veins. Had I long to live, in
any case?

The vehemence of my outburst seemed to
startle him. I rushed him and grabbed the barrel of his pistol. We
struggled with it. I attempted to wrest it from his hand but,
though he was old, bent and twisted, his arms were like iron bands.
I could do little but keep the muzzle away from my face. The weapon
rose and fell in our contentious grasps. One moment it was pointed
at the floor, the next the ceiling. Finally, I drove my shoulder
into the old man's chest. I could hear the breath leave him. He
fell away in one direction, while the pistol went flying in the
other.

With Coppelius sprawled on the floor, Olimpia
cried out to me. "The needles, Eddy! Oh, please, remove these
needles from out my heart!"

I stood over her and felt at a loss. My hands
went to the needles, but I could not make myself grasp them. I was
certain that there had to be a proper way to extract them, but I
felt clumsy and helpless. "I'm afraid I might hurt you," I
said.

"But they will be the end of me."

Then she screamed. I whirled. Coppelius had
climbed to his feet. He was reaching for the pistol in his belt. I
had forgotten it was there.

"And now," Coppelius hissed, through clenched
teeth, "you will watch your lady-love die."

In the next instant, a great flash and a
deafening crack of a gunshot filled the room. With his pistol still
in his belt, Coppelius fell in a heap to the floor. A little swirl
of smoke rose from his chest.

My first thought was of Gessler. With a
smile, I looked up, expecting to see the inspector step out of the
darkness. But instead, I saw a small man dressed in a black frock
coat like mine. He was wearing a silk mask over his face and in his
hand was Coppelius' smoking blunderbuss pistol.

"I thought I'd never be rid of that fool."
The masked man stepped out of the gloom and stood over Coppelius'
body. The doctor may have been mad, but he was right about one
thing: the old blunderbuss packed quite a wallop. A scorched hole
in his coat showed where the ball had entered his chest. The masked
man shook his head sadly. "I suppose I should thank you, Poe," he
said in an oddly familiar voice. "And I will—just before I kill
you, too."

I suddenly realized who it was. "You're the
man from the Rue Morgue."

"I should have run you through then, but that
oaf Burton—"

I made to lunge at him, but he raised the
pistol menacingly and I stepped back.

"It's not loaded, Eddy!" Olimpia cried,
tugging on her restraints. I realized my mistake at once.
Coppelius' pistol was an old single-shot muzzle-loader. What a fool
I was! By the time I started at him again, he had already pulled
Coppelius' loaded pistol from the dead man's belt. He stood back
and aimed it at me stiff-armed, cocking it loudly. He stood
straight, like a fencer.

"That'll do, Poe. Now just back up to the
wall there."

I did as he commanded, backing until I could
feel the cold stone wall against my shoulder blades. The masked man
followed me step for step, stopping alongside Olimpia's table.

"Ah, the lovely Olimpia," he said, looking
down. Beneath the black mask, nothing of his face could be seen but
the bulge of his nose and the concave shadows of his eyes and
mouth. "You should listen to her, Poe. She may have a cold heart,
but her mind is sharp as a tack. Interesting that she has sided
with you against her own father. I guess water is thicker than
blood, after all. But then women
are
treacherous, aren't
they?"

"We're in love," Olimpia said.

The masked man laughed uproariously. "Love!
What does love mean to you, precious, when your own father lies
dead on the floor at your feet? Isn't a daughter supposed to love
her father?"

"He had ceased to be a father to me," Olimpia
said. "He was a madman and he meant to kill me."

"Well, he was like a father to me," said the
masked man. "And now look at him. Oh, he could have stopped me long
before it was too late. But I believe the old man had tender
feelings for me. I really do. And look what it got him—dead as a
doornail."

"What do you mean to do with us, you
scoundrel?" I asked. I was beginning to fear that something
terrible must have happened to Gessler and Tap. They were nowhere
to be seen. Surely, if Gessler had set out right after me, he would
have arrived by now, even injured.

"But it is too late for you, Poe. And for
you, too, my lovely. But I will spare you this indignity." He
grasped one of the needles piercing Olimpia's chest. "This might
sting." Still holding the gun on me, he drew the needle out
carefully. It seemed impossibly long. Olimpia clenched her eyes
shut and bit her lips. The masked man grabbed the second, and then
the third. Soon, he had withdrawn all of the needles, and they lay
glinting upon Olimpia's chest like a nest of chromium snakes.
"There. That's wasn't so bad, was it? Now you, Poe." He gestured
with his pistol. "Move to that table."

I turned my head and saw, propped against the
wall, an operating table identical to the one that held Olimpia.
Apparently the tables were designed to be tilted up and down and
this one stood in the upright position. Two leather restraints hung
from the head of the table and I knew the masked man meant to
secure me to them. I moved towards it, knowing I had but one last
chance for freedom.

"Don't even think about it, Poe," the masked
man warned. "I have but to clench my finger to put a ball in you.
Much worse will happen to Olimpia. Remember that!"

He grabbed my wrist and slapped it into the
first restraint and buckled it tightly. When he did the same to my
other wrist, he took a step back. He still held the gun on me,
though it was unnecessary. I strained against my bonds to no avail.
I was going nowhere. The masked man chuckled at my futile
efforts.

He strode to one of the workbenches and began
sorting through all the various bottles and vials that crowded the
back of the table. He would lift one and either discard it without
further ado, or, finding something of interest, hold it up to the
light and peer at it closely, only to fling it aside in
frustration. Whatever he was looking for, he failed to find it.
Finally, with a sweep of his arm, he sent all the glass tubes and
vials crashing to the floor. He whirled.