The House of Gears by Jonathan L. Howard

Author:Jonathan L. Howard [Howard, Jonathan L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, magazine, short story, fantasy magazine, short stories
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2011-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Ingenious as Samhet’s new non-organic existence was, it seemed to have taken a degree of flexibility from his thinking. Either that or he had a dangerous degree of trust in his deductive logic, especially as it was flawed. Some twelve hours had passed and the cellar had still not been searched. Cabal had made a couple of cautious forays up the steps and seen the servants searching and then searching the same rooms again. He gauged each pass took about two hours, in which case the same cupboards were now on their sixth investigation. Not that Cabal minded; even with his unslowing efforts, his near eidetic memory for figures, and his remarkable mathematical ability, his plan was highly involved and a single error would doom him to death or, as he’d seen, worse. Finding Samhet’s notebooks, now discarded since their contents had been rendered part of the machine’s memory, had aided him enormously, but he was still intending to do something with Samhet’s handiwork for which it had never been intended. Still, one can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, thought Cabal rising once more from the plate-punching table. So much the better if the eggs belong to somebody else.

As he worked, he considered how strange it was that there was no sign that Samhet had ever come down here since adopting his mechanical form. The workshops, stores and laboratory were coated with brick dust and grime. Apart from the swept path to the long-term memory darkroom, presumably kept clean by servants bearing photographic supplies, everything had simply been abandoned. But then, on consideration, perhaps it wasn’t so strange. It was, after all, Samhet’s brain and, mechanical or not, Cabal could understand an unwillingness to traipse through it for fear of damaging it. There are words for people who like to tinker with the mechanics of their own brains, but none of them are admiring.

Still, Samhet’s squeamishness was Cabal’s gain. Down here he had found the time, the equipment, the materials and the opportunity to devise and execute his coup de maître. He checked his watch; almost exactly a day since he’d made the wretchedly poor decision to enter the grounds of the isolated house. And now, it was time to go. He set about making the final preparations.

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