There is a simplicity to a direct threat. It may be only tangential to the larger problem of the Uhrwerkgerät, but it is something to directly strike out at. There is no tomorrow here. We just hit this mad machine hard and walk away.
I almost enjoy the run to Jericho. Oxford traffic prohibits any sort of rapid progress by car and so we handle domestic emergencies on foot.
We scrabble around a corner onto Jericho. Felicity didn’t give us an exact address, but finding the ten foot tall robot wreaking wanton destruction isn’t the trickiest bit of detective work I’ve ever done.
Hannah is the first to skid to a halt. I get the feeling she could have outrun me more completely than she has. I’m not sure why she didn’t. Maybe survival instinct. I’m sure she’ll be as satisfied as me to shoot something today, but the Uhrwerkmänn could cause serious bodily harm should it choose to get up close and personal.
Clyde and Tabitha arrive shortly after. They may have got here quicker, I suspect, if Clyde had held his tongue.
“—no need to worry, is all I’m saying,” he finishes as they slide to a halt beside us.
Tabitha is clutching her new laptop to her chest. It has a matte black case. As she turns it protectively away from Clyde, putting her body between it and him, I see the streetlights catch on a pattern traced in a more reflective shade of midnight. A skull or a snake. I don’t quite catch it before the light flees the laptop’s surface.
“I’m just saying…” he continues. “Well, knowing me, probably not just saying anything. Wittering on about all sorts of things probably. Like now, actually, come to think of it. This is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. But I just mean to say, forgetting all the other blather, and I hope this doesn’t come across as combative. Meant as a point of discussion certainly, but one that opens onto vistas of frank and respectful communication. But I just wanted to say, in a manner of speaking, that judging a chap based on one minor lapse of judgment, which I might add—well I am going to add—which happened during a fairly intense bout of combat. Fisticuffs and all sorts were involved, I assure you. Well, no need to assure you, you were there. You saw them. The fisticuffs themselves. Themself? No themselves. Both sound odd. But that’s not what I’m getting at. An ancillary point at best. But it seems a bit harsh to judge me solely on the fate of one laptop given the depth and breadth of our relationship. And I have apologized. One momentary lapse.”
Tabitha narrows her eyes. Like a shark before it tastes your tibia.
“Two lapses,” she says and taps her stomach. A hard flat slap. One containing no compassion for any spark of life that nestles inside.
That actually shuts Clyde up. Which is helpful because it gives me a chance to say, “Maybe we should be focusing more on that.”
I point. Their eyes follow my finger. They see.
The Uhrwerkmänn is in the middle of the street. Its bulk is picked out by streetlights. It is on all fours. It kicks and smashes at the road. An ugly spastic crawling.
“Gone!” it screams. A sound on the edge of legibility. A sound like a knife being sharpened in the back of its throat. Its colossal fist smashes into the tarmac, leaves a crater.
As satisfying as it will be to slap this thing personally, I do double check, “Any word from Kayla?”
Hannah just shrugs.
Tabitha pulls an earpiece from her pocket, jams it in her ear. “Kayla,” she says. “Bothered to show up yet?”
She shakes her head at me.
“All right,” I say, “we’ll do this the slightly more painful way then.” For the first time in a while things feel easy. Thoughts coming easily. “First we set up a containment zone. Enough people have seen this bloody thing already. We stop it from moving any closer to the town center. Tabitha and Clyde, you two get behind that thing. Clyde, you’ll—”
“No.”
Tabitha’s refusal detonates the bridge beneath the train of my thoughts.
“What?” I manage.
“Not going with him.” She doesn’t even bother looking at Clyde.
I try to find the right expression to put on my face. Angry seems unlikely to work. And sympathetic is never an emotion that seems to survive contact with Tabitha’s emotionally caustic hide. I go with some amalgamation of conciliatory and conspiratorial. “Look—” I start.
“Send him on his own. Probably impregnate it. Screw up its life. Patronize it until it self-destructs.”
Clyde, who seemed as if he too was on the verge of opening his mouth, instead chooses to remain silent.
“Well,” I say, “that doesn’t seem to be an entirely likely scenario…”
“I’ve got this.” She taps her earbud. “Don’t need to be near him to give him information.”
“Tabby.” An unfortunate wheedling quality has crept into Clyde’s voice. He knows better than me how disastrous that is. He cuts the plea short and settles for looking disconsolate instead.
I’m not the only one who’s going to benefit from kicking robot derrière, I think.
“OK,” I say. “Look, Clyde, you stay with me. Tabby and Hannah can go—”
“No.” It’s Hannah this time.
“Jesus,” I say. “When the hell did this become a democracy?”
The Uhrwerkmänn lets out another cawing screeching, “Gone!” and scrambles a few yards down the street. I can see two kids leaning out of an upstairs window staring down at it. Wonder fills their eyes.
Hannah shakes her head. “Whatever. Just makes no bloody sense for me to be behind it. Because Clyde—he doesn’t need backup. He can shut off the street himself. Use some of his bloody magic to… I don’t know, fuck with my head and poke the Uhrwerkmänn in its rusty arse or something. Then you and I are the shooters up front. It’s going to take both of us to dissuade it from coming into town. Better yet, Clyde’s in front and we’re behind. That way he can push it away from the town center instead of toward it. We slow its retreat and do damage. Then you shove Tabitha up on the rooftops in case it tries to go that way. Or just for a good observation spot. Give her good view of the field of engagement so she can prep Clyde with the right spell.” Another shake of the head. “Bloody obvious.”
You know, it would be nice if someone didn’t second guess me all the bloody time, as if I hadn’t done this before.
“Look,” I say, “how the hell do we just shove Tabitha up on the rooftops? Unless you brought a stepladder with you.”
“Actually,” Clyde says. “I do know a spell…”
Damn it. I mean, I know he’s helping. It’s just he isn’t.
The Uhrwerkmänn saves me from recriminations. It plunges its fist into a shop front. Glass crashes. A burglar alarm wails. How are we still standing around talking about this?
“Just get behind the damn thing with Tabitha,” I say. “It’s ten foot bloody tall. I’m sure even Tabitha can shoot something that size.”
“Don’t have a gun,” she says. “Would prefer rooftops.”
I claw my fingers down my face.
“Fine,” I say finally. “Get up on a roof. But Clyde is not bloody helping you. Clyde, punch that thing in the face. Hannah, get behind it.”
There is hesitation. “Now!” I bellow.
Batteries fly into Clyde’s hands. He palms them into his mouth.
Hannah and Tabitha are slower. Tabitha stares at the rooftops. “Well, how the hell…?” she says.
“I don’t know!” I snap. “Maybe get behind the bloody thing like I bloody suggested.”
The Uhrwerkmänn is suddenly backlit. Something coming up the street behind it. A truck perhaps. Red light fills the space, turning the robot into a manic, mashing silhouette.
“Gone!” it screams, dragging the sound out, prolonging the auditory agony. “Gooooooone!”
“Oh this is perfect,” I mutter. Witnesses rear-ending an Uhrwerkmänn are exactly what I need. I yank out my pistol and empty a clip at the damned robot. I’m not sure how much damage I do, but it certainly feels good.
Beside me, Clyde does his thing. A spattering of nonsense syllables and something slams into the Uhrwerkmänn’s drooling chin. It is rocked back, up onto two feet, and then back, sitting down on its arse, dazed. Clyde skids back along Jericho Street’s bumpy tarmac, sneakers squealing in protest.
Behind the Uhrwerkmänn, the truck slams to a halt. I wait for it to flee. But it sits there.
And why the hell would a truck back up the street toward the insane Uhrwerkmänn? That doesn’t seem sensible.
Oh no.
I almost expect it, but it doesn’t make it any better. The massive shadow shape moving between the Uhrwerkmänn and the truck.
Oh shit.
“Friedrich’s here!” I yell. “Engage! Engage!” I jam another magazine into my pistol, start charging, firing. And now would have been a really nice bloody time to have some people positioned behind that Uhrwerkmänn.
The back of the truck opens up. More silhouettes. And not one of them has the decency to be small.
The maddened Uhrwerkmänn manages to get out one more “Gooooone!” before its minimally more rational compatriots are upon it. There are at least four of them. They pin its arms and legs.
Then Friedrich is there as well. He plunges a fist toward his struggling victim’s chest, flings a sheet of metal aside. His fist descends once more. Machinery follows, caught in the glare of streetlights. Dripping oil painted red by the brakelights of his truck.
I’m running, moving as fast as I can while still maintaining something that resembles an aim. I empty a second magazine into Friedrich’s arse. He ignores me.
Damn it, I know what he’s doing. This is the very definition of bad. Friedrich’s followers heave on limbs. Metal screams, but the body starts to twist, reconfigure itself.
“Clyde!” I scream. “Something big!”
“Ushtar mol koltar fal ectum bal melsith—” Clyde’s garbled words ring out in the street.
Friedrich wrenches on one more internal organ. Blue light starts to flood the street.
Shit and balls.
“—bel telsin!” Clyde screams.
Suddenly every streetlight goes out. The brakes on the truck die. Only the glowing blue light of the reconfigured Uhrwerkmänn… no, of the Uhrwerkgerät lights the scene.
Except, wait… there’s a second blue glow in the street. Coming from the back of the truck. And in that thin light I see that the new Uhrwerkgerät isn’t exactly the same as the old one. Volk was a teardrop of metal. This Uhrwerkmänn has become more of an arc. An arm or perhaps a leg is perpendicular to the rest of the body, pointing into the radius of the curve. And this isn’t a new Uhrwerkgerät. It’s a new component of the same one.
Two glows… Two components of one bomb…
Volk is in the back of that truck.
Further analysis is cut short by Clyde’s spell roaring into full effect. Darkness is only the first of the absences to open up in the street before me. A sucking vacuum grabs at me, starts to drag me down the street faster and faster.
Friedrich reels, staggering back from the newly rendered component of the Uhrwerkgerät. I hear something crunch. And goddamn it, Clyde actually hurt him. This could still turn out to be a good goddamn day.
And then it really hits me. Yes, yes, this could be a damn fine day. Because if this Uhrwerkmänn is only a component of the whole then that means Friedrich isn’t done. That’s why Friedrich was kidnapping other Uhrwerkmänner. He needs them to finish building his bomb. To make it bigger. Friedrich’s work still isn’t done.
Which means there still might be hope.
“Schnell!” Friedrich yells. I’m close now. I can see the crumpled plate of armor on his left flank. The dragging tension of the spell lets up. I skid to a stop, take aim, searching for weak points.
I change where I’m aiming. Friedrich isn’t the primary target. Those metal bastards holding the bomb are. I open fire. It’s still not enough. They reach the truck, slam the new component of the Uhrwerkgerät into the old.
The blue light intensifies.
Clyde is howling mad nonsense behind me. That same dragging vacuum fills the air. It pulls me toward Friedrich. And I want to shout no, he’s not the target. He’s not what’s important here. But it’s already too late.
Because there’s another crunch from Friedrich. Because another plate of armor is damaged, the edges are peeled back, more weak points exposed.
Because we have the monumental Uhrwerkmänn’s attention now.
Grinding one fist into another, Friedrich turns and advances upon us.