THE DOOR OF the Faraday car cracked shut as soon as Berd entered. She slumped to the ground, too exhausted to clamber onto the seat and dug her fingers into her sides to stop the air, keening in and out of her lungs, from cutting like sheets of metal. Her injured right arm dragged like the chain of an anchor.
Her agonised breathing echoed in the enclosed space. When she lifted her head from the floor, she found she was shivering. Nothing was making sense. She had entered the Engine to find out why Charles had refused to love her, hoping to win him back, but instead, things had gone horribly wrong.
Charles, her love, was trying to kill her. Gine, her tormentor, was risking life and limb to save her, and she had no idea how all this had happened. Gine’s lie, saying he was Charles, made her far from grateful to him. But if he was speaking the truth then it meant that Charles was doomed.
Too soon the door opened.
She peered out. She was down on the glass-green plains, where the wind blew the odour of burnt pine, motor oil and paraffin from the wrecks of half-a-dozen blazing book stacks onto her face. She remembered seeing hundreds. No doubt Gine was waiting for when she was at her lowest to unleash them. She didn’t need to look at the blood-seared sky to know she was in hell.
Where are you, Charles?
The landscape shook. Lightning scored its nails into the skies. She scrambled out, rubbing her eyes and nose. A book stack, still intact, leaned next to the cliff. That had to be the original book stack. It was her only hope, though where she would go, she had no idea. Maybe the platform Charles had mentioned so long ago...
She slammed into the elevator as thunder crackled. Cool ginger-scented air of the elevator fanned against her, drying the tears she was trying to hold back as she rode it up. Then the door opened, and she stumbled out. She was settling herself in the empty seat when she heard a cry.
“Wait!”
She looked up and across the empty space to see Gine on the top of the plateau, hobbling towards the stack, towards her.
Gine, who had lied to her. Gine, who had called himself Charles. Gine: who was supposed to have Charles inside him. In the sepia light, his clothes appeared torn, his face a mess of bruises. If he expected sympathy from her he had come to the wrong person.
Then she saw Charles, or what was left of him, a heap on the ground. No, not a heap, it was rising. His torso, his husk, as stiff as a tree trunk, a hollow tree, for all his substance was gone. She could not deal with either Charles or Gine now.
The Charles-creature was Gine’s problem. He had tricked her. And now if he expected her to wait for him he was mistaken. She gave one short, scornful laugh then turned to the controls as she tried to figure out how to work this thing.
Thankfully, she had the experience of driving her autocar, and she had watched Charles — No, Gine — earlier. She flicked switches. Her face heated at the memory of his deception.
Hurry, hurry. Hurry before Gine reached her. The stack swung away when Gine was six feet away from the edge of the plateau.
Good. She clenched her teeth and rotated the stack a hundred and eighty degrees.
“Berd, please.”
She would be a fool to turn around; Gine had tried to kill her. The term he preferred was: cull.
And he had done something to Charles.
But if Charles is really inside Gine…
Blast! Blast! Blast!
She turned the stack to face Gine. There was but twelve feet of air between them. And the Charles-creature was closing.
Gine was standing, arms loose by his side. “Please.” His face was at peace as if he did not expect her to take him. But it made no sense why he would need her help. He was in charge of this place. She had seen him melt into the surroundings, into solid steel walls on numerous occasions.
Gine’s chest heaved with the effort of speaking. “I can’t kill him, do you understand? I can’t kill him. But he can kill me.”
Leaving Gine was murder.
Berd told herself she was a fool, but she moved the stack to close half the distance. “Jump!”
No one said she had to make it easy for him.
Gine leapt, sprawling face-down in a heap onto the copper platform. So he wasn’t really that helpless. But she could not make out what he was playing at. She didn’t wait to see if he was all right, but turned the stack and moved away from the cliff. Away from Charles...
She pressed her trembling lips into a straight line as the stack swayed and staggered like a drunken camel. Behind her she heard Gine’s shouts, the slam of his body as he attempted desperately not to fall off the polished platform.
She spread her lips in a mirthless smile. It was her turn to monopolise the chair. When she felt they had travelled enough distance to be safe, she halted the stack, but did not extinguish its engine. Then she swivelled the chair to face Gine.
The platform was empty.
She gasped. He must have fallen off! She shot up from her seat just as she saw his knuckles whiten against the edge of the platform. He hauled himself back up, his face red with the exertion in the dirty brown light.
“How could you?” she screamed at him, throwing all her anger and frustration into her words.
He shook his fist and shouted back, but she couldn’t hear him over the rattle of the engine and the storm. Lightning scattered silver streaks across the sky as she switched the engine off. As the stack quivered to a stop, Gine pushed himself into a sitting position. His chest heaved from the effort as if he were actually breathing.
Thunder shook the air.
“I cried out countless times for you to stop! Where did you learn to drive, if one could even call that driving?”
She raised a delicate finger. “Not one word about women drivers. Or over the edge you go.” She flicked the air to demonstrate.
His face whitened. But she was in control. “How could you trick me like this?” she demanded.
“Trick you? What do you mean? I saved your life.”
“I meant the kiss.”
His scowl promptly vanished, replaced by a grin that showed how much he had enjoyed it. “I opened my eyes to find you kissing me.”
She spoke through clenched teeth, “I thought you were Charles. I thought I was kissing him.”
He arched a brow. “I am Charles. You were kissing him. Me.”
She stilled. “What do you mean?” Her voice was tight.
“I explained it to you before.” Gine tilted his head back, indicating the walls of the plateau two miles away.
‘I?’ He must mean Charles. Charles had made mention about how he and Gine were merging each time he partook of the energy. Only right now Gine seemed to alternate into being Gine one minute and Charles the next. Then she remembered she had seen such confusion in him before. After their ride in the hot air balloon and in the elevator, Charles had appeared as if fighting some bitter internal battle. Gine had been trying to take him over back then. And even that once in the book stack when he almost crushed her hand.
“Earlier you said you were Charles. That is the only reason I turned back. Then you called that — it — whatever remains of Charles. Who is the creature? Explain what you mean or I’ll throw you back.” She placed a finger on a switch.
Gine scrambled to his feet.
“Stay. Where. You. Are,” she ordered.
He shrugged and dropped obediently. “Very well. Charles told you about the line of code.”
Her heart almost stopped. Surely he did not mean that line of code!
“Charles programmed me to always save his life.”
Perspiration dampened her body and she sank back onto the chair.
“What I did, I did because of my programming. If a program performs a bad line of code, is that program bad? Remember, I have no choice in the matter. If I tell you, promise you won’t throw me off?”
She wet her lips. “I promise. Go on.”
“He made me always do what I had to, to save his life. But how could I accomplish this task, if he were not in the Engine?”
She nodded. So that was why Gine had refused to allow Charles to leave the Engine, because Gine required Charles to be in the Engine in order to protect him. That also explained why Gine stopped Charles from reprogramming him. Gine was trying to protect Charles from himself. Unfortunately, it made perfect sense.
“When you entered the Engine the situation changed. Radically. Suddenly, he wasn’t so much interested in saving his life...” He gave her an awkward smile.
“But mine. So when I asked him not to partake of the energy, I was in one sense killing him.”
“That’s why I wanted to remove you from the Engine.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He smiled sarcastically as lightning flashed. “There is more than one way of dying.”
As if on cue thunder crashed. Ozone tainted the air.
She half-closed her eyes, her lashes fluttered from the weight of the truth. Now she understood. If Gine had removed her, he would have broken Charles’s heart. That’s why Gine had sent the second swarm of bits. He confirmed what she had suspected. That he had been trying to keep Charles alive.
“I would have succeeded if you hadn’t been around. Then when you asked him to find a way to stop the book stack, the room filled with water.”
Lightning flooded the air with light, swirling dizzily above her head like water. She felt as if she were back in the stack once more, unable to breathe, drowning.
“You had no choice but to pump him full of energy. Only there was a short circuit.” Her voice was dead flat when she spoke.
He sighed. “He kept attempting to sacrifice himself for you. Trust me. It was hard to fulfil that command. But I did in the end.”
His words chilled her. “You let me and Charles out.”
“I had to because he was dying. I pumped him full of energy or else he would have succumbed. But after you left the stable with your brother, Charles discovered he was...” He rubbed his knuckles against his nose.
“Part Engine. Not just mentally but also physically.”
Gine gave a little laugh. “You make it sound like a horrible thing.”
She ignored his quip. “So when Charles discovered he was part Engine...”
“He decided two things: The first was that he would destroy me. The second was that he couldn’t marry you.”
So now she knew the first reason why Charles would not marry her. But she needed to find out the second, and the third. She pressed a hand against her stomach.
“I tried to save his life and then later my own. Then you re-entered the Engine. My instructions said nothing about letting him back in. I tried to keep him out, but he kept on wanting to get back in, because he was trying to get to you. He hurt himself badly the first time he got in. I knew he would hurt himself as badly the second time. So badly I would have no choice but to inject him with more energy.”
Gine had tried to keep Charles out or Charles would have become an engine. But thanks to Charles’s stubbornness he didn’t succeed and Charles had become an engine. All along Gine had been trying to save Charles. He was a better friend to Charles than she had been to him. “But I didn’t get pumped...”
Gine nodded slowly. “I admit statistically I have only a population size of two. I had to pump you full of energy. You see your muscles were paralysed. Your heart went into spasms. Basically, I had to force you to breathe or else you would have suffocated. As you have not had much energy in you, you survived the process the second time better than he did.”
Than he did...
Lightning blazed, tearing the sky apart, exposing the truth on Gine’s face. Thunder rumbled, rocking the whole landscape. She kneaded her stomach to stop the nausea rising. The electrical storm overhead was nothing to the storm inside.
“Each time I pumped Charles full of energy, he was turning into an engine. A program. As he lay dying, I did the logical thing. He loved you. His love was killing him so I switched it. Only because of the short-circuit it went rather badly. He doesn’t just hate you now...”
Cold fingers clutched her throat. “He wants to cull me.”
Cull. Kill.
Lightning leapt across the sky. Thunder followed. Then the landscape went black, except for the orange fires from the wrecked book stacks that at two miles off resembled dying embers. The turquoise waterfall thinned to a blue thread. The Mill, a milky way of silver stars, glimmered in inky blackness casting little useable light.
Her world was ending. Because she was dangerous for Charles, Gine tried to remove her from the equation. It was the logical solution.
A flag. A switch. A toggle.
Just like that and Charles’s love for her was gone.
“You saved my life when the lightning struck.” Berd’s voice was raw. “You saved my life again in the stack. Back there you saved my life again. But you were never programmed to do so.” She stared into Gine’s face. “You saved my life countless times though I was bad for Charles.”
“Yes, bad. Bad. Very bad.” Gine absent-mindedly brushed non-existent long hair off his face. After a couple of flicks, when his fingers contacted only with air, he looked up and gave her a sheepish smile. For some reason, she could see him more clearly now. Her eyes were getting used to the darkness.
It seemed normal to speak in the gaps between the thunder and lightning, to feel the shadowed presence during the blackness that was Charles...
“Why do you always save me?” she persisted.
“Why do I always save you?” Gine gave a bad-tempered snort. “Utter stupidity. Figure out why, and you’ll know precisely what is going on.”
“But that’s, that’s not possible, is it?”
His answer was a tight-lipped smile.
“No, it can’t be. It’s only because there’s a part of him in you.” Berd nodded, desperate to agree with her answer. Yes, Charles had explained it all to her. He had merged with the Engine. Parts or all of him were now part of it. She looked down at her chest. Then his. Gine’s own had been cold.
Gine rose from the floor and strode over to her. He picked up her hand and placed it on his chest.
Beneath her palm she could feel the thump of his heartbeat even through his lemon satin waistcoat. The thunder in the sky seemed to have settled in his chest. He was turning into Charles just as Charles was turning into an engine.
“Yes,” he said shortly. His lower lip quivered as if he were trying to hold back some emotion. Under his long black lashes, his shining eyes were iridescent blue. They watched her every move. Just like Charles used to...
It was madness to think an engine was in love with her. Really in love with her. At first she had thought it was because a part of Charles was in Gine, but looking into his face now...
She snatched her hand back. “You murdered James!”
“Did I?” He cocked his head, looking so much like Charles, especially now his eyes were the same colour. Standing this close, she could smell him. That familiar boyish scent. The taint of metal was gone. He was living, breathing, and waiting for her to say the word.
When she breathed out, he breathed in.
She itched to slap him. “What do you mean? Of course you did. I saw him!”
“He never entered the Faraday car.”
“You sucked in James.”
“I created an illusion of James.”
She glared at him. “I don’t believe you.”
“If I hadn’t done so, you’d have entered the waterfall. Then you would have been turned into an engine, too.”
There was only one reason, she could think of as to why he had stopped her. “You’re mad.”
Gine flinched. His face hardened. “Am I? Madder than he? I could have let you die so many times.”
It was true.
The blackness of the night flitted inside her. She raised her chin as lightning tore across the sky, wanting to be sure he saw her face clearly, saw the hatred, and tasted her revenge. “I cannot love a murderer. Charles isn’t a murderer. You are. You’re the murderer. You killed all the workmen. Sucked them up into the Engine to turn them into energy. Used them.”
His face cracked. The skin thinned, pressing against the outline of the bones. For a moment, he bore a haunted, gaunt expression then he covered his face with his hands.
Thunder rumbled. She had finished him.
“You’re right. I am. Man is made in God’s image. Gine is made in my image. I have created a monster. Therefore I must be a monster.”
His voice was the same. His body was the same. Only something, something inside had changed. Something else had taken over.
“No!” she gasped, aghast at what she had done. Gine must have morphed fully into Charles now. And she had unjustly accused Charles of multiple atrocities. She tried to take it back though she knew it was too late. “No. You are not a monster.”
He never heard her.
Charles’s voice was perfectly calm. “Soon I will be responsible for your death. Already I am responsible for the deaths of so many.”
“I love you...”
“How can you love a monster?”
“You can’t blame yourself for what Gine did.”
“I programmed him. I put those thoughts in him. I made him do what he did.”
“You aren’t a monster. You love me. Monsters don’t love.”
“Frankenstein’s Monster loved.”
Frankenstein’s Monster did love. And when his love was rejected the Monster turned bad. She had rejected Gine’s love. She stared open-mouthed at Charles.
“Monsters kill. Gine is me, don’t you understand. I am becoming Gine just as much as he is becoming me.”
She grasped his hand and clutched it to her heart. “Then go away from Gine! Come with me.”
“I created him. I should have stopped him. I didn’t and it’s too late.”
That was it. That was the second and the third reasons. Charles would not marry her for three reasons: because he was turning into a monster; because he had wanted to keep her away from him to stop her from coming into Gine’s reach, and the third reason was now clearer than ever – Charles was addicted to the energy.
Even as she opened her mouth to deny the truth, the sky glimmered blue. Electrifyingly blue. Waterfall energy blue. The iridescent blue of Charles’s eyes.
What a fool I was to never before have noticed the connection!
What had been the waterfall elongated, stretching like molten toffee. Then taller. Wider. Two branches shot out to the left and right. Arms.
Her heart pounded. “What’s happening?”
“He’s entered the waterfall,” he said dully.
A figure wavered in the blueness. The Charles-creature was growing. She shook her head, refusing to believe her eyes.
“He’s absorbing all the energy.” Even as Charles/Gine spoke, he grasped hold of her arm, attempting to lever her out of her chair.
The gall! “No!” She slapped his hold off. “I’m driving!”
“You can’t drive!”
Beast! She screwed up her face and started up the Engine.
He glared at her. “We have five minutes if we’re lucky, before he gets here.”
Gine/Charles was planning to run...
It was then she noticed his silver eyes. The energy was affecting him, too. But if Gine had Charles in him then Charles would have Gine in him, too…
She jumped up. “You want to drive? Then drive!”
He eyed her suspiciously as he plunked himself down in her place. She kept her mind blank, smiled demurely, moved around and then gripped onto the back of his steel chair.
If Charles/Gine thought he had won, he was in for a shock.
As he swivelled the stack in the opposite direction to the Mill, she shouted. “No!”
He looked up startled. His bewilderment allowed her to reach over his shoulder, grab the wheel and swing it. The stack pivoted in the direction of the Mill before he seized the wheel. She clung on. Neither would let go. They glared at each other across the wheel.
Then he threw one hand into the air. “You call me mad? That’s suicide!”
As if to prove him right, the plain was instantly populated with stacks popping out of the ground. She had no doubt the Charles-creature was controlling them. Charles had won this world but lost his soul.
She pointed remorselessly in the direction of the Mill. “We’re not making a run for it.”
“I can’t kill him.”
“I can’t kill him either. But the last thing I want is for him to be loose in the real world.” She swallowed hard. “This way, he doesn’t get out.”
Gine slowed the engine.
She stomped on his right foot, forcing the pedal down. The stack sped up again.
“I see,” he spat. “This is why you didn’t mind me driving. Can I make mention this is my foot you’re squashing. I’ll have you know it isn’t metal.”
“You’re lucky I haven’t clapped hands over your eyes.” She removed her foot, endeavouring to look as stern as possible, but inside she was smiling.
She had found Gine’s weak spot. And she had proven it when she had startled him as she seized the wheel. Driving apparently took a lot of effort and while Gine drove, he wasn’t able to read her brain to see what she was thinking. It gave her time to plan at least for now, when there was only one Mill. Imagine what Gine would be like with two Mills or more. Heaven forbid.
Berd had deduced that the Engine had been reading her mind the whole time. It was the only logical explanation as to how he was always one step ahead of her.
After all, they were all energy.
“Keep going,” she ordered.
He kept going, though his lips moved.
No doubt he was calling her names. As she was doing the exact same thing to him, she ignored him. Fair’s fair.
She was asking him to destroy the Mill. This time it was for real. Earlier because Gine had headed the stack in the Mill’s direction, she had assumed wrongly the destruction of the Mill was his objective, but he had never mentioned anything about doing so. Then it had been a ploy. Now she was making it clear she was prepared to destroy the Mill.
The time for bluffing was over.
She had expected after his earlier tactics for the other stacks to dodge and manoeuvre out of the way, but the only stack dodging and manoeuvring was theirs. If a stack stepped into their path, he simply went around. It made their course circuitous rather than straight, taking them longer to get to their objective.
“Ram them!”
“I can’t,” Gine fumed.
“Why?”
“Instructions to remove us from the Engine are in one of them.”
He had to be jesting. “What about earlier?”
“I removed the memory from those stacks I downed. There are no more spares.”
She could have strangled him. Gine had tricked her once more.
The ground jumped up. A couple of book stacks to their right toppled over. At first she thought Gine had done something clever. But the ground was actually shaking.
The monstrous Charles-creature had started to walk.
Time had run out.
Each time one of its massive legs landed, the plains shook. It was coming for them. At its speed, they had less than a minute. And they were still a mile off from the Mill.
Two more stacks toppled to their left.
“Ram them! Forget the instructions,” she screamed.
Their stack swayed recklessly as he stepped them over the wrecks.
The sky was lighter. Half a mile away, she could see the Mill. Pure white light sparked continuously, neurons passing data from one end to the other, an invisible weaver weaving an invisible garment from an invisible pattern on an invisible loom. When she and Charles died no doubt their energy would be part of that invisible material.
The Charles-creature roared.
Berd screamed as every object glowed luminescent as it blew apart. Each individual particle shimmered. Then they all came back together again. The stacks jerked and rumbled forward. Only their stack remained motionless.
What new game was Charles/Gine playing at now? “Keep going!” she screamed.
He pumped the pedal madly. “Can’t! The stack’s done for. He’s removed the energy. Run! Run for it!” Gine jumped to his feet, grabbed her and they raced for the elevator.
The air sizzled, crackling and crinkling as if electric blue ants marched up and down invisible lines. The edges of the platform shrunk as if eaten by termites as the Charles-creature bent down.
Her hair blew wild across her face. As the elevator door closed, she saw the Charles-creature’s fingers touch the chair where they had been sitting seconds ago. It burned into metallic sawdust. That sizzling end was what was in store for them.
As she stared at Gine his face glowed azure, as if he were some animistic god. His fingers were fused into the control panel. Though the Engine was breaking up, he was causing the elevator to work.
“You’re the Engine. Seize control back!” she demanded.
“I can’t. It’s too late. That’s the last of it.”
Couldn’t or he wouldn’t? “Don’t be absurd! Why not?”
He could only stare at her. He pulled his fingers out and his face returned to his normal colour. The door slid open. They were on the plains again.
“Run,” he growled.
He must be joking. “No,” she cried out. “I’m not going.”
Gine clenched his fists in frustration. “Do you want to die here?” He pushed her out of the elevator.
He was serious. But she was, too.
She stared at him as it dawned on her what was happening. Gine was deliberately removing the ‘Engine’ from him. That was her only conclusion. But if he removed the Engine then all he would be left with was ... and then she understood.
He was.
Gine was the Engine, or had been. He had been the servant in this place and then the master, only as he grew, became more Charles-like, he understood that being master was not what he wanted. He had learnt from Charles.
Power wasn’t everything. Life wasn’t everything. Love was.
Her voice broke as she spoke. “I once left Charles. I’m not doing it again.”
His hands dropped to his sides.
She stared into his eyes. “Who are you?”
Walls of copper sulphate blue slid down around them. His face contorted as if in pain.
Tears filled her eyes. “Who are you? Really. Deep down.”
Frustration cloaked his face. He gritted his teeth and glared at her. “You should have run...”
The walls began closing in.
“You said you loved me.”
He glanced away though there was nowhere to look, for the walls were almost touching them.
“If you are Charles, then know that I love you.”
His face tightened. He tilted his chin defiantly at her. Everything around her sparkled as if turning to stardust. She could barely hear herself speak. Bubbles were popping in her ears as her molecules dissembled.
“But if you are not Charles then be Charles. Be Charles and I will love you.”
As his face disintegrated, he laughed. “You knew we weren’t going to make the Mill. You knew. You tricked me. Did you accomplish your objective?”
She nodded. Her insides were melting.
“Ah, but you wore green,” he muttered as he stared into her eyes. “You wore green.” Then he smiled and all that was left were his blue eyes. And she was blinded.