 |
(Preview) by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart September 2015 |
Some lives can be summed up in a sentence or two. Other lives are epics.
In Clockwork Angels, #1 bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson and legendary Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart created a fabulous, adventurous steampunk world in a novel to accompany the smash Rush concept album of the same name. It was a world of airships and alchemy, clockwork carnivals, pirates, lost cities, a rigid Watchmaker who controlled every aspect of life, and his nemesis, the ruthless and violent Anarchist who wanted to destroy it all.
Anderson and Peart have returned to their colourful creation to explore the places and the characters that still have a hold on their imagination. Marinda Peake is a woman with a quiet, perfect life in a small village; she long ago gave up on her dreams and ambitions to take care of her ailing father, an alchemist and an inventor. When he dies, he gives Marinda a mysterious inheritance: a blank book that she must fill with other people’s stories — and ultimately her own.
Clockwork Lives is a steampunk Canterbury Tales, and much more, as Marinda strives to change her life from a mere “sentence or two” to a true epic.
Dedication:
Your lives are going to be epic! -KJA
To Carrie and Olivia, who made my life anything but "clockwork" -NEP
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
AFTERWORD
As a blue alchemical glow illuminated the rails, the steamliner came into Lugtown on its weekly run toward Crown City, the heart of the land of Albion. The chain of cargo cars and passenger gondolas was suspended by bright balloon sacks, each marked with the loving Watchmaker’s honeybee symbol.
The steamliner touched down, steel wheels striking the rails outside of town and decelerating with gouts of steam and showers of sparks. Steam vents hissed, lowering pressure inside the coldfire boiler chambers. The pilot would park at Lugtown for the better part of a day to refill water tanks and take on cargo.
Restless passengers disembarked, men wearing frock coats and top hats or bowlers. Some women wore voluminous dresses, gloves, and button-up black boots; other women wore more casual traveling clothes, or even work overalls on their way to distant job sites.
The steamliner’s weekly arrival was extremely disruptive for a person with a schedule to keep and work to do. Standing impatient and trying to make her way around the crowd, Marinda Peake watched the travelers’ expressions shift from optimism to disappointment, apparently not impressed with the little village of Lugtown. They were on their way to Crown City or to parts unknown—and Marinda had her own business here.
She had often considered shifting her regular supply trip into town to a different day of the week, but she had always come on Wednesday, and it would be too unsettling to change. A well-established routine served a valid purpose.
The steamliner pilot emerged from the front motivator car, which was connected to a passenger gondola and smoking compartment. Marinda held a long-dampened resentment toward any steamliner pilot, since her mother had run off with one such pilot when Marinda was just a girl, mesmerized by his stories of far-off places, the freedom, the flexibility to travel. Elitia Peake was never heard from again, and Marinda’s father rarely spoke of his longlost wife, except with a wistful smile and few details. That had been more than twenty-five years ago. . . .
Marinda did not bother with memories of her mother, though. The woman was never coming back, so there was no sense wasting time or mental energy thinking about the faithless woman. She had other things to do.
Now, the barrel-chested pilot barked commands to his crew, and they hooked up water pipes to refill the boiler chambers for the long journey into Crown City. Cargo workers swung down from their drab bunk car to unload merchandise. Villagers came forward, eager to see what interesting items were available for trade, but Marinda had no interest. Such fripperies were a waste of time and imagination, and she and her father already had what they needed.
The people brought wagons and chugging carts loaded with their finest craftsmanship, which they would ship to Crown City. Lugtown was primarily known for burls from local oaks that were twisted and distorted by a perennial fungus. In keeping with the tenet of the Clockwork Angels that “even the ugly can be made useful, possibly even beautiful,” Lugtowners carved the burls into furniture, decorative accent pieces, and fantastic sculptures—particularly carvings of the angels. Every house in town had burl tables, burl chairs, burl countertops, bowls, even clocks framed with burlwood.
The burl carvers sent their work off on the steamliner, but none of them bothered to go to Crown City to see their art displayed in galleries. When Marinda had asked a woodcarver about it once, he responded with a baffled look. “Why would I want to do that? The Watchmaker granted me the gift to be a sculptor, not a traveler. Should I diminish something I am, for something I am not and do not want to be?” Marinda found that logic eminently
reasonable.
A local quarry also produced many thunder eggs, agates, which the Watchmaker supposedly found beautiful. The polished stones went off to Crown City in crates neatly separated from the burlwood items.
Showing no inclination to hurry, since the steamliner would be there for hours, the villagers loaded their outbound cargo and perused the new shipments of supplies. Marinda bustled past them, away from the steamliner station, and made her way into town. Fortunately, with so many townspeople gawking at to balance the inconvenient disruption of the steamliner’s arrival, the local businesses would have fewer customers, with everyone preoccupied with the new arrivalswhich made for easier shopping on her part. That allowed Marinda to complete her errands more efficiently.
Lugtown was laid out on the same general map as all of the villages in Albion; the Watchmaker had standardized the whole land more than two centuries ago when he imposed his benevolent Stability. Thus, Marinda adhered to the philosophy that if she’d seen one town in Albion she had seen them all, and it was a lot easier just to continue seeing this one.
With measured steps, she walked down the main street, past shops, clerk’s offices, the local newsgraph station. A cloud obscured the sun, and the wind whisked by. Marinda reached up to touch her brown hair done up in an efficient bun so the strands would not be blown astray; they all remained firmly in place. Marinda believed in stability in her hair arrangement, as with all things. Though she was only thirty-two and her skin was still smooth, she had already adopted the persona of a much older woman. In that, Marinda was ahead of schedule. The hours ticked away. She ticked away . . . and her father was ticking away even faster than the rest.
She reached into the pocket of her gray wool skirt to withdraw her list, reviewing the items she needed to purchase. Today, she had to make a special trip to the apothecary for unguents, prescription powders, and ophthalmic salves, though all of those curatives had less and less effect as her father’s health continued to decline.
As she walked past the solicitor’s office, the door popped open, startling her with its jingling bell. Benjulian Frull was Lugtown’s only lawyer, a master of the fine art of legal language, obfuscation, and loopholes. The fact that he had no competition in Lugtown made it difficult for any legal disputes to become contentious, because Benjulian Frull, Esq., represented both sides, quoting chapter and verse to each party until the matter was resolved. “Ah-hem, Miss Peake! I saw you passing by, which is quite fortuitous. I need to discuss a matter with you.” Frull stepped out to join her on the street. He was a man with a round face and a round belly; in contrast, his arms and legs were quite spindly so that, in summation, he was an average-sized man. “And how is old Arlen doing?”
“The same as always,” she said. “Poorly. His eyesight is mostly gone, and he is in constant pain, but he dabbles with his inventions and keeps his clockwork Regulators functioning, although they don’t work as well as he thinks. I believe he’s much more ill than he lets on.” She put her hands on her hips. “My eyesight is perfectly good, and I can see his condition.”
The solicitor frowned. “But how is Arlen’s mind? Ah-hem . . . can he still think clearly? The wheels still turning smoothly?” He tapped the side of his head.
“His body may be failing him, but his mind is not. My father can still daydream, and he likes those silly stories of his more than ever. He wants me to read aloud for him every night.”
“Good,” Frull said. “I just wanted to verify that in your opinion he is of sound mind? He seemed quite clearheaded when he engaged my services last week, but I wanted to make sure.” Marinda raised her eyebrows. “But he never leaves the cottage. When did he talk to you?”
“Arlen sent one of those clockwork contraptions marching into town while you were away on your weekly errands, summoned me to the cottage. I went out and spoke with him for hours.”
Marinda was surprised. “Well, he didn’t bother to mention it to me.” She knew her father had plenty of secrets, but she didn’t realize how much he kept truly private from her.
“It was legal business, a redrafting of his last will and testament. He needs to make certain that you’re taken care of. He wants what’s best for you. You’re aware that he amassed a significant nest egg from his time in Crown City?”
She hardened her expression. “That’s all just so much nonsense. People say he has a secret stash of the Watchmaker’s gold. If that’s the case, he certainly hasn’t used it to make our lives easier, and he refuses to speak of whatever he did back then.” Some even said that Arlen Peake had once worked for the Watchmaker himself, a long time ago. . . .
Marinda wasn’t actually interested in pampered luxuries; she was content with her quiet, perfect life, setting her ambitions low enough so that she met every single one of them. Even if her father did have unimaginable riches from his secretive past, she wouldn’t know what to do with wealth.
Benjulian Frull clucked his tongue. “Arlen had me draw up the documents, which are signed and notarized. Although his wishes seem strange, I believe he is in full possession of his mental capacity. I’m glad you agree. He is preparing for the day when he is no longer with us.”
Marinda felt uncomfortable with the subject. “I’ve tended my father for years. Sometimes, he’s prone to overreacting.” She pulled out her list of items for the general store and the apothecary. “I need to pick up these supplies and get back to my father in time to prepare him dinner. Good day.”
Nodding, the solicitor stepped back inside his office.
Camberon Greer, the round-faced and jovial grocer, knew that Marinda came in every Wednesday, so she never understood why he didn’t just have her order packaged up and ready, so as not to waste her time. The grocer didn’t have the same respect for time as Marinda did—he never had. Marinda wondered what she had ever seen in that man. If circumstances had been different…
Much to Marinda’s surprise, Greer was closing up his store just as she arrived. She frowned up at the nearest clock tower, looked at the smaller clock mounted on the corner of the building across the street, and frowned again. The sign above the door said Camberon Greer: Grocer, General Store; the hours were prominently marked, and they did not match what she was seeing with her own eyes.
Camberon grinned as he pulled the door shut. “It’s Miss Marinda! Happy to see you as always. You’re looking lovely.” He said that to her every time; she knew he used to mean it, but now it was just a habit for him, and a bittersweet reminder for her.
Marinda pointed to the hours. “You’re supposed to be open. I need to purchase my weekly supplies.”
“Sorry, but today is special, Miss Marinda.” Miss Marinda. Did he always have to remind her of that? “It’s my youngest boy’s birthday, and we’re closing down so we can go crack thunder eggs at the quarry. We might get lucky and find a pearl of quintessence!”
The door popped open again, and three rambunctious boys ran out laughing and harassing one another. They were all redheaded, freckled. Unruly ragamuffins, Marinda thought. They were named Oberon, Albert, and Tom—definitely not the names she would have chosen if she and Camberon had had children. She stopped herself from thinking like that.
“But you’re supposed to be open,” she repeated. “I need supplies.”
Camberon continued cranking down the awning and closing up crates of items on display. “Sorry, it’s a special day.” He cocked his eyebrows at her. “And I know you and your father have plenty of supplies for another week.”
“But . . . my list.” She pulled out her paper from the pocket in her skirt.
“We’re going to see the steamliner,” said one of the boys— Albert, she thought, though she never really paid attention. They weren’t her children, after all.
“Then we’re going to the quarry,” said the youngest boy, Tom, the one with the birthday.
“The quarry is always there,” Marinda pointed out. “And the steamliner comes every week.”
“But today’s my birthday,” said Tom, “so it’s special.”
Camberon tousled the boy’s hair. “Is your mother coming?”
“She’s packing lunch,” said Oberon.
Marinda frowned at the inconvenience. It was Wednesday, and she always got groceries on Wednesdays.
Camberon saw her consternation and gave her an understanding smile. “We’ll open again at sunset. You’re in town, why don’t you relax, walk along the stream, go to the park, read a book? There’s no hurry, is there?”
Marinda wasn’t even tempted by such diversions. She had to get home and care for her father; the words of the solicitor had unsettled her. Old Arlen was not well, and she needed to be there to watch over him. It was her responsibility. She had given up so much to take care of him, year after year.
Camberon’s wife, Jasselyn, came from around the back of the store carrying a picnic basket. The three boys jostled, wrestled, and
ran forward to cling to her arms. She endured it all with a smile, and Camberon grinned.
Jasselyn had long brown hair like Marinda’s, but she kept hers loose, sometimes tying ribbons in it, sometimes adding flowers, other times just curling it into an unexpected mane. She looked much younger than Marinda—which was unexpected, because one would have thought that three busy children would wear a person out. “Hello, Miss Marinda.” She sidled up next to her husband, and the children gathered around.
Camberon said, “Please come back at sunset, Marinda. It’ll be fine—I promise.”
The family walked off, leaving her with unsettling thoughts of what might have been. A long time ago, the Watchmaker had planned that Marinda and Camberon would be married, sending preprinted engagement cards and everything, and he had been so eager to have children.
But all that changed when Arlen had gotten sick. Accepting her priorities and responsibilities, Marinda broke off the engagement with Camberon to care for her father.
Planned lives, scheduled happiness . . .
“Have a good picnic,” she said, but doubted they heard her as they walked toward the steamliner tracks and the road leading to the quarry on the outskirts of town.
Storytellers might have described Marinda’s little cottage, yard, and garden plot as idyllic, but no storytellers would ever write about this place. It was just her home, and it was perfect because that was how Marinda chose to define perfection.
Marking the head of the path that branched off to the cottage stood a five-foot-high burlwood angel. This particular angel looked bent rather than majestic; one wing tucked under the other gave the impression that she was flightless. Only perfect burlwood angels were sent to the markets in Crown City, while less successful carvings, like this one, remained in Lugtown like beloved albeit misfit children.
Marinda headed back to the cottage much earlier than expected. But Arlen Peake could be capricious and unpredictable himself, so he wouldn’t be overly bothered by the change in schedule.
As an inventor, he was expected to be eccentric. If the rumors were true, the Watchmaker himself had tolerated Arlen’s unorthodox behavior—and if the loving Watchmaker allowed it, then the people of Lugtown wouldn’t hold it against him (although, truth be told, the eccentric behavior presented its own challenges for Marinda, on top of caring for his other infirmities).
The conversation with Benjulian Frull had troubled Marinda. She knew she had to accept that her father would pass on someday, and then the cottage would belong to her. In the typical blueprint of a life in Albion, Marinda would have settled in that cottage with a husband and a family, maybe three children, maybe even redheaded and freckled boys, but she had deviated from that norm. She would find a profession for herself, do something useful and interesting to occupy her days, and carry on.
The Clockwork Angels said that good work leads to good fortune, and she had no doubt that her fortune would continue, with or without whatever secret gold her father had stashed away from his time in Crown City. Marinda didn’t think about it often. We get what we deserve. That was what the Watchmaker always said.
In front of the cottage, she saw the three clockwork Regulators that Arlen had built out of spare parts scrounged from mining machinery at the agate quarry, engineering castoffs from the regular steamliner, and specialized components ordered from providers in Crown City. The mechanical Regulators were powered by tiny rock pearls glowing with quintessence, assisted by standard spring-driven clockwork mechanisms.
Arlen Peake had named the three windup companions Zivo, Woody, and Lee, apparently after three Regulator friends he had known back in Crown City. Her father often told wistful stories about the real friends, but he said very little about his time in the Regulator barracks or the Watchmaker’s tower. “That is a story you will get in due time, my sparkling daughter,” he had said. “All in it’s time, all in its place.” She could accept that.
The clockwork Regulators were four feet tall with metal arms and legs, pulleys and pistons that glowed with the addition of coldfire fuel. Each head was a smooth brass pot painted with a cheery face. They ratcheted about, did their assigned tasks. To prevent overheating, puffs of steam would blast out from tiny vents where their ears should have been. Each wore a downsized uniform just like that of a traditional Regulator, Zivo in the bright uniform of the red guard, Woody dressed as a member of the blue guard, while Lee served as a miniature black guard.
When Arlen Peake had built these three charming companions, he intended for them to do household chores and work in the garden. He wanted to ease Marinda’s burden of taking care of him, so she could have the freedom to live her own life. Alas, the three artificial Regulators required their own maintenance and supervision, which negated any time savings.
Black-uniformed Lee stood guard on the walkway, as if ruthless bandits from chaotic times before the Watchmaker’s Stability might raid the cottage . . . although this clockwork contraption could have done little to defend them.
Woody worked the well pump in the yard to fill a water bucket, since Wednesday was soup night. The Regulator activated the syncopated well-pumping station, a set of gears that spun an engine driven by a few drops of coldfire. He set the wheels in motion, oscillating a piston up and down, and water spilled clear and silver into the bucket.
Meanwhile, his red uniform covered with mud, Zivo used a diminutive hoe to chop weeds in the garden. Unfortunately, his crude visual sensors were poorly calibrated, and he couldn’t always tell the difference between weeds and vegetables.
“Hello Lee,” she said, as she always did when she returned home. The clockwork Regulator snapped to attention, as if to prove that he took his guard duties seriously.
“Hello Zivo.” The mechanical man in the garden swung his hoe right into the center of a thriving potato plant.
“Hello Woody.” The blue-uniformed contraption bent his copper-pot head in a nod. She took the water bucket from him, and Woody ratcheted off to do other household chores, walking a path around the cottage, circle after circle after circle like a turning clockwork gear.
Carrying the bucket, she entered the cottage. Her father had heard her come up the path, and he smiled in her general direction. The old man sat propped in his calibrated chair, bathed in warm afternoon sunlight from the window. The chair was motivated by a clock that Arlen adjusted for the seasons, which moved the chair at the same speed that the patch of sunlight crossed the floor. He was like a cat soaking up the warmth. Six different clocks set within randomly shaped blocks of polished burlwood, hung on the walls, ticking synchronously.
He squinted at her, although he could barely see. “Hello, my sparkling daughter.”
At his side Arlen kept an array of magnifying glasses of various diameters and curvatures. On his blanketed lap, he had spread out a map of random lines, some dotted, some bold. She didn’t know how he could discern anything even under the highest magnification, but that didn’t stop her father from trying.
He was too proud to admit he could no longer do the things he used to do, but he occupied himself with pondering rather than reading. He held up the paper and smiled at her, but his gaze was off by a few degrees. “I’ve learned a great deal. This is a secret map.”
“A map?” she asked, tucking the blanket around his legs. “A map of what?” And where do you expect to travel? she thought. How do you imagine you might get there? You should stay home and think about practical things.
“It shows the rivers under the Redrock Desert.”
“And what good is that? We’re nowhere near the Redrock Desert. I don’t even know where it is.”
“You should know your geography better, my dear. It’s on the continent of Atlantis, far beyond the alchemy mines, on the other side of the mountains.” He spoke as if he had been there himself. Maybe he had . . . but if so, her father had never told her about it.
“Well, Albion is a long way from Atlantis,” Marinda said, activating the efficient coldfire burner so she could boil the soup water.
“And my feet are sore just from walking to Lugtown and back.”
“You should plan a trip to Atlantis,” Arlen suggested. “Book passage on a cargo steamer. Go to Poseidon City.”
“Now why would I want to do that? I have you to take care of, I have this cottage, I have everything I need.”
“But is it everything you want?”
“Yes it is. Now I have to get busy making dinner.”
As the pot simmered, she prepared the salves, unguents, and medicinal powders for her father’s various ailments. Arlen opened the small bottles and jars by feel, sniffed the preparations. He wiped a gummy substance over his milky eyes; it smelled like almonds and was supposed to increase his visual acuity, a claim that Arlen did not confirm. Other compounds were for his aching joints, his digestion, his heart. The mixtures muddled his thoughts, and her father sometimes preferred to deal with the pain than lose his mental sharpness. He told her he still had too many ideas to
work out.
The three clockwork Regulators came inside as she and her father ate their meal. The clicking hum of the clockwork Regulators and the hiss of occasionally vented steam added to the comforting tick-tock of the burlwood clocks on the wall.
The soup contained cabbage, root vegetables, and a small amount of minced chicken, accompanied by a loaf of day-old bread she had gotten for a bargain at the Lugtown Bakery. It was a frugal meal, as was Marinda’s habit. Her father insisted they didn’t have to be so careful with their money, but since Marinda had never seen any sign of his alleged secret gold, she preferred to be conservative.
While Marinda sipped soup and judiciously sopped the rest with a hunk of bread, old Arlen talked wistfully about the remote alchemy mines on far-off Atlantis and the exotic and dangerous Poseidon City. He had read about such places in books that he kept on his shelf, but once his eyesight began to fail, he had asked her to read to him. Marinda did so because she loved her father (although she did the reading reluctantly, not wanting to encourage
foolish ideas).
As if he could sense her impatience with fanciful tales, old Arlen tried to bring the stories closer to home. “Since you’ve never found Atlantis interesting, I’ll tell you about wondrous places right here in Albion.”
“It sounds interesting enough, Father,” she said as she gathered their bowls, wrapped the last of the bread, and cleaned the kitchen. “But Atlantis and even the rest of Albion are too far away for me to bother with.”
“Too far away?” Arlen’s eyes were still filmy from the salve. “What is the distance of dreams?” He sighed. “I’ve saddled you with too many responsibilities here, and I apologize. I never should have done that to you.”
Marinda clucked. “It’s a daughter’s duty to take care of her father. If I had gotten married according to the original plan, I would be busy caring for my family, and I still wouldn’t have a chance to gallivant off to strange continents and foreign cities.”
“Not even the Alchemy College? To Crown City? Everyone should see the Clockwork Angels at least once in their lives.” Marinda moved his chair to the hearth where she added a lump of imported redcoal. It was late spring and the nights were getting warmer, but Arlen was easily chilled. “Maybe I’ll get around to it someday, when I’m not so busy.”
With a long sigh, her father looked right at her for the first time in months. “I am so sorry for you.” She adjusted his blanket. “As I said, there’s truly no apology necessary.”
He looked away. “And I’m more sorry that you don’t even know what I’m apologizing for.”
Night had fallen and the stars were bright outside. On his shelf, her father kept star charts that identified constellations and asterisms. He had often encouraged her to go look at the night sky to understand the clockwork universe. More than once, she reassured Arlen that she would do just that, primarily so he would go to bed in peace, but she hadn’t yet gotten around to stargazing.
Tonight, though, he didn’t ask her to read to him or step outside to look at the stars. “I think I’ll go to bed early, if you can help me?” He just seemed more tired than usual as she took him to the bedroom.
Out of habit, Marinda turned the key in the special antique clock on his shelf, which supposedly commemorated his service to the Watchmaker. Her father sat on the bed and fumbled around the nightstand table, then patted the bedspread, searching. “Where’s my . . . thing?”
She knew what he meant. She picked up an unusual helmet contraption of his own devising. “Your sequential optical-enhancement device. You invented it—you should remember what you named it.”
He reached out for her to hand him the helmet, which he attached to his head. Leather straps and buckles fitted it to the back of his skull, and a visor composed of integrated lenses and prisms, clear lenses, blue lenses, red lenses, covered his face. He made adjustments to the visor, shifted the lenses into place, and lay back on his pillow, letting out a long contented breath.
“I don’t know how you can sleep with that on,” she said.
“I’ve gotten used to it. My body presents enough other inconveniences— I can tolerate this one.”
She stood at his bedside, frowning. “But why do you need an optical enhancement device when you’re sleeping?”
From behind the complicated helmet, he said, “To see my dreams better, of course. Where is your imagination?” She kissed him on the chin, the only spot she could reach beneath his helmet contraption. “May your dreams be pleasant ones, my sparkling daughter,” he said. “Always.”
She dimmed the lights in his room, even though he couldn’t see anything with the optical contraption over his eyes. “Good night to you too, Father.” It did not seem to be the acknowledgment he was looking for.
Marinda dampened the motivator engines of the three clockwork Regulators, shutting them down for the night, so that the only sound she heard was the ticking of the numerous clocks. She stayed up by herself in the main room, reading by coldfire light. Bookshelves filled one wall, and Marinda glanced at the novels, legends, fanciful stories. She had never paid much attention to the titles or subjects. In recent years, she had read some of them aloud to her father, at his insistence, although she never understood the charm of fanciful fiction.
This night, she worked on the household accounting instead, then she extinguished the remaining redcoal in the hearth and went to her own room where she slept soundly, assured that the budget was in order.
Next morning, she awoke, started the coldfire stove, and put on a kettle to boil for their morning tea. She reactivated the three clockwork Regulators and went in to wake her father. Although he usually stirred before she did, sometimes he chose to sleep in. She entered Arlen’s room to find an odd silence and she realized that the special clock from Crown City had run down. She frowned. What had her father called that gift from the Watchmaker? A Lifeclock. Well, apparently it wasn’t good for much of anything. Arlen Peake lay in bed with the optical contraption still covering most of his face, and when she tried to shake him awake, he did not respond. He wore a smile on his face as if the strange helmet had actually sharpened the visual acuity of his dreams.
He had died in his sleep.
The teakettle boiled dry, and Marinda barely noticed the whistle. Stunned into an instinctive response, she tried to utter the Watchmaker’s benediction, “All is for the best,” but the words would not come out of her mouth. A small voice in the back of her mind said that she should have prepared herself for the imminent, inevitable reality. Now, Marinda had no plan to follow.
She stood in her father’s room for an incredibly long moment, just staring as time stood still. The clockwork Regulators marched into the room and stood at respectful attention. Because their faces were merely painted on their copper-pot heads, the mechanical companions could express no overt sorrow, but their demeanor had changed, as if sadness now flowed through their hydraulics.
Marinda could hear was the ticking of clocks out in the main room and the whirring machinery of Zivo, Woody, and Lee. The shrill screech in the background had fallen silent . . . and she finally realized that it had been the teakettle on the stove. She would attend to that later.
Marinda shed tears, but wiped them away because she had much to do and many things to deal with. It was time to be stoic. Methodical, she went to the kitchen and the writing desk, from which she removed a sheet of paper, then a fountain pen, the same one she had used to balance the household accounts . . . the same fountain pen her father had used to sketch his inventions and to write notes to himself. She sat at the same table where they had eaten the frugal meal of soup and day-old bread the night before.
The clockwork Regulators stood at attention as she wrote out a brief note for Benjulian Frull, informing him of her father’s death and requesting instructions as to what she should do. Since this important mission should be entrusted to a member of the elite Black Watch, and Lee with his black uniform was the closest option at hand, she handed the note to him. His articulated fingers closed around it.
“Take this note to Lugtown and deliver it to Mr. Benjulian Frull. He will return with you.”
With humming gears and a burst from the steam vent by his ear, Lee left the cottage and marched down the path. The other two clockwork Regulators waited for instructions, but Marinda gave them none. Instead, she returned to her father’s bedroom, looked at his motionless form. Angry and helpless, she turned the key in the Watchmaker’s Lifeclock, trying to start it working again, but the mechanism was broken.
Needing to see her father’s face again, she gingerly removed the straps and buckles, lifting away the helmet contraption. Arlen’s expression looked content with whatever he had seen inside the ocular enhancement device.
Feeling a large hole in her heart, Marinda realized she would never know the real story of his years in Crown City with the Watchmaker and the Clockwork Angels. In due time he had said . . . but time had come due for him, and the opportunity was missed. She wondered what her father had been looking at in his dreams, if he could see anything at all.
She had never tried on the helmet herself, since her eyes functioned just fine, but now she needed to see what he had seen. She owed it to him. With some trepidation, she lifted the helmet, adjusted the visor, and noticed that it contained two images.
Arlen had been viewing the second one when he died, but because Marinda chose to do this in an orderly fashion, she reset the optical projector, moved the visor in place, and activated the chronograph.
An image appeared with an intensity that exceeded reality: a moment, a person frozen in time—a mysterious and beautiful woman with a distant gaze and an aloof smile. Marinda realized she had seen this woman before in her father’s old scrapbooks, the ones she had never seen him browse, even when his vision had been perfect.
This was her mother, Elitia Peake. Marinda barely remembered the woman who had left them when she was just a little girl, and yet Arlen projected her image into his dreams every night.
But that wasn’t the image he’d been viewing when he died. The second chronograph contained her own face—a young woman in her late teens, someone who looked beautiful and happy. In the chronograph, Marinda was smiling, her hair loose. It was an accidental moment, just the briefest glimpse of how her life might be.
She couldn’t remember when that chronograph was taken, yet her father had captured it somehow. How had he known to be there to see that small carefree moment? Or maybe such moments had happened more often than Marinda herself noticed, years ago.
She didn’t bother to switch back to the chronograph of her mother, since Elitia had left them long ago. Long ago, Marinda had decided to pack up the rest of her anger toward her mother, lock it in an imaginary box and store it in a place deep inside herself. Her father had refused to speak ill of his wife, insisting that Elitia must have had her reasons. That woman was no longer relevant to either of them, and Marinda and Arlen had made a very acceptable life for themselves.
And now Marinda was alone.
Far more interested in how her father regarded her, she continued looking at the image of herself for some time. Was this how Arlen saw his “sparkling daughter?” She would never question the accuracy of a chronograph, but it seemed a paradox to her. When she held the images, both of these people seemed like strangers to
her.
Fortunately, the solicitor knew exactly what to do. Through long experience, he already had a plan in place.
He accompanied the clockwork Regulator back to the cottage two hours later—two of the longest hours in Marinda’s life. Frull’s round face bore a look of deep concern. “I am deeply sorry for your loss, Miss Peake. Arlen loved you very much, but all is for the best.”
“All is for the best,” she managed to respond. “But . . . what do I do now? How do I arrange a funeral? How do I transfer ownership of our property? I assume there are efficient and established ways for a person to get her life back to normal?”
“There are ways,” Frull said, but he looked troubled. “As soon as I received the message from your representative”—he looked down at the black-garbed Regulator, who stood ticking and whirring in place—“I began to take care of matters. Ah-hem, since Arlen had previously informed me of his wishes, to save you the trouble, we had already filed a plan with the undertaker.”
Marinda felt a wash of relief. “Thank you.” Naturally, there would be a standard routine for such things, not just in Lugtown but across Albion. The Watchmaker himself might be nearly immortal with more than two centuries of the Stability, but normal people died, and it reassured her to know that everything would be taken care of.
Marinda had not yet grasped the ways in which her life would change, though—what this cottage would be like without her father’s presence, what she would do with all his unwanted books and contraptions. She did not know how to maintain the three clockwork Regulators; no one in Lugtown did. The apothecary and the physicians had tried to fix Arlen Peake, and they had not been successful. She supposed that even clockwork Regulators must wind down and die.
“I’ve already contacted the Lugtown newsgraph office to send out announcements,” said Frull. “You, meanwhile . . . it would be best if you just stayed here, enjoyed your cottage for a little while longer.”
She sensed something behind his words, something he wasn’t saying, but Marinda’s heart was too heavy to consider it. She lifted her chin and drew a deep breath. “It will never be the same here without my father, but I will try my best to get back to normal.”
On the morning after the funeral, Marinda had an appointment at the solicitor’s offices, where he would read her father’s will. When she arrived, Benjulian Frull was waiting for her behind his desk. He wore a formal brown jacket and a gray vest complete with pocket watch. His expression was serious—which Marinda appreciated, because this was no light social call. A neat stack of stamped and notarized papers rested in front of him on the desk blotter. Glancing at the top sheet, Marinda saw Last Will and Testament of Arlen Peake.
She took a seat primly on the other side of the desk and folded her hands in her lap. Without bothering with pleasantries, Frull picked up the papers and studied them as if searching for something he knew wasn’t there; he was more than familiar with the document, since he had written it himself in close consultation with her father. He cleared his throat. “I have to warn you, Miss Peake, that this is, ah-hem, not what you expect.”
Marinda was impatient. “You’re going to tell me that my father did not actually have a stockpile of gold, and that all those stories about working for the Watchmaker were just fanciful tales like the ones in his books. Well, I loved my father regardless, and I managed to run my household all these years without any extra bricks of gold. I’m sure I can manage now.”
The solicitor looked up at her. “Oh, it’s not that, Miss Peake. Not that all. Your father did indeed have substantial wealth locked away in the Watchmaker’s bank, and to the best of my knowledge— though I can’t prove it—he did spent his early years in Crown City before he retired young and moved to Lugtown, made a home, married your mother and”—he shuffled the papers awkwardly—“ well, you know the rest.”
Marinda frowned. “Then what is the problem?”
Frull searched among the papers, withdrew one. “Ah-hem. Perhaps I should let Arlen explain it in his own words, which he dictated to me. We had several private meetings so he could get his last letter just right.”
He handed her a brief document, which Marinda read while he fumbled with the lock on his large burlwood desk.
My sparkling daughter, it seems the only thing I can do in these last years of my life is sit and think deep thoughts, and many of those thoughts are about you, the life you have and the life you should have had. Your mother disappointed us, but that was so very long ago. I am more concerned with how I failed you. And now that I have passed, this is the way I can make it all up to you. Trust me, I have considered every detail. All is for the best—and I want only the best for you. Marinda looked up at the solicitor, her brow furrowed. “What does he mean? This isn’t a time for ambiguities.”
“Oh, he was very clear in his wishes.”
Marinda kept reading.
Because I made you abandon the life you should have had in order to care for me, I give you the gift of many other lives. I want you to see the things that might have been, the people you should have met, the experiences that could have been part of your own story—and still can be. Therefore, I have arranged for you to have all the journeys of a great adventure—and in doing so, you will live your own life as well. I wish I could have joined you.
At first you will hate me for this. Then you will love me for it.
Your father.
Frull opened the wooden desk drawer and lifted out a large burlwood showcase box, which was also locked. He removed the pocketwatch on his vest chain and used a gold key dangling from the fob to open another locked desk drawer, from which he withdrew a second key and finally unlocked the burlwood case. “Important things must be kept under lock and key.”
He lifted the lid and removed a leatherbound book with an oxblood red cover stamped with clockwork gears and inset with alchemical symbols. Next, he pulled out a small crystal vial that contained a thimbleful of blood, sealed tight, and set it on the desk. Finally, fumbling with the spine of the book, he plucked out a long golden needle that had been inserted into the binding, its head crowned with a dull, rough diamond that looked like the
result of a failed alchemical experiment.
Marinda had no idea what he was doing.
The solicitor cleared his throat and recited, “By the direct and clear wishes of Arlen Peake, who was of sound mind when he gave me his instructions, you are to be removed from your home in five days time, and the cottage will remain vacant until certain conditions are met. All of his financial accounts are also frozen, and you, his daughter, will have no access to any funds except for a very specific stipend.”
He slid the tome closer to Marinda. “He did however leave you this book.”
Marinda couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I don’t want a book. I have plenty of them on our shelves already. What about my home?” Flustered, she opened the cover of the volume, to find that the title page said Clockwork Lives. She turned the page, but the paper was empty. She flipped to another, and another, then through the entire volume. “There’s nothing written here. It’s blank.” “Nothing just for you, each page impregnated with the most complex alchemical infusions.”
Growing more and more upset by this nonsense, she said, “A magic book? There’s no such thing as magic.”
“Not magic—science. Alchemy. Your father was quite a genius.” “This is absurd, Mr. Frull. You know that.”
“What I know is that your father left no room for doubt when he explained his wishes to me.” Frull picked up the papers again, straightened them, and handed them to her. “There are instructions. This book is designed to collect stories. The pages are alchemically treated to react with human blood in a very specific fashion.” He nudged the golden needle closer to her. “Collect a blood sample from your volunteers. One drop of blood will spread out on the pages and record that person’s story.”
He touched the tiny crystal bottle of blood, gave her a wan smile. “And this is a sample your father preserved for you, his own story. To get you started.”
Though Marinda sat frozen, he was finished with the meeting. “I am not allowed to release your inheritance until you have filled this book with other lives—a full spectrum of people, interesting characters from all walks of life.”
“But . . . but this is entirely irregular,” she said. Since she had spent her adult years tending for her father, Marinda had no money of her own; the household possessions, furniture, financial accounts, everything but her clothes and a few personal items technically belonged to Arlen Peake. As the weight of the pronouncement pressed down on her, she began to feel a sense of desperation. “I will contest it.”
“You can try to contest it, but since I am the town’s only licensed solicitor, I must advise you that you are not likely to win.”
“But why would he do this to me?” Marinda felt lost.
“Didn’t I already give up enough to care for him? What did I do wrong?”
“Ours is not to understand. Arlen’s reasons were sufficient to him.” He handed her the book, shaking his head sadly.
“You have five days to vacate your residence. If you refuse to obey these instructions, you will be forcibly evicted. Your father’s funds and possessions will be placed in safekeeping in the meantime. I suggest you spend the time planning.”
He smiled and said in a bland, rote voice, “All is for the best.”
Marinda gathered the will, the book, the vial of blood, and the golden needle, then left the solicitor’s office, stepping out into a world where she had been cast adrift.
MANY POSSIBLE WORLDS
When you create an entire universe and fill it with interesting characters, how can there possibly be only one story to tell? When Neil approached me with the basic story and lyrics for Clockwork Angels in 2011 (?), I got to work fleshing out the detailed plot, developing the characters, and doing the important “worldbuilding,” which is my particular forte.
As we passed the chapters back and forth, our imaginations went off on tangents, caught up in interesting ideas that didn’t fit into the main story of Clockwork Angels, or characters that we wanted to know better (but in stories of their own). While working on the novel, we would make comments that “someday” we’d get around to those other tales, maybe as standalone short stories. In particular we had a story idea about the mysterious bookseller Ms. Courier hunting through countless parallel universes to acquire interesting new volumes for Underworld Books.
Clockwork Angels: The Novel came out in a beautiful edition from ECW Press, became a bestseller, won some awards. Rush went on an extended tour for the album. I had my own book tours and then subsequent novel deadlines. Two years passed, and we kept thinking about that “someday.” We loved the Clockwork universe, and we loved the characters. We definitely wanted to visit them again, but there was no hurry. The stories and ideas would keep gestating.
Finally in summer 2013, my wife Rebecca and I were going to visit Matt Scannell (a mutual friend of ours and Neil’s) of the band Vertical Horizon for a concert at the Sky Sox baseball stadium in Colorado Springs. Rebecca and I had hoped to spend the afternoon with Matt ahead of time, but the band kept encountering glitches and difficulties with the show setup, the stage itself, the sound systems. Matt’s growing frustration was plain when he sent probably the funniest text I’ve ever received: “Whatever your expectations are for tonight, lower them.”
We finally got to chat with Matt backstage just before the concert. After all the headaches of the jinxed concert setup, Matt wanted to talk about something much more fun—Clockwork Angels. He loved the book and eagerly wanted to know if we were going to do more work in that universe. I reassured him that we had several interesting tales of peripheral characters, people we wanted to explore more. “But we don’t want just a collection of random stories,” I said. “I’m still looking for a framework to connect them all, an unifying story. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
When it was time for the show, Rebecca and I went to our seats with the kids and our two young grandsons (their very first concert!). The event was for a great cause—to stand up against bullying in schools—but the setup was problematic, with the stage out in the middle of the baseball field about a million miles away from the seats, so Matt could not interact with the audience as he usually does. The sound system still had some glitches—but we were having a great time, particularly with the baby grandkids swaying and laughing to the music.
Meanwhile, the wheels were turning in the back of my mind, and as song after song played, I was still searching for some unifying Clockwork story. Then, as I was listening to Matt sing “Save Me from Myself”—which is itself a song comprised of a groupof interconnected stories—I got it. Genuine stadium-level Eureka! lights going on over my head.
At first you will hate me for this. Then you will love me for it.
I suddenly thought of Marinda Peake caring for her ailing father, then inheriting a mysterious alchemical book that could write stories from a drop of blood…and her mission to fill that volume with stories before she could get her own life back. It was exactly the frame I was looking for. The clockwork gears in my head kept spinning overtime for the rest of that concert.
Afterward, when Rebecca and I went backstage again, I was bursting with excitement. Because of the technical problems with the show, the band members were not entirely happy, but oblivious to their mood (in typical Kevin fashion), I gushed to Matt about how his song had triggered the perfect way to connect all the Clockwork tales. He listened with complete focus as I told him about it, and when I finished, he stood there with obvious tears in
his eyes—and I knew that was what he would remember about this concert.
We still weren’t ready to plunge into the project, though. I had several major books to complete by deadline, Neil was recuperating from the long tour … but my mind did occasionally wander back to the Mrs. Courier story and other ideas I had for the strongman, the fortune teller, the pickpocket. Every so often, Rebecca would ask when I was going to get around to writing the next Clockwork book, and I would answer “Someday.”
I finished and delivered Mentats of Dune and Hellhole Inferno, two large science fiction epics cowritten with Brian Herbert. Then I tackled Blood of the Cosmos, an 830-page science fiction opus in my “Seven Suns” universe. When I’m writing such a big story with so many characters and storylines, it’s the only thing I think about day after day until the book is done. In late June 2014 I finished the last chapter of the last draft and sent it off to my editor—and I felt like a marathon runner crossing the finish line and stumbling to a halt, not sure what to do now. That novel was finished, my brain was exhausted, and I needed a recharge. But I was still pumped up with creative adrenaline.
I live in the beautiful mountains of Colorado with countless trails I love, spectacular scenery, and many National Forest campgrounds deep in the wilderness. As soon as I sent off Blood of the Cosmos, I packed my camping gear in the back of the car and picked a campground near several interesting trails in the Cache le Poudre canyon. I drove off to spend two days in the wilderness by myself absorbing the scenery, with no deadlines at all—just letting my imagination rest…or roam.
I went on a six-mile hike along a rushing river, climbing up into a spectacular gorge. Even though I had no intention of writing anything at all, I always carry my digital recorder just in case I want to preserve some notes. Lulled and inspired by the majesty around me, I began to think about the Clockwork Lives frame story. Before I knew what was happening, I started world building, developing the sleepy town where Marinda Peake lived, and a woman who wanted nothing more than to have a quiet, perfect life, but is forced to become a reluctant adventurer—the opposite of young Owen Hardy in Clockwork Angels.
When I thought of her town in the Watchmaker’s Albion, I thought of her eccentric inventor father…and then I thought of her runaway mother and how she could fit into one of the stories, then a brash steamliner pilot, and the clockwork gypsy fortune teller, and a sea captain’s tale, and an alchemy miner on the continent of Atlantis.
Some of the stories came out with fully developed plots, while others were still just ideas, but the people were very vivid in my imagination, some of them familiar from Clockwork Angels, others completely new characters. One idea led to another, then another. It was like an imaginative bag of popcorn popping.
During that hike I dictated twenty pages of detailed notes for Clockwork Lives, ready to send to Neil. By the time I had them transcribed the following week, however, I was heading off on another long-planned hiking trip to complete a spectacular twentymile loop in the Flat Tops Wilderness near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Since I didn’t have time to polish those notes for Neil, and I found myself on a long trail with twelve hours of hiking ahead of me, I decided to go for it. Instead of giving Neil just the notes, I dictated the first four complete chapters. What better way to show him in full detail what this book was going to be like? A week later, without any forewarning, I sent him forty finished pages. “Surprise!”
Fortunately, it was a pleasant surprise, and he loved what he read. At last, we were off and running, plotting how the stories would fit together, the overall arc of Marinda’s journey, filling the gaps and deciding which other tales we might like to include from Clockwork Angels characters who had caught our attention. The stories themselves were individual gems, some of them exciting, some horrifying, others just fascinating to us. For me, though, the heart of the book was Marinda’s story and how all those tales became part of a larger tale.
“Someday” had become “now,” and I began writing in earnest. The draft of Clockwork Lives was coming together nicely, when in a novelistic sort of serendipity, Vertical Horizon came around again to play another concert, and once more Rebecca and I went to meet Matt at the venue beforehand. (No technical difficulties this time!) His first question was, “So what about those other Clockwork Angels stories?” I smiled and said that it was definitely in process. As we talked more about the frame story I had thought of during their previous concert, I came up with the perfect nugget, two lines that are the core of the novel:
Some lives can be summed up in a sentence or two.
Other lives are epics.
I wrote that down on a scrap of paper and stuck it in my pocket. Those became the first two lines in the novel. As Neil and I completed each section, each tale, each chapter, we grew progressively more pleased with Clockwork Lives. Over the past quarter century I’ve written a great many books and I’m always proud to see them published, always glad to tell my stories and do my best, but in this case all the pieces fit together so perfectly and the message itself of the individual tales and of Marinda’s story occupies a special place in my own heart. Neil is convinced Clockwork Lives is one of the best books I’ve ever written—and so am I.
We hope you enjoyed it.
Puchase
Clockwork Lives at Amazon.Com
