Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (2 page)

Hannah retired and Thomas was preparing to do the same, having finished mending a piece of harness, when the dog came alert. She whined and pawed at the door. The rain predicted by Hannah spattered against the window glass, but not hard enough to obscure the sound of approaching footsteps. Thomas went to the back staircase. This would not be the first time a runaway had eluded capture while Thomas engaged the pursuers in a friendly discussion. They'd make their way north, either to John Hunn in Middletown or Thomas Garrett in Wilmington, who'd take them across the border to Pennsylvania.

"Will! Someone approaches!" Thomas called.

"Ready."

Thomas closed the door. A moment later, he heard the sounds of two men moving stealthily along the corridor and down the back stairs.

The knock was sharp, like the rounded metal cap of a walking stick against the wood of the door. The spaniel gave a yelp and cowered in the far corner. Thomas paused, seeking the inner stillness, and then called out, "Coming, coming!" He took a candle and held it aloft as he opened the door. A gust of moist air almost extinguished the flame. The flickering light was barely enough to make out a man on the doorstep, bare-headed in the rain.

"Friend, this is a rough night to venture abroad. What calamity draws thee from thy bed?"

The figure moved closer, and Thomas discerned a smooth oval face, neither young nor old, and as empty of expression as any he had ever seen. Dark hair hung limp and drenched, and the suit of cheap coarse-woven cloth suggested some time on the road, yet the man showed no discomfort. Rain dripped off the end of his nose.

"I have come for the slave."

"I fear thee will have found thy death if thee remains standing out in the rain." Thomas stepped back in invitation to enter.

The slave-catcher remained where he was.

"Thomas, what is it?" Hannah's voice drifted from the interior of the house.

"A poor benighted soul, caught out-of-doors in this rain."

"Bring him in, then, and warm him by the fire! I will be with thee shortly."

"Get inside, friend," Thomas urged the stranger. "Thee is in no condition to conduct business of any sort. Once thee is warm and dry, with a cup of my wife's chamomile infusion inside thee, then we can discuss the matter."

"I have come for the slave."

Thomas studied the stranger, debating in his own mind whether the man might be simple or merely so exhausted as to have no thought beyond his quest. "I am sorry, friend, but the rain makes such a clamor, and my ears do not work as they once did. I am having difficulty understanding thee. Will thee not come in?"

By slow degrees, Thomas convinced the slave-catcher that no business would be conducted until he entered and allowed himself to be dried and seated before the fire. By this time, Hannah had come down, properly dressed. The slave-catcher refused her offers of chamomile infusion or coffee. Thomas counted the minutes in his mind, the miles along the road to Wilmington, and when William and Nat would be safe with Thomas Garrett.

When the slave-catcher pressed his cause, Thomas inquired mildly whether he had a warrant, "For if thee will not take the word of an honest man that there are no slaves in this house, thee must proceed in a lawful manner." The man produced a document, surprisingly undamaged by the rain, and Thomas proceeded to study it at great length. By this time on previous occasions, the slave-catchers had grown impatient and restless. This one waited with admirable stillness. When Thomas glanced up from his reading, the slave-catcher rose.

"I will search the premises now."

"Indeed, it appears you have the right to do so," Thomas agreed. "But this warrant is made out only as 'Agent of Robert A. Cochoran.' Has thee a name?"

"A name?" The slave-catcher paused, his face as expressionless as always. "It is of no importance."

"It is of very great importance," Thomas said gently.
As every slave knows.

"Then call me whatever name you choose, but let me get on with my work. We have spoken too long."

The slave-catcher made to push past Thomas, but Thomas stood firm, studying the other man's face and finding nothing of any personal or particular nature, no clue as to temperament or history, joy or sorrow or hope.

He is like Adam, unmarked as yet by life's travails, but an Adam corrupted and turned into an instrument of evil by the vile practice of slavery.

They went upstairs together. Thomas took the lead, opening each door to show the emptiness of the chamber beyond. In this manner, they proceeded through the house. When Adam, as Thomas now thought of him, announced his intention to search the barn next, Hannah gave Thomas a warning look.

"I am an old man, as thee sees," Thomas explained, "and this night is too chill and damp for me. Will thee stay the night with us and continue the search tomorrow?"

"I have come for the slave. I will search the barn now."

"Thee will not find him there." Thomas accompanied Adam to the door and handed him a lantern. "Mind thee not disturb the gray mare's rest."

Without a reply, Adam walked into the rain. Hannah, drawing her knitted shawl more tightly around her shoulders, came to stand beside Thomas. They watched the upright figure cross the muddy ground between house and barn. The lantern cast a wavering light through the drizzle.

"Such a strange man," Hannah murmured. "Does he not arouse thy pity?"

"He does indeed. I fear he is as much a slave as Nat. Unlike Nat, however, he cannot escape to freedom."

The barn door opened and the slave-catcher passed within.

"Thomas, I think we must try again to have him stay the night with us. No man should be abroad in such—"

A horse's furious squeal issued from the barn, followed by the sound of thumping so loud it could be heard clearly above the rain. The mare must be kicking her stall to splinters.

Not pausing even to put on his coat, Thomas sprinted across the yard, Hannah following but a pace behind. They reached the barn just as the mare let out another squeal. The door to the stall was ajar and yellow light, too bright to come from the lantern alone, filled the space. The mare reared, hooves flailing the air.

Thomas reached the stall. The mare backed up, her rump pressed against the far corner. Her ears were pinned flat against her neck and white rimmed her eyes.

Adam lay facedown and unmoving in the center of the stall.

The lantern had toppled on its side. Already, flames were spreading through the straw. Thomas seized the mare's water bucket, which hung just inside the stall door, and dumped it over the burning straw. Steam and smoke billowed up, leaving a carpeting of sullen orange flames. He moved into them, stamping and scattering cinders. Hannah thrust her shawl into his hands. A moment later, the last of the fire was extinguished. Coughing from the smoke, he straightened up. The barn lay in near darkness. Hannah knelt beside Adam and turned him on his back.

"Thomas.…"

He looked over her shoulder. Adam's still form was barely discernible, a shadow among shadows.

"Thomas, he's not breathing."

"We must get him into the house."

Adam was surprisingly heavy. Between the two of them, Thomas and Hannah were able to load him onto a handcart and wheel him to the house. They laid him out on the kitchen table. In the lamplight, they saw that one side of the slave-catcher's skull had been laid bare, most likely by the mare's hooves. There was no blood, only a slight amount of oily fluid. Instead of pale bone, the gaping wound revealed metal couplings and gears of surpassing delicacy, and bits of glass, some of which shone like embers, blinking on and off. Similar structures were visible in a second gash along one forearm, as if Adam had tried to protect himself when the mare whirled and kicked. A faint, irregular clicking sound, and a hiss like escaping steam, arose from the body.

"What can this be?" Hannah murmured. "A man of gears and lights?"

Thomas had read of such things in newspapers sent by Philadelphia Friends. The specimens had been imported from Switzerland as playthings for the wealthy. Perhaps Yankee industry was now producing domestic models. Automata, they were called. He had not realized they would be so human in appearance.

Hannah looked up at Thomas, and never before had he seen such confusion in her eyes. "Is he—a mechanical person? Or a machine, crafted in the appearance of a man but with no more of the Inward Light than a pocket watch?"

After a moment's reflection, Thomas said, "I do not know what he may be, nor do I think he himself can tell us, damaged as he is."

She made a helpless gesture. "This work is beyond thy skill or mine to repair."

"But not, perhaps, that of Samuel Pusey."

"Yes, a watchmaker might have the knowledge." She lowered herself to one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs. "I do not know whether to bandage him or not. A poultice might make the damage worse."

If this had been a human man, a flesh and blood man, she would have washed him and dressed his wound, found clean clothing for him, and tucked him into the bed that Nat had so recently vacated. But she did not know what to make of this…
automaton
, this clockwork man. And, Thomas admitted to himself, neither did he.

 
SAMUEL PUSEY straightened up, replaced the slender riveting hammer beside his other tools, and removed his watchmaker's loupe. He had worked through most of the day, carefully removing tiny, intricate pieces of metal, sometimes straightening them, other times fashioning new ones. Adam's eyes had remained open through the entire process, his body likewise unmoving.

"The mechanism is most marvelously wrought," Samuel said. "In all my years, I have never encountered its like. My cousin, John Pusey of Doylestown, wrote that he'd seen one some years ago, but he did not have the opportunity to examine it."

"The automata must have become more common since then for one to be found so far from a city," Thomas commented. "It appears they now have employment beyond being mere curiosities."

Samuel nodded, his expression troubled. "I have repaired the damaged parts as best I could, but I cannot say whether it will function as it did before."

Thomas bent over Adam, still stretched out on the table. "He does not appear to be functioning at all."

"There is one more connection to be completed. Thomas, is thee certain this is the right thing, to risk the reanimation of a slave-catching device?"

"I do not know that Adam is a
device
, Friend Samuel. Were he flesh and bone, neither thee nor I would ask such a thing. Are we not, as our Friends in Farmingham remind us, under solemn obligation to use all in our power to ameliorate the condition of our fellow men, of every color and every condition in life?"

"That has never been in question," Hannah said quietly from where she sat sewing by the window. She was making a shirt, although Thomas had not inquired whether it was for the next runaway slave to pass through their farm, or for Adam. She did not add what they were all thinking, which was how to respond to a being that looked like a man and spoke like one, but was in fact not a man.

They sat in silence for a time, each seeking counsel from the Light within. Thomas found no answer to his own uncertainty, and no less certainty regarding how to proceed. Samuel Pusey roused, and, without speaking, bent again over the slave-catcher's head. Adam's eyes remained open. No hint of expression altered the undamaged areas of his face. Thomas heard a faint wheeze, like softly escaping steam. The slave-catcher's eyes blinked, irises dilating and constricting rapidly.

"Do not be afraid," Thomas said. "Thee is among friends."

"I remember you." Adam's voice sounded rusty. "Are you my master?"

"There are no masters here, nor slaves," Thomas said, "for we are all equal in the eyes of God."

"All
men
," Samuel amended.

Adam sat up. "Am I a man?"

Thomas exchanged glances with Hannah, and saw that they were of like mind.
I do not know.

"If I am not a man," Adam said, but slowly, as if the process of reasoning were foreign, "then why have you repaired me? And if I am, if I am a…slave-catcher—yes, that is why I came among you and why we ought to be enemies—then the question is the same. Why did you help me?"

"Must there be a reason?" Thomas said. "Does kindness require any cause beyond that of God which exists in all of us?"

"How do you know I will not continue as I have done, following the slave who sheltered among you?"

"No fugitive has ever come to harm in our care." Thomas laid his hand on the automaton's shoulder. "Even thee."

"I don't understand."

Hannah finished sewing a button and snipped the thread with the little pair of scissors she kept in her apron pocket. "Then bide with us and see if understanding does not naturally arise from thy own experience."

 
THE FOLLOWING FIRSTDAY dawned bright and clear, as if the rain had been a dream. Covered buggies stood in a row outside the Meeting house. Word had spread of the unusual visitor, and it looked as if the entire Meeting had arrived early to greet him. Friends from neighboring Meetings had come, too.

Thomas and Hannah alighted from their buggy, then William and Adam. William went directly inside, but Thomas waited by the door, greeting others as they entered. Adam stood as stiff as a lightning rod, unrevealing of any emotion. He wore the shirt Hannah had made for him, plain and uncollared but of good woolen cloth, with William's old coat, trousers, and shoes. Hannah had stitched the skin-like covering on the side of his head so neatly that the scar barely showed.

The hour for worship drawing nigh, they all went in. The Meeting house was constructed with facing benches in the main room, and a divider that could be lowered to separate the men's and women's business meetings.

The Meeting settled into silence. Here and there, a bench creaked as one person or another adjusted their posture. Thomas centered down, his breathing growing slower and deeper. First his body would quieten, and then his mind. He often saw himself like a vessel from which he poured out the cares of the day, the petty irritations, the thoughts and worries, until all that remained was an empty place, expectantly waiting. From time to time, his attention wandered. On one of these occasions, he became aware of a sensation as if the entire assembly were breathing in unison, even the faint click and hiss from the automaton.