The Machinist Part Two

5
Zachariah sat on the roof of his workshop. He watched the city’s air as he thought about what he had done, what he had to do, and what he could do with what he had. He had a bottle of tea by his leg as he watched the clouds.

The improvements on the cart were coming along. He could go faster along the ground if he wanted. It tended to scare animals with the sound, but otherwise it was well in hand.

The flying machine was not going so well. They had an engine design from the cart that they could adapt, but they were having problems with the weight and how the design of the wings should go to give them lift and speed.

One of the reasons he had decided to sit on the roof was he and Bolan were snapping at each other over every decision.

They had made progress, and the air race was still months away. If they could iron things out, they could get a flying machine in the air on time.

At the moment, things weren’t going as smoothly as either of them wanted, and Zachariah didn’t know how to fix that.

When he finished his tea, he would go over the plans again. Maybe he would see something that he had missed.

He heard an expletive from below. Maybe one of the children had done something to the neighbors. He had found they loved doing tricks when they weren’t helping him.

He pushed himself to his feet, grabbed his bottle, and walked to the edge of the roof. He looked down in the street. He sipped his tea as he frowned at the tableau below.

One of Zachariah’s neighbors had a hand upraised. Her cart lay on its side.
Vegetables and broken eggs had been dumped in the street. Some loud language escaped her lips as she railed on a stranger standing in the street next to the cart.

The stranger looked at her and walked away. He trailed a rod behind him as he walked. A small spark cut into the road as he moved. He walked in a circle, then added some lines with the rod.

Zachariah had the feeling he had seen that drawing before somewhere else. Where? It bothered him, and his memory didn’t want to help ease his mind.

The man walked away, ignoring the ranting woman as he moved. He carried the rod across his shoulder as he made his way down the street.

Zachariah went to the hatch he had cut in the roof so he could get up there in the first place. He looked down in his shop. Bolan stood at the work table with a drawing in hand. Sola sat on the floor playing fetch with Hardy. He had grown to the size of a hunting dog.

How big would he get? Zachariah didn’t have the time to consider the answer to that question. He had something he had to do right now.

“Bolan!,” Zachariah shouted. “I need you to go outside and help Mistress Tom with her cart. There’s a drawing carved in the street. I need a picture of it. This is important.”

Bolan placed the drawing on the table and jogged to the door. Knife dropped from its nest and followed with its eight legs. He vanished into the street.

“Sola,” Zachariah called down. “I need Hardy.”

“You heard Da,” said Sola. “It’s time for work.”

Hardy extended his wings and flew up to the roof. He regarded Zachariah with his composite eyes in a way that said what do you want, old man?

“I need you to find a man that just left here,” said Zachariah. “He was carrying a rod made of orange material. He went east from here, but he might have turned in any direction. I need you to find him and follow him.”

Hardy sailed into the air. He pulled his wings in and blasted across the sky like cannon shot.

Zachariah went to the edge of the roof. Bolan had the cart on its wheels. He and Knife were picking up the vegetables and putting them in the wooden box. He needed to get downstairs.

The symbol was the most important thing, but he didn’t know why. He had to find that memory and there was only one way to do it. He had to build a memory machine with Gold Bug and hope that it showed him the right memory.

Zachariah descended the ladder he had hooked to the hatch and secured to the floor at the bottom. He had used the three daemons to put everything in place. He stepped off the ladder and went to the supply room. He needed a piece of metal to give his daemon.

Gold Bug could build wonderful things. They weren’t permanent. They only had one, maybe two uses, before they broke apart under the strain. Anything they wanted to use based on what the daemon did had to be built from scratch out of real parts.

Zachariah didn’t mind. It made fixing things for other people easier, and gave a challenge to building things for himself.

“Come out, Gold Bug,” said Zachariah. “We have work to do.”

“What’s going on, Da?,” asked Sola.

“I saw something from the roof,” said Zachariah. “It reminded me of something. I asked for Hardy to follow the man responsible in case we needed to know where he went.”

“So what do you plan to do now?,” Sola asked. She waved a hand at her father pulling pieces of metal for Gold Bug to eat.

“Gold Bug is going to make a memory machine so I can remember what was important about the drawing,” said Zachariah. “Once I know why it is important, then I can figure out what to do.”

Bolan burst into the workshop with a piece of paper in his hand. Knife skittered behind him, mechanical legs tapping on the floor.

“Here’s your drawing,” said Bolan. “Mistress Tom said the guy you were interested in knocked her cart over to move it out of the way for what he did in the street.”

“I feel she is lucky to be alive,” said Zachariah. He took the drawing and looked at it. It triggered the same feeling even replicated by the daemon spider.

“All right,” said Zachariah. “This is the plan at the moment. Gold Bug is going to build a memory machine for me. Hopefully this will tell me what I am trying to remember. When that is done, we will consider options.”

“We might have to chase the guy down is what I am hearing,” said Bolan.

“Then you are hearing incorrectly, because we don’t know where he went, or if Hardy caught up with him,” said Zachariah. “Now I need a chair, then we can get to work. I’ll need the two of you to make notes about the memory. I don’t know how lucid I will be.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, Da?,” asked Sola. “We could just ask the man after Hardy comes back and tells us where he settled for the night.”

“He might not want to answer our questions,” said Zachariah. He turned the chair to face the only wall clear of drawings and plans. “I wouldn’t be bothered by this if it weren’t the memory popping up. Once I know, it will probably be something unimportant.”

The two children looked at each other. Memories didn’t rate more than a brief mention from the machinist. He didn’t talk about them for more than a second, didn’t seem to care about them except as things to show him not to do things that would get him hurt or killed.

They had never seen him so much as obsess over a memory of a treasured item in the almost two years the three of them had been living together.

If it wasn’t about fixing a current problem, Zachariah didn’t seem to care one way, or the other.

Now he was proposing hooking himself to a machine and finding out what a weird drawing meant to him.

That was an abrupt change in his basic nature.

Zachariah sat down in the chair. He gestured for Gold Bug to get to work. The insect ate all of the metal to multiply and create the process it needed to build the machine his partner wanted. It affixed all the components to the chair, with the last being a mask over the Riordianian’s face.

“Get ready, Knife,” said Bolan. “We’ll need drawings for all this.”

Gold Bug flipped a switch on one of the components. The mask created a light beam that struck the wall. Pictures formed of someone walking in a street.

“That’s Riordiana,” said Sola. “That’s the old workshop ahead.”

“No wonder your father had problems remembering things,” said Bolan. Knife produced drawing after drawing of the memory as they watched.

The point of view turned in place. A drawing marked the street at the corner of the intersection close to the shop. One hand went up as if to rub a chin as the point of view stared at the drawing. People, and daemons, moved back and forth in the line of sight, as he contemplated the drawing. The point of view looked up to see a woman on a flying insect drop down out of the sky.

“That’s my ma,” said Sola. “She’s wearing the scarf she got before she was killed.”

“He saw the drawing before the destruction of the city,” said Bolan. “The only reason he remembered it is because he studied it because it was something new in the neighborhood. He was probably trying to figure out what it meant.”

“Ma got her scarf a few days before she was killed,” said Sola.

The light snapped off. Zachariah raised the mask. It crumpled in his grip. He winced at that.

“The memory was bad, Da,” said Sola. “Are you sure you want to look at the drawings?”

“Yes,” said Zachariah. “I have to know.”

He held out his hand. Bolan took the stack of drawings from the tray and handed them over. The boy stood back as the machinist went through the memory.

“This is not as bad as I thought,” said Zachariah. “We might still have time. Sola, I want you to go to Ambassador Campbell’s residence and tell him what we’ve discovered. I think alerting him that someone is trying to destroy Messer’s Reach will get us some help. Bolan, I want you and Knife to try to destroy that drawing. We can’t let it stay in the ground, then I want you to look for more of them.”

“All right,” said Bolan. “It’s magic. We might have to be really destructive.”

“Do whatever you have to do,” said Zachariah. “Warn the neighbors so they can move away until this is settled.”

He walked to the door with his daemon on his shoulder.

“What are you doing, Da?,” asked Sola.

“I’m going to try to find Hardy and our mystery man,” said Zachariah. “We can’t let him trigger that drawing if it’s the same as the one that brought that thing down on our city. More of these people will die than ours just because they lack daemons to help them.”

He stepped through the door and kept walking.

6
Sola hurried through the streets of Messer’s Reach. She should have asked for the cart. She could drive it on her own now. She needed a better way to get through the crowded streets than the cart, or a horse.

Hardy would have carried her, but he had been sent after the drawing man.

Her da had seemed too excited when he had seen the drawings from his memory. She should have asked Bolan to find Hardy and let her da try to fix the street. She didn’t like that he was looking for someone he held responsible for the destruction of their city.

There were so many things that could go wrong. Her da didn’t seem that much of a fighter. If he did find the man, Hardy would have to protect him in case of trouble. The beetle would do it, but she didn’t want either of them hurt when the city’s guards could handle things much better than they could.

She spotted the ambassador’s square house. If she could convince him to do something, maybe he could find her da with his daemon. She realized she didn’t what it was.

Maybe it was some kind of plant with extending limbs, or a cat that isn’t there, or a dragon like Primrose and capable of wiping out the city.

If he couldn’t threaten Messer’s Reach for Riordiana, why was he there?

She ran to the front door and banged on it with her fist. She stepped back when no one answered her knocking. She spotted a bell pull and yanked on it until the bell roared overhead.

The door snapped open. The ambassador’s assistant stood there. Anger flickered across his stoic face before he calmly said, “Do you mind? I can still hear.”

“I’m in a hurry,” said Sola. “Is the Ambassador in? I need to talk to him right now.”

“He has some guests,” said the functionary. “Wait here, and I will get him for you.”

The functionary closed the door in her face. She gritted her teeth as she thought about what she should do. She had to do something to save the city. She decided that she would count until she reached five hundred. After that, she was going to do what she had to do.

Sola reached the number and the door still hadn’t opened. It was time for her to take matters into her own hands.

She pushed on the door. It wouldn’t budge. If she had Hardy, the heavy wood wouldn’t have been much of a problem. She looked around for her next option.

She walked down to the corners of the square house. She found a set of trash containers in the right hand alley. She nodded as she looked up at the roof line and measured the distance with her eye.

She could maybe jump up and grab the gutter. It might come away from the wall, and roof. It might not. She didn’t have the time to care. And Bolan could fix anything she broke with Knife.

She climbed up on the trash containers. They were round things of metal with Reach Cleaning on the blue sides in white letters. She looked up at the gutter. She looked down at her feet. She looked back up.

Sola bent her knees and jumped. She caught the gutter with one hand. She quickly secured a grip with her other hand. She used her sandaled feet on the wall and pulled herself over the edge of the roof and climbed up the shallow slope to a flat top.

She looked down from the roof. Ambassador Campbell and some others she didn’t know were playing cards at a table under one of the trees. She frowned. She had been held up for a card game.

She walked down to the edge of the roof. She noticed a gutter ran on the inside of the wall too. She used that to drop to the ground. She brushed her hands on her pants as she walked toward the group.

“Miss Sola?,” Campbell said. They had met after her da had set up the shop so they could live in the city. Paperwork had to be filed.

“Ambassador Campbell,” said Sola. She glanced at the other two men, but she didn’t know them, and they weren’t important unless they tried to stop her. “Messer’s Reach is about to be destroyed. I need you to send a message back home to let the King know.”

“How do you know this?,” said one of the men. He stood, green light glowing in his eye.

“My da is looking for the man,” said Sola. “I have to get back to the shop and try to track him down. This is what my da remembered from before the attack on Riordiana. This one was from a few hours ago. It’s taken me a while to get here on foot.”

She handed over the drawings to Campbell. He examined them side by side. He made a huffing noise as he stood.

“Miss Sola, this is Grimes from Baldwin,” said Campbell. He folded the drawings up as he indicated the man with the green light in his eye. “This is Sourby from Messer’s Reach’s Diplomatic Corps.”

Sourby didn’t stand. She noticed he had a cane at hand, leaning against the table next to him. He wore silver and blue like most of the Reach’s citizens. A patch covered one eye, she thought the same side as the wounded leg.

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Sola. “I have to go. Bolan is trying to dig up the sign right now. I don’t know if he is succeeding, and my da is wandering the city.”

“One moment,” said Campbell. “Grimes will take you back to where you need to be. Sourby and I will follow as soon as we can.”

Campbell put the paper in a metal tube from his pocket. He took a piece of paper from a pad from another pocket and wrote a note on it with a pencil. He put the note in the tube with the drawings. A bird made of fire burst from his shoulder.

“I have a job for you, Streak,” said Campbell. He clipped the note on one leg of the bird. “The king has to see this as soon as possible. Go directly to his office. If he is not there, go to his apartments. Understood?”

The small orange bird sang a melody.

“All right,” said Campbell. “I need you to come back as soon as possible. We might need you to help us search the city for an expatriate and a magician.”

Streak sang another song.

“Go ahead,” said Campbell. “Come back as soon as possible.”

The bird took flight, flapping his wings to climb into the sky from the courtyard. When he was high enough, he exploded in a streak of fire across the sky.

“He’ll be in Riordiana in a couple of minutes,” said Campbell. “If you don’t mind, Grimes, I think you should go to the drawing and make sure nothing will happen while I wait for the king to give me an answer.”

“Come along, young lady,” said the Baldwin. He stepped into the air. Sola followed, dragged by an invisible hand. They streaked across the sky. Sola gave directions as best she could.

Everything looked different from the air.

“There’s Bolan,” said Sola. She pointed at the crowd of people, the boy, and his spider. Red light came from the back of the spider as they tried to cut into the drawing.

“It doesn’t look like he’s having much success,” said Grimes. He brought them down for a landing.

“Why aren’t you in the air race?,” asked Sola.

“We’re not allowed to use our gift for personal profit,” said Grimes. “And some of us are faster than any machine could ever hope to be. There’s no point in kicking a man when he’s down.”

“My ma said that was the best time to kick a man,” said Sola. She led the way to where Bolan looked at the drawing and shook his head.

“Knife can’t seem to cut this up,” said Bolan. “It grows back everything we do to it.” 

“This is Master Grimes,” said Sola. “Master Grimes, this is Bolan, and his daemon, Knife.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Bolan. He stepped closer and whispered, “I thought you were going to get us some help with this?”

“The ambassador has sent a message to the king,” said Sola. “He will be here when he gets an answer. His daemon is pretty fast, maybe the fastest I have ever seen.”

“So we wait for him to get here?,” said Bolan.

“I think I can handle this for you,” said Grimes. “Then we can talk about finding Sola’s father and the man who drew this.”

“Be my guest,” said Bolan. He waved a hand at the drawing as he stepped back. Knife backed up with him, smoke curling from the barrels sticking out of his back. Sola joined them at the edge of the crowd.

Grimes walked out to the edge of the drawing. He looked at it. The green light in his eye pulsed slightly. The street repaired itself after a second of arguing with his talent.

“That’s great,” said Bolan. “How did you do that?”

“I have been given command of a reality altering force,” said Grimes. “And using it on someone else’s reality altering was a small work.”

“Would you like some ale?,” said Bolan. “I think we still have some in the icebox.”

“We have to find my da,” said Sola.

“Knife can do that on his own faster than he can with the three of us following him around,” said Bolan. “And someone is going to have to tell Ambassador Campbell that if this is the only drawing, we have saved the city from a fate worse than death.”

“And he will be able to inform King Festus of that,” said Grimes. “The question is this the only drawing, or are there more?”

“You can tell from the air,” said Sola. “The memory machine only showed us the one my da noticed back home.”

“All right,” said Grimes. “I will do a study and see if I can find any more of these drawings.”

He took to the air in a flash of green light. He vanished over the roof tops.

“Can Knife find Da and Hardy?,” asked Sola.

“Can you find Zachariah and Hardy, Knife?,” asked Bolan.

The mechanical spider cast about, turning on its eight legs. Then it skittered off in that direction.

“Follow him,” said Bolan. “I’ll get the cart and catch up.”

Sola jogged after the fleeing spider as it clinked along the street. An antenna extended from its back. A small rectangular box turned on the end of the antenna as the daemon moved forward.

He turned right, or left, where the street was blocked from heavy traffic, but he kept on the same general line deeper into the merchant district.

Knife paused in front of a building that looked like an inn. The antenna on his back turned as he considered the information it was giving him. He needed to go in and look around to make sure he was at the right place.

Master Eight Arms had saved their lives and given them a place and a purpose. It would be a pleasure to pay him back after the last two years.

And he was the only one of the daemons with weapons of any type. Gold Bug was harmless unless it had eaten and had time to build something. Hardy could only ram a target. That was effective against some targets, but not everything would fall to a battering ram.

Sometimes you needed a lightning gun to punch through a barricade. And look, he happened to have one he could extend on the pseudo-mechanical arms he possessed.

Knife waited for Sola to open the doors for him to proceed. He crossed the lobby in a skittering of legs as he zeroed in on the route he had to take.

He went to the stairs and waited for Sola to open those doors too. He skittered inside, climbing the wall to where he felt Master Eight Arms the most. He dropped down to the landing to the eight floor as he checked his antenna. They were close now.

The sounds of furniture breaking attracted his attention. It could be anything but he had a feeling that was where his fellow daemons and Master Eight Arms were.

He extended his lightning gun and skittered to the door. Did he really want to get involved in what he was hearing inside the room?

And Sola expected him to do something.

Knife didn’t have a way to tell her that Bolan was the brave one of their pairing.

Something had to be done. He might as well get to work. The sooner started, the sooner done.

Knife blasted the door to splinters. He charged into the room, lightning blasting the air. Something flung him through the window as he looked for targets. He grabbed the outside of the wall before he crashed into the street.

The daemon paused before it tried to pull itself back into the room. Why go in when you can do your fighting from the outside?

He secured a line to another building in case something happened to the wall he clung to before he was done. Then he used a remote vision pod attached to the lightning gun to take aim.

The wall came apart under him. He retracted the line and swung clear as that part of the building fell down in the street. He saw that people were running to get clear and thought that was a good thing.

He landed on the other building and made sure his anchor was secured with his weight before he took aim at the hole in the wall across the street. He didn’t like the lack of targets. He didn’t want to shoot Master Eight Arms by accident.

Bolan would not like that at all.

The room cleared of darkness. Master Eight Arms stood with Hardy in his arms. He patted the daemon on the back as he looked around. Sola burst into the room from the hall. He handed the beetle over gently. The thing was half as big as the girl now. If it kept growing, she would be able to ride it like some flying daemons.

Gold Bug looked unsure what it should be doing. The machinist picked the ant up and put it on his shoulder as he examined the battlefield. He seemed satisfied that he had done enough damage.

He ushered Sola out of the room with one hand.

Knife walked down the wall to meet them in the street. He had done nothing useful, but he had tried to do his task as well as he could. He couldn’t do any better.

“Good job, Knife,” said Sola. “You’re a good daemon.”

Master Eight Arms looked down at the spider. He smiled the small smile he usually did when things went better than expected.

“Let’s find your master, and see what we can do about fixing our mess,” said the machinist.

7
Zachariah Eight Arms wiped his hands with a rag as he looked at the mass of wires and components. He had designed the new engine with the help of Gold Bug’s skill at building complicated machines that didn’t last. They needed to test it, but it should work better than the cart they had put together.

He walked the length of the hull. He had left off wings. The flying machine didn’t need them, and he wanted things to be as simple as possible after the complicated engine array.

He didn’t know how much power it would produce, but if it performed well in the air race, he could think about making an assembly line to make more of them.

Then he could work on the next invention impinging on his mind.

He had a thought he could build automatic building workers to put things together for carpenters and masons.

The public door opened. He looked up. He didn’t expect any business. Maybe someone needed him to look at something. He walked out of the work space and into the foyer. He paused when he saw Ambassador Campbell and his associates.

“Ambassador?,” said Zachariah. “What do I owe the pleasure?”

“We came by to talk to you about the summoner you killed,” said Campbell.

Zachariah winced at the bold wording, but he had killed the man with a weapon designed by Gold Bug. He couldn’t take that back now.

And the man deserved it for trying to kill Messer’s Reach.

“What about him?,” said Zachariah.

“Can we sit somewhere?,” asked the Reacher. He leaned on a cane. “Then we will go over this and get it done so we can go about our businesses and claim due diligence.”

“I’m sorry,” said Zachariah. “I didn’t think about that. We can use the common room.”

He led the way through the shop to the living area they had set up to share. He pulled the wooden chairs together so they could sit.

“Let me get you some ale,” said Zachariah. “Would you like something to eat?”

“Ale would be enough,” said Campbell. “I don’t think you should have to cook for us. We won’t be here that long.”

“All right,” said Zachariah. “What do you want to know?”

He retreated to the small cooking area. An icebox had been set up to keep drinks cool. He reached in and pulled out four bottles of ale. He handed over three of the bottles before popping the seal on his.

“Let’s start with the drawing,” said Grimes. “Then go ahead with how you tracked the man down, and the ensuing battle.”

“I was on the roof thinking about the work we were doing to get into the air race,” said Zachariah. “I saw him write the drawing into the street after pushing one of my neighbors out of the way.

“He started walking off. I didn’t know anything about the drawing, but it bothered me because I had seen something like it at some point. So I came down here and asked my daemon to build a machine to help me remember where I had seen the drawing. Once I knew where I had seen the drawing, I borrowed Sola’s daemon, and I used it to find the man before he could go to ground. The rest was a simple walk to where Hardy was and then I talked to the man checking in guests to find out which room he was in.

“I took the daemons up to the room in the hope that he would peacefully give up and erase the drawing,” finished Zachariah.

“Instead the two of you wrecked that floor of the building, dropped part of the wall on the street, and threatened the lives of anyone who couldn’t get away from you,” said the Reacher.

“I wouldn’t put it like that,” said Zachariah.

“How would you put it?,” asked the third man. One of his eyes projected green light as he looked at the machinist.

“I defended myself from someone who might have had something to do with killing an untold number of people, and might have done the same thing here if I hadn’t asked him what was going on,” said the machinist.

“Would you do it again?,” asked the Reacher.

“Not like that,” said Zachariah. “I would have thought about what I could do with the situation if I had to do it over again. I definitely wouldn’t have given him a chance to summon something.”

“The witnesses said there were fell beasts loosed in the building during the
confrontation,” said the Reacher.

“I don’t doubt it,” said Zachariah. “Bolan’s daemon arrived and caused a fracture in their group. It didn’t last long, but it was enough for me to use something Gold Bug built to end the fight.”

“The governments of Messer’s Reach and Riordiana are going to give you awards for your action,” said Campbell. “I received the note before we came to talk to you.”

“Tell them no,” said Zachariah. He looked down at his empty bottle. He went to the icebox and got another one. “I don’t want it.”

“Why not?,” said the man with the green light.

“I didn’t do what I did for a noble reason,” said Zachariah. He put the broken seal on the sideboard. “I did it because this is my home at the moment. And I didn’t want to start over.”

“There is a reward involved,” said the Reacher.

“I’ll let that go too,” said Zachariah.

The three men looked at each other. It had been a long time since anyone had turned down an award for doing the right thing.

“What would you like me to tell the king?,” asked Campbell.

“Tell him to give it to someone better than me,” said Zachariah. “Is there anything else, gentlemen? I have to get back to work.”

“All right,” said Campbell. He stood up awkwardly.

“One last question, Master Eight Arms,” said the man with the light in his face. “Did you see anyone else in the room with this magician?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Zachariah. “When we burst in, he was all alone.”

“Thank you for your time,” said the man. “At the very least, we know what we’re looking for if this shows up again.”

“What do you mean shows up again?,” said Zachariah. “The man’s dead. We reduced him to paste.”

“You reduced a man to paste,” said the Reacher. “But he was part of a unit from the looks of things. There are others out there. We’re looking for them.”

“So someone else might try to do this again?,” said Zachariah.

“Maybe,” said the Reacher. “We don’t know. They might not like what you did.”

“If I come across one of these madmen, I will gladly take him prisoner so he can be questioned,” said Zachariah. “I have built a new life here. I won’t let someone take it from me without a fight.”

“If you see anything else, let us know,” said Campbell. “This might be the major threat until we stop them.”

“I will keep an eye out,” said Zachariah. He showed the men out. The visit had cooled the elation of his flying machine actually looking like it will fly in the air race.

Zachariah put the bottles in a wooden box to take back to the ale house to get them refilled before he went back to his flying machine. He walked along the skeleton waiting for plating. Bolan and Sola could handle that now that he had the innards working. The interior would have to go in over everything with a space inset for the controls.

Gold Bug appeared on his shoulder. He looked at the hull as he stood in place. The machine looked better than he thought it would.

“We’re going to have to go back to the library,” said Zachariah. “Campbell and his friends think our magician was not working alone. There might be a trail we can find if we look through some of the histories.”

Gold Bug climbed down, walked over to the table with his supplies, and climbed up so he could reach the lumps of metal that was useless for anything. He ate into the pile. When he was done, he divided until he could build a machine that sat on the desk. He stood back from his creation.

“And what does this do?,” asked Zachariah. He looked at the square without picking it up.

Gold Bug pressed the switch on the device. A square of paper ejected from the top of the device. A picture slowly drifted into view as the paper sat there.

Zachariah looked at the picture. It was him, but he could see the markings that allowed him to summon Gold Bug from his home.

“We can use this, or something like it to find any other city killers,” said the
machinist. “We can build it in the air ship.”

Gold Bug waved his antennae as he backed away from the device.

“We can make pictures of everyone we come across and the one that seems the most dangerous could be one of them,” said Zachariah.

Gold Bug pushed the machine to an upright position. He pointed it at the door. He pressed the button again. The resulting picture had some hot spots but they didn’t look that serious to the machinist.

Then he realized what the problem was. He needed something to do what the machine did, but constantly without guidance. It had to show him what people looked like while he went about his business.

He nodded.

“This is good but we need something that works constantly,” said Zachariah. “And we need to be able to mount them so we can watch the whole city. That is a lot of work for the three of us.”

Gold Bug stared at him with its composite eyes.

“I like the idea,” said Zachariah. “It just needs to be finetuned. First, we have to build the mechanical watchers. Then we have to mount them in places that could watch the street without being seen. And lastly they would have to send the pictures back here to be collected so we could watch for people at random who might fit the profile.

“That is a major undertaking.”

Zachariah paused.

“We could install an alarm here so the watchers would trigger it when they saw someone who fit the profile so we don’t have to watch everybody,” said the machinist. “What do you think of that?”

Gold Bug made a chittering noise with its mandibles.

“All right then,” said Zachariah. “But before we do all that, we have to get ready for the race."