Fantastic Metropolis

‘Help me.’ he said, confused, pathetic. ‘For God’s sake help me get her out of this coffin.’ An elemental spur goaded my flanks and I charged, storm-ridden, picking up the discarded limb of a dead proto-Toxine—a long, coltish leg—and, jumping the barricades like Liberty leading the People, stood before the tyrant, porcelain club held high, poised to end his reign. ‘But I am her father!’ he said.

‘And I,’ I said, breaking the limb over his skull, ‘am the King of Clockwork!’

He fell and the house shook, tremulous with exultation. Easy, so easy. How had I not known it would be so easy? The storm dismounted, rumbling into the distance, taking with it the shame of the years. The ghetto of my childhood had been razed, Tox and I the only survivors. The dust cloud settled; shards of china spun and were still. I was free.

She stood by the window. Did a burgeoning sentience prompt her to look across the street, to where she suspected her violator’s shade would always spy, always haunt? ‘He’s gone,’ I assured her. ‘He’ll never hurt you again.’ Her returning consciousness chilled me. ‘Tox, are you all right? Don’t worry, I’ve more dream-juice downstairs. You’ll soon be back to normal.’ As I reached beneath her chemise she stepped back, putting her arms across her breasts. ‘Toxine,’ I said gently, ‘don’t be silly. It’s only me. I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help.’ I caught her by the wrists. ‘Toxine—please!’ she was staring at the felled body of Daz, her lovely, vacuous face impossibly eloquent with distress. She turned, and her eyes blistered with pain. Withdrawal symptoms? Or was something human emerging from that chrysalis of stone, something empathic? ‘He hurt you, Toxine, he wanted to take you from me. Don’t you remember all the terrible things he did to you? I am your creator, Toxine, I am your father!’

With preternatural speed she seized me by the throat. Long, steel fingernails cut my flesh, her mechanically enhanced grip extraordinarily powerful. How could she? Was it simply malfunction? Or had sickness unmasked her? Perhaps I had been a fool, a cuckold long ignorant of her lusts and adulteries. Her grip tightened. All that they had said: it was true. The porcelain bitch had betrayed me. Twisting, flailing, my arms collided with the light fixture, and a black curtain dropped upon our stage. Her treacherous, half-human eyes ignited. Murderous eyes. We tripped and skidded across the workbench. ‘I loved you,’ I said, as she broke heart and neck. ‘Have you forgotten the Way of the Doll?’ My eyes closed and I knew only the smell of her silky mane, the coolness of her dress, the noise of my lungs as they rattled towards their doom; I knew too, but only half knew, that my hand had found a screwdriver and that I was driving it into her ribs, her thighs, cracking her immaculate flesh and sending slivers of porcelain to join the fragments of other dolls strewn about the floor. To no effect; her carapace protected her. Frantically I pulled up her crimson frock, and then the thousand petticoats beneath; with one hand I flipped open the belly panel, while the other . . . but by then I was beyond the stars and planets, a castaway of time and space; somewhere, somewhere, I heard the screwdriver’s snicker-snack! as it drove into the overheated motor, breaking gears, cogs and wheels. ‘Johneee!’ she yelled; clockwork filigree scrambled—Ah, so tell it to him, tell it to Mr Impaler—and, releasing her steely garrotte, writhed beneath me like a fish upon the slab, until, the arc lights of her eyes blown, fused, her life retreated to a single fluttering eyelash, the metallic spikes of which, after an eternity of indecision, finally crashed shut like a miniature portcullis.

I lay on top of her, gasping. What had I done? ‘Toxine,’ I whispered, ‘come back, come back.’ My tears spattered her face.

Toxine was broken.

 

For days I walked the streets, following home women with pale skin or dark hair, or women robed in poppy-red dresses, women who moved like machines. But I need more than a replacement engine; I need a soul. And her soul, I think, will never return. What was Toxine? She was a wonder of engineering, a green-eyed Venus; the comfort of my childhood and the ardour of my manhood; she was my friend, and the goddess who came back to me in a merciful moment of grace. She was my life. The human world was unworthy of her, and I, too, am unworthy.

Forgive me, little robot, and accept my amends. I have decided it is time to sleep. The attic, immutable shadowland of childhood, has gathered us to its ruin. We have been here now three days, three nights. Musty carpets, old furniture, surround us, and winter has come. Again, snow drifts down from the rafters, crowning her hair with ice. It is cold. I comb that hair, that long, long hair. We are about to make our journey.

I lie down beside her. The light begins to fail. Outside, the wind is shaking the gables. Sleep, sleep. Those venomous lips I have half kissed away receive me as one lost, now found. I put my arms about her tiny waist. I look into her eyes. All is broken. Consumed by fire. But I am leaving this human world of sadness and regret, leaving as even now it grows dark. Deep in her eyes, in an emerald vision, I see again that land, that happy land, that far-off kingdom where we shall be at peace. My bisque-headed, wheyfaced love, how could I have thought you would betray me? The city descends. Softly, she calls. We go now together into the dark, she leading me through the shadows, out, far out, taking me home, the only home there will ever be for us. Goodnight, Toxine.

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“Toxine,” the first story Richard Calder ever wrote, appeared in Interzone: The 4^th Anthology (Simon & Schuster, 1989), edited by John Clute, David Pringle and Simon Ounsley.