Lucas saw that the men, like Jack, had taken on the color of the room. Were they dying or just becoming more like the air?
Jack led him to a machine at the far end. Yet another room opened off this one, though Lucas could discern only a sepulchral stillness and what appeared to be stacks of vaults, like catacombs, filled with silver canisters. It seemed there must be another room after that and then another and another. The works might extend for miles, like a series of caverns. It seemed that it would be possible to walk through them for hours and finally reach—what? Lucas didn’t fully understand what it was that the works produced. Simon had never spoken of it. Lucas had imagined some treasure, a living jewel, a ball of green fire, infinitely precious, the making of which required unstinting effort. He wondered now why he had never thought to ask. His brother’s labors had always seemed a mystery, to be respected and revered.
“Here,” Jack said, stopping before a machine. “You work here.”
“This is where my brother worked.”
“It is.”
Lucas stood before the machine that had taken Simon. It was a toothed wheel, like a titanic piano roll, set over a broad belt bordered by clamps.
Jack said, “You must be more careful than your brother was.”
Lucas understood from Jack’s voice that the machine was not to blame. He stared at the machine as he’d stared once at the gorilla at Barnum’s. It was immense and stolid. It wore its wheel as a snail wears its shell, with a languid and inscrutable pride. Like a snail with its shell, the machine contained a quicker, more liquid life in its nether parts. Under the wheel, which snagged flecks of orange light on its square teeth, were the rows of clamps, the pale, naked-looking leather of the belt, the slender stalks of the levers. The wheel harbored a shifting shadow of brownish-black. The machine was at once formidable and tender-looking. It offered its belt like a tentative promise of kindness.
Jack said, “Tom Clare, over there” (he nodded at a young man laboring at the next machine), “stacks plates in the bin here. Tom, this is Lucas, the new man.”
Tom Clare, sharp-faced, whiskered, looked up. “Sorry about your loss,” he said. He would have seen Simon eaten by the machine. Was it his fault, then? Could he have acted more quickly, been more brave?
“Thank you,” Lucas answered.
Jack lifted from the bin a flat rectangle of iron, the size of an oven door, and laid it on the belt. “You fasten it tight,” he said. He screwed clamps down onto the iron plate, three on each side. “See the lines on the belt?”
The belt was marked with white lines, each drawn several inches above one of the clamps. “The top edge,” Jack said, “has to be lined up exactly. Do you understand? It has to be right up on this line.”
“I see,” Lucas said.
“When it’s even with the line and when the clamps are secure, you pull this lever first.”
He pulled a lever to the right of the belt. The wheel awakened and began, with a sigh, to turn. Its teeth came to within an inch of the belt.
“When the drum is turning, you pull the other lever.”
He pulled a second lever that stood beside the first. The belt slowly began to move. Lucas watched the belt bear the iron plate forward until it met with the teeth of the wheel. The teeth, impressing into the iron, sounded like hammers banging on glass that wouldn’t break.
“Now. Follow me.” Jack led Lucas to the back of the machine, where the plate was beginning to emerge, full of shallow, square impressions.
“When it’s come through,” he said, “you go back and pull the levers again. First the second one, then the first. Understand?”
“Yes,” Lucas said.
Jack pulled the levers and stopped the machine, first the belt and then the wheel. He released the clamps from the plate of iron.
“Then you inspect it,” he said. “You make sure it’s taken a complete impression. Four across, six down. They must all be perfect. Look into every square. This is important. If it isn’t perfect you take it over there” (he pointed across the room) “to Will O’Hara, for resmelting. If you have any doubts, show it to Will. If you’re satisfied that the impressions are perfect, if you’re sure, take it to Dan Heaney over there. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” Lucas said. “I don’t think so.”
“All right, then. You try it.”
Lucas took a new plate from the bin. It was heavier than he’d expected but not too heavy to manage. He hoisted it onto the belt, pushed it carefully up to the white line, and attached the clamps. “Is that right?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
He tested the clamps. “Should I pull the lever now?” he asked.
“Yes. Pull the lever.”
Lucas pulled the first lever, which started the wheel turning. He was briefly exultant. He pulled the second lever, and the belt moved forward. To his relief, the clamps held tight.
“That’s all right,” Jack said.
Lucas watched the teeth bite into the iron. Simon would have been pulled under the wheel, first his arm and then the rest. The machine would have ground him in its teeth with the same serenity it brought to the iron. It would have believed—if machines could believe—it had simply produced another iron plate. After it had crushed Simon it would have waited patiently for the next plate.
“Now,” Jack said, “let’s go and inspect the piece.”
Lucas went with him to the machine’s far end, and saw what he had made. A plate of iron with square impressions, four across and six down.
Jack said, “Does it look all right to you?”
Lucas looked closely. It was difficult to see in the dimness. He ran a finger into each impression. He said, “I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
“All right, then. What do you do now?”
“I take it to Dan Heaney.”
“That’s right.”
Lucas lifted the stamped iron, carried it to Dan Heaney’s machine. Dan, bulbous and lion-headed, nodded. After a hesitation, Lucas placed the plate carefully in a bin that stood beside Dan’s machine.
“Fine, then,” Jack said.
He had pleased Jack.
Jack said, “Do another one.”
“Sir,” Lucas asked, “what are these things I’m making?”
“They’re housings,” Jack said. “Let me watch you do another one.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lucas did another
