"More power!" roared the Baron.
Fearfully, Igor obeyed, throwing his weight against
the huge lever and driving it forward. Livid blue sparks like
fat, sizzling worms cascaded from the contacts. Somewhere a fuse
overloaded, but the failsafes and backups cut in immediately; a
fine piece of work, though the Baron said it himself, continuity
of power supply guaranteed no matter how recklessly he abused the
system. He bent down over the Thing strapped to the bench and
peered hungrily at the dials on the control panel.
"More power," he repeated.
Igor's eyes widened like an opening flower in
stop-motion. "The resistors," he screeched.
"They're at breaking point as it is. They just
can't take any more!"
"More power."
Oh well, muttered Igor to himself, he's the boss,
presumably he knows what he's doing. And if he doesn't - well, in
years to come Katchen and the children would take a picnic up to
the ruined tower on the top of the mountain, and Katchen would
bring them into the burnt-out shell of the laboratory and point
to a man's silhouette appliqued onto the flagstones and say,
"See that? That's your Uncle Igor." Immortality, of a
sort. And it was better than working in the cuckoo-clock factory.
He edged forward the lever, and at first nothing
happened. Then somewhere behind the massive screen of lead
bricks, something began to hum, and a moment later a tremendous
surge of power began to burgeon and swell, like
the wave of a surfer's lifetime on Bondi Beach. Little
silver beads of molten lead glistened like dewdrops in the
interstices of the shield.
A few inches away from the Baron's nose, the needle
on a dial suddenly quivered. "More power!" he roared,
slamming both fists down on the console and sending his
coffee-mug (a birthday-present from Igor, thoughtfully inscribed
World's Best Boss) flying to the floor. Igor closed his eyes,
mumbled the first four words of the Ave Maria, and thrust the
lever all the way home.
Raw power sprayed out of the circuits like fizzy
lemonade from a shaken-up bottle. One of the minor
transtator coils dissolved instantaneously into a glowng pool of
molten copper; but the backup took the load, and the meter hardly
wavered. You could have boiled a kettle on top of the main
reactor housing, if you didn't mind drinking luminous green tea.
"Yes!" thundered the Baron. "Igor,
it..."
Before he could say exactly what, a
gunbarrel-straight shaft of blue fire burst from the mighty lens
poised a few feet above the bench and enveloped the Thing
completely. The Baron screamed and threw himself at the
fire-shrouded form, trying to beat out the flames before they
utterly consumed his creation; but before he even made contact, a
tremendous force hauled him off his feet and slammed him against
the far wall. Igor ducked under a table as a cyclone of distilled
energy ripped circuit-boards and clamps and conduits out of the
benches and juggled them in a spinning maelstrom of blinding heat
and light around the glowing outline of the Thing. It was
incredible, awesome, terrifying; Spielberg let loose in the
effects laboratory with a blank cheque signed by God.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. All
the lights snapped out and the laboratory was shrouded in
darkness, except for an ice-cold blue glow from the bench where
the Thing had been. The smoke cleared, and there was silence
except for the sizzle- plink of molten copper slowly cooling.
"Igor?"
"Baron? Are you all right?"
Cautiously, both men stood up and stared at the bench
and the source of the unearthly blue light. "Did you see
what happened, Igor?" the Baron whispered. "That
fire... Is there anything left?"
Igor shrugged. "Search me," he said,
"I was hiding."
Together they approached the bench. The blue fire
danced on the scarred surface of the oak like the brandy flare on
a Christmas pudding, and in the heart of the glow, where the
Thing had been, there was a shape; humanoid, certainly, with the
correct number of limbs and in more or less the right
proportions, but...
"My God," whispered the Baron. "Igor,
what have we done?"
"What d'you mean, we?" Igor whispered
back. "I just work here, remember?"
Where there had been a seven foot frame of
carefully-selected muscle and bone, painstakingly put together
from raw materials taken from the finest mortuaries in Europe,
there was now a short, stocky child-shaped object with a small,
squat body, sticklike arms and legs and a head that
was too large for the rest of the assembly. It was wearing
brightly- coloured dungarees, an Alpine hat with a feather in it
and shiny black shoes. It was made of wood and had a perky
expression and a cute pointy nose.
"It's a puppet," the Baron growled.
"So it is," Igor replied, trying to keep
the grin off his face and out of his voice. Despite all the
melodrama of the last half hour, he couldn't help liking the
little chap.
"A puppet," the Baron repeated. "A
goddamned wooden puppet. What in hell's name am I supposed to do
with that?"
Igor coughed respectfully. "If you don't want it
for anything, Baron," he said, "my little nephew
Piotr'd love it for his birthday."
"A pup - " The baron broke off in
mid-snarl. The puppet had winked at him. "Did you see
that?" he gasped.
"See what, boss?"
"It winked at me."
Igor craned his neck to see. "You sure,
boss?" he said. "Can't say I saw anything myself."
"It moved, I'm sure of it." The Baron sat
down heavily on the shell of a burnt-out instrument console.
"Or maybe the radiation's addled my brains. I could have
sworn..."
"Hello," said the puppet, sitting up at an
angle of precisely ninety degrees. "Are you my daddy?"
The Baron made a curious noise; wonder, triumph and
deep disgust, all rolled upin one throaty grunt. "It's
alive," he croaked. "Igor, do you see? It's
alive."
"Oh sure," Igor replied. "We got
ourselves a walking, talking, moving,
breathing, living doll." He closed his eyes and
opened them again. "When you go back and tell the investors
about this, I want to be there. Can I have your lungs as a
souvenir?"
"You're my daddy," said the puppet. "I
love you. My name's Pinocchio and I'm going to live with you for
ever and ever."
The Baron groaned and buried his face in his hands;
which surprised the puppet, because he'd imagined his daddy would
be pleased to see him. A safe assumption to make, surely? Maybe
not. There was so much about this wonderful new world he didn't
know, and wouldn't it be fun finding out?
Deep inside his wooden brain, a tiny voice was
squeaking Hang on, this isn't right, it isn't fair, let me out!
But the grain of the wood soaked up the last flickers of neural
energy, and the dim spark drenched away into the cold sap.
"My name is Pinocchio," the puppet repeated; and if its
nose grew longer by an eighth of an inch or so, nobody noticed.
Text reproduced with permission.
© 1998 
Uwe Milde
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