Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [6]
“Frog singing!” I exclaimed. “Croaking, you mean.”
“I don’t. He’s made a frog with a voice like Tetrazzini’s. You don’t know what Baxter does. He can graft brains or voice on anything. He’s got a ferret with an intellect bigger than Kant’s. The frog sings to him by the hour — never tires — and the ferret is always working out problems in mentality that neither Baxter nor any other man could do. I don’t know where Baxter will stop. He doesn’t know himself. He was very pleased when he made me from my nucleus, and developed me in the oxilater. Did the whole thing in a fortnight, and grafted my brain on afterwards. I’m the biggest all-round success he’s had so far. The ferret has a larger brain for problems, but no common-sense.
“And what about the automatons? He said he was going to make an automaton that could — ”
“Oh, I know what he promised,” interrupted the Faun. “He rehearsed his speech to me in the lab till he knew it. He doesn’t care a hang for the human race, and he was laughing at you all the time. He’s made a couple of automata — great lumbering things as ugly as sin, with a lot of muscle and a pin’s head worth of brains. He’s stuck ‘em up in corners, and doses ‘em with phosphates when they’re hungry. He’s got ‘em ready if anyone calls to see what he’s doing, but they’re no good for work — their mentality is too low. That’s why the ferret is working out problems for him. Baxter can’t hit on a medium brain. Gosh! What a business it is. He never knows what his spawn will hatch into till he opens the ox Hater. I’ve known him cultivate a thousand nuclei with only two per cent of moderate successes. He freezes the others and destroys them, or lets Billiter do it, who always keeps a few for himself. Billiter cultivates dwarf freaks — bulls with six legs, more or less, and men’s heads — satyrs, you know-dwarf elephants with fins, flying camels, and sports like that. He has an amazing collection. Baxter says he oughtn’t to keep such things, but he lets him all the same. He has to. He daren’t go against Billiter for fear of his laying information with the authorities. He’d never be allowed to do what he does if the nation knew it. Oh, I’ve sized them up.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Nine or ten months, I reckon,” it replied.
“You know a lot for your age,” I remarked.
“I know I do. My brain is the smartest ever made.” Here the Faun smirked with its irritating complacency. “Baxter has just crammed me with knowledge ever since I was made, to see how much my head will carry, and he can’t fill it. In addition to all the scientific stuff I have to read for him, I always go through the daily paper,” it said proudly.
“What about neighbors and visitors?” I asked. “Isn’t Baxter afraid of anything leaking out?”
“We don’t have many visitors. If anyone comes Baxter shows them round the laboratory, and trots out his automata under promise of secrecy. I and the frog and the ferret are shoved into Billiter’s museum till they’re gone. And as for neighbors, our nearest lives five miles away. We get on all right as a rule while Baxter is there, but he has to go to London sometimes, and then there’s trouble. We’ve had a sickening time just now. That’s why I am here. Billiter got drunk, fixed up the automata like prize-fighters, and made ‘em pound away at each other. They were hitting out like mad when I saw ‘em last, and they’ll be hopelessly damaged by this time. The frog had been singing to him for twenty-four hours on end; and he’d given the ferret the deuce of a calculation to work out. It was phosphate time for both of ‘em, but Billiter wouldn’t give it. It made me cry to hear the frog sing so imploringly about her food; She was singing flat, too, and the ferret had gone wrong with his additions, all for want of food; but Billiter only raved at them. I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, but he only swore he’d do for me, and tell Baxter it was suicide. He’d have kept his word if he’d got me; but I tripped him up, ran out of the room, and locked him in.”
Here the Faun stopped to snigger