Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

damaged book.”
    “You can help with this one.”
    “Is it a clockwork book?”
    “It is.”
    “Because if it’s not a clockwork book, there’s not very much I can do, is there?” Joe pauses. Some part of the last exchange did not play out as he imagined when he ran it through in his mind.
    “What do you mean, ‘it is’?”
    Billy waves his arms to indicate the magnificence of what he has to offer. “The item is a combination book and device. The textual part is in acceptable if foxed condition, nice leather cover, looks like a diary. The peculiarity is that the outer edges are punched in a grid, so that the book as a whole functions or appears to function as a set of punchcards. One might think of it as equivalent to the drum on one of your music boxes. Yes?”
    Joe Spork nods assent. Billy goes on, waving his hands for emphasis, which he is pleased to call “emf
-arse
-is,” because it generally gets a rise out of the ladies.
    “And in, as it were, the same sack, the same rattling old box, the same shabby loft where the book was located, there is a collection of mucky, disassembled bits and bobs which could, under the right circumstances and through the intervention of a skilled craftsperson such as yourself, form some sort of mechanism which appears, on close and expert examination by me, to attach to the written volume along the spine. Further, there is what I can only describe as a large gold ball forming part of the mechanical apparatus, whose function I have not at this time been able to discern. Thus, a conundrum. A book which is more than a book, and the implication of a machine which does something with it. Hence, to avoid the practice of neologism, Joseph, which as you know I despise, I call it a doodah.”
    Joe Spork gazes at Billy through narrow eyes. It does not please him to be so easily led about by the nose. He knows that Billy knows this kind of thing is his particular delight. He anticipates some species of hustle, or possibly just a task of mind-numbing boredom by way of compensation for his pleasure.
    “And what do I have to do in exchange for this doodah job?”
    “Nothing dreadful, Joseph, just a bit of repair on something, nothing base nor wicked nor criminal—” Billy falters. He must see something in Joe’s face which tells him the Sporkish forbearance is at an end. He holds up a hand in acknowledgement. “Let me show you the patient, all right? It’s a bit special.” And he already has the parcel on the table, so it’s only a second before it stands revealed. It’s quite a sight in a quiet café. “Spicy, eh? Those Victorians, they liked their toys. Their
erotomata
, to coin a phrase. Their ’
ow’s yer father
, though this looks more like
’ow’s yer father, madame, and can I get you something to drink after, and maybe for your sister, too?
I knew some sisters like this once, mind. Frightful handful.”
    The object is indeed an automaton, a clockwork tableau in tin and lead paint, with fabric to flesh out the figures and a brass-and-steel movement visible through the glass floor. A lusty gamekeeper sort of fellow with red cheeks stands on one side, and two ladies in riding dresses stand on the other, and when Billy Friend flicks a switch the figures move around one another in a decreasing spiral until the gamekeeper’s trousers come down and the ladies’ dresses come up, and a somewhat improbable object emerges from the gamekeeper’s burlap undergarments and goes smoothly into a matching aperture on Sister 1, while Sister 2 reclines on a wall and satisfies herself quite frantically, and then the whole thing starts to shake and Sister 1’s head goes all the way around and the gamekeeper suddenly gets what appears to be a hernia and cannot continue, and the whole assemblage grinds and stutters to a halt.
    Joe is furious to find that he is blushing. Billy Friend smirks at the waitress, who is staring with wide eyes at the contraption and looking not entirely unlike a