Penelope Hartwell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Penelope Hartwell had built a watch the size of a thumbnail, but she could not hold two brass ribs steady at once. She sat in her workshop under the great clockwork balloon that crowned her home. On the table lay the frame of a cat. Its spine was finished. Its hips waited. She wanted this creature to move so naturally that Archimedes, her real cat, would accept it as a friend. Archimedes slept nearby, his collar ticking softly with each heartbeat. But the next joint needed four hands, and she had only two. She had worked alone since she retired. Alone since her husband died. Alone since a colleague slipped in with a floor key and took her original schematics. Trust had a price now, and she had stopped paying it. She tried a clamp. The clamp slipped. A rib sprang loose and pinged off the wall. Archimedes lifted his head, then tucked it back down. Penelope set down her tools and pressed her fingers to her eyes. A knock came at the door below. She was not expecting anyone. She found Cornelius Thorne on her step, newspaper folded under one arm, his gold bug-eye glasses catching the lamplight. They had been engineers together, friends longer, and something warmer than friends on quiet evenings. She had not called him in months. "You look like you've lost an argument with a spring," he said. "I've lost several." She stepped back to let him in. He climbed to the workshop and stopped at the table. He studied the brass cat without touching it. "Frictionless torque in the shoulders," he said. "You're making it walk like a living thing." "I'm trying. The assembly needs two people. I don't have two people." Cornelius set down his newspaper. "You have one, at least, if you'll trust him near your gears." The word trust sat between them. He knew what a stolen schematic had done to her. He had not been the one to take it, but he had known the man who did. She looked at his steady hands, then at the ribs scattered across her table. "Hold the frame square," she said. "Don't let it drift." He rolled up his sleeves. She fitted the first rib while he braced the spine. It held. She fitted the second. The hip joint clicked into place, clean and true. For an hour they worked without a wasted word, her voice guiding, his hands answering. When the last pin sank home, the brass cat sat whole on the table. Penelope wound the small key at its neck. The head turned. It looked at Archimedes. Archimedes woke. He stared at the brass cat. His ears went flat. He hissed once, low and sharp, then bolted from the room. Cornelius watched the doorway. "That," he said, "was not the greeting you wanted." Penelope looked at her finished cat, then at the empty spot where Archimedes had been. She had built the body. Now she had to make it welcome.