Nun’s Well

Surreal Tender and Mr. Carker encounter a mystery

Photo by Pourya Gohari on Unsplash

[Back to the saga of Surreal Tender and her secretary and sidekick, James Carker. Yes, that James Carker, but the son he might have had with Edith Dombey. And I scootched Mr. Carker’s timeline up a few years. It’s 1919, the younger James Carker is a mild-mannered 50-year-old gentleman with a shady past, and Surreal Tender is a technomancer — a kind of big half-mechanical human that became obsolete before anyone figured out its uses.

We’re about 25 miles outside the great city of Belleville, which, as Sylvain Chomet tells us, might be anywhere. New York, Montreal … I think it might even look like the Boston where Jo March lived for a while. Definitely some bluestocking vibes amidst the madness. But this land has been colonized far longer than North America, and the indigenous folk were … more of that later.

At any rate, Surreal Tender and Mr. Carker are investigating the death of the famous engineer Diana von Birkhausen, first of the technomancers. Need to catch up? Check out the Table of Contents.]

“This car!”

James Carker clung to his hat.

The Stanley Roadster might look like a maize-colored insect with red and turquoise detailing on its delicate carapace. Its wide-set eyes might gaze in childlike wonder at the world unspooling around the hedgerows. But the little steam-powered chariot whipped around the bend on two wheels, shedding speed to a mere 75 miles per hour, with such gusto that Mr. Carker transferred his grasp to the car door. His hat flew off, lost forever to the bees and butterflies in the cow field beyond the hedge.

Behind the wheel, Surreal Tender whooped with laughter. Her scarf streamed behind her like Isadora Duncan’s on the bright autumn morning of her death, though Surreal’s neck would have been considerably harder to wring.

Besides, it was May.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Surreal answered Mr. Carker. She had to holler for him to hear her.

He looked like he wanted to contradict his employer, but said nothing.

---

They found the cottage at Nun’s Well in poor repair but tidy. Surreal had a woman who came once a month to deal with the worst of the dust and spiderwebs. Mr. Carker had telephoned ahead to arrange this woman — her name was Artie — to clean properly. And someone had tidied the garden, which was no more than a clearing between the kitchen door and the low wall separating the cottage grounds from the meadow.

Now Mr. Carker followed Surreal Tender down the path from the door to the wall. The sun had burned off the dew where it fell, but globes of water still clung to clover in the shade under the lilac tree.

“Once we grew herbs,” Surreal explained. “And there were strawberries in those stone urns by the door, and delphiniums and ferns under the windows.” She turned, populating the garden in memory. “And marigolds and baby’s breath by the wall there in the sun, and bunches of sweet William.”

But now the garden was no more than close-shorn weeds, tussocky and liable to twist Mr. Carker’s ankle. Surreal walked to the wall and with a step that was like a spring stood on it.

“We kept bees there down the hill, just under that pecan tree.”

But the pecan tree had fallen. Nothing remained but an old stump with saplings behind it. No sign of bee hives in the tall, juicy green grass.

The air hummed.

“They’re still here, madam,” Mr. Carker said, consoling her. “Listen.”

Surreal looked around sharply. His interest in her as a construct had never seemed to coincide with much attention to her as a person. She didn’t mind it — she’d been a beautiful monster since the death of Jane Sumner and the birth of Surreal Tender in the remnants of Jane’s body 75 years ago. But she was open to surprises. She sat on the wall and gestured for him to join her.

They looked at the meadow together. At the bottom of the meadow a small wood concealed a creek. Beyond that, the road wound away to the town, also called Nun’s Well.

“The original well is there, just below where we kept the beehives,” Surreal said. “But it hasn’t been a working well for years. It’s just a pile of overgrown stonework now. There — you see the blackberries there, mounded up?”

“Yes, madam.”

“See the darker grass?” She pointed. “There’s sometimes a wet-weather seep.”

He nodded. The day was fair as anyone could want, illuminating a real rural shambles of green and gold with just a hint of a steeple in the distance. The Stanley Roadster parked around the other side of the house and Surreal in her short modern dress that exposed her ankles were the only features of the environment that suggested the dash and freedom of the 20th century. And he couldn’t see the car from here.

James Carker looked at his employer. Neither Diana von Birkenhausen, the engineer who designed the original technomancer chassis, nor Samuel Binder, who invented their hearts, imagined that women would ever dress so lightly as they did nowadays. Surreal wore a straight gray wool-and-linen day dress with just a belt at the back to hint at a waistline. Her sleeves came only to her elbows, leaving the human skin of her forearms bare. Unlike the high collars of the previous century, her collar fully exposed her throat and, in rear, the entire run of cervical vertebrae and the top couple of thoracic vertebrae. For a hat she wore only a simple cloche, which she’d long since thrown off somewhere. Her black hair was gathered in a loose bundle at the back of her neck.

He said, with some reproach, “Your facet joints will be full of dust again.”

“Yes, a definite engineering flaw,” she agreed. “I suppose it’s time for the oil and brushes.”

“With your permission, madam.”

---

He took his time. Sometimes Surreal wished she could feel what he was doing, but as always she sensed only that electrical buzz that indicated human proximity. Familiar humans — she thought that, humans, though of course she supposed her mind was still human as anyone else’s — she could distinguish one from the other. Mr. Carker’s cool exterior concealed a steady buzz of thought and, sometimes, a spark of big feeling, always rapidly suppressed.

A butterfly landed on Surreal’s knuckle. Black velvet, with neon blue tips to its wings. It fanned itself as if breathing. As if it breathed with its whole body.

I guess it does, she thought. For a moment she envied the butterfly’s short, vivid life.

“When Diana was living — moreso than now — women had a hard time finding education or employment in the sciences,” she said. “In fact, it was almost unheard of. As a fundraiser, Diana used to hold a lecture series. She called it ‘Natural Science for Curious Gentlewomen.’ It was wildly popular. She took it to London, Vienna … a lady called Edith Dombey used to attend. Diana gave her a scholarship — she didn’t have much money, but she had an extraordinary mind. It was a pity she had to spend her wits on, you know, money, love, all that — ”

Mr. Carker put his brushes in their case and snapped it shut.

“Since you’ve guessed it, I am her son.” He began polishing Surreal’s neck with a cloth and a drop of oil. “But I only saw her a few times. She placed me with a woman in the country to raise, and I was put to work as an office boy when I was 7 years old.”

Surreal heard his voice smile.

“I forget you’re old enough to remember the scandal,” he said.

“Manager runs away with master’s wife, society belle Edith Dombey,” Surreal quoted. “It was the year I got this heart. I was in seclusion in the laboratory for months, you understand. Fully invalid. But I could read the papers — the story caught my imagination. And then Edith Dombey turned up at Diana’s first lecture. Quiet, eager … nothing like Diana and I used to imagine she must be.”

James Carker put his rag away with the brushes. He continued to stand behind Surreal. Together they watched the meadow tilt towards afternoon, taking them with it.

“After the heart, there’s no turning back,” Surreal said. “Especially now that Samual Binder’s dead, and the technique with him.”

“No, I suppose not.” He paused. “But the chassis itself? Your spinal column, your — everything — that’s irreversible.”

Surreal looked up at him. “Is it? This is Diana von Birkhausen’s own chassis. The culmination, the final model. Everything before was a prototype. Everything after, mere tinkering. I am the apex of her work. And, you know, Diana had this chassis first.”

“But — but after that, she died.”

“Certainly,” Surreal said. “But she didn’t die in 1848. She had another model, one she and Dr. Binder worked on together.”

Mr. Carker didn’t answer. Surreal figured he was thinking about, and deciding against, asking how the transfer might work — what was left of the human woman by that point. Instead he asked, “What happened to the second chassis after she died?”

“You know — ” Surreal looked up at him — “I have no idea.”

---

They continued their argument over dinner, which they took in the dim farmhouse kitchen. The house was not electrified; an oil lamp lit the plank table. Herbs that had long breathed their last fragrance into the still air hung in dusty chains from the rafters.

Artie had made a hot pot, which they shared. Mr. Carker took out a notebook to list items of interest.

“You were her heir,” he said, writing it.

“Yes, she left me Nun’s Well.” Surreal dipped her bread in the gravy. “This cottage and the half-dozen acres around are about all she had, except some personal effects. She’d given away all her interest in von Birkhausen Laboratories.”

“Right, so where’s the body?”

“What?”

“I beg your pardon, I mean her chassis.” Mr. Carker added an item to his list. “You didn’t — ”

Surreal gaped at him. “I assume it was owned by the laboratories and went back to them. It wasn’t mentioned in her will.”

He shook his head. “No. I would have known. As chief clerk, I was in charge of the inventory of all advanced technologies. They were considered real assets, you know.”

“Then it must have been buried with her.”

“Where?”

“Here.” Surreal continued to stare at him. Tears sprang to her eyes, surprising her. “She wanted to be buried here.”