Consequences by Carla Jablonski Page A

scanned the area, pleased with the smooth production, the clockwork organization. All was in order.
    He noticed a worker he didn’t recognize at the controls. Slaggingham had never seen the likes of this guy before. The fellow was over seven feet tall, blue, and had ram’s horns on his head. And the clothing he wore—it was like those of the troubadours in books: velvet doublet, slippers, long cloak. Who could he be?
    â€œHow did you get in here?” he demanded. A genius such as the reverend always had to be on the lookout for spies and saboteurs.
    â€œThe woman brought me,” the worker replied in a flat tone, without stopping his work.
    â€œOh, and what woman might that be?”
    â€œShe who trapped my soul in a globe of crystal,” the blue gentleman replied.
    Of course, Slaggingham remembered—hadn’t Gwendolyn mentioned bringing in an unusualspecimen? She was certainly right about that.
    â€œGild my lily, but you’d pack them in at the circus. Who were you? And why would the likes of you choose to go slumming in London town?” Slaggingham peered at the creature, having a new and terrible thought. “Are you one of the Hunter brat’s creatures?” he rasped.
    â€œI was Auberon, High King of Faerie. I fled my realm to escape a longing more insistent than my soul could bear. I was no one’s creature until your servant took my soul.”
    â€œSo you were a king, eh?” Slaggingham stroked his stubbly chin. “I can’t say I ever had the pleasure of enslaving an actual monarch before. Happy, were you?”
    â€œIf my soul had known happiness in Faerie, do you suppose it would have driven me here?”
    â€œBut you must have been happy, you infernal lumpet,” Slaggingham snapped. “You were a bloody king! Lived in a palace, I reckon.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHad your scurvy breakfast served up on a silver tray.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut you weren’t happy.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMy, what a sad story. Snap my grommets, if it hasn’t got me feeling something close to sorryfor you.” Slaggingham shook his head. “Well, Brother Hornhead, since your previous life was such a prime sink of misery I offer you this: When my merchandise has spoiled the lives of a few more surface dwellers, and my Extractor soaks up enough of their lost happiness to commence distillation and bottling, I’ll give you your own pint of happiness to wash the gloom from your guts. What do you say to that, Brother Hornhead?”
    â€œWhen will you give me back my soul?”
    Slaggingham waggled a finger at Auberon. “Tut-tut. Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Ah, I best be getting back to my rounds.”
    Slaggingham continued on. There were so many machines to inspect! He strolled along a catwalk to the controls of one of the machines. He held his lantern up to read the dials.
    â€œThis reading can’t be right,” he sputtered. “The extractive terminals have been operational now for months. And the surface dwellers have never been so miserable, so we should be swilling in gallons of spare happiness by now. I should be swimming in the stuff.”
    He paced the catwalk trying to piece together why the machine was not functioning as it should. “Perhaps I’ve made the reservoir’s sensor float too heavy,” he muttered. He felt his artificial heart beating triple time, which he knew was not goodfor it, might spring a sprocket or two. Self-doubt, the most diabolical sort of emotion, threatened him at every turn. Whenever he suspected he had gone awry in his thinking, worried that perhaps he was not the genius he had always imagined himself to be, he forced the troublesome thoughts aside as best he could. Such ideas were deadly dangerous.
    He concentrated on the problem at hand and peered into the bowels of the crotchety machine. “Ah! That’s the answer. I knew I was taking a