Daedalus Krane and the Hand of God

Chapter 1

'It is that we take to be most commonplace that once lost we yearn for most.'  

Qusay  

Doctor Daedalus Krane bent his head down and studied the black granite box, his intense blue eyes magnified wide behind the lenses of his wire rimmed glasses. Carefully lifting it up he tenderly held it for a moment in his powerful hands while his fingers searched the surface for any imperfections. Finding none he gently returned it to it pedestal. With his index finger he gently pushed down on the blood red glass tiger's paw that sat on the top of its highly polished surface. With a click the paw dropped slowly out of view into the top of the box.  

Fishing a marble from his pocket Krane folded his muscular arms over one another, dropped his stubbly chin onto his hands and watched.  

From within the recess bright amber eyes flashed. Then warily a face appeared its ears guardedly flattened back on its wide striped head. Slowly, cautiously the tiger emerged, skin flashing with intricately machined layers of silver and gold, its clockwork tail flicking erratically to and fro. Keeping its body close to the surface of the box like a hunted animal it twisted its flat metal head to meet Krane's gaze. Watching Krane it stealthily slid off the box its steel claws clicking gently on the metal surface, and advanced to face him.  

For a moment they stared into each other eyes, the golden tiger's nose almost touching Krane's. Krane could barely discern the whirring of the innumerable of cogs and gears that drove this fabulous device. A device that had cost him hundreds of hours hunched over his worktop from the first light of dawn into late nights in his worktop lit by the erratic sparking of the electric lights on board the Helios.  

Gently Krane released the iridescent glass ball hidden in his hand sending it spinning erratically across the table. The tiger flipped around and reared up, claws flailing and trapped the ball under its paw. Slowly it grasped the sphere in its teeth, picked it off the table climbed back onto the box. Giving Krane one last stare it reversed its body back into the hole from where it had appeared. With a subtlest of clicks the tigers paw returned to the top of the box sealing its secrets within.  

Krane released his breath with a blast that misted the black granite box. It was his most spectacular automation ever, an Indian Bengal tiger. A gift fit for a Maharajah, which, as it happens was who it was intended for.  

Daedalus stretched his aching back and removed his glasses to pinch his nose. Rubbing his tired eyes he slowly gathered the tools spread across his workbench carefully returning them to their jeweller's pouch. He stood and picked his way across his workshop, occasional ducking his head around the vast array of bronze astrolabes, orrerys and cast iron armillaries that hung like huge clots of streaming ivy from the wooden racks strung across the ceiling. He returned the pouch to the drawer of one of the six substantial tool cabinets that lined the curved walls.  

Whistling absentmindedly to himself he pulled a battered leather apron over his head and slipped on his brazing gloves. Picking up his tongs he approached the conical furnace that occupied the centre of the workshop. Pumping briskly on the bellows he bought the coals from a fiery red to an intense whiteness, until they crackled and growled in complaint in the oxygen rich air. Carefully he slipped in two ingots of silver into a crucible, checked the glowing contents of the furnace before giving two short bursts on the bellows. Satisfied he stood back and mopped his broad brow with a cotton cloth.  

Walking quickly over to the portside window he pushed it open and thrust his head out.  

Squinting at the sudden brightness he instinctively raised his hand to shade his face. Flecks of white hot sand carried by the sirocco wind stung his sunburnt cheeks, his long hair whipped and flailed around his face like a nest of angry vipers. A pallid disc of molten platinum hung heavily over the city leaching the sky white, the mid day sun scorching New Delhi's suburbs under its blistering heat. A hundred feet below the myriad of sun bleached ragged awnings that made up a giant patchwork of colours that shaded the low roofs of the city lazily flapped in the sweltering breeze. In the narrow streets he could pick out the tormented shape of a cow on its side, legs sticking out in grotesque angles, its body horribly bloated by its own gasses.