Free Curiosity by Gary Blackwood

square, then move it around the board in its usual pattern. The object is to land on each of the sixty-four squares once, and only once. That may sound easy enough, but I assure you it’s not. I struggled with it for several days before I found a solution. Of course, I was only seven at the time.
    Maelzel turned back and, for the first time, spoke to me directly. “From any square on the board?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œShow me,” he said. I began clearing the big board, but he stopped me. “No, no. From in side the cabinet.”
    I shrugged. “All right.” I’d never tried a Knight’s Tour using the Turk, so I made a few false starts. But on the fourth try, I performed the feat flawlessly—and then I sat, dutifully waiting, until I got the signal to emerge.
    Maelzel was smiling with self-satisfaction, like a man who has gotten more than he bargained for in a business deal. “Who taught you to do that?”
    â€œNo one. I taught myself.”
    He turned to Jacques. “It looks as if the boy will be ready sooner than we thought.”
    â€œReady for what?” I asked.
    â€œWhy, to perform in public.”
    â€œWhere?”
    The man’s smile faded. “You ask far too many questions. Let me see your head.” As he had done at our first meeting, he clamped his fingers on my skull and examined it roughly. “Ah, yes, I see now that your organ of Causality is much larger than normal. I missed that before.”
    â€œCausality?” I said.
    â€œThe desire to know.” He probed the spot that he had identified before as the seat of Cautiousness. “Hmm. Causality and Caution. A curious combination. But I like curiosities. And I like curious people; without them, I would be out of business. Very well. You wish to know where you will be performing, and I shall show you. Come.”

T HE HUGE OUTER SHOP WAS EMPTY OF people. Ensconced in my smaller workroom, I had little sense of time, only an awareness of dark and light. Clearly it was late in the day and the workers had gone home.
    Maelzel led me through a heavy door and into another vast room that held a variety of mechanical exhibits. Scattered among them were half a dozen people. Only when we were almost on top of one did I realize that it was an automaton, so lifelike did it seem. It was a beautiful woman, sitting at a writing desk with a pen in her hand and a sheet of paper before her; on the paper, in graceful, precise handwriting, were the words, “My Dear Friend, I am able to write these lines to you thanks to the cleverness of my creator, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel.”
    â€œI never miss an opportunity to advertise,” said Maelzel.
    â€œThe automaton wrote that itself? Her self?”
    â€œOf course. She is also able to write several short poems and draw two different pictures.”
    â€œReally? That’s incredible.”
    â€œYes, it is, isn’t it? But these—” He led me to a pair of figures who stood perhaps eight or nine inches tall; they wore circus garb and were poised on a thin rope stretched between two miniature trees. “—these are my star performers. They do all the same sorts of acrobatics that a human rope dancer does. They are puppets, of course; if you look closely, you may see the silk threads that move their limbs.” The threads, which were nearly invisible, descended from the branches that arched over the dancers’ heads. “There is no human operator; it is all mechanical.” Maelzel plucked the rope, and the figures sprang an inch or two into the air. “They will not be the stars much longer. When the Turk’s resurrection is complete, he will steal the show, as he always has.”
    â€œDoes the audience believe that he runs by clockwork?”
    â€œPeople believe what they wish to believe. I do not try to convince them of anything. I merely display the machine and let them make up their own