I had finished my course of study and was in the last days of my internship at St. Bart's, yet remained uncertain about my prospects. Ours was a good family, but money had run out a generation ago, the which consideration prevented me from setting up in medical practice. A coach and pair costs money, and so too does an office on Harley Street.

 

My alternatives failed one by one, to my great chagrin. My sole remaining choice seemed to be a surgeon's commission in my father's old regiment. Being a peaceable fellow, that was a career I did not relish. Nevertheless, I had nearly resigned myself to it when to my surprise a note arrived from a favorite cousin:

 

Dear Peter,

I've recently made the acquaintance of R. Andrew Cesalpin, Doctor Mirabilis, who's in search of an advanced student worthy of his time. Immediately I thought of you. Hoping this finds you well...

 

Two weeks later, I arrived at Cesalpin's manor in Dartmoor, a decaying old pile slowly settling into its ill-tended grounds. My first view of that overgrown drive filled me with dismay. Indeed, had I not just walked three miles from the station, I might have turned and left, but as things stood I was tired, hungry, and not a little curious. Besides, I had nowhere else to go.

 

No one answered my ring, but a note on the door directed me through the musty front hall to an attached greenhouse, wherein I made a most curious acquaintance: a creature fashioned all of brass! It was industriously tending the plants, which even at a glance I could see were unusual — though not half so much as their attendant. Long spindly limbs radiated from its barrelly body, atop which rested a cylindrical head with rotating lenses that served for eyes. It was altogether unearthly and quite outside my experience.

 

"You're the... the gardener?" I asked, my voice at least somewhat steady despite my shock.

 

It stopped and looked at me. "Botanical worker, automaton," it said briskly in a pleasant tenor. "Or roboti, from the Czech. One might even call me a Bot-anist, if you'll forgive the pun. You would be Peter Castle, student?"

 

I bowed stiffly. "I had hoped to be introduced to Dr. Cesalpin, but the note—"

 

"Yes, we're quite busy at the moment, alas. Perhaps tomorrow forenoon there will be time to do this properly. Pick any room in the East Wing. I'm afraid you'll have to fend for yourself. There are no servants here."

 

With such little ceremony, the brass man dismissed me and returned to his gardening. Thoroughly disconcerted, I returned to the main house.

 

I'm no stranger to rough quarters, so making up my own room was no hardship. The larder was somewhat bare, however, and I dined on hard bread with dubious cheese and execrable wine, redeemed somewhat by two of the tastiest tomatoes I've ever eaten (quite out of season, too). There was no sign of my host, and I resolved to find him in the morning and settle my status here.

 

I awoke early and set out to explore. The bedrooms were dusty and unused, and try as I might I could find no sign anyone else lived here at all. The drawing room was sadly neglected and the study positively filled with cobwebs. Someone had added a few green herbs and an onion to the supplies in the pantry, and there was dandelion tea ready for brewing. I refreshed myself, breakfasting as I walked.

 

Only the library showed signs of tenancy. Several antique herbals lay open on the great table along with a vast pile of handwritten manuscript and all sixteen volumes of De Plantis. Beneath a magnifier lay pinned a curious allium with a small white flower and jet-black root; an adjacent pad contained notes in unfamiliar hieroglyphics. A scholar did his work here, certainly; but as for where he lived—!

 

I searched the place systematically, descending to the long-forgotten cellars (where I located two promising bottles: not a complete waste of time) and then proceeding upward, penetrating even to the servant's quarters in the cramped attic. In all that space I found no sign of human habitation. Even the rats, if any, had long since decamped, presumably for want of sustenance. The brass gardener had been correct: there were no servants here, nor had been for quite some time.

 

I found myself seated on a dusty chair contemplating that statement: There are no servants here. But in that case...

 

A moment later I was running down the back stairs.

 

I burst rather suddenly into the greenhouse, where the brass mechanical was busily tending a pond of waterflowers. It looked up at me, and two shutters flashed over its lenses, a startling approximation of a human blink.

 

I bowed. "Doctor Cesalpin, I presume?"

 

It— he, I should say, emitted a low rattling noise that sounded for all the world like a chuckle. "Indeed. R. Andrew Cesalpin, at your service. R for roboti, of course; hence my pleasantry of last evening. Mind the Aglaophotis there. Would you care to see a botfly larva?"

 

I was a bit taken aback at this. "Dermatobia hominis? I'd thought they only infested mammals..."

 

The brass man chuckled again, then withdrew its limbs and spun, inverted, through the air on a jet of steam. This maneuver completed, he returned to his work.

 

It took me a moment. "Ah," I said, nodding. "A bot fly; another pun. I suppose that would make me the larva?"

 

He nodded without looking at me. "Would you not agree? Young, and as yet unformed. Are you familiar with the moly plant? Sovereign preventative for most poisons, though paradoxically not for itself. Quite dangerous for a human to harvest, but I needn't concern myself with that. You, however, had best wear gloves."

 

Thus began my long apprenticeship, from which I learned more than I ever had from all the lectures and dissections I'd endured in my entire physician's training.