The Live-Forever Machine

by Kenneth Oppel

  Eric was used to his father’s attacks on the city. His own thoughts were drifting back to the two men whispering in the medieval gallery. In a split second of total recall, he saw their dark shapes grappling, and the locket tumbling from Alexander’s pocket. Gabriella della Signatura, he thought, what am I going to do with you?

  3

  Deep as the City

  Chris scratched his short-cropped blond hair. “You know, when I first met you, I thought you were just another skinny geek—no offence, right?—but you do these crazy things. It’s really more than five hundred years old?”

  “I didn’t know until I got home. I just pushed it right into my pocket. It could have been anything.” Skinny geek. Great.

  Chris shook his head in amazement. “You going to take it back?”

  “I have to, don’t I?” He had to force out the words. He’d spent a humid, restless night debating with himself. Returning it was the only right thing to do. But something about the locket—something about the woman’s face—made him want to hide it away, to keep it for himself. He’d told Chris only because he was sure that, unlike his father, Chris wouldn’t want to see it.

  “You’re not making this up, right?”

  Eric shook his head and sighed. How many times did he have to go through this? “Chris, I saw it. They were fighting in the display, and the locket fell from the tall guy’s pocket.”

  “You sometimes make things up, is why I’m asking. You tell me crazy things and I believe you and then I feel stupid.”

  “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

  “Well, it’s utterly weird. But I’ve heard weirder things lately. Did you watch the news this morning?”

  “About the two guys who hijacked the window-washing platform and took it up to the thirtieth floor?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s the heat. It’s making everyone utterly crazy.”

  They were strolling down Astrologer’s Walk, a wide, tree-shaded lane that ran behind the museum. Eric looked up at the tall arched windows of clouded glass set into the blackened brick. On the other side of the path rose the gleaming shell of the new mall. It was nearly finished construction, a smooth veneer of steel and mirrored chrome supported by massive metallic buttresses and ventilation pipes. Work crews on scaffolding were fitting plates of glass onto the top level. The roar of winch motors and heavy machinery battered Eric’s ears.

  “Hey, that’s a great rip,” Chris said, nodding at Eric’s jeans.

  “My knee went through,” Eric told him a little impatiently.

  “Oh.” Chris looked down at his own pair of designer jeans, which had a long slash above each knee and a second set of rips at mid-thigh. “Mine came this way. They make you pay for it, too, believe me. Costs a friggin’ fortune.”

  “You buy them,” Eric pointed out.

  “Peer pressure,” Chris countered. “Utterly beyond my control.”

  “Like the nose ring.”

  “You got it.” He touched the metal stud in his nostril.

  “What if driving a nail into your head comes into fashion?”

  Skinny geek. That rankled him. Well, it was true enough. He glanced enviously over at Chris. He wasn’t much taller than Eric, but he was a lot bigger, with broad shoulders and a filled-out chest. And Chris’s jeans were solid-looking, the fabric falling in smooth, straight lines, unlike the baggy husks of his own pant legs. Chicken legs. Like father like son. He hated it. At least he didn’t wear glasses. That would have been the final humiliation.

  “So what did you want to show me?” he asked. Chris had called him early that morning, insisting that there was something he had to see at the new mall.

  “Even you, techno-serf, will like this. It’s utterly cool.” He led Eric farther down the path and then pointed up at the steel wall of the shopping centre. “Take a look. They just installed it.”

  It was hard to miss, a huge cube of black glass the size of a house. Within its transparent walls swirled giant CD players and microwave ovens, refrigerators and televisions, watches and leather shoes, clothing with designer logos.

  “Hologram billboard,” Chris said. “And guess who suggested it?” He jabbed his thumb towards his chest. “I told Mom it would be great, and they actually did it! Utterly three-dimensional. Not bad, huh?”

  “Very catchy,” Eric said. Looking at it made him dizzy.

  “You hate it, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t hate it!”

  “You hate it; I can tell. You hate everything that runs off electricity. Techno-serf.”

  The glass-and-steel edifice seemed to quiver slightly and shift in the heat. A hot breeze stirred the sweat on Eric’s forehead.

  “I’m not a techno-serf.”

  “Right. You had trouble turning the school computer on.”

  “I’d never used one before,” Eric protested.

  “Utterly frightening.”

  “Why do you keep saying that word?” Eric exploded. “ ‘Utterly.’ What is that, the adverb of the week?”

  “Perhaps there’s a better word you can teach me,” said Chris, rolling his eyes.

  “Yeah. ‘Dictionary.’ You are driving m utterly crazy!” He scrubbed the sweat out of his eyes with his fists.

  “Pain in the ass,” Chris muttered.

  “No,” Eric shot back. “What’s a pain in the ass is being dragged out in thirty-five-degrees to look at some mall that looks like a building turned inside out!”

  “If they added some Greek columns, would you be happy?” Chris said sarcastically.

  “No. It’d still be ugly. It’s a big metal cage. Why doesn’t anyone think of anything original?”

  “Designed by a world-famous architect, in case you’re interested.”

  “How sad.”

  “Forget it, just forget it,” Chris fumed. “Go back to the encyclopedia or whatever it is you’re reading these days. All you ever do is read.”

  Eric looked away guiltily. Chris was right. In his spare periods at school, when most people went to smoke behind the gym or took off to the store, he sat in the library, going through the history books. His favourites were the ones with the illustrated time lines that charted important inventions and wars. Those were the best for memorizing dates. And there was something safe about dates. They didn’t change. Easier to understand than people anyway—his father, his mother.

  He glanced over at Chris, who still looked angry. Eric wasn’t worried. They argued all the time. They enjoyed it in a way. They argued about anything: the quality of TV programming, a film they had just seen, the importance of computers, the importance of books, skyscrapers, noise pollution, rock videos, sometimes the weather, and once, for almost an hour, about whose watch was more accurate, Eric’s analog or Chris’s digital.

  Eric sometimes wondered why they were friends. At school, Chris was popular and usually hung around with the other guys on the soccer and basketball teams. Eric didn’t know them. He might be a skinny geek, but they were all mentally impaired; they could barely write simple sentences. He’d rather stick it out alone. The only reason he had gotten to know Chris at all was that they were next-door neighbours—if you could call someone who lived fifty-six floors up a next-door neighbour. They took the subway to school together. Chris sometimes helped him with computer science. He sometimes helped Chris with history. That was about it. But this summer, they had been hanging out together a lot more, just because there was no one else around. It was convenient, and Chris was lazy when it came to anything other than sports. An elevator ride down to the ground floor was about all he could manage. So as the summer stretched on, Chris had been spending more time at their place, even though they had a tin-can television and no air-conditioning. He’d look around the house, like a dog sniffing out new territory. He’d look through the bookshelves, squint at the faded prints on the wall, settle into the dilapidated armchairs. And now, Eric was bothered when he thought that Chris’s friendship might be just on loan for the summer. What would happen wh
en school started up again? Goodbye, Chris? Probably.

  “You think your father’s really read all those books in your house?” Chris asked suddenly.

  Eric nodded, grateful that the stand-off was over. “I think so.”

  “Pretty amazing.”

  “He reads most of them in his spare time while he’s working on the subway. He never went to university or anything, so he’s had to do it all himself. He just reads everything.”

  “Wow. Your dad’s kind of weird. I mean, I like him and he seems like a nice guy, but he’s just kind of weird.”

  Eric laughed awkwardly. He was used to people saying things like that about his father. But it still irked him, and made him feel as if he had to convince people that his father was perfectly normal. He was tired of defending him. Maybe they were right, after all—maybe his dad was weird.

  “I’ve seen him a couple of times, writing on the subway,” Chris said. “You can see all these sheets of paper in his little compartment. He must be really into it.”

  “He is,” Eric said with a snort. “Believe me. He spends practically all his time writing lately.”

  Chris shook his head. “You know, I don’t think he likes me very much.”

  “Sure he does.” Eric knew he sounded fake.

  “Nope. He thinks I’m utterly a moron. I can tell.”

  “He doesn’t think you’re a moron.” It made Eric angry that his father hardly ever talked to Chris.

  “He thinks I’m illiterate.”

  “Don’t worry about it. He thinks I’m illiterate, too.”

  After a while Chris said, “You think he’ll ever get married again?”

  “Doubt it,” Eric replied.

  “Don’t see why not, though. Some of my Mom’s friends, they’ve been married four or five times, and they’re not even that old, a lot of them.” He laughed. “He could marry Mom!”

  Chris’s mother made a lot of money and was usually away on business. She was a tall, forceful-looking woman with a deep, year-round tan. She said enthusiastic things like “Fantastic idea, a great thought, why don’t we follow up on that?” and “It’s a go-ahead from me.” But she always looked rather preoccupied and restless when she was with Chris, as if she were still mentally working out the details of her latest real-estate project.

  “Somehow, I don’t think they’d work as a couple,” Eric said with a grin, but he felt his smile contract fast. It would never work for his father, he thought, not with anyone. It wasn’t normal, was it?

  “How’s your dad?” Eric asked, to change the subject.

  “All right, I guess. He sent me this new software package from his shop. New graphics program. It’s pretty good. Mom still hates it when he sends stuff to me. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell.” He paused and then said, almost grudgingly, “Aw, Mom’s okay, I guess.”

  Eric remembered Chris saying once that the only reason his father didn’t get custody was that he sometimes hit the bottle a bit too hard—and Chris’s mom made a lot more money. Eric knew that Chris would rather be living with his father. What would it be like to have two parents fighting over who got to keep you, fighting over who could love you better?

  They’d nearly reached the end of Astrologer’s Walk. Part of the path had been dug up by bulldozers and was strewn with blocks of concrete and metal girders. Eric paused at the edge of an open manhole and looked down.

  “Deep as the city.”

  “What does that mean?” Chris wanted to know.

  “Something my Dad always says. He says the city’s as deep as it is high, but hardly anyone knows it.”

  “That’s a long way down.”

  “He went down there once to explore, I think.”

  At the bottom of the concrete shaft, Eric could see several cylindrical tanks connected by rusted, pencil-thin pipes bristling with gauges and valves. Clamped to the wall of the tunnel were thicker, jointed pipes, and a metal duct that had been cut open, exposing a tangle of electrical cables.

  “No,” Chris said. “Forget it. No way.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to have a look.” Eric pointed at the metal ladder that ran down the manhole. “It’s not really that deep, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, listen, I still haven’t recovered from your last crazy little adventure.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “All because you were reading about the Roman baths or something.”

  “Ancient heating systems. I got a great mark on the project.”

  “All I remember is getting lost in the school steam tunnels and missing the next two periods.”

  “The furnace was deeper than I thought, that’s all. But we found it.”

  “We got detentions.”

  “It was an educational opportunity not to be missed.”

  “It’s too hot for this, Eric. Let’s go back to my place. It’s cool there. I’ll show you the new graphics program.”

  “One very quick look. Come on, I looked at your hologram billboard.”

  “We’ll play computer games. We’ll shop on the Internet. We’ll put tin foil in the microwave and make lightning. You got off on that last time.”

  “That was kind of fun. We’ll do that after.”

  “I’m claustrophobic.”

  “You are not claustrophobic. You know, for a superjock, you’re not very adventurous. C’mon, you can flex your biceps on the way down the ladder. Aren’t you even curious?”

  “Well, no. It’s just the stuff that makes the city work. No big deal. Pipes and wires and cables and drains. Stuff like that, right?”

  “I’ve always wanted to see. You coming?” He lowered himself down the ladder. A faint hiss, like the sound of someone wheezing, filled the tunnel. Wisps of steam curled out from the valves of one of the cylindrical tanks. The stale air, close with heat and moisture, had a pungent edge to it.

  “What’s the smell?” Chris asked, stepping down beside him.

  “Oh, ye of the electric oven,” Eric chided him. “It’s just gas. Our stove at home smells the same when the element doesn’t light right away.” He tapped against one of the pipes with his knuckles. “From these, I guess.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Completely nontoxic.”

  Chris stood with his hands in his pockets, nodding his head in mock appreciation. “Okay,” he said. “Well, this has been great, Eric, a real treat. Thank you.”

  “Hang on,” Eric said. He looked along the rectangular tunnel. It stretched out in two directions, lit by electric lamps hooked onto the wall. “I just want to see how far it goes.”

  “What do you mean, how far it goes? It probably goes halfway out to the suburbs!”

  “Come on, I promise you’ll be back in time for the sitcoms.”

  “I don’t know why I let you drag me into this crap. There’re probably construction workers down here. We’re going to get into trouble. This is utterly stupid.”

  Eric wasn’t listening. He was too busy taking everything in. Bundles of frayed electrical cables hung from the ceiling like jungle vines; condensation dripped from the rust-stained couplings of sagging pipes; the needles of large round meters clicked noisily from side to side, as if monitoring a huge heartbeat.

  The tunnel suddenly opened out onto a metal platform, like one of those old-fashioned fire escapes on the outsides of buildings. Eric squinted into the pitch darkness. He couldn’t see a thing. But suddenly, a feeling of vertigo hit him in the pit of his stomach. He looked down at the darkness seeping through the metal chinks in the grilled floor.

  They were standing over an immense chasm. From somewhere in the distance came the muffled roar of a passing subway train. A hot breeze moved against Eric’s face.

  “I think Dad was right,” he said to Chris, and his words seemed to dissolve in the air the moment they left his mouth. He moved cautiously to the railing and peered down.

  “Can you see anything?” Chris asked.

  “No, but it feels as if it goes on forever.”

>   “All I can see are different shades of black,” Chris remarked.

  A drawn-out mechanical groan drifted up to them from the darkness.

  “Is that the subway again?” Chris said.

  “I don’t—”

  Hundreds of metres below, they saw a small, but intense spark of light. And the sound rose again. No, it couldn’t be the subway. Eric knew that sound perfectly, the clattering rush getting louder, then fading away as the train passed by. This was a slow, heavy clanking that filled the air with a hum, like the throbbing of insects. Eric felt it through his teeth and stomach, through the metal platform beneath his feet.

  Another spark. The hum deepened. Eric felt the first bat-wing stirrings of panic moving through his body. He watched his hands on the metal railing trembling with the vibration. A rivulet of sweat slithered jaggedly down his cheek. There was something terrifying about that noise. What was it coming from?

  For a split second, his nose tingled with the sting of sulphur, and then, without any warning, a billowing cloud of dense, dark smoke boiled up from the blackness and washed over them. Eric recoiled, coughing, his face and eyes burning with soot.

  “What’s down there?” Chris gasped, covering his face with his hands.

  They stumbled back towards the tunnel. The only thought circling through Eric’s mind, like some nursery-school refrain, was that the city was burning, burning, burning, the city was burning.

  4

  Breakdown on the Line

  Tomorrow would be soon enough. He’d take it back tomorrow.

  Eric held the locket closer to his desk lamp. He’d been studying the woman’s portrait for the past hour. He could guess from her name that she was Italian, and the date was clear, but he wanted to know more—how old she was, how she lived back then, what her family was like, whether she was kind or cruel, how that incredible mane of hair smelled, warmed by the sunlight. And he wanted to know whom or what she was glaring at beyond the picture frame. What made her eyes shine like that?