The Live-Forever Machine

by Kenneth Oppel

  His thumb had left a small smudge on the edge of the panel. He carefully brushed it away and then looked at his hands. Even after taking a shower, he still had soot on his fingertips. He hadn’t seen Chris so angry since the furnace adventure. When they had climbed out of the manhole, Chris’s blond hair had been darkened by the thick cloud of smoke, his face streaked with grime. He had vowed right there never to listen to any more of Eric’s crazy skinny-geek ideas again. But Eric wasn’t worried: he’d heard it all before. Chris always came around.

  An advertising blimp droning past overhead made the house vibrate. Eric’s eyes were drawn back to the locket. She was beautiful. He didn’t want to give it back. But he knew he had to. He could always leave it where Alexander had dropped it in the armoury. No. If he did that, he’d never find out anything about her. He’d find Alexander, call him up at the museum. He could just say he’d happened across the locket while going through the armoury—he wouldn’t even have to mention the fight or the man in black. Eric juggled the idea around in his head for a few minutes. All he’d say was that he’d found it lying there. He’d seen the worker in the display earlier, taking away a sword and shield, and assumed it was his. The story wasn’t watertight, but it would probably give him the chance to ask some questions.

  He pushed his chair back and stretched his arms over his head with a groan. His eyes roved restlessly over the paper models on his dresser top—the Roman baths, the Parthenon, the Globe Theatre—and then settled on a small collection of lead soldiers that his father had given him years ago. Some were crouched low, taking aim with their old-fashioned rifles; others were running, sabres raised.

  Why don’t you just give it to me?

  The sentence slithered through his mind without warning. Eric could suddenly see the man in black, pushing against the life-sized medieval soldier, a sneer twisting the corner of his mouth. He felt the pressure of gravel against his hands, the ache in his bent knees. His nostrils wrinkled with the smell of oil and machinery. Then it was over, like a short loop of film played through a projector.

  Eric shook his head. It was too weird. He dragged a piece of paper from his desk drawer, made two columns, one for Alexander and one for the guy in black, and started listing everything he knew. The guy in black was after something, but what? He was young, and he’d changed his name—Eric remembered that now: he’d said he had a brand new one. And he was obviously a jerk because he’d wrecked the soldier statue. That was about it. As for Alexander, it was pretty clear he worked at the museum. He was old, had a strange-sounding voice and a bad cough, and could speak in a foreign language. And he carried a five-hundred-year-old locket around with him. But how strange was that, really? Maybe he was just taking it to be cleaned.

  He read over the list a couple of times and then crumpled it up with a derisive snort. He hardly knew a thing. Certainly nothing that was going to tell him what they were fighting over. Whatever it was, he thought, it had to be pretty important.

  He hauled himself out of his chair and went downstairs to get a drink. The television had switched itself on again, and he watched as a wrecking ball swung into the side of an old building down by the docks. The building’s stone face crumpled away. Bits of tall columns tumbled to the ground in a swirl of rubble and dust. Eric could make out half of a broken arch in the ruin. A Split Second News reporter appeared and began talking about the new office complex that would fill the space. Dad was going to have a fit.

  Eric turned the TV off. It immediately turned itself back on. Eric unplugged it and walked to the window. The roads sweated tar. Buildings seemed to tremble on their foundations. On the museum steps, a man in underpants stood beside a small portable refrigerator, loudly auctioning off packets of ice cubes.

  Time for another cold shower.

  His father’s face was pale and drawn. “Breakdown on the line this afternoon,” he said almost apologetically, as if wanting to explain away his haggard appearance.

  “What happened?” Eric asked him.

  Mr. Sheppard shrugged. “No one knows exactly. The electricity got cut off somehow, just before the museum station. There was a shower of blue sparks, and the train slid to a dead stop.”

  “For how long?”

  “Two hours or so.”

  “Get any writing done?”

  “We were in total darkness the whole time.” He was looking past Eric, through the walls, out across the city. “What did you do today?”

  “Nothing.”

  There was no point. Eric had seen his father wrapped up in himself like this lots of times. And he’d seen this one coming. Yesterday, after that news spot on the fire at the rare-book library and all through dinner, he’d barely said a word. Then he had gone back to his typewriter but had only written a sentence or two. And in the middle of the night, Eric had been woken by the creaking of floorboards—the sound of pacing. He could see light coming under his father’s door from the hallway. For a few terrifying moments, he had thought he could hear quiet crying, but it had turned out to be a vagrant cat prowling the hot night streets.

  “Nothing at all,” Eric said again, anger stealing into his voice. He wasn’t even going to try to tell his father about the open manhole or about how deep the city was, and what was down there. Dad would just sit there, nodding mechanically, lost in his own thoughts.

  Eric heaved himself out of the armchair and headed towards the stairs. He felt as if he were suffocating in the living room. He was sick of it. Always thinking of her. Or writing about her. She was dead, had been for thirteen years! If his father only thought about him as much as he did her—half as much, a fraction as much! Dad wouldn’t even talk about her.

  “The Mona Lisa!” his father called out before he’d reached the stairs.

  “Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Painted in what year?”

  “1503.”

  “Eruption of Mount Vesuvius.”

  “79 A.D.”

  “Good. War of the Roses.”

  “1450.”

  “Between what two families?” There was hardly any enthusiasm in his voice.

  “York and Lancaster.”

  “Right. Columbus’s discovery of America.”

  “Dad—”

  “You know this one!”

  “Why do you hide the pictures of her?” He thought of the wooden locket upstairs in his drawer, wrapped up in an old washcloth.

  “What?” His father looked shaken.

  “Photos of her—” He searched for a better word; they talked about her so rarely. “Her.”

  “Well,” his father began hesitantly, but then trailed off, like a voice at the end of a long-distance phone line, dissolving in static.

  “Why haven’t you ever shown me?” Eric pressed on, insistent. “There are pictures.” He remembered once, several years ago, he’d walked into his father’s room to find him slowly turning the pages of a large book. Looking up, startled, his father had quickly closed it, and Eric had automatically thought he had done something wrong. But even then, instinctively, he had thought, It was her. He had never seen the thick volume again, and his father had never mentioned it.

  “Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”

  All of a sudden. That was a laugh. All Eric had to do was look at his father and see that spark of sadness in his eyes to know he was thinking about her. So why did he get to keep her all to himself? Eric had only the woman in the stories: elusive, fiercely loving, fiercely indifferent, very stubborn, very strong. He immediately thought again of the portrait of Gabriella della Signatura.

  “I’m curious about her,” he told his father. “That’s normal, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” his father said. “Perfectly normal.”

  There was a bitterness in his voice that Eric hadn’t heard before. Suddenly it was as if he didn’t know the tall, bony man sitting rigidly on the sofa, his fingers pulling gently at the tweed upholstery. Eric stood in the doorway, afraid to say anything.

  “T
here are some pictures,” his father said, with a forced-looking smile. “But not now, all right? I don’t know where they are, and I’m very tired. I’ll show them to you later, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  He looked away from his father’s tired face and headed upstairs.

  “I don’t know his last name,” Eric said into the phone.

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. “No,” said the museum switchboard operator. “We don’t have anyone here with that name, first or last.”

  “Are you sure?” Eric asked. “Alexander. I’m sure he works there.”

  “I’m sorry.” The voice sounded Impatient now. “It’s not on my list. There is no one here by that name.”

  The shadows of twilight were just beginning to stretch across the city when Eric stepped out onto the street. The heat wrapped itself around him like a damp wool cloak. But he needed to get out, get away from his father’s brooding silence and fake smiles.

  Across the road, the museum shone in the bright wash of its floodlights. Why wasn’t Alexander on the switchboard list? Eric hadn’t gotten the name wrong; he was sure of that. The man in black had definitely called the silver-haired man Alexander. And Alexander obviously worked there: the coveralls, the careful way he had picked up the toppled sword and shield, his final disappearance through a hidden door at the back of the display. So why wasn’t he listed in the directory?

  Eric crossed the street and turned down Astrologer’s Walk. Up ahead, he could see green light from the hologram billboard sweeping across the walk and the museum wall.

  If he couldn’t call Alexander, the best he could do was go back to the museum in the morning and wait around in the hopes of seeing him again. Or he could try to find that door. It probably led to the back of the museum, to the storerooms and workshops. He looked up at the high arched windows that faced onto Astrologer’s Walk. Back there, behind the clouded glass.

  “Clank, clank, clank yourself!”

  Eric started in surprise and looked into the shadows against the museum wall. A man in tattered clothing stood holding a fishing rod, yelling down into a storm drain grate. Eric had seen him before, lots of times. Jonah—that was the name Eric and his father had given him. He was always surrounded by garbage bags bulging with newspaper, and talking to himself. In the summer he fished through the storm drain grates behind the museum, lowering his line deep into the city and, if what Eric had heard from his father was true, occasionally reeling in a catch. Eric had never seen him so agitated.

  “Dry as a whale’s skeleton in a desert!” Jonah blustered, throwing his fishing rod to the ground. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Fire and brimstone. You! Come here.”

  Jonah was talking directly to Eric now, motioning to him urgently. He held back. Jonah was crazy, like all the other people who lived on the streets, shouting on corners, huddling in alcoves. But he looked harmless enough. And he was waving so insistently that Eric found himself stepping slowly closer.

  He stopped a few feet away. He’d never been close enough to see how worn down Jonah was. His face was stubbled and sun-cured like leather. He seemed to be wearing fragments of several different shirts, wrinkled and layered with dirt, and a baggy pair of grey trousers with pockets all up and down the legs. He gave off a strong smell, too: sweat and mildew and something chemical. Like rug cleaner, Eric thought, and his nostrils contracted involuntarily in revulsion.

  “No more,” Jonah was muttering urgently, ducking his head. “Gone, all of them. No more water.” He stabbed his finger down at the castiron grate.

  “You haven’t caught any fish lately?” Eric asked, glancing at the fishing rod and tangle of line.

  Then Jonah looked him straight in the face, and Eric saw his eyes for the first time. They were startlingly clear, gleaming brightly in his crumpled face.

  “Fire and brimstone!” Jonah shouted, and before Eric had time to step back or raise his arm, Jonah had lunged forward and seized his bony shoulders.

  “Hey,” Eric began. “What—?” He tried to wrench himself free, but Jonah’s grip was too strong; his fingers levered into Eric’s skin like claws.

  “Down, underneath, down there, down,” Jonah yelled, spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth. “Smoke and hot air, clank, clank, clank. Fire and brimstone.”

  “Right, yeah,” Eric said. The few people on the path hurried by with their heads turned in the other direction. Great, that was just great; he could be getting a knife put through him and everyone would just pretend they didn’t see anything. What a city.

  “No, listen,” Jonah said, and his voice was now softer and slower. His eyes were clear and deep. “Fire and brimstone. You tell them inside—” He nodded up at the museum wall. “Tell them, yes?”

  “All right,” Eric stammered, nodding. “All right; yes.” He’d promise anything if Jonah would just let go.

  Jonah released his grip and turned to his plastic garbage bags. “Away all the fish, no more,” he mumbled to himself as if Eric weren’t there, had never been there.

  Eric looked back over his shoulder as he walked away. Crazy idiot. Except that …

  Clank, clank, clank. That was the noise he and Chris had heard from the underground platform. So Jonah had heard it, too. But the rest was just junk—sounded like the guy who stood on the street corner preaching about the wrath of God. Just crazy words that didn’t make any sense.

  “Fire and brimstone,” he muttered. The words rang through his head.

  5

  Alexander

  Someone was watching him.

  Eric paused in the entrance hallway of the museum and looked around. Just a few other visitors, the usual knot of people heading for the gift shop. Nerves, he told himself. There was no one watching him. He shivered in the air-conditioned cool. It was either too hot or too cold. There was no in-between these days.

  But it happened again. As he climbed the swirling stairs, he could feel eyes boring into the top of his skull, and when he looked quickly up, he was sure he saw someone moving back from the railing on the level above him. And a few minutes later, as he walked through the Chinese tomb, he thought he saw something shift at the back of the display.

  Stop, he told himself. You’re freaking yourself out.

  He did a quick tour of the museum, watching for Alexander, and by the time he reached the medieval gallery, his hands were numb with cold, and a muscle in his thin chest was stuttering like a telegraph signal. He pushed his right hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers gently around the locket, feeling its bevelled corners through the washcloth.

  A few visitors passed through the armoury, including one man who panned a video camera rapidly from side to side as he strolled down the corridor without stopping.

  Eric walked slowly through the darkened gallery. The stillness of the displays unnerved him, the soldiers and horses frozen in mid-action, as if they might suddenly jolt to life and finally finish swinging their swords, raising their shields, spurring their horses. A hundred pairs of eyes. The skin on his forearms crawled.

  There was no sign of Alexander. What are my chances of finding him like this anyway, Eric wondered. Very slight. He tried to rub away the goose bumps on his right arm. He grimaced, wishing he could get some meat on his bones. He leaned against the railing and gazed into the display. The toppled soldier had been removed, leaving only the imprint of boots on the gravel. Eric looked deeper back, into the shadows.

  The door blended in so well with the painted backdrop that he never would have noticed it if it hadn’t been left slightly ajar. A vertical sliver of light from the opening gave it away. He looked at it for a long time, chewing thoughtfully on his lower lip. His fingers drummed softly against the locket.

  He walked to the far end of the gallery to give himself time to think. It wouldn’t hurt to have a look. His chances of finding Alexander back there would be better than if he were to wait in the galleries all day. And if he got caught he could always plead ig
norance. He turned and started back.

  He was alone. He swung his legs over the railing and scuttled through the petrified army. The soldiers followed him with their dead eyes. He reached the sliver of light in the dark wall, wedged his fingers into the gap and pulled the door open just far enough for his slim body to slip through.

  A long corridor, illuminated by fluorescent lights, stretched out ahead of him. His heart and breathing slowed. Turning around to face the huge door, he saw that it was marked: West Armoury. He must be in one of the service corridors that ran behind the displays and into the back of the museum.

  He started walking, going over what he would say to Alexander. Found the locket. Saw you disappearing through the door. Assumed it was yours. Came to give it back. Fine. And then he’d try to work in some questions about the locket, and about Gabriella della Signatura.

  The passageway branched in three directions, and Eric picked one at random. He could hear the distant sounds of voices, and the low rumble of wheels under a heavy load. But it was impossible to tell where they were coming from. He passed more and more junctions, other corridors and stairs, some going up, others down. Rat’s maze, he thought.

  It suddenly occurred to him how absurd all this was. Did he really expect to find Alexander back here? He could wander for hours, and then probably just get caught by some other worker. Just to find out about some woman in an old locket. Crazy. Alexander probably didn’t know anything about her anyway.

  He was about to turn back when the sound of footsteps sent an icy contraction through his stomach. He had reached a large intersection of passages and stairs. He paused, holding his breath so he could listen better. The footsteps seemed to be coming from behind him, then up ahead, then to his left … getting louder.

  Well, he thought, his mouth suddenly dry, this is it.

  “ ‘I saw Eternity the other night / Like a great ring of pure and endless light, / All calm, as it was bright …’ “

  The words seemed to well up from the air around Eric, from the tiled floor, the brick walls.