“Well, I guess he wouldn’t be much of a guard if he was blind and deaf. How will we get past him?”
“Do not laugh.”
“No sir,” Adam said.
“We crawl under the carpets.”
Adam didn’t laugh. He pictured squirming under a rug while a locomotive ran freely up and down the halls like an excited dog. If Ferdinand stepped on them, they’d be squished into meat pies.
“We only have to go as far as the rug with the big blue medallion,” she said. “Maybe a dozen doors to the right.”
The corridor announced its arrival outside with the clicking of their lock. “Where are we going?” he whispered.
“To the stable.” She touched the doorknob lightly, deliberately, as if she were trying to slip the bait from a loaded trap.
Chapter Nine
“Take stock of your virtues. Aspire within your means. No one admires the bird who sings over the orchestra.”
- The Wifely Way by the Duchess K. A. Pell
Ferdinand could not speak, but he could whistle. Not songs. Not tunes. Just a single, toneless blat. For him, whistling was a reflex, a signal the master had built into him. The master had compared it to an egg timer, though Ferdinand didn’t know what eggs were or why they needed timing. All Ferdinand knew was that whenever he completed a task, something inside of him whistled, and he liked it.
He wished he could sing. Music was so wonderful. A song could sound surprised, no matter how many times you played it. It could be always happy or always sad.
The generous master had known somehow about Ferdinand’s fondness for music, knew that it gave him pleasure, and so, the master had installed a music player inside the great locker of Ferdinand’s chest. It played songs off copper drums full of little nubs the plucked the teeth of a steel comb. The songs echoed inside of him, throbbing along with the plumbing of his heart. Ferdinand could change the songs whenever he liked. All he had to do was open up his chest and swap out the drums. He had three songs. He loved them all. One was sad, one glad, and one was for chasing things.
Tonight he was listening to the chasing song.
It excited him. He wanted to run down the hall and back again, but he knew he shouldn’t. Running in the hall was wrong: it tore up the carpets, and shook bolts out of the elevator, and most of all, it annoyed Byron.
But the music was building inside of him like steam inside a boiler. It said, “The chase is on!” It posed the eternal question, “How fast can you run?” It sang like a chorus, “Byron isn’t here to tell you no!”
Mister Winters didn’t seem overly concerned that the walking locomotive had begun to emanate plinking, jaunty music, though it struck Adam as a bit eerie. Ferdinand stood far enough off, near the end of the hall, and though his great disc of a face was pointed in their direction, the automaton gave no sign that he had seen them.
Adam looked up the face of the canyon, papered in peeling sheets of pink, the white doors as numerous as the nooks of a curio cabinet. He tried to imagine what the Sphinx’s home had been like when it was new, vital and full of noblemen trying to impress their host. It was a difficult thing to conjure amid the tattered evidence of the present.
Before ducking under the carpet that butted against the threshold of their apartment, Mister Winters looked at him, pressed flat against the jamb. She took a deep breath, and plunged under the dusty rug that was as worn as a hound’s elbow.
He watched her lump move begin to move away. What could he do but go after her? He got on his stomach and wormed into the wrinkle she had left behind.
It only took a moment for him to feel smothered and disoriented. He tried to keep her boot heels in reach, but when he momentarily lost track of them, he made the dreadful mistake of opening his eye. Centuries of dust and grit, disturbed by their activity, blinded him. The weave of the rug above him, rough as a bull’s tongue, scratched his skin and snagged his hair. The rug beneath him reeked of abuse: stains, rot, and vermin. It was like they had crawled into an ancient burrow, inhabited by generations of badgers and foxes. He dreamed of retreat even as the fetid tunnel collapsed behind him. It no longer reminded him of an animal’s den; it reminded him of filled-in grave.
Adam wondered why Edith had begun to tap on the floor. Was she trying to get his attention? How did she expect him to reply without choking on the dust? And hadn’t she warned him about Ferdinand’s remarkable hearing? Surely a light tap would be sufficient; she didn’t have to knock upon the floor so firmly. The beat was increasing, too, becoming insistent, like a derrick pounding the earth.
He understood at last: it wasn’t Edith signaling him. Ferdinand had begun to run in the hall.
Whether they had been spotted hardly mattered. The giant was coming, and they had to get out from underfoot.
Edith threw off the rugs, the bulk falling back on Adam, hampering his escape. Seeing there wasn’t time to extract him, she stood and waved her arm like a railroad signalman and cried, “Stop! No running in the hall!”
The engine charged them like a bull, and Edith wondered, even if it wanted to, whether it could stop in time. Dust plumed amid an ecstatic shriek of joints. The rugs curled up like shavings from a pencil sharpener. Eyes squeezed so painfully tight they filled her head with fireworks, Edith threw herself over Adam and waited for the end to come.
And then waited a moment more.
A music box raised its voice amid the abrupt calm.
Looking up from Adam’s shoulder, Edith found the moon-faced giant stooped over them, its kettle chest plinking with a frantic, childish melody. Ferdinand squatted to her level, the light of his face paling enough for her to see the machinery behind the lens, the whirling, turning mind of the giant. It was a disturbing and exhilarating view.
Their dignity slowly returning, she and Adam rose under the sentinel’s scrutiny. Edith said, “Thank you, Ferdinand. Now, please back up. There’s no need to crowd us.”
The engine took a wobbling step backward, his limbs apparently unaccustomed to retreating. He placed a steadying hand on the wall, shattering the plaster beneath the rosy wallpaper.
“He listened to you,” Adam said, his face pale with dust. “Why did he listen to you?”
Raking down her dark, hackled hair Edith said, “I don’t know. Maybe he listens to anyone who barks at him.”
“All right. I’ll try it,” Adam said, straightening his chin at the looming iron figure. “Ferdinand, turn off that music!”
Ferdinand’s face glowed a little more brightly, but he was otherwise unmoved.
Adam nodded at Edith to try. She delivered the same command, and the walking locomotive opened a drawer in its chest and plucked the cylinder from the player.
“Why is that?” Adam said.
“Maybe it’s because I’m employed by the Sphinx,” she said. “It might think I’m its superior.”
“I thought we were all employees of the Sphinx now.”
“True enough, but I’m a Wakeman.”
“A what-man?”
Edith quickly explained the Wakeman’s role as enforcer of the peace— a sort of marshal who was expected to represent the Sphinx’s interests, which were generally benevolent, as were the Wakeman. Generally.
“So you’re something like a constable?”
“I don’t think it’s quite so grand as that. I’m more of a hired brute.”
“I have never met a Wakeman in my life,” Adam said.
“I’m not surprised. The Wakemen really only concern themselves with the powerful and elite. The Sphinx doesn’t give a fig about the doings of port workers and pirates,” Edith said.
“No offense,” Adam said, his voice shaking with unhappy laughter.
“None intended. I’ve been a pirate, too.”
“Are,” Adam corrected. “You are a pirate, too.”
“Well, until the Sphinx says otherwise. That’s the thing, Adam. That’s the thing I’m trying to protect you from. I don’t have any control over what happens next. H
e could put me to work in any port, any court, any position he chooses.”
“Are you saying you might leave? What about Voleta? What about the Captain? Can you imagine them without you? You’re the rudder of the ship! You can’t leave.” He sounded indignant.
Edith smiled at the compliment. “I promised to look after my crew, and I will. I hope that means keeping Voleta with me. But there are many things beyond my control, Adam, and the day may come when it’s safer for all of you to be as far away from me as possible.”
A doleful little nocturne began to play. They looked up at the colossus. Ferdinand still had his hand in his chest, hovering over the turning barrel. Though they wouldn’t have thought a locomotive was capable of looking ashamed, Ferdinand was making a pretty good show of it.
“We should go before someone calls the corridor to another floor,” Edith said, and led Adam a short distance to a rug emblazoned with a blue medallion.
Edith turned to Ferdinand, who had followed them, and said, “Thank you for escorting us. Please don’t feel like you have to stay.” When Ferdinand failed to shift, she shooed him with her hand. The giant turned awkwardly, seeming pinched by the narrowness of the hall, and sulked off while the music continued to weep inside his chest.
The thought of horses living here boggled Adam’s mind. They’d be impossible to care for and feed, especially so high above everything natural and necessary to a horse. Did the Sphinx trot his steeds up and down the elevating causeway? Did they graze upon the carpets? It seemed absurd.
Yet, when Edith opened the door, he saw hay strewn upon the plank floor of a very convincing stable. He plucked up a straw, cracked it, and inhaled the piquant aroma. A vision of the grasslands, of the plains of his youth, overwhelmed him. He smiled and showed his delight to Edith; she seemed just as charmed by it.
“How did you find this place?”
“Lee showed me.”
“Captain Lee? I’m surprised the Sphinx let him roam about.”
“It was just a little excursion. Nothing sanctioned by the master of the house.”
The main aisle was lined on either side by rows of box stalls of rough wood. Glancing left and right as they walked, Adam was disappointed to find the stalls bare and devoid of any sign of horses: there were no bridles, nor feed, nor droppings, nor the tools for removing them, and no brushes, blankets, or pails. Outside of the sprinkling of hay, the stable was an apparent sham. Which only made sense. What good was a horse here? He could hardly ride a hack up the face of the Tower. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little cheated.
Then he saw that the last stall was occupied, and by the queerest steed he had ever laid eyes on.
The mount had six legs, arranged in two rows of three, no head, and a bench affixed to its flat back. The articulated legs ended in toes that curled and split like the claw of a hammer. The steel and brass machine, apparently dead, was silted with a layer of dust.
Adam asked what it was, and Edith explained that it was a wall-walker, the last wall-walker as far as she knew, which had been built by the Sphinx ages ago for the purpose of ferrying passengers up and down the Tower. There had been thousands of them, once.
“Does it work?”
“It certainly did last time I was here.”
Edith circled the engine, stroking it and making reassuring utterances as if she were gentling a horse. The mount was broad and squat as a farm wagon, and except for a few smutty fenders, the machinery was quite unmasked. She opened a hatch at the rear of the machine and extricated a long glass cylinder, which was a little more than halfway filled with a red glowing ooze.
“Battery’s all right.” She locked the battery back in place.
“How are we going to get past the big doorman, the one who walked off with the Cloud?”
“You mean Henry? We’ll bypass the dock. There’s a whole network of service tunnels, and some of them go to the surface.”
Having circled to the passenger side of the bench, Adam saw there was something in the footwell, several somethings, in fact. He removed an empty wine bottle and a wadded up length of brightly colored silk. When he lifted it, the robe unfurled.
He gave Edith a quizzical look, and she seemed to suddenly have trouble swallowing.
“Won’t need those,” she said after a hard gulp.
“No, I guess not.” He set them on the floor beside the cart, still trying to decide what to make of this funny discovery.
She set a boot on one of the walker’s bent knees, hiked herself up onto the bench. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got to take you out, and come back before everyone wakes up.”
Adam joined her on the high-backed bench and accepted the end of the rope that she handed him. This had all begun to feel a little dreamy to him. What was one of Lee’s bathrobes doing in the footwell of the last wall-walker? Edith pointed at the other end hanging off his side. “Use a good knot,” she said. Adam knotted the ropes over their legs.
Edith straightened her posture, exposing the long-buried lessons of her horse riding days, and stamped her heel upon the floorboard. A throttle sprung up between them. In the same instant the engine rattled, seized, and then revived again.
“Try not to fall out,” she said, putting her hand to the throttle.
The ride was somewhat like a horse and somewhat like a train, though it combined the worst qualities of each: it bounced like a horse but clamored like a train. Adam gripped the dash rail. Edith looked a little insulted.
“She’s just cold,” she shouted, her voice shaking in sympathy with the vibrations.
“You’ve driven before?” The question seemed particularly relevant given the solid wall they were presently charging.
“Ridden, yes. Driven, no,” Edith said. “I have the gist.”
She pushed the throttle further, and their odd steed stamped smartly over the corner between the floor and the wall, and kept right on going.
Adam felt gravity shift to his back and was grateful for the tall bench and the knotted rope in his lap. The two sides of the stable’s roof opened before them like a gate, exposing dim runners of electric light veining a stone chimney.
The wall-walker dug its grapnels in, and began a rattling ascent.
Chapter Ten
“Outings are essential to the health of a wife’s self-esteem. How else can she learn if her things are in fashion, or if she has become the subject of gossip? As a rule, never air your linens more often than yourself.”
- The Wifely Way by the Duchess K. A. Pell
They were like ants in a nest. The shaft before them split and converged, then forked again. Red cells beamed from the heads and engines of other machines, laboring through the gloom. Sallow bulbs illuminated the irregularities of the tunnels, the pockmarks left by chiseling arms, the evidence of an ancient industry.
Adam had no sense of place, no sense of what direction the surface lay or how distant it was, and yet he felt neither confined nor confused. He felt as one floating on a river, a thing carried without effort or attention. He was a contented part of this rattling, plodding accord.
In the darker distance ahead of their rocking steed, a star appeared. The star seemed to double and divide, black filaments of space growing between each new point of light. The celestial zygote swelled and spilled into the dark. A crisp draft of air touched his face, distinguishing every pore, every hair, every crease of skin, until he could feel his expression as distinctly as if he were seeing it in a mirror, and he was smiling with exhilaration.
The wall-walker squeezed through the opening in the Tower face so abruptly, Adam felt as if he had been thrown into the night sky. Then the engine crested the rocky sill and began to climb.
Adam let out an exuberant whoop that made Mister Winters laugh.
It was such a novel view he could hardly stop himself from craning all about. He looked over the back of the bench, downward at the foreshortened face of the Tower, and out at the gaudy crescent of the Market, that great morass of aspirations, s
hining with the light of campfires, torches, and helpless vigils. Beyond that, the cosmos dazzled like a new pitch roof over the gables of the mountain range. When he could stand it no longer, Adam turned his beaming face to Edith. She looked more content than he’d seen her in weeks.
“Incredible,” he said. “We should’ve done this ages ago.”
“The strange thing about driving up a wall is that it starts to feel normal very quickly. If you just look straight ahead, it seems like we’re riding a wagon across a big, fallow field.”
“Yes, but while lying on our backs and depending on six legs.”
“As long as we keep three feet planted at all times, we never have to worry.”
“What happens if we get down to two?”
“Two is as good as none.” Wishing to keep her hand on the stick, Edith pointed ahead of them with a thrust of her chin. “There’s the Collar.”
It was strange to consider the cloudbank from this angle and range; from here, it seemed a common fog rather than the Tower’s perpetual cowl. When newcomers first saw the Tower, the fact that it had no discernable pinnacle made a profound, though conflicted impression upon them. The Collar of Heaven seemed to suggest that either the Tower soared without end, or conversely that it had, in its great ambition, knocked upon some natural limit, like a houseplant grown to the ceiling. Because the truth was uncertain, it was left to the individual’s imagination to either cap the Tower or build it ever on. Both beliefs had the odd effect of making observers feel as though they had contributed in some way to the raising of the monolith, and that gave them the confidence necessary to approach the Tower and be absorbed by it.
Both Edith and Adam felt they had outgrown such amateur ideas, though in fact neither was as enlightened as they liked to believe.
“I forgot how flat this area was. We may have to wander a bit to find a nook for you.”
“What if we just continued on to the summit?”
“You mean drive through the fog?”
Arm of the Sphinx (Books of Babel Book 2) Page 28