The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  “What?” Gavin folded his arms. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Ambassador Lung reminded us how delicate the balance is between China and England. Little conflicts flare up between us, but never quite escalate into an all-out war. We both trade. We make and break treaties. We negotiate. Why? Because both sides collect clockworkers who build little toys. Both sides have the same technological advantage. What would happen if England released Aunt Edwina’s cure?”

  “Countless plague victims would recover?”

  “Unimportant,” Alice said, “from the British Empire’s point of view. The plague would stop creating clockworkers. Once the current ones went mad and died, we’d have none. An end to clockworkers means an end to world-bending inventions for England, and that means China would become the most powerful empire in the world.”

  “The cure would get to China,” Gavin countered. “Their clockworker supply would dry up, too.”

  “The cure would take quite a while to spread to China,” Alice said. “Months, even years. That’s all it would take for China to pull ahead, potentially forever. The Crown won’t risk that. So they’re suppressing Aunt Edwina’s cure.”

  “And condemning thousands to a slow, terrible death,” Gavin finished softly. His Guinness remained untouched. “That’s terrible.”

  “Do you believe it?” Alice half hoped he would say she was mad, that he would find some flaw in her theory to prove it wrong, but he only rubbed his palms over his face and sighed.

  “I believe it completely.”

  Alice felt proud of her deduction and absolutely wretched about it at the same time. Gavin reached across the table and took her hand. The gesture made her feel slightly better.

  The pub door opened, and Feng slipped in. Ignoring the stares of the other patrons, he dropped into a chair next to Gavin and signaled for a drink. “Found you,” he said in his uneven English. “I will not lose you again.”

  Gavin shifted uncomfortably. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me, Feng, but I’m not-”

  “I have no friends here,” Feng blurted out. “Everyone looks at me; they see a Chinese man. They see a curiosity. They see a son of the ambassador, grandnephew of the emperor. My father wants me to learn diplomacy, and I try and try, but I’m no damned good at it. If I sneak out to do something fun, it gets me into trouble.”

  “By fun, you mean women?” Gavin said shrewdly.

  “Many times,” Feng replied with an unabashed grin. “They think Chinese boys will show them something different. They say there are many things English boys will not do.”

  “Mr. Lung!” Alice said. “Perhaps this is a conversation you and Mr. Ennock could finish later.”

  “You see?” Feng said. “This is why I am a bad diplomat.”

  “Your English is very good,” Gavin said kindly.

  “I gave you the nightingale because it is meant to carry messages to secret lovers,” Feng told him.

  “Now look-”

  “No, no.” Feng laughed. “Boys like you do not please me.”

  “But others boys do?” Alice couldn’t help asking.

  “Why not?” He leaned forward. “Have you ever tried them, Gavin?”

  “No!”

  “Then how do you know-”

  “Mr. Lung,” Alice put in, “what is your point?”

  “The nightingale remembers who held it last and will fly to that person. You can put your voice in it and let it fly away. Then it will return with another message. We can use it to communicate, too, as friends. I had no chance to explain it to you, but I hoped you would figure it out.” His Guinness arrived, and he drained it quickly. “I should go, before Father becomes angry again. Good-bye, my friends.”

  And he was gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “It is finished!” Dr. Clef pushed his goggles onto his high forehead and gave Gavin a wide smile. One of his eyeteeth was missing. “Can you believe? The most difficult thing I have ever created!”

  Gavin put out a finger to touch the cube on Dr. Clef’s worktable. The cube was the size of a shoebox and made of a frame of thin beams. And it twisted. The edges crossed one another in impossible ways, with the front going behind the back, or the back coming before the front. It made Gavin dizzy. When his hand approached it, his fingers seemed suddenly too far away. He pulled back.

  “What does it do?” Gavin asked.

  “Turn the crank on the generator and you will see,” Dr. Clef replied. “Or perhaps I should say you will hear.”

  Gavin turned the crank. Electricity crackled at the spot where the Impossible Cube was connected to the wire. The cube glowed blue and drifted slowly upward. Gavin thought of his new airship. He hadn’t tested it in open sky yet.

  Dr. Clef picked up a tuning fork from a set on the table and tapped it. A clear tone-G, Gavin noted-rang out. Dr. Clef pressed the base of the fork against one side of the cube. The note roared into full volume, but it was more than just an auditory note. It went straight through Gavin’s body, through muscle and bone and into his soul. For a moment he felt as if he had no corporeal self. He had fallen into dust and scattered over the entire universe. Then the note ended, and he was standing in the workroom again. He stopped cranking, and the cube sat inert, though it continued to twist the eye.

  “What the hell was that?” he gasped.

  “Very interesting,” Dr. Clef observed. “Try this one.” He struck another fork-D-sharp-and before Gavin could stop him, he pressed the base against one side of the cube and cranked the handle himself. A cone of sound blasted from the prongs of the fork and gouged out a section of stone wall. Chunks of rock crashed to the floor.

  “I like that one,” Dr. Clef said. “How about this one?”

  “Stop it!” Gavin shouted, but Dr. Clef struck an A-flat and pressed it to the cube.

  With a pop, the cube vanished. It left behind a severed electrical wire.

  “Nicht!” Dr. Clef exclaimed.

  The workroom door banged open, and Lieutenant Phipps rushed in with two agents behind her. It was the first time he had seen her since the Ward had captured Edwina several days ago. “What the hell was that?” she demanded. “I think everyone within a mile felt it.”

  “Which one?” Gavin said. “The soul sound or the explosion?”

  “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Agent Ennock. Doctor Clef? What happened?”

  Dr. Clef’s wide blue eyes were filling with tears. “My cube! He is gone! Months of work, gone!”

  “It’s true,” Gavin said. “It vanished. Right after it did that to the wall.”

  “Huh. Maybe it’s for the best, then.” She turned to leave, along with the agents. Gavin ran to catch up with her.

  “Lieutenant,” he said, “I wanted to ask you-”

  “If it’s about your supposedly secret airship, Agent Ennock, you know we encourage our agents to-”

  “No.” He shook his head as the other agents withdrew and Dr. Clef continued to sob over his worktable. “Nothing like that. I wanted to ask about the clockwork plague. Edwina claimed to have a cure, and-”

  “That’s enough, Agent Ennock.”

  “But-”

  “Shut it, boy!” she snapped. Then she closed her eyes for a moment with a sigh and put her metal hand on his shoulder, the most human gesture he had ever seen her make. “Listen, Gavin, I know a cure is important to Alice, which makes it important to you. But I’ve interviewed Edwina extensively and have personally gone through all her research. She’s completely mad. There is no cure and never has been. And we can’t afford to start rumors of one. You can imagine how the public would react.”

  Gavin nodded, aware of the weight of her hand on him.

  “Good. Don’t speak of this with anyone.” She straightened and dropped her hand. “Get Doctor Clef calmed down and help him clean up.”

  “I am on holiday, Lieutenant,” Gavin said. “I just came down here to check on Doctor Clef.”

  “There’s no such thing as a
holiday in the clockworker holding area, Agent Ennock.”

  When she was gone, Gavin went back to the table, where Dr. Clef remained dissolved in tears. “Months and months of time,” he sobbed. “Time flowing like water out of a basket made of gravity. The gravity of my life is pulling me into a sinkhole and warping my space until I can’t escape.”

  Uh-oh. He was moving into a bad phase. He’d be worthless for several days. He’d certainly be unable to help clean up. Gavin picked up the A-flat tuning fork with a sigh and accidently smacked it against the table. The moment the note rang out, the Impossible Cube reappeared on the table with another pop.

  Gavin jumped, and Dr. Clef instantly snapped to himself. “Wonderful! I should have thought of this myself!”

  “Where did it come from?” Gavin asked. His heart was pounding.

  “Time, I think,” Dr. Clef told him. “The cube is truly unique, you know. Do you remember when Viktor von Rasmussen found a way to bring his parallel selves from other universes into this one?”

  “I heard about it,” Gavin said, “but that was before my time at the Ward.”

  “He is dead now. But he started me thinking. I built the cube to be absolutely unique. It actually exists in all the other universes, you see, but they are all the same cube. This gives it many strange properties.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Yes. When you give the cube different energies, it changes them. I think that one”-he gestured at the A-flat tuning fork-“has something to do with time. The cube can’t travel through time, you see. The cube can’t travel at all. I think what happened was that the entire universe-all the universes-moved backward and left the cube in the same place. When you struck the fork again, the cube matched itself to the vibration and pulled the universes back to where they should be, but since we are in the universes, it appeared to us that the cube moved, when actually we did.”

  “That’s im-That’s not poss-That. . makes my head hurt.”

  Dr. Clef waved a hand. “So, so. This is my masterpiece! A wonderful thing, yes?”

  “Yes. I mean, I think so.” Gavin felt off-kilter, and looking at the Impossible Cube didn’t help. “Doctor Clef, you stay here and I’ll be back.”

  “Yes, yes.” He waved a hand. “I have more tests.”

  Gavin locked the workshop door carefully behind him and dashed down the stone hallway and past the extra-heavy door where Edwina was being kept. Her door had three powerful locks on it, and Gavin didn’t have any of the keys. Only Lieutenant Phipps ever went in, even with food. He also passed the Doomsday Vault with its four guards, and, deciding not to wait for the lift, hurried up the spiral stairs to the office of Susan Phipps.

  “I’m going out, ma’am,” he said, poking his head inside, “since I’m still on holiday. But you’ll want to check on Doctor Clef again. He found his cube.”

  “Did he?” Phipps got to her feet behind her desk. “And what does it-”

  There was a muffled boom. All the lights, including the oil lamps, went out. Shouts went up all over the house. Phipps made an exasperated sound.

  “I never liked that thing,” she said, fumbling in the dim moonlight for matches. “I think we’ll have to put it into the Doomsday Vault first thing in the-ouch!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The lamp is still lit. It’s just not giving off any light.”

  “I don’t even want to know how that works,” Gavin said. “Do you need me? Alice rented a new house with her bonus, and I’m supposed to help her. . uh. .”

  “Go, go.” The lights abruptly came back up. More shouts from the halls and rooms. “But I want you on hand in the morning when we put that thing in the vault. An hour before sunrise. You know the ceremony.”

  “Ma’am.” He fled before she could change her mind.

  Alice met him at the front door with a kiss. “You’re just in time,” she said.

  “For what?” He couldn’t help smiling.

  “For moving furniture. It’s too heavy for me, and Kemp is cranky.”

  This row house was small but newer-well built and free of drafts. The living room had a fireplace and the kitchen had a good stove, which meant the place stayed warm. A sofa, chair, divan, and several end tables were scattered about the front room. Click perched on the back of the sofa, and Kemp was in the kitchen with tea things. Little automatons crawled, whirred, and scampered everywhere, like autumn leaves at play.

  “I like this place,” Gavin said. “It’s very much you.”

  “I suppose I should hire a maid-of-all-work,” Alice said, “but I think it would make Kemp unhappy, and the little ones sometimes get nervous around too many people.” She spread her arms. “It’s freeing to be here, Gavin. I’m renting it with money I earned myself, and that means I can be myself. Whyever do you stay in those tiny rooms at the Ward?”

  “Most of my money has gone toward the ship, and my family,” he said. “But I’m glad you found this place. It’s more private.”

  “That it is.” She slid her arms around him, and his heart jumped. “No one to interrupt us here.”

  “Tea?” Kemp said, entering with the tray. Click chose that moment to leap at one of the flying automatons. It squeaked and shot higher. The clockwork cat missed and crash-landed on one of the tables, which tipped over and spilled him onto the floor. He scrabbled madly at the boards and rushed indignantly out of the room.

  “No interruptions?” Gavin grinned.

  “Have some tea,” Alice said, plucking a cup from the tray.

  “Darling? Can you hear me?”

  Gavin jumped. Alice dropped the cup and it shattered on the wood floor. It was Edwina’s voice, and it was coming from Kemp. The automaton stood completely frozen, still holding the tea tray.

  “Hello?” Kemp said, speaking as Edwina. “Alice, are you there?”

  “Wha-what?” Alice said. “Aunt Edwina?”

  “Oh, good. It works. Listen, darling, I don’t have much time, so listen quickly.”

  “What’s going on?” Alice demanded. “Where are you? You’re not going to attack another airship, are you?”

  “Not to worry, darling. I’m in my cell at the Third Ward. They call it a workroom or a laboratory, but it’s a cell, nonetheless. I’ve been pretending my grip on reality has slipped, but they still give me equipment to play with and I cobbled together this transmitter. Did you talk to the ambassador as I told you?”

  “You didn’t tell me to do anything, but yes,” Alice said, recovering herself. “We figured out what you meant.”

  “Then you know about the cure and why the Crown wants to suppress it. I realized this would happen, you know, which is why I set everything up the way I did.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Gavin asked.

  “Mr. Ennock is there? Good! This will make things simpler. Have you joined the Third Ward, Alice?”

  “Yes,” Alice said slowly. “I’m in training, but I’m in.”

  “Excellent!” Edwina sounded relieved. “I haven’t told you everything yet, so I need you to listen closely now. The clockwork plague is destroying the entire world, and not only by disease. One day, a clockworker will make something powerful enough to wipe out all life on Earth. This plague must end. Now.”

  Gavin’s thoughts went to the Impossible Cube, and he glanced at Alice. Her face was white. He reached for her hand, but she shook it off.

  “The Ward has my first cure, the one that works on one person at a time. They put it in the Doomsday Vault. They’re still looking for my second cure, the one that spreads.”

  “You said it was incubating,” Alice interrupted.

  “It is. They can’t find it because I put it in the one place they’d never look.”

  “I’ll ask,” Gavin said with a sigh. “Where?”

  “Inside me.”

  Alice’s expression became incredulous. “Inside you?”

  “There are places even the Ward can’t search, darling. Now that I have proper facilities a
gain, I can finish incubating it. In fact, it will be done by morning. That’s where you two come in.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gavin said.

  “Both cures must be released. That’s why I arranged for the two of you to join the Third Ward. Once I was able to use the Ward’s facilities to finish the cure-”

  “You would need someone to break you out,” Alice finished. “No.”

  “Darling, you must. The Ward will never let this cure go. You need to break me out of this dungeon, and you need to steal the first cure from the Doomsday Vault.”

  “Edwina, you’ve gone mad,” Alice protested.

  “No. I’m quite sane, though I may not last much longer once the Ward realizes what I’m doing. It’s damned hard to work with someone watching. They think I’m growing blue roses. I’m actually quite close, come to that.”

  “Do you mean all this talk about making me independent was nothing more than a ruse to get me into the Ward so I could eventually break you out of it?” Alice cried indignantly. “I’m not a chess piece on a board, Edwina! I’m not a dog to jump when you say so.”

  “And anyway,” Gavin put in, “security is very tight. We couldn’t get you out, let alone break into the Doomsday Vault.”

  “I was afraid you might react this way, darling.” Edwina’s voice was tight. “That’s the real reason I brought Gavin into your life and maneuvered you into falling in love.”

  Alice gasped, and Gavin’s blood went cold. “What do you mean?” he said quietly.

  “When I had Gavin asleep in my tower,” Edwina continued, “I injected him with the clockwork plague.”

  Gavin’s knees buckled. The room rocked, and he went to the floor with his head between his knees. There had been a bandage around his upper arm when he woke up in the tower of the Red Velvet Lady. At the time, he had been mystified by it. Now he knew what it was for, and he wished he hadn’t. His gorge rose, and he threw up on the floorboards between his ankles.