The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  “Good Lord,” said Edwina.

  Alice touched Gavin’s face. “Are you all right?”

  He put his palm on her hand, unable to do anything but nod. Then all the strength left him. His knees buckled, and only Kemp’s chilly hands stopped him from dropping to the floor.

  “Gavin!” Alice grabbed for him as well.

  “I’m. . all right.” His voice was scratchy, and he managed to regain his feet. “Thank you, Alice. For bringing me out of that.”

  She wrapped her arms hard around him, her face wet with tears. “You’re thanking me? God, Gavin. I love you always.”

  “I love you always.”

  “Heavens, I am good.” Edwina emerged from the workroom carrying a spider with a large clock built into its belly. “Except for this little toy. Do you know they wouldn’t give me the parts I needed to complete-ah! Just the thing.”

  She set the spider down and plucked the whirligig automaton from Alice’s shoulder. It squeaked in surprise, and before Alice or Gavin could respond, Edwina tore open its access hatch and yanked out several bits of machinery. The little automaton quivered and went still. Gavin stared in horror.

  “Edwina!” Alice cried. “What-?”

  “Shush, dear. Auntie’s working.” With dazzlingly fast movements, she worked the machine parts-memory wheels, Gavin now remembered-into the clock spider’s insides and closed it up. Then she unceremoniously kicked the thing back into her cell and swept the bits of the whirligig aside with her foot. The entire affair took only a few seconds.

  “Ready now, darlings!”

  “What was that for?” Alice demanded.

  “My final project. You wouldn’t expect me to leave it uncompleted, would you?”

  “But-never mind. We have to get out of here. The noise will bring dozens of people down. Do you have the other cure?”

  “I do,” Edwina said. “Let’s-oh dear.”

  Some of Gavin’s strength had returned, and he straightened enough to glance around. The other doors in the hallway had also been destroyed, flattened by Gavin’s voice. Startled faces, male and female, young and old, were peeping into the corridor. Dr. Clef waved to Gavin.

  “We should leave now,” Edwina said. “In fact, we should run.”

  They sprinted up the stairs. At the top, they met a group of workers, none of them agents.

  “What’s going on?” someone shouted.

  “There was an explosion in the clockworker laboratories,” Alice said. “People need help! Hurry!”

  “Halt right there!” barked a new voice. Lieutenant Phipps strode purposefully, if a bit unsteadily, around the lower turn in the spiral staircase. “It’s a trick. They’ve incapacitated all our agents and broken into the Doomsday Vault.”

  Fear rushed down Gavin’s spine. He glanced at the dozen-odd workers, then at Phipps. Her face was pale and grim.

  “Do you think this is the first time a cure has been found and repressed?” Phipps said quietly. “You walked right past three others in the Doomsday Vault. I won’t let you release any of them.”

  “I never understood you, Susan,” Edwina said. “Even in school, you contradicted yourself. You push the Hats-On Committee into sedition, but balk at this?”

  “I won’t commit treason,” Phipps said. She was bracing herself against the wall for support.

  “I left you a present in my cell,” Edwina told her. “My final project. In fact-”

  “You have ten minutes to evacuate,” boomed Edwina’s voice from below. Gavin’s blood ran cold. It was exactly the voice he’d heard in that terrible tower all those months ago.

  “Good God,” Alice gasped. “The clock spider.”

  “You can arrest us,” Edwina said, “or you can get all those unconscious agents to safety. You can’t do both.”

  “For the good of the Crown,” Phipps replied hoarsely, “I’ll make the sacrifice.”

  “But will they?” Edwina cocked a thumb at the workers.

  “You have nine minutes and thirty seconds to evacuate.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Edwina said.

  There was a moment’s hesitation. Then most of the workers swarmed around the group and out of sight down the stairs to help the agents. The remainder fled outright, leaving Alice, Gavin, Edwina, Kemp, and Click alone with Susan Phipps.

  “Five against one, if you count the cat,” Edwina said. “And you’re still groggy. You can fight and lose, or you can run downstairs and save some lives.”

  Phipps stared at them for a hard moment. Her eyes met Gavin’s, and the disappointment in her gaze nearly pushed him through the floor. Then Susan Phipps turned and marched down the steps.

  Outside, they ran toward the barn with Click leading the way. Kemp and Gavin slid the huge doors open while Alice, Edwina, and Click rushed up the gangplank onto the little airship. When Alice arrived, more than a dozen little automatons poured out of a hatchway and surrounded Alice like a cloud of metal fairies. They squeaked with joy.

  “And I’m glad to see you,” she said, “but we have no time. Cast off!”

  The whirligigs and spiders scampered to obey while Edwina glanced around long enough for her plague-enhanced mind to figure out how everything worked. She cranked the generator, which coughed to life in a cloud of paraffin smoke, and pale blue energy crawled up to the envelope, where it swirled and swooped in a fine glowing pattern beneath the skin. The light revealed words painted along the gunwale. Alice read them aloud as Gavin ran up the gangplank with Kemp close behind.

  “The Lady of Liberty,” Alice said with tears in her voice. “Oh, Gavin!”

  Gavin grinned and flipped switches. The propellers buzzed to life while Kemp reached for the gangplank.

  “Wait for me! Wait!” Gabriel Stark, known as Dr. Clef, puffed up the plank and onto the ship. He was carrying a large lumpy sack. “Du Lieber. How could you leave me behind to explode? And where is my Impossible Cube?”

  “Er,” Alice said. “I’m not sure how to-”

  “Oh-you have a clockwork cat. That is very nice. I will forgive you if I may pet the cat.”

  “Be my guest,” said Edwina.

  The airship, meanwhile, moved, gliding gracefully out the wide doors into the open air.

  “It flies! Gavin. It flies!” Alice clapped her hands with joy, and Gavin’s grin widened into exultation.

  “She flies,” he said.

  “So this is what for you wanted all my alloy,” Dr. Clef exclaimed. “Never would I have thought of this application. Very intelligent.”

  “You have four minutes to evacuate.” Edwina’s voice was clear, even outside. People streamed from the house like ants from a hill.

  “Why don’t they just take the bomb outside?” Alice asked.

  “They can’t, darling,” Edwina told her. “The spider grabs the floor, you see, and it’s too complex for anyone but a plague genius to deactivate, and then only with days of study.”

  The airship coasted past the chaos a bare six feet above the ground. No one seemed to notice them-everyone was busy dragging unconscious agents out of the house.

  “You intended to destroy the Ward from the very start, didn’t you?” Alice said tightly to Edwina.

  “Well, obviously. Look what they’ve done to us. To you. That device will make the one at my country house look like a mousetrap, so let’s move along, please.”

  “I don’t see Simon or Glenda or Lieutenant Phipps,” Gavin said. He felt sick. “They won’t make it out.”

  “They’d have you hanged, given the chance,” Edwina said.

  “You have three minutes to evacuate.”

  Gavin’s fingers whitened on the helm. The propellers beat their inexorable rhythm as the ship glided on. An agent Gavin didn’t recognize stumbled out the door, helped by a workman, then dropped to his knees on the front steps. He thought about Susan Phipps and the others downstairs, moving through air like molasses while Edwina’s voice counted down to doomsday.

  Ab
ruptly he yanked the cord from the generator. The dim blue light of the lattice went out, and the airship fell to the ground with a massive thud, though she retained enough buoyancy to avoid a damaging crash. Everyone rocked on his feet. Dr. Clef tipped over with a squawk.

  “What are you doing?” Edwina shouted.

  Gavin was already dropping over the side. “I have to do something. I have to help.”

  “I’m coming with you.” Alice jumped after him, and Gavin helped her land. Together, they ran inside the house.

  Chapter Twenty

  An alarm bell clanged as Alice and Gavin charged down the stairs. Partway, they met a group of workmen helping groggy, black-clad agents up the stairs. Alice paused to help them, but Gavin grabbed her arm. “No! Down here!”

  “You have two minutes to evacuate.”

  Alice shut her ears to Aunt Edwina’s dreadful voice and followed Gavin down to the cracked and ruined basement. Her heart beat like a snare, and she was only vaguely aware that she had automatically grabbed her tools before jumping off Gavin’s ship. Simon and Glenda were on their hands and knees in the corridor, trying to make it to the stairs.

  “Gavin!” Glenda slurred.

  “Do you hate me that much?” Simon gasped.

  Gavin’s lips tightened as he and Alice ran past. He called over his shoulder, “I’m sorry! We’re trying to help.”

  “What are we doing?” Alice demanded.

  “You’re some kind of clockworker, Alice,” he said.

  The words slammed into her like stones. She’d been trying to forget. Her terror of the clockwork plague rushed back at her. Bad enough that Gavin was infected. Now she herself was somehow affected.

  Gavin felt her stiffen. “You are! You’re not completely like other clockworkers, but you’re close. You know machinery. You can defuse the device.”

  Alice wrestled with fear. “I don’t have a diagram!”

  “You saw what Edwina did to it, and she used parts from your automaton. You can do this.”

  “I don’t know if I can, Gavin. If I make a mistake, we’ll be dead.”

  “You have ninety seconds to evacuate.”

  “And the alternative is?”

  He pulled her into Edwina’s workroom, the one with the door blown inward. Wrecked equipment was scattered everywhere, and for a moment Alice was back in the basement of Edwina’s house, the one that had imploded. In the center of the floor crouched the malevolent brass spider, its claws sunk into the stone, and hunched over it was Lieutenant Phipps. She was trying to open it, without success.

  “You!” Phipps barked, and launched herself straight at Gavin. She slammed him into the wall with her metal forearm across his throat. “I’ll tear your heart out!”

  “Gavin!” Alice cried.

  “The device!” Gavin choked. He twisted and managed to break away, but only because Phipps was still somewhat groggy from the pollen. She snapped a punch that caught him in the chest and knocked him backward. Alice felt the blow herself.

  “You still fight like a pirate, boy,” Phipps snarled.

  Gavin lashed out with a spin kick, but Phipps ducked beneath it. Her metal hand grabbed his ankle and wrenched him around. He landed on his back. “Alice! The device!”

  Alice forced herself to ignore his pain and to turn to the spider. Automatically she unrolled the velvet cloth with its tools inside. Opening the access hatch was no trouble-it was the exact same hatch Edwina put on all her spiders.

  “You have sixty seconds to evacuate,” boomed the spider in Edwina’s voice.

  Another crash. Gavin had rolled aside just in time to avoid the heavy pestle Phipps tried to bring down on his head. He managed a one-two rabbit punch to her ribs, but the angle was bad and he didn’t do much damage. Phipps pointed her metal arm at him, palm out.

  “You have fifty seconds to evacuate,” said the spider.

  Alice stared at the machinery inside. It was all a complicated mass, and she understood none of it. The wheels and gears and delicate wires snapped with yellow sparks, and she was certain that if she made a mistake, she would die, or the device would detonate instantly.

  “You have forty seconds to evacuate,” said the spider.

  Gavin rolled to his feet just as a wire whipped out of Phipps’s palm and wrapped around him. He struggled, but his arms were pinned to his sides. Phipps flicked a knife from its sheath with her free hand and moved toward him. Alice snatched up a half-broken beaker and flung it at the back of Phipps’s neck. It scored a red wound.

  “You have thirty seconds to evacuate,” said the spider.

  Phipps whirled, eyes wild. “You snotty upper-class bitch! I’ll get you next!”

  Gavin lurched into her from behind. They both went down, though Gavin, whose arms were still pinned, was at a clear disadvantage.

  “The device!” he shouted again.

  “You have twenty seconds to evacuate,” said the spider.

  Alice forced herself to study the machinery. It still made no sense. She had no diagram and no instructions.

  Did she need them?

  But operating without them would mean. . what? She wasn’t a clockworker-quite. She had been assembling machines for a dozen years, and clockworkers never lived longer than three.Alice had always assumed she was just talented. Theoretically, anyone could do what she did, with careful instructions and enough time. That no one had done it meant nothing. If Alice pulled this off, it would mean breaking more than mere societal rules. It would mean becoming truly unique. No rules need apply.

  “Ten. . nine. .”

  Phipps shoved Gavin aside and regained her feet. Alice swallowed. All right. She was unique. Machines answered her touch, and nothing could stop her. And with that thought, the memory of what Edwina had done to the spider came flooding back. She saw how everything fit together and, more importantly, how everything came apart.

  “Four. . three. .”

  Alice reached into the spider with a pair of forceps and extracted a single memory wheel. The yellow sparks died, and the spider released its grip on the cellar floor. Alice tossed the wheel away with a sigh, then stiffened as a cold steel touched her throat.

  “Good work, Agent Michaels,” Phipps said in her ear. “That deserves a reward.”

  “We’ve already released the cure,” Alice lied. “There’s no point in killing me.”

  “There’s personal satisfaction.”

  “I saved you just now.” Alice’s heart beat at the back of her throat. “I saved the entire Ward.”

  “Susan!” Simon d’Arco was leaning against the doorjamb. “Susan, don’t! If she released the cure, there’s no point in killing her, and she just saved all our lives. Your life.”

  Phipps turned her head only a little. “She committed treason. I’m just expediting the sentence.”

  “A man gives in to anger,” Simon said. “What would an honorable Ad Hoc woman do?”

  A long moment passed, and Alice prayed Phipps would believe the lie. Then the knife went away. Alice found she could breathe again. Gavin struggled out of the wire and sat up.

  “You have until sunrise to run,” Phipps said. “Then God help you.”

  The dirigible glowed a faint blue against the cloudy night sky while the gaslights of London slid by below. The stars had fallen to Earth, and the dark ground lay above them. Alice felt a moment of vertigo even as the sight took her breath away. She gave a heartfelt sigh and turned back to the deck. Gavin, lithe and strong, was back at the helm, his injuries only bothering him slightly. A mixture of fear and relief made her hands shake. He was sick with the clockwork plague, which filled her with red fear, but in a moment he would be cured, which gave her relief deeper than a drink from a cool, dark well.

  “All right, Edwina,” she said, “it’s time to give the cure.”

  “I don’t know why I would want to,” Edwina said peevishly. “You thoroughly wrecked my wonderful plan to destroy the Third Ward. What am I going to tell the other geniuses at parties? �
�My doomsday device almost went off. It almost destroyed an entire police force.’ I’ll be laughed out of society.”

  “Don’t make me call Kemp on you,” Alice warned.

  “Madam?”

  “Oh, very well,” Edwina sighed. She was holding a large glass jar, and Alice wondered where she’d gotten it. “Set the ship to hover, Gavin, if I may use your Christian name.” Gavin obeyed while Edwina set the jar down and took up the spider Alice had snatched from the Doomsday Vault, the one with the hollow tubules running up and down it. “Your left arm, please, Alice.”

  “Why?” Alice asked suspiciously.

  “Because your one true love can’t administer the cure to himself, and I need to show you how to do it.”

  Alice held out her left arm, and Edwina fit the spider around it. Dr. Clef stepped forward with unabashed curiosity. Kemp stood behind Alice, still uncertain what his role in all this was. Alice had banished the little automatons belowdecks for fear they might get swept overboard or otherwise lost. Click stood on his hind legs and peered over the gunwale, intent on something that interested only him. He popped his phosphorescent eyes alight to see better.

  The spider moved cold and heavy against Alice’s skin. Its legs wrapped around her forearm, and its body flattened against the back of her hand, forming a sort of gauntlet that left Alice’s palm bare. It also put little claws at the end of each finger. A quick pain pierced her arm, and Alice yelped. The tubules ran red with her blood. Instantly, Gavin was at her side.

  “What have you done?” he barked.

  “Don’t strain yourself, darling. Everything is going according to plan. The spider creates a curative serum from her blood. It’s quite harmless, though the spider will never come off. It’s quite fashionable, don’t you think? Much better than a corset.”

  “What do you mean it won’t come off?” Alice shook her hand, then pulled at the spider, but it clung like a tiny demon. Gavin pulled at it as well, but to no avail. The spider’s eyes glowed scarlet.