The Doomsday Vault

by Steven Harper

  “Your cab is still sitting over there,” d’Arco told Alice as he dismounted. “I’d offer to see you home, but we simply can’t leave the machinery. Can you drive it? What am I saying—a woman of your talents could probably shoe the horse.” And Alice had to laugh.

  The drive home was uneventful, and Alice was surprised at how little fear she felt. She should have been jumping at every shadow, but she felt perfectly calm, even a bit thrilled, as she guided the horse through damp streets. The Dress was in violet tatters, her hair was coming down, and anyone might see her in the driver’s seat of the shabby hansom, but she didn’t care in the slightest. She allowed herself a little whoop of glee.

  This, she decided, must be how Louisa felt all the time.

  When she arrived home, she climbed down from the hansom cab and, not knowing what else to do, left it in the street. The horse would no doubt eventually return to its stable on its own, or its owner would remember Alice’s address and come looking for it, or someone would steal the beast. Alice had to admit she didn’t much care at this point. She retrieved her pocketbook from the cab floor and wearily climbed the short steps to the run-down row house she shared with her father, Arthur, Baron Michaels. When she entered, a clockwork cat leapt down from the windowsill with a light clicking of iron claws. It peered up at her, segmented tail switching back and forth, lamplit eyes glowing with unearthly green phosphor.

  Alice reached down to pat the cat’s head. “Hello, Click. I’m glad you waited up for me.”

  The cat made a rumbling noise that sounded nearly like a purr, batted at her tattered sleeves, then abruptly scrambled to his feet and rushed out of the room. Alice shook her head and suddenly realized she was starving. She tiptoed past her father’s study-cum-bedroom and slipped into the tiny kitchen, where she threw together a sandwich, her dress bulging inconveniently about her. Click jumped up on the counter to watch, his phosphorous eyes casting small circles of light over the bread and ham. He swatted at her hand, and she tapped his nose with the knife handle with a thin clank in admonishment.

  “You don’t even eat,” she said.

  Click meowed at her, somehow managing to sound a little huffy. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but actual speech wasn’t part of the codex that ran the tiny analytical engine in his head, and for this Alice was wryly grateful—a talking clockwork cat would be dreadfully obnoxious.

  She put sandwich and tea on a tray with a candle and bustled upstairs, not wanting to awaken Father. The thought of having to explain the condition of The Dress to him filled her with dread.

  The yellow fog continued to shoulder itself against the windows as Alice entered her room. Her candle provided only a little light, but putting on a gas jet would cost too much. Like Father’s study, Alice’s room lacked much furniture, but Alice had learned to weave rag rugs, and they added warmth to the floor. Under the window stood her workbench—a tall table with several drawers under it and a stool to sit on. Several wooden shipping boxes were stacked on the floor, all of them with Alice’s address on them. Cogs, flywheels, and tiny barrels for analytical engines littered the tabletop, and an array of tools hung neatly on hooks from the wall above. Standing incongruously nearby was a dressmaker’s stand for The Dress.

  Alice flung open the wardrobe. “Out, please,” she said. “I need help.”

  From the wardrobe flittered, crawled, and scampered a dozen small machines, automatons of brass and copper. Some skittered on half a dozen legs; others buzzed about beneath whirling blades. All of them possessed tiny, intelligent eyes and long-fingered hands.

  “I need to get ready for bed,” Alice told them.

  The automatons instantly set to work. They zipped about the room, their tiny hands tugging Alice out of The Dress, or what remained of it, clicking and squeaking to themselves all the while. Petticoats and lacings and corset all fell away, layer by layer. The automatons unfastened dozens and dozens of buttons. One of the automatons, a flier, seemed to be having trouble staying aloft. It labored, then dropped toward the floor. Alice caught it, halted the others in their work, and took the little machine to her workbench. Standing in her petticoats, she popped the key from the windup mechanism, deactivating the automaton, and swiftly disassembled it.

  Alice hadn’t built her automatons, of course. They had arrived in pieces at Christmas, her birthday, Easter, even Guy Fawkes Night, along with complicated instructions for assembly and activation. And always at the bottom of every box of parts lay hidden a small pasteboard card with a handwritten scrawl: Love, Aunt Edwina.

  The little automatons had started off fairly simple and had become more and more complicated over the years. Assembling them had given Alice quite an education in mechanics, engineering, and basic physics, and sometimes she wondered if that was the purpose Aunt Edwina had in mind.

  Alice barely remembered her aunt Edwina. According to her father, the last time he had spoken to her was after Alice’s ninth birthday, just before the clockwork plague struck the Michaels family. It had killed Alice’s mother and older brother, forced her father into a wheelchair, and marked the Michaelses as socially undesirable. Aunt Edwina had withdrawn to her small estate outside London, snubbing the society that was trying to snub her and living her life as she liked. She wore trousers instead of skirts, talked to strange men without a proper introduction, and supported suffrage years before the Hats-Off Committee appeared in Parliament. In order to wheedle his way back into the social graces of the traditional folk, Arthur Michaels publicly repudiated his sister’s behavior and declared her a bad influence, though he didn’t refuse the little automatons she sent to Alice.

  Click jumped up on the workbench, and Alice briefly touched the cat’s smooth head before going to back to work, her stiff petticoats hitched unbecomingly around her knees. Click had arrived fully assembled as an engagement present from Aunt Edwina three years ago, when Alice was eighteen. Father had arranged a marriage to Frederick Trent, a business associate. Knowing she had few other prospects, Alice hadn’t protested. In a stunningly unfortunate series of events, however, Frederick Trent himself contracted the clockwork plague from an errant beggar and died a week before the wedding.

  What few social and business contacts had been left to Arthur Michaels quickly dried up. His investments went bad, and he’d been forced to sell the family home. Debts and bad business moves had decreased their fortunes further. Now they couldn’t even afford a girl to come in and sweep. And the daughter of a baron was socially forbidden from finding paying work, no matter how many useful skills she might have. Even Ad Hoc ladies would find the idea of a baron’s daughter laboring for mere money horrifying. More than once, Alice had considered disguising herself somehow and finding a job, but the only skill she had was assembling and repairing automatic machinery, and since most automatons were owned by nobility, she stood a good chance of being recognized. The possibility of being caught out made her too nervous to try it.

  Alice donned a jeweler’s loupe to magnify the tiny machinery and saw one of the propeller gears was missing several teeth. Alice plucked a replacement from a drawer with a pair of tweezers, dropped it into place, and tightened the tiny bolt. She had already sold several of Aunt Edwina’s gift automatons without telling Father, and she wondered how long it would be before she ran out of machines to sell. Her greatest fear was that she might have to sell Click.

  Deftly she finished reassembling the little automaton, unable to help but admire how its smooth brass surface hid a number of greasy, whirling bits of machinery. Her quick fingers rewound the brass key, and the automaton whirled to life. Its eyes snapped open, its blades spun it aloft, and it flew, chittering, across the room to join the others. They caressed it and squeaked among themselves.

  “Enough of that now,” Alice told them with mock sternness. “I want my nightshirt.”

  The automatons scampered and flew to obey. They removed the remainder of Alice’s petticoats and helped Alice pull the worn nightshirt over her head. Th
e undergarments, at least, were undamaged. She kicked The Dress into the corner before wolfing down the sandwich. One of the automatons picked up a bit of pasteboard from the floor and handed it to Alice. It was Glenda Teasdale’s card, the one with the square root of two on it—a mystery indeed. And what on earth was the Third Ward?

  If you find you need a change in your life, write to me, all right?

  Alice frowned as she finished the last bite of sandwich. Miss Teasdale was an Ad Hoc woman, wearing trousers, riding astride, calling a peer of the realm love as if they were related. Earlier, Alice had found it exciting, but now that she’d had time to calm down, she realized how ridiculous the entire affair was. And she had sacrificed an extremely expensive dress to this Third Ward for barely a thank-you. Glenda Teasdale and her Third Ward could go hang.

  Alice Michaels tossed the card onto her workbench, blew out the candle, and dropped into exhausted, righteous sleep.

  Chapter Four

  “Here you go, son.” Stone hunkered next to the pallet and set the pewter plate on the deck near Gavin. His phosphorescent lantern cast a low circle of green light on the wood and shoved the shadows backward. “I got you some beans this time. They even have some salt pork in’em.”

  Gavin pushed himself into an upright sitting position on his pallet with deliberate slowness. Each movement pulled at his back, sending demon twinges up and down his body. Around him, the dark hold smelled of tea and cinnamon, silk and paper. Bundles, boxes, and crates created chunks of deeper shadow all their own. He carefully took up the plate and shoveled salty beans into his mouth. The chain around his left ankle clanked.

  “Have we moved yet?” he asked.

  Stone shook his head. “Still tethered. Not much to see out there but a hangar, my boy. Wellesley Field’s a good three miles from London. You can’t even see the city now that we’ve landed, so you ain’t missing anything.”

  “I’ve made the Beefeater run a hundred times,” Gavin muttered. “Seen London.”

  “Right.”

  Gavin finished the beans and shoved the plate aside. It felt odd to be on board ship with her engines silent. Two engines had turned up damaged from the pirate fight and had shut themselves down not long after Gavin’s whipping. Repairs had taken more than a week, and in that time both the Juniper and the pirate ship had drifted about as playthings of light and wind. Correcting their course and getting to England had taken another two days. A medium-sized dirigible normally made the run from New York to London in three days, two with favorable winds, but the Juniper had arrived in London as a captive more than ten days late. Gavin wondered if she and her crew had been reported lost. Had anyone notified his family? The telegraph offices ran regular messages, but he had no idea if the Boston Shipping and Mail Company would go through the expense for a mere cabin boy. The image of his mother slumped across the kitchen table, a crumpled telegram in her hand and tears on her face, made his throat grow thick, and he found himself hoping the BSMC was too miserly for common courtesy.

  He swallowed the tinny taste of beans and made himself ask the question he’d been dreading. “Will we be ransomed soon?”

  Stone shrugged. “Probably. Captain hasn’t said, but he can hardly keep you all locked in the brig for another week, can he?”

  “Is he going to ransom me?”

  “He’ll ask. The real question is”—Stone leaned forward a little—“will your company pay it?”

  Gavin’s mouth went dry. The fears he’d been trying to suppress all the long days he’d spent lying on his stomach in the Juniper’s hold while fevers wrenched and tore at his healing body came roaring back. The BSMC always paid ransom for ships. It usually paid ransom for officers. It often paid ransom for airmen. It never paid ransom for cabin boys—not even for cabin boys only a few weeks away from their eighteenth birthdays.

  “That’s what I thought,” Stone said, reading the expression on Gavin’s face. “Listen, boy—Captain Keene ain’t cruel. He only beat you instead of throwing you overboard for killing Blue, didn’t he? And he let that old man tend your back, right?” When Gavin didn’t answer, he went on. “I think he likes you. If I talked to him, I bet he’d let you stay on with us. You’d be a proper privateer instead of a milksop merchant. Load better’n being sold to the East End whorehouses.”

  “Is that what he’ll do?”

  “Most like. He has to make money off you somehow to pay for everything you ate.”

  Gavin wondered on what sort of scale a few cans of beans outweighed the lives of Tom and Captain Naismith and the lashes that had landed on Gavin’s back. He wanted to be angry, but he was too tired. The skin over his spine felt tight.

  “So those are my choices,” Gavin said. “Join you or spend my time doing... doing what Madoc Blue wanted.”

  “Think so.” He scooted closer to the gunnysack pallet and perched on its edge, close enough for Gavin to feel the heat of his leg. “Anyway, I’m ready.”

  With stiff, reluctant movements, Gavin leaned toward Stone and retrieved his fiddle from its battered case on the floor. Once it was under his chin, he gave Stone a resigned look. It was the price for extra food—and for Stone speaking up so Gavin would keep his life.

  “ ‘Tam Lin,’ ” the man said, his eyes glowing green above the phosphorous light. His white leathers, those he had stolen from one of Gavin’s crewmates, took on the same sickly hue.

  Gavin played. The ancient song’s minor key meshed with the unearthly cold fire within the lantern as his bow and skittering fingers cast dreadful shadows over the bulkheads. Every note was a curse, but the iron chain around Gavin’s ankle siphoned his strength, and the music seemed to fall away into the darkness, its art and beauty flat and dead. Stone didn’t notice. He nodded his head, tapped his fingers, and grinned with green teeth.

  When Gavin finished, he said, “I lied, son. I’m sorry.”

  The bow jumped in Gavin’s hands and screeched across the strings. “What do you mean?” he asked, straining to keep his voice level even as his heart jerked hard.

  “The captain already ransomed the crew, and the company’s wired the money. Except for you. They drew the line at a cabin boy.”

  Gavin’s mouth dried up and tension tightened his chest. “They’re gone? Everyone’s gone?”

  “On their way back to Boston. You’re the only one left. The captain talked to a woman what runs a little backgammon house, and she was all happy to hear about a boy who can fiddle in the evening and handle instruments at night. I’m supposed to bring you up. The captain’ll give me hell for taking so long, but I had to get another tune of you, didn’t I?”

  Gavin hit him with his fiddle. The instrument’s edge caught the underside of Stone’s chin, and he went down with a grunt, eyes glassy. Gavin went through his pockets with chilly fingers and came up with a key. It fit the lock on his ankle chain. He released it, fastened it around Stone’s ankle, and tossed the key into the dark hold.

  “Bastard,” he whispered, then shoved the fiddle into its case and made his way toward the ladder out of the hold, abandoning the pretense that his wounds made him a near invalid. He just wished they didn’t still hurt. At the last moment, he ran back to strip Stone’s white leather jacket and put it on himself. It was overly large and still warm from Stone’s body heat.

  Gavin threaded a path through the dark hold, finding his way by touch and memory, until he came to the rear ladder. He crept upward to the hatch, fiddle case strapped to his back, and listened. No voices. With aching care, he edged the hatch cover up until he could peer out onto the deck. Dim light; no people. He eased the cover higher, set it aside, and froze as it scraped against the wooden decking. The sound vanished into the distance as if swallowed.

  Heart thudding in his rib cage, Gavin slipped out onto the deck. He had the sense of great space all around him, but there was no sky. Overhead, he heard the faint creak of the envelope straining against the thick netting that tethered it to the ship, and the deck swayed only faintly. Behind
the ship lay a huge archway of cloudy light, a doorway so big the Juniper could coast straight through it. She was in one of the hangars at Wellesley Field. Gavin had seen the Juniper into Wellesley any number of times, but this was the first time she’d arrived as a prisoner. He wondered where the pirate ship had gotten to—and the pirates, for that matter.

  As if in answer, a voice from below shouted, “Stone!”

  Gavin’s heart jerked again, and he scrambled to the thin cover of the gunwale.

  “Stone!” called the voice again, and Gavin recognized Captain Keene. “Bring that boy down now, you lazy fuck! The lady wants to have a look.”

  Gavin risked a peek over the edge. The Juniper was anchored only a few feet above the hangar floor, lashed down with a series of guy ropes that ran through a complex system of gears and pulleys, which were, in turn, held down with flyweights and levers like those found backstage in a theater. Gavin could almost feel the ship straining against her bonds, longing to burst free and sail the clouds again. Several rope ladders trailed to the ground, and a loading ramp with a block and tackle mounted atop it had been rolled up, ready to unload cargo into Captain Keene’s pockets. Below, Captain Keene himself waited with his arms crossed. A dumpy woman in a simple dress and hat stood beside him. No doubt she owned the house Stone had mentioned. Both woman and captain were looking up.

  “Stone!” Keene bellowed. “If I have to come up there, you’ll scrub decks for a month!”

  Gavin realized he was holding his breath. Keeping low, he moved across the deck to the other side of the ship and found a guy rope that angled down to the ground. He slipped between a gap in the netting, wrapped his knees around the rope, then slid downward hand over hand. His arms and legs, weakened and stiff from weeks of inactivity, screamed murder at him, and his back joined in. Gavin ignored them. The tar coating made the rope a little slick. He was halfway down now, and picking up speed.