The Impossible Cube

by Steven Harper

  Glenda was breathing fast. Alice was so tired, she could barely move, but from somewhere she found a reserve of strength that let her come to her feet. “Glenda,” she said, “you’ve done so much for me. You were an exemplar to me, and without you, I would never have struck out on my own. I did a terrible thing to you in return. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I wish I could take it back. If you want to shoot, I’ll understand.”

  And she moved in front of Phipps. Gavin tried to stop her, but she shook him off. She stood there, unarmed but for her iron spider, her arms spread wide. Too many people had died for her. She could die for someone else now.

  Glenda took aim. Alice held her breath but refused to close her eyes. Glenda lowered the pistol.

  “Goddamn you,” she said again, but this time to Alice.

  “I’m sorry,” Alice said, and was surprised at how disappointed she was that Glenda hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  “What am I to do with my life?” Glenda asked bitterly.

  “If you can control your impulse to curse,” Phipps said, “perhaps you should go into politics. I can give you a letter of introduction that will go over quite well with the Hats-On Committee in Parliament.”

  Gavin, meanwhile, staggered over to the table where the arc stood. Silently, he picked up the Impossible Cube. A lump formed in Alice’s throat. She joined Gavin and took his hand. Click clicked across the floor as well and sat at Alice’s feet. He looked at the arc as if waiting for something. Alice’s remaining automatons limped over to her and crawled into her skirts or fluttered to her shoulders. They all stood in a moment of silence before the arc, now a gateway to the world of the dead. Alice fought back tears.

  “Feng gave his life to save ours,” Alice said. “I hope that will be enough for his father—and his family.”

  “The plague took Dr. Clef,” Gavin said. “I knew it would happen, knew he’d leave, but I didn’t think he’d try to kill us.” He sighed heavily and wiped at his eyes. “In his own twisted way, he was like a father to me, and now he’s gone. He and Feng both.”

  Alice embraced him and let her own tears wet his shoulder. They both wept for loss and unfairness while Glenda, Phipps, and the mechanical stood by in mute sympathy. At last Alice stepped away and fished in her pocket for a handkerchief.

  Gavin said in a heavy voice, “His remains went into the past, you know, to a time before the dam was built. Did you see the water boil?”

  “Oh!” A shock of realization went through Alice and she put her metal hand to her mouth. The Dnepro River boiled in the center of Kiev and the plague rose up like a dragon and devoured the city. “Do you think… Did Dr. Clef start the clockwork plague?”

  “I don’t know,” Gavin admitted. “Clockworkers don’t spread the plague, but Dr. Clef was pulverized and his blood was dragged into several places in the past. Maybe that did something to the disease.”

  “Good heavens. Good heavens,” was all Alice could say. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief in her metal hand.

  An alarm blared, and red lights flashed all over the room. Click jumped straight up. Alice started as well, and her automatons jerked.

  “Oh no,” Gavin said.

  “We need to leave,” Phipps said. “Now.”

  “What—?” Glenda began.

  Gavin was turning the Impossible Cube over and over in his hands so quickly it made Alice dizzy to look at it. “I think that last burst of energy from the Cube did something. Didn’t you feel it? The way it dragged over your bones.”

  “I did feel it,” Phipps said. “Singularly unpleasant, too.”

  “The Cube was connected to the dam, and it wrenched something inside. Deep down within the stones. At the level of… of the tiny things.” Alice could see Gavin was floundering for words. “The bits aren’t holding together anymore. Can you see the cracks?”

  “No,” Glenda said nervously, glancing around.

  “I can.” Gavin tapped his forehead. “They’re small, but spreading fast. The structure isn’t sound.”

  Fear stabbed Alice as the implications hit her. “How much time before it fails?”

  “Less than an hour, I think. It’ll destroy a good part of lower Kiev.”

  “How do we stop it?” Glenda asked.

  “We can’t. Not in an hour,” he said. “We have to evacuate everyone we can.”

  They ran for the stairs—or tried to. Gavin and Alice could manage only a fast walk. Alice winced at the pain in her shoulders and her thighs, but she grimly kept going. It got better the more she moved. Gavin’s jaw was also set with pain. Alice thought about having her automatons carry her, but the thought of being lifted by her arms made her shudder, and in any case, most of her automatons were as bent as she was.

  Somehow, they made it up the stairs and out the main doors, where they found the wrecked elephant still standing by the two mechanicals Alice and Gavin had stolen from the Gonta-Zalizniaks. Near them, however, also stood the Gonta-Zalizniaks themselves. Nearly forty of them. All in mechanicals.

  “Good lord,” Phipps said.

  A hundred weapons clacked, whined, and chattered as they trained on the little group.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Give us sound generator,” boomed one of the Cossacks. “And then we kill you.”

  “Shouldn’t that be or we kill you?” Glenda shouted back.

  “No.”

  The alarms continued to blare discordant notes in a mocking parody of the paradox generator’s siren song. It was a day for loss. Gavin had destroyed his own invention, his pinnacle of perfection, and then watched his mentor and his friend die painful deaths. He had lost a chance to find out what had happened to his father, and nearly died himself. He looked at the Cossack mechanicals, and a terrible calm came over him.

  “I don’t have time for you,” he said. “The dam is failing. You need to save your people, the ones you took responsibility to rule. If you don’t, I will destroy you. This is your only warning.”

  The Gonta-Zalizniaks laughed as one, and the sound echoed over the warning sirens. Then their voices merged into an eerie unity. “You think we are fools. Now you die.”

  The weapons moved. Gavin placed one hand on top of the faintly glowing Impossible Cube. It looked heavy, but felt light and springy. Gavin opened his mouth and sang. A clear D-sharp reverberated in the air. The Cube glowed electric blue, and it amplified Gavin’s voice to a rumble, a boom, a half-tone detonation. The cone of sound flattened the mechanicals like tin soldiers. Several of them fell into the river with spectacular splashes and sank from sight. The sound poured from Gavin, shattering windows and smashing doors on both sides of the river. The mechanicals twitched and shuddered. Glass bubbles cracked and broke. The Cossack clockworkers within clapped hands to bleeding ears and screamed in pain. Alice finally jerked Gavin’s hand from the Cube, and the note died, leaving groaning, half-conscious Cossacks in its wake. The Cube darkened completely.

  “Enough,” Alice said. “They’re down. The rest of their fate is up to them.”

  “You’re more merciful than I,” Phipps observed. “They did experiment on children, after all.”

  “And you sided with them,” Alice said.

  “That was before I knew. Can you still drive that mechanical? We’re in a bit of a rush.”

  “How are we going to evacuate everyone?” Glenda said. “There’s just the four of us.”

  A booming crack thudded against Gavin’s ears. Gavin’s stomach tightened. The dam was failing faster than he had originally calculated. Once it gave, the river would smash through the lower city. Most of Kiev was built on hills, but the lower sector past the dam would be wiped out, including the square that housed the Kalakos Circus.

  The circus.

  “I have an idea,” Gavin said. “Lieutenant, can you drive a mechanical?”

  Phipps gave him a withering stare.

  “All right, good. You take this one. Alice, if you and Glenda can use the other one to run ahead and tell Dod
d we’re coming, I think we can save the people. But you’ll have to hurry.”

  “What do you intend to do?” Glenda asked.

  “You’ll see. Just go!”

  “You drive,” Alice said to Glenda. “I don’t think my arms are up to the task.”

  In moments, Glenda and Alice had run off, picking their way through the tumbled army of Cossack mechanicals. Some of the Gonta-Zalizniaks were groaning softly in their shattered bubbles, but Gavin spared them little pity. He had given them every chance, and he had other worries.

  “Let’s move, Lieutenant,” he said, and hoisted himself into the mechanical he had stolen from Danilo Zalizniak. Lieutenant Phipps followed, and took up a position next to him. It was distinctly odd sitting near Phipps on a padded bench instead of facing her across a desk—or the barrel of a gun. Inside the machine, Gavin pulled part of the control panel apart until he located a rubber-coated live wire. He yanked the wire loose and jammed the business end against the darkened Cube. Instantly, it glowed electric blow.

  “Go!” he said. “Walking speed.”

  Phipps put the mechanical into a stately march upriver, toward the circus. Gavin put his hand on the Impossible Cube and sang. This time, the note was a G, blue and pure and clean. The Cube glowed, and the note flowed out like liquid silver, washing over the streets and into the factories and houses and shops. The people, who had hidden inside the moment the mechanical army had marched past, emerged and blinked beneath sooty clouds. They listened to the wondrous sound and, unable to resist, followed it. On both sides of the river, people followed it. They poured out of the city and followed. Those who could walk helped those who couldn’t. And they were happy. They laughed and chattered among themselves and pointed at Gavin, pale blond and blue-eyed as he sang on the marching mechanical.

  And then the plague zombies came. They slid out of the shadows and into the street by the river, unbothered by the dim sunlight. The people didn’t seem to notice or care. In the world’s strangest parade created by the world’s strangest music, everyone moved without panic, without fear, down the river toward the circus.

  “How long can you keep this up?” Phipps asked. She seemed unaffected by the note, perhaps because of the amount of machinery in her nature.

  Gavin shrugged, took a quick breath, and kept on singing. He was already tired from the events down by the turbines, and now the Cube was taking more energy from him. He felt like a water glass with a hole in the bottom, but he kept singing. The crowd followed along. It wasn’t the entire city, thank heavens—only those who could hear the note, the ones who were in danger of the impending deluge. When they encountered a bridge, the people on the far side of the river crossed over to Gavin’s side. Gavin was becoming seriously tired now, and the intervals between breaths were growing shorter. He forced himself to keep up the volume, and Cube glowed like captured sky in his hands.

  A booming crack in the distance behind them, louder than thunder from an angry god, told Gavin the dam was beginning to fail now. Cracks were racing through its structure. Once it went, a swath of downriver Kiev would be washed away, and his clockwork was automatically calculating the path, volume, and velocity of the water. His voice wavered, tainting the purity of the note. The Cube’s glow dimmed, and a wave of fear swept through the crowd. They heard the thunder and saw the plague zombies in their midst. Screams and knots of panic broke out. Sweating, Gavin forced his voice back to the G. The Cube’s blue glow steadied. The crowd calmed and continued. Phipps shot him a worried look, but she didn’t dare speed up and outpace the crowd.

  Gavin’s body was starting to shake from the effort now. Every bit of concentration he had poured into holding that single, silver note. The vague memories of his father loomed up. He had to hold the note perfectly, with absolute precision, or Dad would—

  No. It was nothing to do with his father. He needed perfection in this time and in this place because these people needed it to live, and he would do it. He would be the voice they needed. For them. Not his father.

  A new strength came over him, and he sang and sang and sang. The note held steady—and perfect. The crowd came quickly and happily and in an orderly fashion.

  And he realized the mechanical was kneeling beside the circus train. Alice and Glenda were in the engine compartment wearing ear protectors, and a wave of relief swept over Gavin when he saw a healthy cloud of smoke puffing from the stack. Dodd had said he would try to get the boilers going, and Alice had warned him not to stop. The circus people who hadn’t managed to flee joined the crowd, their expressions also happy and calm. Linda wasn’t among them, but Nathan and Dodd were, to Gavin’s relief. Click and the little automatons were perched on the engine’s roof, not bothered by the heat of the boilers.

  Gavin kept up the note, though he could feel his voice starting to fail. An explosion upriver boomed against his bones and startled the crowd, but set off no panic. Instead, they piled into the train, into passenger sections and boxcars. They climbed onto the roofs and clung to the sides. They boarded the Lady and sat on the deck. They packed themselves in with calm, ordered care because Gavin’s voice led them and kept them from understanding that the river carried their deaths.

  Finally everyone was on board. People clung to every surface, inside and out. Phipps disconnected the Cube from the mechanical and helped Gavin up into the engine compartment with Alice and Glenda. He hoped it would retain enough power. His tired mind tried to run the formulas to find out and failed. Alice gave him a concerned look and moved toward him, but Gavin shook his head violently. She gave a tight nod and turned back to the boilers. Gavin kept singing, barely. His legs and arms shook with exhaustion. The tiny room was crowded, so Phipps stood back, near the coal carrier. Alice, who had certainly never driven a train before in her life but whose talent with machines let her understand them quickly, pulled levers and spun wheels, giving instructions to Glenda with gestures. The engineer was part of the crowd in the back, enthralled by Gavin’s voice.

  A soft wind whispered over them, created by tons of unchained water pushing the air ahead of it. The train jerked forward. Wheels spun in place, caught for a moment, spun again, and caught for good. Slowly, the train moved ahead, gaining speed. The deadly flood thundered toward them, smashing stone buildings and washing away bridges.

  Gavin’s strength gave out. The note ended. He dropped the Cube and would have fallen if Phipps hadn’t stepped forward and caught him. Glenda snatched up the Cube before it hit the ground, handed it to him, and went back to work.

  “Are you all right?” Phipps asked.

  Gavin felt like a sack of wet sand. He could only give a small nod. Phipps helped him slide to the metal floor, though he could see out through the space between the coal carrier and the engine, the Impossible Cube in his lap. Without his voice to keep things steady, fear swept the people on the train. Demonic howls and screams trailed behind them, and some of the people clinging to the sides and top fell off. The train rocked, but Alice didn’t slow. Gavin didn’t have the strength to feel sorrow for the ones they had lost. The river roared behind them, reaching for them with watery dragon hands. The train gained speed. Buildings rushed past them, then were devoured by the river. Despite the train’s speed, the river was gaining on them, eating the tracks behind them.

  “It’s hard,” Alice said, her ear protectors now around her neck. “Everyone’s panicking and rocking the train. It slows us down.”

  Glenda looked out the window and back. “The river’s getting closer, nearly to your ship.”

  Coal dust smudged Alice’s lovely face. She looked at Gavin, and he could see the reluctance. “Darling, can you… ?”

  He didn’t have the power. He couldn’t even lift his arms. But Gavin met her brown eyes. This woman had led him into hell and changed him and now she was leading him back out. She needed him. With a groan, he lifted a leaden hand and dropped it on top of the Impossible Cube, let his mouth fall open, and whispered a note.

  Nothing happen
ed. The river thundered toward them. The train rocked again as people screamed and thrashed against one another, crushing and beating one another against the walls of the cars. Gavin swallowed, took a breath. He was Gavin Ennock. He could do this.

  Gavin breathed out and sang. The G came through, crystalline blue. The Impossible Cube flickered, then glowed and the sound pulsed back over the train. The people instantly calmed. The train stopped rocking and picked up speed. Alice and Glenda, who had put their ear protectors back on, worked at the engines, while Phipps hovered over Gavin. He sang and sang while the train puffed faster and faster. The water receded behind them, and then the train took a curve that brought it uphill. It lost speed, but it went away from the water. Gavin’s hand was sliding away from the Cube, and Phipps reached down to press it back into place. The Cube was losing its glow, running out of the electricity it had taken from the mechanical. Half a mile flashed by, and they were at the top of the hill. Alice slowed the engine and let the train coast. It was drifting to a stop near a station.

  “We did it,” Alice said, but her words came from far away. “Darling, you did it!”

  The Cube went black. Gavin tumbled into darkness.

  He was lying on a cloud, a soft, fluffy cloud. It was so restful and fine. Delightful not having to move. He had only a tiny moment to enjoy the sensation. Abruptly, he jerked fully awake as he always did, his heart beating at the back of his throat.

  The room was spacious and white. Thick rugs covered polished wood floors. A large wardrobe of pale birch took up one corner, and an icon of the Virgin Mary hung in one ceiling corner, draped with white bunting embroidered with a red design. A table and easy chairs occupied another corner. The generous bed was also white, with fine linen sheets, a feather-filled duvet, and plump pillows. Where was he, and how had he come here?

  He sat up and groaned as fire tore through every muscle. Aching and sore, he forced his feet around to the edge of the bed and realized he was naked. And clean. Hissing with every movement, he found a chamber pot under the bed, used it, and replaced it. The fiery ache continued when he stood up. A soft white dressing gown hung from the door, and he gingerly tied it on, which made him feel a little more secure. To his immense relief, he found his fiddle case next to the door. Carefully, he picked it up and opened it on the bed. The fiddle inside gleamed at him, undamaged. He sighed heavily.