“You there! Guard!” Ubaldo snapped as they drew close. “Get up at once!”
The hapless guard heard Ubaldo’s practiced tone of command and leapt to his feet before he was fully awake, struggling to come to attention and salute even as his brain wrestled with a dense fog of sleep and whiskey.
“Sir!” he cried, striking himself painfully on the nose with his saluting hand. “Corrections Officer Hasenpfeffer at your orders, sir!”
“And a good thing, too, Hasenpfeffer,” Umberto growled ominously, “or I would have been forced to put you on report for dereliction of duty! Now get those gates open and help me take this terrorist scum to the DPS lockup, these are Mr. Pilkington’s express orders!”
“Yes, sir, at once, sir, thank you for not reporting me, sir,” the guard bleated, almost gibbering in his anxiety to look good for this DPS fire-eater. He pulled a big ring of keys out of his pocket and fumbled hysterically at the locks, finally getting them both open and starting to pull the gates apart …
A moment later, the guard was lying on the ground, once more deep asleep as Liam and Ubaldo hauled him over to the sentry box, tied him up firmly with his own belt and braces, and gagged him with his shirt. Then Liam grabbed the keyring, waved to Becky and Cap’n Billy and took off towards the warehouse. The door of the temporary prison was an enormous, barndoor sort of affair with wheels that slid along tracks, and like the main gate it was secured by two big padlocks set into heavy steel hasps.
“Aren’t there any other guards?” Becky whispered tensely as Liam tried different keys.
“I’m pretty sure Cap’n Billy was right,” he whispered back, “they aren’t worried about people breaking in. But we’d better move fast anyway, we can’t count on good luck too much longer.”
Naturally it was the last two keys that opened the locks, and by the time he had them off the hasps Liam was sweating. Now, if they just had another thimbleful or two of good luck left … he pulled open the door slowly to keep down the noise, and as it parted to reveal the inside of the barn-like structure, Liam heard an anxious murmur sweeping through the crowd of prisoners.
“Ssshh!” he hissed into the darkness, “keep it down in there, we’re here to set you free, not hurt you—don’t make a racket and wake up the guards!”
A moment later, he had the door all the way open and a sudden, involuntary cry came from the fetid, urine-and-sweat-smelling darkness:
“Liam! It’s Liam, boys!”
Harry the Jap jumped out into the dim light and grabbed Liam in a fierce bear hug, followed by a dozen or so more Butcher Boys, all of them clamoring to get at Liam and whispering so loudly that Liam was sure they’d be heard by the enemy.
“Ssshh! Boys! Pipe down!!” Liam managed to get them quiet and beckoned Cap’n Billy over. “Help Cap’n Billy get everybody out of here and down the bank to the water,” he hissed, “we’ve got boats enough to take you all back to the city. I’ll be bringing up the rear guard, if something slows me down don’t wait for me, we’ve got our own boat.” He turned to Harry: “Help me find my Gran, will you?”
With a sudden sinking feeling Liam saw Harry shaking his head: “They took her away an hour ago,” he said. “They said she had to go to the infirmary.”
“The infirmary? What for?” Liam’s voice had jumped several notches, and Harry worriedly put a finger to his lips.
“I don’t know. That’s the infirmary, the little building over there.”
Liam followed Harry’s pointing finger. A building about the size of a small stable stood nearby, its shuttered windows leaking tiny streaks of light in the darkness.
“You better be careful, though,”” Harry added, “it wasn’t a guard that came to get her, it was an Acme. And it could talk.”
Liam frowned worriedly, thinking that the only talking Acme he’d ever seen was the one Lukas had made for President Lincoln.
“OK, Harry, you go help Cap’n Billy get everybody down to the water, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Harry started back towards the inside of the barn, which was now boiling with activity, but stopped and turned back towards Liam after a few steps: “Hey! Where’s Mike, anyway?”
“He’s in town getting some special supplies,” Liam whispered with a thin smile, “we’ll tell you it about tonight when we all get home.”
Harry nodded and slipped away into the darkness as Liam turned in the other direction and moved quickly and silently over to the infirmary building, stepping with exaggerated care and listening with every nerve strained for the sound of an unexpected breath or footstep. Finally he drew up next to a shuttered window and peered into the narrow crack along one side …
It took all the self-control he could muster to stifle the groan that rose in his throat. Gran was inside, all right, but she definitely wasn’t being treated for anything: she was lying on her back, apparently out cold, strapped to some kind of padded table with wheels by a big leather strap around her chest and another around her hips.
As Liam moved to the crack on the other side of the shutters and put his eye to it, Ubaldo and Becky tiptoed up to join him and he pointed at the crack he’d just vacated, gesturing to them to take a look. Peering inside again, Liam caught his breath sharply. From here, he could see an operating table with a metal-shaded calcium arc lamp hanging over it, and on the table a patient covered with a white sheet except for his head. The head was the part they should have covered as far as Liam was concerned. Its top was missing and there didn’t seem to be anything at all inside it.
“I don’t believe it!” It was Becky who had hissed the words, shaking her head as she gestured Liam over to join her and Ubaldo. Liam put his eye to the crack and almost echoed Becky at full voice. There, in the space between Gran and the operating table, a wheelchair had appeared, with an Acme seated in it. The automaton sat peacefully, its arms resting on the arms of the wheelchair and the top of its head resting on its metal lap as it looked sightlessly towards Liam and a human brain festooned with wires as thin as hairs was lowered into the cavity … by Lukas!
“That’s the limit!” grated Liam, loudly enough that Becky dug her fingers sharply into his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Liam said, returning to a whisper as he took out his Colt. “I’m going in there. You two take an extra-careful look around the outside to make sure no one else is going to be part of our little get-together and then come in and help me get Gran out of here.”
They nodded and disappeared around the outside of the house as Liam walked over to the entrance, crossed his fingers that Lukas wouldn’t have bothered to lock the door, put his hand on the knob, hesitated for another moment, then stepped sharply inside with his Colt raised.
Lukas seemed to freeze in mid-motion as he registered Liam’s presence.
“What the Devil do you think you’re doing, Lukas?” snapped Liam. “Why is my grandmother here?” Now that Liam didn’t have to whisper any more he was almost shouting, and Lukas recovered enough from his astonishment to snarl at Liam:
“Of all the intolerable effrontery! You have the gall, McCool, to burst into my operating room in the middle of an extremely important operation, at its most crucial juncture, and ask me what I’m doing? I’m being interrupted by a moron, and if you don’t stop the racket at once I will have you seized and taken across the yard to a place where they’ll know what to do with you!”
Liam was so angry by now that he could barely trust himself to speak, and yet he was collected enough to be amazed at the Russian’s oblivious self-confidence.
“I tell you what,” Liam said a little hoarsely, “I think I’ll just make things simpler by blowing a nice big hole in you and interrupting you forever.”
Lukas made an impatient face and looked beyond Liam. “Number Four!” he said sharply. “Guard the woman!”
There was a crash behind him and an Acme which must have been standing against the wall next to the shutter suddenly sprang forward next to the rolling table on which Liam’s grandmo
ther lay asleep, laying its massive steel fingers gently but ominously on her chest above her heart. Liam’s breath caught in his throat as he thought of the brute destructive power of an Acme and Lukas registered his reaction with a grim smile.
“I believe it’s checkmate, Mr. McCool,” said Lukas.
“Maybe,” grated Liam, “but whatever you’re planning for my Gran I’m sure she’d rather be dead, so either you back that machine off her and swear on your honor to leave her completely alone or I will pull this trigger. Gran will be dead and I’m sure I’ll be dead, but you will be too, and somehow I think that that at least is a thought that might give you pause.”
Lukas looked at him for a long moment, his teeth clenched with frustration. Finally he gave Liam a curt nod. “Mr. McCool, you are the most insanely tiresome person I have ever met, and I have traveled the world from one end to the other. However. Your proposal is accepted with the proviso that you and your friends stay absolutely silent and do not move a muscle until I finish this operation and take my leave. Do we understand each other completely?”
“My friends?” Liam asked innocently.
“Don’t waste my time with rubbish,” Lukas snapped. “One!” he called out, “Three!”
Behind Liam the heavy footsteps of Acmes sounded as two more of Lukas’ creations entered, one of them firmly gripping Becky and the other Ubaldo.
“Sorry, Liam,” said Becky with a grimace, “they had us before we even got around the house.”
“SILENCE!” bellowed Lukas. “I have an agreement with Mr. McCool: all three of you are to remain immobile and totally silent until I am ready to leave, which will be in a very few minutes. So you and Mr. McCool’s grandmother should be quite safe—as … long … as … you … obey. Do you understand?”
Glumly, the three of them nodded. Lukas looked back and forth between them, then nodded and went briskly back to work, adjusting the wires connected to the brain he had just inserted in the skull cavity of the Acme and carrying on a cheerful monologue as he worked.
“No doubt you’ve been told that the human brain and nervous system operate according to some quite mysterious scheme of electrical signals. I should explain at once that nothing about the brain is a mystery to me, including its electrical behavior, and so I have been at pains for some time to put my knowledge to work in combination with both the advancing technology of automaton-building and Secretary Tesla’s valuable work on the wireless transmission of electrical energy and signals.”
He fell silent for a few moments, humming to himself absent-mindedly as he bundled together the wires connected to the brain and led them down a channel in the automaton’s neck to a point at which they disappeared into a forest of other wiring in the thing’s chest. At this point the Acme’s eyes suddenly started glowing with the same coldly eerie blue light as the eyes of Lukas’ other Acmes and it spoke in a voice that Liam recognized as a much-improved version of President Lincoln’s speaking apparatus:
“Thank you for connecting me, Father. I am pleased to be a part of your faithful servant The Brotherhood.”
Lukas beamed with satisfaction and continued talking as he bolted on the top half of the Acme’s head and cleaned up the remaining traces of the operation:
“You will be familiar with the word druzhina, Mr. McCool, ‘brotherhood’ is the most satisfactory translation I can come up with for the moment. The most important thing is that no matter how few or how many of them there are they all become, as soon as they are activated, part of a single limitless being, communicating their thoughts by wireless transmission. And even more useful is something that I discovered in the process of achieving this wireless communication—a procedure that allows me to overcome each brain’s individual personality while retaining its native intelligence. I must admit that’s why I wanted your grandmother, McCool; she proved to be far and away the most intelligent and at the same time the most stubborn of all the prisoners, and I would have been extremely interested to see if my process could overcome even her iron will.”
“Careful, McCool!” he warned, holding up a finger as he saw Liam twitch towards him with barely contained fury. “Though I regret missing the chance to operate on her,” he continued as Liam subsided, “there will be more than enough brains to work with in Little Russia, both Indian and European. Indeed, I expect the Indians’ brains to be quite interesting experimentally.”
He dusted off his hands and looked around the room the way travelers do before setting out on a trip.
“Can you imagine?” he continued, moving towards the opposite side of the room and a door which was clearly an exit. “That trumpery dictator Stanton actually thought that I was doing all this research for him, and that in exchange for his kindness in providing me with a laboratory and materials I would tell him the secret of refining calorium. In fact, he had intended to introduce me triumphantly to the public tomorrow at some sort of grand Fourth of July ceremony he’s planning in Union Square.”
He chuckled with genuine amusement and shook his head. “Silly little man—the ego of Gargantua linked to the brain of a weasel. No doubt he will be distressed to discover tomorrow that I am already in Little Petersburg, assuming the mantle of Viceroy and the leadership of a revolution that will one day sweep the world.”
Lukas bowed respectfully to Becky. “Thanks to you, Miss Fox, the world now knows that our revolution has begun in Little Russia, though after today such heroic feats of reporting as yours will no longer be necessary. The moment I set foot on Little Russian soil, I will tear down the veil of silence that stretches along the borders between us—I intend to establish open communications with the rest of the world so that all will be able to see the marvels that we shall work there and treat me and my people with the respect we deserve. Meanwhile, my automaton friends will build more and more copies of themselves, and those copies will begin making multiple copies of the Battleship Delta which my helper Boylan stole from Stanton.” He smiled and peered at Liam. “Did you have something to say, Mr. McCool? No? Then in that case I must take my leave of you all.”
“Number Four!” he said to the Acme guarding Liam’s grandmother. “Stay as you are until you hear the engine start, so that Mr. McCool will not be tempted to do anything foolish. Understood?”
“Yes, Father,” the Acme said.
“Excellent.” Lukas opened the door and waited as the other Acmes exited. Then he turned back to Liam: “I can only hope, Mr. McCool, that you will give up your idiotic interference with my activities if I tell you that curiosity led me to investigate the matter thoroughly and I am now quite sure that our mutual friend Maggie was killed by McPherson, in a fit of jealous rage when she refused his advances.”
“What?” cried Liam in spite of himself.
“I will forgive your breaking your pledge of silence,” Lukas said with a thin smile, “considering the emotional circumstances. But I know this for sure after talking to the bartender at McSorley’s Ale House, where the ‘Great Detective’ is a regular. McPherson told the whole story to the bartender in a drunken fit of melancholy not long ago, after another woman had rejected his advances and held him up to ridicule in front of his fellow sots. And now my friends, I must beg you to excuse me!”
With that, he exited abruptly, leaving the final Acme standing guard over Liam’s grandmother.
“Do not move,” the Acme said stolidly. After a brief pause, Liam and the others heard the sound of a silenced Delta starting up outside, and abruptly the Acme leapt all the way across the room and crashed through the wall. Within seconds, Liam and his companions heard the muted whirring of the Delta rising over the compound and speeding away into the distance.
Liam sighed heavily; it had just about killed him to stand there like a department store dummy and let Lukas escape; but there was one solid consolation—he and Crazy Horse and the others had kicked over a great big hornet’s nest as they left New Petersburg, and obviously Little Russia’s brutally enforced communications barrier had kept Lukas i
n ignorance of what was happening there. With a little luck, Crazy Horse’s foster father would soon be interrogating Lukas and then turning him over to the okhranniki for target practice … After a moment Liam shook himself free from his thoughts and turned to Becky with a tired smile:
“The noise of that Flyer will have the guards across the way up and about, that’s for sure. Come on, let’s undo Gran.”
Becky and Liam and Ubaldo set to work with a will and before long they managed to undo the restraints. Liam’s grandmother barely stirred in her deeply drugged sleep.
Liam rolled his eyes with frustration: “There’s no way she’ll even be able to walk with you, let alone hurry.”
“Please, Mr. McCool, allow me!” volunteered Ubaldo, and before Liam could protest Ubaldo had hoisted his grandmother off the rolling table and onto his back in a fireman’s lift. “Don’t worry, Mr. McCool, we’ll keep her quite safe.” He turned to Becky: “And now you and I had best move sharpish,” he said and started out the door.
Liam pulled Becky close for a split second, then pushed her towards the exit. “I’ll see you tomorrow, at the party. And be careful!” He waved as she disappeared after Ubaldo, then looked around the operating theater and shook his head. “Dosvidaniia, Lukas,” Liam muttered. “Next time.” Then he pictured Lukas’ arrival in New Petersburg and grinned, imagining the scene as Boylan sweated through bringing his boss up to date on the problems with their plans and laughing out loud as he imagined the Russian’s frenzy over the loss of his nice new Battleship Delta.
Absolutely the biggest thing I ever stole, Liam thought. As far as that goes, the biggest thing anybody ever stole. “You maybe a Grand Duke, Lukas,” Liam continued out loud, “but you still don’t want to mess with the King!” Still chuckling, Liam turned and went out the door at a run, heading for the river and the boat to New York.
Chapter Thirty
The old codger shuffled along the Fourth Avenue side of Union Square, pausing across from the Department of Public Safety headquarters to lean on his walking stick and watch the workmen putting the finishing touches on a bank of grandstands angling towards a stage with a podium that sat in front of the DPS building, facing across the square towards the Pilkington Agency’s building. All the building facades were festooned with red, white and blue bunting, and American flags of every possible size flew everywhere—from the tops of buildings, from lamp posts, from telegraph poles and from thousands of two-foot lengths of wooden doweling that were standing in fire buckets at the 14th Street corner, ready to be distributed among the crowds and waved jubilantly at the punch lines in Secretary Stanton’s speech.
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