Fires of Invention

by J. Scott Savage

  “Figure out your father’s code on your own,” he said, pushing the tool away. “I’ll just return what I found.” He turned and walked toward the window.

  “You found something? What? Where?” Kallista ran after him. “I’ve been looking all over, searching for patterns, doing mathematical calculations.”

  Trenton eyed the screwdriver, and Kallista lowered the blade. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that security has been snooping around—asking questions at work, coming by the shop at all hours. When I saw you enter the window, I assumed you were working with them.” She chewed her lower lip. “Did you really find something?”

  Trenton considered not telling her, but what was the point? He patted his apron. “I found what your father hid. If they’ve discovered the shop, we probably shouldn’t talk here, though.”

  “Turn around,” Kallista said.

  “So you can stab me in the back?”

  Kallista put the screwdriver into her tool belt and at least tried to look a little guilty. “I wouldn’t have stabbed you—much. Now face the back wall. I have to do something.”

  “Do what?” Trenton asked, but he faced the spot where the door had been while Kallista moved around behind him. He heard a soft click, and the metal wall he’d so carefully searched rose rumbling into the ceiling.

  “I don’t believe it,” Trenton said. With the wall up, he could see small tracks set into both sides of the room and the edge of the thick metal plate above him. When it had been down, though, the illusion was perfect.

  “Did you really think my father would have left his belongings unprotected?” Kallista asked. “Or that they wouldn’t have forced open the door and taken everything after he died?”

  Trenton hadn’t considered that, but now it seemed obvious. Why else would she leave such valuable equipment where anyone who climbed through an unlocked window could find it?

  “But the wall was up the first time you brought me,” he said.

  Kallista opened the normal workshop door and turned on the lights. “When I climb through the window, I can trigger the door to open. I didn’t this time, because I saw you go inside. My father built the wall. He installed alarms and traps all over the place. Be glad the wall was down when you got here. If you enter the wrong code in the door twice, everything inside the workshop goes up in flames.”

  Was she serious? He honestly couldn’t tell. He followed her into the workshop, and she shut the door.

  “So?” she said, facing him. “What was the clue? What did you find?”

  Trenton took a deep breath. “I’ll show you on two conditions.”

  Kallista’s eyes narrowed.

  “First,” Trenton said, “we work on this together.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said. “My father left this—whatever it is—for me.”

  “Funny, then, that I’ve found the first two clues.”

  The two of them glared at each other.

  “I thought you didn’t want to get involved,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Let’s just say I’ve changed my mind.”

  Kallista’s lips narrowed. “You’re a farmer. Not a mechanic.”

  “I’m a mechanic who’s been forced to farm. And my conditions are not negotiable. Either I’m in or I’m gone.”

  Kallista’s hand slipped toward the handle of her screwdriver.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Trenton said. “Your father left more than one piece this time. I brought one of them, but you’ll never see the other two unless you swear we’re a team.”

  It was a bluff, but it worked.

  “Fine,” she said. “What’s the second condition?”

  Trenton had been thinking about this ever since he’d taken the pieces from the tank’s box, but how could he say what he had to? “I know he was your father, but . . .” He touched the cool metal inside his apron.

  Kallista’s face drew in on itself, and her shoulders pulled forward as if to protect her from a blow. “But what?”

  There was no easy way to do this, so he spoke as quickly as he could. “I won’t hurt other people. If this thing he was working on is dangerous—if it’s some kind of weapon, or if it could injure other citizens—you agree that we destroy it.”

  “My father never hurt anyone,” Kallista said, her voice cold.

  “Maybe not on purpose. But he blew up that apartment building. He killed himself and a lot of other people.”

  “That’s a lie!” Kallista shouted. Her face was nearly white except for two spots high on her cheeks, which glowed like coals. “My father was the best mechanic I’ve ever known. He understood every piece of equipment in the city. He wouldn’t have blown up a water heater any more than he would have let his tools rust.”

  Trenton knew it had to be horrible for her to admit what her father had done. But if they were going to work together, she had to face the facts. “People died. That’s not a lie.”

  Kallista folded her arms across her chest. “Name one.”

  “One what?”

  “Name one person who died in the explosion,” she said. “Everyone knows that Leo Babbage blew up an apartment building and killed a bunch of people. The chancellor tells the story over and over. So give me the name of one person who died in the explosion.”

  Trenton opened his mouth, then shut it. “Well, I don’t know specifically, but I’m sure—”

  “Are you?” She paced around the workshop. “After my father died, I was in shock. I couldn’t understand how he could have made such a huge mistake on such a simple project. I’d never seen him so much as strip a bolt or put a gear on in the wrong direction. I couldn’t help but think about the people who had died in the explosion. Finally I decided I had to track down the family members of the survivors to apologize.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault,” Trenton said. “You didn’t cause the explosion.”

  “No. But I was the only living relative of the person who did. It’s what my father would have done if he could have. I spent three weeks trying to locate the relatives of the people he supposedly killed. Guess how many I found.”

  Trenton shook his head.

  “None,” Kallista said. “Not one father, mother, sister, or brother of any person who died in that explosion.”

  “Impossible,” Trenton said. Estimates ranged between twelve and twenty people killed. With that many deaths in a population the size of Cove’s, Kallista should have been able to find a dozen relatives the first day. “Where did you get the list of victims?”

  Kallista took a socket driver from the wall, turned it in her hands, and put it back. “Funny thing about that. After the explosion, there was a scorched building, broken walls, and lots of gossip about my father and all of the people they say he killed—a friend of a friend, an aunt’s sister’s nephew once removed. But there was no official list of victims’ names. I went to the chancellor himself to request the names, and you know what he told me?”

  The hairs on Trenton’s arms stood up. “What?”

  “He said the accident was hard enough on the families and that I should leave them alone. He refused to provide a single name of anyone who died in the explosion.” She turned to stare at him, her eyes like pieces of flint. “You know what else was missing? Bodies. I got there within minutes of the explosion—it was the building next to ours. Not one body was ever pulled from the wreckage.”

  “But your father’s . . .”

  A single tear trickled from the corner of Kallista’s eye. “They told me I wouldn’t want to see what was left of him.”

  16

  Trenton tried to take in everything Kallista had told him, but it was too much. None of it made any sense. “You think the city pretended that your father and those people died?”

  “I don’t know,” Kallista said, wiping away the tear with an angry brush of her hand.

  “Why would they do that?” It seemed far more likely that she’d twisted the story to ease her pain. He couldn’t blame her. “If your father
didn’t die in the explosion, what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Kallista said. “I don’t know if the explosion was real or set up. I don’t know how my father died. Maybe the chancellor was telling the truth; maybe none of the victims’ families wanted to talk to me.” She clenched her hands. “But can you see now why it’s so important that I find out what my father was working on?”

  “Yes,” Trenton said. Hoping he wouldn’t regret it, he reached into the pocket of his apron and took out the three pieces he’d found in the metal box. One by one, he laid them on the worktable.

  Kallista’s eyes gleamed.

  “Do you know what they are?” he asked. “The tubes look like they fit into the curved piece.”

  “They do.” Kallista took the first tube out of a box under the workbench and set it beside the other two. “That’s what the ring cut into the top of each tube is for.” She inserted each of the tubes into the curved piece. They fit in place with a soft click. When she inserted the last one, all three of the tubes extended out and down like curved fingers.

  “Is it some kind of weapon?” Trenton asked. Maybe Kallista’s father knew someone was trying to kill him and he wanted to protect himself.

  “I don’t think so.” Kallista turned the U-shaped piece over. With the tubes inserted, a pair of threaded bolts had popped out from the back of the curve. “This is part of something bigger,” she said, handing it to him. “Something else connects here, and this hole in the middle is for another star driver. It’s designed so that the tubes can all be drawn in or pushed out at the same time.”

  “It’s light,” Trenton said. The curved piece was almost a foot across and solid to his touch. It should have weighed as much as a pipe wrench, yet he could easily lift it with one hand. “This isn’t iron or steel. Definitely not brass or copper.”

  “It’s called an alloy,” Kallista said. “My father was researching metals lighter and stronger than we have now.”

  Different kinds of metals? This was much more than changing the size of the gears in a machine or tweaking a chain drive. “Then he was an inventor.” The word popped out before he realized what he was saying. He clapped a hand to his mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  If someone had called his father a name like that, Trenton would have been livid. But Kallista didn’t flinch. “My father didn’t think that inventor was a bad word. He said the human mind was built to look for better ways of doing things.” She took the device from Trenton and placed it on the workbench. “He used to tell me how there were things no one else knew about the city.”

  “What kinds of things?” This probably wasn’t a conversation he should be having. His father would frown on this kind of talk, and his mother would throw a fit. But wasn’t it his mother’s fault that he was here in the first place? If she hadn’t gone to the chancellor, he’d be happily fixing a steam plant or a coal feeder.

  “He never told me,” Kallista said. “I got the feeling he was afraid that knowing could get me into trouble. Or maybe he didn’t think I was old enough.” She ran a hand across the shiny metal, clearly proud of her father’s work. “Where did you find these, anyway?”

  “In the filter box of one of the fish tanks. The pattern on the first tube matched the shapes of the tanks I was working on. You’re lucky I was assigned there.”

  “It wasn’t luck.” Kallista went to a cabinet and took out several boxes of hexagon-shaped nuts. She began trying them on the ends of the bolts. “You know, my father never told me he loved me. He was a terrible cook. I’ve done all the laundry, made the meals, and cleaned our apartment for as long as I can remember. But he taught me to read when I was three. I knew how to use and take care of every one of his tools by the time I was five. Most importantly, he taught me that you make your own luck. He never left anything to chance.”

  “You’re saying he knew I’d get assigned to food production and work on the fish tanks?” Trenton asked.

  Kallista rolled her eyes. “He was a mechanic, not a psychic. He left these for me. I don’t work on level one as much as I do on three, but I would have figured it out.” She found the correct nut, threaded one onto each bolt, and nodded. “Was there any kind of message or clue on the fish tank?”

  “Not unless it was underwater, and I’m not about to go swimming again to find out.”

  Kallista wrinkled her nose. “I was going to say something about your unique aroma,” she said with a grin. “I’ll think about the fish tank. You keep an eye out for anything else out of the ordinary. In the meantime, I need to go to level three to find the next piece.”

  “Why three?” Trenton picked up the metal piece and studied it for more markings. “Did you find a clue?”

  “I found two,” Kallista said with a cocky grin. “The first tube was on the mining level. The rest of the pieces were on the food-production level. That leaves the city and level three.”

  Trenton snorted. “Not very scientific. What are you going to do, wander around those levels until you find strange, unclaimed parts? And technically, the first tube was halfway between levels three and four. It could have been scooped up in the mines or fallen down from above.”

  Kallista snatched the piece back from Trenton. “My father used to play a game with me where he’d hide something and I had to find it. When I was little, he made it easy, like an apple on top of my bedpost. Later, I had to follow a series of hints. I’m sure he set up the first tube to be found when and where it was. I’ll bet that if you’d looked closer, you’d have discovered a timer set to release the tube onto the belt at a certain day and time.”

  “But the chute was too small for an adult to climb up,” Trenton said. “He couldn’t have fit inside.”

  “Which means he had to drop it in from above—from the coal-burning plant. Clearly he wanted me to figure out that the power plant was where he’d hide the next piece of the puzzle.”

  That sounded like a huge stretch. “You got this all from the fact that I found the first piece on the feeder belt?” Trenton asked.

  “That. And the bolts.” Kallista tapped the two bolts sticking out from the back of the piece.

  “What about them?” Trenton asked. The bolts didn’t look like anything special.

  Kallista spun the nuts she’d taken from the cupboard. “The threads on these are much wider than on most bolts. They’re used in only a couple of places. And it just so happens that one of them is the power plant connected to feed belt eleven.”

  Trenton was stunned. She knew the exact types of bolts used in a specific power plant?

  Kallista grinned at his reaction. “I might have had one other small hint.” She turned around the box she’d taken the nuts out of. There, printed in clear bold letters, were the words Coal Plant 11.

  Trenton gaped before bursting into laughter. “You are such a faker! I can’t believe I fell for that. It just so happens that one of them is the power plant connected to feed belt eleven.” He shook his head. “How are we going to get to level three?”

  Kallista pulled the device toward her. “We?”

  “We figure this out together. It was part of the deal.”

  Kallista sighed. “Fine. Meet me here tomorrow night at seven. Bring a coat.”

  • • •

  Trenton was quiet at dinner that night.

  “How was work today?” his mother asked. “Your clothes smelled strange.”

  “Clyde and I had a contest to see who could inhale the most plankton,” Trenton said.

  His father quirked his eyebrows. “Your mother says you came home later than normal. Is everything all right?”

  Trenton glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Did his father know about his mother’s visit with the chancellor? “I had a meeting with a woman from the city about my transfer.”

  His mother stiffened.

  “How did it go?” his father asked.

  All afternoon, Trenton had been thinking about how he would handle this moment. He could c
all his mother out by telling her what he’d learned. But what would that accomplish? According to the woman from the city, the decision was final. If he said anything now, it would only cause another argument.

  “It was denied,” he said.

  “Oh.” His father pushed his food around with his fork. “I’m sorry. I know how much you were looking forward to being a mechanic.”

  Trenton looked directly at his mother. “They felt that food production was a better career path. They thought that working with machines would be dangerous for me—and for the city.”

  “Did they?” his mother said, her face expressionless. “I’m . . . sorry too.”

  Trenton’s father looked at the two of them as though sensing something was wrong.

  “They were probably right,” Trenton said. “If I were given access to complicated equipment, who knows what kind of trouble I’d get into?”

  17

  The next day, Trenton stepped off the elevator and found Clyde once again writing something on his slate. “What is that?” he asked, walking over.

  Clyde jumped up and wiped his slate before Trenton could see what was on it. “Just taking notes on stuff we’ve been learning.” Trenton eyed him curiously, but Clyde turned away without meeting his gaze. “Come on. We’re working on alfalfa today.”

  They joined the group of students they’d been assigned to work with and followed their instructor to rows of shelves stacked with growing trays. The students were assigned to remove the plants from the trays, place them in vats to be dried, and reseed the mats.

  The trays smelled much better than the fish tanks, and there was no slime to fall into, but even working in a nicer place Trenton couldn’t stay focused. He kept thinking about what his mother had done. Did she think he wouldn’t find out? Did she even care if he did?

  “You feeling okay?” Clyde asked, handing Trenton a tray. “You look ready to throw someone into the algae pond.”

  Trenton realized he was scowling and forced himself to relax. “Yeah, I just have a headache.”