Fires of Invention

by J. Scott Savage

  He had to get his mind off his mother. She might be able to keep him out of mechanic training, but she couldn’t stop him from fixing and building things. It was what he loved, who he was. As he emptied grass into the dryer, his thoughts drifted to what Leo Babbage had been working on.

  It still seemed like a weapon. The finger-shaped extensions were sharp enough to do serious damage, and the curved piece could be mounted on a grip of some kind. But violence was a serious crime, and Kallista said that her father tried to obey the law. Plus, the parts were a lot of work to go through when something as simple as a knife or a hammer could be just as deadly.

  Was it a farming tool, then? He looked at the hydroponically grown plants around him and laughed out loud as he imagined himself showing up for work with the tool strapped to his arm.

  “What’s that?” the others would ask.

  “Mechanical hand,” he’d say, opening and closing the metal fingers. “Just the thing for grabbing that stubborn catfish out of the pool and pollinating hard-to-reach pear blossoms.”

  At lunch, he set down his plate of food and pulled out his slate, sketching the device from memory. Three curved points—for grabbing? Stabbing? Holding? A mechanism that extended and retracted, and . . . what? What attached to the back?

  Maybe a pole. He drew one on his slate, but it didn’t look right. He changed it to a mechanical arm. He sketched hydraulics that opened and closed the extensions, and then a joint to pivot up and down. He added another joint in the center of the arm and made it gear driven so the arm could rise and lower separate from the end. It really did look like a mechanical hand. Except in his drawing, the tips didn’t look like fingers at all. Or like weapons.

  They looked more like . . .

  “You draw even worse than you farm,” a voice said.

  Trenton lifted his head to find Clyde watching over his shoulder. He tried to hide his slate, but Clyde had already seen the drawing. “I was just, um, you know, figuring something out.”

  “No offense, but you kind of stink at drawing.” Clyde erased the slate and began sketching. In half the time it had taken Trenton, Clyde drew the mechanical arm.

  It was perfect, exactly how Trenton envisioned it. “I didn’t know you could draw.”

  “Drawing doesn’t make anything or contribute to the city.” Clyde handed him back the slate and shrugged. “You still want to work on machines?”

  Trenton looked away.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just because the city says you can’t work on machines anymore doesn’t mean you can’t think about them. You can’t be punished for what goes on inside your head.” Clyde looked like he was going to say more, but at that moment, Simoni came over and sat down with a plate of cheese and fruit. Clyde lifted an eyebrow and took his food a few feet away.

  “Is that how they get coal out of the mines?” she asked, cutting her cheese into neat cubes.

  “Huh?” Trenton asked.

  Simoni pointed her knife at the slate. “That’s what you were drawing, wasn’t it? A coal-digging machine? Looks like those claws would do a good job. Is that how they do it?”

  Claws. That’s exactly what he’d been drawing. The curved points did look like claws. Attached to the end of a strong enough arm, they’d be able to rip coal from deposits in mountain walls and put the chunks into mining cars.

  Was that what Kallista’s father had been designing, some type of mining equipment? Surprisingly, the idea disappointed him a little.

  “Are you listening to me?” Simoni asked.

  Trenton realized she must have continued talking while he was lost in his thoughts. “Yes,” he said, searching his brain for any trace of her last words. “You were talking about, um, mining equipment, and . . .” He glanced at her plate. “Cheese?”

  Simoni’s brow wrinkled. She flicked a square of cheese in his face. “No. I was not talking about cheese. What’s wrong with you today? Clyde says you’ve been in a trance all morning.”

  “Sorry. I’ve been distracted.” Trenton put his slate back into his apron pocket, then pushed his food around with his fork. “I’ve been wondering about what I’ll do now that my transfer request was denied.”

  “I knew it.” Simoni’s expression softened. “Farming isn’t so bad. You need to stop moping and do something fun. A bunch of us are going to have a picnic in the orchards tomorrow after work. Want to come?”

  If Angus had been jealous before, how would he react after hearing that Trenton and Simoni had gone on a picnic together? He liked the idea. “Absolutely.”

  He tried to focus on his work the rest of the afternoon, but as soon as his shift ended, he raced home, did his homework, and changed clothes to meet Kallista. She had said to bring a coat, but he didn’t have one. He’d never needed one in the perfectly adjusted temperature. Even if he had, wearing it would have raised too many questions.

  He couldn’t think of any reason a coat would be necessary anyway. The city was warm, and level three even got hot from burning coal and the steam-powered plants. The suggestion was probably just Kallista’s odd sense of humor. He could see her laughing her head off as he trudged through the hot, humid air, sweating like a pig in a coat. He finally compromised by tying an extra shirt around his waist, just in case.

  When Trenton came out of his room and headed for the front door, his mother was sitting in her wheeled chair, folding clothes. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Out,” Trenton said without looking at her. He briefly considered adding, To put the citizens of your precious city in danger, but thought better of it. Instead he turned his back and said, “I won’t be home for dinner.”

  She rolled toward him. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

  Holding the doorknob, Trenton finally met her eyes. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

  They stared at each other until his mother looked away. Guilt gnawed at his stomach. Why should he feel guilty? She was the one who’d destroyed all of his hopes and dreams. If she’d minded her own business they wouldn’t be in this situation.

  He hurried outside before either of them could say anything more.

  When he arrived behind the shop, Kallista was already waiting. She was dressed much the way she’d been the day he’d mistaken her for a boy—a long black coat, gloves, and boots. This time, though, her top hat had been replaced by a brown leather cap and welding goggles pulled up on her forehead.

  She eyed his clothes and twisted her mouth. “Told you to bring a coat.”

  Trenton frowned. “I’ve been to the third level. It’s not cold.”

  “Fine,” she said with a hint of a smile. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She tossed him a pair of goggles like her own, along with a flat leather cap.

  “What are these for?” he asked.

  “You’ll see.” Kallista said, jogging down an alleyway. Trenton expected her to turn right toward the center of the city. Instead, she headed left.

  “Where are you going?” He hurried to catch up with her. “The elevators are that way,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  She glanced down the street in both directions. “The elevators have guards. Or do you happen to have a pass to the third level? If so, that would have been good to know.”

  Trenton followed as she ran across the street and ducked into the shadows of a clothing store. “I assumed you had one. You said you work on equipment in the lower levels.”

  “You really are naïve.” She snorted. “You think just because I’ve worked on different levels that I can take the elevators anywhere I want? Unless your job assignment is there, you need a work order to leave the city. No work order, no elevator.”

  This area was mostly shops, and since they all closed at seven o’ clock, the streets were nearly empty and the streetlights dimmed. The darkness made it easier to hide, but the lack of people made the two of them stand out. Every time someone came into view, Kallista ducked out of sight. The more she ducked a
nd ran, the more frustrated Trenton became.

  “If you don’t have a pass, what’s the point of all this?” he asked. “The elevators are the only way to get to the next level.”

  “Is that right?” she asked with a mysterious gleam in her eyes.

  They continued toward the edge of the city, where the buildings were smaller and more spread apart, until they were so close to the bare stone of the mountain wall that Trenton could see the tool marks where the rock had been broken away.

  Kallista stepped into the doorway of a closed vegetable market and knelt. She pulled a piece of chalk from her pocket and handed it to Trenton. “Draw Cove.”

  He took the chalk. “What do you mean?”

  Kallista tapped the sidewalk with her gloved hand. “Draw it. Right here. I want to see how much you know about the place you live.”

  “Okaaay.” Trenton didn’t see the point, but he hunched down and started by drawing a circle on the sidewalk. Kallista brushed away the shape before it was even halfway complete.

  “I didn’t ask you to draw a map of the city,” she snapped. “Anyone can do that. We’ve lived here our whole lives, haven’t we? I want you to draw Cove from the side. The way you’d see it if you cut the mountain in half.”

  Trenton stared at her. He’d never thought about viewing Cove from the side. He put the chalk to the cement and paused. “They don’t teach that in school.”

  “They don’t teach a lot of things in school—one of the many reasons my father never sent me,” Kallista said. “It’s about time you got a real education.”

  18

  Trenton squeezed the chalk until his fingers turned white. He tried to start the sketch several times but kept pulling back. “How am I supposed to draw something I’ve never seen?”

  “You say you’re good with machines,” Kallista said. “Don’t tell me you can’t form a picture in your mind. Imagine the mountain the way you would a machine, then draw it.”

  She was right. Working on things required you to envision how the pieces fit together. He could see each level on its own from above; he just needed to reorient them in his brain. He started by making two sloping lines that met at the top—the sides of the mountain. Next, he drew the first level across the mountain about halfway down, then the city level below that, then the power-plant level, and finally, the mining level at the bottom. He labeled them: one, two, three, and four. He definitely didn’t have Clyde’s drawing talent, but he thought he’d done a decent job.

  Kallista put her hands on her knees and nodded. “Keep going.”

  What else was there? He studied the drawing. He’d forgotten the elevators—of course. He need to add one for each of the four quadrants of the city. He drew four shafts running from the top level to the bottom. Good. But something was still missing.

  He mentally reviewed each level. The first level: food production. The second level: housing, businesses, schools, and parks. The third level . . .

  He nearly slapped his head. Of course. He’d missed the feeder chutes that brought coal and ore up from the mines to level three.

  Now that he was thinking about Cove as a whole, there also had to be steam pipes running up from the lower levels to the power-generation plants. He didn’t know exactly where the chutes were in relationship to everything else. So he guessed, sketching lines in several places across the city.

  “How’s that?” he asked, sitting back and admiring his work.

  Kallista snickered, and Trenton tensed.

  “Actually,” she said in a conciliatory tone, “it’s probably better than most people could do.”

  Trenton stared at his drawing. “What’s wrong with it?”

  Kallista took the chalk. “For one thing, it’s all out of proportion.” She wiped away the sides of the mountain with the sleeve of her coat and redrew them. Instead of running from one side of the mountain to the other, the levels now filled less than a fourth of the mountain’s width. She then extended the sides of the mountain down farther until even the lowest level was barely a third of the way down from the mountain’s top.

  She eyed the drawing critically and nodded. “My dad could have done better, but this is close enough. If the mountain were hollow, the way you drew it, the whole thing would have collapsed under its own weight long ago. Also, your levels are too close together. Fifty feet of rock, minimum, separates each section to keep one level from falling into the other. And there are stone pillars—here, here, here, and here—left in place to help bear the weight of the rock.” She drew four thick lines in each of the four sections of the city. Sixteen total.

  “I’ve never seen any pillars,” Trenton said, thinking she was making fun of him.

  Kallista rolled her eyes as if she were trying to teach a clumsy baby to walk. “You also haven’t seen the masses of pipes, drains, and struts running through all four levels. Not to mention the wires running from the power plants to the conversion stations like the one you built your swing on. That’s because they’re all hidden.” She pointed to their right. “Haven’t you ever wondered why there are only a few buildings as tall as that?”

  Trenton stared at the structure she was pointing toward. Most city buildings were two or three stories, tops. But now that he thought about it, each quadrant had four buildings that reached all the way to the top of the level. They were bigger around than the average building.

  “So the pillars are hidden inside those,” he said, feeling like someone had just revealed an extremely impressive magic trick he hadn’t even realized was going on until that moment. “But why are they hidden?”

  “Probably because buildings look better than a bunch of big columns of rock sticking up everywhere. Of course, there are also holes drilled all over the place to run pipe and wires and such.”

  Trenton nodded excitedly, feeling his heart race. “We can climb through the holes.”

  “Not even,” she said. “There’s barely enough room for the pipes. Every time there’s a leak or a wire goes bad, they have to fish the whole thing out. It’s pretty dumb.”

  “Then what was the point of telling me this?”

  Kallista puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. “Because I thought you’d actually be interested in what’s around you.”

  “Okay,” Trenton said. “It is interesting. But how does it help us get down to the next level?”

  Kallista drew a tube that ran straight up the center of all four levels before angling to the edge of the mountain. “You left out something that you see every day. Something kind of, I don’t know, important, because it keeps us alive.”

  “The air-exchange pipe,” Trenton blurted. How had he forgotten about that? It’s what gave them the air they breathed. Running through all four levels and, at more than a hundred feet across, it was plenty big enough to climb down. “If we could get inside it, we could go to any level we want.”

  “We could,” Kallista agreed. “Except A, there are iron grates between every level, and B, even if you managed to get inside, which is all but impossible, the exhaust fans are so strong, they’d suck you up like a pea through a straw and chop you into itty-bitty bloody pieces.”

  “Then how are we supposed to get down?” Trenton exploded. Kallista had to be the most irritating person he’d ever met.

  She put her finger to her lips. “Listen.”

  Trenton took a deep breath and tried to control his temper. Tilting his head to the side, he listened. At this time of the evening, with businesses closed and most people inside eating dinner, the city was nearly silent. There was nothing to hear except . . .

  There was something—a swishing sound. As if someone nearby were blowing through lips pressed almost close enough together to whistle. He looked around. The noise seemed to be coming from the mountain wall. Glancing up, he spotted a metal shaft running the length of the wall and through the ceiling.

  “The pipe at the center of the city draws the bad air out,” Kallista said. “The fans inside it create a huge suction. That’s why
no one is allowed to get too close to it. What most people don’t realize is that the air coming from the outside is sucked in through vertical ducts located around the outside of each level. It just so happens that the ducts are almost exactly the right size for kids like us to climb in—both up and down. And the vents take all of about five minutes to unscrew.”

  “We’re going to crawl inside an air duct?” Trenton asked.

  “It’s not too bad,” Kallista. “I’ve done it before. Every ten feet, you can hold on to brackets and rest.”

  Trenton ran his fingers through his hair. “We’ll be climbing through air from . . . outside?”

  “Don’t worry,” Kallista said. “It’s filtered before it ever gets to us.” She folded her arms wrapped in her long black cloak. “But it is a bit cold.”

  • • •

  She hadn’t been kidding. The air blowing through the vent was so icy that the metal duct almost hurt to touch. Climbing down a few feet behind Kallista, he tried to keep his arms and legs from shivering. “W-why is it s-so freezing?”

  “The air comes from the top of the mountain,” Kallista called up. “My father says that there’s something called snow up there almost year-round. It’s like crystals of frozen water.”

  Climbing down the shaft was hard work. But even with the exertion, by the time they managed to work their way down to the third level—by pressing their backs against one side and their knees on the other—Trenton could barely feel his fingers. The hat and goggles protected his head and eyes, but his second shirt did nothing against the bitter-cold air that ran down the shaft in a constant gale.

  Removing the vent from the outside had been a simple matter of removing the screws. It took Kallista longer to get the second vent off from the inside because she had to twist the screws out with a pair of pliers and then hammer them when they were unscrewed too far to grip. When the two of them finally climbed out on the third level, he was pretty sure he knew what it felt like to be an ice cube.

  Kallista watched him stomp his feet and rub his hands. “Maybe next time you’ll take my advice.”