Fires of Invention

by J. Scott Savage

  “What’s wrong with that?” Trenton asked, wishing he could understand people like he did machines.

  “Just that he thought he could fix people the same way he fixed equipment. He didn’t understand that you can’t straighten bent motives with a hammer. You can’t repair broken relationships with a wrench. He could see what people were thinking, but when it came to dealing with them, he was all thumbs.”

  Trenton glanced at Kallista out of the corner of his eye, wondering how she was reacting to all of this talk about her father. She unbuttoned her coat and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.

  “My father wasn’t very good at telling people how he felt. He, um, had a hard time in social situations.”

  “That’s putting it gently,” Miss Huber nodded understandingly. “He angered people in powerful positions because he saw through their stories. He angered them even more because he was far too blunt in pointing out their mistakes.”

  Kallista stared at her hands. Miss Huber seemed to realize the effect of her words. “Don’t look so glum, child. None of us is perfect. Those who believe themselves to be without flaws are the worst of the bunch. Your father understood that he wasn’t good at expressing himself with words. So he did it with actions, which brings us back to why you are here. You say you think your father left you something, yes?”

  “The year before he died, he was working on a . . . project of some kind.”

  Miss Huber folded her meaty hands beneath her chin, her eyes serious. “This project. What do you know about it?”

  Trenton held his breath, hoping Kallista would be careful. How much did they really know about this woman? Could they trust her? She could be working with the chancellor. The whole thing with the security guard could have been a setup.

  If Kallista shared any of his doubts, she didn’t show it. “He wouldn’t tell me. But I think he wants me to find out now. He left clues for me.” She leaned toward the desk. “Do you know what his project was?”

  The plant manager’s brows lowered until her eyes nearly disappeared. She seemed to consider her words carefully before speaking. “I think I may. Not precisely what he was working on, but why he was working on it. He came to me with a story that was so”—she waved her hands in the air—“so outlandish, so unlike Leo Babbage, that I couldn’t believe he was serious. I told him so. But now I can’t help wondering . . .”

  “What was it?” Trenton nearly shouted. “What did he tell you?”

  “Yes, what?” Kallista asked, both of them barely remaining on their chairs.

  But Miss Huber shook her head. “No. He kept the project secret for a reason. I believe he regretted telling me as much as he did. Even if I knew the details, I wouldn’t share them with you. He clearly believed that what he was doing was too dangerous to share. And so do I.”

  “Dangerous?” Trenton asked. “Like a weapon? You think he was trying to hurt someone?”

  Kallista opened her mouth, but Miss Huber spoke first. “Leo Babbage was one of the gentlest souls I’ve ever known. I never saw him lay a hand on another person in anger. When I tell you that what he was working on was dangerous, I speak not of danger to others but to himself. He put himself into direct conflict with powerful people, and now . . .” She sniffed and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  “But he wanted us to come here,” Kallista said. “He left something for us in your plant. I know it.”

  Miss Huber pushed her chair back from her desk and stood. “If he sent you here, I can only assume it was so I could tell you to stop your search. You may think you want to know what he was working on. But trust me, you do not.”

  Trenton bit the inside of his lip. He’d come here looking for answers. Now he was a little relieved they hadn’t gotten them.

  Kallista stood, her cheeks bright and her dark eyes glinting. “I don’t want to know what my father was working on; I have to know.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” Miss Huber walked to the door. “I’ll have one of my staff escort you back to the city. Please don’t come here again.”

  Trenton turned to leave, but Kallista refused to move. She glared at the plant manager. “You’re lying. I know you are. My father left something for me, and I’m going to keep coming back until I find it. If you have me arrested, the first thing I’ll tell them is that my father told you all about his project.”

  Kallista was shorter than the plant manager and weighed probably a third of what the woman did. But as Trenton watched the two of them glare at each other, he had no doubt as to who would come out on top in this battle of wills.

  At last Miss Huber bobbed her head. “Very well.” She crossed to a metal cabinet and knelt before it. The door had a series of dials and levers—it was a safe.

  Miss Huber muttered as she worked the dials. “You’re as stubborn as your father was.”

  “More,” Kallista said with a smug grin.

  Miss Huber pushed the final lever, and, with a loud click, the door swung open. She took out a cloth bag and set it on the desk with a clunk. “Several months before your father died, he gave me this package. He said that if anything happened to him, I should wait two years. If, during that time, his daughter came asking for the package, I should give it to her. If she did not come, or if anyone else asked for the package, I was to destroy it.” She shook her head. “I thought it was a mistake then, and I still think so now. I wonder if I shouldn’t have destroyed it the day I heard about his . . . accident.”

  “What is it?” Trenton asked. “What’s inside?”

  “I don’t know,” Miss Huber said. “He requested that I not open it, and I haven’t.”

  • • •

  The entire trip back to the workshop, Trenton thought about what the plant manager had said about Leo Babbage’s project being dangerous. He didn’t think the tough old woman could be scared of anything, but toward the end of their visit, he was almost positive he’d seen fear in her eyes.

  What could be so dangerous that it scared a woman like her?

  Kallista must have sensed his hesitation. “You don’t have to stay,” she said. “This was between my father and me. I won’t blame you if you walk away.”

  Trenton eyed the package on the table. He knew he was walking a fine line between curiosity and stupidity, but he had to know what Leo Babbage had left behind. Maybe then he could decide whether to quit the search or keep going. He took a deep breath. “Open it.”

  Kallista reached into the bag. She took out another extending tube and a teardrop-shaped piece of metal that Trenton could instantly tell fit onto the bolts of the U-shaped piece. She turned the bag upside down above the workbench, and a small tube of paper fell out.

  With trembling hands, she picked it up and unrolled it. “It’s his handwriting,” she said, quickly scanning the small sheet.

  “What does it say?” Trenton asked, leaning over her shoulder.

  She showed him the note. There was no mention of Kallista or a signature. Only two short lines.

  Remember the time I took you to visit the house of the big guy’s

  nine daughters? The hunger there has always bothered me.

  Kallista shook her head. “Not even a Love, Dad.”

  “He didn’t want anyone to know that it was a letter for you in case someone else got hold of it.”

  “Yeah,” Kallista said. “That’s probably it.”

  But Trenton thought he saw tears in her eyes. She looked away too quickly for him to be sure. “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. I’ll have to think about it. In the meantime, let’s put these pieces together.” She took the teardrop piece and fitted it into the U. Two nuts tightened the pieces together, and the last tube clicked into the back tip of the teardrop.

  The entire thing was now more than eighteen inches long. With the three tubes in front and the one in the back extended, the pointed tubes held the device a good ten inches off the workbench.

  “Look,”
Trenton said, pointing to the opening at the top of the teardrop shape. “See the gears and hydraulic connections inside? Whatever this connects to will have the ability to open and close the tubes, and rotate the whole thing forward and back. It’s like a big metal hand.”

  “Not a hand.” Kallista shook her head. “A foot. It looks like a . . .” She suddenly burst into laughter.

  Trenton looked from her to the device, puzzled. “What’s so funny?”

  “Sorry,” Kallista said. “It’s just . . .” She giggled again, and Trenton couldn’t help but join her, even though he had no idea what she was laughing about. She managed to stop giggling long enough to say, “It looks like my father built a metal chicken foot.”

  Trenton stared at the contraption. She was right. That’s exactly what it looked like—a giant metal chicken foot. He quickly ran some numbers in his head. “If that’s a foot, the chicken would have to be at least thirty feet tall.” He clapped his hands to his mouth. “I’ll have to tell food production to prepare for some really big eggs.”

  “Giant eggs!” Kallista hooted. “My father’s secret project was providing enough scrambled eggs to feed the whole city.”

  They both laughed so hard they collapsed to the floor.

  21

  The next day, Simoni rushed up to Trenton as soon as he finished work. “Let’s go,” she said, handing him a leather satchel. “This is going to be so much fun.”

  “What’s this?” he asked, hefting the satchel.

  Simoni stopped, the smile disappearing from her face. “Tell me you didn’t forget the picnic. You’ve been disappearing every day after work, but you promised.”

  The picnic. Of course. With his mind on giant chickens and the clue on Leo Babbage’s note, Trenton had completely forgotten his promise to go to the orchard with Simoni and her friends today.

  “I didn’t forget,” he quickly said. “I was just surprised that you already have the food.” He hefted the pack, pretending it weighed more than it did. “What’s in here, rocks?”

  Simoni’s smile returned. “You’ll have to wait and see. But it’s delicious. Come on.” She broke into a trot. “Let’s catch up with the others.”

  Trenton had been planning on going to the workshop to brainstorm about the clue with Kallista. Plus, he wanted to get another look at the foot. He had an idea that by calculating the size of the hydraulic line and the number of teeth in the gears, he might be able to estimate what it connected to as well as the strength of whatever powered it.

  Still, he found himself getting caught up in Simoni’s cheerfulness as she chattered about the latest gossip concerning the other food-production students. It turned out that two different girls liked Clyde—who’d have guessed that? Apparently Clyde was clueless. That much Trenton could have guessed. Another one of the students—a girl he didn’t know well—had been caught smuggling fruit to her family and was sentenced to three days of retraining.

  Walking beside Simoni in the fragrant orchard, Trenton realized he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed being around her. Unlike Kallista, who always seemed on the verge of punching him in the nose, Simoni was like a bright, bobbing flower.

  “Here we are,” Simoni said as they reached a group of eight others already gathered at a perfect spot to eat. The apple and pear trees were in bloom, and tiny petals covered the ground.

  Trenton started to sit down before seeing that Simoni was giving him an expectant look. He glanced around quickly, wondering what he’d missed, and noticed the others had laid blankets out on the ground. Was he supposed to have brought a blanket? He should have thought to ask more questions.

  “Inside the bag,” Simoni whispered.

  Trenton opened the satchel and saw a blue- and brown-checkered wool blanket. He breathed a sigh of relief. He spread it out beneath a couple of cherry trees.

  Simoni grinned and sat down. “Thank you, kind sir.”

  “You’re, um—welcome,” he stammered.

  As Simoni began taking food out of her bag, Trenton glanced at the other kids. A few of them had been in his school, although one graduated the year before. Several others he didn’t know well; either they’d gone to different schools or he hadn’t worked with them yet. Four boys and four girls all watched him.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” Simoni asked.

  “No. Uh, definitely not,” Trenton said, stumbling over his words. He reached into the satchel and pulled out random items.

  The meal included hard-boiled eggs, fresh breads, artichoke hearts, and a fruit salad with some kind of sweet and slightly nutty sauce. There were even little smoke-flavored sausages. If he could have done nothing at the picnic but sit and eat, it would have been perfect. The problem was, the others seemed to expect him to talk. And not just talk; he was supposed to say funny things.

  Trenton had never been good at small talk. Ask him about a job or how to do something mechanical and he could speak as clearly as anyone. But when it came to jokes or amusing stories, he didn’t have a clue. And he was pretty sure the others wouldn’t see the humor of a giant chicken foot.

  “How do like your training?” asked Arthur, the second-year student.

  “Good,” Trenton said, desperately trying to come up with something that would make them laugh. “A couple of days ago, I fell in the plankton tank.”

  The girl by Arthur frowned. “Plankton? How disgusting.”

  Not the reaction Trenton had been hoping for.

  “You should have seen my shirt when I got home,” he tried. “It was totally green.”

  The comment was met with complete silence. Knowing he needed to come up with something—and quickly—he remembered the clue on Kallista’s note.

  “I have a question for you all,” he said. “Where do the nine daughters of the big guy live?”

  “The big guy?” asked one of the other boys. “You mean the chancellor?”

  “No one could have nine daughters,” said a girl with long, nearly white hair and a pointy nose. “That’s against the law.”

  Trenton shifted on his blanket. “Oh, no one in the city. It’s a riddle. You know, like a clue to figure out. If someone gave you a note telling you to go to the house of the big guy’s nine daughters, where would you go?”

  “Nowhere,” said Arthur. “Obviously, it would be a trick, since no one in Cove has ever had—or will ever have—nine children, sons or daughters.”

  Simoni smiled politely at Trenton. “So what’s the answer to the riddle? Where is the home of the nine daughters?”

  As everyone waited expectantly for Trenton’s response, it occurred to him that he didn’t actually know the answer. “You guys think about it for a while. I don’t want to spoil it for you.”

  “Well, that was . . . fun,” Arthur said. The group rather pointedly turned away from Trenton and Simoni and began a discussion about their various jobs in food production.

  Trenton released a sigh of relief, grateful to have the awkward conversation ended.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Simoni said, disappointment shadowing her face.

  As Trenton followed her through row after row of trees, he glanced at one of the grain silos that ran all the way to the ceiling—and counted three more. He immediately knew why they were there.

  “The pillars,” he said.

  Simoni stopped to see what he was looking at. “The what?”

  He pointed to the nearest silo. “Did you know that each quadrant has four stone pillars? They help keep one level from crashing down on the next.”

  Simoni squinted. “I don’t see any pillars.”

  “That’s because they’re hidden inside the silos.” He looked up and noticed several discolored spots on the stone ceiling by the silos, almost as if the rock had been patched. Maybe something had been attached to the ceiling there at some point?

  “If you say so.” Simoni shrugged. “Now, stop staring and come this way. I know a great place behind the hay bales.”

  Trenton followed her, b
ut he couldn’t stop staring at the rock above them. Now that he was looking for discolored spots, he noticed more and more of them.

  “Isn’t this perfect?” Simoni asked, pulling him down to sit beside her in the hay.

  “Sure,” he said. “A little itchy, though.” He looked to his left and spotted the biggest mark yet. Something must have been attached to the ceiling, but he couldn’t imagine what.

  “What are you looking at?” Simoni asked.

  Trenton pointed to the dark spot. “I’m wondering what used to be attached to the rock up there—probably a long time ago. This was the original level where our forefathers founded Cove.”

  Simoni pulled back. “Are you giving me a history lesson?”

  “No.” Trenton tore his gaze away from the ceiling. “I just thought it’s, you know, interesting to understand more about where we live.”

  Simoni shook her head. “Remember what I told you about Clyde being clueless that someone liked him?”

  “Sure,” Trenton said.

  “He’s not the only one.” Simoni moved closer and took his hand in hers.

  • • •

  By the time Trenton got off the elevator at level two, he was still in mild shock.

  Simoni looked at him as they stepped through the gate. “You didn’t mind holding hands?”

  He swallowed hard. “No! I mean, I liked it. I’m glad you, and me, that we . . .” He could feel his face turning redder and redder, so he quit trying to talk.

  Simoni smiled and gave his hand a squeeze. “Good,” she said. “Next time, don’t be so clueless,” she called over her shoulder, before running off.

  Clueless, Trenton thought as he walked back toward his apartment. That’s what he’d been, all right. Simoni likes me. How long had she felt that way? And why hadn’t he realized it? He’d liked her since the second grade. But he didn’t think she’d ever looked at him that way.