Fires of Invention

by J. Scott Savage

  The plans were no joke. They were real. Though why he would have drawn them up and what he expected his daughter to do with them was beyond understanding.

  The plans on the page—shown in surprisingly great detail—were for building a creature that looked like it had come directly from the pages of one of the storybooks in Leo Babbage’s workshop. Trenton studied the powerful, clawed legs, the broad wings, and the sharp-toothed mouth.

  “What is that thing?” he whispered.

  Kallista held the plans up, eyes filled with wonder. “It’s a dragon.”

  23

  Trenton paced the workshop, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t know why you’re still wasting time on this.”

  “It’s my time,” Kallista barked, looking up from her slate. “I can do what I want with it.”

  It had been over two weeks since they’d found her father’s plans, and Trenton couldn’t believe she was taking them seriously. He’d stopped by before work to see if she’d finally given up on the project. Clearly she hadn’t.

  He dropped onto a stool and rested his elbows on the workbench. “So many things are wrong with this; I can’t begin to count them.”

  Kallista stared at him, her lips narrowed.

  “Fine. I’ll count them.” He held up one finger. “First, you’re talking about something out of a story.” He swept his hands over the books Kallista had spread across the workbench. Each was opened to a picture of what Kallista called a dragon. Apparently her father had a thing for the make-believe beasts because there were more than a dozen pictures of them burning buildings, devastating cities, and soaring through the air. “They aren’t real,” he sputtered, amazed that he had to say it.

  “They aren’t,” Kallista said. “But this one can be. It will be. I’m going to build it.”

  “With what?” Trenton held up another finger. “That’s my second point. You want to build this creature, but all you have is a foot. One foot. You don’t even have a pair of feet. What good are the plans with no parts?”

  Kallista shoved aside her slate and unrolled the plans, which she and Trenton had pored over for hours. “The parts are listed here, along with instructions for how to put them together. My father wouldn’t have left the plans if there weren’t already parts to go with it. All I need to do is figure out where he hid them.”

  Trenton put his head in his hands. “Do you hear how you sound? We’re talking about a thirty-foot-tall steam-powered . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

  “Thirty-three feet, six inches,” Kallista said. “A thirty-three-foot dragon.”

  “Exactly.” Trenton curved his fingers into claws. “It’s one thing to hide a few talons inside a mattress or under a sink. It doesn’t make any sense, but at least it’s possible. Do you honestly believe there’s a metal head taller than you and that it’s hidden somewhere in the city where no one’s noticed it for a year?” He pulled the plans toward him. “I have no doubt that your father drew these up. And who knows—it could even work. But he clearly didn’t get a chance to finish making the parts.”

  Kallista took the plans away from him. “If he didn’t finish making them, I will.”

  They’d been over and over this. He nodded toward the map she kept updating on her slate. “How many smelting plants have you checked now?”

  She looked away. “Six.”

  “And how many have the ability to make the metal your father machined the pieces from?”

  Kallista didn’t answer. She didn’t need to; he’d seen the map. She’d taken every repair job on level three that she could get, and she’d visited every plant with the ability to turn ore into metal. She’d carefully asked questions at each one, looked around for anything unusual, and checked their finished products. Not one had the ability to make anything other than steel, iron, copper, or brass.

  Trenton got up from the stool and touched her shoulder. “Are there any other plants left to check?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then why do you keep trying?” he asked. “Even if you could find the place he had the metal smelted, and even if you figure out a way to make the parts, where would you build it? There’s nowhere in Cove you could assemble a giant dragon without people noticing. Even if you could, what would you do with it? Can you imagine what the chancellor would do if he walked out of City Hall and saw a dragon flying overhead?”

  Kallista’s lips pulled up a little. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it made Trenton happy anyway. “I’d dive-bomb him,” she said. “Knock that monocle right out of his eye.”

  Trenton chuckled. “We could breathe flames on him and melt his stupid walking stick to slag.”

  “We?” Kallista folded her arms. “I thought you didn’t believe in making the dragon.”

  He raised his hands. “I don’t. But if you did manage to build it, you couldn’t fly it by yourself. Look at the plans—two seats, one in front of the other, and two sets of controls.”

  Kallista looked over the plans. “I could change that if I combined the wing stick control with this one and added an extra foot pedal here.”

  “It would never work. The person in front has to control the direction, legs, and head. The one in the back handles altitude, tail, coal feeder, and flames. No way could one person handle all of that at the same time.”

  Kallista shook her head. “I could automate the coal feeder, and who cares about the tail?”

  “You think you can improve on your father’s design?”

  Soon the two of them were lost in discussions of wing strength, landing options, and a hundred other nuances. Trenton had no doubt that Leo Babbage had been crazy when drawing up the plans, but he was a crazy genius. Trenton had never seen a machine this complicated—or this brilliant. How the man had come up with the idea in the first place was beyond him. That didn’t change the fact that it was a useless design that could never be built.

  He glanced from the plans to his pocket watch—he was late for work. How had the time passed so quickly?

  “I gotta go,” he said, jumping up from his chair. “Seriously, though, stop wasting your time on this.”

  “I’m not wasting my time,” Kallista said. “My father built those parts somewhere, somehow. I will figure it out. All I need are better maps.”

  “Where are you going to get them?” Trenton called, running across the basement to the window.

  Kallista slapped her hand on the workbench. “I know just the place. The city offices.”

  Trenton stopped halfway through the window and looked back. “You are not breaking into City Hall.”

  She only grinned, and Trenton shook his head. Like father, like daughter.

  But if she was going, so was he.

  “Don’t go until I get back from work,” he said before boosting himself into the alleyway behind the shop.

  He ran all the way to the elevator. By the time he reached it, the car was empty.

  “The other students went up fifteen minutes ago,” the security officer said. “You’re late.”

  “Thanks for letting me know,” Trenton muttered. Fidgeting the whole way to the top level, he checked his pocket watch. This was the second time in a week he’d been late. One more time and he’d get a permanent mark on his employee record. That could have an impact on what position he ended up with after his training.

  As much as he hated the idea of being a farmer, there was no changing his future. If he had to be stuck in food production, he didn’t want to end up processing plankton or cleaning up after cows for the rest of his life.

  The moment the gate opened, he raced to potato processing, where he was assigned for the day. As he ran panting to his station, he realized something was wrong. Instead of the usual joking, everyone worked with their heads down, their attention focused on the potatoes they were peeling. Trenton looked for their teacher, wondering if this was about him being late, but there were no adults in sight.

  “Where have you been?” Simoni asked, y
anking him into line next to her and handing him a bag.

  “Sorry,” Trenton said. “I couldn’t find my . . .” He thought furiously. “My apron. It fell behind my bed last night.” His lying skills had improved considerably since meeting Kallista, which probably wasn’t a good thing. Glancing over his shoulder, he asked, “Has anyone noticed?”

  “No,” Simoni said. “Everyone’s been focused on Clyde.”

  “Clyde? Why?” Trenton asked. He looked around, but his friend was nowhere in sight. “Where is he, anyway?”

  Simoni wiped her eyes with the back of her glove. “Security took him on the way here. Everyone’s saying he’s been sent to retraining.”

  Trenton’s stomach went cold. “What did he do?”

  Simoni pulled a potato from the bracket suspending it in the water and shoved it into Trenton’s hands. She looked quickly around and whispered, “He was caught being creative on the way up in the elevator. I saw him writing something on his slate, but I didn’t think anything of it. He’s always taking notes. The security officer running the elevator must have seen something more because he snatched the slate out of Clyde’s hands before he could erase it.”

  He remembered how Clyde had fixed the schematic of what Trenton now understood was a dragon’s foot. He knew what Simoni was going to say next. “It was a drawing, wasn’t it? A creative drawing?”

  Simoni nodded and fought back a sob. “They pulled him out of work and took him back down the elevator. None of us could do anything to stop it.” She shook her head. “Why would he do something like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Trenton said, squeezing the potato until he thought it would burst. But what if Clyde felt the same way about drawing that Trenton felt about building things? What Clyde had done couldn’t be half as bad as what Trenton and Kallista had been doing.

  Putting his head down, he tried to push thoughts of Clyde and the dragon out of his mind and concentrate on bagging potatoes. By the time lunch rolled around, he’d picked more potatoes than anyone, even though he’d started late. But even working hard wasn’t enough to stop him from thinking. If anyone here deserved retraining, he did.

  As the other kids headed to lunch, Trenton tucked his gloves into his apron and walked in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you going?” Simoni asked.

  “I’m not hungry. I’m going to take a walk.”

  Simoni hurried to join him. “I’ll go with you.”

  Together they went past the greenhouses and around the fish tanks to where the rock wall marked the edge of the level. There, they turned right and continued the same circuit Trenton had been slowly walking over the last few weeks.

  “You come out here a lot,” Simoni said. “I see you during lunch and after work.”

  Trenton hadn’t realized she’d been paying any attention. “This is the original level of the city. I’ve been looking the spot where the founders first tunneled into the mountain.”

  “Why?” Simoni brushed her hair over one ear and shivered. “They sealed that off. Otherwise the outside air would have poisoned us.”

  “I know,” Trenton said. “But there has to be some sign of where the entrance used to be. I can’t help wondering about those people. I know they built the city to get away from creativity and inventions. But weren’t they being creative themselves by building all of this?”

  “Don’t say that,” Simoni said, squeezing his arm. “Do you want to be sent to retraining too?”

  “No.” Trenton shook his head. “But I can’t stop myself from wondering how it all started.”

  “You should go to the museum. They have lots of information about the men and women who founded the city.”

  Trenton groaned. He’d found information in the museum, all right. But not the kind she was thinking of.

  Simoni reached down and took his hand in hers. “You think differently from most people.”

  “I don’t mean to. I guess my brain just doesn’t work like everyone else’s. I’m curious about things. I’m trying to change, though.”

  “I wasn’t saying it’s bad,” Simoni said. “I mean, obviously we have to be careful of where curiosity can lead us. Creativity and change are what got us into the situation we’re in now. But you’re right; the people who designed the city must have had some curiosity, or they never would have come here to escape the sickness, right?”

  Trenton met her eyes. “Yeah. They must have.”

  “The important thing is to keep those kinds of thoughts in here,” she said, tapping his head. “If Clyde had kept his pictures in his mind instead of putting them on his slate, he wouldn’t have been arrested.”

  At the thought of Clyde, who was one of his few friends, Trenton felt guilty all over again. He hoped everything would be okay.

  “Ebony’s pretty broken up,” Simoni said. “She really likes Clyde, and I think he likes her.”

  “Yeah?” Trenton asked.

  Simoni nodded. She moved closer, and their shoulders brushed together. “I know this is a bad time to ask, but I have to know. Do you like me?”

  Trenton nearly tripped. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Like or like?” She looked at him with her deep-green eyes, and he could barely breathe.

  Unable to speak, he nodded.

  Simoni stopped and turned toward him. “Angus wants to be more than a friend with me. He says so all the time. He’s cute, but not nearly as interesting to talk with as you.”

  Was she saying he wasn’t cute?

  “Do you want to be more than friends?” she asked.

  “I . . .” Trenton swallowed hard, and for some reason, Kallista’s face popped into his head. That was dumb. He and Kallista were barely even friends, and definitely nothing more. “I’d like that.”

  “Good,” Simoni said. “I’d like that too.”

  24

  Having skipped lunch, Trenton was starving that night, and he couldn’t stop worrying about Clyde. Part of him wanted nothing more than to eat dinner and go to bed. But he knew Kallista would be more than happy to break into the city offices on her own. With her heavy-handed tactics, she’d probably rip the whole place apart if he wasn’t there to stop her. Also, his father would be home from the mines any minute, and his parents had been giving him odd looks lately.

  Running through the kitchen, he saw that the table was already set.

  “You aren’t staying for dinner?” his mother asked.

  “Can’t,” he said, grabbing two pieces of bread and shoving a chicken breast between them. “I have to study with some friends.”

  “What friends?” his mother asked. “Do I know them?”

  “Probably some of them.” He yanked the door open and shot through. “Don’t wait up.”

  “Your father and I want to talk with you,” his mother called after him. “You keep coming home so late.”

  He slammed the apartment door—pretending not to hear her—and raced out before his father could arrive home. Trenton had a pretty good idea what his parents wanted to talk about. That was a discussion he hoped to put off as long as possible.

  Kallista was waiting for him outside his apartment building with her top hat on and a pack slung over one shoulder. She folded her arms, eyeing the slapped-together sandwich. “You’re late.”

  “Why does everyone keep telling me that?” he grumbled around a bite.

  “Maybe because you’re terrible at keeping track of time.” Kallista spun around and walked down the street. “Which is almost as bad as talking with your mouth full.”

  Trenton finished his sandwich and brushed his hands on his shirt as he ran to catch up. “What’s in the pack?”

  “Things we may need.”

  When they turned up Main Street, Trenton felt as exposed as he had the night they broke into the museum. It was one thing to sneak through back alleys. It was something much different to sneak into the most important building in the city.

  As they passed through the shadow of a building, Kallista tur
ned to look at him. “Is everything all right? You look tense.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “My friend was arrested today for drawing a picture.”

  “What a danger to us all.” Kallista sneered. “I’m surprised the magnificent machine that is our city hasn’t stopped functioning completely.”

  Trenton didn’t feel like arguing. Mostly, he felt sick over Clyde’s arrest. “Are you sure you want to do this? I’ve explored almost all of level one over the last few days, and there’s no place there your father could have built anything as big as the dragon. You know the city better than I do, and I’m guessing you’ve explored most of level three by now. All that leaves is the mines, and no one could build anything down there without the miners noticing. What do you hope to find on a map?”

  “If I knew what I was looking for, I wouldn’t have to find the map. I told you, my father didn’t do anything without a reason. He wants me to figure out where he built the pieces.”

  “You keep saying that,” Trenton said. “But if your father did everything for a reason, why did he design a mechanical dragon in the first place?”

  “To make you ask dumb questions,” Kallista sniped.

  She was smarter than that. She was only pretending not to understand.

  “You know very well that there’s no possible reason for designing a thirty—no, a thirty-three-and-a-half—foot dragon inside a city built in a mountain. What could we possibly do with it? It would be like giving a steak to a man with no teeth.”

  They paused outside the main city square. Even with the offices closed, plenty of people were coming and going. And standing right in front of the entrance to City Hall, was not one, but two security officers.

  “Looks like we need another plan,” Trenton said.

  Kallista tilted the top hat forward on her head. “I’m going around back to find another entrance. Since you’re obviously toothless, you can stay here and gum your steak.”

  Why did he bother hanging around with her when he could be with Simoni, who was so much nicer? Biting back a nasty response, he followed her around the outside of the square to the back of the building. He secretly hoped there was no back entrance so he could say something witty about listening to him more often. Unfortunately, they found a single metal door, and no security in sight.