Fires of Invention

by J. Scott Savage

  “What’s wrong with me?” Trenton yanked at his hair with both hands. “Your father was working on this, right here where we are. For some reason, he never finished the dragon. But he did manage to leave us a note warning us that we aren’t just in danger—we’re in extreme danger. And now he’s dead. Are you not connecting the dots?”

  Kallista looked up at the words her father had painted, probably not long before he died.

  “Yeah,” Trenton said. “Extreme danger. Before we get all yay-for-our-team, shouldn’t we figure out what he meant?”

  “I’m sorry,” Kallista said. She set the foot down. Trenton thought it might have been the first time he’d ever heard her apologize. “I was just so excited. I mean, my father left all of this for me. It was his way of showing he loved me.”

  “I know,” Trenton said. “I’m excited too.” He waved his hands in the air. “This is like a dream come true for me. All of the machinery I could ever want to study, tinker with, repair . . . not to mention a steam-powered dragon that might actually fly. I could live the rest of my life up here and never get bored. But at the same time, that message terrifies me.”

  He didn’t know what dangers her father was talking about. Didn’t know if they’d be able to put the dragon together, and if they managed to, he couldn’t imagine they could actually make it fly. Security would probably catch them and shut the whole thing down. But right there, at that moment, he felt happier than he’d ever been in his life.

  “I’ve got to get back soon, or my parents will worry. But let’s at least look around.”

  Kallista smiled, and Trenton couldn’t help but smile back.

  Along with everything else Kallista’s father had left behind were several mining helmets. Trenton picked one up, dropped a handful of carbide pellets into the lower chamber, and added water to the top, the way he’d seen his father do it. It took him a moment to figure out how to adjust the drip of water onto the carbide, but once he did, acetylene gas began to hiss and he lit the lamp.

  Together they explored the rest of the foundry. There were tools to shape metal, equipment to make more of the alloy, and a variety of molds to make everything from gears to ball bearings.

  “I don’t see any gas masks,” Kallista said. “That’s a good thing. It means he wasn’t worried about the air.”

  “Your father knew how to make gas masks?” Trenton asked. He’d read about them—the early settlers of the city had worn them to survive outside, but he’d never actually seen one.

  Kallista added carbide to her helmet. “He couldn’t find any plans for them, so he adapted the masks used in the mines.”

  “By why? The air here is fine.”

  “It is,” Kallista said. “But it wouldn’t be if we had to go outside.”

  Trenton, who had been examining a set of calipers—a tool designed to measure the thickness of things—frowned. “Why would we ever do that?”

  Kallista seemed surprised by the question. “My father said we’d have to someday. We could run out of coal. Disease could wipe out the food supply. There could be an earthquake. Leaving Cove was a topic he talked about a lot. He said it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. When I was little, he spent a lot of time on gas masks. I don’t know why he stopped.”

  The idea of leaving the city disturbed Trenton more than he wanted to admit. Cove was safe. It was home. Inside the city, he understood how things worked. Outside, anything could happen. The thought made him want to curl up in a ball and hide.

  “Let’s follow the path in the other direction,” Kallista said. “I want to know how he got up here.”

  They turned off the generator and, with only the glow of their hissing helmets for illumination, followed the trail of footsteps leading away from the foundry. This level was laid out a lot like the city below—wide streets and buildings arranged in neat rows. Except that factories and heavy equipment took the place of apartment buildings. The ceiling was too high for them to see by the light from their lamps.

  Trenton was fascinated by all of the machinery. Some of it looked familiar, but the rest was unusual enough that he had to resist the urge to run over and take everything apart to see how it worked.

  “Why do you think they left all off this here?” Trenton asked. “Why not take it with them when they dug out new levels?”

  “Maybe it was too difficult to move,” Kallista said, craning her neck to look at a crumbling smokestack. “Or maybe the old equipment was worn out and falling apart.”

  That made sense. Why move worn-out machines when they could build new ones? Trenton looked at the trail, wondering how many trips back and forth Leo Babbage had taken and how many years he’d worked on the project.

  “How do you think he found this place? Did he know that the levels were here all along, or did he discover the torn-out maps like we did?”

  Kallista sighed softly. “He was always asking questions. It bothered most people. But I remember thinking he knew everything about everything. He loved to read, especially old books. He was gone a lot the last few years. This must be where he went.”

  “How did he come up here so often without being discovered?”

  Kallista picked up a rock and flung it against an old metal tank; the impact made a loud clang. “That’s part of what I want to find out. He was too big to climb through the vents.”

  Turning his head, Trenton spotted what looked like an opening in the wall. “What’s that?” he asked, walking toward it.

  As they got closer, he could see that it was a cave. Kallista leaned over to pick up a chunk of something black. “Coal,” she said. “It’s a mine entrance. They must have done their mining and power generation on the same level.”

  “I don’t think so,” Trenton said. He walked a little deeper into the cave and stopped near a familiar sight—a coal chute disappearing into the ceiling. The feeder belt was gone, but he could still see the metal brackets where it used to be.

  He ran his fingers over the stone surface of the chute. “They fed the coal through the ceiling here. So at some point, the power plants were above this level. They probably changed it into a factory level when they had to dig deeper. I’ll bet that’s how each of the levels started.”

  Looking around, it suddenly struck him that every level had once been solid mountain. “What did they do with all the rock and dirt they had to excavate?”

  “There’s a separate pipe inside the air exhaust,” Kallista said. “Any unused minerals are ground to dust and spewed outside.” She peered up the belt. “Do you want to see what’s up there?”

  “I don’t know,” Trenton said.

  A cold draft blew down from the opening with a hooting sound, as if the spirits of everyone who had died in the outside world were calling down to him. Cold shivers ran from his scalp to the base of his spine, and all at once, he didn’t want to go up there.

  “The map had only two pages torn out,” he said. “That must mean that the level above is where the settlers came in from the outside. What if they didn’t seal the entrance tightly enough, or if leaks have formed over time? The air up there could be poisonous.”

  Kallista stared into the darkness and rubbed her arms. An odd rumble, which could have been the wind, or something else, echoed down the opening. “Why do you think they closed these levels?”

  “Maybe that’s what your father meant by extreme danger. There has to be a reason he chose to work down here.”

  Kallista nodded. “Let’s go,” she said. “We need to get back anyway.”

  They followed Leo Babbage’s trail back the way they’d come, and a few minutes later discovered a low passage slanting into the ground. It was another coal chute—this one was surprisingly clean and going down instead of up.

  “This has to be how he got here,” Kallista said.

  Trenton peered into the hole. “Maybe. But where does it go? I’m pretty sure that someone would have noticed a hole in the ceiling of the food-production level.”

  “There’s
only one way to find out,” Kallista said. She sat down and scooted into the chute on the seat of her pants.

  Trenton followed. It was sort of fun. The slant was steep enough they could slide almost the whole way. He expected the chute to end at the ceiling of what he had, until recently, known as level one. Instead, it ended abruptly at a little metal door.

  “Careful,” he said as Kallista reached for the door. “There could be a big drop on the other side.”

  Propping her feet against the sides of the chute, Kallista eased the door open. “What is that?” she said, peering into the dark. She sniffed. “It smells . . . weird.”

  Trenton recognized the smell immediately. He slid next to her and shined his light on a pile of small, yellow kernels. “Dried corn,” he said. “We’re inside a grain silo.”

  Below the metal door was a circular walkway. He and Kallista climbed out of the feeder chute and onto the walkway. When they pushed the door shut behind them, it was nearly invisible. Trenton ran his finger across the surface until he touched a hidden button that popped the door open again.

  “How did he find this?” Trenton asked. “And who made it?”

  “This is my father’s work,” Kallista said. “I’d recognize it anywhere. Somehow he discovered the chute above this silo and dug it out.”

  Trenton couldn’t imagine how much time and patience that had required. He was coming to admire Kallista’s father more and more. They shut the door and walked around to the opening on the other side of the silo. Looking out, Trenton saw a ladder leading down to the back of a barn.

  “We can take the elevator down from here,” he said.

  Kallista shook her head. “I’ll have to go back through the vent. I’m not allowed on this level.”

  Trenton laughed. “They only check your pass going up. The security officers assume that if you were allowed up, you’re okay to go down. I’ll grab you an extra apron and gloves. No one will look twice at you.”

  He started to climb onto the ladder, but Kallista clutched the back of his shirt. “I don’t know what kind of danger we’re getting into, but it’s okay if you want to stop. I can build the dragon by myself, and I really think I can figure out a way to fly it alone. Not that there’s anywhere to fly.”

  He reached up and squeezed her hand. “You said your father did everything for a reason. That means he purposely made the dragon to require two people. Maybe he thought you needed a friend.”

  Kallista bit her lip and nodded. “I’ve never had one.” Then she pushed his hand away and grinned. “Hopefully it won’t be too bad.”

  28

  The next few months, Trenton found himself constantly running from one thing to another. The dragon was coming along faster than he could have hoped. But homework was ramping up as he neared his first-year halfway exams.

  At the same time, he found himself spending more time with Simoni after work, taking walks around the orchards and sneaking treats to the farm animals. She made him laugh, and talking to her was getting easier. Even Angus appeared to have backed off.

  The only thing less than perfect was the fact that Trenton was hiding a huge secret from her. Lying to her and to his parents about where he was going and what he was doing had become so common that he did it almost without noticing. Every so often, though, the guilt got to him enough that he’d consider telling Simoni about what he and Kallista were working on.

  One afternoon as they walked through the trees, he pointed to the orchard and asked, “Have you ever imagined what it would be like to create something different, like a new kind of apple?”

  Simoni smiled uncertainly. “Why would we need a new kind of apple when the ones we have are perfect?”

  Trenton scratched his cheek. “I don’t know. Maybe you could improve them. Like, what if you could breed an apple as tart as a cherry, or as juicy as a peach?”

  Simoni punched him softly on the shoulder. “You’re joking. Apples are crunchy, cherries are tart, and peaches are juicy. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. They all taste like what they are. If you started changing things you’d ruin them. Next thing you know, you’d have beans that tasted like potatoes or—or—beef that tasted like fish.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Trenton said. “Sometimes I just wonder if change is always bad, if things have to stay the way they are.”

  Simoni squeezed his hand. “Are you still upset about not being a mechanic? You know that all jobs are equally important, and you’re becoming an excellent farmer. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up getting the best test grades in the class.”

  Trenton squeezed her hand back. “I don’t know about that. But being in food production is great. Especially since it means we get to work together. I’ll bet Angus wishes he were a farmer right now.”

  Simoni smiled. “I’ll tell you what. On your birthday, I’ll make you a pie with peaches, cherries, and apples all together. Even if it’s not the right day for those fruits.”

  “Careful,” Trenton said. “If Angus hears you talking like that, he’ll have you sent for retraining in no time.”

  As soon as he dropped Simoni off at the elevator—telling her he was going to make one last check on the plankton tanks—Trenton raced to the barn, made sure no one was watching, and climbed up the silo. He put on the sweater and helmet he’d hidden inside the secret door, then climbed up the coal chute and jogged to the foundry.

  As soon as he got there and saw Kallista, he could tell something was wrong. She sat on the frame of the dragon’s body, a deep frown on her coal-smeared face.

  Trenton scrambled up the twenty feet of front leg to the belly of the dragon. “What’s wrong, a part not fitting right?”

  “Everything fits fine,” Kallista grumbled. “But it doesn’t work.”

  Trenton peered at the feeder Kallista had recently installed. It looked like a miniature version of the power plants on level three. Coal was pulled up from the bin and fed into the furnace, where flames heated pipes that then turned water to steam. The pressurized steam powered the pistons, which created power to run everything else.

  “Let’s see,” he said.

  Kallista let out an exasperated breath before pushing the button that lit the furnace.

  Trenton watched the temperature gauge rise steadily as the coal burned in the furnace. Soon he heard pistons moving. As they churned, the feeder belt kicked into gear, adding more coal to the fire.

  “It works perfectly,” he said with a grin.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Kallista snapped. “Look at the pressure gauge.”

  The needle was barely up to the halfway mark. Trenton frowned. He tugged a rod that would eventually be connected to the rider controls, when they got that far, and the mechanical wings unfurled from the sides of the dragon’s body. He pulled another rod, and the wings moved up and down.

  “The pressure isn’t quite where we’d hoped it would be,” he said, “but it’s enough to power the wings.”

  Kallista slammed the rods back, folding the wings against the sides of the frame. “It does now. But the wings will never move fast enough to lift the dragon—not to mention lifting both of us. It will only get worse with the added resistance of the canvas.”

  “So we speed up the feeder.” Trenton moved a lever, and the belt pulling coal from the bin increased to full speed. The pressure gauge moved up a few marks, but not nearly where it needed to be.

  “It’s not creating enough power,” Kallista said, glaring at the gauge. “We’d need at least twice as much power to even consider flying.” She spun the air valve shut, cutting oxygen from the furnace, and the engine slowly powered down as the flames went out.

  “Hmm.” Trenton scratched his head. Careful to avoid any hot parts, he climbed into the body and examined the entire assembly from underneath. “What’s this open space for—the one between the coal bin and the furnace?”

  “I don’t know,” Kallista said. “That’s the way it was designed.”

  That didn’t see
m right. The rest of the dragon had been built to be as lightweight and efficient as possible. It had to be, if it would ever take off and keep itself in the air. He climbed up next to Kallista and held out his hand. “Let me see the plans.”

  Her brow furrowed. “I told you, that’s the way it was designed.”

  “I know,” Trenton said. “I just want to see if we missed something.” He reached for the plans, but Kallista held them out of his reach.

  “I didn’t miss anything,” she snarled. “I’ve been over the plans a dozen times. I’ve been up here doing everything while you and your Simoni waltz around the gardens.”

  Trenton felt like she’d slapped him in the face. He’d been putting in as much time with the dragon and Kallista as he could. It wasn’t his fault that she didn’t have any homework. Not to mention that she also had no friends or family, so she could spend every spare minute she wasn’t doing repairs working on this.

  “That’s really how you feel?” he demanded, folding his arms across his chest.

  She set her jaw. “Yes.”

  “Fine.” He climbed down the leg. “Figure it out alone. I’m done.”

  Kallista climbed after him, the plans pinned under one arm. “What do you mean, you’re done?”

  Trenton jumped down. “Done. Finished. I’m sorry that I can’t spend every nonworking minute up here like you do. But, yes, I do have other things in my life—like friends and a family. I’ve spent as much time up here as I can. I’ve lied to people I care about. I’m probably putting them all in danger by coming up here so often. And I did it to help you. If that’s not enough, then I quit. Do it yourself. Your father should have designed his dragon for one person, because it’s clear you can’t keep friends.”

  Kallista stared at him, the color leaving her face. “Is that how you really feel?”

  “Sometimes.” Trenton’s chest heaved. He picked up a pipe, then thew it away, knocking over a stack of brackets. “I’m doing as much as I can. I really want to see this succeed. But you have to understand that I can’t give up my life for this project. I can’t be a cherry and an apple at the same time.”