Lumière (The Illumination Paradox)

by Garlick, Jacqueline E.

“What’s that?” Eyelet points past my shoulder, her voice muffled by the regulator, her eyes bigger than they were before.

  I swing around, somewhat frightened.

  Hot gassy steam shoots up from a hole in the ground about twenty meters in front of us. Bertie stalls, lurching to a halt. I throw down my feet to steady us, staring up at the sky. “It’s a geyser,” I shout.

  Steam careens skyward for a good thirty meters before spiraling back to earth. It smells of rotten eggs and unlaundered stockings, even through the mask. The pressure of the surge throws Eyelet’s hair back at her shoulders and scorches the exposed skin on my brow.

  “Geysers?” Eyelet shouts over the rumble of the spray. “We have to dodge geysers, too?”

  “For a about a month after the storm retreats, yes.”

  “I thought all the explosions ended when the Vapours retreated.”

  “They did. These are new. Every time the Vapours pour down over the escarpment, they disrupt the atmospheric pressure of the Earth, creating a drag on its surface when they retreat. The drag wreaks havoc with the Earth’s geothermal balance, causing it to erupt in this way. Mix that with a hundred years of man poking holes in the ground to mine coal, and whatever went on the Night of the Great Illumination, and voila!” I stretch my hands to the forest. “We get the toxic cocktail you see before us.” I drop my arms. “Or at least that’s my theory.”

  Black clouds rise from fumaroles to our left, mud pools gurgle to our right. A smoldering, fast-running river of dark red sand weaves through the center of the forest, bathing us in incredible heat. It smells of rotting flesh and ripe sewage.

  A few criminals dangle from charred limbs in the distance—or what’s left of their remains.

  Eyelet turns her eyes away, her bottom lip quivering. “So how will we know when we’re upon a geyser, then?”

  “We won’t. But Bertie will.” I reach down and activate the gizmo attached to the inside of the cycle’s bottom rib. “He’s equipped with a sensory seismometer,” I say, setting the dampened pendulum, immersing the arm in oil. “This should pick up any low frequencies of oscillation from now on, alerting us to any sudden movement in the Earth’s surface with a sharp bell.”

  “Should?” Her eyes are wide.

  “Will. Come on.” I kick the cycle into gear and pedal on. “We’d better keep moving.” I throw open the throttle, hoping I’m right, as a tree liquefies in the path—draining like oil into a slick swamp on the ground. Bertie swerves to miss it. “Good boy, Bertie,” I say, popping it into the next gear, fishtailing around the hot lapping pool—don’t want to melt a tire—keeping my eyes open for more of the same.

  I ride the ridge from then on, trying to keep to the cooler top rocks. I don’t want to frighten Eyelet any more than she already is, but if we have to stop now to change a tire, we could be goners.

  We push on for what seems like an eternity, trees dissolving, mud pools festering, crevasses sizzling all around. Bertie does his best to alert me to things, but still, we have a couple close calls.

  “Look!” Eyelet nearly jumps from her seat. Bertie shudders and slows. A massive plume of dark black smoke rises from beyond a hill a short distance away. It fills the skies overhead, drowning out the clouds. It looks like there’s a fire, but there’s no smell of smoke.

  “What is it?” Eyelet breathes.

  “I don’t know.” I pull up to the base of the hillside and stop. Bertie trembles beneath us. “You two stay here,” I say, dismounting the cycle. “I’ll work my way up the rocks and take a look.” I bound up the hill and scale the rock. Eyelet’s fingers lace through mine. “I thought I told you to stay.” I turn on her.

  “You should know by now, I don’t take orders well.” She grins. “Now let’s go see what this is, shall we?” She takes up her skirts and hikes up in front of me, charging to the top. “Good God!” She gasps and pulls back. “The earth. It’s gone.” She turns to me, clutching her heart.

  I leap the rest of the way up and stare over the edge into the roiling mire. The sight is daunting, I must admit. Smoke belches from a seemingly endless pit, a swirling cauldron of black ash and steam. It’s as though someone’s taken a knife and cut away the earth. It’s the biggest crevasse I’ve ever seen.

  “Where’s the other side?” Eyelet says, squinting.

  “There isn’t one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s Embers. Not a crevasse.”

  “Like at the back of the Compound.” Her head swings around. “It extends this far?”

  “Disturbing, isn’t it?” I raise a hand to my eyes, squinting through the trolling fog. “I hadn’t thought it, but it must skirt the entire countryside.”

  Eyelet swallows as she leans out over it, face engulfed in its smoke. “Do you suppose it skirts Brethren now, too?”

  “May well.”

  She looks up at me. “What do you think is down there?”

  “Nothing good.”

  “Where do you think the land has gone? Do you think it’s possible the earth could have broken off and floated away, up beyond the cloud cover?”

  I wrinkle my brow. “Don’t be ridiculous.” I lean forward, nose to the pit. “It’s far more logical that it would sink.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me, that’s who.” I straighten, seeing her squint at the sky. “You’re not seriously looking for the missing piece of land, are you?”

  “No more than you were leaned over just now peering into the pit to see if it was there.” She scowls, then bites her lip. “Have you ever heard of a place called Limpidious?” she adds, sheepishly.

  “Only in fantasy books,” I say.

  “So you do know,” she says. My turn to scowl at her. “You don’t think—”

  “Of course not,” I snap.

  Her cheeks flush red.

  I suddenly throw out an arm, pulling her down to her knees, my heart racing.

  “What is it?” she says, clutching my sleeve. “What’s the matter?”

  “Shhhhh!” I whisper. “We’ve got visitors,” I point out the movement in the trees. Eyelet gulps and pulls in close to me.

  Horses whinny inside gasmask regulators, sounding more alien than horse, their feet stamping in the gravel. Voices stream over the edge of the rock, the hard drawl of working-class men. Through the cloud cover I make out a row of trolley carts hooked to flatbeds, each backed up to the edge of the pit, about a hundred meters away on the opposite side of the hill.

  Eyelet crouches beside me, silent, as I squint through the heavy fog. “Who are they?” she whispers.

  “I’m not sure.”

  A workman yanks on a cord and one of the flatbeds mysteriously rises, unloading the cargo from the cart into the mire.

  “What are they doing?” Eyelet hisses.

  “Dumping, by the looks of things. Disposing of garbage from some factory, it looks like.” Sheets of metal, rusty gears, springs and old machine parts tumble and clank through the fog as they fall over edge of the ridge. The noise is deafening.

  A second worker raises another flatbed.

  “Where do you think they’re from?” Eyelet shouts.

  “Some factory in town, I guess.” I try again to make out the name of the company on the sides of the carts, but the shifting fog’s too thick for me to see.

  The mire belches as the debris tumbles in. Eyelet chokes. One of the workers’ heads jerks in our direction.

  “You there!”

  “Oh God,” Eyelet whimpers.

  I yank her down flat onto the rock.

  “Show yourself!” the worker shouts.

  I hold my breath and pull Eyelet tight to my chest.

  “What?” A second worker laughs. Stones crush beneath his boots. “You calling on a criminal, are you? Better check them gauges of y’ers. I think them fumes are getting in.”

  “Naw, I thought I saw ‘er girl.”

  “Out ’ere in the middle of no man’s land.” He laughs and biffs
the worker. “Come on, back to work, y’u ol’ fool.” He rips another cord and more garbage dumps, drowning out their conversation.

  I wait for another shift in the cloud cover then yank Eyelet to her feet. “We’d better get out of here,” I say, pushing her down the rocks. “Before we end up in that pit.”

  Thirty

  Eyelet

  “The beggar’s breeches!”

  Urlick shakes out his hand then sucks his thumb. He’s hurt himself. Bertie’s blown a tire, despite our best efforts, and we’ve had to stop to change it against our better judgment.

  I’m supposed to be keeping watch on the woods while he repairs the balloon, but a part of me feels like I should give him a hand. Especially since he’s having such a time of it. It seems we have no spare. Only a patch, which isn’t exactly cooperating—“Blessed Blunder!”—at all.

  Urlick re-lights his torch a little too close to his face and it bursts into flame, singeing the ends of his eyelashes. The already vapid air swells with the stench of sulfur and burnt hair.

  Bertie chortles.

  “Perhaps I could—” I lean over.

  “Go back to keeping watch!” Urlick eyes me hard.

  “Very well, then,” I straighten. “Have it your way.” I take a few steps, then double back. “You do know you’ve got the balloon in upside down, right?”

  His hand slips from the wrench, grazing a knuckle.

  “I’ll just wait over here,” I say, moving away.

  He stands, yanking the points of his waistcoat, as Bertie lets out a monster sigh.

  “Ouch!” I shout, bringing a hand to my head.

  “Now what is it?”

  “Something just struck me in the back of the head.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m not kidding.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Oh, good Lord, it’s a beetle.” I try to pluck it out but it sticks. “There’s a beetle running in my hair!” I dance around, flapping my hands. “Come help me get it out, will you please!”

  Urlick laughs, drops the torch and stalks toward me. “Relax,” he says, fishing an object out of my hair. “It’s just my Insectatron.”

  “Your what?”

  “My mechanical Coccinellidae." He flings it under my nose. "You know, a ladybird? Cute, don’t you think?”

  “Not really.” I scowl.

  “It’s a mechanical messenger like a carrier pigeon. Only it’s in beetle form.”

  I reach to stroke it and the mechanical ladybird scuttles to the other side of his palm.

  “Inside here is a homing device that doubles as a timepiece to keep its secret.” He shows me, getting its wings to flutter open, revealing the face of a watch. “It must have mistaken the face of your chrono-cuff for the lens of my pocket watch when it tried to land. There’s a magnet buried deep inside the belly of my timepiece that’s designed to attract it.” He eyes the sterling timepiece affixed to the metal cuff on my wrist. “Perhaps there are magnets inside your piece too, and it became confused.”

  “You said it acts as a homing pigeon, but only one way then?”

  “No. Just like a pigeon, if I were to let it go it would return to Iris’s duplicate base back at the Compound.”

  “I see,” I say, watching him release a tiny brass latch at the rear of the bug, deploying a spring-loaded arm. The round face of the timepiece then lifts up, revealing a secret chamber. The space is filled with tiny mechanical gears and levers, all shifting this way and that. In the center sits a miniature cylinder wrapped in a thin sleeve of tin, like those found in the heart of a music box.

  “See this?” He pulls a tiny skewer-like pin out of the rear of the bug. The skewer holds ten little cubes made of brass, each speared through the middle. Two of the cube's sides are inscribed with the letters of the alphabet, the third contains the numbers one through ten, and the last side of each is blank. “You spin these around like this, you see?” Urlick demonstrates. "Until the message you desire clicks into place." He twists the cubes one by one until he’s formed a word. Help, it reads. “That's how you create the message you want to send. Then you plunge the skewer back up into the beetle’s body, like this”—he reinserts the pin into the rear of the bug—“and it stamps your message onto that tiny tin scroll wrapped around that cylinder there.” He points.

  “You mean it imprints it?”

  “Yes. The same way a stamping does. Once the word is stamped, the cylinder automatically rotates a tenth, providing a clean bit of slate for the next word.”

  “How many words can it hold?”

  “Anything up to one hundred and forty characters.”

  “That’s it?”

  His brows fall as he stares at me. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Well, I’d have at least rounded it up to an even one-fifty.” I fold my arms.

  “Would you now?” he scowls.

  I launch myself up onto my toes, watching as he unravels the small printed scroll from the drum. His face grows uncharacteristically serious. “What is it? What does it say?”

  “It’s from Iris.” He looks up. “There’s been a problem. Seems someone’s broken into my laboratory.”

  “Let me see.”

  Lab compromised. Secrets blown. Flossie aware of your plan. Sent word via Ladybird ahead of you to Academy. Couldn’t contain her. Turn back.

  “What does she mean, sent word via Ladybird? Does Flossie have one too?”

  “Yes.” Urlick rakes a worried path through his hair. “I gifted one to her last Christmas.”

  “You and Flossie exchange Christmas gifts?” I trip over the words, they come out so quickly. I must have misread their relationship. I’d not have taken them as sweethearts. Have I been a fool?

  “Not exactly,” Urlick breathes, and strangely I’m relieved. “It was more of a gift of necessity. The Academy threatened to cut off my studies last fall when the Vapour activities increased. Unless there was a way Flossie could be in constant contact with them, they were no longer going to allow her to venture so far into the Follies. Out of desperation, I created the Insectatron and gifted it to her at Christmas. The match of it was sent to the Academy. That’s how she could send the message.”

  “But I thought you said she lived in the Follies. I thought she was an itinerant.”

  “I did, and she is, but she has family connections back at the Academy.”

  “What?”

  “Her parents. They’re both professors.”

  “Oh my…”

  “Rumor has it, Flossie is the illegitimate love child of some high-ranked professor and his married professor mistress. In order to protect both their images, Flossie was sent away at birth, to be raised by an aunt out here in exile.”

  I knew I’d recognized those eyes.

  “We’re jiggered!” Urlick turns and pounds his fists on a tree. “It’s only a matter of time before they catch us now.”

  “Perhaps not,” I fling myself around. “Perhaps her Ladybird didn’t make its destination?”

  Urlick scowls, angered at the thought of his gizmo not succeeding.

  “All right then,” I swallow. “Perhaps we can still outrun them? It might not have landed yet.”

  “We’ll have to,” Urlick snaps, staring off into the distance as if he’s calculating the Ladybird’s arrival. “We’ve no other choice.” He races over to the cycle and drops to his knees. Bertie groans as he forces on the tire.

  “Get your pack,” he shouts to me. “We’re leaving.”

  Thirty one

  Eyelet

  Urlick veers onto the main road for the last few clicks of the journey, slowing from time to time. He pulls a Dyechrometer from his pocket and activates it, scanning our surroundings for feral heartbeats, checking for intruders. The sonic sound of its beep makes both Bertie and me jump. My blood runs cold until the sound switches to a dull gong, the signal for all clear. The device hasn’t detected any other heartbeats but the two of ours within a hundred meter radius.

  We’re safe.

  For now.<
br />
  Urlick flips shut the lid and pockets the Dyechrometer. “Better don the masks, anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re almost at the entrance to Gears.” His eyes traipse across the horizon. “Another hundred, maybe hundred-fifty meters. Though we’re not going to use the entrance. Best not to take any chances.” He looks to me. “You being wanted and all.”

  “About that—” I lower my head. I should tell him. But how? How do I explain what happened to Mother and why I’m wanted without explaining my affliction?

  I look up to see him gazing at me sympathetically. “You can tell me later.”

  Bertie sighs.

  I reach into my pack and pluck the gasmask out, and pull it down over my face.

  Urlick laughs. “Ride into town with that on and you’re sure to draw unwanted attention. Here—” He reaches into my pack and pulls out the wax replica of Ida, the one C.L. gave me before we left. “The idea is not to stand out.”

  “Of course,” I say, accepting it reluctantly, holding the thin waxy replica of Ida’s face in my hands. A chill sneaks down my spine as I look into her eyes. Crazy Legs’s last words swirl in my head. “Please, Eyelet. Iris insists. It’s the only way you’ll be safe to travel the streets of Brethren.”

  Iris. Thoughtful, kind Iris.

  Urlick pulls his father’s death mask from his pack, rakes back his hair and slips it into place. Its gelatin-coated backing sucks to his skin in a noisy slurp. I shiver. The idea of walking around in someone else’s likeness curdles deep in my belly. It’s not right. None of this is right. But oh so necessary.

  Urlick rubs his hands over his fake skin, pressing out every groove, every line, securing every dart-like wrinkle. Slowly his father’s face comes to life, adhering securely to his, and I can’t help but think how wicked that seems.

  Carefully, he centers the fake pale pink lips of the mask over his own purple ones, pinching them down into place. From another box he pulls two shiny circular translucent skins, lifts up his lids, and places them over his eyes, blinking, until at last his eyes adapt to their new painted veils. He turns and looks at me through the same ghostly eyes that stared down at me before, from the landing of the stairs—and I shudder, unnerved by their empty, glazed-over stare.