The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century)

by Cherie Priest

  In the center of all this cheerless, colorless misery, a tremendous structure jutted from the center of a circular path. At first glance it blended into the wall, which ran a few yards behind it. “What’s that?” Zeke asked.

  He was too loud, and Angeline shushed him. But she answered as she gathered them to her like a mother hen. “This way, boys. Stay close to the wall. Zeke, that’s the old water tower they was building when the Blight came. It’d look bigger if it weren’t standing in front of the wall.”

  The tower looked plenty big enough. Perhaps half the wall’s height, the water tower was a cylindrical, very tall turret made of bricks and capped with a metal roof like a boy’s hat. The roof was rusting, and red-rimmed holes both large and small were eating their way through the original material, but Rector could see that someone had tied flaps of canvas down over one pitted segment. Another large sheet hung loose, having lost its moorings. It flapped against the building like a ghost clapping slowly.

  From within the smooth brick tower came the noises of men at work.

  Rector picked out snippets of conversation and the occasional hoot of laughter. He heard heavy things being lugged and lighter things being thrown, or hit. He detected metal on metal, and the scrape and whine of wooden crates being shoved about and pried open, their nails squeaking against the wood that held them.

  Spiraling up the tower ran a series of tall windows, too narrow for a man to crawl through but big enough to let light inside. Now they let light out, and beneath the rust-ragged cone that topped the structure, the brilliant electric buzz of man-made bulbs and high-powered lanterns made the top floor glow.

  At the tower’s base, a white-painted gate had been left unfastened.

  Rector watched Angeline out of the corner of his visor. She was eyeing that gate, and he knew she was probably calculating the value versus the trouble of pulling it open and investigating.

  She caught him watching her and she winked. “Don’t worry. I won’t go for a climb without you.”

  “Stairs?” Houjin asked, keeping his chatter to a minimum for once.

  “Stairs. Spirals of them, bottom to top. There’s two ways in, I believe. The one you see right in front of us, and one on the other side.” She was still thinking about it. Rector knew the look of someone weighing a bad idea, and knowing it was a bad idea, and thinking maybe it wasn’t the worst idea in the world—all evidence to the contrary.

  But she was as good as her wink and her word. Maintaining their best efforts at utter quiet, the four of them edged back behind the tower, between it and the wall.

  There, the shadows were thicker than the fog, and it felt like night.

  Rector shivered, but hid it by adjusting his satchel. “Now what do we do?” he asked. In truth, he wanted to go back to the Vaults. Badly. He itched all over, gloves and long sleeves and tall socks be damned; and his ribs were on fire from the stress of breathing so hard through such sturdy filters as the ones he now kept in his mask.

  “I just want to watch. Just a few minutes,” she told them.

  From their new vantage point, they could see both entrances. They were closer to the “front,” but it’d be difficult for anyone to leave the tower via the other door without walking past them, so Rector felt like they had everything covered. Apparently Miss Angeline did, too. She crouched down and urged them all to do likewise, squatting behind the detritus of old gardening equipment and the rubble of decorative benches that had never been assembled.

  Soon the clang of footsteps on metal echoed through the tower and oozed out with the fog-diffused light. Then they heard a crunch and a loud stream of profanity, followed by, “We need to fix these goddamn stairs!”

  “What do you expect? They’re metal. The gas is hard on metal.”

  “So we should replace ’em, or repair ’em.”

  “Or you should be more careful.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “This isn’t it?”

  The front gate slammed open, ricocheting against the tower and kicking up a puff of dust that might have been brick and might’ve been rust. A man emerged, stomping and waving his right leg as though it was hurt and he was trying to shake off the pain. The gate’s metal bars cracked and creaked on their hinges, and as the portal slowly rocked shut, a second man pushed it open again.

  “You all right?”

  “I’ll survive. Went straight through the stairs, did you see that?”

  “You did it right in front of me.”

  “Stop being so all-fired smart, would you?” He patted down his leg, and Rector saw that his pants were torn and there was a smear of blood above his ankle. The man was not badly injured, and he knew it, but nobody liked to have an open cut outdoors where the Blight could get to it. He planted the hurt foot down on the ground and stood up straight, looking around.

  The four voyeurs all ducked down lower, not that it mattered. What their position didn’t hide, the wall’s shadow obscured well enough.

  “Where’s Otis? Ain’t he supposed to be here by now?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Don’t know. My watch stopped working yesterday. The gas seeped inside it and rotted out the innards.”

  “Son of a bitch, this place is miserable. Can’t believe anybody lives here—I don’t care how much money there is to be made.”

  The man with the bloodied pants leg snorted. “If you really didn’t care, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I don’t plan to move inside and set up a homestead. I’m not a goddamn fool. And I don’t know if Otis’s late or not, but he might be. Maybe he got lost.”

  “It ain’t six blocks from the hole to the tower. If he got lost, he ain’t got the sense God gave a speckled pup.”

  “It’s hard to see,” the other fellow insisted. “If you ain’t used to running around in a mask, it can mess you up. Gets you all turned around. Maybe we should go down the hill and look for him.”

  “Maybe you should kiss my ass. See if Jay and Martin will go.”

  “They just got back from pissing down by the side of Denny Hill. Nobody wants to climb that thing twice.”

  “Fine, then you go.”

  “Not by myself.”

  “Well, I ain’t going with you.”

  While they bickered, Rector cringed. He took Angeline’s elbow with one hand and Zeke’s with the other, drawing them back closer against the wall—farther into the shade, and farther out of earshot.

  “But I want to see them,” the princess hissed.

  “Trust me. Please,” he begged.

  Houjin gave him a glare that said Not a chance, but he followed him a few yards back and joined the huddle. “What is it? And why are we supposed to trust you, again?”

  Rector held up his hands for quiet because it was his turn to talk—and for once, he had something true and important to say. He leaned forward, and when all their heads were practically touching, he told them what he knew.

  “I don’t recognize the one fellow who hurt his leg, on account of it’s hard to see when people are wearing masks. But the other one’s name is Isaac West—I’d know his voice anyplace. He’s a chemist from Tacoma who’s been moving sap under his own brand, calling it ambrosia. I heard Yaozu didn’t like it much, and I also heard West wasn’t planning to change his behavior any. And that Otis fellow they’re looking for—I bet it’s Otis Caplan.”

  “Who’s that?” Zeke asked, bonking his forehead against Houjin’s mask.

  “Used to be in the army. The Union, I mean. He was a scientist. He invented some kind of gun that everybody liked, and it made him a mint. Then he switched from dealing arms to dealing sap a year or two ago, and now he’s making another mint. Bought a big house in San Francisco, but he comes up here pretty regular.”

  “What about the other two, the ones we followed up here?” Angeline asked.

  Houjin said, “One of these guys called them Jay and Martin.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know everybody. Give me a break.”
>
  Zeke’s voice was low with awe. “I heard of Otis, back before I came in here. Every time there was a rumor going ’round that Minnericht was dead, or missing, or gonna retire, or anything, people used to say Otis Caplan was coming to take over the operation.”

  “I don’t think he ever discussed it with Minnericht,” Angeline said wryly. “And anyway, Yaozu beat him to it. Do I even want to know why you know of these men, Red?”

  “Probably not, ma’am.”

  Zeke sat back on his heels and asked, “I think my filters are stuffing up.”

  The princess sighed, and looked at the boys one at a time. Seeing the same thing on each face, she relented. “I think we’ve done enough mischief for now. My mask is starting to chafe me, too. Let’s turn around,” she started … but whatever she’d planned to add was drowned out by the sputter of something loud, and coming closer.

  Everyone tensed and retreated, and soon all four backs were pressed up against the wall—as close as they could get, as if they could melt right into the rocks that formed it.

  The rumbling, roaring sound grew louder, approaching from behind them, back the way they’d come. Rector desperately shuffled through his moth-eaten memories, hunting for some idea of what the noisemaker might be. The closest he could come was the steam-powered works at the old sawmill, but that wasn’t quite right. The volume was correct, and the mechanical rhythm of it was absolutely right, but the timbre and tone were all wrong. This was something smaller but still impossibly heavy. The close-pressed air made the rattling feel like an assault, and the vibrations were a personal insult as they butted and shoved. The ground beneath his feet quivered like it wanted to fall.

  “What is that?” asked Zeke.

  Houjin replied, “It reminds me of something I saw in New Orleans.” And he might’ve elaborated, except that the persistent clank drowned out every other sound, and everyone had the good sense not to shout, in case it suddenly stopped. Instead they covered their ears and watched as a machine came crawling up the hill and into view.

  It rumbled and rolled, a war carriage without a war horse, riding on enormous wheels that were spiked with great nubs for the sake of traction. The rear of the carriage was covered with canvas in an old-fashioned wagon style, but the front was sealed up with glass to create a compartment for the driver. The driver himself was a wide-set man sporting glasses and a bow tie. He was not wearing a mask, a fact that Houjin called attention to by pointing at the one he wore and gesturing back at the transport machine.

  Angeline nodded, and everyone frowned. The machine’s cabin must have air filters, or carry its own air supply for clean breathing. Rector could see the wheels in Houjin’s head turning, calculating how on earth it could’ve been done … and wondering how he might be able to repeat it.

  Rector tapped Angeline’s arm and drew her closer. Right into her ear, he said, “That’s Otis. I never seen him before, but I heard he was a tall fat man who’s always dressed nicer than he ought to be. They say you can’t mistake him for anybody else.”

  “Not a lot of fat men around these parts.”

  “Not a lot of bow ties, either,” Zeke observed. “Nobody dresses up like they’re going someplace fancy.”

  “Yaozu does,” Houjin muttered, and Rector realized it might be true. He didn’t know what a Chinaman wore to dress up and go out someplace fancy, so it was hard for him to say one way or the other, but it made sense to him that rich men ought to dress like rich men, and act like rich men, too. How else would anybody know they had any money?

  And in Rector’s experience, people didn’t often take orders from men without money.

  “I wonder what’s inside that wagon,” Angeline said. Rector barely heard her—the noise of the machine’s engine made everything sound shaky and faint.

  “Supplies for making sap?” he guessed.

  The engine cut off, and the mayhem of its clatter died down. It settled into near-silence, except for a few pings and whistles as the motor cooled.

  Caplan reached down to the seat beside him and picked up a mask, then put it on and opened the door to let himself out. He stepped down to the ground and slapped the door shut again, then stomped forward to shake hands with Isaac West and his companion.

  “It’s about time,” West greeted him. “What do you think of the place?”

  “I think it’s a shithole if I ever saw one,” Caplan said disdainfully, and if he weren’t wearing a mask, Rector thought he might’ve spit on the ground for emphasis. “But if Yaozu can make it work, we can, too. I won’t be outdone by no goddamn yellow Chinaman who thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

  Angeline snorted quietly. The snort spoke volumes, so Rector was unsurprised to hear her mumble, “This one dresses real nice, but he talks real trashy. Says everything I need to know about him, don’t it?”

  “I expect it does,” he agreed.

  Otis Caplan said, “Anyone else around, or just you two?”

  “Jay and Martin are upstairs.”

  “Go get ’em. These things are heavy, and I can’t leave them sitting in the back. That part ain’t sealed, and the air will corrode them ’til they’re useless.”

  Isaac West ordered the man with the scraped-up leg upstairs with a bob of his head. He sighed, but didn’t argue—not in front of Otis Caplan. Instead, he slowly turned and went through the white gate. Just out of sight, Rector heard a door open and shut with a soft scraping noise. It made him think of the seals on some of the underground doors. This impression was confirmed as he eavesdropped further and Caplan asked, “How’s the tower coming?”

  “We got the interior drained, cleaned, and closed up. It’s practically a fortress in there, and it goes down to a basement level we didn’t know about. We got that dried out, too, and we’re checking its integrity now.”

  “But is it airtight?”

  “Not yet, but we’re working on it. Up top, we almost got it sorted—all we need is a little more glass and some better sealant. Then, of course, we gotta find a way to pump the bad air out, and pump good air in. We can get it as tight as we like it, but that won’t do us no good if we can’t breathe what we’ve trapped.”

  “The people who live here have got something figured out.”

  West nodded. “They got pumps, coal-fired or steam-powered. They send these big waxed tubes up above the Blight line and pump down fresh air that way.”

  Otis Caplan struck a pose for pondering, with his hands on his hips and his head cocked to the side. If he could’ve reached his beard, he might’ve stroked it in a villainous fashion. “Could we swipe one of those tubes?”

  “I doubt it. They’re awful big to make off with. Besides, the tube’s no good without the pump.”

  “Could we steal a pump?”

  “No idea,” West told him.

  Angeline said to Rector, “Now that’s a man who’s lying. He’s just afraid of telling his boss no too many times in a row. Any damn fool knows you can’t steal a pump. They’re as big as a whole room.”

  Rector said, “Otis ain’t never seen a pump. For all he knows, one might fit in a wheelbarrow.”

  From within the tower came the sounds of footsteps and grumbling, descending the spiral within—and using more caution on this trip than they’d shown before. Rector heard, “Watch out for that step. It’s broke,” as the creak of decaying metal made a straining sound that squealed all the way out into the park.

  “Here they come. Help me unload,” Caplan ordered West. Together they went to the wagon’s rear, and Otis released a latch that dropped the back end open. “I’ve got the glass you asked for, and the closest thing to a sealant I could find, which is tar. I hear nothing works better against this gas, but it won’t be pretty. As for the rest of the stuff, I brought enough to start a war.”

  He reached into the cargo area and withdrew a crate. It scratched across the floor until he had it in his arms, then, with some help from West, he put it on the ground. Isaac West said, “Too bad we ain’t got
an army. You can bring us all the guns you want, but without anybody to shoot ’em, they don’t do us much good.”

  “It ain’t all guns, West—though if it matters to you, I’ve got more fellows coming tomorrow night. We don’t need an army to bring this place down to the ground. Or … farther into the ground. I don’t know, I guess we can send it straight to the devil with what I brought.” Caplan pulled a pry bar out from the wagon and gave it a twirl, then jabbed it into the top of the crate. “Get a gander at that, would you?” he suggested proudly.

  Angeline, Rector, Houjin, and Zeke all craned their necks.

  “Hot damn, Mr. Caplan. That’s a lot of dynamite, ain’t it?”

  “This? This is only some dynamite. I’ve got a lot of dynamite packed up in the back along with the guns. I’d like to think of the guns as a last resort, really. It’ll be less trouble if we can just plug up the holes, cave in the tunnels … less work for us, and nobody on our end gets hurt.”

  West turned his attention to whatever else was inside the wagon, shrugged, and said, “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  The gate swung open. Jay and Martin exited the tower, joined by the man who’d fetched them.

  “Over here, boys.” West waved them out to the carriage.

  Angeline sat back on her heels and everyone else slumped over as well. Rector saw naked horror in Zeke’s eyes, and something he couldn’t quite pinpoint in Houjin’s. At a glance it looked like anger, but it might’ve been fear.

  The princess said, “Back to the Vaults now. All of us. We wouldn’t have time left on these filters to do those men any damage—even if we weren’t outmanned and outgunned.”

  “We need to tell my mother,” Zeke said tightly.

  “Your mother, and Mr. Swakhammer, and anybody else who might be helpful.”

  Houjin said, “I’ll tell Captain Cly.”