It was suddenly clear to Tim: The cinders that spilled from Daniel were the remains of exhausted hope. The black soot he shed was the remnants of suffering Daniel could neither forget nor forgive. The fire was sullen rage, the deadly smoke, fear.
Tim wobbled on his feet, then took a step back, releasing the connection he had made so deeply with Daniel. He felt Molly’s hand on his arm, and it brought him back to himself.
He blinked a few times, not wanting either of them to see how shaken he’d been by the glimpse into Daniel’s life. And that the news he had to tell them wasn’t good.
“So can you do it?” Daniel asked eagerly. “Can you set me back the way I was? Get rid of all this black muck?”
“Daniel,” Tim said, “I really hate to be the one to say this, but that stuff that’s on you—it’s your soul. I don’t think I can get it off you without…well, without killing you.”
Daniel sank back onto his heels and covered his face with his hands.
“Is there anything you can do?” Molly asked, concern and sympathy on her face. Tim liked that she went from kicking Daniel to wanting to help him.
Tim sighed. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, but yes, I do have an idea.” He faced Daniel again. “There’s one thing we can try. We’ve got to get this Slaggingham to run you through his machine again. In reverse, or something.”
Daniel shuddered. “You won’t catch me climbing into that glass coffin again. No thank you. I been through enough today.” He tugged hard on the brim of his battered hat and pulled it low over his face. Tim could see the boy’s lips sticking out in a pout.
“A pity party,” Molly scoffed. “What fun.”
“Isn’t it, though,” Tim said. Here he was trying to help, and the helpee wasn’t helping at all.
Tim crouched down beside Daniel and lifted the hat brim. “I want to see this Slaggingham in person,” he told Daniel. “And I’m not going to splash around the sewers all day to find him. You are going to take me to him. Now.”
“Have you gone barmy?” Daniel scoffed. “He’ll murder you, he will.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Tim replied. “Can you zap us there, or should we be looking for a grate to crawl down?”
“Oh, I can take you straight to him. If that’s what you really wants.”
“It’s what I wants—er, want.” Tim stood back up and faced Molly. “If we’re not back in an hour or so, you can start the ice cream expedition without us. Take Marya, if you can find her. I’m not sure if unicorns eat ice cream, though.”
“Are you nuts?” Molly glared at Tim. “You can’t go down there.” She pointed at Daniel. “You heard what he said—this Slaggingham wants you dead. And you’re just going to walk right into his lair?”
“I wouldn’t call it a lair. It’s more a factory, like,” Daniel corrected.
Molly lifted her foot as a warning, and Daniel held up his hands in a placating gesture. Tim took her by the elbow and walked her a few steps away from Daniel.
“Molly, I’m certain the only way I can help Daniel is by running him back through that machine.” He lowered his voice. “Besides, I don’t think any of us are safe with him as he is. It’s better if I nip this in the bud now.”
As the words came out of his mouth he realized he was finally facing up to something in the moment. Instead of following his usual pattern of running away, he was dealing with the crisis dead-on.
Molly crossed her arms over her chest. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“Oh, bad plan,” Tim said. There was no way Tim would bring Molly along on this excursion underground. The fact that they were going after some bloke who invented machines that could do what had been done to Daniel meant they weren’t dealing with anyone ordinary. He didn’t want Molly anywhere near that.
But he knew her all too well—she wasn’t one to sit back and let someone else go to the action. How could he convince her to stay behind?
“Look, I need you up here as backup,” he explained. “If I don’t come back after an hour, then come down and find me. If we’re down there together now, there’s no one to help later.”
Molly narrowed her eyes as if she were trying to decide whether he was scamming her or serious. “Okay,” she said dubiously. “One hour only. And then I’m coming down after you.”
“Thanks, Molly. Okay, Danny boy,” Tim said, turning around. “Lead on.” Silently he added, I really hope I don’t regret this.
Chapter Nine
Underneath London
REVEREND SLAGGINGHAM HAD BEEN tickled to see the transformation in his protégé, Daniel. He watched gleefully as the boy shouted out in rage at that blight on humanity, Timothy Hunter. Soot and cinders swirled everywhere—no one could survive that kind of attack. Now that he’d become an altered creature, perhaps Daniel would be able to withstand all that flame and ash. If not, more’s the pity, but such is life.
A clanging alarm drew Slaggingham’s attention away from his viewing machine. He glanced down at his watch. “Fume and choke me! I’m late! I should have inspected the Extractor three and a half minutes ago. How could I have missed it?”
Slaggingham pressed the button that caused the panel to slide down, concealing the viewing machine again. Then, he hurried along to the main part of the underground factory. He went to inspect the bottling plant, admiring the perfectly symmetrical lines of the empty bottles on the conveyor belt. Snatching one up, he read the label aloud. “Slaggingham’s Own Elixir of Happiness. Distilled and bottled in subterranean London.”
He proudly scanned the area, pleased with the smooth production, the clockwork organization. All was in order.
He noticed a worker he didn’t recognize at the controls. Slaggingham had never seen the likes of this guy before. The fellow was over seven feet tall, blue, and had ram’s horns on his head. And the clothing he wore—it was like those of the troubadours in books: velvet doublet, slippers, long cloak. Who could he be?
“How did you get in here?” he demanded. A genius such as the reverend always had to be on the lookout for spies and saboteurs.
“The woman brought me,” the worker replied in a flat tone, without stopping his work.
“Oh, and what woman might that be?”
“She who trapped my soul in a globe of crystal,” the blue gentleman replied.
Of course, Slaggingham remembered—hadn’t Gwendolyn mentioned bringing in an unusual specimen? She was certainly right about that.
“Gild my lily, but you’d pack them in at the circus. Who were you? And why would the likes of you choose to go slumming in London town?” Slaggingham peered at the creature, having a new and terrible thought. “Are you one of the Hunter brat’s creatures?” he rasped.
“I was Auberon, High King of Faerie. I fled my realm to escape a longing more insistent than my soul could bear. I was no one’s creature until your servant took my soul.”
“So you were a king, eh?” Slaggingham stroked his stubbly chin. “I can’t say I ever had the pleasure of enslaving an actual monarch before. Happy, were you?”
“If my soul had known happiness in Faerie, do you suppose it would have driven me here?”
“But you must have been happy, you infernal lumpet,” Slaggingham snapped. “You were a bloody king! Lived in a palace, I reckon.”
“Yes.”
“Had your scurvy breakfast served up on a silver tray.”
“Yes.”
“But you weren’t happy.”
“No.”
“My, what a sad story. Snap my grommets, if it hasn’t got me feeling something close to sorry for you.” Slaggingham shook his head. “Well, Brother Hornhead, since your previous life was such a prime sink of misery I offer you this: When my merchandise has spoiled the lives of a few more surface dwellers, and my Extractor soaks up enough of their lost happiness to commence distillation and bottling, I’ll give you your own pint of happiness to wash the gloom from your guts. What do you say to that, Brother Hornhead?”
&nb
sp; “When will you give me back my soul?”
Slaggingham waggled a finger at Auberon. “Tut-tut. Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Ah, I best be getting back to my rounds.”
Slaggingham continued on. There were so many machines to inspect! He strolled along a catwalk to the controls of one of the machines. He held his lantern up to read the dials.
“This reading can’t be right,” he sputtered. “The extractive terminals have been operational now for months. And the surface dwellers have never been so miserable, so we should be swilling in gallons of spare happiness by now. I should be swimming in the stuff.”
He paced the catwalk trying to piece together why the machine was not functioning as it should. “Perhaps I’ve made the reservoir’s sensor float too heavy,” he muttered. He felt his artificial heart beating triple time, which he knew was not good for it, might spring a sprocket or two. Self-doubt, the most diabolical sort of emotion, threatened him at every turn. Whenever he suspected he had gone awry in his thinking, worried that perhaps he was not the genius he had always imagined himself to be, he forced the troublesome thoughts aside as best he could. Such ideas were deadly dangerous.
He concentrated on the problem at hand and peered into the bowels of the crotchety machine. “Ah! That’s the answer. I knew I was taking a chance using balsa wood.”
A metallic clinking behind him caught Slaggingham’s attention. He turned to see screws fling themselves out of their spots, and then a grate popped open. A metal hand with screwdrivers and pliers for fingers appeared, and Awn the Blink, Slaggingham’s nemesis—troublemaker extraordinaire—pulled himself out of the tiny space.
“Balsa wood, was it?” Awn the Blink asked. “I thought it tasted a bit organic.”
“You!” Slaggingham growled.
“That’s right, sir. Awn the Blink, in person. And not precisely at your service.”
“You’ve gone too far,” Slaggingham fumed. “Seventy-seven ratcheting years it took me to build this Extractor! I won’t have my beauty tampered with by an antennae-topped figment of Timothy Hunter’s imagination.”
“So you figured out it was I who’d done it, eh?” Awn the Blink said. “You’re smarter than you look. And ’cause I’m a kindly soul, I’ll help you out. I can tell you what’s wrong with your invention.”
“Crank me! Would you?”
“I will indeed.”
Slaggingham beamed. “You know the moment I clapped eyes on you, Mr. Blink, I said to myself, now there’s an honest son of toil. Why, look at the hands on him. Those stalwart hands aren’t stained with the blood of the oppressed laboring classes, by jingo, those hands—”
Awn the Blink cut him off. “Fifty pounds, squire. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
Slaggingham’s jaw dropped open. Then he snapped it shut with a bang and his eyes narrowed. “Forty pounds, and not a farthing more.”
“Sixty,” Awn the Blink countered.
“Very well, you profiteer. Fifty it is.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Tinker and blast.” Slaggingham threw up his hands in defeat. “Done!” Slaggingham pulled a wallet from inside his jacket pocket. Muttering oaths under his breath, he counted out the bills into Awn the Blink’s metal palm. “Pirate. Thief.”
Awn the Blink ignored the name-calling, and double-checked the number of bills. Satisfied, he shoved them into the back pocket of his baggy, grease-stained blue jeans.
Slaggingham tapped his foot impatiently. “Well?” he snapped.
Awn the Blink grinned. “All right, guv’nor, now that we’ve taken care of the business portion of our conversation. About this Anti-Tantalic Extractor apparatus of yours.”
“Yes?” Slaggingham hated the eagerness in his voice, knowing it revealed the fear behind the question. Confound it! He shouldn’t need explanations from the likes of Awn the Blink! His own scheming blueprint of a brain should be capable of solving every conundrum.
“The design is a pippin,” Awn the Blink declared, “and the construction is every bit a wonder.”
Slaggingham beamed. “Of course, of course. No need for compliments.” His chest puffed out a bit. Perhaps he’d misjudged the tool-fingered contraption.
“Your problem is entirely conceptual.”
This caught Slaggingham up short. “Oh?” His eyebrows rose. A conceptual problem? Impossible! That would mean the problem had been there all along and he had never seen it. In fact, one might hazard to say that if it were a “conceptual problem,” then it was he himself who had caused it. If that were the case, how could he live with himself?
Awn the Blink patted the Extractor, his metal fingers clanking on the machine. “This setup you got would work fine for extracting particles or gases from the atmosphere. But happiness? Hah!”
“Wh-what do you mean?” Could the little blighter be right? Was there a flaw in the concept itself? What could I have missed? Slaggingham wondered.
“Emotions don’t float about in the air like flipping molecules, squire. You were doomed to failure from the start.”
“B-b-but—” Slaggingham sputtered. Error was just not possible! Not possible!
Awn the Blink continued without even a pause. “And even if you could catch and bottle the stuff, what good would that do you?” He pointed a screwdriver-tipped finger at Slaggingham. “You’ve turned yourself into a mechanism with these whatsits of yours. Sure, it allowed you a longer life than required by most, but at the end of the day, where did it get you?”
Now Slaggingham simply gaped openmouthed at Awn the Blink.
“You couldn’t use the elixir even if it could exist. You’re not built to swallow, much less digest.”
“Tippy-tappy torque wrench!” Slaggingham moaned, understanding hitting him all at once. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “What a fool I’ve made of myself.”
It was true—he was a complete and utter failure. He had worked for all these years—decades, nay, a century!—on a stinking design flaw. And even if he had managed to wrest happiness from the very air, the transformations he had wrought on himself in his efforts to achieve his goals had made him a freak, who could never benefit from his hard work. The irony of his predicament pained him to his very bloodless core.
He unbuttoned his vest, flicked the bolts on his metal chest, and yanked out his heart. He stared at the thing—the cold mechanical thing. It clicked methodically in his hand, tiny lights pulsing. Slaggingham yanked on the chain that ran though his body instead of veins, so that he could bring the heart up to his face.
“Oh, even the most cunningly engineered plans, they will go astray, curse them!” His grip on the heart tightened; springs popped out of place.
“Curse them,” he bellowed, throwing back his head and letting out a howl. He snapped the heavy chain right out of his body and flung the mechanical heart to the floor. He glared down at it. “You foul thing, you have betrayed me.” He stomped it hard, mechanical pieces scattering all around.
“Curse them!” he whispered as he collapsed into the corner. Awn the Blink grinned, then hopped back into the grate.
Tim peered anxiously down into the muck. The sewers were dark and they stank, and he really didn’t want to think about what might be under that water. He wanted to get this business with Daniel over with, go back above ground, and take about thirty showers.
Water dripped from the damp, vaulted ceilings overhead, making plop-plop-plopping noises. Isn’t dripping water some sort of torture? Tim was beginning to understand why: The repetitive sound was really irritating. The whole place gave Tim the creeps.
Daniel must have noticed Tim’s dubious expression. “This is just the entrance into the underground system,” he explained. “Wait until you see the factory and the machines and thingies.”
They moved farther along the tunnel, and Tim saw that it branched in several directions. How big is this place? he wondered.
“This way.” Daniel bounded through an archway, and Tim followed. Daniel obvio
usly knew his way around—he even managed to avoid tripping over uneven patches and the messiest of the muck.
Once through the archway Tim discovered that he and Daniel stood on a long catwalk running the length of an enormous, vaulted room. At the center was a large pile of junk—pieces of twisted metal and gadgets clumped together like some kind of weird sculpture. The place was deserted, and the few lights flickered as if they were running out of electricity.
“I thought you said this was a factory,” Tim said.
“It was.” Daniel sounded uncertain. “Mine and Slaggingham’s. We were partners.”
“I don’t know, Daniel. It doesn’t look like your factory is making much of anything at the moment.”
“Yes, I grant you that.”
“Was that the machine Slaggingham put you through?” Tim asked, nodding toward the massive pile of metal. He hoped not, since it looked like it needed extensive repair, and he was pretty sure the manual would be nowhere around.
“No, it was farther in,” Daniel explained. He led Tim along the catwalk and through another archway. Now they climbed down a metal ladder, and found more tunnels.
It’s a regular city down here, Tim observed. He supposed it could have once been a factory; there was certainly enough stuff around and space. But it sure didn’t look like it was still open for business.
Daniel seemed as confused as Tim. “It’s never been so quiet in here,” he confessed. “Before, there was all this whirring and banging and—” He held up a hand. “Wait…hear that?”
Tim strained his ears to listen. Daniel was right—it was faint, but it was there. A small fzzzt, fzzzt, sizzling sound.
“This way.” Daniel dashed forward in the dark tunnel, then came to such a sudden stop that Tim banged into him.
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