by Matthew Cody
Also by Matthew Cody
Powerless
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Matthew Cody
Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Odessa Sawyer
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89780-1
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Alisha and Willem,
as always
In loving memory of
Lt. Col. James Cody
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Part One Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Two Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part Three Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The process of writing this book was, appropriately, full of twists and turns, and at times we could have used a Cycloidotrope of our own to figure it all out. My deepest thanks go out to my editors, Joan Slattery and Michele Burke, without whom I’d be lost in the ether. Joan helped me begin this book, and Michele helped me finish it—I’m so very grateful to both. And my thanks to Nancy Hinkel and Jeremy Medina for their thoughtful feedback and support and, of course, to my friend and agent, Kate Schafer Testerman, for far too much to list here.
Go to sleep, evening star,
For here comes the bogeyman
And he steals away children who
Don’t go to sleep!
—from a traditional Spanish lullaby
PART ONE
We Explorers are, too often, blind to
the consequences of our actions; blind to
our responsibility for those millions who
slumber in ignorance beneath the Veil of
Reality. Now is the time for us to open our
eyes and recognize that in our journeys we
have left too many doors opened.
And dark things have followed us back.
—from the introduction to the
Encyclopedia Imagika,
“On the Profession and Its Associated Perils,”
Sir Bartholomew Wainright, editor
PROLOGUE
TOMMY
NEW YORK, 1901
A mist had settled over the city, the leftovers of the sort of downpour that scrubs manure from cobblestones and soot from buildings. Inside, candles were lit, and outside, gaslights hissed and popped to life. The streetlamps made little difference in the soupy evening fog. But staring up at the Percy Hotel, with its tall windows and new electric bulbs, you’d have thought someone had gone and built a tower of bonfires on the edge of Manhattan.
A new century. It had only just begun and the world had already changed.
Eyeing my chronometer, I triple-checked its charge. I fidget a lot, but it’s not that I’m anxious—I just have trouble standing still. Years of living on the streets will teach you that it’s dangerous if you stay in one place for too long. You’re better off keeping on the move.
I adjusted the paragoggles on my forehead and cinched the leather delver’s gloves around my wrists, tight. Any tighter and my fingers would go numb.
“What’s the bird say?” asked Bernard, wiping little water droplets from his glasses.
I tried to answer but my words were lost in the hoof steps of a passing horse and rider. The man shouted at us as he trotted by—something about two boys being out after dark and loitering where we had no business, and so on. I answered the man’s concerns with a nice, rude gesture.
“Merlin’s still on about something,” I said again, after the clatter had died down. The clockwork canary on my shoulder gave one of his tin can chirps. “Something’s funny about that hotel, and I’m betting on the basement.” Merlin had been singing up a storm ever since we’d spied the Percy, and the metal bird’s squawking usually signaled trouble.
“I don’t know,” said Bernard. “He’s really acting up—I’ve never seen him this twitchy before. Maybe we should go back.”
For an Explorer, Bernard was a bit on the cautious side. In his book, there was no situation so urgent that it couldn’t benefit from a little extra preparedness. Not a bad way to live if you’re looking to make assistant manager by the end of the year at Such-and-Such-Mister-Stuffy-Pants’ Bank. And maybe it’s fine if you want a really exciting profession, such as … an accounts clerk. Or a grocer. But Explorers are adventurers. This may mean that at times we can be a little foolhardy and, yes, even reckless. But if you saw just half the things I’ve seen, you’d be jumping out of your boots, too.
I promise you, there’s just so much to see out there—you have no idea.
“Go back?” I asked. “Look, Bernard. Time to get back in the saddle and stop dwelling on the past. Can’t worry our way through life, eh?”
“I’m not worried, per se,” answered Bernard, his milk-fat cheeks blushing red. “It’s just, after the Hidden City, I’d have thought you’d—”
“Let’s not talk about that right now, partner,” I interrupted. As I said, I’m a fellow of action—I don’t care to dwell on the bad stuff of life. And believe me, what happened to the Hidden City was the worst.
“Besides,” I said. “We’re Explorers, Bernard. Even if we’re the last, the title still means something. So let’s do some exploring.”
Merlin looked at each of us in turn and tweeted.
“See? Merlin’s here to protect you if things go south. You keep hold of the bird while I take the lead, and if there’s anything in there worth poking into, I’ll do the poking. Agreed?”
Bernard nodded, but he was hardly enthusiastic.
I gently scooped Merlin off my shoulder and onto Bernard’s. The bird’s surprisingly delicate for a creature made all of metal.
Bernard wiped a fresh coat of mist from his spectacles as he frowned at the canary. “Tommy, I’ve also been doing some reading …”
“There’s your first mistake.”
“The Percy has a history. This very spot was the site of a multiportal event, years before there was even a hotel here.”
I squinted at my friend. Now he’d managed to pique my interest. “You
mean like a nexus?”
Bernard shrugged. “It’s unclear. What is known is that multiple portals opened at once and there were casualties involved. The Academy declared it off-limits to further exploring. You know, there are some doors that are meant to stay shut, Tommy.”
“We’re just having a quick look-see,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder with one of my biggest, most lying-est just-trust-me grins. “We’ll be extra careful. I promise.”
The basement turned out to be a forest of junk—cluttered trails overgrown with old lobby chairs, cracked clawed tubs and curtain rods. An upright roll of musty carpet marked the entrance, and the exit (if there was one) was lost somewhere in the darkness. As the basement hadn’t been wired yet for electric lights, a single gas bulb hung uselessly near the doorway, black with soot. This was a place where things were thrown away, cast off and forgotten about. A graveyard of old lives.
Merlin chirped worriedly as we eyed the room.
Adjusting the chronometer on my wrist, I set it to count backward from ten. The little brass hands whirred and clicked into place before starting the soft ticking of minutes. Then I pulled down my paragoggles and waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the cobalt glow of paralight. Where the room was once hidden in shadow, I now saw distinct blue shapes.
“I’ve set the clock to ten minutes. That should give us more than enough time to do a little reconnoiter.”
“Are you sure?” asked Bernard, squinting beneath his own goggles. He never did have the knack for seeing in paralight. “It looks a bit dodgy, if you ask me. Looks like a perfect place to walk into an attercop web. Or worse.”
“If the two of us can’t handle a single attercop, then we’ve got no right to the name Explorers,” I said. The awkward way Bernard wore his oversized goggles made him look like some kind of fat, blue-eyed bug. “C’mon, we’re wasting paralight.”
“Fine,” he answered. “But just a quick look. If we’re lucky, it’s just an ordinary old basement after all.”
“An ordinary old basement?” I laughed. “Aren’t they always?”
Tiptoeing my way through the maze of junk, I tapped my Tesla Stick on the floor, testing the ground. At the center of the room, I paused in front of an overturned sofa. It lay on its side at a suspiciously awkward angle as if it had been dragged out to the middle of the floor and left there. It was out of place.
“Hey, give me a hand with this,” I said, and, with a few grunts, the two of us righted the mildewed sofa back onto its feet, exposing a deep crevasse in the floor underneath. At its narrowest it was maybe a few inches wide, but near the middle it opened into a jagged hole two or three feet across. Where the cobblestone floor was broken away, it had been covered with a thick film of spiderweb. In the blue light I saw, dangling in the sticky strands, bits of animal bone and a few bottle caps. In the middle of everything a single doll’s head stared back at me, its eyes chewed out and missing.
“Attercop,” Bernard whispered. “Told you.”
“Have you ever actually seen an attercop?”
“No,” answered Bernard. “And neither have you. But at least I’ve read about them.”
“Well, this web looks old. Maybe he scurried off to a new home. Let’s make sure.”
Reaching into the shoulder bag at my side, the one marked with the Explorers’ symbol—a machine cog with feathered wings—I took out an oddly shaped gun with a net dangling from the tip and tossed it to Bernard.
Bernard looked at the gun and arched one surprised eyebrow at me. “Are you serious?”
I shrugged. “Net for the netter. You can cover me.”
As gingerly as I could manage, I stepped within reach of the crevasse. If the attercop was home, he’d be waiting just under the web for his prey.
“Any vibration,” Bernard was saying, “even a small one, will bring him to the surface. And he’ll come angry. But attercops are built for climbing, not walking, and their short front legs mean that they are ridiculously slow on the ground. Most of the time they’re only really dangerous in the web.”
Most of the time.
I crouched down low next to the sofa and slowly, very slowly, reached forward with my Tesla Stick, ready to discharge fifty thousand volts of electricity at anything that came crawling out of the web on more than two legs. My heart was beating hard in my chest, but I just couldn’t stop smiling. Times like that made me feel alive.
Inching the tip of my pole to the edge—I was a good distance away—I tapped the web. Just a tap. I kept a loose grip on the handle, letting the wrist strap hang. I didn’t want the attercop pulling me in along with the pole.
Nothing happened.
I tapped again, harder. The bottle caps jingled against each other as the pole brushed the strands and came away easily. The web had lost most of its stickiness, which was yet another sign that its maker had moved on.
“Looks safe,” I said.
It was much tougher than a normal spiderweb, more like spun cotton, and it took a few sharp jabs to break the thing. As I worked, the ghastly doll’s head remained suspended by a few stray strands, dangling above the crevasse. Its eyeless gaze settled on me for just a second, before I knocked it into the dark.
Watching the head fall away, I had to shake off the little chill that crept up my neck. With the web cleared, what was left was an open chasm. But if my instincts were right, this was more than that—there was something down there. Even in the paralight, the crevasse looked dark. The walls were uneven and narrowed the farther down they went.
“Hook me up,” I said. “I’m going down.”
“Do you want the netgun?” asked Bernard as he fastened a thin line to my belt.
“No, that thing’s too bulky to climb with, and I’ve got the Tesla Stick if I have any problems. Besides, if that attercop decides to visit up here, you’ll need it more than me.”
Reaching back into my pouch, I took out a shining metal ball and handed it, very gently, to Bernard.
He arched his eyebrow again. “A mayfly? What’s this for?”
“Last resort. What you said earlier about this place having a history? Well, if I don’t come back, toss it in and seal up the hole. But make sure I’m truly done for—I wouldn’t want to be down there when the mayfly does its thing.”
“You’re very reassuring,” said Bernard, gingerly pocketing the ball and removing his shoulder satchel. “You know I’d never use it.”
“Protocol and all. You’re the one always quoting me the rules.”
Bernard managed a half smile. “You said it yourself: we are the Academy now. We can change the rules as we like. Just be careful, all right?”
Bernard handed me a coil of rope, and, with a satisfied nod, I slipped over the edge and into the dark. According to the chronometer, I had less than two minutes of paralight left. I’d hoped to at least scout the bottom before having to resort to using a lantern. Even if this turned out to be an ordinary cavern, there could still be something nasty down here, and I didn’t want to attract attention with real light until I absolutely had to.
I rappelled my way along the rough dirt wall of the crevasse as Bernard fed me an inch of cord at a time. The seconds took forever to tick by as I was slowly lowered through the basement floor, but to go any faster would risk my losing my balance, or Bernard might lose his footing and I’d fall the rest of the way.
Descending into the unknown, I dreamed about what might be at the bottom. Where did the basement of the Percy Hotel lead? It must be someplace special for Merlin to go on like that. The last really wondrous place I’d explored had led to the Ying Obelisk—an enormous tower hidden among the ice rings of Saturn. The stones drank in the sunlight during the day and shone bright gold at night. The creature who lived there looked like angels with their ice-particle wings, and they sailed along the ether winds of space. It was one of the most glorious places any person could see in all of creation, and I’d discovered it under the bed of an eight-year-old girl.
Though
I could still just make out Bernard’s silhouette above me, the paralight was fading fast. An unusual panic started to set in the farther I went, as I imagined the walls slowly closing in, tightening like fingers around a bug. I’d have to risk some light after all.
As I fumbled in my breast pocket for a match, I heard Bernard’s harsh whisper from above. “Hey, you’ve stopped! Everything all right?”
Bad enough I was about to light a match, but now we were shouting whispers at each other. “I’m fine!”
With one hand on the rope, I had to pry the match tin open with my teeth, wincing as they scraped the metal. It was a clumsy effort, but after a few tries and some spilled matches I managed to strike one against the rock wall. A quick hiss of sparks and a second later the crevasse was lit by a weak glow.
It took only a few moments for my eyes to adjust, just long enough for me to notice the glint of a solid floor not ten feet below. Its surface was smooth, almost polished. As I put the match to the wick of the small hand lantern clipped to my belt, there was a confused moment as the lantern light was suddenly reflected back at me by four multifaceted eyes not three feet away.
The attercop. It was here after all, and more, it was waiting for me. I spied it just as it was readying itself to pounce, its fangs clicking now in anticipation of this unexpected meal. And here I was, a worm dangling on a hook.
There was no time to think. I pulled the safety hook on my harness and as the creature lunged, I dropped.
The attercop’s fangs just missed me as I fell and landed on the hard floor. Something gave way in my ankle, and worse, I heard the crunch of the Tesla Stick snapping beneath me. But I had escaped the attercop’s grasp—for a moment anyway. As I rolled across the floor, the lantern sputtered and blinked—but it stayed lit.
The attercop was descending, faster than I would have thought possible with its stubby front legs. I had only a few seconds to act. Bernard was shouting something from above, but the blood pounding in my head drowned out my partner’s words.
