by Arthur Slade
“That must be Prince Albert!” Modo said.
“You’re right! The prince at the heart of a horrible machine. This Clockwork Guild certainly loves its symbols. The papers will have a heyday!”
Hyde staggered up to the giant in awe, his arms raised as though he wanted to embrace it. His face had a look of absolute joy. “Dr. Hyde!” Hakkandottir shouted through a speaking trumpet. “Step back! We have to complete our tests!” But he still walked about, reaching to touch the metal ankles of the machine, hugging its calves. “Cornelius! Come back to me.” He snapped out of his trance and climbed back up to the platform, stealing another glance over his shoulder and shaking his head in wonder.
“Well, that was odd,” Octavia said. “I just don’t understand what this machine is meant for.”
“I … I don’t know. And how do they intend to get it out of here?”
Fuhr pulled the levers, grinning. One gigantic arm reached out; and the pincers lifted a barrel and squeezed until it snapped in two, spraying water across the ground. The giant’s arms swung about, knocking half the scaffolding over. Workers scattered and Fuhr let out a barking laugh.
Hakkandottir raised her speaking trumpet again. “The system is functioning properly. You may proceed, Mr. Fuhr!”
With that, Fuhr manipulated the levers so that both of the giant’s arms were bent as though it were flexing its muscles. The ceiling was only a few feet above it now. The left arm shot straight up, driving the pincers directly into the rock, which cracked. The right arm followed; then both arms struck again and again, causing dirt and shattered stones to rain down. A beam of sunlight shot through the cavern’s ceiling, illuminating the giant’s gleaming arms.
When the opening was large enough, Fuhr shouted, “For the Clockwork Guild!” The giant grabbed onto something outside with its claws and began a slow, deliberate climb out of the cavern and into the streets of London.
31
A Stroll Through London Town
Modo and Octavia watched as the giant pulled its iron foot through the hole and disappeared. It was as if the thing had never existed; as though they’d imagined it all. Octavia put her hand to her mouth. “I … I never dreamed I’d ever see anything …” She tightened her grip on his shoulder. “We must stop it, of course, but I haven’t the faintest…”
“We could go back down the tunnel the way we’ve come and take a cab to …” He paused. His mind wasn’t working properly. It would take far too long to travel that far. “Never mind.”
She pointed at the hole in the roof of the cavern. “That’s the quickest way out.”
Modo nodded. “It’ll take some doing.”
Scaffolding, at least six stories high, stood somewhat shakily below the opening. They’d have to risk their necks, but the top of the scaffolding looked close enough for them to leap up and grab the lip of the hole.
Modo heard a pop and ducked, pulling Octavia down with him. They peeked through the door again, in time to see Gibbons holding up a fizzing champagne bottle and splashing its contents into glasses. Several of the men in greatcoats and Hakkandottir clinked glasses.
“Let’s leave them to their celebration,” Octavia said.
They stole out of the train car, edging along the wall to the corner of the scaffolding, and began climbing. Modo was impressed that Octavia was able to match his speed. Soon they were clinging to the thin metal bars three-quarters of the way up.
He kept an eye on the people below. Hyde was still staring at the open hole contentedly. Hakkandottir shouted orders while her men set dynamite among the machines used to create the giant.
Then, as though she had felt his eyes on her, she looked up directly at Modo and shouted. Two men fired pistols, bullets zinged off the wall behind Modo and Octavia.
“Faster!” Octavia hissed. “Climb!” They scrambled higher and higher. They hoped the coal smoke and steam hanging in the air would help to hide them.
The guns had stopped firing and Modo paused to see why. Octavia kept climbing. He could just make out Hakkandottir and Hyde, walking toward the train car. She put her metal hand on Hyde’s shoulder. The possibility that she was being affectionate toward him made Modo feel sick.
It occurred to him that they could set dynamite under the scaffolding’s supports. Just then, he felt the scaffolding shaking. He looked down. A shape lunged out of the mist below.
“You won’t tell anyone about this,” Gibbons said, using his powerful new arm to launch himself the last few yards and latch onto Modo’s ankle. His metal fingers squeezed so hard that Modo let out a yell.
“Traitor!” Modo shouted, trying to shake him off.
“Just a matter of shifting perspectives!” Gibbons spat out. His eyes blazed behind his fogged glasses. He pulled so hard that Modo nearly lost his grip. They were both going to fall.
“Kick him in the head,” Octavia yelled from above.
Modo feinted a kick at Gibbons’s head, then stomped on the man’s good hand. Gibbons let go of the scaffolding, but kept a tight hold on Modo, clutching both his legs.
Modo remembered Mr. Socrates’ pocket belt, and drew the first thing he could put his fingers on. He pointed it at Gibbons, realizing too late that it was the fountain pen.
Gibbons paused to look at it and was just about to laugh when Modo pressed the button and black ink shot out, staining Gibbons’s face. His skin began to sizzle. He screamed, clutching his eyes as he fell to the ground.
Modo, frightened of what was still dripping from the pen, dropped it and climbed up to Octavia.
“Next time, kick him in the head,” she said. At the top of the scaffolding, Modo was heartened by the early evening sunlight.
“Stand still!” Octavia grabbed his shoulders. “I’ll use you as a ladder.” He put out his hand and supported her weight, his legs shaking, the wood slats creaking on the scaffold. She stepped directly on his shoulders, then leapt onto the stone ledge above them.
Modo jumped up and grabbed the ledge, while Octavia knelt and took his other dirty, gloved hand. She heaved and pulled until his chest hung over the lip of the hole. Kicking and squirming, he wriggled the rest of the way onto the ground, and when he’d finally caught his breath, he stood up.
St. James’s Square! He’d spent hours perched atop the London Library, looking down at the peaceful garden. Now, the statue of William III on his horse had been swatted aside; the iron fence surrounding it had been flattened. A woman with a baby stroller was still cowering with fear behind a bench. Water streamed in an arc where the giant had broken a fountain in two. A tree, its roots covered in dirt, lay tossed across a bench. On the southern edge of the road a hansom cab had been overturned. One horse was still standing, the other on its side, kicking. A man’s legs stuck out from under the cab.
“We must keep moving,” Octavia said, hiking up the front of her skirts and tucking them into her sash. The pantaloons looked more like britches. “I’ll be faster now.”
“We can’t go yet,” Modo said. He darted over to the hansom cab, Octavia at his heels. Another man joined him; they grabbed the axle and lifted. Modo grunted, straining every muscle, raising the cab an inch, then another. People stopped to watch. “Pull,” he barked. “Pull the driver out!”
Octavia dragged the driver to safety. His shins were bent back at an awkward angle and he groaned, “Me gams! Me gams!” Modo dropped the cab, only realizing then that it was a bobby who had helped him with the lifting.
“What strength! Good work!” The police constable tipped his canvas hat back. He looked Modo up and down. “Why are you wearing a mask?”
“A boiler accident.”
“You’ve been beaten all to pieces. You came out of that hole. What’s happening down there?”
Octavia grabbed Modo’s hand. “I’m sorry, sir, but I must get my brother to the hospital.”
As they ran across the square they heard him shout, “Halt! I want to speak with you!” They sped straight out the south end of the square and caree
red onto Pall Mall, passing the Travellers’ Club and Norfolk House. It was easy to tell where the giant had been: Wagons were overturned and people stared in horror in the same direction it had gone. Modo and Octavia dodged through the clusters of people, skirting halted omnibuses. Two men with sandwich boards displaying Patent Boot Black shrank back against the door to Queen’s Theatre.
“Where’s he steering that thing?” Octavia huffed as they ran.
“The shipyard?” Modo could picture the giant poking holes in the sides of ships. But if the Guild wanted to sink ships, dynamite would have been a much simpler weapon.
Partway down Pall Mall another statue lay shattered. Soon, Modo saw the giant slouching toward Trafalgar Square, coaches and carts scattering before it. With one arm the giant pushed over an omnibus, the horses neighing and breaking out of their harnesses, the passengers inside screaming, the ones topside leaping to the ground. The giant plowed through the busy square, stepping past a bronze lion and smacking a claw against Nelson’s Column, chipping the granite. Modo expected the statue of Nelson to tumble to the ground, but it stood firm. The giant stepped into a fountain and out again, turning as though it had just made up its mind to go visit the National Gallery, then staggered in the opposite direction. Fuhr’s lost! Modo thought. It began to move clumsily down Charing Cross Road, the paving stones shattering like glass under its metal feet.
Modo and Octavia ran as fast as they could, but the giant was picking up speed. Its gait was no longer so lopsided. Fuhr was gaining confidence in its operation.
“The Parliament Buildings!” Octavia exclaimed.
“Of course,” Modo replied. If only he could climb to the rooftops, he’d move so much faster, but he could never abandon Octavia. He pushed past a stunned gentleman leaning on an umbrella and squeezed between two barristers in white wigs. He briefly lost sight of the giant, then the crowds grew more sparse and he and Octavia were able to run again.
Approaching the Parliament grounds they heard gunfire as the monstrous machine lumbered across the green lawn toward the Parliament buildings. The four guards fired away, gun muzzles flashing. Modo thought, No! Don’t hit the children!
He and Octavia ran across the yard just as the machine took two quick strides and swatted away the guards.
Fuhr yanked on a lever and the giant’s iron claw smashed the second-story windows of Parliament. Another lever made the giant kick down a door. Orderlies streamed out like ants.
“How do we stop it?” Octavia shouted.
How? Modo still couldn’t believe that something so horrendous existed.
There was a clattering behind them, and they turned to see a black carriage bounce off the road and onto the grass; the snorting horses stopped just before trampling Modo. He backed away and stood next to Octavia. The driver was a soldier in an unfamiliar black uniform, a rifle in a holster beside him. He jumped down, straightened his jacket, and opened the door to the carriage.
Holding a top hat, out stepped Mr. Socrates.
32
Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant
“Ah, you are alive. Good,” Mr. Socrates said, putting on his top hat. “A few of my other agents weren’t so lucky.” His left eye was bruised, and despite his jaunty manner, he looked tired and somehow older. His suit needed pressing. Tharpa stood behind him. A neatly stitched slash now embellished his jawline.
“So, Modo, what exactly is the contraption?” Mr. Socrates asked.
Modo wanted to grab Mr. Socrates and hug him. But he had enough control not to blurt out his joy. “Mr. Socrates—your eye. What—”
“It’s none of your concern, Modo,” he snapped. “I asked you a question.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered, forcing himself to concentrate. “We saw it being built in a chamber below Saint James’s Square. The missing orphans power it somehow. Fuhr is in control of it.”
Mr. Socrates watched calmly as the giant smashed its claw into the windows of Westminster Hall and dragged out a hapless occupant.
“Impressive,” he said. “The Guild engineered this right under our noses. I’d thought the young men who attacked their parents were the real threat, but no, they were merely a decoy, throwing us off the track of the larger plan. This machine is … well … beyond all imagination.”
“Prince Albert is part of the machine,” Octavia said.
“He is?” Mr. Socrates reached into his greatcoat, took out a small telescope, and looked through it. “I see. That complicates things. And Miss Hakkandottir?”
“Underground,” Octavia said. “She said they’ll sink the machine in the Thames when they’re done.”
“That’s not good news.”
“Not good news?” Octavia said. “That’s a bloody understatement!”
“Watch your tongue, Miss Milkweed,” Mr. Socrates said. “Even in times of crisis it’s important you maintain your composure.”
“My composure is fine, thank you very much, considering what has been done to so many orphans!”
Modo became distracted from their quarrel by a niggling thought. There was something about the giant he just couldn’t put his finger on. It was made of tons of iron, sheet metal, gears. Even with so many children built into the body of the machine, it was impossible that they could bear the weight of all of that and keep the giant standing upright for so long. Something else was at play. But what?
A team of muscular brown horses pulled a large, steel-plated carriage across the Old Palace Yard. It stopped at Mr. Socrates’ signal. “I received a telegram informing me there was an event down here. I brought reinforcements.” The doors opened and soldiers in black uniforms climbed out, carrying rifles. Three unhooked a small field gun from the back of the carriage.
“In a few minutes our problems will be solved,” Mr. Socrates said.
“But what about the children?” Octavia asked, incredulously.
A flash of concern crossed Mr. Socrates’ face. “We will do our best to prevent unecessary deaths. It is all we can do.” He turned toward an officer. “When you have your weapon set up, fire. Begin by aiming at its head, at the man who’s controlling the machine. Do what you can to avoid the children, and most especially the young man at the center of the giant. You won’t want to kill Prince Albert.”
The officer went pale. “Prince Albert, sir?”
“Good, you were listening. So aim well.”
The officer saluted and marched back to his men.
“There must be a better way,” Modo said. What if Oppie was struck by a shell? “You can’t fire at it.”
“People are dying as we speak,” Mr. Socrates said. “Important people. You have to make hard choices in this business. We can only do our best.”
At that moment, the field gun’s boom nearly deafened Modo. The shell struck the metal shield behind Fuhr and exploded, clouding the shoulders of the giant with smoke.
“Excellent shot!” Mr. Socrates shouted, but when the smoke cleared, they could see that Fuhr was unharmed. As though the shell had been little more than a pesky fly, he continued to bash at another part of the building.
“We’ll have to try another approach,” Mr. Socrates said.
Modo continued to wrestle with the notion that the machine worked at all. He felt in his coat pocket and pulled out the torn piece of paper that had Hyde’s notations. He skimmed it and two lines jumped out at him.
harnesses the inner potency! This is the discovery! if this energy can be directed through a filament to gyro
There were filaments all along the giant, glowing with light, so some kind of energy was lighting them. Not electricity. The source had to be on the giant. The filaments were attached to the children. Gyroscopes were spinning, proving that there was an energy source. Harnesses the inner potency!
“Could it be,” said Modo, “that Dr. Hyde has discovered an energy inside the children that powers the giant?” He held the paper up to Mr. Socrates. “We found a portion of Dr. Hyde’s notes in their experimental chamber.”
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Mr. Socrates took the scrap, sniffed at the scent of sewer that still clung to it, then examined it. “This is unreadable. I can’t make a decision based on a fragment of illegible handwriting and a guess.”
“But sir, I’m certain that I’m correct.”
“Even if you were, Modo, what difference could it make now?” He turned away. “Men! Load! Aim for the legs!”
“Nooo!” Modo pulled on Mr. Socrates’ arm, and for an angry moment, he felt as though he were that child in Ravenscroft again.
Mr. Socrates jerked his arm out of Modo’s grip. “You’ve done your part. We’ll handle everything from here.”
Modo took a step back, dejected. He watched all the children moving as one. He thought of Oppie and how the boy had delivered him his food, taken care of him. There were a hundred Oppies in there. They didn’t deserve this. There had to be a better way.
He studied Mr. Socrates as he marched about, giving more orders. He doesn’t see the children, Modo thought. Doesn’t know them or their lives. He was never poor. Modo couldn’t control himself anymore, he began running with his telltale lope toward the giant.
“Hold fire!” Mr. Socrates shouted. “Modo, I order you to return!”
“Modo!” Octavia cried.
Her voice made him falter, but Modo charged on. He stormed across the grass, past the statue of Richard the Lionhearted.
The giant had its back to him and Fuhr was busy driving it toward another pillar, which he smashed. More people were flushed out of the building, while others looked out the windows, unaware of the danger.
The children were still silent, pushing and pulling with their legs and spines, faces set in angry determination. The filaments running from their shoulder bolts glowed throughout the machine, sparks shooting. Their life energy, Modo was certain of it now.
Modo leapt at the metal ankle of the machine and latched onto it. The moment he touched the steel, the hair on his arms stood on end as though an electrical charge were going through him. He found himself face to face with a girl, her eyes wide and her features deformed by the tincture. The bolts in her shoulders held her tight inside the frame. Filaments had been attached to each shoulder bolt. One glowed bright red and the girl bent her legs at the same time as all the children in her row. As they lifted their legs, so too did the giant. “I’ll help you,” Modo cried.
