The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  Alice came over to investigate. “What is it?”

  The cat swiped at the automaton with metal claws.

  “What’s that on its side?” Gavin said. “Looks like writing.”

  They both leaned in. Inscribed on the torso in graceful script were the words Love, Aunt Edwina. Alice went pale.

  “What is it?” Gavin asked, afraid she was going to faint.

  “She wrote that on every one of the automatons she sent me. And look-there’s a diagram on the inside of his front panel.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Aunt Edwina meant me to find him. She assumed that her attackers wouldn’t notice him or wouldn’t know how he goes together. Clearly Aunt Edwina wanted me to assemble him so he could tell me more.”

  “This is the same woman,” Gavin reminded her, “who imprisoned me in a tower and set deadly traps.”

  “Yes,” Alice said. She picked up a wrench from a scattering of tools on the floor. “And I’m assuming she had reasons for all of that. The traps, for example, may have been set to keep out whoever destroyed this place.”

  “They didn’t work.”

  “Not everything goes as planned, Mr. Ennock. Hand me that spanner, would you?”

  He did. “Let’s work out what happened so far, then. First, your aunt comes down with the clockwork plague, but instead of dying, she becomes a clockworker.”

  “And she lives as a clockworker longer than any clockworker I’ve ever heard of.” Alice examined a gear, discarded it, picked up another.

  “She vanishes-or seems to,” Gavin went on. “Which triggers a provision in her will that leaves you her estate. Does that make you a wealthy woman?”

  “No.” Alice opened the back of the automaton’s head and peered inside. “The memory wheels seem to be intact. That’s helpful. The house isn’t inhabitable, as you can see, and it will take months, perhaps years, to sell the land. And since I’m not technically nobility yet, I will have to pay exorbitant taxes on the sale. Now that I think about it, I may have to pay taxes on it now.”

  “You’re not technically nobility? What does that mean?”

  “My father is a baron, but I won’t be a baroness until I inherit his title. And before you interrupt with the question you Americans always seem to ask, Mr. Ennock, there are no men in my family to inherit the title. In such a case, the daughter inherits. But until that happens, I’m not nobility, and I must pay taxes.”

  Gavin stared. Alice was the daughter of a baron? “Incredible,” he whispered.

  “What all of this means,” Alice continued, “is that I may have to pay an enormous inheritance tax on this estate, and Aunt Edwina’s solicitor was extremely lax in failing to mention it.”

  “Uh, sorry I brought it up,” Gavin said, still impressed. “Anyway, your aunt disappears, leaving you an estate full of traps. Which brings us to the first question-why would she leave you a house that tried to kill you?”

  “I said before that I don’t think she was trying to kill me,” Alice said. “I think she was trying to keep someone else out. It worked, but only for a while-someone got down here. The traps didn’t keep me out, either, but they weren’t intended to. Aunt Edwina knew I would outsmart them.”

  “She must have a lot of confidence in you,” Gavin said.

  “Presumably.”

  “In the meantime, she also had me kidnapped and put in that tower. Why?”

  Alice unwound a coil of copper wire and snipped off a length. “I think she wanted me to let you out so you could help defeat the traps and help me take the house. It’s certainly what happened.”

  “But why?”

  “That I don’t know. Clockworkers do go mad. Now, where did I put that piston lubricant?”

  Gavin watched her work, her movements confident and quick. She looked a little older than he was-somewhere in her early twenties-and he wanted to ask her exact age, but that would have been really rude, and he didn’t want to offend her. Hell, more than anything he wanted to impress her, but what would impress this woman?

  “Uh… Miss Michaels?”

  Alice had stuck her head into the automaton’s chest cavity. She withdrew and blinked at him. A bit of grease smudged her cheek. “Yes?”

  “Er…” His entire face felt hot, and he realized he was blushing. Cursing himself for an idiot, he plunged ahead anyway. “Would you like some music while you work?”

  She blinked at him again, and he looked away, scuffing the stone floor with one foot. What kind of fool would-

  “I would love some music, Mr. Ennock. Do you know any Mozart? I find his music focuses my mind on mathematics.”

  “Uh.. ”

  “Something from The Marriage of Figaro, perhaps.” She hummed a few bars of a familiar tune.

  “Oh, yeah-I know those songs. I didn’t know Mozart was the composer.” He set bow to strings and played. Despite the pain in his fingers, every note came out sweet and quick, like flavored ice on a summer day. Maybe it was the time he had spent in the tower with nothing to do but practice, but his playing seemed to have improved lately. He didn’t think he could have played that hellish song the automatons had laid out before he’d been captured.

  Alice went back to work, and she seemed to be going even more quickly now. Gavin slipped from one song to the next, always keeping with Mozart, the famous clockworker composer, while Click watched. Their work melded, music and science melting together with every twist of Alice’s wrenches and every slide of Gavin’s bow. In what felt like very little time, Alice was tightening a final bolt on the automaton’s chest plate. She straightened, and Gavin heard her back pop even over “Open Your Eyes.” He stopped playing.

  “Finished,” Alice said unnecessarily. “His Babbage engine is fully functional; his power sources are wound and charged. And your playing helped, Mr. Ennock. Really, you should play professionally.”

  He thought about his time in Hyde Park. “I guess I have, in a way.” Then he realized she was praising him and that he had just possibly impressed her, and that made him flush again.

  “Now we just switch him on.” Alice inserted a tool into the automaton’s left ear and twisted. The automaton twitched. Its eyes flickered, went out, then glowed steadily. Gavin felt an insane desire to shout, “Live!”

  The automaton turned its head with a creak, apparently taking in its surroundings. It looked at Alice and said in a quiet, reedy voice, “Good evening, miss. My name is Kemp. What service do you require?”

  “It works!” Gavin exclaimed.

  “Of course it works,” Alice said. “Hello, Kemp. Do you know where you are?”

  “I appear to be in Madam’s laboratory. And it is a frightful mess.”

  “What is your function in this house?” Alice asked.

  “I am Madam’s valet.”

  “Isn’t a valet a manservant?”

  “Madam has her own ideas about the way the world should run, miss. Might I ask who you are?”

  “My name is Alice Michaels, daughter of Arthur, Baron Michaels. I am your mistress’s niece.”

  “I see,” Kemp said. “There is extensive information about you in my memory wheels. But why are you here? Where is Madam?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember, Kemp?”Alice asked.

  Kemp’s eyes flickered. “Madam called me down to the laboratory. She ordered me to remain still. Then you were standing before me.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “What is the date, miss?”

  “May twenty-fourth,” she said, then added, “1857.”

  Kemp’s eyes flickered again. “Oh my. I have been inactive for more than a year!”

  “I’m sorry, Kemp,” Alice said. “Aunt Edwina vanished sometime ago. She left me this house and its contents in her will. This is Gavin Ennock. Did Aunt Edwina say anything about him before she deactivated you?”

  “Code forty-seven delta,” Kemp said. “Code forty-seven delta. Active. Active.”

  “What?” Gavin said.


  Kemp swiveled his head left and right several times, then refocused on Alice. “According to the terms of Madam Edwina’s last will and testament and code forty-seven delta, everything in the house belongs to you, which means I am now your valet, Madam.”

  “Oh!” Alice put a hand to her mouth. “Well. I suppose you are.”

  “Love, Aunt Edwina,” Gavin put in.

  “Tell me, then,” Alice said, “did Aunt Edwina say anything about capturing Mr. Ennock here or about her upcoming disappearance?”

  “That information is not in my memory wheels, Madam. I am sorry.”

  “Do you know who might have broken in here and destroyed the laboratory?”

  “That information is not in my memory wheels, Madam. I am sorry. Would Madam care for something to eat or drink?”

  Gavin’s stomach growled at that moment. “I would. What time is it?”

  “After three in the morning,” Alice said, checking a watch in her handbag. “Good heavens, no wonder I’m so hungry. I didn’t even have supper.”

  “Madam!” Kemp said. “You mustn’t neglect yourself so. I will return in moments.”

  “I don’t know what you’ll find in the kitchen after a year, Kemp,” Alice said doubtfully as Kemp headed toward the stairs with stiff steps.

  “Tins keep.” Kemp put his foot on the bottom step. “I regret that it won’t be the best meal, but I daresay it will-code one seventeen omega. Code one seventeen omega.”

  “What was that one for?” Gavin demanded.

  “Sixty seconds,” boomed Edwina’s voice. “Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.”

  “Oh dear,” Kemp said. “My attempt to leave the laboratory appears to have activated a destruction code.”

  Gavin gave Alice a wild look. “I thought the traps in the house were all deactivated.”

  “This one must have been separated from the rest. I don’t know everything.”

  “Madam,” Kemp said, “we must leave immediately.” Before either Gavin or Alice could respond, Kemp flung Alice over his shoulder and skittered up the stairs. Gavin hurried to follow with Click on his heels. At the last moment, he snatched up his fiddle and Alice’s handbag.

  “Put me down, you brass idiot!” Alice shrieked. “I can walk myself.”

  “Forty-one. Forty.” Kemp was moving faster than a mechanical man should have been able. “I cannot obey, Madam. My program is quite clear.”

  “Twenty-two. Twenty-one.”

  They were at the cellar door. The house creaked. Beams groaned like an airship in a gale, and bits of plaster fell to the floor. Terror tightened Gavin’s stomach, and his heart pounded at the back of his throat. It wasn’t enough time to get out. Something snapped with a report louder than a hundred guns, and a section of ceiling crashed to the floor.

  The ground rumbled beneath Gavin’s boots as they reached the front door. Kemp smashed it open with a metal fist. Ears back and all his claws out, Click bolted through the opening, the metal making scrabbling noises on the stones.

  “Twelve seconds. Eleven. Ten.”

  Outdoors, they ran for it, though Kemp refused to pause long enough to put Alice on her feet. She stopped yelling, but her expression said there’d be hell to pay later. Edwina’s voice chased after them like a banshee.

  “Four. Three.”

  Kemp deposited Alice behind a low stone wall. Gavin dived behind it with Click, skinning his palms on dirt and gravel. They huddled there, plastered against hard rock.

  “Zero.”

  Gavin expected an explosion. Instead, there was a strange quiet. It rushed over them in a silent wave. This silence went beyond a simple lack of noise. This silence devoured all other sound and left behind an odd purity, as if Gavin’s soul had been scoured with sand and rinsed clean. Air rushed past him, blasting his hair. Gavin and Alice peeked over the wall just in time to see the manor house crumple inward and compress into a wrinkled mass like a schoolboy’s spitball. In less than a second it sucked into itself and vanished, all without the slightest sound.

  Gavin clapped his hands and snapped his fingers, but heard no sound. He shouted at Alice, felt the tension in his throat, but heard no sound. Her mouth moved, but he heard nothing. She pointed at one ear and shook her head. For a horrible moment, Gavin was afraid he’d gone deaf. Kemp remained impassive. Then a bird called, and another, and another. A damp breeze rustled leaves in nearby trees. Kemp’s joints creaked. Gavin sighed with relief and heard the sound in his own ears. He offered Alice a hand up.

  “What was that?” Gavin asked, never so relieved to hear the sound of his own voice.

  But Alice was staring over the wall at the house, or the space it had occupied. The entire building, including the tower, was gone. In its place, a perfect half sphere had been carved into the ground, revealing layers of earth and stone. Gavin edged up to it and peered over the side. The bottom looked to be four or five stories down. It could have swallowed the Juniper with ease.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  “Indeed, Mr. Ennock,” Alice said. Her face was pale. “I would rather not remain here. One of the locals mentioned a train station. Shall we go look for it?”

  They arrived at the station more than an hour later, grubby, tired, and hungry. Gavin was used to being all three, and the two automatons weren’t bothered by physical needs, but Gavin worried about Alice. Her face grew more and more pale with every passing moment, but she refused both Gavin’s and Kemp’s repeated offers of assistance.

  The train station was brightly lit to ward off plague zombies, and the schedule informed them that the next train to London would arrive in only a few minutes. Gavin and Alice sank gratefully to a bench to wait. It was nearly four in the morning, and a fair number of other people, ones with jobs in the city, were also waiting for the train so they could get to work. Kemp vanished and reappeared with their tickets and four bread rolls.

  “I am sorry breakfast is so poor, Madam,” he said. “It was the best available.”

  Alice handed two of the rolls to Gavin, who wolfed them down without hesitation. “Where did you get the money, Kemp?” she asked.

  “Madam-previous Madam-has an account for tickets. I hope Madam will trust me about the rolls.”

  Alice’s expression said that Madam didn’t, but Gavin touched her wrist, and she said nothing. The train’s arrival ended further conversation.

  Gavin automatically moved toward one of the open-air boxes that made up third class, but Alice called out to him, “Mr. Ennock! Our car is over here!”

  Trying to keep the awe off his face, Gavin followed Alice, Kemp, and Click into the first-class car. No other passengers were in evidence, and the two of them took up plush chairs facing each other across a carpeted floor. Gavin sank into the seat, feeling like a grubby imposter next to Alice’s cool grace.

  The train jerked forward, and a bit later Kemp reappeared with a food seller wheeling a cart. Kemp folded tables down in front of Gavin and Alice, whisked a selection of bread, meat, and fruit from the cart, and set them on the tables while the dark city rushed past the windows. Alice ate immediately, but Gavin just looked down at his plate, his mouth watering at the smells of fresh bread, sausage, and boiled eggs.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Ennock?” Alice asked. “I can’t imagine you’re not hungry.”

  “I’ve got no money,” he said, feeling his face flush.

  “The meal is part of your ticket, sir,” Kemp put in.

  So Gavin ate gratefully. It must be wonderful to be rich and the daughter of a baron. When he finished, he leaned back in the comfortable chair to close his eyes for just a moment, and then Alice was shaking him awake. The sun had just risen outside, and the train was stopped at a station.

  “We’re in the city, Mr. Ennock.”

  “Oh.” He yawned and got to his feet. “Uh… thanks. For rescuing me and for the food, I mean. I suppose I should be going.”

  “Do you have a destination in mind?”

  He shrugged. “Hyde Park, I g
uess. It looks like a fine day for busking.”

  “What if someone tries to kidnap you again?”

  “I have to play somewhere. That and flying are all I know, and no one will let me fly.”

  Alice seemed to be warring with herself. At last, she said, “Come to my house, Mr. Ennock. You could meet my father.”

  Gavin considered refusing. He was a street busker in dirty clothes, not someone who should meet a baron. On the other hand, the baron might reward the young man who had saved his daughter’s life. Besides, the idea of not seeing Alice again caused him a strange amount of pain. Every time he saw her disheveled hair, he wanted to reach out and stroke it back into place. Every time he saw her move, he wanted to follow after her. Every time he heard her voice, he wanted to sing along with it.

  “That would be wonderful,” he said.

  Alice hired a cab, and sometime later, they were pulling up to a shabby-looking row house. Kemp, who had been clinging to the back of the cab, hopped down.

  “Is this Madam’s home?” he asked.

  “It is,” Alice responded with overmuch cheer in her voice and a bit of color in her cheeks. Gavin caught on quickly. Either she’d been lying about the baron thing or they were poor regardless of the title, and Alice was embarrassed. He felt bad for her, but not too bad-it was a mansion compared to his family’s grimy flat in Boston, and a palace compared to the cellar he’d slept in until just lately.

  Remembering his manners at the last moment, Gavin jumped down from the cab and held out a hand to help her out, then stood uncomfortably by while Alice paid the driver.

  “If Madam will give me her key.” Kemp held out a hand for it, then hurried up the short steps to open the front door. Click swiped at Alice’s bedraggled skirts with a plaintive meow, and Alice picked him up. Just as she was bustling toward the short steps to the front door, two men emerged. Kemp stood back to the let them by. Both men were middle-aged and wore simple brown business suits and hats.