The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  “Not necessary,” she said with a small smile. “Good night.”

  Gavin checked his own clothes-they were drying nicely near the stove-and rolled himself up in a spare blanket from the wardrobe. There was only one, and he decided Barton would just have to suffer, though the laudanum would probably give him a better night’s sleep than Gavin would get. The stone floor was hard and chilly, but eventually he fell asleep.

  Sometime later, a sound jerked him awake. He tensed, though his training kept him from leaping to his feet.

  The moon slanted through the narrow windows, providing just enough light for Gavin to make out Alice moving about in her baggy shirt and trousers. Barton snored on in his drug-induced slumber. Gavin watched through slitted eyes as she wedged a bit of wood underneath the door to keep it from swinging shut. Then she picked up the first of her husband’s little machines and carried it outside. A moment later, she returned for the second and the third. Once Alice had left the final time, Gavin counted to thirty and stole to the door, where he peered outside into the bright moonlight.

  Alice had moved the machines some distance from the tower. As he watched, she flipped the machines over and, with a tool from her pocket, popped each one open and yanked various parts out of them. Before Gavin could make out what they were, she took the parts down to the river and threw them in with a splash. Tree, still asleep in the water, didn’t move.

  Several things clicked at once in Gavin’s head. Alice hadn’t cared so much about getting the machines back as she had about making sure no one saw what the machines were for, either because their function was illegal or socially unacceptable. She had been especially frantic because Patrick Barton knew her, and he might babble about the machines’ origins to someone else, or worse, improve their design and show them off. Furthermore, Alice had said the machines actually belonged to her fiance and he would be upset if they were lost. Gavin now took that to mean Mr. Williamson would be upset if their secret got out. The robbery had revealed the existence of the machines to several people-Gavin, Simon, Barton, and anyone who read the report that Gavin would eventually write-so Alice had apparently decided to destroy the illegal or unacceptable parts, leaving “clean” machines behind. She could even blame the damage on Barton.

  So, what were the machines for? The obvious answers-theft, smuggling-didn’t bother Gavin so much as the idea that Alice was being forced to cover up for her soon-to-be husband. What kind of man engaged in illegal activity and then dragged his fiancee into it? He clenched a fist.

  Alice hurried back toward the tower, and Gavin rushed back to his place near the stove. He feigned sleep as Alice crept back into bed. After some time, her breathing deepened and steadied, while sleep eluded Gavin entirely. Finally, he got up and slipped over to the table, where the roses still lay scattered across the wood. With a glance at Alice, he picked up the rose closest to his chair, kissed it once, and crept over to the bed to lay it gently beside her pillow. She inhaled deeply, and he froze, but she only smiled in slumber. Gavin returned to his hard stone floor and lay awake for a long, long time.

  Chapter Twelve

  Alice awoke with a groan. Her muscles screamed when she rolled over to sit up on the lumpy camp bed, and she prayed she would never go through anything like yesterday again.

  No, that was a lie. Yesterday had been the greatest thrill she’d had since. . well, since she had rescued Gavin from Aunt Edwina’s tower. She stretched and grimaced at the soreness. It felt strange to be wearing trousers. By all rights, she should be embarrassed wearing them in front of Gavin, but it didn’t bother her. Perhaps it was because Gavin didn’t care about rules.

  The fire in the stove had died out, and Gavin lay before it, wrapped in his blanket. Morning sunshine sliced through the narrow arrow slits and cut strips across the stones near him. His white-blond hair, tousled with sleep, seemed to glow pale in the soft light. She swallowed. Yesterday, when he strode into the ruined shop dressed in black leathers, her heart had nearly stopped. Every moment they had shared came rushing back. His beautiful playing. His hypnotic singing. His bright smile. His optimistic, we-can-do-it attitude. The months fell away, and she was standing next to him while he played the devil’s own music to destroy the traps in Aunt Edwina’s house. He grinned with undisguised joy in the Third Ward’s little airship. He sang to her in Dr. Clef’s laboratory and touched her soul.

  That day had been the most dreadful in her life. The Third Ward, with its fascinating inventions, its daring female agents, its promise of adventure, called to her. It wanted her, would accept her. The Ward didn’t care that she was a woman or a lady. She could explore the world, dissect dozens of gadgets, and the Ward would pay her for it.

  All of which had made it hard to turn Phipps down. Even the Ward’s stunning salary wouldn’t come close to clearing Father’s debts. But that wasn’t the main reason. The main reason, the one she had refused to think about despite Louisa’s prodding, lay asleep in front of her. Gavin. She was already half in love with him, and worse, she was sure he knew it. Alice simply didn’t think she had the willpower to stay faithful to Norbert if she worked in close proximity to Gavin. Consequently, when Phipps had offered her a position with the Third Ward, she had forced herself to refuse.

  Alice creaked to her feet and found a tattered rose on the floor. Her feet carried her over the floor to the stove. Patrick Barton snored in drugged sleep a few feet away from Gavin. Her heart beat quickly at the sight of him. Gavin had grown in the past few months. His shoulders had broadened, and his movements had become more confident. He had always been handsome, but now he was breathtaking. His black leathers contrasted sharply with his pale eyes and hair, his features had sharpened, and he showed a strength she hadn’t noticed before. Last night, she hadn’t been able to resist asking him to sing for her. The lullaby’s beauty nearly made her weep, and when he closed his eyes, her treacherous hands flipped one of the roses to the table in front of him. She had half hoped he would confront her about it, but he’d kept quiet.

  What would it be like to touch him? He wouldn’t know-he was asleep. Even as the thought formed, that same treacherous hand reached down to caress his cheek. She could almost feel its raspy warmth beneath her fingers.

  She snatched her hand back. That was quite enough. Alice set her mouth and turned to check on Barton. He was still unconscious. She didn’t want him to wake, but she didn’t know anything about dosing a man with laudanum, either, so she decided to let him be and get breakfast.

  At the last moment, Alice stole back to the bed and slipped the battered rose into her pocket.

  The sounds she made rattling through the tins woke Gavin with a start. He came to his feet before he fully woke, apparently ready to fight.

  “Good morning,” Alice called over a tin of pears. “I hope you like fruit.”

  Breakfast had nothing to do with hot chocolate. There was neither sausage nor newspaper. But a madman slumbered on the floor. When he showed signs of stirring, Gavin forced more laudanum down his throat.

  “Won’t that hurt him?” Alice asked.

  “It might eventually,” Gavin admitted, “but we have to keep him quiet until I can get him back to headquarters. Simon and I kept L’Arbre Magnifique asleep for almost a week, and he was fine.”

  “He’s a clockworker. How would you know?”

  After breakfast, Gavin changed back into his own clothes, which had dried overnight, and went outside to examine his backpack. He fiddled with the switches and gave the crank a few turns. No response.

  “I think it died,” he said. “I was hoping to radio London before we left, but-”

  “I can have a look.” Although she could now afford another set, Alice still kept the portable tools from Aunt Edwina in her handbag. She had used them last night to disassemble Norbert’s machines and throw the incriminating parts into the river.

  The backpack came apart in short order, and Alice peered inside with delight. It was refreshing to examine something that was
n’t designed for. . that had another purpose than the one she had become accustomed to. Almost instantly she saw the trouble. Water had shorted out several connections and circuits.

  “How can you repair that?” Gavin said.

  “Easily, Mr. Enn-Gavin.” She gestured at the mechanical. “Mr. Barton stole a large number of spare parts. Why don’t you check on Tree while I handle this?”

  Tree, it turned out, had almost entirely recovered overnight. Gavin was even able to refasten the brass pieces that Barton’s barrage had knocked loose yesterday.

  Alice, meanwhile, finished her own repairs and switched the backpack’s wireless on. Feedback whined and screeched.

  “You did it!” Gavin said. “You’re fantastic!”

  “Thank you,” Alice replied, glowing at the praise even as she realized she shouldn’t. “Can you raise London?”

  Gavin tried, and got nothing but static. “We’re out of range. We can try again when we get closer.”

  “Speaking of which,” Alice put in, “how are we going to handle the travel and explanations?”

  Gavin looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Gavin,” she said gently, “as a traditional woman, I can drive about London with a man who isn’t my husband or father as long as we’re in public. But I can’t go away overnight with him. Even an Ad Hoc lady couldn’t do that. I’m not even coming back in my own clothes.”

  “Oh. Right. It’s always something stupid.” He scratched his cheek, which was growing raspy. “Look, I don’t think anyone saw you leave London with me. Tree scared away the crowd outside the shop, and you can’t really see who’s riding him. And if we give you Barton’s hat for the ride back, you’ll look like a boy. If anyone does know you left town overnight, we’ll tell him Barton captured you. I, an agent of the Crown, rescued you in a daring raid at dawn, and now I’m seeing you home. Your dress was badly torn in the rescue, so you bravely donned a spare set of man’s clothing. How’s that?”

  “Why am I the one who gets captured?”

  “You’re the traditional lady.”

  Alice let that pass. “And what do we tell my fiance? He certainly knows I was gone.”

  “Tell him whatever you want. If you trust him,” Gavin said, his tone carefully neutral, “tell the truth. If you don’t, give him the lie. Simon and Lieutenant Phipps will back you up.”

  Alice thought about that. On the one hand, she had rushed off only to ensure Norbert’s filthy machines remained a secret, so he had little right to be angry. On the other hand, she had spent the night in a tower with another man, begged him to sing for her, and more or less handed him a rose, which would give any fiance the right to be upset. Perhaps there was a third option-if no one but Gavin and the Third Ward knew the truth, Alice could give Norbert an edited version of what had happened, a version that left Gavin out of it. She had tracked Barton to his lair, cracked him over the head, disguised herself with his clothes, and brought him back to the authorities in his own mechanical. That might work.

  Spinning lies and donning disguises felt suddenly stupid and frustrating. Gavin was a good friend, and nothing more, but the rules of traditional society made it clear that men and women could only be lovers, especially if they went away overnight together. For a moment, she considered casting it all aside. So what if someone recognized her and gossiped? What was the worst that could happen?

  Norbert might become angry. Some of the people he did business with might lose respect for him and take their business elsewhere. Her children, when she had them, could end up with the social stigma of an unfaithful mother. A heavy sigh escaped her.

  “I think your solution will do,” she said. “I’ll drive the mechanical. You take Barton in Tree, though we’ll have to find his hat first.”

  The trip back to London went quickly, and Alice thoroughly enjoyed driving the mechanical. The metal shell gave her a sense of height, strength, and power quite new to her. Earth thudded beneath the mechanical’s feet, and the landscape sped by or slowed at her command. She had become a giant, a great warrior from mythology. The damp English air rushed over her, teased at her hair, pulled at her clothes. The feeling of speed and freedom exhilarated her in ways she had never thought possible. No one could stop her or stand in her way. Beside her, Gavin was just visible through Tree’s branches with Barton chained nearby, and Alice couldn’t decide which was stranger-driving a great mechanical beast or walking beside an ambulatory tree.

  “Race?” she called.

  “First one to the crossroads wins!” Gavin yelled, and Tree said, “WINDY.” They thundered up a hill and down the other side, frightening a herd of cattle on the other side of a hedgerow. Alice shouted like a little girl and ran. She was one with the mechanical now. Its legs were her legs; its arms her arms. Power thrummed through her, and she ran and ran and ran. Beside her, Tree rustled and thumped, scattering leaves and bits of bark. Gavin lost his hat. They reached the crossroads at exactly the same moment and came to a stop.

  “A tie!” Alice shouted. “Well-done!”

  “It was!” Gavin called back. Then he jumped and abruptly twisted in his seat so he could turn the crank on the backpack. The backpack squealed, spat static, and spoke, though Alice couldn’t make out the words.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “That was Lieutenant Phipps. Simon and Glenda weren’t able to capture the clockworker they went after yesterday.”

  Alice started. She had forgotten all about the grinning clockworker’s reappearance. “And?”

  “He vanished, but now he’s resurfaced with more plague zombies in the City. We might be able to catch up with him if we cut over to City Road. We’ll pass right by St. Luke’s Hospital and into the center of London.”

  “Isn’t the Third Ward already there?”

  “Two bombs exploded not far from headquarters. No one was hurt, but they dropped rubble across streets and clogged traffic in a dozen directions. And the dirigibles are out of the country. Our people can’t get to the location. The clockwork must have planned it that way.”

  “What is he doing?”

  Gavin said, “He’s trying to storm the Bank of England.”

  They left the little road, stepping over hedges and ancient stone walls. The earlier exhilaration that came with the speed left Alice, replaced with a grim urgency. Not only had the grinning clockworker returned; he was endangering lives. By forcing a group of plague zombies into a crowded, daylight street, he was potentially infecting dozens, even hundreds of people with the clockwork plague. Every thought of propriety left Alice’s head. She didn’t care what happened to her or her reputation-no other families would suffer from the clockwork plague as hers had; not if she could stop it.

  They reached the wider, cobblestoned City Road. Horse, carriage, and foot traffic moved along its length, but they wove around or through it all, leaving startled horses in their wake. Drovers shouted and shook their fists, but Alice didn’t respond. When they reached London proper, the City Road became brick, and Alice heard the screams. Gavin did, too, and they steered their respective mounts toward the sound. City Road became Moorgate and Prince’s Street, with their staid, respectable buildings. Alice and Gavin angled east, and chaos greeted them. People milled everywhere. Half of them were trying to get away, and half were trying to get a better view of the happenings. Panicky horses pulled carriages and wagons into a hopeless snarl. Glass from shattered windows crunched under hundreds of feet, and a broken gaslight had erupted into yellow flame. Over it all, Alice heard eerie music. Memories from a year ago sent a chill down her spine. For a moment, she was wearing The Dress and facing a horde of zombies at three in the morning.

  People scattered when they saw Tree and the mechanical, though it was still tricky to maneuver around the snarled vehicles. Ahead of them, Prince’s Street met Threadneedle and four others at odd angles to make an intersection the size of a marching field. Looming over it was the Bank of England, a white structure begrimed with decades o
f coal smoke. The building covered multiple acres and was built around an irregular network of courtyards, ramps, staircases, and pillared halls. At the moment, it was being attacked by a crowd of zombies. Alice stared. Gold bouillon, no doubt what the clockworker was after, lay buried in vaults deep underground. The zombies, nearly a hundred in all, were attacking what amounted to a tiny corner of the bank, and they had no hope of getting to anything worthwhile, but that didn’t seem to stop them. Zombies created a sea of bodies three and four deep around one small part of the building. They flung themselves at the heavily barred, arched doors, attacking with stones pried up from the street or with their bare fists. A bell on the bank roof rang and rang in a call for help, but Alice knew the police wouldn’t want to get involved directly-they stood the same risk of infection as anyone else. Fear twisted in her own chest at the thought of a zombie’s touch, but she remained determined to help.

  In the center of the zombie crowd stood the grinning clockworker. His brown coat nearly reached the ground, and his ragged top hat, out of place so early in the day, poked up like a smokestack. The white mask covered the upper half of his face, and his lower face kept that impossibly wide grin. He was playing the strange instrument Alice remembered from their first encounter. Clearly he had repaired it, and perhaps had even made some improvements. It still looked like a bagpipe with strange little machines attached to it, though the clockworker didn’t blow into it. The dreadful music poured ceaselessly from the instrument, and it seemed to be driving the zombies into a frenzy. The sickly men, women, and children, gaunt and ragged, pounded at the building, moaning and crying with inhuman ferocity.

  Tree and the mechanical worked their way to the intersection. A trio of policemen waved their arms, trying in vain to restore order, and a fourth officer on horseback wrestled with his mount to keep it under control, though none of the officers approached the zombies or the clockworker. People screamed and pointed or simply fled. A carthorse lay on its side, its eye fixed upward in death. Gavin halted Tree within running distance of the bank, opened a cupboard door concealed by Tree’s bark, and extracted a violin case.