The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  “Can you play tritones on that?” she shouted across to him, her voice barely audible over the clockworker’s music and groan of the zombies.

  “Not effectively.” He was already climbing down, leaving the sleeping Barton chained to one of Tree’s branches. “But I have a different idea.”

  He sprinted toward the zombies-and the clockworker in their midst. Alice, unused to trousers, fumbled through her pockets. “Gavin! Wait! I have the tuning forks!”

  But he was already too far away to hear. He reached the edge of the zombie crowd, put bow to strings, and played. His fiddle blended with the clockworker’s otherworldly song. The grinning clockworker spun, flaring the tails of his long coat. He stared at Gavin, but didn’t pause in his own playing. His fingers continued to skitter over the controls of his instrument, and the terrible music rippled from it in endless waves. Gavin stared back, and something passed between them. The clockworker nodded once, and Alice held her breath. Her hands went cold on the controls of the mechanical.

  Gavin set his shoulders and played louder. His fingers flew up and down the fiddle’s neck. His melody wound around the clockworker’s, combined with it, and created a new one. The zombies paused in their rampage. They turned, entranced by the duet.

  The clockworker changed the tune, and the zombies screamed with one voice. Alice clapped her hands over her ears to shut out the horrible noise. It was like listening to the dead. They went back to attacking the doors.

  “ROCKY,” Tree said beside her. “LOOK.”

  A man poked a rifle through the bars of an upper window of the bank. Alice instantly came to herself. She didn’t like the clockworker and she feared the plague zombies, but the man with the gun might hit Gavin. Without thinking, she reached down with her mechanical hands, tore two chunks of brick and mortar from the street, and hurled a piece at the man. The chunk was only the size of cat, but it clanged hard against the window bars. Startled, the man dropped the rifle and jerked himself back inside.

  “LEAFY,” Tree said.

  Gavin switched his song to match the clockworker’s again as Alice stomped toward the zombie crowd and stopped there. Tree, bereft of a driver and with Barton chained in his branches, stayed behind. The zombies paused a second time. They and the clockworker turned to stare, this time at Alice. The clockworker’s song continued, though the grin fell off his face. Alice felt tall and powerful as she glared down at the clockworker who had frightened her, threatened her, disrupted her city. Her fist clenched, nearly shattering the second piece of brick and mortar.

  “Stop that music!” she yelled into the mechanical’s speaking tube. At her feet, Gavin halted. “Not you!” she amended hastily. “You!”

  Gavin started up again, but the clockworker ignored Alice’s order. The zombies made a thick wall between the mechanical and the clockworker, and Alice couldn’t quite reach him. She didn’t want to stomp through the crowd, either. It would be horrible and messy, and as much as she hated and feared the clockwork plague, she couldn’t bring herself to crush the skulls of its victims. Alice fumbled through her pockets, yanked out the tuning forks, and clanged them together. The tritone rang out, but it drowned in the duet below. Disgusted, Alice shoved the forks back into her pockets and grabbed the mechanical’s controls again, but she couldn’t do anything with the zombies in the way. The clockworker’s grin returned. They were at an impasse.

  “You’ll have to stop playing sometime,” Alice called.

  The clockworker ignored her and changed his song again. The zombies abruptly turned their collective gaze on Gavin, who was without defenses. They were only a few paces away. With the rigid precision of mechanicals under control, they reached for him.

  “Run, Gavin!” By reflex, Alice hurled the piece of brick and mortar at the clockworker. The clockworker leapt backward with a yelp and bumbled into a zombie. The chunk crashed into the ground where the clockworker had been standing. The song stopped.

  Silence fell over the square. Then the zombies cringed and flung up their arms to shield their eyes from the sunlight. They scattered, fleeing the terrible light. Gavin shinnied up the mechanical, fearful of being touched and infected, and dropped into the padded bench seat beside her without even a how-do-you-do. It made for a tight squeeze, and she was acutely aware of the way his hard muscles pressed against her body.

  “The tuning forks,” he panted. “Quick!”

  But Alice was busy with the controls. She tried to slip the mechanical through the thinning crowd of zombies toward the clockworker, who had already scrambled to his feet.

  “Drat!” she muttered. “He’s getting out that instrument of his again. Get ready to play.”

  “I don’t know if I can play squashed in here. Where are the damned forks?”

  “In my pockets.”

  Gavin slid his hands down Alice’s outer thighs. Even under the circumstances, she felt a thrill at his touch, and her breath caught. He found the forks and pulled them out. Alice, meanwhile, moved the mechanical a step ahead despite the scattering zombies. The clockworker fished in his coat with one hand and produced a set of padded metal cups connected by a length of polished wood. These he popped over his ears.

  “Fantastic,” Gavin muttered, tossing the forks to the floor of the mechanical with a discordant clatter.

  Mouth set, Alice leaned the mechanical forward and reached down with its arms, but she wasn’t quite close enough to touch the clockworker. The zombies lurched around, looking for shadows but not finding any. This side of the bank faced south, and there weren’t any alleys nearby. This caused the zombies to mill about in painful confusion. They mewed and squealed almost like children. Alice tried not to look too closely, but she couldn’t help seeing their pain and misery. This one used to be a young woman, and her ragged dress was soaked through with patches of blood where her skin had sloughed off, and her hair had come out in clumps. An old man limped painfully on the stump of one foot. A little girl clutched a filthy stuffed dog and cried tears of blood as she tried to escape the all-powerful sunlight.

  The clockworker, for his part, pumped the bellows on his instrument and blasted out two powerful notes, paused, and rumbled out a third, one so deep it throbbed through Alice’s bones.

  “What the hell?” Gavin said.

  The clockworker repeated the set-one, two, pause, and three. Alice reached again, but he dodged out of the way. The instrument deflated with a ghostly wail that set Alice’s teeth on edge, and the clockworker skittered between the mechanical’s legs with the agility of a spider. He scuttled off. Swearing, Alice turned the mechanical in time to see him reach the corner at Prince’s Street.

  “Get him!” Gavin shouted needlessly, for Alice was already in pursuit. She dodged an overturned carriage and stomped around the corner just in time to see the clockworker standing motionless in the center of the street. He snapped a salute to Alice, took one step sideways, and dropped out of sight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “No!” Alice tromped over to the spot and found nothing but the open sewer hole. The smell of rotted waste oozed upward. “Do we dare?” she said.

  Gavin, still clutching his fiddle, jumped down to peer into the hole. “We’d have a fifty-fifty chance of going in the wrong direction,” he said. “And I don’t have a light.”

  “I had the same thought. I’m not sure if I’m unhappy or relieved, to tell you the truth. Slogging through the sewer is hardly my idea of fun.”

  “I’ve done it,” Gavin said. “It’s even worse than you’re thinking.”

  “What now, then?”

  “We need to get out of here before reporters show up and start asking questions. The Ward doesn’t like publicity. And we need to get Tree and Barton and his mechanical back to headquarters. Can you still drive it?”

  “Reporters?” Alice twisted around in the seat as if one might leap out of a window at her. “Are any here now?”

  “Might be.” Gavin shrugged. “They run toward disasters instead of away fr
om them.”

  Alice slumped down. “I can’t be recognized.”

  “You won’t be. You still look like a boy in that hat and those trousers. But let’s get out of here, just in case.”

  The zombies had dispersed, finding their way back into alleys and side streets. Gavin clambered into the mechanical, and Alice hurried it toward Tree. Once again, Gavin’s body pressed unavoidably against Alice’s. She tried to ignore the feelings this aroused in her but found it a losing battle. He smelled like leather and sweat, unlike Norbert’s scent of cologne and linen. His muscles were hard and powerful, unlike Norbert’s softer frame. His-

  “Lamppost!” Gavin yelled.

  “Sorry.” She skirted the object and reached Tree. Already, people and traffic were returning to the intersection. One of the policemen they’d seen earlier hurried up to them as Gavin was climbing down. He looked nervous but determined.

  “I need to ask you some questions, sir,” he said, then glanced up at Alice. “And you, lad.”

  “Crown business.” From somewhere in the recesses of his clothing, Gavin produced a metal badge. “I have to get my prisoner to headquarters.”

  Before the bobby could protest further, Gavin whistled and Tree bent down so he could hoist himself upward. Barton continued to snooze among the branches. The policeman retreated uncertainly. “Now look-,” he began.

  “Ask for Lieutenant Phipps through Scotland Yard,” Gavin called down. “She’ll tell you it’s taken care of. Follow me, Allen.”

  It took Alice a moment to realize he meant her. She touched the brim of her borrowed hat at the policeman and turned the mechanical to follow Gavin. They reached the spot where Fleet Street and its noisy press shops and smelly factories joined the wide thoroughfare of the Strand, which followed the river Thames down to Westminster and, ultimately, Third Ward headquarters. Guarding the spot was the Temple Bar, a two-story stone archway that blocked the street between the three- and four-story buildings. The top half was solid stone, adorned with bas relief statues of the Queen and the Prince of Wales. The lower half was an archway barely tall enough for a beer truck, and only wide enough for two carts to pass in opposite directions. Pedestrians were shunted through a pair of side doors on either side of the Bar, but cart traffic was forced in like sand through an hourglass. When Alice was little, she had happened to be walking nearby with Father when the Queen in her grand carriage had come up the Strand, intending to enter the City from Westminster. The gates of Temple Bar were slammed shut to bar the way-hence the name-and John Humphrey, Lord Mayor of London, strode out to meet the young Victoria, who was in her fourth year of reign. This was before Father’s illness, and he was easily strong enough to lift Alice so she could see over the heads of the crowd. The men had all removed their hats. The Queen ascended from her carriage, looking young and beautiful in a silken gown of deep blue. Jewels gleamed at her throat and on her fingers. She approached Humphrey and, in a voice that rang clearly, asked for the Lord Mayor’s loyalty. Humphrey presented her with a pearl-encrusted sword, and they exchanged other formal pleasantries as traffic piled up on both sides of the Bar. Eventually, the Queen ascended back into her carriage, the Bar reopened, and the royal carriage drove through, allowing traffic to move.

  “I got to see the Queen!” Alice said breathlessly. “The Queen!”

  “You did indeed.” Father set her on the sidewalk. “Something to remember forever, eh?”

  “What was all that for?” she asked.

  “Old tradition, dating back to Queen Elizabeth. The Lord Mayor is technically the sovereign of the City, so the Queen asks for his loyalty. He gives her one of the five City swords to show she indeed has it, and he orders the gates open. Some say she’s asking permission to enter the City as well, but that’s rubbish.”

  “What happens to the sword?” Alice asked. “Does the Queen give it back for next time? Does she get a new one every time she comes into the City?”

  Father scratched his head. “You know, I never thought about that. You’ll have to ask the Queen the next time you see her.”

  “I will,” Alice said. “May I have an ice?”

  Back then, Alice had thought Temple Bar awe-inspiring and the ceremony fascinating. Now, however, she saw only congested traffic where the crowded street narrowed from four lanes to two. They slowed, joining the line of carts and carriages. Alice fidgeted. People stared at Tree and the mechanical as they passed, though traffic didn’t halt. Machines and other strange objects weren’t uncommon in London, as long as they behaved themselves. Still, Alice was nervous about being recognized, and she kept her hat pulled low. The line of traffic at the Temple Bar stalled, edged slowly forward, stalled again.

  And then she saw Norbert. He emerged from the pedestrian gate on the south side of the Temple Bar and strolled straight toward them. The fine material of his conservatively cut suit and waistcoat stood out from the crowd of rougher men, as did his confident air. Alice’s heart jerked. Whether she told Norbert the full-blown lie or the edited truth wouldn’t matter in the slightest if he caught her red-handed with Gavin. She put a hand over her mouth as if scratching her nose, turned her head away from him, and prayed he would walk on by.

  “You, lad!”

  His familiar voice filtered through the street noise. Alice flicked a glance downward. Norbert was standing at the mechanical’s feet, arms folded.

  “Yes, you, lad!” he called. “Tell me who built this machine. I can’t imagine it was you.”

  All the breath left Alice’s breast. Panic constricted her chest with iron bands and her bowels turned to liquid. She couldn’t think. If she spoke, or even lowered her hands, he would recognize her. What could she-

  “Oi! Don’t talk to ’im!” Gavin said from Tree. His American accent had been replaced with something one might hear from Seven Dials. “He’s just an apprentice, and anyway’e lost ’is voice in an accident. Inhaled the wrong fumes.”

  Norbert turned. Traffic edged forward again, but he was easily able to keep pace with Tree and the mechanical. “Are you his master? You look young for-”

  “No, guv’nor. That’s our master.” Gavin pointed to Barton. “What do you wants to know?”

  Alice sat motionless in the mechanical. Relief that Norbert was no longer looking in her direction eased some of the panic, but the danger was still imminent.

  “I run a machinery concern,” Norbert said to Gavin. “If your master builds mechanicals and needs a source of machine parts, I would like to speak with him.”

  “Yeah, all right. I’ll tell ’im when he’s finished sleepin’ it off. You got a card, guv?”

  Norbert handed one up, and Gavin thanked him. He turned to go, then paused and came back to the mechanical. He squinted up at Alice, and she started to panic again. He knew.

  He tossed a coin upward. It landed on the seat beside her. “Go see a doctor about your voice, lad.” And he was gone.

  Alice deflated on the padded bench. The relief was so complete, she lost all strength to stir a limb until the drover behind the mechanical shouted at her to move forward. She complied.

  “Are you all right?” Gavin called.

  “You were wonderful.” Gratitude overfilled her like water in a tiny glass. “A real hero. A true-” Then she remembered she was supposed to be a boy and stopped herself.

  “That was your. . I mean. . you knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  And they said no more.

  Getting through the Temple Bar was tricky. Tree had to turn around, stoop, and go backward so the low arch wouldn’t rip at his branches. Alice had to put the tall mechanical in a crouch and make it take baby steps. Both processes took considerable time and did nothing to endear them to the people behind. Once they were through, the Strand widened considerably and traffic flowed much more quickly, allowing them to move with speed.

  “That stupid Bar thing stops everything dead right at the busiest point in London,” Gavin complained. “And it’s
ugly to boot. They should just tear it out.”

  “Temple Bar?” Alice said, aghast. “It may be ugly, but it’s been there for hundreds of years. The Queen stops there every time she enters the City. It’s a long-standing tradition. They’ll never take that down, not in a millennium.”

  Gavin grimaced. “I suppose. But now we really need to hurry. Barton’s waking up, and I’m out of laudanum.”

  The Strand sped past them. Alice caught occasional glimpses of the Thames, crowded with boats and small ships. Many of them were powered by coal-fired steam engines. But mostly she saw tall buildings, all square and no-nonsense and covered with coal soot. Her earlier exhilaration had left her, and now she wanted only to deliver Barton and the mechanical to the Third Ward so she could go home to a bath, a good meal, and a nap. Driving the mechanical, with its constant pedals and pulleys, was beginning to tire her.

  At last they cleared the more crowded part of London and entered the greener parks and squares of Westminster. A fog rolled in off the Thames, sending a chilly gray blanket after them. It was already growing hard to see by the time they reached the gates of the estate Alice barely remembered from a year ago. In the center of the wrought iron was the numeral 2 surmounted by a square root symbol. They opened as Tree and the mechanical approached. Moments later, Alice and Gavin were both climbing down from their mounts. A crew led the restless Barton away and, at Alice’s direction, stowed Norbert’s little machines in a crate. Since there was no incriminating evidence on them, Alice didn’t much care what happened to them at this point, though she didn’t relish the thought of refitting them.

  The fog chased Gavin and Alice inside the great brick house, where Alice was escorted to a dressing room. She was allowed a quick bath and was given a simple green dress and straw hat. Feeling immeasurably more normal and secure in skirts, she was fastening the last button when the door opened and the woman who gave her the clothes poked her head in.