The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  The corners of Phipps’s mouth twitched. “Indeed. We’ll start your training in the morning. Early.” With that, she strode away.

  Alice started to say something, but Gavin stopped her. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Tell her you have an idea about finding Edwina. Let’s keep it to ourselves for now.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Because the last two times she yelled at me,” Gavin said.

  “Two times?” Alice repeated.

  “Once after the incident at the Bank of England, and once after your adventure with the giant mechanical. You didn’t stick around for that one.” Gavin rubbed his face. “If your idea doesn’t pan out, I don’t want her to yell at me again. I don’t like being yelled at.”

  Alice looked doubtful, but finally nodded.

  “So tell me what’s going on.”

  “Do you have a map room in this place?”

  A few minutes later, she was unrolling a large, detailed map of London across a table in a room illuminated with gas jets Kemp lit for her. Click lounged on the table and batted idly at the scroll weights Alice used to prevent the unwieldy parchment from rolling back up.

  “Aunt Edwina kept playing that same chord,” she said. “It was a message, one only someone with perfect pitch would understand.”

  Gavin scratched his head. “Well, it didn’t work. I don’t understand it.”

  “You did-you just didn’t decode it. Look here. You said the G-sharp has a frequency of fifty-one; the B’s frequency is thirty; the rest would be zero, of course; and the D is nine. Those four numbers were almost exactly the same as fifty-one, thirty, zero, and eight, the map coordinates Pilot gave for Buckingham Palace when he flew us on the airship from Father’s house. I don’t know much about map coordinates, but I reasoned the music numbers must give a spot for a place close by. And I was right. Look-fifty-one degrees, thirty minutes north and zero degrees nine minutes west.”

  “Holy cow!” Gavin’s finger stabbed down onto the map. “Hyde Park!”

  “Oh! We should have known from the beginning!” Alice exclaimed. “Everything comes back there. Norbert and I often went to Hyde Park, and you played in Hyde Park. I first heard you there, though I didn’t know it at the time. If that’s where Aunt Edwina’s hiding, no doubt she heard you as well. It may be the reason she settled on kidnapping you-availability.”

  “It wouldn’t explain why she came back for me,” Gavin pointed out.

  “What say we go ask her?” Alice asked.

  “After you, Your Ladyship.”

  “Might I suggest a change of clothing first?” Kemp said. “Neither Madam nor Sir is quite attired for tramping through the verge.”

  “Oh! I hadn’t thought. Can you find something more appropriate for me, Gavin?”

  Kemp’s eyes flickered and flashed. “I have already contacted the Third Ward’s main Babbage engine and discovered both the location of Sir’s room and the location of the main clothing stores. What color dress would Madam prefer?”

  “Madam would prefer trousers, please,” Alice said wickedly. “If Madam is going to break the rules, she may as well break them badly.”

  “If Madam and Sir will give me a moment.”

  “He’s full of surprises, isn’t he?” Gavin said as Kemp bustled away.

  Her arms went around his neck. “We have more rules to break, Mr. Ennock.”

  When Kemp returned a few minutes later with more appropriate clothing, he found Alice and Gavin in a state of dishabille. He coughed, and they separated. Gavin flushed, but Alice only laughed. It was the first time he had ever heard that sound from her, and his heart gave a little leap.

  “Thank you, Kemp.” She planted another kiss on Gavin’s mouth and scuttled behind a tall fire screen to let Kemp help finish removing her dress while Gavin changed out of the remainder of his evening clothes. His groin ached, and he was glad that Alice couldn’t see his present state. Click cocked his head across the map table.

  “What are you looking at, cat?” Gavin muttered.

  Click licked a metal paw.

  Alice emerged from behind the screen wearing brown trousers, a white blouse, a riding jacket, and a boy’s cloth cap. Gavin barely recognized her, but she was still beautiful. The trousers and jacket outlined her shape and made her femininity even more apparent. Gavin longed to snatch her up and flee to a remote mountaintop, where the air was clear and the clouds washed the world clean and where they could be alone together for an eternity of moments.

  Kemp said, “I took the liberty of ordering a pair of riding horses from the stable. I will stay behind to ensure proper quarters are prepared for Madam’s return.”

  They were heading out the door when Alice stopped and dashed back to Kemp. She spoke to him briefly, then rejoined Gavin.

  “What was that about?” he asked.

  “I’ll want tea and a hot bath when I get back,” she explained, “and Click will need winding, since he’s staying behind. Life is in the details, Gavin.”

  “At least you’re not calling me Mr. Ennock.”

  They didn’t go the stables, though. Instead, Gavin led Alice to a staircase that took them down to the first basement level and a heavy door with several keyholes on it. Gavin spun a combination lock several times, depressed a number of keys on a large adding machine set into the door itself, and produced a key, which he slid into the third keyhole from the right. The door clanked and groaned, then creaked slowly inward.

  “What is this?” Alice asked.

  “The weapons vault. We’re not going unarmed.”

  The large, large room beyond was filled with racks and shelves and drawers. Gun barrels made of metal, glass, and other substances gleamed in the overhead electric lights. Pistols in a variety of shapes waited to be loaded and used. Many were connected by long, heavy cords to power packs meant to be strapped to the wielder’s back. Other racks sported explosives-bombs, dynamite, barrels of gunpowder. One section was lined with syringes, ampules, and rows of brown medicine bottles.

  “Goodness,” Alice said. “You’re well equipped.”

  “We try.” Gavin felt unaccountably pleased at the remark, as if he had something to do with the Ward’s weaponry. “Most of them are singular pieces invented by the clockworkers we find. The worst ones go into the Doomsday Vault, of course, but these are for us agents to use as we see fit.”

  Alice picked up a small ball of red porcelain. “What’s this?”

  “It’s filled with pollen from a plant developed by L’Arbre Magnifique. Don’t drop it! It’ll put you to sleep for several minutes unless you drink absinthe first.”

  “Absinthe?” Alice shuddered. “Why absinthe?”

  “Ask L’Arbre Magnifique.”

  She set the ball down and hefted a bulky rifle. “What’s this one do?”

  “Good choice. It shoots a balled-up net that springs open to engulf the target. Not much accuracy over long distances, but good at close range.” Gavin selected several syringes with corks on the end. “Opiates. Clockworkers don’t sleep much, and it takes a lot to keep them out, as you saw with Patrick Barton.”

  “Why didn’t we take any of this with us when we went after him?”

  “No time, remember? He was running, and we had to track him before the trail faded. Besides, Tree came armed. Here, take this one, too.” He handed her a pistol and holstered one for himself. “Now we can get those horses.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alice, Baroness Michaels, swung down from her horse with the net rifle heavy on her back. Everything felt odd. It felt odd to ride astride. It felt odd to wear trousers. It felt odd to think of herself as Baroness Michaels. It felt odd to think she had left her fiance.

  One thing that didn’t feel odd was having Gavin beside her. That felt perfectly right. She was theoretically about to walk into the den of a notorious clockworker who was also her own aunt; yet right now she felt happier and more secure than she had since be
fore her mother died.

  Gavin dismounted from his own horse with a creak of leather, and the animal snorted hard. His pale hair shone almost like a halo from under the simple cloth cap he favored. They were in the middle of Hyde Park, some distance north of the Serpentine. Trees and bushes and lawn stretched out around them, and a misty drizzle made the moon a fuzzy disk. Yellow gaslights shone here and there, but the park itself was deserted. Alice glanced around, wondering exactly where to start looking.

  “This is more or less where the map coordinates would put us,” Gavin said. “It may take several hours of searching before-”

  “Here it is!” Alice called out. She was examining a small gardener’s shack that stood beneath a spreading beech tree. It appeared completely normal, except for the overly complicated lock on the door. Gavin trotted over and shone a large electric torch on it. Brass gleamed, and Alice saw scratches above the lock.

  “Too much for a simple gardener,” Gavin agreed.

  Alice’s heart rate climbed, and her lips were parted with excitement. “How do we get in?”

  “These scratches.” His fingers dragged across them. “It’s musical notation, but old-fashioned-medieval. Doctor Clef showed me some stuff like it.”

  “What happens if you sing it?”

  Gavin sang, a short, quick melody that trilled like a nightingale. Alice found it pretty, but she glanced nervously around. Staying in one place after dark was a good way to encounter a plague zombie, especially in a place like Hyde Park, where the lights were scattered and far apart. Even as the thought crossed her mind, a shadow moved to their right. Two plague zombies lurched out of a clump of bushes. Both were women in tattered dresses. One carried a battered parasol. To their left came a trio-three teenaged boys, barefoot and in rags.

  “Gavin!” Alice hissed.

  He caught sight of the zombies, and the melody stopped with a startled choke. A red light flashed above the lock.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Alice said. “The Ward can find this place again.”

  “Agreed.”

  But more zombies oozed out of the damp darkness, a crowd of pale men, women, and children, all groaning their misery. There was no way through them. Alice shrank back against the shack, her excitement forgotten.

  “Where did they all come from?” she asked desperately. “Why are they coming for us?”

  Gavin turned back to the door and started the song again, but his voice shook, and he got only a few notes in before the red light flashed. He started a third time. Alice drew her pistol. There didn’t seem to be much point in using the net rifle against a whole crowd, though the single pistol in her hand didn’t seem a great defense, either. Could she kill a plague zombie? They had once been-perhaps still were-human beings. The closest ones were only a few paces away now, and she could smell the rotten meat, even see the maggots that crawled around their open sores. Gavin continued to sing. Alice drew back the pistol’s hammer and aimed with a shaky hand.

  The lock clunked and the bolts drew back. Gavin’s torch revealed a staircase heading down.

  “Go!” Gavin shoved her inside without waiting for a response, then dived after her and slammed the door shut. Alice leaned against the shack wall, breathing heavily. Her knees quaked inside the unfamiliar trousers.

  “Are you all right?” Gavin put an arm around her shoulders. “Did they touch you?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I’m fine. They didn’t touch me.”

  Fists thudded slowly on the door and walls. Alice shied away from them. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about them. I faced down a small army of them at the bank.”

  “You were sitting atop a mechanical at the time. Drink this.” He handed her a flask, and she sipped something that burned all the way down. “Brandy. For the jitters.”

  It did help. What helped even more was the way Gavin took her hand as they stood at the top of the stairs.

  “Since we don’t have much choice,” he said, “let’s see who’s home.”

  They descended the creaky staircase and came to a wide tunnel lined with brick. A deep trench ran down the center. Water dripped, and rats scuttled away from the light of Gavin’s torch.

  “This looks like part of the sewer,” Alice said. “Though it smells rather fresher.”

  “How would a baroness know what the London sewers are like?” Gavin flicked a foot at a passing rat, and it squeaked angrily at him.

  “I do read. Let’s go.”

  They followed the tunnel cautiously, weapons drawn. Alice’s world narrowed to quiet footsteps, dripping water, and the scrabbling of rat claws behind Gavin’s strip of light. Gavin halted, and Alice nearly ran into him.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “That.” He pointed the light at the floor. A wire glimmered at ankle level above the bricks. Alice took the torch from Gavin and followed the wire along its length. It led to an enormous round weight suspended on a heavy pole at the opposite side of the tunnel. Tripping the wire would cause it to swing across the tunnel and crush whoever might be standing there.

  “It’s almost halfhearted,” Alice said critically. “It wouldn’t fool a child.”

  “Maybe it’s a distraction from the real trap,” Gavin offered. “Simon and I once went after a clockworker in Germany who cooked up-I swear I’m not making this up-a variation of Limburger cheese that exuded deadly gas. Except it turned out the Limburger was to cover up what he was really making.”

  “What was that?”

  “Exploding crackers.”

  She smacked him on the shoulder. “You did make that up.”

  “Ask Simon! Anyway, maybe something else is going on.”

  They searched for several minutes but turned up nothing. Alice grew cold, and her earlier excitement deflated entirely now that she was on her hands and knees in a chilly, damp tunnel inhabited by rats.

  “If there’s nothing, there’s nothing,” Alice said at last. “Let’s keep going.”

  Alice had to admit to a certain amount of trepidation as they both stepped over the trip wire. Still, nothing happened. They continued on their way and rounded a corner. The tunnel went on a little farther and ended in a simple door limned with light. They each pressed an ear to the wood. Nothing. Gavin set his shoulder against it and mouthed, Ready? Alice drew the net rifle and nodded.

  The door yanked itself open, and Gavin stumbled with a yelp into the space beyond. Painful light blinded Alice, and she fired the net rifle. It jerked in her hands with a muffled phoot. Gavin yelled again, and she heard a scuffling noise. Alice’s eyes adjusted and she could see. The space was a large underground laboratory filled with esoteric equipment. Lying on the floor in front of her wrapped in a net was Gavin. Standing over him was the strange clockworker in the long coat, top hat, and grinning skull half mask.

  “Halt, Edwina!” Alice fired the net rifle again. A pellet the size of a rugby ball burst from the business end and rushed toward the clockworker, but she twisted out of the way. The pellet exploded into a full-sized net that wrapped itself around a support pillar. The clockworker thrust a hand into one pocket.

  “Don’t move!” Alice barked. “I will fire, Edwina. You know I will.”

  The clockworker froze.

  “I could use some help down here,” Gavin said from inside the net.

  Alice didn’t move. “I want answers, Edwina. You’re not getting away, and you’re going to tell me why. Why would you send plague zombies to attack your own niece? Why would you leave me a house filled with death traps? And why didn’t you help me when I really needed you?”

  Aunt Edwina just stared at her, the skull mask hiding all expression. Gavin was trying to untangle himself from the net without much success. Words poured out of Alice in a geyser of acid.

  “Did you think that sending me a bunch of stupid automatons would make up for leaving me alone to take care of a sick old man all my life? You could have slipped me money, or visited in secret, but you didn’t. Was I that horrible? Was I
that ugly and stupid? How terrible I must have been for you to abandon me when I needed you the most, and only your ticking clockwork automatons to comfort me.”

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Edwina said. “Truly I am. And I’m afraid it’ll get worse before it gets better.”

  Alice froze. The voice. The tone. It couldn’t be. “Louisa?”

  “Please, darling. Call me Aunt Edwina.” The clockworker swept off the mask and hat to reveal the face of Louisa Creek.

  Alice was struck speechless. All she could do was stare while Gavin continued to struggle within the net on the floor.

  Louisa-Edwina-clapped her hands in glee. “I know I’ve put you through a lot, darling, but look at you now! You’re wearing trousers! A true Ad Hoc lady. And you’ve trussed up that delicious young musician for yourself. How can the night get any better?”

  “What the bloody fucking hell is going on?” Alice shrieked.

  The room went silent. Gavin stopped moving within the net. Even Louisa/Aunt Edwina seemed at a loss for words.

  “Well?” Alice asked dangerously. “I want an explanation, Louisa or Aunt Edwina or whoever you are, and it had better not involve transplanting a human brain.”

  “Of course, darling,” she agreed. “But why don’t we help your young man out of that net first? Unless you want to leave him all tied up and helpless.”

  “He’s not my-oh, never mind. Just stand over there and don’t move.”

  She looked hurt. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Should I?” Alice knelt down. “Hold still, Gavin. Squirming only makes it worse.” She twitched him free, and he rolled away. He’d lost his hat and torch, but his pistol was in his hand.

  Edwina wrung her hands. “Don’t be too put out, darling. I put the kettle on the moment you entered the park and sent my helpers up to ensure you came down here instead of haring off to the Third Ward. I have eyes all over, you know.”

  “You know about the Ward,” Gavin said.

  “Obviously. Oh, Alice, may I give you a kiss? It’s been so long. Well, it hasn’t really, but you thought I was Louisa Creek.”