The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  “You’re bluffing,” Alice said desperately. “It’s a lie. He’d be dead by now if it were true.”

  “No, darling. It was my own recipe, the slowed version, but he does have it. At least he’s not contagious yet.”

  “No,” Alice whispered.

  “There’s good news. You can cure him long before he becomes one of those unfortunates who lurch through alleyways. Just get me out of the Third Ward and break into the Doomsday Vault. And you’d better hurry.”

  The lights in Kemp’s eyes flickered out, then came back on. He turned his head left, then right. “Oh! Oh dear! Did I switch off? Sir! Do you require assistance?”

  Gavin stared at the stinking puddle of vomit. The revelation crushed him to the floor, and his back ached anew. A small sore on the back of his hand caught his eye. Was it a plague sore? In a few weeks, he would join the souls shambling through the shadows, hoping someone would throw him an apple.

  “I won’t let this happen again, Gavin.” Alice was kneeling beside him with her arms around his shoulders. Several of her little automatons perched on her shoulders. “I won’t. We’ll find a way into the Vault, and we’ll get Aunt Edwina out so we can cure you. I don’t care how impossible it is.”

  Gavin brought his head up. “I know how to do it.”

  Moments later, Gavin was sketching madly on a sheet of foolscap at Alice’s new kitchen table with Alice leaning over him. Kemp had been banished to Alice’s bedroom, however unfairly, and Click perched on the coal stove, heedless of the heat it put out. Several of the little automatons were lined up above the cupboards. Alice kept a continual hand on Gavin’s arm or his shoulder or his head, as if he might float away and her touch would keep his feet touching the floor. Thank God he wasn’t contagious yet. She couldn’t bear the thought of not touching him.

  A number of feelings battled inside her-fury at Aunt Edwina for doing this to Gavin and to her, guilt over her role in the entire affair, fear of what was going to happen next, and through it all, a growing and powerful love for Gavin. When he was nearby, she felt his presence, and when he was gone, she felt his absence. When he laughed, she was happy, and when he was upset, she wanted to tear London in two. And right now, she felt ready to destroy the world for him.

  “Doctor Clef is the key,” he said. “He finished his Impossible Cube earlier today, and Lieutenant Phipps said it has to go into the Doomsday Vault.”

  “So they’ll have to open it,” Alice breathed.

  “Yes. There’s a little ceremony surrounding any invention that goes in. An hour before sunrise, all the clockworkers are locked in their rooms, and the available agents stand honor guard in two lines-like this-while Lieutenant Phipps marches between them. She takes the invention to the Doomsday Vault, which is here. The guards open it, and she puts it inside. Then everyone has a breakfast of kippers and eggs and beer, including the clockworker who invented the device. If he’s gone completely insane, he sits at the table in a straitjacket.”

  “So we somehow sneak in when the Vault opens and hide inside until they all leave?”

  Gavin shook his head. “No. The Vault would close on us and we’d be trapped. There’s only one way to do it.” He put his pencil down and exhaled, long and slow. “Alice, if we go through with this, it’ll be a crime against the British Crown. I’ll be branded an American spy, and you’ll be a traitor. Are you willing?”

  And she hesitated. He was right. She tried to set aside thoughts of Gavin and to think of the situation clearly, as would an automaton. This plan went beyond merely breaking a few societal rules. This plan was outright treason. The sentence for that was transportation to Australia at best, hanging at worst, and her title wouldn’t protect her. The plan, if it worked, would topple the British Empire and change the course of history for thousands, millions of people. Did she, the daughter of an unimportant, impoverished baron, have the right to make that choice?

  Did the Third Ward have the right? They had a vested interest in keeping the status quo. Without clockworkers, the Third Ward had no reason to exist. On the other hand, they were more informed, more aware of the wide world. They knew what was proper.

  Alice opened her mouth to answer Gavin just as a brick crashed through the front window and tumbled across the floor. Both Alice and Gavin started, then rushed to the broken frame to peer outside. Norbert Williamson swayed on the sidewalk, just visible in the yellow lamplight. He held a bottle. On the street stood his mechanical carriage.

  “You thought you could hide from me, you bloody bitch?” Norbert yelled. “You owe me a child and a title!”

  A pang went through Alice’s stomach. “Oh God.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Gavin said with clenched teeth.

  “No.” Alice laid a hand on his arm. “I will.” And before he could protest, she was out the door.

  “There you are, you whore,” Norbert growled. He gulped from the bottle. “Did you enjoy fucking him?”

  “Not nearly as much as you enjoyed watching your friends use those machines, you may be sure,” Alice replied primly.

  Norbert didn’t seem to notice the dig. “You’re coming home with me. I’ll teach you manners and lock you up long enough to make sure the boy didn’t pollute you with his spawn.”

  A crowd was gathering. People opened windows and peered out doors. Alice became aware of every pair of eyes, every judgmental look, every knowing nod. The carriage stood in front of her. It would be so easy to bow her head and climb into it, ride smoothly away from all these unfair, world-shaking decisions, these choices she had never asked to make. All she had ever wanted was a quiet life with a quiet husband.

  But that was a lie, too, wasn’t it? It was a lie she told herself. She’d been telling herself she wanted these traditional things. . and why? Because it was her fault the clockwork plague had torn through her family, killed her mother and brother, crippled her father, and wanting traditional things would set everything aright. Except Father was dead, and now the person she loved carried the plague. The tradition, the lie, would cause Gavin’s death, and the deaths of thousands more.

  “No,” Alice whispered.

  “What?” Norbert growled.

  Alice straightened, standing tall before the neighbors who came to stare. Gavin stood in the doorway. “I said no. I am Alice, Baroness Michaels. I am not going back with you, Norbert Williamson. I love Gavin and always have. Go back home to your factory and your money and your filthy machines. I hope they rip your cock off.”

  Norbert flung himself at Alice. Gavin shouted a warning from the front steps, but Alice saw him coming. She stepped aside and gave him a shove that carried him straight into the wall of the house. He smashed into the bricks and staggered backward, dazed and with a bloody nose. Gavin hoisted him by belt and scruff and flung him into the carriage. Alice smacked the emergency switch for home, and the carriage rushed away.

  Alice found herself in Gavin’s arms. He tipped her chin back and kissed her, right there on the street in front of the little crowd. His embrace was solid as an oak tree, and the kiss electric as a lightning bolt. She gave herself up to it, and to him.

  “I do love you,” he whispered.

  “And I love you,” she said.

  A smattering of applause broke out, then grew louder. Alice broke away from Gavin. The crowd clapped and cheered. “Great job, love!” someone shouted. “You showed him!” “Wish I had your courage!”

  Laughing, she dashed back into the house with Gavin close on her. With the door shut, he kissed her again and pressed his body against hers. She felt his urgent hardness, and her own body responded. “I’ve never wanted you more than I do now,” he whispered.

  “We don’t have time,” she replied with regret. “It’s only a few hours until sunrise, and we have to break into the Doomsday Vault.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lieutenant Phipps marched past Gavin with the glowing Impossible Cube. As the most junior agent of the Third Ward, he was at the far end of the d
ouble line of agents lining the corridor, the end farthest from the Doomsday Vault. Another agent played a military drum. Every beat snapped to Phipps’s footsteps. Each agent, and there were nearly twenty, wore a dress uniform of black linen with red trim. Several sported body machinery similar to Phipps’s, and all of them, even Simon and Glenda, carried side arms. Alice, who was still in training and not yet technically an agent, was nowhere to be seen, but Gavin knew she was hiding halfway up the stone spiral staircase that led back up to the main floor.

  Phipps reached the head of the double line, and the drum stopped. The four agents who guarded the round, two-story door to the Doomsday Vault saluted Phipps and turned to the Vault controls. Each guard knew only one sequence of instructions for opening the Vault, to ensure that no one person could open it alone. The first guard spun a large wheel that reminded Gavin of an airship helm, then spun it backward, then forward. The second guard spoke rapidly into a speaking tube. The third guard turned a series of dials set into the door. The fourth guard took a card from his pocket, punched a series of holes in it with an awl, and fed the card into a slot. A moment of silence followed. Gavin held his breath. With a dull booming sound, the great door swung outward.

  Lights inside the Vault flickered to life, revealing a wide, long tunnel lined with shelves. Strange objects, some of them moving, occupied the spaces. Gavin couldn’t see into the Vault very well from his vantage point, but he didn’t need to. He pulled from his pocket a small object of his own: two glass bulbs connected by a third, like an hourglass with a slight bulge in the middle. The top bulb held water. The small middle bulb held a cube of sugar. The lower bulb held a clear green fluid. Gavin twisted a small brass lever on the side of the device, and the water in the top bulb rushed down over the sugar cube and into the absinthe in the lower bulb just as Phipps entered the Doomsday Vault. The absinthe in the lower bulb bubbled and changed to a milky green.

  “What are you doing?” hissed Donaldson, the agent next to him. “Put that away!”

  Gavin flipped the glass lid off the device and forced himself to drink, grimacing at the cloying taste of anise. By now, some of the others had noticed. They stared, uncertain what to do about this flagrant breach of protocol. Before they could make up their minds, a fluttering sound came from the stairwell, and a little automaton emerged into the hall, its propeller whirling madly. It held a red ball of the type Gavin had cautioned Alice not to drop in the weapons vault.

  “Sorry, everyone!” Gavin shouted.

  Phipps, still holding the Impossible Cube, spun in surprise just as the automaton dropped the ball on the stone floor. Pink pollen burst into the air and formed a sweet, choking cloud. The agents staggered as if drunk. Several dropped to the ground.

  Gavin was already moving, the taste of absinthe still in his mouth. He sprinted toward the Doomsday Vault and caught Lieutenant Phipps as she slid to the floor. The Impossible Cube had already fallen at her feet. It glowed like a piece of broken sky.

  “Wha-?” Phipps said.

  “Sorry about this, Lieutenant,” he said again. “I really am.”

  “Why?” Her eyelid flickered. “Why. . Gavin?”

  Gavin hung his head in guilt. Phipps had turned a disgraced cabin boy into a full-fledged agent, and now he had betrayed her.

  Alice rushed down the stairs, her lips smeared green. Click and Kemp followed behind her, and the little automaton fluttered down to land on her shoulder. “We have to hurry. You said the pollen wouldn’t last more than an hour.”

  “Alice. . of course. .,” Phipps slurred. “You want. . the cure. . wreck. . world.”

  “It needs to be wrecked,” Alice said, “so it can heal. Kemp, Click-you two wait out here. If Lieutenant Phipps wakes up, hit her on the head.”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  Gavin snatched up the Impossible Cube. Dr. Clef had charged it, and no one had wanted to drain the charge before the ceremony. It felt springy, as if made of pine boughs. Together he and Alice hurried into the open Doomsday Vault.

  The long room inside was crowded with inventions, some on shelves and some on the floor. Some were easily recognizable as dangerous: a bomb the size of a sofa; a glass vial filled with black liquid and marked DEATH; an enormous energy rifle pointed at the ceiling. Others were a mystery: a single automaton with no features; a trumpet; a thick book; five live hamsters in a cage with no food or water. Each object had a small placard in front of it with a name and year. The very first one, closest to the door, was a large iron ball with spikes. The faded placard read RICHARD W., 1829. A chill ran down Gavin’s spine.

  “Incredible,” Gavin breathed. “The power in this room could destroy the world a hundred times, and we walk around above it, living normal lives.”

  “Our lives are far from normal,” Alice said tersely. “We need to find the cure and get out.”

  They followed the tunnel to the back, where the placards were fresher. The line of inventions stopped, though the Vault itself continued for some distance.

  “The Ward means to continue collecting these dreadful things,” Alice said. “Look!”

  She picked up a largish spider made of polished black metal. Several tubules ran up and down the spider’s legs. The placard read EDWINA M., 1858.

  “That’s the cure?” Gavin said dubiously.

  “It’s the only Edwina invention in here.” Alice snatched it up. “We don’t have time for doubt. Let’s go!”

  They hurried back to the entrance of the Vault, each of them carrying a doomsday device. Gavin’s heart beat fast, and his hands tightened around the Impossible Cube. Every move he made changed history, altered millions of lives, and that responsibility frightened him even more than the possibility of being caught and hanged. Maybe this was how Queen Victoria and President Pierce felt all the time.

  “Shall I carry that for Madam?” Kemp asked.

  “Thank you, no,” Alice said, clutching the spider to her chest. “Click! Hurry!”

  The five of them, counting the little automaton that still sat on Alice’s shoulder, dashed past the sleeping agents down the hall where the clockworkers were locked in their laboratories, and found Edwina’s door. Gavin stared at the heavy wood for a moment, surprised at the amount of loathing he felt. Behind that door was the woman who had kidnapped him and infected him with the clockwork plague. He’d been trying not to think about that, to concentrate on the mission; however, now faced with setting her free, he felt disgust and hatred boiling black inside him.

  “What are you waiting for?” Alice hissed. “Hurry!”

  Gavin clenched his teeth. “She’s a monster.”

  “Oh, Gavin!” Alice put a hand on his arm. “Gavin, I know it’s hard.”

  “You have no idea, Alice. To her, I’m a windup music box, an automaton who’ll obey orders. She trapped me in this horrible, filthy city, and now she’s dragged me underground and is forcing me to set her free.”

  Kemp made a coughing sound.

  “I know, Gavin,” Alice said. “What she did is unforgivable. But you can move on. You’re bright and merry and you soar. Your hatred won’t change her, or what she did. Don’t give her the power to chain you down and ruin you.”

  Gavin faced her. Every muscle in his back ached, and the cube grew heavy. His throat thickened. “I don’t know what to do, Alice. I hate this world. I hate the people in it. A man named Madoc Blue tried to do unspeakable things to me and I killed him. His blood was still on my hands when the first mate ripped my back to shreds. And then the Red Velvet Lady summoned me like a sorceress with a spell and locked me in her round tower so I would do her bidding. She’s the figurehead of all the horrible things that have happened to me. To my world. I’ve fallen so far, Alice, and I just want to fly again, be free of all these horrible people.”

  “Free from me, Gavin?” Her arms went around him, and she kissed him. The warmth of her body went through him, and he closed his eyes, soaking in her presence. Thank God he wasn’t contagious yet.

 
“Can you do this?” she asked when they parted. “Not for me. For you. And for the world.”

  Gavin bit his lip and nodded. Then he put his hand on the Impossible Cube, took a deep breath, and sang one note. The crystal D-sharp thrummed through him, built in intensity, rushed upward, and roared from his throat. The energy blew the door inward so hard, it cracked in two and the pieces smashed against the opposite wall. Gavin continued to sing. The Impossible Cube glowed blue in his hands. He was aware of Alice shouting at him, but he couldn’t stop. Silky anger and disgust poured out of him, slid from his throat in an orgasmic black stream. The badness felt so good, and he felt so bad that it felt good. He struggled against it, then gave in. His body shuddered with the pleasure of it. The cube glowed brighter, and his anger thundered through the underworld until the stones began to crack, and still there was more and more and more. Edwina shouted something at him, and he snapped his head toward her. She dived aside, and the power of his voice shattered the stones behind her. More and more fury tore from him. A hand grasped his shoulder, and he rounded with righteousness.

  It was Alice. Her face held no trace of fear, only wonder and concern. Alice, who had also come from the hell that was London. He felt her love, both quiet and fierce, and the music buried within his anger answered it. Before the terrible note could touch her, he tightened his throat and changed it.

  The new note rang white and clean as a bell that had only just cooled in the mold and still remembered what it was to be hot and pure. It swept every color of sound along the cracked stone corridors and poured over the sleeping agents, who smiled in their drugged sleep. It rushed over Alice and sheathed her in light, lifting her gently off the floor while sparks flickered about her like snowflakes. The little whirligig on her shoulder clung to its perch.

  Gavin’s note faded. Alice drifted to the floor, her eyes wide. The glow faded from the Impossible Cube, and Gavin dropped it. As the cube tumbled toward the floor, it changed colors-blue to green to yellow to orange to red. The moment it touched the flagstones, red energy exploded in all directions with a bone-jarring whump and a blast of warm air that stirred hair and clothes. The cube was gone.