The Doomsday Vault

by Steven Harper

  “What’s that?” Gavin asked. He was pointing down a short corridor that ended in a round steel door that looked to be ten or twelve feet in diameter. Flanking it were four guards armed with wicked-looking rifles Alice couldn’t begin to identify. They certainly didn’t fire bullets.

  “That’s the Doomsday Vault,” Phipps said. “Sometimes a clockworker will create something so terrifying or dangerous that using it would be unthinkable, even in dire need. We lock all such inventions in the Vault, where no one can touch them. There’s enough power beyond that door to demolish the world a dozen times over.”

  “Why not simply destroy such devices?” Alice asked, aghast.

  “Believe me, Miss Michaels, we’ve had many discussions about that over the decades. Some devices are too dangerous to destroy. Other devices might turn out to be useful later. Another clockworker might invent a safeguard, for example, that makes the original device highly useful. In the end, Her Majesty decreed that we keep everything, just in case.”

  “How do they create these inventions, Lieutenant?” Alice asked. “And how far can they go?”

  “That’s the question that gives me nightmares, Miss Michaels. We used to think that clockworkers were bound by the laws of physics, and they could do something only if it were physically possible and they had enough money and the right equipment. But now the clockworkers are discovering that the boundaries of these physical laws are . . . porous. I hear them use phrases such as gravity sinkhole and extra-temporal commutation. I think that last term has something to do with traveling in time. I’ve had two—two—clockworkers tell me that matter and energy are the same thing, and another one said he could see entire universes that occupy the same space as this one. I thought he had reached the complete lunatic point in his illness, but then he turned up with three parallel versions of himself, and it was only with great difficulty that we persuaded him to send them back. The world is very lucky that they need extensive and expensive equipment to create their most powerful inventions, or Earth would have been destroyed long ago. They create with great glee and don’t think about the repercussions, which is why the Third Ward has to search them out and bring them here, where we can keep their work in check.”

  She took them to a particular door, selected a strange-looking key from a ring on her belt, and tapped it near the lock. The key rang—it was actually a tuning fork.

  “C-sharp,” Gavin said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Phipps said. The lock clicked, and she pushed the door open. “This is the sound laboratory, and we need you here, Mr. Ennock.”

  “Gavin!” Simon d’Arco rose from a marble worktable. “Glad you arrived. And nice to see you again, Miss Michaels.”

  “It’s been only a few minutes, Mr. d’Arco,” Alice said.

  “‘Simon,’ please. I said we’re very informal in the Ward.”

  “Do you call the lieutenant ‘Susan’?” Alice asked, genuinely curious.

  “No,” Phipps said.

  “And this”—Simon gestured to another man—“is Gabriel Stark, but he prefers to be known as Doctor Clef.”

  A shortish, balding man in coveralls, goggles, and a stained white coat looked up from the strange object he was working on. The object appeared to be a wire framework, but it twisted Alice’s eye. The lines of the cube came together... wrong. The more she looked at it, the more the front of the lattice seemed to fade into the back, or maybe the back was coming into the front. The man pushed his goggles onto his high forehead, revealing watery blue eyes set into a round face. “Good day,” he said in the broad, loopy tones of a north German.

  “What is that thing?” Alice asked.

  “Do you like it?” Dr. Clef said. “It is a cube, and it is quite impossible. Watch this.” He reached for a machine mounted on his desk. A wire led from the machine to the Impossible Cube, and when Dr. Clef spun a crank on the machine, the wires in the cube sparked and glowed blue. As Alice watched, the cube trembled, then rose a good inch above the table.

  “It can fly!” Gavin gasped.

  “Good heavens!” Alice said. “Is it a magician’s trick?”

  “No, no.” Dr. Clef stopped cranking, and the cube dropped back to the table. “It is an alloy of my own design. When the electricity goes through the metal, it ignores gravity a little. It allows the Impossible Cube to do what it must do.”

  “And what is that?” Alice asked.

  Dr. Clef blinked at her. “How can I know? It is not yet finished.”

  “It can fly,” Gavin muttered. “Fly!”

  “Doctor Clef is one of our more prolific clockworkers,” Simon told them. “His work is currently at a delicate stage, and he didn’t want to stop, so—”

  “Go on, go on.” Dr. Clef made shooing motions with his screwdriver. “Do not mind me. I make no sound.”

  “So come in,” Simon said. “The laboratory awaits.”

  The sound laboratory was a brightly lit stone room filled with equipment Alice didn’t recognize, some of it small, some of it large, and Alice’s fingers itched to take every piece apart and examine them from the inside. One wall was taken up by a variety of musical instruments—harp, drum, piano, violin, cello, flute, bugle, trumpet, and more. Another wall was filled with bookcases and books. Simon led Gavin to the instrument wall.

  “Do you know why we’re excited to have you, Gavin?” he asked.

  Gavin shook his head. He was still staring at the Impossible Cube.

  “We suspect you have a musical talent of a type that appears perhaps once a generation,” Simon explained. “Or even less often.”

  “How did you know he has such a musical talent?” Alice interrupted.

  “Our agents heard him play in Hyde Park, and we suspected,” Phipps said. “But before we could move to find out more, he inexplicably vanished. We couldn’t find him anywhere. You can imagine our reaction when Agent Teasdale got your letter and he turned up at your home, Miss Michaels, especially since we’ve been investigating your aunt.”

  “Have you?” Alice said in a chilly tone.

  “Of course. She falls under our jurisdiction. We learned of your aunt’s condition several weeks ago and sent agents to investigate. When our people arrived, they found her house in a difficult state. A trap near her front door instantly killed one of my people. His name was Franklin Mayweather, and he had a wife and two children.”

  Alice remembered the puddle of dried blood on the floor. Guilt stabbed her stomach, even though she’d had nothing to do with the trap or Franklin Mayweather’s death.

  “My people tried to capture the woman Edwina,” Phipps continued, “but she eluded them and vanished. Her house was heavily trapped, and after some investigation, they decided the place was too dangerous for further exploration, so they left.”

  “Then who demolished her laboratory?” Alice asked.

  “I couldn’t say. However, apprehending Edwina is still a high priority. She has already killed Franklin Mayweather, and we need to stop her before someone else pays the same price. In addition, the clockworker who controlled those plague zombies and wreaked havoc the night of the Greenfellow ball is still at large, and we have a number of cases on the Continent we’re overseeing. In other words, we need all the agents we can lay hands on.”

  “And musical talents such as Gavin’s are useful in the extreme.” Simon sat at the piano and played a single key. “What note is this?”

  “B,” Gavin said, tearing his gaze away from Dr. Clef’s cube. “I have perfect pitch. You don’t need to test that.”

  “Indulge me.” Simon played several notes, all of which Gavin named perfectly. Then he played chords, and Gavin named those as well. Occasionally he played one chord with one hand and another chord with the other, which Gavin helpfully pointed out. “Good, good.”

  “This young man is pleasing to me,” Dr. Clef called from his worktable. “How well do you remember the music?”

  “I learn fast,” Gavin said, taking out his fiddle and tuning it q
uickly. Alice leaned forward on her stool.

  “How fast?” Dr. Clef asked.

  “I’m running the tests, Doctor Clef,” Simon said. “I thought you had work to do.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” Dr. Clef bent studiously over his cube, though Alice could see him peering at Gavin, despite his goggles.

  “Play something,” Gavin said.

  Simon played in a minor key. Gavin listened through one verse and one chorus. Simon stopped playing, and Gavin played it through perfectly. Simon joined back in again, and Gavin played harmony. They played other songs back and forth, songs Alice couldn’t identify. Gavin’s fiddle swooped and spun, though every note echoed off hard stone. Dr. Clef gave up all pretense of working and listened. Alice heard a quiet longing in the music, a wish for every note to fly free, and it brought a quiet tear to one eye.

  “That was perfect,” Simon breathed. “Can you sing, Gavin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sing something for me, then. Your favorite song.”

  “ ‘The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies,’ ” Gavin said. He raised his fiddle for accompaniment and sang.

  There were three gypsies a-come to my door,

  And downstairs ran this a-lady, O!

  One sang high and another sang low

  And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!

  Alice stared. She had never heard Gavin sing. His light, clear voice arrested her. His white-blond hair shone in the bright electric light, and his lithe body moved with the fiddle. He played and sang with his entire soul, and Alice wanted to get up and dance.

  Then she pulled off her silk finished gown

  And put on hose of leather, O!

  The ragged, ragged rags about our door

  She’s gone with the wraggle taggle gypsies, O!

  Gavin’s voice and fiddle tugged at Alice. They sang of adventure, of new places, of casting off rules and conventions. In that moment, she would have followed Gavin anywhere. Dr. Clef had abandoned his work and was now sitting at Gavin’s feet like a small child. Gavin’s blue eyes met Alice’s brown ones, and she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to.

  What care I for my house and my land?

  What care I for my money, O?

  What care I for my new wedded lord?

  I’m off with the wraggle taggle gypsies, O!

  The song ended. Dr. Clef jerked as if he had been slapped awake. Simon applauded. Phipps stood nearby with her arms crossed, expression unreadable. Alice spun sideways on the stool, face flushed.

  “Marvelous!” Simon said. “Worthy of a concert hall.”

  “Not the first time someone has told me that, actually,” Gavin said with a wry smile. He tried to catch Alice’s eye, but she didn’t dare meet that gaze. “You still haven’t explained why this is worth something to you.”

  Dr. Clef crept back to his table and set back to work, one eye still on Gavin.

  “One last question before I answer.” Simon turned back to the piano. “What kind of interval is this?”

  He played it, and Dr. Clef yelled. Alice twisted on her stool in alarm. The clockworker clapped both hands over his ears and yelled and yelled. Lieutenant Phipps was instantly by his side. She touched his cheek with her mechanical hand, and he calmed.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor Clef,” Simon said. “I forgot you were in the room.”

  “What was that all about?” Alice demanded. She was still half-ready to run for the door.

  Gavin grimaced. “I don’t know the name of the interval, but no song I know uses it.”

  “A tritone,” Alice put in. “The Devil’s Interval. The one you asked me to play during the zombie attack.”

  “Exactly.” Simon closed the piano lid. “And it all comes back to clockworkers. They love music. They can even be entranced or hypnotized by an exceedingly well-played song, the more complicated the better, as Doctor Clef demonstrated. So you can see why someone who can sing and play like you do, Gavin, would be a tremendous asset to a group that collects clockworkers.”

  “Why tritones?” Alice asked. “We used one during the zombie attack, but no one would explain why it worked.”

  “They are horrible,” Dr. Clef muttered. “Ungeheurlich.”

  “Most clockworkers experience actual pain when they hear a tritone,” Simon explained. “The instrument you repaired during the zombie attack was designed to play music especially loudly, and you saw the impact a loud tritone had on that clockworker.”

  “In addition,” Phipps added, “it’s important to understand that all musical intervals can be expressed as numbers, determined by the frequency ratio.”

  “Frequency ratio?” Gavin said.

  “In simple terms,” Simon said, “when an object such as a string of a certain length vibrates at a certain speed to create a certain sound, it produces a certain number of cycles—a measurement of sonic energy. If you compare that string with another string vibrating at a different speed, you get a ratio. Perhaps one string produces three cycles each time the other produces two cycles, giving us a ratio of three to two. That particular ratio, incidentally, makes the sound of a perfect fifth. Two strings vibrating at a ratio of two to one will give us an octave.”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with clockworkers finding tritones painful,” Alice said.

  “The frequency ratio of a perfect tritone does not exist,” Simon said. “In mathematical terms, the ratio of a tritone is one to the square root of two.” Dr. Clef shuddered at his table.

  “The square root of two?” Alice repeated. “But that can’t exist.”

  “That’s what I just said. The square root of two is an irrational number. On the one hand, it must exist—we can see it in a right triangle. We can hear it in the frequency ratio of a tritone. But on the other hand, no two identical rational numbers will multiply together to make two. The square root of two can’t exist, and yet it does. Irrational. We think this is why tritones bother clockworkers so much. They sense aspects of the universe that normal people can’t, and the paradox created by that irrational frequency ratio causes them distress.”

  “And that’s why the symbol of the Third Ward is the square root of two,” Phipps said. “We shouldn’t exist, but we do. Which brings me to our next point. Gavin Ennock, you have a musical talent that would be very useful to the Third Ward. I would like to officially offer you a position as an agent. Will you accept?”

  “Yes,” Gavin said instantly.

  Phipps nodded, though her expression didn’t change. “And Alice Michaels, you have a talent for assembling and using clockworker technology, one never before seen. This would also be extremely useful to the Third Ward. Will you accept a position as an agent?”

  Alice looked at Gavin’s expectant face, then at Phipps’s impassive one.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?” Gavin said. “Al—Miss Michaels! Why not?”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it, Mr. Ennock,” Alice replied primly. “But I do wish to leave. Now.”

  Phipps’s expression remained neutral. “If you like. But first I have to perform a quick procedure.”

  She drew a strange-looking pistol, and Alice pulled back with a hiss. “What on earth?”

  “This is not a weapon, Miss Michaels.” Phipps unwound a cable from the stock and plugged it into a receptacle in her own forearm. A high-pitched whine grated in Alice’s ears just as Phipps pulled the trigger, and Alice was half-blinded by a dazzling pattern of color. She rubbed at her eyes, trying to regain her vision.

  “What was that?” she demanded.

  “Another clockworker invention,” Phipps said. “As I understand it, the light patterns disrupt the connections between the portion of your brain that stores recent memory and the portion that controls speech. In other words, you won’t be able to talk about anything that has happened in the last two hours, more or less. It’s standard practice for all those who see our installation but aren’t part of the Third Ward. Simon will see you out. Gavin will, of course, st
ay here to begin his training immediately.”

  And she turned her back on Alice to talk to Gavin. Alice left the room, leaving Simon to scramble after her. She kept an icy silence all the way up the elevator, out the main doors, and to the main gates, where Simon hailed a cab for her.

  “Can you tell me why, Miss Michaels?” he asked, dark eyes almost pleading.

  “I’m late for luncheon with my fiancé, Mr. d’Arco,” Alice said. “Good day.”

  And she was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  Dear Gramps:

  You must have got my telegram, so you know I’m all right. Now I can write a longer letter and tell you more than ESCAPED PIRATES. AM FINE.

  Some friends told me that the Juniper’s capture made the papers in Boston. You must have been worried sick. I’m all right. Really. The pirates boarded us and we fought, including me. I’m sorry, Gramps, but Tom was killed. So was Captain Naismith. Both of them fought, and they were brave. Tell Ma, but do it gentle, all right?

  And how is Ma? And Jenny and Harry and Violet and Patrick? Did Jenny get married? Was Ma able to send Patrick to school? He’s smarter than any of us, so I hope so.

  Anyway, I escaped the pirates in London, but Boston Shipping and Mail wouldn’t put me on another ship. Now I have a job at and it pays a lot better than cabin boy or airman.

  I guess I should explain some more. At my job is , so I can’t say much about it. Don’t worry! It’s not illegal or bad or anything. I’m helping people. I’m a sort of policeman. They want me because I can .

  Oh, come on! Does that have to be—hey! Don’t write that part down! Or that! Don’t you have a button for when I’m editing or something?

  Gramps, you can already tell I’m not writing this letter. It’s called a transcription, and it’s supposed to be my thoughts as they come out of me, like a song I make up as I go. I’m speaking, and my words are being written on a kind of printing machine for me by —fine, by someone else. The blocks out what I’m not supposed to talk about, and corrects my grammar, too.