The Doomsday Vault

by Steven Harper

  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.

  “If you’re done,” she said, “Lieutenant Phipps wants to see you in her office.”

  “Of course she does,” muttered Alice, who wanted nothing more than to go home.

  The door to Phipps’s office was shut, but Alice could hear the woman’s voice inside. She was giving someone a firm dressing-down, and her displeasure sounded clear, even through two inches of solid wood. Alice knocked and Phipps’s voice stopped.

  “Come!” she called.

  Alice entered the book-lined office. The odd transcription machine stood at the ready beside the desk. Gray fog pressed against the windows as if it were trying to get in, turning afternoon into evening. Gavin, newly bathed and shaven and so damned handsome, came to his feet when Alice cleared the threshold. Susan Phipps, behind the desk, kept her seat. Her metal arm and brass eyepiece gleamed in the lamplight. Obviously, Gavin was the victim of the dressing-down, and she wondered what had gone wrong.

  “As I was discussing with Agent Ennock, Miss Michaels, I’m torn,” Phipps said when Alice sat down. “On the one hand, I’m upset that you created such a spectacle in the City streets and called attention to our organization in a way that cost me enormous amounts of money to keep out of the newspapers. We don’t do things that way in the Third Ward, and Agent Ennock here knows better than that.”

  “Oh,” said Alice, nonplused. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “Granted. Unlike Mr. Ennock here, you didn’t go through Ward training. But that brings me to my other point. I do find myself impressed with you. No training, no plan, no support, and you still managed to bring in a clockworker on your first outing for the Ward.”

  “I don’t work for the Ward,” Alice replied primly.

  “Not yet,” Phipps shot back. “And I do want to hear your version of what happened. You can speak freely. Your fiancé and everyone else outside these walls will never read the report, and as I already pointed out, I’ve arranged for the newspapers to remain silent.”

  Alice glanced at Gavin, who nodded, and told the story, though she left out the true function of Norbert’s machines. The transcription device clattered and thumped, and every word appeared on the paper scroll.

  “Very well,” Phipps said when she finished. “Now I need to show you something downstairs. It won’t take a moment.”

  Before Alice could protest, Phipps swept her and Gavin out of the office and into the lift they had used last time. The cage sank into the stony fortress beneath the mansion, and Alice shifted her weight from one foot to the other, partly interested and partly wanting to get home. Norbert was no doubt worried, or furious, or both, and her first duty was to him.

  “While you were freshening up, we brought Patrick Barton down to the clo
ckworker level.” Phipps exited the lift with Alice and Gavin close behind. The chilly corridors stretched out in several labyrinthine directions. Clanks and thumps and shouts echoed against the stones. “Miss Michaels, you reported encountering Barton at a ball approximately one year ago.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he exhibited no strange behavior?”

  “Not unless you count coming to the Greenfellow ball in a badly cut coat.”

  They passed the Doomsday Vault, and the four armed guards came to attention.

  “Did you notice any markedly increased intelligence, heightened reflexes, an increased interest in music, or sensitivity to poorly played or off-key music?”

  “No, but I barely noticed him at all. He asked Louisa to dance, not me. Why are you asking all this again?”

  “Because.” Phipps stopped at a particularly heavy door and extended her metal hand toward it. The first two of her six fingers extended with a sharp sound and created a key, which she inserted into the lock. “The laudanum has fully worn off, and this is the result.”

  The door opened into a small cell with stained mattresses lining the walls and floor. Patrick Barton sat on the floor. He wore a dingy straitjacket. His hair stuck out in a dozen directions, his eyes were wild, and his straitjacket was chained to the rear wall. When the three of them entered, he shoved himself backward.

  “My Boadicea has fallen,” he whimpered. “Money and machines, cash and mechanics. You sold your soul for coins, and now you walk with an angel who fell from the sky. Are you here to pull me into a velvet pit or fling me into unforgiving air?”

  “He’s insane,” Alice whispered.

  “The earth travels through the sky and the sky pulls the earth.” Spittle ran down Barton’s chin, and words flowed in a waterfall. “The earth thinks it moves in a straight line, but the eye of God warps space, so the earth travels in a circle, a spiral that grows a little smaller each time, moves us closer to hell, even though we think we’re moving toward heaven.”

  “He’s in the final stage,” Gavin breathed. “How?”

  “We don’t know,” Phipps replied.

  “Final stage? What’s going on?” Alice demanded.

  Barton screamed and threw himself at them. Alice leapt back with a cry. Barton didn’t get very far. The straitjacket hobbled him, and the chain brought him up short. He growled and snarled like a dog on a leash.

  “Out!” Phipps ordered.

  Alice fled with the others right behind her. They slammed the door just as Barton began to howl. The heavy door cut the sound off. The trio stood in the hallway a moment, silent. Alice’s knees were weak.

  “I don’t want to do that again,” she whispered at last. “I can’t.”

  “How long before he dies?” Gavin asked.

  “Three days, perhaps a week,” Phipps said. “And that’s puzzling. I don’t know how much you know about clockworkers and the clockwork plague, Miss Michaels.”

  “Not much,” Alice admitted uncomfortably. “They don’t teach about it at finishing school, and clockworkers are . . . well, you know.”

  “Insane, yes,” Phipps said. “And people fear and dislike them, often with good reason, so they don’t discuss them in polite company. All right, listen—the Third Ward has made an extensive study of clockworkers and their pathology. Every case is different, but most follow a general pattern. When someone who is going to be a clockworker first catches the clockwork plague, their symptoms are very different. Most plague victims come down with fever and muscle tremors in the early stages. Those that survive are often scarred.”

  Alice clenched her jaw. She remembered with absolute clarity when her father and mother and older brother came down with the fever and muscle tremors that heralded the clockwork plague, and she remembered the helpless terror she felt as her mother and brother worsened and died. Father had worsened as well, and then recovered, more or less. He never walked again, would never lift Alice above his head so she could see the Queen.

  “The ones who don’t die right away or survive with scarring almost have it worse,” Phipps continued heartlessly. “Their symptoms intensify until they include delirium, loss of muscle tone, thinning of the skin, pustules, and sensitivity to light, which result in what the public likes to call plague zombies. Eventually they die as well.”

  “I know how that aspect of the clockwork plague works,” Alice said icily.

  “Your family is well acquainted with it,” Phipps acknowledged. “But clockworkers are different. People who will, through a mechanism we do not yet understand, become clockworkers, begin with different symptoms. The plague seems to work with their brains instead of against, at least for a time. In the first phase, which lasts three or four months, they show increased intelligence, insomnia, an interest in good music, and a strong dislike for bad music. They are not contagious, and we still don’t know why. In the second phase, their intelligence increases vastly, often within one or two specialties, such as biology or art. Their sensitivity to bad music leaps to include a sensitivity to tritones. They sleep very little, and they gain heightened physical endurance, as if their bodies were burning up future resources all at once. This allows them to work tirelessly on their strange machines and abstract mathematics. They also begin to think differently from normal people, which lets them commit acts of great brilliance or stunning cruelty. This stage can last anywhere from fourteen months to three years. The longest time on record that a clockworker in this phase lived was three years, two months, and four days.”

  “Until your aunt Edwina came along,” Gavin added. “We’re still looking for her.”

  “The third and final phase,” Phipps said, “is the one you just observed. The disease seems to devour the clockworker’s brain all at once. He loses all touch with reality.”

  “What does this have to do with—oh! ” Alice exclaimed. “I see! If Patrick Barton was healthy at the Greenfellow ball just a year ago, he hasn’t had time to go through the entire plague yet. That’s what worries you.”

  “Correct. We’ll interview his family and friends, of course, but even if he was somehow exposed to the plague at the ball—and it seems likely he was infected rather later—he should still be within the first or second phase. Why was the plague so advanced in him?”

  “Was that a rhetorical question?” Alice countered. “Because I have no way of knowing the answer.”

  “I can’t answer it, either,” Gavin pointed out.

  “A great many odd questions seem to come up where you’re concerned, Miss Michaels.” Phipps straightened her uniform jacket. “As Agent Ennock pointed out, we still don’t know the true fate of your aunt Edwina. The clockworker who plays to zombies also seems to have an attachment to you, and you just happened to be in that shop when Mr. Barton robbed it. It’s very curious.”

  “Are you insinuating something?” Alice asked hotly. “Because I resent the implication.”

  “I’m insinuating nothing. I want you to work for me and bring all this clockworker strangeness with you.” She handed Alice a piece of paper from her pocket. “Look at this.”

  Alice unfolded the letter and froze. Graceful script flowed across the page, and at the bottom was a seal in scarlet wax of a woman in a flowing dress mounted on a horse. The paper suddenly felt both heavy and delicate. “This is from the Queen. The Queen wrote to you.”

  “In her own hand,” Phipps agreed. “She’s polite—she’s never anything else—but she still regrets to inform me that if I can’t capture the maniac who’s been stirring up plague zombies and wreaking havoc in London, she’ll find someone who can.”

  Alice’s mouth was dry. She could imagine Victoria sitting at a desk with a gold pen and inkpot, her brow furrowed in thought. Her hands had caressed this bit of paper, and now Alice held the same bit. The connection felt almost too powerful to bear. “The Queen,” she murmured again.

  “We need to find this grinning clockworker,” Phipps said, “and I think you can help. Please, M
iss Michaels. Come work for us.”

  “No.” The word popped out by reflex.

  “Is it because of your position?” Phipps pressed. “A traditional lady doesn’t labor for money, I know, but actual work doesn’t seem to bother you. You could work for free, you know, or donate your salary to charity.”

  “No.”

  “You think your fiancé would object? We might be able to persuade him. The Prime Minister doesn’t know we exist, but a few high-level officials do, and I’m sure one of them would be willing to discuss the matter with him and—”

  “No.”

  Alice couldn’t help flicking a glance at Gavin. His eyes, blue as an April sky, caught her earth brown ones and held them. At that moment, a powerful rush of emotion made her knees tremble beneath her borrowed dress. This man had saved her life, and she had saved his. He was handsome, and thrilling, and made the angels weep for envy of his music. If she joined the Third Ward and worked with this man, she would either give in to base temptation or weep every night for what she couldn’t have during the day.

  Alice cleared her throat and spoke, though every word was a stone that crushed her down. “It’s simply impossible. But it’s nice to be wanted.”

  Gavin’s face fell. He looked unhappier than Phipps, and Alice nearly recanted then and there.

  “Lieutenant Phipps,” Alice said suddenly, “are you an Ad Hoc woman?”

  A look of surprise crossed Phipps’s face. “Of course.”

  “So you vote,” Alice pressed. “And your husband . . . ?”

  “Doesn’t object in the slightest,” Phipps said. “He died of the clockwork plague years ago.”

  “How do you cope?” Alice asked in abrupt desperation. “How do you deal with the death and hell you see in London every day?”