Lady Orchid gasped and pulled the box to her. “My jewels! Where did they come from?”
“That may be difficult to explain.” Gavin cleared his throat. “For a while, the Third Ward housed a clockworker named Viktor von Rasmussen. He discovered that there are different universes that exist side by side with this one. We can’t see or hear them, but they still exist. Dr. Rasmussen even found a way to bring different versions of himself from those universes into this one.”
Phipps shuddered at this. “Took forever to persuade him to send them back.” she said. “Caused no end of trouble, and a long line at the privy,”
“This box was created somehow like the Impossible Cube,” Gavin said. “It bends time and space around itself and creates. . a gate into other universes. Though I don’t understand how it works without a power source.”
“Anything you put into the box doesn’t actually exist in our universe anymore,” Alice put in. “When you set it to oh-one-eight, anything you put inside goes into a. . a piece of universe number eighteen, for want of a better way to put it. Change the lock to another number, and you’re looking into a different universe. You have a thousand universes to choose from-more than that, if you count the half spins and quarter spins that seem to affect the box as well.”
Gavin rose and said vaguely, “I’ll be right back.” And he went below.
“I am not worthy to understand,” Li said with a shake of his head. “This is very confusing.”
“Let me demonstrate.” Alice picked up Click and dropped him into the box. He yowled with surprise and disappeared inside, even though he was a bit larger than the box and the box was already filled with jewelry. Alice shut the lid on him before he could jump back out, noted the latch-it was still set to 018-and spun it at random. The numbers landed on 365. The yowling ended. Alice opened the box again. It was empty of both cat and jewels. Lady Orchid made a sound of protest.
“It’s all right,” Alice told her. “Click is still here, but he’s also gone elsewhere. You could say that he exists and does not exist at the same time.”
“How much material will fit in there?” Kung asked.
“I’m not sure, though it looks to me like this box is the embodiment of an infinite set. You can add an infinite set to an infinite set any number of times and still have room for more infinite sets, so I think you could add an infinite amount of material to this box and still have room.”
“Fascinating,” said Lady Orchid tightly. “Please bring back my jewelry.”
“Of course.” Alice reached for the latch.
“When you do,” Phipps put in, “point that thing away from me. I have a feeling your cat won’t be very happy.”
Alice reset the phoenix latch to 018. It belatedly came to her that she might be wrong and that she might have condemned Click to a terrible destruction. Her rash actions were almost like a clockworker’s, and she didn’t enjoy that thought in the slightest.
She opened the box. Click sprang out and rushed away with another yowl. He fled belowdecks past Gavin, who was coming up with the Impossible Cube, its lattices still dark. He set the Cube on the table opposite the Ebony Chamber. The Chamber was still filled with jewels. The Cube was filled with empty space.
“What are we to do with this?” Li said.
“I’m not sure,” Gavin said. “I just. . wanted it nearby.” He paused a moment. “Who created the Ebony Chamber?”
“Lung Fei,” answered Kung. “The same Dragon Man who created the Jade Hand and the salamanders. They are all connected.”
Lady Orchid, meanwhile, carefully tipped the jewels out of the Ebony Chamber. They made a gleaming hoard of stiff beauty on the tabletop. She was setting the box down again when she froze. “Connected. No.”
“What is wrong?” Kung asked, looking worried again.
“They are all connected. Kung, I know why the Chamber was empty, why there was no paper proclaiming the heir’s name.” She put her hand inside the box to feel around, then withdrew it with a sharp gasp. “What-?”
“It feels odd, yes.” Alice leaned toward her. “What did you mean just now?”
“I have seen Xianfeng open the Ebony Chamber more than once. But whenever he did so, he placed the Jade Hand over the phoenix latch. Like so.” She put her palm over the latch, covering it completely. “I thought it was to hide the numbers from the eunuchs. But now. . if the Chamber is connected to the Hand. . I wonder.”
“The Hand creates another infinite set,” Gavin said with a nod. “There’s oh-one-eight and oh-one-eight-A.”
Lady Orchid shut the box and tried other numbers-009, 005, 000. Every time she opened the Chamber, it was empty. This only seemed to confirm what she was thinking. “I believe he did declare an heir-my son-but we need the Jade Hand to open the Ebony Chamber to the correct. . place.”
“All of which only reinforces our-your-need to lay hands on the Hand, so to speak,” said Alice. “We became rather sidetracked.”
“Yeah. An infinite set in an infinite set.” Gavin slowly turned the Ebony Chamber open again and held the Impossible Cube over it. “So, what would happen. .”
Electricity arced blue from the Chamber to the Cube. It snapped and hissed like a nest of snakes. Alice’s hair rose, and she felt it prickle across her neck. A low rumble built swiftly into a high whine, and air moved through the stable.
“Gavin!” Alice cried. “Stop!”
But Gavin seemed caught in a trance. He lowered the Cube closer to the box. The whine grew louder and more shrill, a dragon screaming its own death. Power twisted and writhed around Gavin’s hands and spilled onto the table. The cups and dishes shattered. Jewelry flew in all directions. Everyone, including Phipps, seemed stunned. Alice moved. She shoved the table hard. The Ebony Chamber went flying, and one of the table legs caught Gavin’s thigh. His hands jerked, and the Impossible Cube bounced across the deck in the opposite direction. The whine faded and the electricity stopped. The Chamber remained dark except for the limned dragons dancing across it, and the Impossible Cube carried a soft blue glow except for a few dark places where the lattices crossed one another. A blanket of silence dropped over the deck.
“Goddamn it!” Phipps pounded the table with her brass fist. “And damn it again! Ennock, if you ever do that again, I shall rip your bollocks off and stuff them up your arse!”
Alice flushed at the dreadful vulgarity, the worst she’d heard in her life. “Lieutenant! There’s no call for-”
“Not the time, Michaels.” Phipps had lost her hat yet again and cast about for it. “Is everyone all right?”
Everyone reported that they were, including Gavin. Kung and Orchid gathered up the jewelry and piled it on the table again. Li scooped Phipps’s hat from the deck where it had fallen and returned it to her with something in Chinese that no one bothered to translate for Alice. Phipps responded from her chair, and Li bowed to her. He stayed bowed for a little longer than strictly necessary, or so it seemed to Alice, and Phipps gave him a long look with an expression Alice had never seen before as she put her hat back into place. Then she caught Alice looking at her, and her expression went wooden again.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin said. “The plague was. . I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”
He wouldn’t meet Alice’s eyes, and she knew they were both thinking the same thing-three fugues in one day now. Her stomach felt cold and sick, and more than anything she wanted his arms around her for just a moment, but not in front of all these people.
“What happened, then?” Alice asked.
“I don’t fully know.” Gavin gave the Impossible Cube an uneasy glance. “The two of them seem to share a connection.”
“Two infinite sets,” Alice agreed.
“Two sets of infinite.” Gavin’s voice was dreamlike. “One gives power; the other takes it. I can see it down to the matching particles. What one does, the other matches. When these two are one, they can split the particles in pieces, change gravity, tilt the world and slosh the ocea
ns. It calls to water. Always water. Tilt the glass and slop it over, flood the land, flatten mountains, and we’ll all be underwater.”
“Flood and plague will destroy us if you don’t cure the world.” The words of Monsignor Adames echoed from the Church of Our Lady in Belgium and slammed through Alice with the force of twelve hammer blows.
“Gavin, you’re frightening me.” Her voice was shaking. “Snap out of it.”
“Together they can flood the continents with their infinite. Tilt the world, slosh the glass. Tilt the axis, flood the-”
Phipps slapped him on the face with a crack. Gavin started, then blinked at them all with wide blue eyes.
“What’s the matter?” He put a hand to his cheek. “What did-?”
“We shall keep the Cube and the Chamber separated until we can study the phenomenon further,” Alice said briskly over the thickness in her throat. “Right now, we need to plan our way into the Forbidden City.”
This remark was met with general assent, though everyone found it difficult to keep their eyes off the Cube and Chamber, squatting like hungry lizards only a few paces away. Even the impressive pile of jewelry on the table couldn’t compete.
“Flood and plague will destroy us if you don’t cure the world,” Alice thought. But we’ll never put them together, so that so-called prophecy won’t come true, Monsignor Adames. Of that, you may be sure.
“The secret passage goes under the moat and both walls,” Lady Orchid said. “One end is found in Jingshan Park, which is outside the northern wall of the Forbidden City. The other end emerges just behind the Hall of Mental Cultivation, the emperor’s residence. Eunuchs guard several points along the entire passageway, and we will need to kill or bribe each one.”
“Can they all be bribed?” Alice asked doubtfully.
“I doubt it very much. Some will raise an alarm no matter what we do.”
“I thought you said you were one of only a few people who even knew the passage existed.” Gavin drew up a chair again. “What about all these eunuchs?”
Lady Orchid waved this aside with her fan. “Their tongues have been cut out so they cannot reveal its existence, and neither can they read or write. This is why they are easy to bribe-many are unhappy with their situations.”
“I can imagine,” Gavin growled.
“Once you have emerged from the passage, you will find more guards and servants,” Kung said. “They are everywhere. And then you will have to enter the palace, find Su Shun, and take the Hand from him.”
“I can build us some weapons,” Gavin said doubtfully, “but I don’t think we can do this alone.”
“The young lord is correct.” Li had taken up a position behind Phipps’s chair now. “You will need men to fight when you are in the passage, and men to fight when you are in the Forbidden City. The fighting will serve as a distraction for the guards so you can find Su Shun and take the Hand. Once you have given the Hand to Prince Zaichun, he can end the battle.”
“Where would we find someone suicidal enough to-oh.” Alice stopped herself. “Are you. . volunteering, Lieutenant Li?”
He bowed to her. “My men and I stand ready, Lady Michaels.”
She shook her head. “We can’t ask you to do that.”
“You saved our lives, Lady Michaels. I only ask that you do not disappoint us with refusal. My men and I only wish to serve you and, if necessary, die with honor.”
“We accept, Lieutenant,” Gavin said before Alice could object again. “And thank you. You and your men honor us with your service.”
Yet another bow from the lieutenant. Alice abruptly found the air too close. She got up and stalked toward the front of the ship, picking her way around the rolled-up endoskeleton and the piles of silk. One of the whirligigs flitted up from below to land on her shoulder, and she touched it with an absent gesture. Thoughts swirled through her head. So much was happening so fast, and she couldn’t take it all in.
And then Gavin was there. He put his arm around her waist. She started to pull away at first, then sighed and leaned against him. It was good to stand with someone strong.
“Penny?” His eyes were very blue, and the salamander made a brass circle around his ear. “Or maybe I should offer a nickel. Inflation, and all.”
She managed a weak smile. “It just came over me all at once that our plan involves bringing a number of men into the Forbidden City so they can fight and die, and then we intend to kill a man, cut off the hand of a small boy, and graft one of the dead man’s hands onto him. I don’t know how we came to this point, and I don’t know if it’s right.”
He nodded. “I think the fact that we’re questioning what we’re doing means we’re on the right path. The only people who don’t question themselves are tyrants and despots.”
“And. . clockworkers,” Alice whispered.
His arm tightened around her waist. “And them. Look, we’re risking our lives, too. Tyrants don’t do that-they make other people risk their lives. Besides, thousands will die in Su Shun’s war with the West if we don’t stop him.”
“I know.” She sighed heavily. “I do know. I just don’t like carrying this kind of responsibility. I never asked for it. I certainly don’t want it.”
“Another good sign, I think. Su Shun does want it, and look where it’s taking him.” He paused. “But that’s not the worst of what’s bothering you.”
“No.” She stared into space. “They’re asking you-we are asking you-to build weapons. That means you’d probably go into a fugue. It frightens me, Gavin.” He started to protest, and she held up a hand. “I know all the reasons we’re doing it, and I agree that we must. But the fear is still there. I’ll just have to live with it.”
There wasn’t anything else to say, so he gently turned her around. “We should go back and see what they’re planning.”
At the table, Phipps was pointing to the map. “So your spies put piles of gunpowder and ammunition here and here and here.”
“Indeed,” Kung replied. “The question is, what can we do with them?”
“Did he say gunpowder?” Alice put in.
“He did,” Phipps said.
“Hm.” Alice studied the map. “I might have an idea, then.”
“We have a few ourselves.” Phipps drummed her brass fingers on the table. “Gavin, what kind of weapons can you build by tomorrow morning?”
He glanced at Alice, who kept an impassive look on her face. “Tomorrow morning?”
“In three days, the Jade Hand will have grafted itself permanently onto Su Shun’s arm and give him a stronger hold on the throne,” Li explained. “It would therefore be best to go after him tomorrow night.”
“Oh.” Gavin ran a finger over the salamander at his ear. “If you bring me more copper, a steel bar, and some magnesium, I could probably build a pair of electromagnetic emission power pistols, and maybe a vibratory frequencation blade.”
“I definitely can’t translate that,” Phipps complained.
“Two large pistols that make zap noises and a sword that will cut through almost anything until the power runs out,” Alice supplied.
“Easily done,” Kung said.
“What was the lady considering?” asked Li.
Alice touched the little whirligig on her shoulder and thought a moment. “My whirligigs can follow fairly complicated orders if they are worded properly, though Click has a distressing tendency to do as he wishes. If we avoid using him, I think we can create quite a display for our Forbidden City friends, though you two lieutenants would have to work out a few military details.”
“I see.” Phipps turned to her Oriental counterpart. “Can we do that, Lieutenant?”
Li made one more bow. “It would be an honor, Lieutenant.”
Alice looked between them one more time.
Interlude
A pall of oily smoke and steam hung over the Outer Court of the Forbidden City. In the great space between the orderly clusters of red-tiled buildings gathered the machines
. Dragons of iron and brass coiled around themselves, hissing and muttering. Copper tigers raked the cobblestones. Mechanical elephants stomped heavy feet and trumpeted to shake the air. Flocks of small birds with sharp, shiny claws, wheeled overhead. Black-clad Dragon Men moved among them with tools, making adjustments, adding weapons, improving engines. At the behest of one Dragon Man, a tiger opened its mouth and a pistol cracked three quick bullets at a wooden target, which vanished in a pile of splinters. Another Dragon Man gestured at a live cow standing to one side of the court, and a hundred brass birds descended on the animal. The cow had time to make a surprised grunt before it was reduced to a pile of wet meat and yellow bones.
General-no, Emperor-Su Shun stood on the snowy steps of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Creamy clouds covered the summer sun and filtered the light drifting down on the hundreds of buildings, large and small, that made up the Forbidden City, safe behind scarlet walls and an azure moat. The city bustled with activity as it always did, but now a new intensity wove itself into the eunuchs and the maids. They kept their heads down and hurried more quickly about their tasks, trying not to draw attention to themselves. The concubines were especially worried-Su Shun might decide he didn’t want “used” concubines and demand fresh ones, which would put all of them out on the street. Most of them would end their days in brothels, since no one wanted to marry a cast-off concubine.
Su Shun stood above them all in his new suit of yellow armor, yellow for the Celestial Throne, yellow for the emperor, and made a grim smile that covered only half his face. The other half of his face, the brass half, remained immobile. Behind him rose the Hall, with its magnificent scarlet pillars and its gold carvings and its two tiers of swooping tiled roofs, though eunuchs were even now taking away the jade treasures stored within and prying gold from the walls. Su Shun had no use for jade or gold, but both would fetch a high price, and war was costly, especially a war involving Dragon Men.
When Su Shun had given the order to begin the sale, two of the eunuchs had dared to voice mild protest. Su Shun had raised the Jade Hand and spoken to Lung Chao, Emperor Xianfeng’s favorite Dragon Man. The Hand had glowed, and Lung Chao, with his enhanced strength and reflexes, had broken one man’s neck and crushed the other’s windpipe before anyone could move. Now the eunuchs obeyed with alacrity.
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