The Dragon Men ce-3

by Steven Harper

  The Cube’s countless particles had all changed color. He could see it now. They were supposed to be paired with the particles in the Ebony Chamber, but they weren’t. They were pairing with particles in the earth, with particles that stabilized matter and made up gravity and affected time. When the Cube’s particles turned, so did the ones in the earth, and when enough of them turned, the planet would tilt.

  But Gavin could see it now. If the Cube’s particles paired with something else, the Cube’s grip on the earth would relax, and nothing would happen. All he had to do was redirect the pairing. He could do that if he understood the particles and became one with them so they answered his touch. He had to go down farther again, as he had almost done before.

  The Cube’s glow shifted again. It was a deep violet now, and the storm below Gavin’s feet was growing more intense. The battery gauge on his wrist gave him only a few minutes more power as well. All this he was aware of even as he examined particles so small and so fast, they barely seemed to exist at all.

  He reached down and in with his clumsy musician’s fingers. The particles scattered before him. He had to do this, find the balance. He could do it. He had only to achieve perfection and the balance would be his. Perfection was the key to-

  Uri’s voice came to him as if from a book of wisdom. “Perfection doesn’t exist, kid. One mistake doesn’t ruin the entire song any more than a single ripple ruins an entire stream.”

  But that wasn’t true. It was entirely possible to play the perfect song, build the perfect ship.

  Be the perfect husband.

  Perfect lover.

  Perfect son.

  But perfection was impossible, and anything that was impossible was therefore flawed. Perfection was therefore imperfect. It was a strange symmetry, an odd balance. Gavin shook with the implications.

  Secrets whispered at him, pulled his mind in a thousand directions, pulled him away from the particles. But away was also toward. Out was in. No matter which direction he went, it would be the right one. He let himself go, released his hold on everything, and let a universe of particles and atoms and molecules and lattices and planets and quarks and stars and galaxies all rush through him all at once. He was a river, one piece that nonetheless flowed from beginning to end. He let go of Gavin Ennock.

  An explosion rushed through him. He felt himself everywhere and nowhere, light and darkness, separate and together. He was himself and he was the universe because they were both the same thing. A calm ecstasy filled him. There was nothing more he needed now.

  He found himself pulled toward a single particle. With negligent ease, he pulled himself toward it and looked inside, even though he already knew what was in it. He found himself looking at the entire universe again from the top down. And within that universe was a galaxy, and within that galaxy was a star, and around that star orbited a planet, and above that planet hovered a young man who didn’t need a name anymore, for a name only served to separate him.

  The Impossible Cube was fading, shifting into a spectrum of light not visible to the naked eye. But the young man could still feel the Cube in his hands. In fact, he could feel his entire body, every organ and cell and neuron and protein and molecule of water. He saw the microscopic plants clinging to his brain cells, and he saw another balance-plague and cure. Yes.

  The Impossible Cube had warped time and sent the clockwork plague from the tortured present into the innocent past. The plague had then created clockworkers and a society that loved and feared them. One of those early clockworkers had created the Ebony Chamber, a balance for the future Impossible Cube. Or perhaps the Ebony Chamber had forced the creation of the Impossible Cube as a balance for itself. And then one day, a clockworker had created the Impossible Cube, which had warped time and sent the plague into the past.

  The plague itself was destroying the world because the plague had no balance. Alice’s cure wasn’t powerful enough. The world-the universe-needed something bigger to correct itself.

  The young man reached into the disappearing Cube. There was the energy, and there were the particles pairing up with the wrong partners. The battery indicator on his wrist gave him only a minute of wing power, but he wasn’t watching that. He reached down and felt a single person, a man walking through the streets of Peking below with newfound strength. The young man above looked into the older man below and saw Alice’s touch there; he noted how the cure devoured the plague, how the particles spun and danced. He saw the vibrations; he used his perfect pitch to match the frequency. Thanks to her, he could see exactly what needed to be done. He took a deep breath, filling every sac in his lungs, and-

  He.

  SANG.

  The long note rang like a trumpet, a thousand orchestras of brass, so powerful and sweet, it reached every corner of the world. It slid over mountains and caressed the forests. It stilled oceans and hushed deserts. Everywhere on Earth, people stopped what they were doing and looked up at the sky, entranced by the force and beauty of that one note. Later, no one was able to agree on what the sound was or where it came from, only that it made the heart ache with longing. People wept in houses and streets and factories and farms and fields as if they had awoken from the sweetest dream and only now realized what they had lost.

  The Cube took the sound and twisted it. The note, sung with the absolute precision of one who understood the universe from the ground up and the stars down, changed the Cube. Its particles changed. They paired with countless trillions of particles hidden away in millions of human bodies all across the planet.

  They paired with the particles that made up the clockwork plague.

  The little particles. . shifted. As one, they made a quarter turn and changed color. A fundamental change took place. All across the world, the microscopic plants that clung to human tissue and created the clockwork plague cracked and fell into their component parts. The young man saw it happen in his own brain; he watched the disease dissolve and disappear.

  Power streamed out of the Cube as the young man sang the plague away. The Cube’s glow faded. It turned dark, and still the young man sang. There were still pockets of plague here and there in the world, and he tracked them down, singing them into oblivion with the voice of creation. The Cube cracked. The lattices Dr. Clef had painstakingly constructed fell apart as the young man drained the power that held them together. The Cube crumbled, and still the young man sang, directing the power safely away from the Cube and into the plague. As the last bit of the disease vanished and died, the Cube dissolved into a fine dust that blew away on the wind. The salamander in his ear pulled painlessly away and fell into the dark cloud.

  The young man hung there a moment. It was over. The plague was gone. The world was cured. He was cured. And he was still alive and well. The prophecy had been wrong. The storm at his feet rumbled and flickered. He glanced at the battery dial. A few seconds left. He could make it back to Earth if he hurried. The young man dove through the clouds.

  A lightning bolt struck him full on. It cracked through his body and sizzled and scorched. The wing harness shattered, scattering glowing blue rings in all directions. Energized by the electricity and still defying gravity, they hung like water droplets while the young man plunged to the ground.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alice watched Gavin vanish into the sky, trailing blue light as he went. It was the last she would ever see of him. The trembling Earth dragged at her, weighing down every bone and muscle. Her heart was an aching black hole in her chest. He was gone. Gavin was gone, and she would never see him, never touch him, never hear his musical voice. How could she go on without him? The world was dead.

  Lady Orchid and Cricket, still dripping wet, arrived at the bottom of the steps. Phipps and Li also finally regained their feet. They all climbed up to Alice.

  “What happened?” Phipps said, but Alice couldn’t speak. She could only look to the sky. Phipps followed her gaze and then looked at Su Shun and the Jade Hand and the Ebony Chamber and seemed to work out
what was going on.

  “I’m so sorry, Alice,” she said softly. “We’ll see that he’s remembered forever.”

  It all crashed in at once-months of travel, weeks of stress, days of holding herself together, and all for nothing. After a lifetime of foiling the impossible, Alice did one thing it never occurred to her she might do: She collapsed, weeping, into the arms of Lieutenant Susan Phipps. Startled, Phipps froze a moment, then held her tight, patting her back and making soothing sounds.

  “He’s gone, Susan,” Alice cried. “I pushed him away, and now he’s gone.”

  “You had to do it. He knows you had to do it,” she murmured. “He loves you, and he knows.”

  Lady Orchid, meanwhile, was cradling her wrist stump and examining the Jade Hand without touching it. Su Shun still lay unconscious on the steps next to it in his lacquered armor. More tremors shook the courtyard, forcing everyone to stagger for balance. Cricket clung to his mother.

  Alice stood upright again. Her eyes felt hot and puffy. She had no handkerchief and was forced to wipe her face on her filthy sleeve. “What next?”

  “I don’t know,” Phipps replied. “This didn’t come out anything like we’d planned. If only-”

  The sound silenced them all. The purest, most beautiful sound Alice had ever heard reached through her, stilling all her fears like a gentle hand calming stormy water. The sweetness of it made her heart ache to bursting. It touched every part of her and filled her with love and peace and serenity. And most of all, the sound was utterly familiar.

  “Gavin,” she whispered.

  He had done this once before, but on a smaller scale, beneath the headquarters of the Third Ward. His voice and the Impossible Cube had lifted her and cleansed her, washed her clean. Now it was happening everywhere, to everyone.

  The entrancing sound rang on and on. Looks of peace and happiness crossed the faces of Susan and Li and Lady Orchid and Cricket and the soldiers and the Dragon Men. The sound continued for countless moments, filling the entire world, and Alice couldn’t imagine how anything so wonderful could possibly end. But then it did, and she wept again, feeling the deep loss of love and beauty.

  “Oh, Gavin,” she called to the sky, “what did you do?”

  There was a soft meow. Click was sitting next to the Ebony Chamber, looking at Alice with quizzical green eyes.

  “Click?” Alice said. “Where did you-?”

  Lightning flicked across the sky and thunder crashed. A strange feeling went through her left forearm and her hand. With a series of soft clinks, the iron spider that had burrowed into her flesh and drunk her blood all those months ago released itself. Quietly, and without pain, it slid off her arm and thumped to the ground next to the Jade Hand. The glowing eyes went dark.

  Alice held up her lightened arm and hand in wonder. It felt as if the limb might float away.

  “Are you all right?” Phipps asked. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s so strange. Why did it let go now?”

  All around the courtyard, the Dragon Men put their hands to their ears. The salamanders came away. They flung them aside or dropped them or crushed them in their hands with yells of joy.

  “They are cured,” said Lady Orchid, with Li translating a moment later. “I think the blessing of dragons is gone.”

  Su Shun groaned softly.

  “What must we do about the Jade Hand?” Li said in both Chinese and English. “Young Lord Zaichun is here. We could-”

  A few paces away, something clunked to the ground and clattered away. Startled, Alice picked the object up. It was a Dragon Man’s salamander, bent and broken from the impact. What on earth?

  Trying to understand, she peered upward. A figure was falling toward the courtyard. As it grew closer, she could make out the tattered remnants of wings. Her heart jerked. Gavin! He plummeted straight toward the stones near her feet. His arms pinwheeled-he was still alive.

  Alice made a wordless scream. She had already let him go. She couldn’t watch him die. But there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t fly. She couldn’t catch him. There was nothing for him to land-

  Click meowed again from his spot near the Ebony Chamber. With chilly fingers, Alice snatched it up. The lid was still open from when Su Shun had opened it so Gavin could put the Cube inside. Not quite believing her own audacity, she ran forward with it. This had to work, this had to work, this had to work.

  “Ennock!” Phipps barked. “Dive! Dive, you fool!”

  Somehow, Gavin heard and understood. Perhaps it was the last of the clockwork plague still at work augmenting his mind, or perhaps it was sheer luck operating in their favor at last. He twisted round and came down, hands first, straight as an arrow. Alice maneuvered the Ebony Chamber directly beneath him and held her breath. Gavin slammed headfirst into the Chamber. White light and a terrible noise exploded in all directions. Blind, Alice staggered but managed to stay upright. The lid crashed shut in her hands, and Alice blinked her vision clear. She found herself standing alone in the courtyard and holding the Ebony Chamber. The remnants of Gavin’s shattered wings lay in pieces all about her. They had been sheared clean off. Of Gavin himself there was no sign. The Chamber felt the same-no heavier or lighter than before.

  Trembling with fear and uncertainty, Alice set the Chamber down.

  “What happened?” Phipps asked beside her. Click had followed her down the steps. “Is he alive or is he dead?”

  “I can’t tell.” Alice clenched her hands. Dread and doubt made cold lumps inside. Her words came out in tiny bursts. “Oh God, I have no idea. I’m scared to open it and find out. It’s safer not to know.”

  “Just do it,” Phipps said tightly.

  The phoenix latch still read 000. Her breath quick and frightened, Alice unlocked the latch and opened the Chamber. Its hinges creaked like quiet laughter or a soft scream, Alice couldn’t tell which. She held her breath and peered inside.

  The box was empty.

  “No,” she whispered. “No. Please.”

  She reached into the box and felt around, as if that might change something. But all she touched was unyielding wood. Gavin was gone.

  Sorrow crushed Alice to the ground. She knelt amid the shattered remains of Gavin’s wings and pounded the stones on either side of the Ebony Chamber with her bare fists, not feeling the pain in her hands, only the pain in her heart. The solid stones refused to swallow her up. They left her there, cold and alone. Susan finally drew her up and away.

  “Come along,” she said. “We set out to stop a war, and we saved the world instead. Thanks to him and thanks to you.”

  Alice shook her head and choked out, “What kind of world takes away the one who saves it?”

  But Phipps had no answer.

  Lady Orchid, meanwhile, removed the battery pack from Su Shun’s back, set it on the ground, and raised the wire sword high with her good hand. Her son stood next to her on the steps, looking pale. Both were still wet from the well. By now, eunuchs and maids were moving into the courtyard from other parts of the Forbidden City. Most had fled the buildings when the tremors began and were now coming to a more central area for news. Surprise rippled through them when they saw the emperor half conscious on the stone steps and the Jade Hand in the grip of the Imperial Concubine. Alice saw Prince Kung, and with him were a great many soldiers. Her two whirligig automatons zipped in to land on her shoulders.

  “I declare Su Shun a traitor to the people of China,” Lady Orchid called over the nighttime crowd, and Phipps hastened to translate. “Proof lies here, in the way the Jade Hand has rejected him.”

  Zaichun picked up the Jade Hand. The bit of Su Shun’s wrist left inside the Jade Hand chose that moment to slide out and flop to the steps at Lady Orchid’s feet. The crowd murmured.

  “No.” Su Shun got to his hands and knees, shaking his head.

  “See how he kneels before the true emperor,” Lady Orchid continued. “See how he confesses his guilt. And there is but one punis
hment for treason.”

  Su Shun started to rise farther, but Lady Orchid was quick. She flicked the sword down. Although Su Shun saw it coming, he couldn’t move out of the way. His eyes went wide as the vibrating blade sliced through his brass-bound neck, leaving no blood. His head tumbled down the steps, crunching and clattering, to fetch up at Li’s feet. His empty eyes stared upward; his brass jaw gaped. Li shoved the head aside with his foot, and it rolled away like a piece of trash. Alice thought she should feel ill or upset, but she could only think of Gavin and the awful hole in her life. There was a brief silence, and then the crowd of maids and eunuchs cheered.

  “The reign of the despot is over,” Lady Orchid continued. “The true emperor stands before you now.”

  Zaichun gulped, set his face, and took a step forward. But Lady Orchid shut the sword off, dropped it, and took the Jade Hand from Zaichun. To the amazement of Alice and everyone else in the assembled crowd, Lady Orchid slid the Jade Hand over the stump of her right wrist. The hand jerked. It moved and clicked and inserted wires and metal strips. When it finished, Lady Orchid, in obvious pain but doing her best to hide it, raised the Jade Hand high. It glowed green.

  “The hand has accepted a new emperor,” she boomed. “One who will govern all of China with a firm and just rule.”

  The stunned crowd remained silent. Alice understood. The idea of a female emperor was unthinkable, impossible. The Jade Hand lent her some credibility, but-

  “Bring forth the Ebony Chamber!” Lady Orchid commanded.

  Before Alice could quite comprehend what was going on, Lieutenant Li brought the dark box with its gold dragons up the steps to Lady Orchid. Zaichun stared uncertainly. Li knelt at Lady Orchid’s feet and knocked his head on the stones just as a soldier would for an emperor. The crowd murmured again.