The Impossible Cube

by Steven Harper

  “Let’s go,” Alice said, “before I pry these bars open myself.”

  Gavin nodded around a thick throat and, feeling wretched, forced himself to turn his back and walk away from the children. He swore to himself that the sun wouldn’t set on another day before he came back for them.

  “We need to concentrate,” Alice said briskly. “How are we going to find Feng in all this?”

  Gavin did his best to push thoughts of the children aside. Alice was right—he needed to concentrate on the mission at hand. “I already know how.”

  He took the silver nightingale out of his pocket. Alice reached for it, but Gavin moved it away from her. “Don’t. It returns to the last person who touched it. Feng sent it back to me when the song I recorded for you in Berlin turned out not to help.”

  “So he was the last one to touch it,” Alice finished. “Brilliant!” She paused. “Why didn’t you use it when we were looking for him in the city?”

  He gave her a strange look. “I didn’t need to.”

  Alice pursed her lips, then muttered something that sounded like “Clockworker logic.” “Just toss it, then. Quick!”

  Gavin flung the little bird into the air. It sprang to life, fluttered in a circle, and headed for one of the staircases across the main floor. Gavin and Alice hurried to follow, dodging giant mechanicals and ducking whirligigs, feet thudding on worked stone. They dashed up the staircase with a wall on their left, just barely able to keep the little streak of silver in sight, and hurried down an arched hallway. Electric lights glared down from the ceiling.

  The hallway abruptly widened into a large, dark room. Even Gavin’s clockwork-enhanced eyes couldn’t make out details, though he got the sense the space was round. It was certainly large enough to echo. A single beam of light from high up stabbed down to illuminate a small circle in the center of the room. In the center of the circle was a square cage six feet tall, and in the cage huddled Feng Lung. Or, Gavin assumed it was Feng. A blanket wrapped his body and head like a tattered cloak. Between the blanket and bars, Gavin could see only part of his face. It seemed to be Feng, and the nightingale zipped into the cage to land on his shoulder. The figure in the cage didn’t react. Gavin wanted to run over and pull the cage open, but he also felt suspicious.

  “Does this seem strange to you?” Alice whispered as they entered the room. The place was cold, almost icy. The duo stopped about twenty feet from the cage. “I mean, stranger than it should be.”

  “Very,” Gavin whispered. He raised his voice a little. “Feng? Is that you?”

  In response, the figure in the cage raised his head. The blanket fell back, revealing his face. Alice gasped. Gavin’s heart jerked and nausea oozed through his stomach, though he also felt a strange and exciting fascination. Feng’s hair had been shaved off, leaving nicks and cuts behind. A brass spider the size of a hand sprawled across the right side of Feng’s head, its body covering his ear and its legs framing his eye, nose, and mouth. Four of the legs drilled into his skull and neck. Gavin’s hand went unconsciously to his own skull, and he bit his lip. Scar tissue puckered Feng’s cheek and his right eye drooped. A line of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth. He shivered with cold.

  “Oh, Feng,” Alice said. “What did she do?”

  Feng didn’t answer. He simply stared at them with his good eye. The nightingale perched motionless on his shoulder. Alice sniffled and, with a low cry, ran to the cage.

  “Don’t touch!” Gavin cried.

  Alice halted mere inches from the icy bars. “Why?”

  “It might be a trap.”

  Lights exploded to life all about the room. A barred gate crashed down to block the exit. Gavin flung up a hand to shield his eyes against the painful and blinding brightness. Alice cried out again.

  “Really, Gavin,” came the voice of Susan Phipps. “I’ll have to have a word with Simon. He should have trained you better.”

  Gavin’s heart sank. When his vision cleared, he saw the room was actually an operating theater, with Feng’s cage in the bottom and high, circular walls all around. Above and out of reach, a circle of chairs ringed the room, set so anyone sitting in them could observe the events on the floor. Perhaps a dozen people in lab coats, work clothes, and formal dress occupied the chairs, including Ivana Gonta in her pink tea gown. All of them wore copper collars with buttons on them. Among them sat Susan Phipps, flanked by Simon d’Arco and Glenda Teasdale.

  “Shit,” Gavin said, and not even Alice admonished him.

  “Indeed.” Phipps still wore the scarlet dress uniform and gold sash, though now she had added a matching hat with gold braid on the brim. “I’m actually disappointed in you both. You should have known it would be child’s play to connect you with the circus and follow you here. The Countess Ivana was pleased to be involved. She has a new experimental subject, and I have you.”

  “You’re traitors, Susan,” Alice said. “All three of you. You don’t even see it, do you? You’re traitors to every human alive, and you live in hell.”

  “You’re imprisoned in the circle,” Glenda pointed out. Her blouse was a deep yellow. “Not us.”

  “Simon,” Gavin said, “you were my best friend. Help me, instead of stabbing me in the back!”

  Simon looked at Gavin and swallowed. His fingers clenched and unclenched. Then he looked at Phipps, set his mouth, and straightened his black jacket without saying a word. Gavin’s heart dropped.

  “What did you monsters do to Feng?” Alice demanded.

  “Very important experiment,” Ivana called down. She was sitting behind a console similar to the one Gavin had seen on her bird the night before, her hand on one of the levers. “You should be proud that he has become part of Gonta heritage.”

  “And Zalizniak,” put in a man sitting near her.

  “How did you do anything at all?” Alice continued in the same demanding voice. She shook her parasol angrily up at them, drawing every eye to her. Gavin slowly slid his rucksack off, his eye on the lever in Ivana’s hand. “You didn’t even have him for a full day.”

  “That is Gonta-Zalizniak way,” said the man who had spoken earlier. He wore a lab coat with red-brown stains that Gavin didn’t want to think too closely about and a whirligig with spikes on its tiny feet sat on his shoulder near his copper collar. He pointed to himself. “Danilo Zalizniak. Our sister was not the only one to work on him. We all worked on him together.”

  “That’s what you tell everyone,” Alice huffed theatrically. “But we know clockworkers don’t work together. They all want their own way and eventually tear each other to pieces. Quite literally, in some cases.”

  For a moment, Gavin flashed on the conflicts between himself and Dr. Clef. How long before one of them tried to kill the other? Assuming Gavin survived the next few minutes.

  “Ah, that is for normal clockworkers,” Danilo said. “We are not like them. We serve the family.”

  And Gavin saw the pattern. “That’s what the collection is,” he said. “You don’t think of yourselves as individuals. You don’t even call yourself I. It’s always we. I’ll bet you weren’t born with the names Danilo and Ivana, either.”

  Danilo grinned a demon’s grin. “You have good brain. We would like to see it.”

  “He and the baroness are mine,” Phipps said. “You have the Oriental boy. As we agreed.”

  “So, so.” Ivana removed her hand from the lever and waved it negligently. “Perhaps we wish to change the terms of our agreement.”

  “What do you mean?” Glenda demanded. Simon remained silent.

  “Do you think that you are the only ones who know of this cure your Alice carries?” said another woman. Her voice echoed about the chamber. “It interests us very, very much. This cure is already destabilizing Europe, and we approve. We predict that within five years, all European clockworkers will be gone because cure will destroy plague. China’s machinery will continue to grow, and she will easily take all of India and Africa and possibly west coast of A
merica before cure reaches her empire and stops creation of more dragon men. By then it will be too late. China will reign supreme.”

  “No,” Phipps said flatly.

  “Feng,” Alice whispered. “Can you stand up?”

  The young man stared blankly, and Gavin couldn’t tell if he had understood her or not.

  “Feng,” Alice whispered again, “you have to stand up. Stand up!”

  Feng instantly got to his feet. The blanket fell away. He was shirtless. Corded muscle moved under ivory skin recently scored with a series of terrible scars that ran across his chest and abdomen. Tiny, neat stitches held the edges together. Gavin’s nausea returned. Hadn’t the spider on his face been enough? What else had they done?

  “Like or not like, Lieutenant,” Danilo said. “It will happen. We want it to happen.”

  “Why would you want that?” Simon burst out. His voice was hoarse with stress. “It would destroy your family. Already, Alice is spreading the cure through your city. Who will become the next generation of clockworkers?”

  “Is nothing, nothing,” said an old man who sported a set of steel teeth. “We have our own supplies of plague. You are truly stupid man if you think that we Gontas and Zalizniaks could not manipulate plague when it started here, in our own city.”

  “You can cure the plague?” Alice gasped. She grabbed Gavin’s hand with her bare one. “But I’d heard you couldn’t.”

  “Of course we can,” said the old man. “It is our secret. And we can infect people with it, and we have ways of increasing chances that victim will become clockworker. Is why we need children.”

  “Can you cure clockworkers?” Alice blurted before Gavin could ask the same question.

  Ivana gave her a scornful look. “Why would we look into such things? Stupid English. Even if we wanted to destroy our clockworker family, plague changes itself when it makes clockworker and becomes quite incurable. Waste of time.”

  “Enough discussion,” Phipps said. “I will take my prisoners and leave now.”

  “Nah, nah,” said Ivana. “If lovely baroness fails to reach China, Chinese Emperor will rule most of world, and probably hurt Ukraine. This is bad for Gontas and Zalizniaks. Lovely baroness must reach China to spread cure more quickly and destroy Chinese Empire as well. We have agreed.”

  Gavin gasped. The Gontas and Zalizniaks were on their side?

  “But we still think curing China is a bad idea!” Danilo Zalizniak protested. “We think that baroness must not reach China. Britain’s weakness will let Ukraine expand west.”

  Ivana touched a button on her collar. Danilo cried out and clutched at his own collar with both hands, his face a rictus of pain. “We believe we came to agreement,” she said mildly as Danilo rocked in his chair. “Is this not so? Speak English for benefit of our guests.”

  “No!” Danilo howled. “No! We— You are wrong! You Gontas are—”

  Ivana touched a button on her collar again, and Danilo screamed. Alice put a hand over her mouth. Gavin stared, both sickened and transfixed. The other clockworkers watched in complete silence, though some of them—presumably Zalizniaks—looked unhappy or angry. Phipps sat in the center of them all, clearly trying to swallow her outrage. Gavin suppressed a mean smile. For once, she had miscalculated, overplayed her ability to persuade clockworkers.

  “Baroness must reach China,” Ivana said. Her tone was quiet and kind. “Do we agree, brother?”

  “Yes,” Danilo whimpered.

  “And we should give her all aid necessary. Is this true?”

  “Yes.”

  Another tap on Ivana’s collar, and Danilo’s face instantly relaxed. He slumped down in his chair. Glenda and Simon exchanged startled looks.

  “What did we agree, brother?” Ivana asked, her finger still hovering over the copper at her throat.

  “That… that the baroness should reach China,” Danilo whispered. “And we should help her.”

  “Just so.” Ivana touched a different button on her collar, and Danilo arched his back with a great gasp, but this time the expression on his face read pure pleasure instead of pain. His mouth fell open, and he groaned. Ivana released her collar, and Danilo relaxed.

  “There we are,” she said. “We may clean ourselves up and change into different trousers, if we desire.”

  “We are grateful, sister.” Tears streamed down Danilo’s face. “Grateful.” He got up and stumbled out of the observation area.

  “We are sorry you had to see that,” Ivana called down to Gavin and Alice. “This is why experiment with Oriental boy is so important. If it works, we have no more arguments.”

  “Well,” Gavin said, setting his rucksack on the floor and opening the top, “if you want Alice to reach China, I suppose that means we should be on our way. If you’ll just open that gate…”

  “We said baroness must reach China,” Ivana agreed. “You, on other hand, are quite different. We need advanced clockworkers. You will join Gontas.”

  “Or Zalizniaks,” said the old man.

  Gavin had been expecting something like this, but the actual words still chilled him. Alice, meanwhile, had her traveling tools out, the ones rolled up in black velvet embroidered with Love, Aunt Edwina in gold thread. Ivana manipulated her console. A pair of long metal arms extended from the ceiling. They held a copper collar. Another pair of arms reached down with them, intending to grab Gavin and hold him.

  “Don’t fight us,” the steel-toothed clockworker said. “It will go easier. Believe us.”

  “No!” Phipps rose. “He belongs to me!”

  “Sit!” Ivana barked, and grabbed Phipps’s metal hand. Two other clockworkers grabbed Simon and Glenda before the Third Ward agents could react, and handcuffed them to their chairs. Glenda shrieked in outrage. Simon kicked at his captor, who easily dodged away. The metal hands snatched at Gavin.

  “Gavin!” Alice cried. She had a set of lock picks in her hands.

  “Get Feng!” Gavin shouted, and the plague slowed time. He dodged the set of grasping arms and snatched the collar from the other set. Angles and trajectories drew themselves in the air for him. He moved his arm a precise two degrees to the left and half a degree down, and threw the collar. The gleaming discus spun through the air and hit the first lever on Ivana’s console, the one she had been holding when the gate crashed down and the lights came up. The lever deployed, and gate cranked upward.

  “What are you doing?” Ivana howled. She was still holding Phipps’s arm. “How dare you?”

  She reached for the lever, but Gavin raised his wristband. More angles, more trajectories. The magnetic polarizer sent a tiny gear spinning toward her, and it pinged off a button on her collar. Instantly, every clockworker in the gallery, including Ivana, screamed in pain. They clutched at their throats and howled. Phipps, her metal arm still caught in Ivana’s grip, jumped and jigged in place as well, though she retained enough self-control to send Gavin a look of pure venom. The mechanical arms reaching into the cell went limp. Glenda and Simon struggled against their handcuffs, but to no avail.

  “Hurry!” Gavin said to Alice. “Before the electricity stops!”

  Alice already had the cold cage unlocked. She yanked it open, but Feng didn’t move. “Feng!” she said. “Come on!”

  At her words, Feng left the cage. Gavin snatched the set of ear protectors from his pack, put them on, and dashed out the doorway behind them. The three of them pounded down the long corridor, Gavin clutching the rucksack in front of him. They ran down the steps to the great room, and Gavin headed for the spiral staircase leading up to the main house, but Alice turned, towing Feng with her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, pulling one ear protector aside so he could hear her.

  “I’m not leaving these children behind,” she said.

  He sighed. “I knew you were going to say that. And I agree with you. Let’s go.”

  Alice’s cure had already spread to all the children, thanks to the close quarters of the cages, and they
looked healthier, more alert. She bent over the lock on the first cage, and the whistle hanging around her neck clattered against the bars. The child inside backed away from her.

  “It’s the same kind of lock they had on Feng’s cage,” she said. “I can open it almost as fast as with a key by now.”

  “They’ll come any minute,” Gavin said.

  Alice didn’t respond. In seconds, she had the door open, but the ragged little boy inside refused to come out. “Feng, can you tell him we’re here to take him away?”

  Feng didn’t respond. He simply stood near the cage, the spider plastered across half his face.

  “Feng!” Alice said.

  And then Gavin had it. “Feng,” he said, “tell the children in Ukrainian we’ve come to take them out of here. Tell them we’ve come to take them home.”

  Feng spoke musical Cyrillic syllables. The boy looked doubtful even as Alice unlocked the second cage. “Why does Feng listen to you?” she asked.

  “You have to give him a direct order,” Gavin said. “It’s what the Gontas were working on—absolute obedience.”

  Alice looked sick. “That’s horrible!”

  “We’ll figure it out later,” Gavin said. “Open the cages before the Gontas recover.”

  The second and third children were more eager to leave their cages, which convinced the first child. Alice had just freed the tenth and final child when a horde of gibbering, angry Gontas appeared at the entrance of the hallway leading back to the operating theater. Ivana was at the forefront. They quickly spotted Gavin, Alice, and Feng. With a shout, they ran down the stairs. They had paused long enough to arm themselves, for they bristled with weapons—energy pistols, thunder rifles, vibration knives, quantum swords. They boiled down the steps, bounding with plague-enhanced speed, and rushed toward the three escapees and the children, who cowered in fear. Their demonic howls echoed off stone walls, and spittle sprayed from their mouths. Phipps was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the electric shock affected her more because of her metal parts. Simon and Glenda were no doubt still in handcuffs.