“Actually, Mr. Sawyer, she deciphered it for me. This is tink Janae Nelson.”
She stepped up. “Mr. Sawyer, it’s truly a privilege to meet a tink of your ranking.”
“You know who I am? I’m surprised, you’re so young. Pleased to meet you, even if it’s under such dire circumstances.” He took her hand and kissed it.
“Speaking of the message, the terracotta warriors you put into the Chinatown address referred to the mechanical statues, didn’t they?” I asked.
Sawyer nodded, again looking pleased that his message had been received.
“You have a way to stop him, right, Mr. Sawyer?” Janae asked. “Surely you can cut the communications to the mechanicals or short them out—”
“Just fry whichever of these devices allows someone to command the mechanicals,” I said, “and we’ll get out of here. We’ve got the sky ferry down the hall waiting, and the guard is . . . well, he’s gone.”
“I can’t do that,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Janae asked. “Why not?”
He wrung his hands, his face covered in shame. “Mr. Montague would never allow me to operate anything like that from here for fear I’d use the mechanicals to get myself out of this place. The controls are in a special chamber in the mansion.”
“The mansion?” I asked, pointing upward. “Do you know where it is?”
“Of course I do. I’m the one who installed the equipment in it. The room is at the highest point of the mansion, in the tower, for maximum transmission purposes.”
“Come on, then,” Janae said. “You have to take us there.”
“Yes, of course,” he said with new resolve in his voice.
We’d only made it a few paces when he called out from behind us, “Wait a minute, I need to get something.”
Pulling my jacket to the side and exposing Hennemann’s pistol, I said, “This can blast a hole through pretty much anything. I imagine it can mangle any of the tinkware up in Montague’s command center.”
He backtracked into a vestibule off the side of the main room. “That won’t do it!” he called out. “You can’t risk disabling the transmitter. The mechanicals are already in place. Damaging it could inadvertently set them in motion early.” The boxy room lit as he entered. “We have to feed the signal back into itself again and again.”
I caught up to Janae. “Do you understand what he’s talking about?”
Obviously hearing me, he answered before she could respond. “An oversaturation of reciprocity interchange, Detective.”
“Yeah, that’d be the way to do it,” Janae said, taken with this esoteric answer.
I gripped her arm, causing her to stop at the opening of the chamber. “Uh, non-tink here. In layman’s terms, what are we about to do?”
“Have you ever held up a mirror to another mirror?” Janae asked.
I felt stupid as we kept walking. “No. I only need one mirror, so I only have one mirror.”
“All right, but if you did, it would look like the mirrors went on forever and ever—like a never-ending hallway. Mr. Sawyer can create an internal paradox like that between the transmission base and the mechanicals dispatched around the city.”
“Which causes what, exactly?” I asked, entering the room behind her. Sawyer was already bent over a metal table that supported part of one of the grey mechanicals.
If a human had been lying there, the scene would have resembled a morgue, if the body was only half a torso. I was reminded of a traveling magician who came to town when I was a boy and supposedly sawed a young woman in half. This was the top part, complete with head, arms, and abdomen.
Sawyer worked at prying the brass communication module from the forehead of the dormant metal man.
Janae continued with her explanation. “What does that cause? Well, let me try another way. Imagine if I gave you a glass of water and you responded by giving me two glasses back, and then I double that, so now we’re at four glasses of water. And this goes on, doubling each time. Eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on until—”
“We’d both drown,” I said.
“Now you’re getting it,” Janae said, giving me a pat on the shoulder that felt a bit condescending.
“That’s an excellent explanation, Miss Nelson. Would you please come around to this side of the table and assist me in removing the module? I think I may have designed this a little too well. The module inset is designed to withstand a tremendous amount of underwater pressure, so I didn’t plan on ever taking any of these out.”
“You want me to help you?”
“He said you’re a tink, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir, a level eight coggler technician.”
This caught his attention. “A level eight CT? And so young. You look the same age as my daughter. You remind me of her, except her eyes are brown.”
Her hands fidgeted. “I was going to take the Ronod 4-L test in two months.”
What was going on between these two?
He beckoned. “Well, come around here and let’s get started.”
When he turned to the tool shelves on the wall, she shot me a smile as big as the lab. She mouthed, “This is so exciting,” and scurried around to his side with glee.
An unfamiliar feeling twisted inside my heart. Was that a jealous twinge? Where could that have even come from? I suppressed the ridiculous notion and stared down at the lifeless face of the mechanical. The two tinks cheerfully called out what I assumed were names of tink tools and instruments as they noisily rummaged through various-sized containers. Was I the only one who remembered that the people in the Under were about to be drowned?
The metal face of the mechanical changed. “Hey, is it supposed to be doing that?” I leaned in for a closer look. “Hey, Doc, should the eye slit be glowing blue like that?”
What happened next occurred at blinding speed.
There was a loud metal clang like the slamming of a steel gate, and the half-mechanical flung its arms around my chest and arms, the weight of it nearly smashing my face into the metal table where it’d been.
I managed to pull back and straighten up, even with the mechanical clinging to me. I stumbled to the side. It felt like an anvil was strapped to my bruised chest.
Crying out for help, I clumsily swung the two of us around. Hennemann’s gun fell to the floor as I accidentally slammed us into a shelf of parts.
With the mechanical pressed against me, there was no way to get to the second gun in my shoulder harness.
I swung around again, and containers of vacuum tubes, springs, cogs, and other components crashed to the ground.
Janae called out my name, but the mechanical’s mouthless face blocked my view of her.
The half torso leaned back, pulling its face as far from me as its metal neck would allow while its vise-like arms tightened around my midsection. It seemed to stare into me through its blue glowing eye slit. I was certain that it was studying my face.
Something metal struck the back of the thing’s head with a loud clang. No doubt Janae was beating on it, but the mechanical didn’t yield.
I managed to ask, “Sawyer, what is it doing?”
“He’s looking at you!” he shouted.
“Who is?” I asked, adrenaline pumping so hard, I felt my heart was about to explode.
“Mr. Montague. He’s the only one with access to the mechanicals. The system is set exclusively for his brainwaves.”
Montague?
The grip around me constricted. “What . . . what do I do?” I could barely get the question out as it pressed its chest harder against mine. If Montague was operating it, I’d find no mercy here. No doubt he’d take the opportunity to repay me for shaking him in the study.
Not confined to the limits of human anatomy, the head leaned back even more. I envisioned a hammer rearing back to hit a nail. Before the death blow could strike, I swerved into what remained of the supply shelf.
The collision was more than the weakened stru
cture could take, causing it to collapse around us. I glimpsed Janae in my periphery jump clear of the falling objects. Slipping on the scattered parts, I fell to the ground. Luckily, the back of the mechanical absorbed much of the impact from the shelf.
The agony of my earlier abuse at the hands of the Densmore brothers was amplified a hundred times over, and spots formed before my eyes. I fought to remain conscious. I knew without a doubt that if I passed out, Montague would use the metal creature to crush me. I had to resist.
Like a voice from a dream, I heard Janae screaming to me.
“Kip, take this!”
The fog in my brain partially lifted.
Montague squeezed more tightly.
Janae’s voice rang out, “Don’t you dare die on me, Thorogood Kipsey! You made a promise to take me to him!”
Really? I thought. Nagging me at a time like this?
Something cold and metallic was placed in my right hand by my side. The sensation startled me, and I nearly dropped the cylinder. Janae’s fingers clamped around my hand.
“Shove Rodger up the bottom of its open chest cavity and push the button!”
My voice sounded muffled from under the shelf. “Won’t that shock me too?”
“Don’t argue. Just do it, Kip. Do it now!”
My thumb found the button to activate the device. It hadn’t worked properly on Bailey. “But how do you know that it’ll—”
“I set it for a lower voltage! Kip, do it!” she screamed.
Thoughts of my first encounter with Rodger flooded my brain. Remembering that excruciating anguish, the sensation of lightning coursing through my being, burning me from the inside out, that made me want to die rather than experience it for another second. Was I seriously considering inflicting that upon myself?
In another moment or so, the mechanical would most certainly end my life by crushing me—or I could choose to activate Rodger and probably electrocute myself.
My hand was slick with sweat as my thumb nervously twitched near the button.
Her voice pleaded, “Kip, you have to do it! You have to help me stop him from drowning those people!”
I found the hollow of the mechanical’s torso and pushed through a strand of knotted cables and wires as far as I could bend my arm.
I gritted my teeth in anticipation of pain and pressed the button.
The mechanical spasmed and then released slightly. I was still trapped in its hold, but not as firmly. A crackling sound came from inside it, and the metal man shimmered.
I gave it another sustained jolt. The arms contracted again, this time releasing enough for me to breathe again.
I zapped it a third time, my hand so tight around Rodger that it began to cramp.
“Die, you metal bastard,” I mumbled with the little breath that remained in me.
Its arms didn’t loosen again, but the blue glow of the eye slit intensified into a brilliant white so bright that I could see it through my closed eyelids.
When the sound of crackling stopped, there was a repugnant burning smell. I opened my eyes to a haze of grey smoke. The eye slit of the mechanical faded to yellow and then out. My body was covered in sweat.
Sawyer called out, “Detective Kipsey, are you all right under there?”
I grunted a feeble Yeah and remained motionless as Sawyer and Janae worked to remove the toppled shelf. I was exhausted and sorer than a beat rug. When they finally got to me, they still had to remove the bolts on the arms to get me out.
“You did good, Kip,” Janae reassured me. “Real good.”
My dry mouth made it difficult to speak. “How . . .” I cleared my throat and felt pain in my ribs. “How did you know?”
“Know what?” she asked, concentrating on loosening another bolt from the shoulder apparatus.
“How did you know it wouldn’t shock me?”
She mused for a second and then shrugged. “I didn’t.”
“Wait! You what?”
She forcibly snapped the top of the arm off the shoulder cradle. “I took a guess that it might not shock you. I knew that a low-voltage blast wouldn’t kill you, just muss your hair and make you piss yourself.”
“Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”
“It all worked out, and you’re fine,” she said, returning to her feet. She gripped the top of the mechanical. “All right, I’m going to pull this out from around you. Lift your back as much as you can to make it easier.”
Sawyer assisted, and I shimmied out from the remaining manacle-like appendage.
Sitting with my back against the wall, I watched the two of them work to detach the head of the mechanical. Sawyer seemed oddly pleased. “It really works,” he remarked to Janae. “I mean . . . of course, I’ve done testing, but this is the first time I’ve seen one operated remotely, and it really works.”
Good for him, but I wasn’t in the celebrating mood.
“The way we’d been talking about the mechanicals,” I said, “I thought they were simultaneously deployed. But Montague was controlling just this one, right?”
My question puzzled him. “Yes, Detective, but that’s different. Once the programming for flooding the Under is started, they will perform their tasks on their own like a player piano playing a tune off the roll.”
“Hmmm, is there a way to just change their instructions once they’ve begun climbing down? Can you reverse their orders?”
Janae joined in. “No, he can’t. Right, Mr. Sawyer?”
He agreed with a nod.
“Kip, it’s like a cuckoo clock,” she said. “The birdie pops out at a specific predetermined time. You can’t alter that, but you—”
“But you can stop the clock gears from turning,” I interrupted, “and if the gears don’t turn, the cuckoo doesn’t complete its task.
“Precisely,” Sawyer answered, pointing at the stuck cylinder. “That’s what this’ll do for us.”
I staggered to my feet and found Hennemann’s gun in the rubble. I checked it, a habit I’d recently acquired. Then I tucked the pistol into my belt. “If Montague launched everything right now, how long would it take?”
“As soon as the command sequence is initiated, an hour, an hour and a half at the most. That’s about how long it’ll take the mechanicals to climb down the stilts, move to their positions, and begin puncturing the water barriers. Once it starts, there will be no turning back.”
Janae held up the brass communication cylinder identical to the one Sawyer had slipped me days ago. “Got it! Let’s go.”
Both scrambled to their feet. Sawyer spoke behind me as we trotted through his labyrinth of junk. “For weeks, Charon have been delivering the pre-assembled marine turbine components from their sky skiffs down there. The mechanicals are too heavy for the skiffs, so they will descend down the ration shafts. Once they do, everything will be in place simply waiting for the water to pour in.”
Janae chimed in, “Mr. Sawyer, we discovered a bunch of small crates—hundreds of them, maybe thousands, in a warehouse in the Bedford sector.”
He answered her like an actuary running off statistics. “Three separate warehouses across the city, each containing over seventeen hundred battery boxes waiting to be filled. But that’s phase two, after the flooding.” He grabbed his jacket from a hook near the entrance to the corridor and began fastening it around himself.
In low voice, I answered, “Yeah, well, I don’t plan on allowing him to even finish phase one.”
When we made it back to Bailey’s guard post, I said, “You two go on and get into the sky ferry. I’ve got something I need to do.”
Janae didn’t like this. As I headed down the corridor to the Babbage area, she called out, “Kip, what are you doing?”
“Just take Mr. Sawyer and get in. I’ll only be a minute.”
A moment later, I opened the door to a pristine chamber a fifth the size of Sawyer’s lab. Except for the wood paneling that encased what I guessed were the Babbage machines, everything in the chamber had b
een painted white, the same color as the attire of the dozen or so men and one woman.
“Who’s in charge here?” I said in a commanding voice.
No one answered, but every head in the place turned in my direction. If confused looks were gold, I could’ve bought the place. It was obvious this crew wasn’t used to outside visitors.
I took a few steps into the room and rephrased the question. “Who’s Jim Nelson’s second-in-command?”
To say the room was silent would be inaccurate. My ears were filled with the rhythmic churning of different-sized wheels and the clicks of busy gears from the rows of Babbage machines, but no one spoke.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” I said, not trying to mask my growing annoyance.
When the others turned to face a heavyset man with glasses, he was forced to raise his hand. “When Mr. Nelson is away, I take the lead on the day’s computations.” He pushed his white-painted chair back and stood. “Mr. Nelson is down with a fever and won’t be back until the end of the week.”
“Jim Nelson is dead,” I told them. “He won’t be coming back.”
This revelation incited a series of gasps and murmuring.
“Your boss was killed two nights ago because he discovered that Alton Montague was going to have prominent city officials murdered as well as killing a lot of innocent people.” I conveniently left out that the “innocent people” were scrapes banished to the Under.
I felt every wide eye in the place on me. I pointed to the man who’d spoken. “What’s your name, sir?”
The large man took his glasses off and rubbed his forehead with the back of his palm. “I’m Leopold Beyer.”
“Well, Mr. Beyer, you’re in charge now. I need you to do something for me. The entire fate of Addleton Heights depends on it.”
I moved closer to his perfectly arranged white desk, remembering the symmetry of Nelson’s apartment. “Mr. Beyer, I need you to act as a courier and deliver something to Police Chief Ormond, something that your boss, Jim Nelson, died for.”
“Why should we believe you?” the woman two rows back asked. “What proof do you have?”
I calmly looked her over, masking my annoyance at her challenge. With her black hair pulled tightly in a bun, there was nothing to conceal the wrinkles that time had marked her with. I answered evenly as I stared her down. “Believe me or not, but if it were me, I’d abandon this place, considering you all deal in information, and having information is what killed Mr. Nelson.”
Addleton Heights Page 28
