Fires of Invention

by J. Scott Savage

  “I am,” Trenton said, pleased that someone had recognized him. Maybe his reputation was spreading.

  The tall boy returned to his grinding, but Trenton thought he caught a scowl thrown in his direction.

  “Darn fool idea,” the man groused. “Could’a got yourself killed. So what do you want?”

  That wasn’t the response Trenton had expected. “I, um, w-was wondering,” he stuttered, “if you might ever have heard of a certain tool—a driver with a square tip and a star-shaped shank.”

  The man rooted his finger around in his ear and flicked something onto the floor. “Never heard of it. Never want to hear of it. Now get out of here before you mess the place up.”

  Trenton hurried out the door, wondering why his father did business with such a brute. But not before he noticed the boy staring intently after him.

  7

  Whatever the tube was, Trenton was definitely getting rid of it. Maybe it was an approved device, and maybe it wasn’t. But the last thing he needed was a black mark on his record, especially when he was about to start vocational schooling.

  He couldn’t exactly take it to the chancellor, either. The man would probably ask where he’d gotten it and why he hadn’t turned it in immediately. Or worse, blame him for making the device. It would be easy for the chancellor to claim that the tube was Trenton’s, even though there wasn’t a shred of proof.

  He’d have to find a place to get rid of the tube where no one could tie it back to him or his family. Better yet, a place where no one would find it at all—where a bad gear couldn’t cause the machine of society to break down.

  An incinerator? If the tube melted, there would be no evidence left behind and no way for the owner to retrieve it.

  Halfway back to his apartment building, Trenton paused to watch the trolley steam past. Although he’d seen it hundreds of times, he never stopped being fascinated by the gleaming pistons, spoked wheels, and most of all, the huffing and puffing engine that provided the power to pull riders and freight around the city. What he wouldn’t give to dig into that engine and poke around.

  When the last car chugged by, he crossed the tracks and turned into an alley between two buildings. A few seconds later, a man followed him into the alley. A coincidence, probably. Lots of people lived in the city, and this was a popular shortcut for reaching apartment buildings down the block. Still, as jumpy as he was, having someone behind Trenton made him uncomfortable.

  What if word had gotten out that he was asking questions about a tool no one had heard of? What if a shopkeeper had warned authorities that a potential inventor was on the loose? He picked up his pace while watching the man out of the corner of his eye. He was tall—made even taller by a shabby top hat with a brass-studded leather band. His black coat was buttoned all the way up to his chin and was so long that it dragged on the ground.

  Trenton sped up, and behind him, the man walked faster, heavy boots crunching the gravel with each authoritative step. What if it was someone from the security force? Had they recognized him? He broke into a jog, rounded the corner to the right, and ducked into an apartment building. Hiding behind the door, he watched the end of the alley. If the man turned this direction, he’d run up the stairs and wait until they quit looking for him.

  What if he came inside the building? What if there was more than one person following him? Sweat dripped down the back of Trenton’s neck as he imagined a group of security officers led by Marshal Darrow searching his room. It wouldn’t be long before they discovered the tube under his mattress. What then? What would his mother say? This time there wouldn’t be an offer of retraining. They’d lock him up permanently, or worse.

  The man in the top hat reached the end of the alley and turned left without a pause. His heart pounding, Trenton waited for the man to turn around. But he didn’t. Whoever he was, the man in the long coat didn’t seem to be looking for him at all. No one had called the authorities. His relief made him so giddy he had to put his hands to his mouth to cover the laughter that forced its way out of him.

  A door banged on the floor above him, and a man yelled, “Someone down there?”

  Trenton threw the front door open and ran into the street, laughing so hard that the bump on the front of his head throbbed. He ran to the end of the block, cut across the park, and turned into the narrow lane between his apartment building and the next one over.

  The man in the top hat stepped out of the shadows.

  Before Trenton could react, the man was on him—grabbing him by the shoulders, spinning him around, and shoving him against the wall.

  The man began searching Trenton’s pockets.

  “What do you want?” Trenton gasped, trying to pull away. “I didn’t do anything, I swear. Whatever you heard is a lie.”

  “Where is it?” the man asked. Except it wasn’t a man at all. Trenton recognized the high-pitched voice.

  “I know you.” He spun around, twisting out of the boy’s grip. “You’re the kid from the shop.”

  The boy seemed to hesitate for a moment, then shoved him again, knocking Trenton’s head on the bricks. “What did you do with it?”

  Trenton pushed him away. “Do with what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He glared at the boy’s pale face and dark, nearly black, eyes. This was no security officer. Trenton regained his confidence. “Does your boss know you treat customers this way? I’ll bet he’d can you if he knew what you were up to.”

  He expected the boy to back down after a threat; no one wanted to lose a job, especially a kid who couldn’t be more than a year or two older than Trenton. The boy pulled back a fist and punched him in the mouth.

  For a second, Trenton could only stare in shock. Violence against another citizen meant guaranteed retraining. The boy raised his fist again, and Trenton rammed him in the stomach with his head.

  The two of them wrestled on the ground in clear sight of anyone who might walk by. What kind of person would attack someone in broad daylight? Talk about a twisted cog. Trenton had never fought in his life, but it was either that or get beaten. Though the tall boy was lightweight—little more than skin and bones—he was full of tricks—biting, kicking, throwing dirt in Trenton’s eyes.

  He was wiry, too. Every time Trenton managed to get on top of him, the boy twisted away. It was like he’d been fighting all his life. Trenton thought he had the boy caught in a headlock, but the kid slithered out of it, and suddenly Trenton was on the ground, on his back, with his arms pinned beneath the boy’s legs and an arm across his throat.

  “Are you going to talk?” the boy said, pressing his elbow against Trenton’s Adam’s apple. “Or do I have to break your neck?”

  “Can’t . . . breathe,” Trenton croaked.

  “And you won’t breathe again unless you tell me what you did with what you found.”

  He knew about the tube. Trenton felt his chest grow cold. “What are you talking about?”

  “The thing with the star-driver connection.”

  “Don’t . . . know . . . what . . .”

  The boy pressed harder with his bony elbow, and everything began to go gray. Trenton clawed at the boy’s coat sleeves, but his strength was rapidly fading. Right before he passed out, the pressure against his throat eased, and he sucked in cold fresh air.

  The boy picked up his top hat and shoved it over his spiky black hair. “I’m going to try this one more time. If you don’t give me the answers I want, I’ll let you suffocate.”

  “Okay.” Trenton’s neck ached, and his throat was on fire. He had no doubt that this kid was insane.

  “I know you have something. Where did you get it?”

  Trenton tried to roll away, but he couldn’t move. “The mine,” he finally grunted. “In the coal feeder.”

  The boy gritted his teeth so hard that Trenton heard them rubbing together. “Of course. I’m the one they should have sent down there. He would have known that.”

  “Who would have known?” Trenton asked, curious
in spite of the fact that he was pinned to the ground by a lunatic. “And why should you have gone?”

  The boy pushed down with his elbow again. “I’m the one asking questions.”

  Trenton nodded.

  “Where is it now?”

  “I threw it away,” Trenton said. “In an incinerator.”

  The boy’s eyes went wild. He put both hands around Trenton’s neck. “I told you—no more lies. If you had destroyed it, you wouldn’t have asked about the star driver.”

  “Okay,” Trenton gasped. “I didn’t get rid of it. But I’m going to. Trust me, you don’t want it. Do you have any idea what they do to people who make unapproved devices?”

  “You mean to inventors?” The boy chuckled. “Yes. I know what they do to inventors.”

  Above them, a window slid open, and a woman yelled down. “You there, in the street. What are you doing?”

  The boy looked up, and Trenton took the chance to roll out from under him. He jumped to his feet and raised his fists. The boy stepped forward, and Trenton backed away, balled hands held high. He noticed a piece of broken concrete in the street and picked it up.

  “Don’t come near me, or I’ll . . . I’ll hurt you.”

  “Fighting!” the woman shouted. “Those boys are fighting. Someone alert security.”

  The boy glanced around the alley, then backed away. “I know who you are. Next time you’d better have the . . . the thing you found.”

  “I won’t give it to you,” Trenton said.

  “You will, or you’ll be sorry.” The boy straightened his coat and hat. “Don’t even think about getting rid of it between now and then. If you do, I will kill you.”

  Running footsteps sounded from down the street, and someone shouted, “This way!”

  Trenton turned and raced in the other direction. When he looked back, the boy was gone. Trenton ran to his apartment building, pounded down the hallway, through his front door, and into his bedroom. He slammed the door behind him and reached under the mattress. For a second he thought the tube was gone, then his fingers closed around the cool metal.

  He stared at the gold tube. What he had found? And what was he going to do about it?

  8

  The next day at school, Trenton kept glancing toward the door, waiting for either the boy or security to show up. Why hadn’t he thrown away the device when he’d had the chance? Or shown it to his father? Right after deciding he’d never do anything to get in trouble, he’d gone straight out and asked every mechanic, tinker, and repair shop about an unapproved tool. He might as well have painted a sign on the back of his shirt saying “Arrest me.”

  He missed half of the answers on a math test and spent twenty minutes reading the wrong chapter of his English textbook.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Mrs. Staheli asked after she’d called on him twice for the same answer. “We studied that two weeks ago.”

  “What? Oh, yeah, I’m . . . fine¸” he said to the laughter of the other kids in his class.

  But he wasn’t fine. He ate his lunch inside the classroom and spent every minute of the day watching for the boy in the long coat and top hat. When the final bell sounded, he didn’t know whether to be relieved that no one had come for him, or terrified that now he had to face the walk home.

  Staying in the middle of the pack of students filing out of the building, he scanned the playground and nearby streets for anyone out of the ordinary. Other than parents waiting for their children, the only person he didn’t recognize was a girl with blousy black-and-red-striped pants tucked into knee-high boots, a leather vest laced up the front over a white tank top, and slicked-down black hair. He didn’t remember having seen her before, but since she was neither a security officer nor a boy, he didn’t worry about her.

  He kept with the other kids as much as possible and managed to make it almost to his apartment before someone stepped up beside him.

  “You looking for a boy in a top hat and a long coat?” a voice whispered.

  Trenton jumped. It was the girl he’d seen outside the school. He looked quickly around, but except for a couple of little kids skipping toward the playground, the two of them were alone.

  “Have you seen him?” Trenton asked the girl. “I think he might be crazy.”

  “Oh, he is,” the girl whispered. And then, in a high-pitched voice that Trenton recognized at once, she added, “I should know.”

  Trenton stared at her, shocked nearly beyond words. It was him. Or her. She looked so different now. But he recognized the eyes. “You’re the boy.”

  She held out her hands. “Technically the boy is a girl. I was a little offended you didn’t recognize it at the time. But the coat did hide my shapely figure.”

  “You hit me,” Trenton said, still unable to believe that the girl in front of him was the boy who’d attacked him the day before. She was tall and skinny as a flagpole, and her hair was as short as a boy’s. But . . .

  “I kind of surprised myself at that. But it was a good punch.” She cracked her knuckles. “Bam. I’m kind of disappointed it didn’t drop you.”

  Trenton suddenly realized that the boy—the girl—he was talking with was the lunatic who’d tried to choke him to death. He turned to run, but she grabbed him by the shoulder. “I figured that hitting you wouldn’t do the trick this time. So I brought this.” She held out her right forearm, which was encased in a gold band. The band was covered with wires and gauges and had a small attached lever.

  She squeezed a lever, and one of the gauges moved with a click. “Every time I pull this,” she said, squeezing the lever twice—click, click—“it increases the electricity. By now, I figure it’s got enough voltage to throw you clean across the street.”

  “That’s not approved,” Trenton said, trying to edge away from her.

  Her lips quirked ever so slightly. “Oops. Guess I’m in trouble.”

  Trenton looked from her to the device. She was insane enough to use it.

  She nodded as though she’d heard his thoughts. “If you don’t want to get fried, you’re going to take me to my—I mean, to the thing you found. Hand it over, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Trenton took a deep breath. “I won’t do it.”

  She stared at him as if she hadn’t heard right. “Didn’t you hear what I said? If you don’t give it to me, I’ll—”

  “You’ll shock me,” he said, stiffening his shoulders. “I get it. You’re crazy.” He shut his eyes. “If you’re going to do it, get it over with.”

  He waited for several seconds. When nothing happened, he opened his eyes. “Well,” he said. “What are you waiting for?”

  Now it was the girl’s turn to look surprised. She clicked the lever a couple more times. “You want me to electrocute you?”

  “No,” he said. “But I’d rather go through that than give you the tube. I’ve been thinking about this all day. If I give you what you want, you’ll get caught with it sooner or later. And then it’s only a matter of time until security figures out who gave it to you. They’ll ask around, find out that I was looking for a tool that fits it, and I’m done. So go ahead and fry me. It’s better than being sent to retraining.”

  “The tube,” she repeated softly, rubbing a hand over her slicked-back hair. “What if I go to the authorities right now and tell them that you have an unapproved . . . tube in your house?”

  “It isn’t there,” he said. She moved the armband toward him, but he refused to back down. “I didn’t get rid of it. But I couldn’t leave it in my house, either. So I hid it.”

  “You hid it?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe this. How old are you?”

  “Fourteen—almost,” he said. “How old are you?”

  She glared at him. “Fifteen—almost.”

  “That’s only a year older than I am. What school did you go to, and what are you training for?”

  “I didn’t go to school, and I’m not training to be anything. I’m a repair technician, grade three.” S
he clicked the lever over and over, seemingly unaware of what she was doing. “Okay, so it’s not in your house. I can still tell the nearest security officer that you have it. Like you said, every repair shop in the district will remember that you asked around about the star driver. Cleaver’s shop can’t be the first one you tried.”

  Trenton bit the inside of his cheek. He’d feared that things might reach this point. But he was all in now. “I don’t think you’ll report me.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Didn’t you just say that I’m crazy?”

  “Oh, you are,” he said. “Only a crazy person would fight in the street and threaten another citizen with death to get their hands on an unapproved device. But you also don’t want to lose it. If you tell anyone about me, security will seize the tube, and you’ll never see it again.”

  They stared at each other, and he could see her trying and rejecting one angle after another. They both had a lot to lose.

  At last she sighed. “The tube. What does it look like?”

  He blinked. “You don’t know?” As determined as she was to get it, he’d assumed she knew what the device was and how it worked.

  She shook her head, and all the toughness went out of her face. She didn’t look nearly as scary when she wasn’t trying to be threatening. “I’ve never seen it. I just—I know it was left for me.”

  “What do you mean? Who left it for you?”

  “I can’t tell you,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand.” She looked so sad, he might have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been brandishing a deadly weapon on her arm.

  “There’s not a lot to tell,” he said. “It’s about this long and this big around.” He demonstrated the size of the tube with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s curved and has a—what did you call it?—star-driver slot on one side and a whole bunch of rings in the other side.”