“Which is the book restorer?” Elsa asked.
“All of that,” Leo said with a sweeping gesture.
The giant machine covered the back wall of the laboratory, taking up the entire width of the room. Several sheets of canvas were draped over it to keep off the dust, and they obscured its true shape in a way that turned it vaguely sinister to Elsa’s eye.
Leo said, “So, I suppose you understand now why no one ever tried to move the restoration machine.”
“Yes,” said Elsa. “Quite.”
He began removing the canvas covers, each one pulling free with a visible puff of dust. “It works as a sort of assembly-line process—scanning, trimming, scribing. You set the book in here,” he said, giving the leftmost hub of the machine a pat, “where it removes the pages from the binding—”
“Removes the pages!” Elsa said, aghast.
“Yes.” Leo shot her an apologetic look. “I’m afraid the machine will have to disassemble the book and rebind it when the restoration is complete.”
Elsa did not look upon this development with great enthusiasm. “It’s bad enough the poor books were lit on fire. We’re trying to preserve whatever subtextual content they still contain, not erase it. Won’t taking them apart effectively make them new books when they’re reassembled?”
“Mm, right. I’d wondered about that, too. According to Porzia, ‘theoretically, no.’”
Elsa pursed her lips. “You and your qualifications again.”
“Hey! This time it’s Porzia’s qualification. I wash my hands of responsibility.”
Elsa was not amused. “I do hope you understand that the books will be useless without the subtext.” If the worldbooks were effectively reset back to the condition they were in when they were brand-new, any content Montaigne had added—such as objects he’d carried in from Paris, or notes he’d written down while inside—would be lost.
“Only one way to find out for certain if it’ll work,” Leo said, folding up the last of the canvas and stacking it in a pile. “Shall we fire it up?”
She reluctantly set down the carpetbag near the first machine hub. “Very well.”
“Simo!” Leo called, and when the man appeared in the doorway, he asked, “Is there coal in the power room?”
“Simo!” said Simo enthusiastically.
“Get the boilers going, then,” said Leo, and Simo hurried off.
A few minutes later there came a rumbling from beneath their feet, the sound pitched so low it neared the boundary of human hearing and was felt more as a vibration behind the sternum. Leo, who had been fiddling with the controls impatiently, grinned and immediately reached for a large electrical switch on the far side.
“We’ve got power. Here we go.” He gripped the wooden handle of the switch in one hand and gave it a firm yank, then snapped it into place in the opposite position. The switch cast a rain of yellow sparks, forcing Leo to jump out of the way, and the restoration machine hummed to life.
He said, “Ready to start?”
Elsa reached into the carpetbag and selected the worldbook she thought least likely to be important—an older volume she hoped Montaigne wouldn’t have used recently. Unimportant as this first worldbook was, if it came through with the subtext intact, that meant they could repair all the others. She took a deep breath, let it out, and handed the book to Leo. “Let’s do this.”
Leo set the book inside the first machine hub, which neatly unstitched the binding and spat out a stack of loose sheets. He carefully carried the stack to the next hub. Elsa stood right beside him, their shoulders almost touching, so she could watch as he carefully fed the pages in one at a time.
She was suddenly aware of just how close he was standing, close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin warming the cool air. He turned to face her. There was nothing guarded about the way he looked at her now.
“Elsa, I…”
He’s going to kiss me, she thought.
But before she could decide how she felt about that, he mumbled, “Never mind,” and turned back to the work at hand.
Now Elsa felt as if the last ripe plum of the season had been dangled in front of her and then snatched away. Had she misread his intention? Was she merely projecting her own desires onto him?
Her mother had warned her how denial could enhance desire. Notice your desire, acknowledge it, then let it go, Jumi had instructed her that day when they sat together by the creek and watched the water, long before there was a sea to watch instead. If you want something from someone, that gives them power over you, her mother had said.
She had never really believed she would need her mother’s lessons on the subject of men. Elsa, who loved solitude and independence. How could it be that such feelings had taken seed in her heart? It must be the loss of her mother, the chaos of her abrupt departure from Veldana, leaving her unmoored and defenseless. She would have to be more careful, and squash this weakness.
After that, Leo kept his attention focused on the machine. When all the pages had been fed through, he took the stack of repaired paper to the final hub for rebinding. Elsa hovered anxiously, her confusion over Leo forgotten in the face of more pressing concerns.
The machine finished with a soft hum, and Leo lifted the newly bound worldbook. He held it out to her, his amber eyes alight with hope. “Moment of truth.”
Elsa sucked in a nervous breath. The activity of the machine had warmed the book, so it felt almost like a living creature in her arms. She lifted the cover and handled the paper to test for that distinctive new-book feeling, but the pages hummed low and dull with age beneath her fingertips—steady, but not eager and frenetic like the buzz of a new book. Relief flooded through her, and despite herself, Elsa broke into a smile.
“It worked! The subtext should be intact.”
Leo returned her smile, his expression like the clouds parting to unveil the full brightness of the sun. “The machine’s hungry. Shall we feed it another?”
Elsa pressed the warm leather cover to her cheek, allowing herself a luxurious moment of hope. “Yes,” she said. “We shall.”
8
WHAT A CHIMAERA THEN IS MAN, WHAT A NOVELTY, WHAT A MONSTER, WHAT CHAOS, WHAT A SUBJECT OF CONTRADICTION, WHAT A PRODIGY! JUDGE OF ALL THINGS, YET AN IMBECILE EARTHWORM; DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH, YET A SEWER OF UNCERTAINTY AND ERROR; PRIDE AND REFUSE OF THE UNIVERSE.
—Blaise Pascal
They made it back across the valley to Corniglia and down the steps to the station in time to catch the afternoon train to La Spezia. By then, the sun hung low over the Ligurian Sea, capping the waves with liquid gold, and a few wisps of cloud glowed unreal shades of pink and orange. Elsa thought she couldn’t have scribed a more appealing view if she tried.
Leo hefted the carpetbag of worldbooks, all now restored, into the luggage rack. There had been no time for a thorough check of each book—not if they were going to catch the train—and now Elsa couldn’t help fidgeting nervously in her seat, her mind cycling with fresh urgency through the questions that had haunted her for days. Who had taken Jumi? How was Montaigne involved? She felt certain the answers were waiting in the repaired books.
With a puff of smoke, they pulled out of the station. The two towns they passed through, Manarola and Riomaggiore, were even more strange and beautiful when bathed in the slanted afternoon sunlight. Then the train entered the final bend to turn inland, wheels screeching against the tracks and passenger compartments rattling. Elsa put out a hand to steady herself against the shaking. In a moment it was over, but Leo leapt out of his seat, his expression tense.
Elsa stood up to follow him a second later, confused. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but something’s wrong. We took that corner too fast. Didn’t you feel it?”
“It’s not as if I have an abundance of experience to compare this ride against,” said Elsa defensively, annoyed with herself for missing the significance of the shaky cornering.
“I’m going to check with the
engineers,” Leo said.
“Then I’m coming with you.”
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t argue.
They had been seated in the second passenger car. Leo yanked open the door at the front end and stepped over the gap to the adjacent car, Elsa at his heels. Some part of her yearned to linger there in the gap, the wind whipping at her skirts and the tracks racing by beneath her feet, but Leo was already striding purposefully through the front-most passenger car.
Opening another door, they found themselves face-to-face with the metal wall of the coal car. A narrow ledge wrapped around its side, leading to the locomotive car. Looking at it, Elsa had to wonder if the designer had really intended anyone to traverse the distance while the train was moving. They had to sidestep the whole way, hugging close to the wall of the car, coal dust smearing their clothes as they went.
When they rounded the front corner, the locomotive finally in view, Elsa considered if that hadn’t been a spectacularly bad idea. What if one of them had fallen to their death? What if someone stole the carpetbag while they left it unattended? But a quick survey of the cab’s interior revealed that the risk had probably been a necessary one.
One of the engineers was on the floor, struggling to sit, a hand pressed to the back of his profusely bleeding skull. The other engineer was frantically examining the controls, which had all been reduced to melted nubs of metal protruding from the backhead of the engine. The floor was littered with a collection of brass wheels and lever handles that had, presumably, once been attached to the controls.
Leo stepped across the threshold into the cab, and the poor engineer—the one still on his feet—nearly had a heart attack at their sudden, unexpected arrival.
“You can’t be in here!” he croaked, clutching at his ribs in a manner suggesting he’d also taken an injury.
“We’re here to help,” Leo said authoritatively. “What happened?”
“Sabotage. They destroyed the controls!”
The engineer with the head wound added, “Men in black … Didn’t see their faces.…” He attempted to haul himself to his feet but fell back into a sitting position.
“Keep still, my good man. Don’t worry, we’re pazzerellones.” To the better-off one he said, “See to your friend.”
The engineers ceded control of the situation, the one without the head wound watching Leo with an expression of unveiled awe. Elsa hadn’t realized the mere mention of madness carried with it such gravity and expectation. How odd Earthfolk could be.
“We’ve got to slow down, or we’ll be off the tracks at the next sharp corner. If you’re a mechanist too, as I suspect, now would be the time to confess it,” Leo said, brisk and matter-of-fact, making Elsa flinch with surprise. He didn’t see, though, as he’d already turned his attention to examining the ruined controls. “Looks like there’s not much we can do from here, unless we want to try disassembling a steam engine while it’s running.”
“That sounds like an excellent way to get boiled alive.” Elsa hesitated to say more, but now was not the time to play coy with him about her abilities. “What’s our alternative? Can we access the running gear while we’re in motion?”
“I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘access,’” Leo qualified.
She snorted. “Well, let’s at least have a look at what we’ve got to work with.”
Elsa turned back to the entryway of the cab, lay down on her stomach, and inched forward until her torso hung down in the narrow space between the rail cars. The corset stays cut into her painfully and made the already awkward position nearly impossible. Leo joined her, his blond hair sticking up as if from an electric shock as he hung upside down.
Trying to ignore the awful corset, Elsa watched the complicated interplay of rods and levers that spun the wheels. After a moment, a picture resolved in her mind of how the pair of pistons must work together. “What a lovely valve gear!”
“Yes, I’m rather fond of this design. Quite clever. Invented by a Belgian pazzerellone, I believe,” Leo said with fresh enthusiasm. “Are you ready to admit you have mechanist tendencies?”
Elsa deflected his question with one of her own. “Could we find one of those valve gears to disassemble later? I’d fancy a closer look.”
“I don’t see why not. Of course, there is still a runaway train to deal with,” he said mildly. “Hurtling toward our untimely demise, and whatnot.”
“Oh. Quite right. We should probably do something about that.” The adrenaline was making her almost giddy. She thought for a moment. “Release the coupling that connects the locomotive to the passenger cars?”
“It’s under too much pressure. The couplings aren’t designed to be detached while the train’s in motion.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Well,” Leo said, still hanging upside down beside her, “I can see good news and bad news. The good news is it’s an older model and doesn’t have air brakes.”
“Air brakes?”
“A centralized braking system for the passenger cars that runs on compressed air, powered by the boiler. So the good news is we can disable the boiler without compromising the brakes.”
“Ah.” From this description, Elsa could foresee the bad news. “No centralized braking means we might need to repair the brakes in each passenger car individually, if they’ve all been tampered with.”
“Precisely.”
Elsa shimmied back inside the cab and stood, then waited for Leo to follow. “You get started on the brakes, and I’ll shut down the engine,” she told him.
Leo’s brows drew together, and instead of rushing to get to work, he stood his ground. “First, I want to hear you say it.”
“Ugh, we don’t have time for this!”
His serious gaze fell on her with all the heat of a spotlight. “You’re right—and we don’t have time for amateur mistakes, either. Elsa, I need to know if you’re up to this.”
She huffed her frustration, but she was cornered and she knew it. “Fine, fine! I’m a polymath, all right?”
He nodded, the tense stillness of his body melting into motion. “Very well, then. I’ll see if I can pry the flooring up so we can manually engage the locomotive brakes.”
“Excellent.”
Elsa took her lab book out of her belt pouch, handed it to the uninjured engineer, and instructed him to guard it with his life. That done, she dialed the necessary coordinates and opened a portal to her laboratory.
“Elsa! Where are you going?” Leo, who was kneeling by the place where the brake lever used to be attached, called over his shoulder.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to find the right tools by standing here and wishing hard enough,” she said, and stepped through the cold blankness of the portal.
Her laboratory seemed especially solid after the shivering, jouncing motion of the too-fast train. In the main room, the wooden floor panels did not even creak beneath her shoes. Empty worktables stood at the ready beneath a broad, blank window.
She walked through a doorway to her raw materials room, where she kept supplies of every element found on Earth and a few that weren’t. Vats of molten metal lined one wall, and chambers of chilled gases lined the other. She had powders and crystals and fluids, all meticulously organized. Whatever item she was looking for would always be positioned closest to the entrance for ease of access.
She pressed her eyelids closed and envisioned the element she needed. When she opened her eyes, there it was, right in front of her: the vat of liquid nitrogen.
* * *
Leo pried up the floor panels and scowled at the damage done to the brake controls. Heat radiated off the steel wall of the firebox, where the fuel burned, and the pulse hammering fast in his veins only flushed him further. No tools, no time, and he had to jury-rig a way to force the brakes to engage. Sure, fine, but it wouldn’t be enough if they couldn’t also cut the drive power. The muffled roar of coal combustion served as a constant, terrible reminder that the train w
as gaining speed instead of losing it.
Leo heard the soft whoosh of a portal reopening. “Finally,” he said, without turning away from the brake mechanism. “Where have you been?”
“Get the fire doors open,” Elsa’s voice said behind him.
Leo looked up. Elsa had a large brass canister strapped to her back, a tube snaking over her shoulder attaching it to the long contraption in her arms, which she held two-handed like a rifle. She was wearing thick leather elbow-length gloves and goggles atop her traveling attire. She looked magnificent—every inch the pazzerellona she was.
“What are you waiting for?” she yelled at him. “Open the firebox!”
Leo shot to his feet. The lever that should have controlled the firebox’s small metal doors was broken. He grabbed a detached lever off the floor and jammed it in the crack between the fire doors, prying them apart. Heat blasted out, singeing the fine hairs on the backs of his hands, and he darted aside.
Elsa aimed the contraption into the firebox and sprayed some kind of liquid at the glowing coals. The liquid hissed and boiled, filling the air with a cool, odorless steam. Leo found himself feeling short of breath.
“Crack that window!” Elsa shouted, and as soon as she’d emptied her canister into the firebox, she ran to the opposite side of the cabin to open the other window, too.
Relief washed over Leo, as rejuvenating as the fresh air breezing in through the narrow window frames. “We’re not gaining speed anymore, but we still need the brakes,” he said, turning away from the window to discover Elsa already kneeling beside the opening in the floor, evaluating how far along he’d gotten.
He moved to help her, but she waved him off. “I’ve got this one. See if you can get the passenger car brakes working again.”
Leo felt an unexpected flash of anger at her perfunctory dismissal, but now wasn’t the time to bicker about who was in charge. He made his way back to the passenger cars, checked the pulse of the unconscious porter who was supposed to be operating the brake, and then got down to work. This mechanism wasn’t as badly damaged as the locomotive’s brake system, which should have been a relief.
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