The Friday Society

by Adrienne Kress

  Michiko gaped, too. Though less obviously. Where moments ago there had been a grand cathedral, now there was . . . nothing. Just a cloud of dust and smoke, and flames licking the sky.

  Michiko watched the dark smoke curl upward, and then her ears were drawn to a faint siren far to the east. The fire brigade’s airships would be dispatched soon to shower down a heavy spray of water. Turning the heat into a white steam.

  “Can you believe we just saw that?” asked Hayao, staring in awe at the fire burning bright.

  Michiko shook her head.

  What a week.

  * * *

  IT WAS AMAZING how easily grown men could turn into young boys. Cora quickly dove into an alcove, pulling Lord White with her as the Members of Parliament collided with one another in the chaos.

  “My goodness, Miss Bell. This is all rather frenetic,” said Lord White, adjusting his glasses and sitting on the narrow bench below the window, crossing one leg over the other.

  “Indeed. What was it? It shook the whole building.”

  Lord White shook his head and then pulled a small brass box from his pocket.

  “Not now,” said Cora, assuming its contents to be some means of relaxing his lordship.

  But Lord White only smiled and slid the top of the box open so that it was now a long rectangle. “Keep lookout, would you?” He extended a small, metal, strawlike thing from one end, and Cora couldn’t help but look over his shoulder. The open box didn’t contain any illicit substance, just some gears and a glowing yellow center.

  “What in the blue blazes is that thing?” She had been pretty confident she’d seen all his inventions. Obviously, this confidence had been misplaced.

  Lord White gave her a wink, turned a dial, and a strange crackling sound emanated from the box. And then . . .

  Barker’s voice. “Sir?”

  “I need more information,” instructed Lord White.

  “About that sound, sir? And the shaking?”

  “Yes. As quickly as possible, thank you, Barker.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The crackling stopped as Lord White turned the dial again.

  Cora was speechless. “Where is he? He’s not at home, surely?”

  Lord White smiled. “Oh yes. Isn’t life just like that sometimes? Today is the first long-distance test of my tele-audio device, and it just so happens to be a day that it comes in rather handy. Funny, don’t you think?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  “Why do you think I wanted you and Harris to work on the commissions? Why do you think I hired him in the first place? I had to focus all my attention on this.”

  “Oh.” Was that what it was all about, then? Why hadn’t he just told her? “I thought . . .”

  “What?”

  She felt really silly now. “I thought . . . you were slowly trying to replace me.”

  Lord White looked stunned. “By hiring an assistant for you?”

  “An assistant for me? What in the world do you mean?”

  “Well, he’s a clever young man, but he doesn’t have your gifts. I thought you could maybe teach him a thing or two. Thought you might need help doing the tedious work while you got cracking at the inventing.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Honestly, sometimes his lordship could be infuriating.

  “I thought it was obvious.”

  “He said he was your new assistant.”

  “Well, he was mistaken.”

  Cora was astonished. She had nothing to say. She just stared ahead at the MPs running to and fro, and felt altogether ridiculous. Why had she ever doubted Lord White? Well . . . it wasn’t like he went out of his way to let her know she mattered either.

  There was a crackling sound again.

  “Yes, Barker?”

  “Sir, St. Paul’s has been completely demolished. There was an—”

  “. . . WILL LISTEN TO THE WORDS OF . . .”

  “. . . water ships. Seems to have been curtailed, however . . .”

  “. . . ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL AND UNDERSTAND THE GRAVITY OF . . .”

  Cora looked at Lord White, who was staring at the device with deadly seriousness. “What’s going on?”

  “Something’s interrupting the current. Someone else is talking.” He twisted the dial and the yellow glow faded out. He gave the device an unhelpful hit on the side with his palm.

  “. . . A MERE DROP COMPARED TO AN OCEAN . . .”

  Cora turned and stared out the window. The tinny voice emanating from Lord White’s device sounded far off suddenly. Not coming from his now-defunct tele-audio machine, but from somewhere else. She glanced back toward the room and noticed that the MPs had stopped their racing about. She stood and looked around the corner of the alcove. The men lined the walls, their heads sticking out through the windows, making Cora flash in her mind to the decapitated body of Dr. Welland.

  It was only a moment, though, and she had their alcove window open, her head joining those already sticking out. The voice was magnified, seemed to be coming from the sky. It echoed loudly around the city.

  “. . . ONE MILLION POUNDS AND I SPARE LONDON. YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT TO COMPLY. I CAN AND WILL DESTROY YOU ALL.”

  “Ominous,” said Lord White wryly, his head joining hers in the morning air.

  “Don’t you think it’s serious?” asked Cora.

  “What? The mysterious voice in the sky? Might be. But I’ve never responded well to histrionics.” He pulled his head back inside and Cora followed suit.

  “Didn’t Barker say something about St. Paul’s being destroyed? I don’t think this is an empty threat,” she said, bringing herself back to sitting next to him.

  “I don’t know what it is. But I think it would be best to leave it to Scotland Yard.”

  “Lord White!” Mr. Fish ran up to them and doubled over, short of breath. “Thank goodness you’re here. We’re calling a meeting of the House instantly to discuss how to respond to this threat.”

  Lord White rolled his eyes and sighed loudly. For a man who wasn’t a fan of theatrics in others, he certainly made use of them when it suited his purpose. “Don’t tell me we’re even thinking of giving in to such a demand . . .”

  “We need to debate the situation. Come, come now, sir. . . uh . . . your lordship.”

  Lord White was whisked away, and Cora followed, intending to observe the proceedings from the gallery.

  If there had been chaos after the explosion, it was nothing compared with the chaos in the House of Commons after being blackmailed by a voice in the sky. Cora was used to watching the men all standing and shouting at one another. Or at least shouting at the Speaker of the House in the way a brother might passive-aggressively yell at his sister through his mother: “Tell Sally I never want to play with her again . . .” “Tell Bobby that I don’t want to play with him either . . .” and so on. But Cora had never seen anything quite like this before.

  “Mr. Speaker! Would you explain to Mr. Weatherington that we can’t spend the taxpayers’ money on blackmail . . .”

  “Mr. Speaker, kindly tell Mr. Cox we have no time to deal with political philosophy . . .”

  “Mr. Speaker, will you tell Mr. Weatherington to just shut up . . .”

  And more conversations of the same kind, each overlapping the other. And worse, MPs were actually throwing things at one another, a pencil here, a shilling there, to get the attention of someone across the aisle. And then there was the haggard-looking Speaker of the House sitting at the far end, his forehead cradled in his hand, looking like what he needed more than anything was a good cry.

  Lord White stayed seated in his prime position in the front row and was having a quiet chat with two other MPs. Cora highly doubted that it had anything to do with the topic at hand.

  Cora knew how politics worked. She knew that eventually the Members of Parliament would have to settle down. Eventually, they’d all agree to take some action that nobody was happy with. But God only knew w
hen that would be.

  She also knew something else.

  Cavorite had been stolen from a murdered Dr. Welland.

  The British Museum and the Tower had been robbed.

  Citizens were dropping like flies.

  Moments ago St. Paul’s had been destroyed somehow.

  Now this loud, magnified voice was threatening London?

  None of this was a coincidence.

  Watching the men below her, yelling and red-faced, Cora felt surprisingly calm. She turned and left the gallery.

  Left the Palace of Westminster altogether.

  She’d never walked out on her job before. Certainly she’d procrastinated between tasks. But mid-job? No, she was a good worker.

  But what was the point of doing good work when everyone around you was acting foolish?

  The streets were empty. They were never empty at this time of day. But they were now. Quiet and still, and with a strange sensation of discontent, as if the hard stone beneath her feet were distinctly unhappy.

  She wandered to the edge of the river and looked to her left to see the smoke and steam rising from the place where a spectacular cathedral had once stood. An airship was still circling the spot, but the fire seemed to have been put under control by the water ships. Cora decided to move along the river’s edge toward the chaos.

  Still a little dazed.

  Even more than a little determined.

  She arrived at Embankment, very near the spot where all this had started. At least, for her. In the distance, two figures materialized as she approached. She said nothing even as she recognized one of them when it pulled off the unsettling silver mask. Not until they were face-to-face.

  Clearly it made sense that she’d be one of the only other people out and about. It made Cora reason that one other person was likely somewhere to be found as well.

  “Michiko.”

  “Cora.”

  Cora glanced at the boy at Michiko’s side. He was all limbs and at least a head shorter than her friend. And like Michiko, he was covered in dust.

  “We saw it,” said Michiko.

  “You saw what happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “There. Bright light. Flew to there.” Michiko pointed up to the sky, quite near where the airship was circling, then toward the burning cathedral. The boy tugged at Michiko’s arm and said something to her in Japanese; he seemed to stumble over his words, and once in a while he glanced at Cora as if his explanation needed to be heard as quickly as possible.

  Michiko nodded. And nodded. And then finally gave one sharp nod and pushed the boy behind her.

  “He say, come from there.” Michiko pointed to the water. “Come up, up, and come from there.” She pointed back to the spot she’d originally indicated.

  “That’s all he said?” asked Cora. The stream of Japanese she had just heard had seemed considerably more involved than that.

  Michiko looked at her steadfastly, and Cora decided to drop the subject.

  “Do you think,” she said instead, “that all of this is connected?” Michiko looked at her, not seeming to understand. “Connected,” Cora said more slowly.

  Say yes and make me feel sane.

  “All . . . connected. Energy. All,” Michiko replied.

  “Yes, but this, the robberies, the man in the fog, all the . . . death. Is it connected?”

  For a moment Michiko looked puzzled, and then slowly said “yes,” as if she’d already answered the question and wasn’t entirely sure what she’d said wrong the first time.

  Cora smiled. Michiko looked just as puzzled as ever. Possibly her smiling didn’t make sense to an outside eye, but it was good to know someone else saw things the way Cora herself did.

  And there was another one, too, another person who saw the connections.

  “Let’s go to Nellie’s.”

  38

  Plans

  “WHERE ARE WE GOING?” asked Hayao quietly, though he needn’t have lowered his voice. It wasn’t like Cora understood what he was saying.

  “We aren’t going anywhere. I am going with Cora. You are returning to your master.”

  “You are my master.”

  Michiko stopped and so did Hayao. “Then, as your master, I want you to go to the stall and get to work. You’re late enough as it is.”

  “Okay.” Hayao didn’t move.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s just . . . we’re going the same way, it looks like . . .”

  Michiko sighed and started walking again, faster now, in order to catch up with Cora, but also because monkey boy was starting to get on her nerves again.

  It turned out he was right. Not only were they going the same way, they were going to the very same location. Cora was taking Michiko to the blonde’s flat, the one she’d woken up in that first fateful night. The one that just also happened to overlook the market stall where Hayao worked.

  Michiko and Hayao parted before the arched entrance to the square. Hayao hadn’t shared with the old samurai that he was studying with Michiko, and quite frankly Michiko didn’t want to find out what the old man thought of her having the nerve to teach samurai. She already knew what she thought of it.

  But as she entered the square, it was impossible to keep herself apart from Hayao. The stalls were being manned with all diligence, but very few people were there to buy anything. Michiko had never seen the market so empty before. In a way, it was far more eerie than passing the demolished St. Paul’s.

  As she followed Cora to Nellie’s apartment, Michiko started to feel concerned. This wasn’t right, this working with other people. This wasn’t what she’d been taught. How could she focus on the task ahead with the weight of other problems, with other relationships in the back of her mind?

  Yet, here she was, almost glad to have some help in pursuing what was turning out to be a most formidable foe. Were the Fog and the voice in the sky the same person? She thought they were. There were no coincidences in life. And it was not a coincidence that she had met the blonde and the brunette. Over and over again.

  They ran into Nellie on the dark stairs leading up to her flat. That bird of hers was sitting on her shoulder looking concerned, and Nellie was overwhelmingly glad to see them both. Her lilting voice filled the empty hall with speech so fast that there was no way Michiko could follow it. Then Michiko noticed she was smiling in her direction. “Hi there, Michiko!” she said.

  Michiko replied, “Hi.”

  Soon she was following Nellie back up to where she’d come from and then the three of them were in her all-too-familiar room.

  Time for more talking. They really liked to talk, those two . . .

  * * *

  IT WASN’T MUCH of a plan. There wasn’t much to go on. But they each agreed to handle a task and decided they’d meet back at Nellie’s when their respective responsibilities were complete.

  And so it was that . . .

  Cora would find out who had placed the order for the device.

  Nellie would seek out Messrs. Staunch and Proper.

  And Michiko would investigate where that thing that blew up St. Paul’s came from.

  Thus, three girls made their very first plan together.

  39

  What Michiko Did . . .

  MICHIKO STOOD AT the edge of the Thames staring out across to the South Bank. Behind her, the wreckage from the landmark formerly known as St. Paul’s had turned into a heap of blackened embers.

  The object that had destroyed the cathedral had come from underwater; that’s what Hayao had said at any rate. Had it really? She didn’t think he’d lie to her, but what if he’d simply been mistaken? Then again, if it had come from the sky, surely the pilots of the airships would have seen something.

  She sat down to think. She closed her eyes and let her body relax. Her thoughts flowed out and away, and she let the world touch her. It was so quiet. So quiet for this city. She was surprised to realize that she’d grown so used
to the noise that she could now be struck by its absence.

  She heard a bird cry to its friend. A carriage somewhere passing down a cobblestone street several blocks away. She heard water lapping quietly against the bank of the river. And an echo as water passed beneath her, underground, the sound rising up to greet her through a sewer grate.

  She opened her eyes.

  What if the rocket hadn’t come from under the river? What if it had simply passed through it, but its origin was somewhere else?

  It made sense. A lot more sense than a criminal trying to hide something in a highly trafficked and narrow river.

  There was so much of this city she knew nothing about, especially what went on underneath it. It had a complex sewer system, she knew, and then, of course, there were the underground trains she avoided whenever she could. Underground could be a very reasonable place from which to launch a rocket.

  Michiko stood and started to walk.

  She had been to the reading room in the British Museum during her first week in England. Callum had taken her on a big sightseeing tour, showing her all the landmarks, at least from the outside.

  “Everything you need to know is in there,” he’d said. Or he’d said something like that; Michiko had known even less English at the time than she did now. But he’d tried to communicate the idea to her. That was when he still pretended to care.

  She got herself up onto the rooftops and traveled quickly across the city to the British Museum. She passed between the large vermilion banners with “Alexandria” written on them and found herself inside the large-domed reading room in what must have been record time, had anyone cared to calculate it.

  She approached a young man in a tweed suit and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Map,” she said.

  The young man crossed his arms and looked at her carefully. “What was that?”

  “Map.”

  He shook his head, and it was clear to Michiko that for some reason he was pretending not to understand.

  “I’m sorry, your accent . . . say again?”

  “Map,” repeated Michiko, getting angry now. Honestly, it was one word and a one-syllable word at that. This librarian man was clearly just playing with her, finding her funny or whatever in her non-European way.