The Boneshaker (8 page)

"On the left," Dr. Limberleg said to Mr. Minks, then strode off to join Mr. Coffrett and the man in the bowler.

"Dad? Can I look around?" She made sure that Dr. Limberleg was out of earshot before she asked. If he didn't like her questions, he sure as anything wouldn't like her poking around.

"I don't see why not."

What she wanted to see most sat a little ways behind the stage the man was working on: a gigantic wheeled object covered in a huge piece of dark fabric. The top was pointed, as if what was underneath had a spire like a church, and the wheels didn't look like a wagon's at all. They were brass-rimmed, with spokes like those on a bicycle or a motorcar—but the thing sitting on those tires was too tall and too wide, too huge altogether to be any sort of motorcar Natalie had ever seen. Plus the wheels were mismatched: two were very, very large, and two were very, very small.

She crept closer, sure that she could see a pedal peeking from under the forward edge of the cover. The cloth was heavy and a little slick, the kind that kept rain from soaking through. She took hold of the edge and bent to peer under it.

"
You!
"

Natalie dropped the cloth and stumbled back so fast she tripped and sprawled and had to pick herself up off the ground in order to put some distance between herself and the man with the spiky gray hair. He strode at her like an angry bull, head lowered and shoulders hunched ... and with a claw hammer in one hand. Natalie scrambled away until she felt one of the other wagons come up against her back, and prepared to scream.

But he stopped in front of her and pointed the hammer at the thing under the cloth behind him. "That's dangerous, what's under there. A lot of electricity. You want to keep clear."

"Got it." Even Natalie could see that there wasn't any electricity in evidence at the moment, but between the hammer and the man's glowering stare, arguing didn't seem like a particularly good idea. She sprinted, red-faced, back across the lot and crouched beside her father, who was making notes in a little book.

"Caught you, did they?"

"I wasn't going to touch anything," she grumbled. "I just wanted a look. There's something huge over there, under that cloth. Is that the ... nostrum? What's a nostrum, anyway?"

"A nostrum's just another word for a medicine, or a remedy."

Natalie considered the oilcloth-covered thing, then turned her head to glance at Dr. Limberleg with his funny hair and pale blue lenses. "So who are they, Dad?"

"Snake oil salesmen. Too bad Doc's out of town. He'd have a ball with this ... what did he call it?"

"Dr. Limberleg's Nostrum Fair and Technological Medicine Show," Natalie recited. "What's a snake oil salesman?"

"It's a not very nice term for somebody who travels around selling patent medicines. Nostrums."

"What's wrong with selling medicines? Mr. Finch sells medicines, and so does Mr. Tilden."

"Mr. Finch is a pharmacist. He sells prescription medicines when Doc Fitzwater thinks someone needs them. Patent medicines are different. Anyone can make up a patent medicine, so it's hard to know if you're getting a remedy that works or just something weird in a jar."

"So is Mr. Tilden a snake oil salesman?" Mr. Tilden kept rows of oddly shaped bottles behind the left-hand counter in the general store. They had fantastic names like Vegetable Compound or Kickapoo Indian Sagwa and Natalie's favorite of all, Dr. Henrik Vermola's Worm Confections.

"I'll explain later." Mr. Minks shouldered the satchel and rose as Dr. Limberleg crossed the lot toward them. "How long is the show in town, Doctor?"

"I suppose that depends on you, sir. We had not planned to stop here at all, but..." He waved a hand at the damaged wagon. "Two days at least."

"I'll see what I can do."

Natalie barely registered the conversation. A few yards away from the brass-wheeled contraption, a man wearing silvery spectacles was unloading another wagon. Half of it was piled with ominously coffin-sized crates. The rest was full of old bicycles. Some of them were true boneshakers, older even than her grandfather's antique Michaux.

Dr. Limberleg followed her gaze. "We appear to have similar interests, young lady. We use gaslight and oil for the most part, but certain elements of the fair require electricity. The bicycles power my generators, and a few other things." He raised an eyebrow and nodded at the wagon. "In fact, I believe one of them is a Chesterlane rather like your own."

Natalie craned her neck for a better look as the man in the silver glasses lifted two more cycles down to the ground, one in each hand. The Chesterlane was easy to spot, even without all the adjustments Mr. Minks had made to Natalie's. The tires were plain iron rims, but the front one was bigger than the back, and it had the same elaborate collection of springs, the same oddly placed pedals. It was blue, but just like hers it was etched with golden whorls that caught the sun.

"Shaky as it is," Limberleg said, taking off his spectacles to polish the lenses against his coat, "the Chesterlane Eidolon can be very, very fast. And it's one of the more powerful bicycles I know of. If you can keep it from behaving like some primitive boneshaker, that is." He gave her a pointed look. "Most can't."

Natalie nodded seriously, hoping she was wrong about how much Dr. Limberleg could tell about her shaky relationship with her own bicycle, and followed her father back down Heartwood to Bard Street. About midway down the road, she glanced back over her shoulder. Limberleg was talking to the man with the hammer, and they were both looking at her.

***

Simon Coffrett leaned against one of the painted wagons while Limberleg and the gray-haired man watched Natalie and Ted Minks until they were out of sight. "So what brings you back this way, Jake?" Simon asked.

"It's such a nice place to visit." Dr. Limberleg smiled thinly. "You all roll out the carpet so nicely. Makes it difficult to leave."

"Can't say that's ever been my intention before."

"Yes, and to what do I owe this unexpectedly pleasant reception?"

"Learned my lesson," Simon replied, hands in his pockets.

Limberleg gave him a look that plainly said he didn't believe a word.

"All right," Simon said with a little smile. "Evidently I have a price and you can afford it."

The gray-hair and the bowler hat wandered closer to hear Simon's next words, but before he could continue, someone laughed.

Silhouetted by the sun, the drifter with the carpetbag and the lantern stood in the road, doubled over in hilarity. The man in the bowler hat took a step toward him. Simon looked mildly at his fingernails.

"Well, fancy that," Limberleg muttered, glancing from Simon Coffrett to the drifter and back. "Something funny, friend?"

"Just can't believe my lucky timing's all," the drifter said. "A medicine show! Might have to stick around and have a look. You know, 'fore I get on my way."

Limberleg exchanged a glance with the gray-haired man. "It's a welcoming kind of town," he said at last, turning his gaze to Simon Coffrett. Simon looked at his fingernails again.

"Yep, seems that way." All the humor melted off the drifter's face. He twirled the lantern pole in his fingers. "Can't wait to get to know it better." Even in daylight, the little lantern glowed behind him as he strolled away down Heartwood Street back toward the center of town.

Limberleg smiled his thin smile again and spoke to Simon Coffrett. "Learned your lesson."

"A man can only make so many mistakes before he starts doing things right," Simon said placidly. "Welcome to Arcane."

W
ATCHING HER FATHER
climb a ladder was enough to give Natalie a heart attack. Clumsy at the best of times in a workshop that, at its cleanest and most organized, was still an obstacle course, he usually took the rungs as if he were nimble as a monkey and generally missed the first three and tripped over whatever was at the bottom of the ladder before he made any vertical headway. If he managed to survive the ascent, he still had to navigate the loft of the old barn, which was chock-a-block with scores of spare wheels and tires designed by vengeful gods to entrap feet and imitate alpine landslides at the slightest touch. Sometimes it was better not to look. Certainly it was better not to talk, or breathe.

Natalie turned the flyer's wind-up key over and over in one hand and waited until her father was safe in the loft and the first round of torture, with its attendant banging and bruising, was over. "So if Mr.Tilden sells patent medicines," she asked at last, "and Dr. Limberleg sells patent medicines, how are they different?"

Mr. Minks rolled aside a dusty antique wheel from an old covered wagon and measured the one underneath. "If you bought medicine from Mr. Tilden and got home and discovered it didn't work at all, what would you do?"

"Take it back and ask Mr. Tilden for something else." Natalie covered her eyes with one hand as she spoke. He was uncomfortably close to the edge of the loft.

"But what if you'd bought a medicine from a traveling salesman, some elixir nobody'd ever heard of, and forgot how to use it? Maybe you couldn't go back and ask, because he'd already left town. Suppose you accidentally took too much and instead of curing your toothache, it made you sick?" He paused to measure another wheel. "And then sometimes the medicines are harmless but they don't do anything. Some people try and sell you sugar syrup in a fancy bottle or pass off mints as wonder pills."

"So why does anyone buy anything from a snake oil salesman?"

"Not all of them are frauds. You just never know. Dr. Limberleg's medicines could be real. I guess we'll have to go to the medicine show when it opens and find out for ourselves." Her father grinned at her through cobwebby spokes. "Who knows? He may even be a real doctor."

"Hmm." Natalie turned to the workbench under the window and planted her chin in her palm. Between her elbows lay the machinery that made up the mechanical flyer. With the fingers of one hand she tapped the key thoughtfully against her cheek.

How had Dr. Limberleg made it go without winding it?

It was a simple enough machine, really. Her brother Charlie had carved the pieces with his whittling knife and their father had designed the mechanism using gears and wooden dowels. It was made of spruce, just like the real
Flyer I
that Wilbur, and then Orville, had tested at Kitty Hawk when Natalie was just a tiny little girl.

Natalie had finished building the flyer a couple days earlier and had tried to wind it, but it hadn't moved a twitch, so she'd taken the key out (and one or two other parts) to try to fix it. Something was wrong inside. Even
with
the key, the
Wilbur
shouldn't have worked. But somehow, Dr. Limberleg had made it move, and without winding it at all.

She picked up the automaton and turned it over and over, following the uncomplicated chain of moving parts inside. No answers there. At last Natalie slotted the little brass key into its port, turned it once, and set the flyer on the workbench. Slowly she lifted her hands away.

It didn't move.

Maybe the mechanism just needed coaxing. She nudged the key with one finger. It stayed stuck firm. She wiggled it. Nothing. Natalie glanced up to be sure her father was safely out of sight among the spare wheels, then picked the flyer up and shook it.

Nothing.

"Natalie!"

She turned, holding the automaton behind her back as she looked up into the loft.

"I meant to stop by the pharmacy and it slipped my mind. Would you mind riding over there and asking Mr. Finch for Mom's vitamins?"

Natalie tilted her head. "Umm, sure." This was new. "What vitamins?"

"Just ask him exactly that. Annie Minks's vitamins. I'd go myself, but this'll take me a while. Those wagons Limberleg has are ancient." He smiled down at her, dusty and covered in cobwebs, from the edge of the loft. "You can do it in no time on that Chesterlane, I bet."

Natalie walked. It was such a short distance anyway, practically across the street ... silly to ride a bicycle, really. Still, she continued to mutter "Chesterlane Eidolon, Chesterlane Eidolon" to herself as she walked down Bard toward Mr. Finch's shop.

Mr. Tilden from the general store was walking up the pharmacy steps when Natalie crossed the street. She caught the door just before it banged shut and slipped through behind him.

"Lester. Got a telephone call from Pinnacle. Some good news, finally."

The pharmacist stood behind the counter with his back turned, singing along to a ragtime record, but the tone of Mr. Tilden's voice would've made anyone stop and pay attention. Mr. Tilden clearly hadn't noticed Natalie come in after him. She could have turned politely away or even stepped back onto the porch, but something made her slip out of sight around the far side of a huge dispensing cabinet full of boxes and jars.

At the counter Mr. Finch chuckled as he turned down the music and clapped Mr. Tilden on the back. "Well, at least Doc got to take the old Winton out for another trip. He won't mind so much if there's nothing for him to do."

If there was nothing for Doc to do in Pinnacle, the flu must have stopped spreading. She leaned a little closer. The pharmacist was still talking.

"...take a lot off of everyone's minds. Shall we put up signs?"

"Not yet." Mr. Tilden's voice was so sharp that Natalie jumped back. "Not until the hucksters leave town. Can you imagine if we announce that the flu's burned itself out the day before they open up shop? Whether they even came through Pinnacle or not, they'll take credit for it."

"I guess it can't hurt to wait until they're gone to make an announcement." A momentary pause. When Mr. Finch spoke again, his voice was quieter. "I met them on their way into town. Something about those folks puts me on edge, Ed. They put hairs up on my neck."

Hidden in her corner, Natalie nodded in agreement. Mr. Tilden must've been doing the same, because the next words he said were, "I hate to say this, because I never like the way other people mean it when they say it, but I have to tell you, Lester, I just don't like the looks of them. I don't like the way they
seem.
"