The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire (38 page)

“It’s hard,” Alice said, her ear protectors now around her neck. “Everyone’s panicking and rocking the train. It slows us down.”

Glenda looked out the window and back. “The river’s getting closer, nearly to your ship.”

Coal dust smudged Alice’s lovely face. She looked at Gavin, and he could see the reluctance. “Darling, can you… ?”

He didn’t have the power. He couldn’t even lift his arms. But Gavin met her brown eyes. This woman had led him into hell and changed him and now she was leading him back out. She needed him. With a groan, he lifted a leaden hand and dropped it on top of the Impossible Cube, let his mouth fall open, and whispered a note.

Nothing happened. The river thundered toward them. The train rocked again as people screamed and thrashed against one another, crushing and beating one another against the walls of the cars. Gavin swallowed, took a breath. He was Gavin Ennock. He could do this.

Gavin breathed out and sang. The G came through, crystalline blue. The Impossible Cube flickered, then glowed and the sound pulsed back over the train. The people instantly calmed. The train stopped rocking and picked up speed. Alice and Glenda, who had put
their ear protectors back on, worked at the engines, while Phipps hovered over Gavin. He sang and sang while the train puffed faster and faster. The water receded behind them, and then the train took a curve that brought it uphill. It lost speed, but it went away from the water. Gavin’s hand was sliding away from the Cube, and Phipps reached down to press it back into place. The Cube was losing its glow, running out of the electricity it had taken from the mechanical. Half a mile flashed by, and they were at the top of the hill. Alice slowed the engine and let the train coast. It was drifting to a stop near a station.

“We did it,” Alice said, but her words came from far away. “Darling, you did it!”

The Cube went black. Gavin tumbled into darkness.

He was lying on a cloud, a soft, fluffy cloud. It was so restful and fine. Delightful not having to move. He had only a tiny moment to enjoy the sensation. Abruptly, he jerked fully awake as he always did, his heart beating at the back of his throat.

The room was spacious and white. Thick rugs covered polished wood floors. A large wardrobe of pale birch took up one corner, and an icon of the Virgin Mary hung in one ceiling corner, draped with white bunting embroidered with a red design. A table and easy chairs occupied another corner. The generous bed was also white, with fine linen sheets, a feather-filled duvet, and plump pillows. Where was he, and how had he come here?

He sat up and groaned as fire tore through every muscle. Aching and sore, he forced his feet around to the edge
of the bed and realized he was naked. And clean. Hissing with every movement, he found a chamber pot under the bed, used it, and replaced it. The fiery ache continued when he stood up. A soft white dressing gown hung from the door, and he gingerly tied it on, which made him feel a little more secure. To his immense relief, he found his fiddle case next to the door. Carefully, he picked it up and opened it on the bed. The fiddle inside gleamed at him, undamaged. He sighed heavily.

A quick knock made him turn. The knock repeated.

“Uh… hello?” he called. “Who is it?”

The door burst open and Alice rushed in with a tray of food. Click trotted in behind her. “You’re awake! Thank God!”

She set the tray on the table and caught Gavin in a hug that made him howl. She instantly released him. “I’m so sorry! I should have realized—when I stopped moving, everything started to hurt worse, too, and you’ve been asleep for a long time.”

He hobbled to an easy chair next to the table and, gritting his teeth, eased himself into it. Alice hovered over him, offering help, but he waved her away. Click jumped onto the bed and settled into a pillow, his phosphorescent eyes gleaming green.

“How long was I asleep?” Gavin asked.

“You were unconscious, not asleep.” Alice took up the chair opposite his. She wore a white blouse, a pale blue skirt, and a straw hat with peacock feathers on it. All of it made her look free and bright, and Gavin was so glad to see her. “It’s been three full days. I was so worried. I thought the smell of food might bring you out.”

The mention of the food brought his head around to it. There was tea and some kind of dumpling in a cream sauce and peppered roast pork and dark bread and cucumbers with onions. Gavin was ravenous, and, ignoring the pain, pulled the tray toward him so he could eat. The dumplings were stuffed with soft cheese, and the tender pork was seasoned perfectly. Alice took a paper packet from her pocket and handed him two pills from it.

“Take these,” she said. “They’ll help with the pain.”

He swallowed them and kept eating. “Where are we?”

“The mayor’s house. So much has happened, I don’t know where to begin.”

“The last thing I remember is singing on the train.”

She nodded. “Part of the dam held, so the river destroyed less than we feared—a section a quarter of a mile wide and about five miles long. We got nearly everyone within that zone to safety. We lost some people, but… almost everyone survived. Except the Gonta-Zalizniaks. They’re all missing, presumed dead. Their house was at the bottom of the valley, you know, and it’s completely underwater now. The river is returning to its original bed. Some of the city will be flooded permanently, but most of it can be reclaimed. We’re being hailed as heroes.”

“We are?” Gavin paused with a fork halfway to his mouth. “We destroyed the dam and killed a bunch of people.”

“That’s not the way the Ukrainians see it,” Alice said. “The dam fed power to their hated Cossack rulers, you see. We, on the other hand, rescued their children,
led the Cossacks down to the horrible dam, blew it up, and swept them away forever. The mayor—his name is Serhiy Hrushevsky—has taken over the city. He’s a very nice man who used to be a professor at the Kiev Ecclesiastical Seminary but became mayor because he wanted to soften what the Cossacks were doing. His son Mykhailo is extremely intelligent as well and will probably succeed him in politics, and— Oh! I’m babbling. I’m just so relieved that you’re all right, darling.”

“I’m happy to see you, too,” he said. “But what next?”

“Well, once the whole story came out, Mayor Hrushevsky brought us here to rest and recover as honored guests. I cured the rest of the plague zombies in the city, which only made everyone even happier, and they want to have a city-wide ball in our honor.”

The medicine Alice had given him started to work, and Gavin’s muscles relaxed. “I’ve never been a hero before. I don’t know how to react.”

“I don’t either, to be honest. I’m letting Phipps handle most of it.”

“Phipps! I’d forgotten all about her. She’s still with us?”

“Oh yes.” Alice folded her arms. “She insists upon coming to China with us. Glenda has already slipped off, back for London. We haven’t heard from Simon, either.”

“And we won’t.” Gavin drained his teacup, then paused. “I have to say… I was hoping…”

Alice grew more serious. “For what?”

“That we might be able to search the laboratory in the Gonta-Zalizniak house. To see if they had found… you know.”

“I do know.” She reached across the table and took his flesh hand in her metal one. “We’ll find a cure. You have time yet, no matter what Dr. Clef thought. We will cure you, we will get married”—her voice began to choke—“and we will have lots of children who will get very, very tired of hearing the same stories of their parents’ adventures over and over again.”

“‘Aw, Dad, not that boring story about Feng at the dam again,’” Gavin said, trying to lighten the mood by imitating a child, except his own voice grew thick. “‘We’ve heard it a million times.’”

“Will they speak with an American accent, do you think? Or a proper English one?”

“Hey! There’s nothing wrong with a good Boston accent,” Gavin said, laughing now. Click raised his head. “Don’t forget that we perfected baked beans so you beefeaters could put them on toast.”

Alice was laughing too, and she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Good heavens. I haven’t even told you the best part.”

“There’s more?”

“The paraffin refineries are nowhere near the dam and weren’t touched. Mayor Hrushevsky is insisting we take all the oil we need. The
Lady
has been restored by his own men, and she is ready to fly when we are.”

Gavin spent three more days recovering. He tired easily and slept a great deal, though he insisted on spending as much time as possible on the
Lady
, which was tethered just above the mayor’s modest house. It was easier to rest amid the familiar, homey creak of wood and hemp. It also seemed to Gavin that the
Lady
was
pleased to see him. The ship appeared to float more freely, hold herself more steadily when Gavin was aboard, though he didn’t say anything about this to Alice.

When Gavin checked the
Lady
’s workshop, he was gratified to find the metal project he’d been working on had been moved there from the train, and he spent some time fiddling with it. It was nice to work on something that wasn’t a weapon. The Impossible Cube was locked away in a cupboard. Alice, Gavin, and Phipps didn’t see any need to tell anyone else the particulars of how they had led everyone out of danger. The paradox generator, of course, had been destroyed along with the dam, though Gavin still felt a small twinge at its loss.

Dr. Clef’s notes about the danger of time, space, and energy were also gone, burned by Phipps. Gavin didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had read them and, with a clockworker’s precision, memorized every numeral and symbol. He didn’t intend to use the information, of course. After everything that had happened, it would be foolish in the extreme. Much more interesting to work on his little project.

Now that Gavin was out of danger, Alice set about playing the part of the baroness to the hilt, making speeches and attending parties. Phipps attended most of these events as well, moving easily among the people, pointedly making friends and contacts. Once Gavin had recovered sufficiently to travel—and appear in public—Mayor Hrushevsky declared an entire day of celebration for their send-off to China. He presented Gavin with a new outfit—white airman’s leathers. Gavin found he couldn’t speak.

The ball was both plain and lavish, all at once. Mayor Hrushevsky, a great shaggy man with a long dark beard, insisted that the party be held outdoors in the streets, so it was more like an all-day festival than a ball. The pall of Gonta-Zalizniak rule had lifted, and the people appeared brighter, more cheerful. Even the weather cooperated, granting them a bright, balmy day. Gavin heard Ukrainian music for the first time, and he was enchanted. Street bands and musicians played at nearly every street corner. The mayor opened up the city coffers, and free food was available from stalls every few feet. The electric lights had gone out with the dam, of course, but after sunset people put out lanterns of glass and of colored paper, tinting the city with a hundred lively hues. Alice and Gavin and Phipps wandered about the city, greeted with cheers and laughter wherever they went. They danced to the music, and Gavin held Alice tightly as they whirled through the evening streets.

“Who knew that a cabin boy from Boston would travel so far?” he said to her. “I love you always.”

“And I love you always,” she replied.

When it was time to go, Gavin, Alice, and Phipps returned to the square in front of the mayor’s house and listened to a speech they didn’t understand in the slightest. They smiled and waved to the cheering crowd, Gavin in his new whites, Phipps in her formal reds, and Alice in a Ukrainian-style blouse and skirt, heavily embroidered with tiny cogs and wheels, made just for her by a dozen grateful Kievite women. Click and the automatons, repaired and shined for the occasion, made an honor guard as the trio ascended the
ladder to the hovering
Lady.
The envelope’s curly endoskeleton glowed blue with power from the generator and its generous supply of paraffin oil. The cheers and applause buoyed them up to the starry sky, lifting Gavin’s spirit with every step. When they arrived on the deck, Gavin took the helm and Alice increased power to the generator. The glow intensified, and the ship ascended, higher and higher, until the city became flecks of color on black velvet. A cool breeze washed over him, mixing the scent of purity with the smell of paraffin exhaust. Click took up his usual spot, peering over the side of one gunwale, and the little automatons perched on the ropes or skittered about near Alice. Phipps folded her arms and watched. It was a thrill to be back in his rightful place, back in the air where he belonged.

And yet…

Once they established a heading east and the nacelle propellers were pushing them along, Gavin asked Phipps to take the helm for a moment. She arched a questioning eyebrow.

“I need to show Alice something below,” he said.

He led Alice down to the laboratory. She looked apprehensive. “It’s not anything bad,” he reassured her.

“You’re not going to propose again, are you?” she said. “I don’t really need—”

“It’s not that, either. I’m just… This is important to me, and I want you to be the first to see.”

Now she looked mystified. “All right.”

The little laboratory had been tidied up in preparation for the trip. Most of the floor space was taken up by a large, bulky object covered in a white cloth. Kemp’s head, the eyes still dark, sat on the worktable.
Gavin hoped to figure out a way to restore him, but that wasn’t why he had brought Alice down. His heart was beating fast, and his palms were sweaty, though he couldn’t say why.

“I’ve finished it,” he said lamely. “It’s all done.”

It took her a moment to understand. Then she got it. “The project you started in the circus? That’s wonderful! I’m honored you want to show me, darling. Let’s see it.”

Gavin took a breath and whipped the cloth away. Alice gasped. The framework he had created spread out something like a kite. A battery pack with buckles and straps took up the center. The thousands of alloy rings he wound into a cloak now hung over the framework in waterfall ripples. When extended, they would stretch more than ten feet both left and right.