Arachnodactyl (14 page)

T
he front door was locked
.

Ikey let go of the doorknob and craned his head back to take in the front of Cross’s house. Its pale stucco front and dark windows stared over his head, out to the river that scrubbed the bottom of the town. He raised a fist to knock, but it hovered before the door. Amid the paint, the outline of a knocker stood visible. Several small holes in the wood showed where it once hung some time ago.

Ikey glanced down, as if the knocker might be before the doorway, laying on its side, waiting to be replaced.

Nothing sat there, of course.

He lowered his fist and peered at the dark curtains pressed against the dirty, dust-crusted glass.

If he knocked, would she answer? At times, Rose indeed felt like an apparition. She was barely seen or heard. She moved in a ghostly fashion and her features did appear distorted. Those hands. The long limbs. The veil. And he had never seen her leave the house. Always she stood among shadows, as if trapped inside.

Ikey rubbed the tips of his fingers over his thumb. Ridiculous. He ought to go inside and flat-out ask Rose about her nature. Sit down and have the discussion and be done with it. With the subject broached, he might discover a way to suggest that she aid him in the construction of others of her kind. The answer was that simple.

Ikey regarded the door.

Would she answer?

A nattily dressed couple strolled past. The woman held her chin aloft and found something fascinating to look at while she studied the other side of the street. She clutched the elbow of a man like an ornament dangling from his arm. The man stared at Ikey in a stern manner while gripping a fine, silver-tipped stick in the right hand.

Ikey slunk down the street and around to the alley behind the row of houses. There, he located the back of Cross’s house and tried the gate. Locked, of course.

After looking both ways, Ikey took a running jump at the wall. His hands clutched the top of edge. A toe found purchase. He pulled himself up. On top of the wall, he saw a woman in the window of one of the neighboring houses. Her gray, frizzy hair sat like a lump of lint on top of her head. She scowled through a wrinkled face and raised a finger to scold Ikey, but he slipped down and landed in the narrow alley between the workshop and the garden wall.

As he approached the house, he glanced over his shoulder into the workshop’s windows. The table and shelves inside sat in shadows. The room stood empty. Ikey continued on the path to the backdoor. He grabbed the knob and gave it a twist.

Locked as well.

Ikey stepped back, planted his hands on his hips, and stared up at the back of the house. This was ridiculous now, sneaking around like a common burglar. He stepped up to the door, and before he could give it another thought, rapped on the wood.

And waited.

Ikey sighed and stepped back. He looked up at the back of the house again, even though the last thing he’d see would be a light burning or a drape stirring and offering evidence of someone at home.

He stepped up to the door and knocked again, his knuckles ringing the wood in sharp, forceful blows. The door shuddered with his efforts.

Nothing.

Ikey ran a hand through his hair. He turned around and planted his hands on his hips. In Cross’s workshop he would find everything needed to pick the lock.

The door creaked open.

Ikey turned back around and found Cross’s face peering from the dark.

“Why didn’t you knock?” Cross asked.

Ikey glanced away and back. “I just did. Twice.”

Cross rolled his eyes. “On the front door. Like a civil person.”

Ikey shrugged.

“Wait, the back gate is locked, ain’t it?” Cross asked.

Ikey looked down, ready to nod, then stopped himself. He straightened his back. “It is.”

Cross squinted. “So how did you… Oh, bugger it. Get in here and clean up. Dinner is about served.”

Cross withdrew into the house. Ikey stepped into the scullery, washed up, and then joined Cross at the table with his lantern.

“You and Wendy get everything taken care of?” Cross asked as he leaned forward onto his elbows.

“We did,” Ikey said.

“Good. And he taught you how to strip one of them turbines, replace the innards, and put it back together?”

“He did.”

Cross rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Good. Then tomorrow we’ll fire the thing up and see if we can at least get her to stand on her toes.”

The stairs cracked. Ikey stared at the top of the stairwell until Rose reached the dining room. She looked the same as always, but Ikey had expected her to look different. Or to treat him different. Or to… he knew not what. But instead of acknowledging him at all, she placed a small plate of sliced bread and a dish of butter on the sideboard, then returned to the kitchen.

Unlike the previous two nights, dinner passed in a manner close to pleasant. Cross sat deep in thought and stared at the table. Instead of speaking around a mouthful of food, he took absent bites and chewed in a slow and deliberate manner.

Rose ate considerably less and sat in silence as well. The silence gnawed at Ikey. An urge pushed at him to lean towards her and whisper, ask if she was all right. If everything was all right. Was it acceptable, what happened the night before? As the dinner stretched on, Ikey’s skin crawled and crept around him. He picked at his food as well and wished Cross would grow tired of the lack of drink on the table and finally leave Ikey and Rose alone to speak in private.

Finally, Cross placed his fork on the table and nudged his plate back a knuckle’s width. He looked at Ikey. “You done?”

Ikey swallowed a bite of fish. “I guess so.”

“Good. Let’s get out to the workshop. We have a lot of work tonight.”

The bottom fell out of his stomach.

Cross stood and hitched his belt.

“Hasn’t he had a hard enough day?” Rose asked as she stood and picked up her plate.

“What? And I haven’t?” Cross asked.

“You can decide when you’ve had enough. Ikey can’t very well tell you no, can he?”

Cross waved a dismissive hand at her while he looked at Ikey. “Now tell me true; you want to go out and work in the workshop, or do you want to stay in here and knit in the dark, or whatever the hell it is she does when I’m not around?”

Rose clucked her tongue as she picked up plates and utensils from the sideboard. “No, it’s not like I’m keeping your house clean or anything.”

“Are you?” Cross asked, his eyebrows arched in mock surprise. “It’s not like I could tell with all the light in here. How can you even tell?”

“Because my feet don’t stick to the floor anymore, and this house no longer smells like a meat locker gone sour.” With that, Rose whisked into the scullery. A clatter of plates and a jangle of utensils followed.

Cross shook his head. He planted his palms on the table and leaned over until his face hovered in front of Ikey’s. “Get married the first moment you can, Ikey. There’s nothing like marriage to keep a man focused on what’s important. Let’s get out of her way and on to our work.”

Out in the workshop, Cross lit another lantern and set it in the middle of the table. The next order of business was to grab the bottle from the junk heap. As Cross poured himself a cup, Ikey strained to see a sign that Cross had found the remains of the music box. It appeared he hadn’t.

“Want any?” Cross tilted the bottle to Ikey.

“No, thank you.”

“Probably for the best,” Cross said, then tilted the cup back.

Ikey looked to the shelf where the arm sat. After studying Cross’s other creations, he wished to hold it and examine it again. What more might he glean from the arm this time around?

Cross thunked the cup onto the table top.

Ikey started.

“All right,” Cross said. “Tonight’s order of business. We—you and I—are going to build a brand new engine for the
Kittiwake
. From scratch. Forget everything Wendy showed you, everything he told you. Forget it all.” Cross wiped his palm across the air before him. “Clean slate. Now. Here’s the problem—”

“What about the engines we rebuilt today?” Ikey asked.

Cross lifted an eyebrow. “What about them?”

“You said we were going to give them a try tomorrow.” A flicker of the rage from the
Kittiwake
’s envelope tickled him.

Cross shrugged his shoulders as he poured more liquor into his cup. “Doesn’t matter. They’re not going to work.”

“How do you know?”

Cross set down the bottle and picked up his cup. “I know.”

“So why are we—”

“Oy! Excuse me,
Captain
. I thought I was in charge here.”

Ikey flushed and averted his eyes to the table. A tightness threaded through his muscles.

Cross took a drink, then placed the cup back on the table. “As I was saying, we need to build an engine that will generate enough hydrogen to lift the
Kittiwake
. Here’s what I was thinking.” Cross chopped the air in front of him with both hands as if placing the idea before himself. “If we increase the rotational rate of the magnetic rod, we should increase the rate at which electricity is generated. If we can zip more current through the wires, we can increase the hydrolysis rate in the tanks. A greater hydrolysis rate generates both more hydrogen and more oxygen. Greater lift and a hotter fire. We’ve modified the engine every which way. It might be time to consider the boiler assembly.”

Cross arched an eyebrow at Ikey. “Thoughts?”

Ikey closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Concentrate. The engine components assembled themselves in his mind, along with the boiler and its pipes. The steam rushed through the pipes and the turbine turned.

“What if we…” Ikey grasped the air before him, then drew a circle in the air. “A bigger wheel. For the turbine. It would turn the rod faster.”

“Nah,” Cross said. “But at least you’re thinking. A bigger wheel means a greater force is required to move it. Unless you also have a way to increase the force generated by the boiler…”

Ikey’s hands fell into his lap.

Cross took a sip from his cup. “What if we…” and he began to spool out a great line of technical jargon that surged up around them until it crested as a wave and swamped Ikey’s ability to follow along, and so Ikey’s attention drifted across the table and snagged on the lantern. The yellow tongue of flame drifted back and forth under the shimmering eddies of heat and light that rippled the air.

“Heat,” Ikey said.

Cross stopped mid-sentence, mid-gesticulation, his fingers splayed out before himself to illustrate some point Ikey had missed. “What?”

Ikey sat up on his stool. “Heat. Hot air rises. In the summer, it’s always cooler on the floor. What if we heated the gas? What if we replaced the hoses with pipes, and then we wrapped them in copper tubing and piped steam through it? It’d heat the gas. It would rise.”

Cross drained his cup, then sucked at his teeth as he stared across the room. “You’re on to something.” He shook his head. “No. No, it wouldn’t work. If we pulled more steam off the boiler, we wouldn’t have enough to run the propellers or the turbine as hard as we need. We’d have to get another boiler. But nice try. Glad to… Wait a minute.”

Cross rubbed his chin, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “That’s it! Wait! What if we ran exhaust from the fire through those copper coils? The exhaust could heat the hydrogen before it is vented outside. And if it has a chance to cool down—Wait, no. Soot would build up in the coils in no time. Occlude the whole mess… Oh! But if…”

And on Cross went in stops and starts before he grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper and sketched a design for the boiler that would suit his needs and heat the hydrogen as it passed into the cells. Ikey watched him address each problem. Instead of coming up with a proper solution as he and Uncle Michael might have done, Cross tried to pass the problem around the system. Instead of designing a device to remove soot from the exhaust, he designed an exhaust system that gave the soot someplace to go and wait to be collected by Sharp or someone else when it came time to clean.

It seemed inevitable that every music box, and even Rose herself, was governed by a series of counterweights. It was what Cross would do; spread the problem around. Balance. Whether he designed an intricate little device to turn vibrations into melodic, haunting tunes, or designed an automaton to cook his dinner, clean his house, and knit him sweaters, it was all a trick of balance, of measuring out precise movements and passing them around the system through an array of weights and counterweights—the chimes themselves.

And in Rose?

He gritted his teeth. Traditional weights and counterweights worked in the music boxes because they were stationary. They sat in an upright position and never moved. But Rose? She moved about. If she lay down, the counterweights would rest against her chest and become useless.

Ikey sat up straight, eyes wide. He never saw her lie down. Could she? If she did, if she was knocked over, would she cease to function as would a grandfather clock laid on its back?

Cross dropped his pencil to the table with a clatter, then slumped onto his stool. With a chuckle and a shake of his head, he filled the cup halfway, then pushed it towards Ikey.

“Go ahead, my good man. You deserved it. That was brilliant. Absolute brilliance. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Ikey smiled. A warmth spread through him, and the heat was fanned as Cross clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. Ikey picked up the cup, sniffed, and took a sip.

It burned and tasted like acetate or worse. He wrinkled his nose and placed the cup back before Cross.

Cross threw his head back in laughter. “You’ve had a good life, chum, if you can turn your nose up at that. But you’ll find over time that this,” Cross said as he picked up the cup and held it between them, “this is a less bitter flavor than the waking moments of a man’s life.” He lifted the cup in salute, then took a drink. “Ah!”

Ikey took a couple breaths to clear his chest of the burn. Cross’s praise still lit him, however. Confidence bubbled up his back, and for a brief moment Ikey felt like he might figure anything out.