Doc Sidhe (11 page)

"It's what I do. I design things. Buildings, aircraft, devices. But there tend to be interruptions. Such as when people try to kill me. The Monarch Building is one of mine."

Harris heard metallic clanking and banging long before Doc brought the car to a halt at one of the unfinished upper levels. In front of the car was a wooden platform; beyond that, open air a long way down. Harris stepped out on the platform but stood well back from the edge; he managed to quell his stomach's mild rebellion as he looked around.

He stood on the only flooring to be found on the whole level. But all over "up eighty" and the floor below, men worked, creating the cacophony Harris had heard.

One story down, odd metal contraptions were set up on small wooden platforms. Each device looked like a small metal cauldron on a stand; affixed to the cauldron was a crank-operated attachment. Men worked the cranks to blow air into the cauldrons, super-heating the contents to incandescence.

Harris watched one of the men take a pair of tongs, fish around in the glowing mass within the cauldron, and then expertly flick something up into the air. A man on Harris' level caught the cherry-red flying thing in a brass bucket and immediately used tongs of his own to fish it out; Harris now saw that the thing was a big rivet. The bucket-man shoved the rivet into holes bored through a girder and the bracketlike framework it rested in. Two waiting men, one on either side of the girder, stepped into place; they carried coppery cylinders attached to firehoselike tubes stretching out of sight below. Each positioned his device over one protruding end of the rivet; there was an angry
brrraaapp
, like a short burst from a high-pitched jackhammer, and the men stepped back, satisfied.

All over the naked steelwork of the skyscraper, the same scene was being played over and over again. Other crews of men guided crane operators moving more girders into position, lowered them into place, fixed them there with temporary bolts.

These were men of all sizes, ranging from some three-quarters Harris' height to others nearly as tall as he. Most had nut-brown or red-clay-colored skin; they were earth-toned from head to foot because of the brown leather pants, jackets, and gloves they wore. Only their cloth caps, in red, green, yellow, and other colors, and the orange-red hair some of them had, gave them any color. They walked fearlessly on precariously narrow girders as though they couldn't see the thousand feet of open space between them and the ground.

And one of the men, positioned at a far corner of the building under construction, towered over the rest.

He was a freak compared to the others. If Harris gauged his size correctly, he was enormous, the height of an NBA basketball player, the build of a boxer. He was nut-brown like most of the rest, but his hair was a long blond cascade. Unlike the others, he wore only boots and a pair of lightweight tan pants. He had two partners, one catching the rivets and the other helping him drive them into place; normal sized for men of Neckerdam, they looked like midgets next to him.

Doc spotted the gigantic man and headed toward him—casually walking out onto the metal that stretched weblike over that long, long drop to the ground.

Harris froze where he was. Doc reached the first upright girder and began to edge around it, then realized that Harris was no longer behind him. He looked back and after a moment said, "Stay here. I'll return in a minute." He stepped around the upright barrier and continued onward.

Something wilted inside Harris. He knew that, in Doc's eyes, he had to have just ceased being an adult human and had become a child. Dammit.

He sat down and yanked off his shoes and socks. If he were going to do this, he wouldn't do it on slick leather soles. Then he rose, poised for a long, long moment at the edge of the wooden platform . . . and stepped out onto the cool metal girder.

One step. Still alive. Two steps, still alive. He reminded himself that as a kid he was always good at walking on the top of the curb, graceful and balanced.

Then he looked down, watched the girders of the steel skeleton growing together far, far below, and he was suddenly reminded that a fall off an Iowa City curb led to a four-inch drop. This sudden impulse of his would kill him if he slipped. A wind brushed at him and his stomach lurched.

He reached the first upright girder and clung to it. Still, there was no going back. He edged around the obstruction to the horizontal girder on the other side and kept going, making slow and steady progress, grabbing hard onto each upright beam as he came to it.

He heard a dry chuckle from one side. There stood the partners of the giant construction worker, one girder-length off to his left. They leaned casually against an upright, helpfully staying out of the way of this high-steel virgin, and lit smoking-pipes as they laughed at his progress. Then one of them glanced down at Harris' bare feet and his chuckle choked off. Harris shot them both a scowl and kept going.

An eternity later, he crept around the final upright. Ahead stood Doc, his back to Harris. Doc faced the big, bare-chested worker, and Harris realized that his estimation of size was correct; the worker towered over Doc, more than a head taller than the white-haired man.

Doc must have heard Harris' approach; he turned. "Joseph, this is Harris Greene, the grimworlder I told you of. Harris, this is Joseph."

Harris said, "Hi," looked up into Joseph's face . . . and froze.

Joseph's features were just somehow wrong. He had high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, a wide mouth—a strong combination. But there was something incomplete about his features, as though he were a doll who had not been detailed after emerging from the mold, or a cartoon character suddenly brought to life in the real world. Seen by himself, he might have been considered handsome. But alongside Doc, the perfection of his features seemed alien.

Joseph, expressionless, gave Harris a slow nod, then returned his attention to Doc. "I don't want to remember that. I don't want to remember you. I have a life now, and good pay for easy work. Don't drag me back into your circle." His voice was a deep, throaty rumble; Harris thought he could feel it vibrating in the steel under his feet.

"Joseph, this is important. Angus Powrie and his new master are up to something. Using devisements and devices worthy of Duncan Blackletter himself. Sending agents to the grim world and bringing people like Harris back.

"You owe it to me. I freed you. Now I need you."

Joseph stared. His expression did not change, nor did his eyes, but something did, and Harris imagined the huge, unfinished man swinging out an arm and casually batting Doc off the girder. Doc must have felt it too; he took a step back and balanced himself for trouble.

But Joseph crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. "Death follows you, Doc, and strikes down those who help you and love you while leaving you unharmed. But you're right. I owe you a debt. I will pay it. I hope you don't kill me in collecting it."

Doc was silent a long moment and Harris wished he could see his face. Then Doc said, "Did Duncan ever talk about the grim world?"

"Yes."

"Did he know devisements to take people there?"

"He went there. Not long before you caught up to him. He took gear and spent a day in that place. He left the gear there. When he returned, he said the grim world was ghastly. I think he loved it."

"What sort of gear?"

Joseph shrugged. "Crates. Boxes. He took gold to spend."

Doc fell silent. Harris broke in, "So did he have one of those conjurer's circles? Do you know where it went?"

"He did. In his conjuration laboratory. It went to the grim world, as I said."

"I meant, where
in
the grim—"

Doc said, "Wait. I don't remember a conjuration laboratory. Was this at Wickhollow?"

"Yes. It was well-hidden. You never asked about it. You just wanted help dealing with your dead friends."

Doc didn't answer for a moment. Then, his voice more quiet: "We'll go there tonight. You need to show me this laboratory."

"Meet me here at four bells. Leave me alone until then."

"Thank you." Doc turned to leave, and Harris began to grope his way back around the girder he clung to.

But Joseph spoke again. "Goodsir Greene."

Harris looked back. "Yes?"

"If you are not bound to this man, leave him. Else you will die with him."

Harris looked away from Joseph's glum features and didn't reply. He just crept back across the girders.

"What did he mean?"

"About what?" Doc drove back to the Monarch Building more slowly than he'd left it; there was a shadow of gloom over his features.

"About your friends."

Doc was slow in answering. "Joseph was made by a deviser named Duncan Blackletter."

"Made?"

"He is not a man. He is a thing of clay and powerful devisements. One with a beating heart and, I think, a soul fit for rebirth. But he was Blackletter's slave, and did many bad things for him. He had no will of his own where Blackletter was concerned."

Harris thought about Joseph's unfinished face. It didn't look like clay. But he didn't look exactly human, either. "Was this Blackletter guy . . . the one who gave you all that trouble a while back?"

Doc shot him a sharp glance, then nodded. His voice was weary. "Duncan was a very bad man. Full of charm and good cheer even as he was murdering people. He set nations against one another to advance his businesses or to obtain knowledge.

"The last thing he did was to make plans to enslave the king and queen of Novimagos. He managed to do great things for Novimagos, anonymously. He built up a debt they could not repay and used dark devisements to tap it so he could bind their will to his. That's what he was about when my associates and I caught up to him in his home in Wickhollow, twenty years ago."

"Twenty?" Harris had to reevaluate Doc's age. "You don't look it, but that makes you forty at least."

Doc managed a faint smile. "At least." Then the smile faded. "Duncan and I fought. The old way. Not with guns or swords but with strength of will and old, old ritual. I was able to redirect his will against him, and he was destroyed, consumed by fire. I nearly was.

"But I'd had to concentrate all my attention on him. While my associates fought his allies, Angus Powrie and Joseph among them. And died, one by one. Micah Cremm. Siobhan Damvert, Jean-Pierre's mother. Whiskers Okerry. All dead." Doc's voice was barely audible over the engine noise.

"I'm sorry."

"They were neither the first nor the last. Joseph is correct, Harris. Death wanders around in my shadow. My associates know it and stay with me anyway. But as soon as we can find your path back to the grim world, you will go, and be safe."

"Yeah." Safe to do what? Harris shook his head and tried to think of something else.

Just before dusk, as they rode in the vast red limousine Harris had seen last night, Alastair explained things to Harris.

"One bell" was midmorning. Two bells was exactly noon, straight up. Three was midafternoon; four near dusk; five was the shank of the evening; six was midnight; seven was the quiet time of the night—as quiet as a wide-awake city like Neckerdam ever got—and eight bells was around dawn. Each of the bells, so named for the ringing of the clock bells that marked their passing, was divided into twenty chimes; some clocks rang off the chimes as well. A chime was made up of five hundred beats, also called ticks.

Harris did some mental math and calculated each bell at about three hours, each chime at nine minutes, and each beat—what? a little over a second. As confusing a nonmetric system as he was used to back home.

So as the sun set far to the west of Neckerdam's stone and steel canyons, Jean-Pierre, driving, pulled up beside the Bergmanli Elevations building site and honked.

Joseph, clad in his work clothes and an enormous yellow shirt, emerged through the fence gate. He walked awkwardly, as though he were new to locomotion. He climbed into the car, settling alone into the rear-facing seat opposite Doc, Alastair, and Harris.

"You must be Joseph," the doctor said. "Alastair Kornbock. Grace on you."

The man with the unfinished face gave him a little nod.

"Care for something to eat? We'll have better pickings before we leave Neckerdam."

Joseph shook his head.

Alastair reached into the little red satchel he'd brought and dragged out a green glass flask; he waved it hopefully. "Uisge?"

Joseph shook his head.

Alastair sighed, uncapped the flask, and took a sip. "This is going to be a long drive."

He was right. A strained silence settled over the car. Jean-Pierre seemed strangely stiff during the drive; Noriko kept her attention on him, and Harris felt, in spite of the emotional detachment she projected, that she was concerned for him.

Doc spent his time disassembling the volt-meter the ersatz musician had carried. "Interesting design," he said quietly. "Old techniques, decades old, but very creative. I think I can improve on it, though." He seemed disturbed by the design of the device and spoke very little after that.

They took the Island Bridge to Long Island; it amused Harris to learn that it
was
called Long Island. Some things obviously translated quite well from the grim world to the fair one. The community on the far side of the bridge was Pataqqsit, and in the twilight it seemed to be half city, half green park.

On the far side of Pataqqsit, where traffic thinned so that the red limousine was often alone on the tree-lined road, Harris saw the first windmill. It was tall and more slender than the archaic sort of grain-grinding mills he'd seen in photographs.

Then they topped a hill and he could see what looked like an ocean of the things laid out below him; the road cut through an enormous field full of windmills. "Jesus," he said. "What's all this?"

"Wind farm," Alastair said. "Otherwise Neckerdam would have no way to power her lights, her underground trains and high-trains, or anything."

"What about coal? Oil?"

Alastair laughed. "While we're at it, why not lean out the window to empty our bowels instead of using the water closet?"