Hot and Steamy (13 page)

Dusky threw herself out of the seat and toward the trapdoor. Flinging it open, she dropped to the scorched ground beneath the Behemoth. Dr. Tucker—or what was left of him—lay there, mangled by the cowcatcher as it had shoved forward along the lawn. She turned her head away.

Scrambling from under the machine, Dusky dashed over to where Obadiah lay, still as death. She fell to her knees and pulled the noose from around his throat. It had made livid red marks upon his neck, but once she removed it, he started hacking and coughing, struggling to get the air back into his lungs.

Dusky thought she had never heard such a wonderful sound in her life. She leaned over and kissed Obadiah's face again and again as tears flowed down her face.

“You're alive,” she said. “Oh, thank the Lord, you're alive.”

“My arms,” Obadiah said weakly.

“Oh!” Dusky said. She looked over at Dr. Tucker's stone-still form. She cringed at the thought of having to touch his body, but she had no other choice. She found the key to his cruel manacles in one of his blood-soaked pockets, and in a moment she had Obadiah freed.

He brought his arms around and held her in them tight, his shoulders shaking with the release of his emotions. “The worst part wasn't hanging there,” he said. “It was the thought I wouldn't be able to stop him from killing you.”

“We're safe now,” Dusky said. “Right?”

Obadiah craned back his neck to peer into her eyes, and he nodded. He let his eyes roam the body-littered field, where many of his friends lay.

“Well,” Dusky said. “Mamma Esther, Missy, and Sandy are still here. And we got this machine up and running and ready to go. Where we gonna take her?”

Obadiah smiled at her then, and she felt her heart melt from the sheer heat of it. “Out of here,” he said. “Any place we can find that's somewhere new. Someplace you and I can call our own.”

She brought her mouth up to his again and tasted the sweat tang of the sweat on his lips. “Let's go north,” she said. “Let's find us a home.”

Z
oe stood outside the Great Man's door, her references clutched in her left hand, along with the cablegram that had summoned her to this ramshackle structure. The hall of the building was dingy, its once-ornate carpet musty, dust-filled, and stained. The sole light came from a grime-covered window at the far end. It seemed odd that Doctor Von Lang, the famed inventor, should live in a deserted tenement, though he was a renowned eccentric. Yet, Zoe had checked, and the city registry definitely said he owned the building, so . . .

Maybe I should have brought Armstrong or CC with me
, Zoe thought.
No! You can do this! We need this job so Kit can continue her research, so all of us can—so we don't go broke. You can do it!

She remembered Ray Armstrong's confident smile from earlier that day. . . . “If Victor Von Lang wants to see you, it must be important. And if he's got work, so much the better.”

“But what could he possibly want with me?” Zoe had asked.

“Zoe, you're brilliant,” Kit Chapman-Challenger, whom Zoe called “CC,” put in. “Bring your references, in case he wants them.”

“B–but . . .” Zoe stuttered.

Armstrong cut her off. “No ‘buts,' kiddo. Just keep the rendezvous and knock him dead.”

Dead
, Zoe thought.
I wish I were dead.

She stretched out her trembling right hand and pressed the doorbell. Somewhere in the unplumbed recesses beyond the battered mahogany door, a distant buzzer sounded.

Suddenly, the door flew open, and the face of a wild man poked out. His shocking blond hair protruded in all directions; grease-smeared goggles covered his frantic blue eyes. Zoe jumped back and nearly lost her glasses.

“Can't you see I'm busy?” the man said, fairly spitting the words. Then he looked Zoe up and down, and his gaunt face brightened. “Miz Tesla?”

Zoe nodded mutely.

The madman grinned from ear to ear. “Welcome! Welcome! Do come right in.” He held the door open and motioned for Zoe to enter. “I'm Victor Von Lang.”

“I–I'm Zoe. I got your cablegram.”

“Of course, of course.” Doctor Von Lang laid one greasy, glove-clad hand atop the shoulder of Zoe's freshly cleaned blouse. Despite his apparent mania, his touch felt surprisingly gentle. “I know who you are, Miz Tesla: aide-de-camp and chief mechanic for the world-renowned Kit Chapman-Challenger.”

World-renowned but perpetually strapped for cash, Zoe thought.

“That's why I cabled you,” Doctor Von Lang continued. “Do step inside. We have so much to talk about.” He gently moved Zoe through the doorway and into the cluttered laboratory beyond.

She gawked. Beakers, tubes, electrical engines, lathes, drills, cutting equipment, and more filled the huge space to overflowing. The ceiling in the lab stood easily thirty feet tall.

It looked as though Von Lang's lab took up the entire floor . . . maybe the entire structure.
No wonder the building seemed deserted!

Zoe held out the papers clutched in her hand. “I brought references . . .”

“References? Don't be silly! Why would a mechanic of your caliber need references? I wouldn't have cabled you if I thought you needed references.”

“Why did you cable me, Doctor? You said something about a job. . .”

Von Lang pulled off his dirty goggles and gloves and smoothed back his hair. “Yes, of course. I almost forgot in the excitement of the moment.” He removed his chemical-stained lab coat and hung it on a mahogany coat rack. “You've heard of me, I suppose?”

“Everybody's heard of you, Doctor Von Lang—”

“Call me ‘Victor.' ”

“You invented the ionic storage battery, the electro-steam converter, the micro-motor, the artificial skin used to treat burn victims during the war . . . all before you were twenty-five.”

Von Lang waved his hand dismissively as he washed up at one of the lab's many soapstone sinks. “Child's play. Anyone could have done all that.”

“Don't be absurd, Doctor. Your inventions have changed the world—”

“Poppycock!” He straightened and looked her directly in the eye. “People sing of my accomplishments every day, yet the world remains full of chaos and greed. If anything, I've merely accelerated humankind's inhumanity toward its fellows. That is why I have withdrawn—retired, as it were—to these humble chambers.”

I'd give my right eye for a lab this humble
, Zoe thought.

He looked away from her, out the lab's tall windows, and his blue eyes grew distant. In that moment, Zoe realized how truly handsome he was—once he'd cleaned himself up.

“Yet,” he said quietly, “it's this very isolation that vexes me now. One person, no matter how brilliant, no matter how talented, cannot do everything.” Somehow, despite all his money and property and patents, Von Lang seemed terribly sad and vulnerable. Zoe remembered, then, how he'd lost his wife in an industrial accident, several years before.

“That, Miz Tesla, is why I cabled you. I need your help.”

“Zoe. You can call me Zoe. But why do you need my help?”

“Because you are the best mechanic in Manhattan, if not the entire country—or perhaps even the world.”

Zoe blushed from the tip of her nose right down to her toes. Von Lang didn't seem to notice. “I–I'm not—”

“Of course you are. Do you think I can't afford to hire the best?”

“So you're hiring me?”

“Of course! Why did you think you were here? What is your usual rate?”

“I don't really have a usual rate. I usually just work for CC.”

“Miz Chapman-Challenger, yes. How foolish of me.”

“She usually handles all my negotiations,” Zoe fibbed.
Even though no one's ever tried to hire me before.

“I'll have my solicitor contact her, then. I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement. How soon can you start? Immediately, I hope?”

Zoe glanced down at her white blouse, one shoulder now dirtied from Von Lang's hand, and her neatly pressed skirt. “I really didn't come dressed for—”

“Never mind. There are some spare jumpsuits in the locker room. I'm sure one of them will fit you.”

“You have a locker room? I thought you worked alone?”

“I work alone now . . .” His eyes grew sad and distant once more. “Find something you like. I'll call my solicitor and we can begin work in, say . . .” He fished out an ornate golden pocket watch and checked it. “Twenty minutes?”

Zoe nodded. “I . . . I guess.”

“Splendid!”

 

He's really not as strange as he seemed at first,
Zoe thought as she buttoned the top button of the khaki-green jumper. The outfit didn't fit very well, but it was the best she'd been able to turn up in the dusty locker room adjoining the lab. She gazed at her reflection in a grimy mirror and adjusted the belt.
He doesn't care how you look
, she told herself.
It's your mind he admires, and your dexterity, and your . . . craftsmanship.

Taking a deep breath, she returned to the lab, where Von Lang, in a new white coat, stood waiting.

“All set?” he asked. “Excellent. Everything is arranged. You're working for me full time until such time as either Miz Chapman-Challenger urgently needs your services or our project is complete.”

“How soon do you think that might be?”

He shrugged. “It depends on how well-deserved your reputation for brilliance is, Zoe.”

Again, she blushed, and this time he definitely noticed.

“I have few rules in this laboratory. The only absolute one is that you must
not
touch any of my ongoing experiments.”

She looked around. The lab was a mess of boiling liquids and sparking coils. “How will I know what not to touch?”

“I have only one ongoing project right now, and it lies inside that armoire.” He pointed to a tall wooden cabinet on the far side of the room, between two blue velvet curtains.

“W–what is it?”

“I . . . I'm testing the longevity on a new type of battery. I've been working on it for several years now, so it's imperative that the cabinet not be disturbed. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

He stared into the distance, lost in thought, until she cleared her throat.

“What are we working on, Dr. Von Lang?”

His blue eyes lit up. “Let me show you.” He walked across the laboratory to a large table, draped in burgundy velvet. The tabletop was tilted nearly vertical, and the whole surface was taller than either Zoe or Von Lang. The doctor removed the velvet drapery with a flourish, like a magician completing a trick. “I've been working on this for a long time. . . .”

Zoe gasped and stared at the life-size drawing pinned to what she now realized was a huge drawing board. It was the schematic for a machine, but a machine like nothing she'd ever seen before—a machine in the shape of a human being.

“This,” Von Lang announced, “has become my life's work—the fully functional human automaton. I call it the
Automata Futura
.”

Zoe looked the schematic up and down; it was, without a doubt, the most complicated set of plans she had ever seen. It made her own automaton inventions—including the self-propelled
spider grapnel
—look like tinker toys. “Th–that's amazing, Doctor—”

“Victor.”

“Victor. But . . . why?”

He clasped his hands behind his back and looked at the floor, his shoulders slumping. “You've heard about the . . . industrial accident that took my wife from me.”

“Yes. I'm very sorry.”

“Well, what if things like that never had to happen again? What if people never had to labor in the shadow of death—in mines and factories? What if all such dangerous jobs could, instead, be done by machines? Imagine the revolution that such an invention could bring. Imagine the working classes elevated to the leisure class. Imagine the power of all those brains set free from day-to-day drudgery. Imagine working on what you loved—your passion—liberated from worldly cares and danger and loss.”

As he spoke, imagery of the world set free from toil and suffering blossomed in Zoe's mind. It was beautiful; Victor's grand scheme was even more glorious than the plans pinned to his drawing board. She gasped at the plan's brilliance. “I . . . I can see it!”

“If all that could be true—if we could make it happen—what a glorious, shining metropolis this city, indeed, the whole world, would become! Will you help me, Zoe?”