Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) (25 page)

The overalls were
too big so she turned up the sleeves and legs and hoped no one would notice how loose the Wellingtons were. If it came to a foot race, she might as well be wearing clown shoes crossing a bog. The mining helmets were uncomfortable as well as cumbersome, so she opted for the flat cap instead, taking care to tie her hair up as tightly as she could. Lastly, she used saliva to wet the mud on the underside of the Wellingtons, and smeared it over her face.

It wasn
’t exactly what Cathy had had in mind for wooing London, but it would have to do.

She grabbed a sled from the rack and determined to figure out
its use. If this was the preferred mode of transportation down here, it would only aid her disguise. How, then, did it work?

The other alcoves
in this utility area were either empty or filled with trolleys, broken sleds, crates of empty milk bottles and cans of fruit, wooden beams, dustbins, horseshoes, assorted automobile parts, and endless stacks of metallic tracks, identical to those laid down on the middle of the corridor.

Attraction beats the iron gait,

So tend the field from twelve till eight.

She
ran those lines from Donnelly’s verse over and over in her mind. Magnetism: the key to unlocking her Atlas case; also, she was now quite certain, the means by which the sled would be whisked down the passageway. For while science had never been her forte at school, inklings and intuition had; they’d seen her through several subjects she hadn’t expected to pass. They were the hidden reminders of one’s experiences, however unconsciously one soaked them up in the first place. Metal tracks and electric cables and metallic sleds?

Some kind of m
agnetic locomotion.

The main c
orridor remained still, empty. Behind the first portcullis on the left, a brass sphere supported by decorative steel spider legs sat in the centre of a room that pulsed ultraviolet and yellow alternately. A bizarre fungal growth covered the top third of the sphere, while tables filled with potted plants, glass tubes, beakers, and bottles of coloured liquids stood away to one side.

What the deuce is that all about?

The second and third portcullises faced one another. A lever was attached to the wall outside each. Beneath the lever, the wheels of a five-digit combination lock made her think twice. She only had three numbers, those engraved on the case. If she were faced with
this
type of lock further on...

Automobiles of every shape and size were
parked in the left hand room. Horses and carriages waited in the other. Meredith heard voices coming from the latter, so she slung the sled over her shoulder and made for the metal tracks.

A
notice on the wall next to the start of the four metal strips on the left read,
Caution! Diamagnetic levitation uses powerful electromagnets. No heavy metallic items allowed. High setting for freight sleds ONLY. Single passengers use low setting. When light is green, pump lever twice. For smoothest ride, maintain centre of balance.

The light was indeed green, so she pumped the black-handled lever
back and forth in the ground. Over the tracks, a heavy
whuh-whuh-whuh
began and seemed to cushion the air from underneath. As she lowered the sled, it rested just above the metal tracks on an invisible bed of air. When she let go for a moment it began to accelerate, perhaps pulled by the periscope overhead. Halting its progress took a considerable effort. But even then pulling the sled back was impossible, so she had to tilt it sideways to free it, then start again at the beginning. As she did, the butterflies in her stomach swarmed electrically to her fingers and toes in a vision-whitening pulse, making her gasp. It was a pleasant sensation, though, and left a prickly tickle all over her body.

She sat on the sled. It lowered
ever so slightly and immediately picked up speed. Meredith found that the steadier she kept it, the more the egg-shaped
whuh-whuh-whuh
sensation flattened to a cockle-warming whir. Approaching each new periscope hanging from the ceiling produced another gentle spurt of acceleration, and there were hundreds. The periscopes on the opposite side of the tunnel faced the opposite way, so the right hand track had to be for travelling in that direction.

How far she
’d have to travel she didn’t know, but none of the portcullis rooms seemed apt for a meeting place. They were laboratories and storage rooms, and she’d give anything to be able to explore them at her leisure.

Maybe later in the
month, when the eight sects aren’t meeting?

The periscopes
became more frequent as she began to climb. Several between portcullises. They dragged her uphill at a constant speed, a gentle ten miles an hour.

I
f all this was under the city of London, how many more tunnels had they built? Perhaps even the Leviacrum tower, despite its constant upward expansion, was simply not big enough to house the scientific ambition of its masters, and the only alternative was to spread downward, splay outward where none could gain access. She did her best to identify the experimentations she could only glimpse as she passed; some didn’t mean a thing to her, and she wished again that Sonja were here beside her to provide a little insight.

In one,
an emerald light beam was suspended between two trees. Swarms of living fluorescent particles inside it appeared to give off flashes of electricity. These flashes struck a shiny metal orb mounted on a rotating light-sensitive wheel below. Glowing symbols then appeared on the wheel, as if the orb had translated the flashes into pictorial language. These symbols were then recorded, like photographs, onto a never-ending roll of film, before they disappeared and the wheel spun to record the next message. Communicating with intelligent microscopic life forms? Whatever next?

More than one laboratory was sealed with glass d
oors behind its portcullis. These contained human bodies afloat in large glass jars full of bubbling water. Alternating currents flash-crackled between silver globes above each jar, zapping the water repeatedly. It reminded her of the heinous science the characters in Sonja’s penny dreadful comics often practiced, twisted experiments inspired by Dr. Frankenstein’s. But what where they up to?

Another room boasted an iron vault door behind its portcullis, with no window. A notice on the door read,
Caution! Live ammunition used inside
.
The next warned of explosive chemicals, while the one after that contained highly flammable liquid. Meredith kept thinking of the recent cataclysmic explosions, first off Norway, then in the South Pacific, many had blamed on this institution. Were these research laboratories linked to those acts of destruction? If only she had a camera with her. If only she had access to the records detailing what went on here. If only the rest of the world knew about this place!

A junction up ahead signalled the end of her current ride.
She alighted from the sled just before a corridor leading to the left. The sign said, Automata 8, Anti-Gravity 3, Elevators 15 & 16.

But e
levators to where? Straying from this central tunnel probably wasn’t a smart move but Meredith’s curiosity was now insatiable, sugar-rich—the more she saw, the more she wanted to know. It coursed through her arteries with fizzy urgency. She might be the only outsider to have
ever
reached this far. It might be her only chance to go all the way.

Carrying the sled under her arm, she soon arri
ved at a gridiron bridge over an acre of glass-ceiled laboratory cubicles. The only lights were on the underside of the bridge. They revealed just enough of the sleeping mechanisms in the cubicles to tell her this was experimental automaton technology. And obscene. Half-man, half-horse machines. Then a hideous centipede-like mechanism made up of a dozen small man-shaped automata joined by flexible piping. Then a slender automaton dressed up like a prostitute. Lastly, disembodied metal arms and oversized heads protruding from a kitchen wall, the former for cooking, the latter for God-knew-what. If this was Automata 8, what the hell were they making in the first seven?

Beyond the b
ridge she found the elevators. She hurried past those because the one on the right was grumbling—in use? A couple of trolleys had been left outside a storage room nearby.

Fifty yards on she reached what had to be Anti-Gravity 3, a stupendous cavern
over five hundred feet deep and about a quarter of a mile square. Reinforced glass shielded it from her current level, while there were umpteen observation levels on the far side. She used the high magnification on her goggles to look around. Nine concrete craters dotted across the cavern floor appeared to be the hubs, with equipment and boxes strewn around them. Miniature rockets were hung by scaffolding over four of them. Exactly what the propulsion might be she couldn’t guess. Anti-gravity? A new one on Meredith.

Large copper pipes emerged from the roof, lined the walls, and ap
peared to feed these crater hubs. What did they bring? Oil? Gas? Psammeticum?

F
igures appeared in one of the observation windows opposite. She ducked out of sight, clamped a hand over her thumping heart. There were several well-dressed men and women toting pens and clipboards. No sense in dawdling here—she’d seen all she came to see. Meredith dashed past the elevators and across the bridge and back to the central corridor, her mind spooling theories.

Luckily the corridor
was still empty. The sect members all had to be engaged elsewhere. Were they evaluating the various experiments? Maybe some of them. What about the others?

She decided to press on a little, to see as much as she possibly could before heading back to the cemetery.
Ahead on the left, a locked wooden door was marked
Southwest Administration.
Directly facing the end of the magnetic track stood a green octagonal building. Lights were on inside, and through one of its porthole windows she spied a plush, oak-panelled conference room.

Four
people sat around the octagonal table in the centre. A further two men and a woman stood apart from the table, scrutinizing a wall map of Great Britain; they smoked cigars and cheroots and sipped brandy as they listened to the only speaker at the table, a scowling old woman who was reading a sheet of paper through her Atlas monocle.

Of the others, she recognised
Frank, aka Thurston Kingsley, pensively biting his nails, the boorish Mr. Slocombe, who glared at the old woman as though she was reading his worst school report out loud, and the impatient elderly driver who’d thrown away his flat cap at the front gate. While it appeared official and all—identical letters and paraphernalia had been left for each of them at their places at the table—it somehow didn’t strike Meredith as particularly...intimidating. Only two of the members were over thirty years of age, fully three of the seven were women, and in a society replete with veteran scientists, businessmen, politicians and warmongers, these did not seem to represent the power elite of such a monumental organisation.

Heck, Slocombe was more than enough proof. These
were second, maybe third-tier Atlases at best. Maybe even familiars granted access but awaiting promotion to the premium ranks of their particular sect.

Meredith crept around the
left side of the octagon, to see what lay on the other side. There she found another corridor, half as wide as the previous and much shorter, less than a hundred yards to a bare brick wall and a steel gate on the far side. Kingsley and his cronies couldn’t see her. She hung her sled on a rack next to a few dozen others and continued on.

“
...Ethel Dockery and those pesky unionists, damn their hides,” a disgruntled voice emerged from the first open doorway ahead. Meredith froze. She thought about squirming away as fast as her boots would flap.

No, you couldn
’t outrun a corpse from one of those jars.

She caught sight of the brim of a large touring hat, then
turned on a sixpence and slumped back the way she’d come—if her disguise worked at all it would have to be now, while they couldn’t see her face. Her sister knew how to walk like a boy; Meredith only had to copy that and she might be all right.

“
Come, let’s to the lounge,” a woman said. “We’ve barely said hello. It’s been all business, business, boo and bye.”

“
Ha! D’you hear that, Denton? The lady and I are in agreement at long last. It’s what I’ve been saying for months: we need to pace these meetings so that one doesn’t sneeze and miss half the docket.”

“
We’ll have to see about that.”

When Meredith heard their footsteps grow fainter, she loitered at the sled rack until the group had exited through the steel gate.
Then she made her way to the room they’d emerged from. They’d left the light on inside, but the door was locked. She moved on to the next, hoping to find an office, a filing room, anywhere she could slip inside and retrieve
some proof
that this place existed, proof that she’d been here, in the heart of Atlas, and that there was more going on here than mere rumours and whispers.

No luck with the next door, nor the next.
Strangely, the steel door at the end of the passage had been left slightly agape. She frowned, took her hands out of her deep overall pockets. The
one
gate in the entire complex left open—and the farthest gate at that? Nah, not a chance. Not unless they’d left someone else...