Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (14 page)

I step forward, choosing left over right, praying my instincts are correct, when a glimmer of light catches my eye up the corridor. Collecting my skirts, I chase after it, bursting up the puddle-dotted floor. It’s not yellow like the torchlight, but rather a glistening shade of silvery-black, flickering in and out through the darkness. I move quickly, but softly enough for my boots not to be heard, hoping to reach the glimmer before it flickers, then fades to black. The corridor once again falls dark.

I gasp, arriving at the spot where I last saw the light, and run my hand over the wall. It’s cool to the touch, damp and sweaty, just like the others—only as I move farther along my fingers catch on the lip of what feels like a rail of steel. I follow it up the wall, surprised when it curves around in a giant circle. Jumping my fingers over the rail, I run my hands over the inside. The surface is rough and scaly, like the bottom of a cast-iron pot. At the center of it there’s a handle.

I’ve found a door, a huge one—more like a hatch on a boat, but a door nonetheless—embedded into the side of the stone wall.

I look up to see two large metal springs hovering over my head in the darkness, flanked on either side by a scaffold of pulley-fed gears. Metal ropes feed between the two structures, up and over a giant support beam mounted above the middle of the door. Attached to the top is some sort of chrono-metered device. I brace a boot against the wall and pull myself up. It’s ticking. The device is ticking—measuring time right down to the nanosecond, in a backward countdown from one hundred.

Just forty-three seconds and twenty-nine nanoseconds left.

I drop down and reach for the handle on the door. If I’m going to pass through, I’d better hurry.

I just hope I find Urlick on the other side.

I swallow hard and pull on the lever. Turbines click, then the hatch glides slowly open, emitting a waft of white curling steam. I wave it away and lunge across the threshold, gasping as the chrono-metered device overhead signals zero. Before I’ve the chance to turn around, the massive metal door swings shut, threading itself back into the hole in the wall behind me like a giant screw. Two metal arms fly out of the sides of the walls and I duck. They clamp down over either side of the door, like a giant spider would its prey. I throw my hands over my ears at the tremendous
gong
sound, and pad my way up the corridor.

The corridor gradually narrows the farther I go, closing in overhead, until at the end of the hall, coming up from the floor, there’s a blast of light followed by a sharp hiss.

It’s as if someone’s just lit a match.

I chase after the light, throwing my back up against the wall when I reach the source. A second hole.

Craning my neck out around the corner, I’m astonished to see—

A laboratory. Urlick’s laboratory. In a dungeon-like room below.

Urlick stands center stage, torchlight in his hand, his black wavy hair aglow.

A metal staircase extends from the lip of the hole beside me, folded up like a set of bellows. Rusty chains form a handrail. Metal treads serve as steps. The whole thing hangs suspended mid-air, from a set of cables anchored to the stone slab ceiling.

That must be how he got down there. The steps must extend.

Urlick drops his heads into a crib of tools and starts digging. I make my move. With the stealth of a cat, I edge carefully out onto the top of the suspended staircase.

Urlick lifts his head and I lower mine. His eyes slowly scan the room.

I suck in a breath and keep very still.

He stalks across the floor, lighting a sconce on the wall with the new gaslight in his hand, then he walks around the perimeter lighting the rest. Slowly the room hisses to life, revealing the most beguiling inventions I’ve ever seen.

Strange-looking mechanical bugs of every shape and size cling to row upon row of automated flowers—a garden full of them. A rustic-looking millipede serves as a conveyor belt twisting through the middle, and in the center sits what must be the prized possession, hidden beneath a black velvet drape. The
Illuminator,
I’m hoping.

Something deep inside me stirs.

Though it doesn’t look big enough to be the Illuminator.

He drops the torch and reaches for the drape. I can hardly breathe as he yanks it away—and I’m struck by shock a second later. He’s revealed
not
the Illuminator, but the strangest-looking motorized double-seat bicycle one could ever imagine.

What on earth
is
that?

It has an aerodynamic frame that looks like the skeleton of a bird. A giant one. From a time we’ve never seen. Its skeleton head hovers over a fat, white-walled, balloon tire with wooden spokes. A matching wheel is at the back. Two lamplights fill its empty eye sockets. Pedals hang below the ribs. Two seats straddle the tailbone, one behind the other. All that’s missing are the feathers.

Urlick picks up a wrench, tinkers a moment, then exits the room, muttering about finding something better.

I can’t help myself; I must get a better look. I lean forward, accidentally activating the staircase. With a jerk it unfolds, accordion-like, from its perch. I gasp as it strikes the floor with a thud and expels me. I roll out into the center of the room—a disheveled gape-mouthed heap.

The staircase retracts, rattling treads and quivering chains ascending toward the ceiling as I scramble for cover and dive beneath a tarp thrown across a wooden horse. “What was that?” I whisper, hearing a sigh.

Clutching my chest, I stick my head out from under the tarp. No sign of Urlick anywhere. No sign of anyone for that matter.
Strange.

Bravely, I step out into the open and move toward the cycle, examining it more closely, running a cautious hand over its smooth white frame. Feels like bone. I rap. Sounds like it, too. Gasping, I pull my hand back. It can’t be! Can it? Not even people as eccentric as the Babbits would harvest bone for their creations, would they?

My eyes zero in on a strange-looking box wedged between the frame and the second seat. Is that a coffers box? I touch it. Good God, it is. First bones, now a coffers box? I swallow. What lurks within
that
, I wonder?

I reach out again, blinded by a gust of steam. I fall back. My hand meets the handlebar, triggering some sort of mechanism. The lid of the coffers box slides eerily back. Yellow flames burst from its sides like fire from the nostrils of a dragon. A pair of wings spring forth from the sides of the coffers box like two black bumbershoots, expanding at least
fifteen meters in either direction over the floor. I scramble backward, gasping as they nearly cast me off my feet. It can’t be. I stare. Can it?

Gracefully,
unbelievably,
the cycle appears to
breathe,
as if human—its wings pulsing gently in and out as they lower themselves to rest on the ground.

I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, I’ve seen winged contraptions before, don’t get me wrong. In books and photographs, even once at the fair, but never anything quite like this. This seems to be alive and capable of movement. “Was that you who sighed?” I reach out to stroke its wing, and it jerks back.

It’s alive. I swear to God it’s alive—

I stare at the wings’ soft, thin, delicate webbing, which appears to be made of some sort of—
skin.
I creep toward them, throat closing tighter with every step.

Please God, not human.

The cycle winces again, as if sensing my presence.

“It’s okay,” I whisper to it, crazily. “I promise not to hurt you.”

F
ourteen

Eyelet

“What do you think you’re you doing?!” Urlick’s voice slaps me cold in the back.

I swing around to find him stalking across the room, wrench in hand.

“Nothing,” I say, backing up.

His eyes find the wings and then my face. “How did you get in here?”

“I—
uh
—I…”

“Was it Iris?”

“No!”

“Then
how
?”

He stands so close I smell peppermint tea on his breath, feel the heat of frustration rising off his shirt.

“I followed you,” I volunteer—
stupidly.

“You did what? How?”

“I jammed the lock with a bit of cloth. Yesterday when you weren’t looking.”

His expression darkens. He pushes past me across the room.

“I’m sorry—” I trot after him. “I was just curious—”

“Curious!” He jerks around. “So, curiosity gives you the right to impose on my privacy, does it? Tell me,” he juts toward me, “is it customary where you’re from to force yourself into people’s private spaces, without invitation?”

“Of course not!”

“
Ooooh!
Well, forgive me, then! I thought perhaps it was a cultural difference, not just an Eyelet one!” He throws a fist to the switch on the handlebar, and I jump as the wings contract, snapping briskly back into place within the coffers box—all but the tiny tip of one. Then he turns and stalks away without speaking.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset.” I give chase. “It’s not like I caught you with your pants down in the privy.” He turns and glares at me. “Well it isn’t!”

A tense beat or two skips between us, during which I worry he’s going to order me back to the kitchen. I can’t let him send me away now. I’ve come all this way to search for my father’s machine, and search for it I
will.

Flattery.
That should do it. Flattery always works on men, doesn’t it?

“Besides,” I say, settling back on my heels. “It’s incredible, really—”

“What is?” Urlick snarls.

“The cycle, of course,” I gesture to it, letting my hand brush his arm. He moves away. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” I continue. “Especially the wings.” I tip my head so the light catches me; I feel it sparkle in my eyes. I play with the curl next to my cheek, like I’ve seen so many other girls do. “They’re truly ingenious,” I add.

His brows crinkle. He clears his throat. The wine-colored blotch on his cheek flushes even redder.

It’s working. He has no idea how to respond. How precious. Has he never been flattered before?

“What are they made of, exactly?” I step toward the bike, letting my gaze float from his face. I scan the room, skimming over several things before my eyes land on a drape. Suspended from the ceiling on a set of rods and rings at the back of the room hangs the perfect red velvet square.

But I bet I know what its secret is.

I keep walking and talking, hoping to close the gap between us—the drape and myself, that is. “The veins in the wings. Are they bone?” I stare at the drape. Urlick catches me, so I turn to face him.

“Bamboo,” he says. His eyes are wary, his voice thin.

“Bamboo?” I tilt my head, acting stupid.

Urlick drops back down onto a trolley, slips beneath the cycle, and sets to work. “It’s a reed,” he humors me. “Indigenous to the East. Reeds are hollow in the center, better to simulate the bones of a bird.”

“Really.” I shuffle sideways. “How clever. And the joints”—I inch toward the drape—“what are they made of?”

“The bleached backbones of a ox, if you must know.” He looks up between the spokes at me.

“Oh.” I make a face. “Dare I ask about the webbing?”

“Tanned animal hide.” He returns to his work, ratcheting a nut in then out of place.

“What kind?” I lean. My fingertips brush the curtain’s tassel fringe. Urlick looks up and I yank my hand back, folding it innocently inside the other.

“Dinosaur,” he says, leering.

“Dinosaur?” I scrunch my brow. Could they have possibly resurrected a dinosaur intact among that collection of stuffed oddities in the study?

A cheeky smile floods over Urlick’s lips.

“Oh, you
cad
. What is it really?”

“Elephant.”

“Elephant?”

He grins.

“Why, of course,” I play along.

Seriously, what kind of a fool does he think I am? I might never have seen an elephant in the flesh, but I’m smart enough to know they don’t come in black.

Urlick returns to his work, a grin still plastered on his lips. I take advantage, shuffling ever closer to my target. I lean, my hand connecting with the drape. Gathering a handful, I prepare to sling it back. “And the rest of the cycle,” I say. “Is that oxen bone as well?” I’m just about to yank when Urlick’s head swings around, his eyes shifting wildly between the drape and my hand.

“Would you be so kind as to hand me that wrench over there?” he stammers. He flicks his gaze in the direction of a wrench on the ground a good ten meters away. I consider his proposal a moment, watching his expression grow even more feverish. “I could get up,” he starts again. His Adam’s apple twitches. “But you’re already standing.” He sort of laughs. Perspiration beads his brow.

I glance at the drape, then drop my hand. Clearly this will have to wait. I thunder across the room, heels clicking, stoop to pick up the wrench, and click back, twirling the wrench in my hand. “So, tell me,” I say when I reach him, falling into a crouch at Urlick’s side. “How does it breathe?”

“What?” He jolts up, smashing his skull on the chain guard.

She noticed?
His face screams.

That’s right I did. Explain your way out of this one.

“You heard me. I asked how the cycle breathes.”

His lips part. His good cheek turns red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

“Really?” I say, plopping the wrench into his outstretched hand. “You mean to tell me, you’ve never heard it draw air in and out like a set of bellows being pumped over a fire?”

“No.” His lips quiver. “I can’t say that I have.”

The sounds of our heartbeats fill the room, pulsing off the walls.

“Well then,” I close his fingers over the wrench and hold mine there. “I guess I must have imagined it.” I stand, tapping a toe against a tank on the side of the cycle. “What’s this?”

“Blooming heck!” Urlick lunges sideways.

“What? What is it?”

“If you’re not careful, you’ll blow us both to bits. That’s a hydrogen tank you’re kicking.”

“As in the gas?”

“That’s correct.”

“Really?” I bend to get a better look. “I’ve never heard of anything being powered by hydrogen gas. Especially not in the form of a motor—”

“Of course not, it’s only just been invented.”

“By whom?”

“By me!” he scowls. “I refurbished a conventional steam engine to accept gas, then reconfigured it to activate on the build-up of steam.”

“And it works?”

Of course it works,
his eyes shout at me.

“What about the wings? Can it really fly?”

Urlick’s expression sours. He picks up his wrench.

“Don’t tell me you’ve created a winged creature that can’t get off the ground?”

“Why are you here again?” He sits up, catching his forehead on the cycle’s chain. “I believe I specifically left you in the kitchen, telling you I’d see you later?” He wags his wrench. “In fact, I believe I told you never, under
no
circumstances, were you
ever
allowed to enter my laboratory.”

“That was your father’s.”

He grits his teeth.

“That’s it!” He kicks away the trolley and leaps to his feet. “You think you’re so smart? Go on!” He points. “Find your own way back to the kitchen!”