The Boneshaker (19 page)

"Wow, that's something," Ryan said. "What's that, a machine?"

"An automaton," said a grown-up voice. Dr. Limberleg stood behind them polishing his spectacles. "Of course, Miss Minks knows quite a lot about automata," he said. "How is yours coming along? The charming little flyer."

"Fine." Natalie hesitated. She didn't particularly want to have a conversation with Dr. Limberleg or spend extra time with his uncanny automatons. On the other hand, the idea of
not
asking the question on the tip of her tongue was just as aggravating.

"Dr. Limberleg?" He paused in the act of walking away. "Um. What makes it go?" She gave the little harlequin a closer look just to be sure she hadn't mistaken the key for clever decoration. "I mean, how do you wind the clockwork up?"

"It isn't clockwork." He smiled a little. It was the kind of smile she often got from an adult who didn't know her well, right before he gave her an answer he didn't think she'd understand. But there was something else in it, too; something wary.

"It is," said Dr. Limberleg, "a perpetual motion machine."

"What does 'perpetual' mean?"

"It means everlasting," said the doctor, smirking a little. "It means that this automaton doesn't
have
to be wound. It will go on forever, all on its own."

Lesson learned: never, ever admit (to this man at least) that she didn't know the meaning of any word, ever again. "That's impossible. Nothing goes forever all on its own."

"And who, if you please, told you that?"

"My dad."

Dr. Limberleg's smirk curled. "I hate to crush two misconceptions in one day, but parents have been known to be wrong before. Even, I would imagine, yours."

Behind her, Ryan, Alfred, and Miranda exchanged worried looks.

Natalie opened her mouth to set him straight, but Dr. Limberleg spoke first. "That automaton will carry on, now
that it has been set into motion, forever—or at least, close enough to forever that none of us could possibly tell the difference—unless something stops it by force."

"No." Natalie shook her head. Why it mattered so much to prove him wrong, she didn't know, but the idea of that little tumbler going on forever made her feel uncomfortable, anxious, even a little sick. No bit of machinery, no matter how subtle and complex, could do what he claimed this one could. "Machines don't work like that."

"You could watch and see," Dr. Limberleg said carelessly, "but waiting for it to wind down would be a dreadful waste of time."

All four kids turned immediately to stare at the automaton. Natalie willed it to slow, however imperceptibly. She tried to measure the little delay between cartwheels, to watch for some hesitation as it changed direction at the end of the wire....

"Poor Natalie."

She looked up at him with narrowed eyes. But Dr. Limberleg wasn't looking at her. He, too, was watching the automaton.

"You're lucky, really," he said. "Most people are much older when they discover their world isn't the place they thought it was. By then ... sometimes ... it's too late."

Natalie stared at him for a moment, so perplexed by the look on his face and the words he had just spoken that she simply stood there, eyebrows furrowed over her nose. Then something occurred to her.

"I'm not saying I believe you," she said, "but if all that's true, how do you start it in the first place?"

The strange look faded slowly. One eyebrow lifted over the top of Dr. Limberleg's blue-lensed glasses. "Are you sure you want to know?" Then he turned and stalked off with a swish of his coat.

"I hate when people say things like that." Natalie put her hands in her pockets so that her friends wouldn't see them shaking.

"Hey, Natalie." Alfred watched the doctor walk away, then pointed toward a wagon that stood at the end of a dead-end path. Dr. Limberleg ushered an older man up the stairs and inside. A little line of people clustered at the foot of the steps, with Natalie's brother unmistakable in the middle of it. "Isn't that Charlie?"

"What's that, anyway?" Ryan muttered. "I could've sworn the film tent was there yesterday."

"
For the fifteenth time,
if someone would just listen to me, the film tent's—"

"It's Dr. Limberleg's wagon," Natalie interrupted. "Remember the presentation? The bald man, Argonault, has the Phrenology Pavilion, and Dr. Limberleg takes patients in a wagon."

"So what's Charlie got that he has to see a doctor for?" Alfred asked.

"Nothing I know of." She jogged to her brother's side. "Charlie, what are you doing?"

Charlie jumped as if he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Nothing. It's free, remember? Just for fun."

The door to the wagon opened, and Natalie's neighbor, Mr. Carlton, descended the stairs. He looked a little bit pale.

"Just a moment, my dear sir." Dr. Limberleg appeared in the doorway behind him, brandishing a small card on which he scrawled something with a fountain pen. He slid it into Mr. Carlton's hand. "Mr. Dalliot can see that filled for you. Next guest, please!"

Dr. Limberleg stepped aside to let a woman pass into the wagon. His eyes met Natalie's. He frowned and swung the door shut.

"Charlie, don't. I don't like this."

"Nattie, it's just for a grin," he protested. "Look, nobody's taking it seriously."

Nobody in
line
was, as they chatted with one another and in general tried to act like they were there only for novelty's sake, but Mr. Carlton had seemed a little rattled. Sure enough, the woman who'd been next in line almost tripped coming back down the stairs in her haste to get to the next phase of her treatment, whatever it was. She clutched her prescription card in both hands like something precious or miraculous—or both.

Natalie glanced over her shoulder at her trio of friends. Ryan, Alfred, and Miranda shifted uncomfortably, not sure whether to stay and wait for Natalie or tactfully disappear. After a minute's silent debate, the boys, with Miranda in tow, wandered around the side of the wagon to where there was just enough shade for the three of them
to look as if they simply wanted to get out of the sun for a little while.

The line inched forward as another patient climbed the steps.

"Come on, Charlie. This is boring. You'll be waiting forever." The patient reappeared, and another stepped inside to take his place. The line wasn't taking forever at all. In fact, how could any doctor work so quickly? "We're going back to see what's in the Cabinet of Curiosities," Natalie said a little desperately. "That'll be more fun than just having some doctor try and sell you pills. There's nothing wrong with you, anyway!"

Natalie didn't realize how subdued the little line of customers had gotten until her voice, high and distressed, pierced the quiet.

"Charlie." She tugged frantically at her brother's arm. Everything about this felt wrong.

The man in front of them disappeared into the wagon. Charlie was next. Natalie fidgeted. Too quickly, the door opened again.

"You recall where to find the Magnetism Tent, don't you?" Dr. Limberleg's eyes fell on Natalie again and narrowed as he spoke to the departing patient.

This was it. She turned her face up to Charlie. "Please." People were staring at her, and she blushed at the childish fear she heard in her own voice, but Charlie just patted her shoulder with a smile that was probably supposed to be comforting, and climbed the steps.

Dr. Limberleg gave her a smile, too, another of his thin, unfunny ones, as he shut the door.

For long minutes—much longer, it seemed, than anyone else's consultation had taken—Natalie waited. The people in line shuffled.

The door opened and Charlie stumbled down the steps. Natalie sprang after him, her friends hurrying behind at a little distance.

"What is it?" Natalie demanded. "What did he say? What's in there?" Wordlessly Charlie showed her the prescription, a rectangle of heavy paper punched with a series of little holes on one side.

"Limberleg's Ginger-Angelica Bitters," she read. Only because she'd spent so long staring at a bottle labeled with these same words could she decipher Dr. Limberleg's spidery scrawl. "What's it for? Charlie?"

"For when I get the shakes."

"But you almost never get the shakes anymore."

"Why get them at all?"

Natalie's friends trailed her as she followed Charlie all the way to the front of the fair. The Dispensary looked as if it had seen good business already; the shelves were a little less crowded and Mr. Dalliot seemed to be exhausted. The second the customer he was helping left the counter, his chin dropped to his chest, one hand still resting on the cash register keys. Not for the first time, Natalie wondered how Limberleg had found so many people who looked just like one another to work there.

Charlie stepped up. "Um, hi."

Dalliot blinked once and raised his chin again. "Prescription?" Charlie put the card into his outstretched hand, and the dispenser, giving it only the briefest of looks, slid it into his breast pocket. He paused, then swiveled and reached for a bottle. "Dr. Limberleg's Ginger-Angelica Bitters," he intoned. "Two dollars and fifty cents."

Two dollars and fifty cents?
AH four kids gasped in disgust as Charlie slid his money across the counter.

"Charlie, that's—" The glare he gave her made Natalie bite down on the words
a whole lot of money.

"Here," he muttered. "You can have this, Natalie. I don't want it."

He put something in her hands and then he was gone, sprinting toward home.

Natalie looked down at her clasped hands. The thing Charlie had given her was cold and irregular and, in places, round. Her friends gathered around as she opened her hands, one finger at a time, until at last there it was. Natalie felt all the breath go out of her.

"What is it?" Miranda asked.

"The free prize, obviously," Ryan said. "Because Charlie bought medicine."

Only Alfred noticed the look on Natalie's face. "It's pretty swell, Natalie," he said with forced cheer.

"I guess."

In her cupped hands she held a model of a bicycle and rider. She could see tiny gears, a mechanism of some sort that suggested it was more than just a model—that it was, in fact, mechanical. An automaton.

"Looks a little like you, doesn't it?" Miranda said.

"I don't think so." But the little figure in painted overalls was definitely a girl. And the bicycle ... it had two close-set wheels, the front one a bit bigger than the back. It was decked with springs. Even the shade of red was almost the same as Natalie's.
Please, please let there be a key,
she thought desperately. She turned it over and over, examining it as closely as she could with three kids leaning over her blocking the sun.

But try as she might, she could see no place to wind it.

B
Y THE END OF THE FIRST DAY
of the nostrum fair, something had happened to Arcane. It had become a town of believers. Everyone who'd given it a try, it seemed, had undergone an intuitive diagnosis and had miraculous, almost instantaneous results. Natalie quickly tired of hearing her neighbors talking about the miracles of the nostrum fair as she walked through town toward the general store, pulling the red enameled Chesterlane Eidolon alongside her. The only reaction Natalie had to Dr. Limberleg and his fair was a fierce wish to get her own bicycle working, if only to show Dr. Limberleg that he didn't know everything.

At the Central Exchange at the back of the general store, her father was hard at work on the telegraph machine. As she passed the left-hand counter, Natalie glanced at the shelf of medicine bottles on the wall, and
the new sign that read
WE SELL PATENT MEDICINES BUT DO NOT ENDORSE THEM.

"Hi, Nattie. Have a good time at the fair today?"

"No," Natalie said sourly. "Charlie bought medicine, even though he doesn't need any." She leaned on Mrs. Tilden's desk and stood watching Mr. Minks fiddle with the telegraph. "Dad, can you look at something for me?"

He wiped his hands clean and straightened. "Sure. Got a scrape?"

"No." From the pocket of her overalls, Natalie produced the little bicyclist.

"Well, that's something! Looks a little like someone I know." He chuckled. "It sort of looks like your Chesterlane, too, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess." She wasn't about to say out loud that she almost thought, despite the fact that it had been Charlie's free prize, that Limberleg had intended it for her. As if somehow he knew she hadn't figured out how to ride her own bicycle, and wanted to rub it in. "It seems like it's mechanical, right? Supposed to do something, I mean."

"Hmm." He turned it over in his hands just as Natalie had. "Sure does. So where's she wind up?"

"Can't figure it out. Dr. Limberleg has another automaton that he says doesn't need to be wound at all. A...
perpetual motion
machine."

"Not possible. It might not wind with a key, but something has to start it up, and get it going again when it slows down. Some kind of a force has to act on it."

"Then winding a key is like using a force."

"Exactly. People have been trying to find a way to create perpetual motion for as long as they've been building machines, but no one ever succeeds because the idea goes against the laws of physics. You need to apply force, whether it's with a key or an engine or what have you, to keep a machine going."

"That's what I told him," she said in exasperation, "and he said I was wrong."

"Of course you're not wrong! My Natalie, wrong about machines?"

"Well," she said, trying not to burst with pride, "I didn't believe him, anyway."

Natalie proceeded to get good and scraped up in Smith Lane for the next hour as she tried again to apply the practice she'd gotten on Limberleg's generator bicycle to her own. When she finally gave up and limped around the corner of the livery stable to head home for supper, the world's fastest bicycle remained untamed.

She heard the smirk in George Sills's voice before she saw his face.

"What's the matter, Natalie?" He stood at the end of the alley flanked by two laughing friends, blocking the way to Bard Street. "Daddy take off the baby wheels a few years too early?"