The Doomsday Vault (21 page)

“Exactly. Just recently, a Chinese clockworker bred an entire new species of silkworm. It produced thread that could be woven into a lightweight cloth that blends into nearly any surrounding, much like a chameleon. The military implications were staggering.”

“Not to mention what a smuggler could use it for,” Gavin pointed out.

“An airman would think of that,” Phipps said. “Fortunately for us, one of our own clockworkers created a special lens that converts heat—he calls it infrared energy—into visible light. He created several, in fact, and we handed them out to the army, which rendered the chameleon cloth much less useful.” She tapped her own monocle. “They're also quite nice for seeing in the dark.”

The lift came to a stop, and Phipps slid the iron gate open. A chilly stone corridor greeted them. Electric lights provided a steady glow, though the place smelled of damp.

“What's this place?” Alice asked.

“The high-powered floor.”

Phipps took them out of the lift, and Alice abruptly realized she was still holding Gavin's elbow. Her face grew hot and she let go. Gavin didn't seem to notice, or pretended not to.

“This is where we keep the most powerful clockworkers and their technology,” Phipps said. “This is what our agents live to find—and protect. It's what holds the British Empire together.”

Alice was expecting even more wonders than she'd seen upstairs, but they only passed a series of side corridors and heavy, closed doors. Behind one of them, however, she heard a muffled explosion and what might have been a scream.

“What's that?” Gavin asked. He was pointing down a short corridor that ended in a round steel door that looked to be ten or twelve feet in diameter. Flanking it were four guards armed with wicked-looking rifles Alice couldn't begin to identify. They certainly didn't fire bullets.

“That's the Doomsday Vault,” Phipps said. “Sometimes a clockworker will create something so terrifying or dangerous that using it would be unthinkable, even in dire need. We lock all such inventions in the Vault, where no one can touch them. There's enough power beyond that door to demolish the world a dozen times over.”

“Why not simply destroy such devices?” Alice asked, aghast.

“Believe me, Miss Michaels, we've had many discussions about that over the decades. Some devices are too dangerous to destroy. Other devices might turn out to be useful later. Another clockworker might invent a safeguard, for example, that makes the original device highly useful. In the end, Her Majesty decreed that we keep everything, just in case.”

“How do they create these inventions, Lieutenant?” Alice asked. “And how far can they go?”

“That's the question that gives me nightmares, Miss Michaels. We used to think that clockworkers were bound by the laws of physics, and they could do something only if it were physically possible and they had enough money and the right equipment. But now the clockworkers are discovering that the boundaries of these physical laws are . . . porous. I hear them use phrases such as
gravity sinkhole
and
extra-temporal commutation
. I think that last term has something to do with traveling in time. I've had two—
two
—clockworkers tell me that matter and energy are the same thing, and another one said he could see entire universes that occupy the same space as this one. I thought he had reached the complete lunatic point in his illness, but then he turned up with three parallel versions of himself, and it was only with great difficulty that we persuaded him to send them back. The world is very lucky that they need extensive and expensive equipment to create their most powerful inventions, or Earth would have been destroyed long ago. They create with great glee and don't think about the repercussions, which is why the Third Ward has to search them out and bring them here, where we can keep their work in check.”

She took them to a particular door, selected a strange-looking key from a ring on her belt, and tapped it near the lock. The key rang—it was actually a tuning fork.

“C-sharp,” Gavin said.

“I wouldn't know,” Phipps said. The lock clicked, and she pushed the door open. “This is the sound laboratory, and we need you here, Mr. Ennock.”

“Gavin!” Simon d'Arco rose from a marble worktable. “Glad you arrived. And nice to see you again, Miss Michaels.”

“It's been only a few minutes, Mr. d'Arco,” Alice said.

“‘Simon,' please. I said we're very informal in the Ward.”

“Do you call the lieutenant ‘Susan'?” Alice asked, genuinely curious.

“No,” Phipps said.

“And this”—Simon gestured to another man—“is Gabriel Stark, but he prefers to be known as Doctor Clef.”

A shortish, balding man in coveralls, goggles, and a stained white coat looked up from the strange object he was working on. The object appeared to be a wire framework, but it twisted Alice's eye. The lines of the cube came together... wrong. The more she looked at it, the more the front of the lattice seemed to fade into the back, or maybe the back was coming into the front. The man pushed his goggles onto his high forehead, revealing watery blue eyes set into a round face. “Good day,” he said in the broad, loopy tones of a north German.

“What is that thing?” Alice asked.

“Do you like it?” Dr. Clef said. “It is a cube, and it is quite impossible. Watch this.” He reached for a machine mounted on his desk. A wire led from the machine to the Impossible Cube, and when Dr. Clef spun a crank on the machine, the wires in the cube sparked and glowed blue. As Alice watched, the cube trembled, then rose a good inch above the table.

“It can
fly
!” Gavin gasped.

“Good heavens!” Alice said. “Is it a magician's trick?”

“No, no.” Dr. Clef stopped cranking, and the cube dropped back to the table. “It is an alloy of my own design. When the electricity goes through the metal, it ignores gravity a little. It allows the Impossible Cube to do what it must do.”

“And what is that?” Alice asked.

Dr. Clef blinked at her. “How can I know? It is not yet finished.”

“It can fly,” Gavin muttered. “Fly!”

“Doctor Clef is one of our more prolific clockworkers,” Simon told them. “His work is currently at a delicate stage, and he didn't want to stop, so—”

“Go on, go on.” Dr. Clef made shooing motions with his screwdriver. “Do not mind me. I make no sound.”

“So come in,” Simon said. “The laboratory awaits.”

The sound laboratory was a brightly lit stone room filled with equipment Alice didn't recognize, some of it small, some of it large, and Alice's fingers itched to take every piece apart and examine them from the inside. One wall was taken up by a variety of musical instruments—harp, drum, piano, violin, cello, flute, bugle, trumpet, and more. Another wall was filled with bookcases and books. Simon led Gavin to the instrument wall.

“Do you know why we're excited to have you, Gavin?” he asked.

Gavin shook his head. He was still staring at the Impossible Cube.

“We suspect you have a musical talent of a type that appears perhaps once a generation,” Simon explained. “Or even less often.”

“How did you know he
has
such a musical talent?” Alice interrupted.

“Our agents heard him play in Hyde Park, and we suspected,” Phipps said. “But before we could move to find out more, he inexplicably vanished. We couldn't find him anywhere. You can imagine our reaction when Agent Teasdale got your letter and he turned up at your home, Miss Michaels, especially since we've been investigating your aunt.”

“
Have
you?” Alice said in a chilly tone.

“Of course. She falls under our jurisdiction. We learned of your aunt's condition several weeks ago and sent agents to investigate. When our people arrived, they found her house in a difficult state. A trap near her front door instantly killed one of my people. His name was Franklin Mayweather, and he had a wife and two children.”

Alice remembered the puddle of dried blood on the floor. Guilt stabbed her stomach, even though she'd had nothing to do with the trap or Franklin Mayweather's death.

“My people tried to capture the woman Edwina,” Phipps continued, “but she eluded them and vanished. Her house was heavily trapped, and after some investigation, they decided the place was too dangerous for further exploration, so they left.”

“Then who demolished her laboratory?” Alice asked.

“I couldn't say. However, apprehending Edwina is still a high priority. She has already killed Franklin Mayweather, and we need to stop her before someone else pays the same price. In addition, the clockworker who controlled those plague zombies and wreaked havoc the night of the Greenfellow ball is still at large, and we have a number of cases on the Continent we're overseeing. In other words, we need all the agents we can lay hands on.”

“And musical talents such as Gavin's are useful in the extreme.” Simon sat at the piano and played a single key. “What note is this?”

“B,” Gavin said, tearing his gaze away from Dr. Clef's cube. “I have perfect pitch. You don't need to test that.”

“Indulge me.” Simon played several notes, all of which Gavin named perfectly. Then he played chords, and Gavin named those as well. Occasionally he played one chord with one hand and another chord with the other, which Gavin helpfully pointed out. “Good, good.”

“This young man is pleasing to me,” Dr. Clef called from his worktable. “How well do you remember the music?”

“I learn fast,” Gavin said, taking out his fiddle and tuning it quickly. Alice leaned forward on her stool.

“How fast?” Dr. Clef asked.

“I'm running the tests, Doctor Clef,” Simon said. “I thought you had work to do.”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Dr. Clef bent studiously over his cube, though Alice could see him peering at Gavin, despite his goggles.

“Play something,” Gavin said.

Simon played in a minor key. Gavin listened through one verse and one chorus. Simon stopped playing, and Gavin played it through perfectly. Simon joined back in again, and Gavin played harmony. They played other songs back and forth, songs Alice couldn't identify. Gavin's fiddle swooped and spun, though every note echoed off hard stone. Dr. Clef gave up all pretense of working and listened. Alice heard a quiet longing in the music, a wish for every note to fly free, and it brought a quiet tear to one eye.

“That was perfect,” Simon breathed. “Can you sing, Gavin?”

“Yes.”

“Sing something for me, then. Your favorite song.”

“ ‘The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies,' ” Gavin said. He raised his fiddle for accompaniment and sang.

Alice stared. She had never heard Gavin sing. His light, clear voice arrested her. His white-blond hair shone in the bright electric light, and his lithe body moved with the fiddle. He played and sang with his entire soul, and Alice wanted to get up and dance.

Gavin's voice and fiddle tugged at Alice. They sang of adventure, of new places, of casting off rules and conventions. In that moment, she would have followed Gavin anywhere. Dr. Clef had abandoned his work and was now sitting at Gavin's feet like a small child. Gavin's blue eyes met Alice's brown ones, and she couldn't look away. She didn't want to.

The song ended. Dr. Clef jerked as if he had been slapped awake. Simon applauded. Phipps stood nearby with her arms crossed, expression unreadable. Alice spun sideways on the stool, face flushed.

“Marvelous!” Simon said. “Worthy of a concert hall.”

“Not the first time someone has told me that, actually,” Gavin said with a wry smile. He tried to catch Alice's eye, but she didn't dare meet that gaze. “You still haven't explained why this is worth something to you.”

Dr. Clef crept back to his table and set back to work, one eye still on Gavin.

“One last question before I answer.” Simon turned back to the piano. “What kind of interval is this?”

He played it, and Dr. Clef yelled. Alice twisted on her stool in alarm. The clockworker clapped both hands over his ears and yelled and yelled. Lieutenant Phipps was instantly by his side. She touched his cheek with her mechanical hand, and he calmed.

“I'm sorry, Doctor Clef,” Simon said. “I forgot you were in the room.”

“What was that all about?” Alice demanded. She was still half-ready to run for the door.

Gavin grimaced. “I don't know the name of the interval, but no song I know uses it.”

“A tritone,” Alice put in. “The Devil's Interval. The one you asked me to play during the zombie attack.”

“Exactly.” Simon closed the piano lid. “And it all comes back to clockworkers. They love music. They can even be entranced or hypnotized by an exceedingly well-played song, the more complicated the better, as Doctor Clef demonstrated. So you can see why someone who can sing and play like you do, Gavin, would be a tremendous asset to a group that collects clockworkers.”