The Dragon Lantern (5 page)

3

Archie ran to the rail outside the Cahokia Arms and looked back and forth along the broad sweep of gangplanks on their level that ringed the Cahokia Man. Mr. Rivets and Philomena Moffett joined him moments later.

“She's got too much of a head start,” Archie cried. “We'll never catch her!”

“We will if she looks just like me,” Mrs. Moffett said.

“There she is,” Mr. Rivets said. He pointed to a place farther along the gangplank, right where it disappeared behind the giant statue. Archie frowned. The only person there was an Illini man on the way to work with a newspaper tucked under his arm.

“That man?” Archie asked. “He doesn't look anything like Mrs. Moffett.”

“I assure you, Master Archie. I see no man there. It is a young woman with a fox tail. And she has the lantern in her backpack!”

Archie shook his head. No matter how hard he tried, all he could see was a Cahokia businessman.

“She must have some way of making us see what she wants us to see,” Mrs. Moffett said. “But it doesn't work on machine men.”

“Come on, Mr. Rivets!” Archie cried, taking off at a run. Mrs. Moffett ran the other way, toward the cable car platform. Good. If the thief went up or down, Mrs. Moffett could cut her off.

Archie was halfway round the gangplank when he realized that Mr. Rivets was lagging too far behind. Mark IIs were built for power, not speed.

Just like me,
Archie realized.

Archie ran back toward his Tik Tok.

“Sorry, Mr. Rivets, but you're moving too slow, and I need your eyes,” Archie said.

“I don't understand—” Mr. Rivets began, but before he could finish, Archie picked up the thousand-pound machine man and started to run.

“Master Archie! I knew you were strong, but I had no idea!” Mr. Rivets said.

The truth was, Archie didn't know how strong he was either. Strong enough to pick up Edison in his iron body and toss him into a pit with Malacar Ahasherat. Strong enough to lift a Mark II Machine Man and run with it. But what was his limit? Whatever it was, he hadn't found it yet. Mr. Rivets slowed him down about as much as the long coat and backpack he still wore.

A twelve-year-old boy running with a machine man in his arms was quite a sight, and everybody for five levels with a view of him stopped and pointed. The businessman Archie was following stopped to look at what everyone was pointing at, and for the briefest of moments the man wasn't a man anymore. It was a girl—an Asian girl in a white dress, wearing fox ears and a fox tail, staring at him in wide-eyed amazement. But how…? Archie blinked, and the girl was a businessman again, running away.

“I saw her, Mr. Rivets—I saw her! The girl you saw! Just for a second when she turned to look at me!”

“If she has the ability to somehow project images into your mind, as Mrs. Moffett suggests, it would appear that she must concentrate to do it,” Mr. Rivets said. “Seeing something that startled her broke her concentration for the merest of moments, allowing you to see her as she really is.”

The girl in her businessman disguise took a gangplank toward the cable car platforms, and Mrs. Moffett appeared in her way. The girl/businessman pulled up short and looked back and forth between Archie and Mrs. Moffett. She was trapped. They had her!

The girl, still disguised as a businessman slid underneath the walkway railing, grabbed the gangplank, and swung herself down to the level below.

“Slag!” Archie cried. He leaned over the railing, but the businessman was gone.

“There,” Mr. Rivets said.

Archie saw her. A Pawnee woman with a baby bundled up in a papoose. She was hurrying toward the cable car platform in the other direction. Mrs. Moffett was running for a downtown cable car, but she was going to be too late.

“Hang on, Mr. Rivets. I'm going to swing you down.”

“Master Archie, I think this an ill-advised course of action.”

“Got any better ideas?”

“The lack of a better idea is not a valid reason for embracing a
bad
idea, sir,” Mr. Rivets said.

“That's what I thought,” Archie said. He lifted his mechanical valet over the rail and held on to him by an arm. It felt no different to Archie than dangling a stuffed animal over the edge, but the rail he was leaning on groaned in complaint. Looking down like this, Archie realized just how far down it was to the Cahokia Man's feet. He might survive that fall, but Mr. Rivets wouldn't. Still, they had to stop that girl. He had to have the Dragon Lantern back.

“On three, Mr. Rivets.” Archie swung Mr. Rivets back and forth. “One … two…”

“And what exactly am I supposed to
do
on three, sir?” Mr. Rivets asked.

“Three!” Archie said. He let go of Mr. Rivets's hand, and the machine man fell toward the gangplank below.
Crash!
Mr. Rivets landed on his backside, smashing a hole in the wooden planks of the walkway.

“Hang on, Mr. Rivets!” Archie yelled. “I'll swing down!”

Archie leaned out over the rail and remembered how terrible he was at jumping around like a circus performer.
Oh slag,
Archie thought. Where was Hachi when he needed her? This was what she was good at! If Archie missed, he would fall seventy-five stories, and the girl would get away for good.

“Wait! I've got a better idea!” he called down to Mr. Rivets. Archie lifted his right leg and stomped.

Smash!
His super-strong foot split the wooden planks below him, and he fell through. It was what he had meant to do, but he hadn't expected to drop so fast.

“Slag!” he cried.

Clang!
He landed right on top of Mr. Rivets, knocking him the rest of the way through the hole he'd made and falling with him to the level below that.

“Slaaaaag!” Archie cried again.
Crunch!
He and Mr. Rivets smashed into the wooden gangplank, shattering wood and splitting ropes. The walkway threatened to give away underneath them again, but Archie scrambled to his feet and pulled Mr. Rivets to his.

“May I say again, Master Archie, the lack of a better idea is not a valid reason for embracing a bad one.”

“We're alive, Mr. Rivets. And look!”

A downtown cable car was leaving the station above them, and the first rows of seats were just visible coming through the floor. Sitting in one of them was the fox girl. She stared back at him in amazement before changing back into an old woman.

Archie snatched up Mr. Rivets and ran for the cable car platform. The gangplank was full of people, though—men and women heading to work, nannies pushing strollers, deliverymen hauling boxes. Archie had to shuffle back and forth through the maze of them so much he was never going to make it in time.

“Master Archie, why are you dancing around?” Mr. Rivets asked.

“What do you want me to do, run over all these people?”

“Master Archie, there
are
no people.”

Archie put a hand out to touch one of the passing pedestrians. It went right through her. He took a step toward a man carrying a large wooden crate and winced, expecting it to hit him in the face, but the man and his box walked right through him. Archie didn't feel a thing.

“It's all in my head,” he said, amazed. So. She could do more than just change her appearance. She could make you see other things too.

Archie walked forward, passing through person after person, then broke into a run. “All right, Mr. Rivets—you have to tell me if any of these people are real, or things are going to get real messy!”

But none of them were real. Archie sprinted for the cable car platform. The fox girl, still disguised as an old woman, looked anxiously between Archie and the conductor. They were just going to make it, and she had nowhere to go.

“First-row priority seating is for city elders and people with disabilities,” Archie called. “Not thieves in fox costumes!”

The old lady got up from her seat and ran up the stairs of the cable car with the speed and agility of a twelve-year-old girl, surprising the rest of the passengers. Archie and Mr. Rivets got on board right as the cable car left the station, and Archie put the machine man down to climb after her. The cable car went down as they ran up, and when the old lady was level again with the floor where Archie and Mr. Rivets had boarded, she jumped across the two-foot gap between the cable car and platform, her fox tail flashing briefly before she scampered away.

Twisted pistons!
Archie ran up the steps, trying to get to the top row of seats to jump before the cable car passed the level above them completely. He was too slow, and the cable car was too fast! He got to the top just as the cable car was clearing the floor above them and jumped, grabbing on to the platform with both hands. He was just about to slip off when something below him gave him a push up. Mr. Rivets!

“I'll catch the next car up,” Mr. Rivets said as Archie clambered onto the deck. “Be careful, Master Archie!”

“Careful is my middle name,” Archie whispered, using a line he'd used before. As he looked back down the cable car hole he'd just climbed out of, he wondered if that was true anymore—and if he wanted it to be.

Archie followed the fox girl down a walkway filled with Cahokia schoolchildren in black-and-white uniforms. They laughed and talked and jostled each other, filling the gangplank ahead of him.

Illusions! They had to be. She was tricking him again. Archie ran right at the last kids in line.
Oof!
He knocked three kids flat and fell on top of a fourth.

“Hey! Watch it! Look out, you flange!” they cried.

“Sorry! Sorry,” Archie said. So.
Not
illusions. He pulled himself up and worked his way through to the head of the line, where the teacher stood with her hands on her hips.

“Sorry!” Archie told her. “Just trying to get past.”

“All right, boys and girls, settle down,” the teacher said. She started doing a head count. “Let's see if we've lost anyone.”

Archie had almost turned the corner when he heard the teacher say, “Wait, how do I have one extra?”

Archie spun around in time to watch one of the students he'd flattened peel off the end of the line and take off running in the other direction.
Slag!
He'd run right into her and hadn't realized it! Archie pushed his way back through the school group to more shoves and complaints and raced after the fox girl. Mr. Rivets was just coming back up on another cable car, and he pointed at the fleeing child.

“There, Master Archie! The fox girl!”

“I know! I know!” Archie cried. He was so close! A man appeared right in front of him, and Archie flinched but passed right through him. Then a machine man appeared, and a wall, and, improbably, an enormous bear, but Archie closed his eyes and ran right through every one of them. He was so close to catching her that the fox girl was just throwing them at him out of nowhere to confuse him.

The girl ran toward one of the public access ramps where air taxis picked up and dropped off passengers, but there was no ship there. She staggered to a halt, windmilling her arms to keep from falling out of the city. Archie stopped behind her. She could make him see anything she wanted to, but there was no way she was getting past him.

“Wow,” she said. “I think I can see my house from here.”

The girl turned to face him, and in the blink of an eye the schoolgirl turned into the fox girl Archie had only caught glimpses of. She was a little taller than Archie, with long, straight black hair that fell past her shoulders and hung down in her face, half-hiding her narrow eyes. Her skin was darker than Archie's but lighter than most First Nations people, her face soft and round. She wore a baggy white dress that looked like a bathrobe, with a wide white cloth belt tied around her stomach. Sticking up out of her dark hair were two reddish-brown fox ears, and hanging in the air behind her was a reddish brown-and-white fox tail that swished mischievously in the air. It looked for all the world like it was real.

“Is that what you really look like?” Archie asked.

“Why? Don't you believe your eyes?” she asked with a smirk. Her accent sounded foreign, like Anglish wasn't her first language.

“Give me the lantern,” Archie told her.

The fox girl cocked her head sideways. “You are very strong,” she said.

“I also can't be hurt,” Archie said. He took a step closer, to show her he meant business.

“But can you fly?” the fox girl asked. She gave him a wink, stepped backward off the platform, and fell.

Archie rushed to the edge of the platform and looked down in time to see the fox girl bounce on the big cushy balloon of an Apache Air liner that was cruising by a few stories below. She gave him a playful wave, then slid off onto the smaller airbag of a passing air taxi. She was working her way down, airship by airship!
Slag it
—where was Hachi? This was what she was good at!

Mr. Rivets ticked up beside Archie and looked out over the edge at the fox girl. “Astonishing,” Mr. Rivets said.

“I'm going after her,” Archie said.

“And how will you do that, Master Archie?”

“Fergus's gyrocopter. I'm still wearing it.”

Archie fumbled for the lever inside his coat that would activate it.

“Sir, may I remind you of my repeated advice about embracing bad ideas?”

“I have to get that lantern back, Mr. Rivets. Besides, it's not like whatever Fergus built can kill me.”

Archie found the lever and pulled it. A metal rod shot up out of his backpack with a mechanical
click!
and curved metal fan blades popped out of it like a sideways windmill. The blades started to spin in the strong, high winds of Cahokia in the Clouds, and Archie was suddenly reminded of a steam-powered meat grinder he'd seen at a butcher's shop in Philadelphia that could chew up whole cows.