The White City (34 page)

A squeal began, first faint and then growing. The part within his hand writhed, and then the metal began to compress, crushing in on itself as Ray had done to the clockwork men attacking Conker. The part grew hotter in his hand.

“Stop,” the clockwork man said with its expressionless, tinny voice.

Ray dropped the broken part onto the work table and staggered back a step, dizziness returning. The clockwork man leaned forward and began trying to fix the broken piece.

As Ray started for the stairs, the clockwork man reached out to grab his arm. “Stay here—”

The Nine Pound Hammer hit the clockwork man’s skull, punching it straight down. The brass skin of its chest burst open and pulsating rods and gears spilled out. The clockwork man crumpled to the floor. The small cone of its mouth, now somewhere buried within its chest, issued muffled words: “Back—work—stop—release—”

“Come on!” Si said, grabbing the lantern and running for the stairs.

Ray turned back to Gigi. The boy’s pupils were covered in a misty haze. He could not bring Gigi with them. Only one thing would help Gigi and the other workers.

“Where does this machinery go?” he asked.

“Do-o-own,” Gigi whispered.

The three ran to the stairs, spiraling past floor after floor until Ray felt he might collapse. Conker clutched him under the arm to help. The heat diminished as they descended. Each subsequent floor seemed taller, with larger and larger pieces of machinery being assembled. The floors filled with long assembly lines of workers gave way to floors with large, steam-powered lifts and men working in clusters with white-hot torches and heavy drills.

At last the stairs ended in a cavernous room lit by more of the bare electric bulbs, now mounted to the ceiling. Large pieces of machinery attached to heavy hooks and cables came down through wide chutes. Waiting below was a line of workers with enormous rolling carts. Once the pieces were placed inside, the workers, oblivious to the three who had arrived in their midst, pushed the carts along iron tracks.

“Where do we go from here?” Si asked.

Ray watched the workers. The network of tracks led in one direction. “That way,” Ray said.

They followed the tracks. After several hundred yards, Conker stopped and pointed. “Look.”

Ahead was an enormous circular opening in the floor, several hundred feet across. The tracks joined together, workers stopping their carts as each fed onto a solitary line. That track
reached a ramp at the edge of the opening, where empty carts were coming up a second track next to the other.

Ray followed Conker and Si closer to the rim. The side-by-side tracks were bolted to the walls of the pit and spiraled down into the black. The three fell in behind some workers and started down the ramp.

Ray shivered. These workers were bringing parts to add to the Machine. And it was somewhere down there in the darkness below. As he followed the others, he peered over the edge into the mouth of the vast opening. Like some gigantic well it descended, lit only by lanterns fixed on the carts. They made two side-by-side lines of lights, one going down, the other coming up. The steady movement of lights spiraled down the walls of the shaft until they disappeared into blackness.

“How far down you reckon it goes?” Conker asked, peering into the void and then looking wide-eyed at Ray.

The answer terrified him.

Far. Very far.

R
OUND AND ROUND THEY DESCENDED
. L
OWER AND LOWER
.
Ray realized that the walls of the shaft seemed to be of blasted rock and shoveled earth, but all along pieces of roots stuck out. Some were as thin as a man’s finger. Others were as fat as an oil drum. But what was obvious to Ray from the foul smell and mushy black spots was that these roots were rotting. And with them the Wolf Tree was dying.

The workers ahead and behind them pushed the carts of machinery along the tracks, while just to their right other workers passed them without a curious glance. None of them spoke. Only the
clack-clack-clack
of iron wheels on iron tracks resounded, but at such great numbers, the noise was overwhelming.

“Not all of these people could have come from Omphalosa and the Expo,” Si murmured.

“I was thinking that too,” Ray said. “The Gog has been capturing workers for years, probably before he ever kidnapped Sally and the other Shuckstack kids.”

“You’d think they’d be missed,” Conker said, looking at the ashen-faced men trudging along before and behind them. “Ain’t they got family somewhere who’s wondering where they are?”

“Some, probably,” Ray said. But most he knew were missed by no one. They were the lost. The anonymous. The ignored. Immigrants. Orphans. Poor and displaced people. These were the Gog’s prey.

As they walked on, Ray watched Conker and Si ahead of him. The two of them had been trying to avoid looking at each other. Ray caught from time to time the tension in Conker’s jaw, the painful sidelong glances at her when she was not looking. Si never should have come with them. Ray could not bring her back out from this dark portion of the Gloaming. Or he could, in fact, but he would have no strength to return to Conker. Besides, how could he ever find again this dark bottomland of the Gloaming that the Gog had usurped?

They would never return to their world. They would never again see the open air, the morning sun on Shuckstack, the mountains, the prairie, the windswept trees around Mother Salagi’s cabin, the beautiful places they loved.

Ray was surprised to find this somehow reassuring. It honed his attention. It gave him strength. There was no saving himself or his friends. There was only this final task to complete—to find the heart of the Machine deep within this abyss and destroy the Gog’s wicked source.

“We’re nearly to the end,” Conker said.

Ray looked down the huge shaft. Below, the lights from the carts seemed to stop a few turns below, with only blackness beyond.

As they got closer, they watched as the carts before them were unloaded by huge cranes fixed to the walls of the shaft. While the empty carts were transferred by the cranes to the track going up, other workers began bolting and fastening the parts and pieces directly into the rock and decaying roots that made the walls of the shaft.

Ray followed Conker and Si as they passed the last workers and continued down the empty tracks.

“You were wrong,” Si said, turning up the flame on the lantern and holding it higher to illuminate the track ahead and the walls writhing like a black mass of insects. “We’re not at the end.”

“We’ve reached the Machine,” Conker said.

Dull orange lantern light reflected off bolts and metal faces and spinning parts. The clatter of the carts dissipated above, leaving only the noise of the machinery all around them. The farther they descended, the louder the noise grew. Cogs whirled, pistons fired, valves sputtered and hissed, belts churned, and engines roared. It was as Ray remembered from the dream he had witnessed long ago, the dream Conker had been having of their fathers facing the Gog’s previous Machine. But then he had seen only a small portion of the Gog’s creation, and here—groaning and pulsating from the vast dark below—the Machine encased in the walls went on and on and on, deep into the abysmal well.

“Dim the lantern some,” Ray said to Si.

She frowned. “Why?”

“We don’t know how far down we’ll have to travel. And we need the oil to last.”

Si did not question him further. She turned the damper down until only the thinnest light illuminated the path before them.

They had been walking for what seemed hours when Conker whispered, “Something’s following us.”

Ray looked back. The lights of the workers had long since disappeared. Through the din of the Machine he heard it—the clunk of heavy footsteps.

“What do we do?” Si asked, tightening her fingers around her knife.

“Keep going,” Conker said.

As they descended, the footsteps grew louder. Ray kept looking back, trying to find whatever moved in the dark. He could see nothing. He wanted to tell Si to turn off the lantern, but how would they find their way? Even if they didn’t fall from the ramp’s edge, they would have to walk slower, and that was not what they needed to do.

“What is it?” Si whispered.

“A Hoarhound,” Ray guessed.

Conker turned to look at Ray. His eyes glowed orange from the lantern’s flame. “We ought to be able to handle a Hoarhound.”

Ray nodded. “We’ll have to be careful. Not much room on this ramp for a fight.”

They went farther. All the while, Ray tried to find a spot to lie in wait for the pursuing Hound. There had been short
shafts, niches in the machinery every so often. That must have been where the Hoarhound had been hiding as they passed, a guardian placed by the Gog to protect his Machine. Why it had not attacked them already, Ray was not sure, but it was pursuing them now.

Ray heard a strange sound like the hissing of a boiler, and he looked up in time to see flames illuminate the dark hundreds of feet above. Then the fire and noise vanished.

“What was that?” Conker gasped.

Ray had not been able to see well, but it seemed the flames had shown a snout, some monstrous jaws.

“Whatever it is,” Si said, “that’s no Hoarhound!”

Then the pace of the footsteps increased, striking heavily on the ramp.

“Do we face it?” Conker growled, holding the hammer with both his hands.

“No,” Ray said. “Just run!”

Si went first, the lantern before her. The slope was slight, but the iron gave little traction, and they ran hesitantly. There could be no misstep, no slipping or losing one’s balance with that gaping void only feet away.

On the opposite side of the shaft, a dark form was moving. Si’s lantern did not illuminate that far, but whatever was after them was getting closer. The ramp beneath their feet began shaking with the weight of the beast.

“It’s coming!” Si shouted.

“Go!” Conker roared. “Go faster!”

Ray could hear the clockwork monster’s claws ringing out on the metal rails, the scraping of iron, the pumping of pistons.
Conker stopped first to spin around. “Get behind me,” he said, rearing up with the hammer. Ray ran past him and then turned to look back.

The beast skidded on the ramp a dozen or more yards away and opened its jaws wide. It gave a piercing hiss like leaking gas, and then flames jetted from its mouth. Ray flung up an arm, but fortunately the flames did not extend far enough yet to reach them.

“What is that?” Conker shouted. Ray stared openmouthed at the monster. Nearly twice the size of a Hoarhound, the machine bore little resemblance to any particular animal. It perched on four legs and had a long snout, but its body and head were nearer to a locomotive or some great engine than to a beast. It was a pulsating mass of moving parts encased in pipes and iron plates.

It growled, and as it did, glowing fumes filled its mouth. A monstrous assembly of grinding teeth spun on cylinders where its lips should have been. Whatever they touched would be sucked into ragged saw blades mounted in its gullet.

Its slot-like eyes glowed like a volcanic vent, and as Ray stared into them, he realized this creature existed only to protect the Machine. It had been forged and brought to life for this moment, to stop the next bearer of the Nine Pound Hammer who might fulfill John Henry’s destiny.

“Conker,” Ray said, hardly able to keep his voice from shaking. “You can’t fight this.”

“We got no choice,” Conker said, not taking his eyes from the clockwork sentinel. He was bracing his stance, flexing his fingers on the stout handle of the hammer.

Si grabbed Ray’s arm. “Give me the spike.”

“What?”

“I can do it,” Si said. “You’ve brought us here. I can help Conker. You’ve got to hold that thing off. Only you can do it, Ray.”

Ray hesitated only a moment before unbuttoning his shirt. He pushed aside Redfeather’s copper to open the toby. He snatched out the golden spike and put it in Si’s hand.

The toby trembled against his chest. Ray felt the tingling rise in him. It was fainter. Although he was in the Gloaming—the source of the toby’s collective power—he was in the most corrupted part of the shadow world.

“Good luck, Ray,” Si said.

The clockwork sentinel took a step closer, bringing its heavy paws down to shake the ramp.

“You can’t do this alone, Ray!” Conker said.

“I have to,” Ray said, stepping past Conker and facing the hissing beast. “Si’s right. She can hold the spike. You two must go. This is no Hoarhound.”

“Which is why—”

“Conker!” Si shouted. “It’s time to leave.”

Ray took a step closer to the sentinel. His muscles tightened as he tried to draw up the power against this monster of the Gog. The iron tracks between him and the beast whined, the metal beginning to curl. “Go!”

Conker backed a step, then turned to run with Si.

The clockwork sentinel hissed as the metal track twisted before it. Ray felt his body trembling as he pushed out with his palms. The repellent force like opposing magnets grew, and the track began to tear from its bolts. Ray concentrated on the ramp, hoping to use it against the creature.