Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“Finished,” Alice said unnecessarily. “His Babbage engine is fully functional; his power sources are wound and charged. And your playing helped, Mr. Ennock. Really, you should play professionally.”

He thought about his time in Hyde Park. “I guess I have, in a way.” Then he realized she was praising him and that he had just possibly impressed her, and that made him flush again.

“Now we just switch him on.” Alice inserted a tool into the automaton’s left ear and twisted. The automaton twitched. Its eyes flickered, went out, then glowed steadily. Gavin felt an insane desire to shout, “Live!”

The automaton turned its head with a creak, apparently taking in its surroundings. It looked at Alice and said in a quiet, reedy voice, “Good evening, miss. My name is Kemp. What service do you require?”

“It works!” Gavin exclaimed.

“Of course it works,” Alice said. “Hello, Kemp. Do you know where you are?”

“I appear to be in Madam’s laboratory. And it is a frightful mess.”

“What is your function in this house?” Alice asked.

“I am Madam’s valet.”

“Isn’t a valet a manservant?”

“Madam has her own ideas about the way the world should run, miss. Might I ask who you are?”

“My name is Alice Michaels, daughter of Arthur, Baron Michaels. I am your mistress’s niece.”

“I see,” Kemp said. “There is extensive information about you in my memory wheels. But why are you here? Where is Madam?”

“What’s the last thing you remember, Kemp?”Alice asked.

Kemp’s eyes flickered. “Madam called me down to the laboratory. She ordered me to remain still. Then you were standing before me.”

“How long ago was this?”

“What is the date, miss?”

“May twenty-fourth,” she said, then added, “1857.”

Kemp’s eyes flickered again. “Oh my. I have been inactive for more than a year!”

“I’m sorry, Kemp,” Alice said. “Aunt Edwina vanished sometime ago. She left me this house and its contents in her will. This is Gavin Ennock. Did Aunt Edwina say anything about him before she deactivated you?”

“Code forty-seven delta,” Kemp said. “Code forty-seven delta. Active. Active.”

“What?” Gavin said.

Kemp swiveled his head left and right several times, then refocused on Alice. “According to the terms of Madam Edwina’s last will and testament and code forty-seven delta, everything in the house belongs to you, which means I am now your valet, Madam.”

“Oh!” Alice put a hand to her mouth. “Well. I suppose you are.”

“ Love, Aunt Edwina, ” Gavin put in.

“Tell me, then,” Alice said, “did Aunt Edwina say anything about capturing Mr. Ennock here or about her upcoming disappearance?”

“That information is not in my memory wheels, Madam. I am sorry.”

“Do you know who might have broken in here and destroyed the laboratory?”

“That information is not in my memory wheels, Madam. I am sorry. Would Madam care for something to eat or drink?”

Gavin’s stomach growled at that moment. “I would. What time is it?”

“After three in the morning,” Alice said, checking a watch in her handbag. “Good heavens, no wonder I’m so hungry. I didn’t even have supper.”

“Madam!” Kemp said. “You mustn’t neglect yourself so. I will return in moments.”

“I don’t know what you’ll find in the kitchen after a year, Kemp,” Alice said doubtfully as Kemp headed toward the stairs with stiff steps.

“Tins keep.” Kemp put his foot on the bottom step. “I regret that it won’t be the best meal, but I daresay it will-code one seventeen omega. Code one seventeen omega.”

“What was that one for?” Gavin demanded.

“ Sixty seconds ,” boomed Edwina’s voice. “Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.”

“Oh dear,” Kemp said. “My attempt to leave the laboratory appears to have activated a destruction code.”

Gavin gave Alice a wild look. “I thought the traps in the house were all deactivated.”

“This one must have been separated from the rest. I don’t know everything. ”

“Madam,” Kemp said, “we must leave immediately.” Before either Gavin or Alice could respond, Kemp flung Alice over his shoulder and skittered up the stairs. Gavin hurried to follow with Click on his heels. At the last moment, he snatched up his fiddle and Alice’s handbag.

“Put me down, you brass idiot!” Alice shrieked. “I can walk myself.”

“Forty-one. Forty.” Kemp was moving faster than a mechanical man should have been able. “I cannot obey, Madam. My program is quite clear.”

“Twenty-two. Twenty-one.”

They were at the cellar door. The house creaked. Beams groaned like an airship in a gale, and bits of plaster fell to the floor. Terror tightened Gavin’s stomach, and his heart pounded at the back of his throat. It wasn’t enough time to get out. Something snapped with a report louder than a hundred guns, and a section of ceiling crashed to the floor.

The ground rumbled beneath Gavin’s boots as they reached the front door. Kemp smashed it open with a metal fist. Ears back and all his claws out, Click bolted through the opening, the metal making scrabbling noises on the stones.

“Twelve seconds. Eleven. Ten.”

Outdoors, they ran for it, though Kemp refused to pause long enough to put Alice on her feet. She stopped yelling, but her expression said there’d be hell to pay later. Edwina’s voice chased after them like a banshee.

“Four. Three.”

Kemp deposited Alice behind a low stone wall. Gavin dived behind it with Click, skinning his palms on dirt and gravel. They huddled there, plastered against hard rock.

“Zero.”

Gavin expected an explosion. Instead, there was a strange quiet. It rushed over them in a silent wave. This silence went beyond a simple lack of noise. This silence devoured all other sound and left behind an odd purity, as if Gavin’s soul had been scoured with sand and rinsed clean. Air rushed past him, blasting his hair. Gavin and Alice peeked over the wall just in time to see the manor house crumple inward and compress into a wrinkled mass like a schoolboy’s spitball. In less than a second it sucked into itself and vanished, all without the slightest sound.

Gavin clapped his hands and snapped his fingers, but heard no sound. He shouted at Alice, felt the tension in his throat, but heard no sound. Her mouth moved, but he heard nothing. She pointed at one ear and shook her head. For a horrible moment, Gavin was afraid he’d gone deaf. Kemp remained impassive. Then a bird called, and another, and another. A damp breeze rustled leaves in nearby trees. Kemp’s joints creaked. Gavin sighed with relief and heard the sound in his own ears. He offered Alice a hand up.

“What was that?” Gavin asked, never so relieved to hear the sound of his own voice.

But Alice was staring over the wall at the house, or the space it had occupied. The entire building, including the tower, was gone. In its place, a perfect half sphere had been carved into the ground, revealing layers of earth and stone. Gavin edged up to it and peered over the side. The bottom looked to be four or five stories down. It could have swallowed the Juniper with ease.

“Shit,” he whispered.

“Indeed, Mr. Ennock,” Alice said. Her face was pale. “I would rather not remain here. One of the locals mentioned a train station. Shall we go look for it?”

They arrived at the station more than an hour later, grubby, tired, and hungry. Gavin was used to being all three, and the two automatons weren’t bothered by physical needs, but Gavin worried about Alice. Her face grew more and more pale with every passing moment, but she refused both Gavin’s and Kemp’s repeated offers of assistance.