Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

But Alice wasn’t listening. She stuffed her hair into a serviceable bun and rushed down the stairs to the front room, where she found Gavin seated with Glenda Teasdale and Simon d’Arco. Simon, his dark eyes sparkling, was engaged in lively conversation with Gavin while Glenda, dressed in skirts and a puffy-sleeved blouse instead of trousers, sipped at a teacup.

Father was nowhere to be seen. The men rose when they caught sight of Alice. Gavin looked very fine; well-rested and dressed and combed. His white-blond hair shone in the gaslight. He caught her eye and smiled. She started to smile back, then caught herself.

“So good to see you, love,” Glenda said, taking Alice’s hand with Ad Hoc familiarity. “I was hoping you would contact us. We clearly have a great deal to discuss.”

Alice hesitated.Yesterday-or the day before-contacting the Third Ward had seemed a good idea. Now, with Glenda and Simon in her drawing room, it seemed less so.

“I prefer Miss Michaels,” she said carefully, “and I’m glad you came. My aunt-”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Simon said, doing so, “but this whole affair is a bit delicate, and we should probably talk about it at headquarters, where it’s safer.”

“Definitely.” Glenda, who hadn’t released Alice’s hand, was already towing Alice toward the stairs. “Shall we?”

“I can’t leave my father alone again,” Alice said. “It’s not right.”

“Your automaton can see to him,” Glenda breezed. “He’s only napping.”

It would be so easy to go with her. Then Alice thought of her father again, and of her new fiance. She crossed her arms. “No. I can’t.”

Simon looked uncomfortable. “Please don’t put us in a difficult position, Miss Michaels. We speak with authority granted by the Crown, which gave us legal jurisdiction over anything to do with clockworkers, and this isn’t a secure place for a discussion. By authority of the Queen, we must insist. If you please, Miss Michaels.”

His tone was polite, but Alice heard the iron beneath it. She set her mouth and nodded once. “Fine.”

“Coming, Mr. Ennock?” Glenda asked.

Before Alice quite knew what was happening, the four of them were clattering up the steps to the second floor, Gavin with his fiddle case strapped to his back.

“Why are we going up here?” Alice asked.

“It’s how we came in, of course,” Glenda replied. She pushed open the half door at the end of the hall and stooped to crawl through, barely slowing down. Gavin shrugged and followed. Alice almost refused, but Simon d’Arco was standing right behind her, obviously expecting her to go, so she went. The little door led to a dusty airing cupboard that Alice hadn’t entered in years. A trapdoor opened onto the roof. Gavin turned to give her a hand out, and Simon came behind. A damp breeze teased at her hair, and a dizzying drop fell away to the street below. People bustled past on the narrow byway, looking tiny and unimportant. Even the noises they made were small. Alice prayed no one would look up and see her. But even as the thought crossed her mind, a boy pointed, and several people paused to stare upward. Alice turned her back. If word got back to Father that Alice was climbing about on the roof. .

“Don’t worry. We’re not staying up here,” Glenda explained.

“We’re going in that?” Like the boy, Gavin pointed upward, his face shining with excitement.

Above them hovered a small dirigible, perhaps the size of a cottage. The dirigible’s gondola hung suspended by silken ropes, and the entire thing was tethered to one of the chimneys. Alice had been concentrating so hard on the people below that she hadn’t even noticed its presence. A wooden ladder extended itself toward them as she watched in startled amazement. Dirigibles she had seen, but never one hovering over her own house.

“There’s no space to land it on the street, which is why we’re on the roof. Up we go,” Simon said. “Does it make you nervous, Miss Michaels?”

It did, but the thought of appearing nervous in front of these people spurred Alice forward. “Not at all. Eyes down, Mr. Ennock. You, too, Mr. d’Arco.” She swarmed up the ladder. At the top, a thin, balding man with elaborate muttonchop whiskers gave her a hand into the gondola, then helped Glenda, Gavin, and Simon aboard. Simon folded up the ladder.

“You’re Pilot?” Gavin asked.

The thin man nodded and wordlessly turned to a small wheel Alice remembered was called a helm. Gavin expertly flicked the tether free, and the little propeller engines on the sides of the gondola whirred to life.

“Have you ever flown before, Miss Michaels?” Gavin asked.

“No,” Alice said as the city slid away below. Bitter-smelling coal smoke rose from a thousand chimneys, and a thousand people, horses, and automatons filled the streets. From up here, she could even see into the alleyways, where plague zombies shambled through the shadows, looking for garbage. A trio of well-dressed women in emerald dresses strolled the cobblestones, carrying signs that read DON’T THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY and THE AD HOC NEEDS YOU, unaware that only a few paces away a zombie lurked in the shadows, forced to hide from painful sunlight. Alleys emerged into side streets and joined larger streets, like tributaries joining rivers.

“It’s fascinating,” she breathed.

“It’s the most wonderful place to be,” Gavin told her, and she noticed how closely they were forced to stand in the confines of the tiny gondola. He looked happy, even thrilled, and that started a warm bit of happiness glowing inside Alice. She almost took his hand. He leaned over the side, and for a moment she thought he might leap over the edge and soar away.

“How do you know where to go?” Alice said. “Don’t you get lost?”

“It’s the same as on a ship, ma’am,” Pilot said. “We can use a chart with coordinates. We’re coming up on Buckingham Palace, for example, and that’s at fifty-one degrees, thirty minutes north, zero degrees, and eight minutes west. Of course, over London, it’s easier just to look down. You learn your way.”

“Does this ship go any higher?” Gavin asked of Pilot.

“Not with all these people in it,” the man grumbled.

Simon clapped Gavin on the back. “Lots of chances for flying in the Third Ward, Gav-Mr. Ennock.”

“You can call me Gavin,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

“I’m Simon. We’re very informal around the Ward, you see. It sets us apart from… everyone else.”

“What exactly is the Third Ward?”

“It’ll be easier to show you than tell you,” Glenda said.

As Pilot predicted, they passed almost directly over Buckingham Palace, official residence of Queen Victoria for twenty years now. Alice felt her own excitement and almost jumped up and down like a little girl at the sight. The Queen had ascended the throne when Alice was a baby, and like many English, Alice couldn’t remember or imagine a time without Queen Victoria and Prince Albert ruling the Empire. Alice looked down at the square, stately building surrounded by green gardens and wondered if the Queen were at this moment signing a proclamation or receiving an important dignitary or perhaps just sipping tea from a porcelain cup in a lavishly decorated hall. How wonderful and strange to glide above her.

Another section of the city passed beneath them, and then the airship passed over a stone wall surrounding another generous section of greenery, in the center of which lay a white mansion surrounded by outbuildings. The airship drifted gently downward to land with a soft bump on the lawn in front of the great house, and a pair of workmen dashed over to secure the ship. Everyone scrambled to disembark, and Glenda led them up the steps into the house.