Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“Quite.” Phipps took them into a small, square room and pulled shut an iron gate. “Other countries look at clockworkers and see a threat. They think of plague zombies carrying disease, and never mind that clockworkers don’t communicate the clockwork plague. And they see terrifying technology, of course. So they shun clockworkers or kill them.”

She turned a crank and flipped a switch on the wall of the room. The floor gave a sharp jerk, and the entire chamber descended. Alice squeaked and grabbed Gavin’s elbow.

“It’s called a lift,” Phipps said. “It’s perfectly safe. One of our clockworkers modified the original design from America. It runs on electricity.”

“Oh,” Alice said. “I’d like to examine it sometime.”

“If you come work for us.” Two floors passed by them, followed by a thick layer of stone.

“Why do clockworker inventions remain so rare?” Gavin asked. “I mean, we saw that giant automaton upstairs, and you mentioned the war machines at Waterloo. Why doesn’t the Crown build more and more of them?”

“We can’t,” Phipps told him. “A few inventions can be re-created, certainly. Babbage engines. Electric lights. Hardened glass. Designs for dirigibles. But the vast majority of clockworker inventions, especially the ones with any sort of power source, are so complicated, so complex, that no one can re-create them. Not even if the clockworker manages to draw extended diagrams.”

“As my aunt has done?” Alice asked.

“Exactly as your aunt has done. That’s one of the reasons why we’re interested in you, Miss Michaels. As far as we know, you’re the only person able to follow a clockworker’s thinking well enough to assemble a clockworker’s inventions. Your cat Click, for example, and that automated valet.”

“But I don’t understand them,” Alice said. “I just assemble them.”

“That’s a singular ability, Miss Michaels. With few exceptions, only a clockworker can create the pieces of advanced technology we need to keep the Empire running, and once something has been created, only a clockworker can maintain or re-create it. Perhaps you can assemble these inventions because your family has been touched by the clockwork plague so often. Or perhaps you’re some sort of clockworker yourself. A demi-clockworker, if you will.”

All the strength drained out of Alice’s body, and the blood left her face. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I hadn’t considered that.”

“Don’t go all fussy,” Phipps growled. “If you were going to die of clockwork plague or infect someone else, you would have done it long ago. I don’t put up with the idea that women are the weaker sex or that females are particularly prone to hysterics, so if you’re going to prove me wrong, do it elsewhere.”

The words stung like a slap, and Alice came to herself. “You may have researched my background, Lieutenant,” she snapped, “but you know nothing of me , so you may keep your comments to yourself, thank you.”

Phipps gave her a curt nod, and Alice wondered if that had been some sort of test. “At any rate, America is starting to see the value of clockworkers, but it remains too deeply divided over slavery and economic issues to make proper use of them. India treats clockworkers as untouchables, of course, and the Africans and Muslims stone them to death. Ever since we’ve colonized these places, the Ward has been able to snatch clockworkers away for our-the Crown’s-use. China, as I said, has its own clockworkers, and we seem to be locked in a constant struggle to stay abreast of them.”

“We invent something; they invent something a bit better; we have to invent something a bit better than that,” Alice said.

“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.