Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“C-sharp,” Gavin said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Phipps said. The lock clicked, and she pushed the door open. “This is the sound laboratory, and we need you here, Mr. Ennock.”

“Gavin!” Simon d’Arco rose from a marble worktable. “Glad you arrived. And nice to see you again, Miss Michaels.”

“It’s been only a few minutes, Mr. d’Arco,” Alice said.

“‘Simon,’ please. I said we’re very informal in the Ward.”

“Do you call the lieutenant ‘Susan’?” Alice asked, genuinely curious.

“No,” Phipps said.

“And this”-Simon gestured to another man-“is Gabriel Stark, but he prefers to be known as Doctor Clef.”

A shortish, balding man in coveralls, goggles, and a stained white coat looked up from the strange object he was working on. The object appeared to be a wire framework, but it twisted Alice’s eye. The lines of the cube came together… wrong. The more she looked at it, the more the front of the lattice seemed to fade into the back, or maybe the back was coming into the front. The man pushed his goggles onto his high forehead, revealing watery blue eyes set into a round face. “Good day,” he said in the broad, loopy tones of a north German.

“What is that thing?” Alice asked.

“Do you like it?” Dr. Clef said. “It is a cube, and it is quite impossible. Watch this.” He reached for a machine mounted on his desk. A wire led from the machine to the Impossible Cube, and when Dr. Clef spun a crank on the machine, the wires in the cube sparked and glowed blue. As Alice watched, the cube trembled, then rose a good inch above the table.

“It can fly !” Gavin gasped.

“Good heavens!” Alice said. “Is it a magician’s trick?”

“No, no.” Dr. Clef stopped cranking, and the cube dropped back to the table. “It is an alloy of my own design. When the electricity goes through the metal, it ignores gravity a little. It allows the Impossible Cube to do what it must do.”

“And what is that?” Alice asked.

Dr. Clef blinked at her. “How can I know? It is not yet finished.”

“It can fly,” Gavin muttered. “Fly!”

“Doctor Clef is one of our more prolific clockworkers,” Simon told them. “His work is currently at a delicate stage, and he didn’t want to stop, so-”

“Go on, go on.” Dr. Clef made shooing motions with his screwdriver. “Do not mind me. I make no sound.”

“So come in,” Simon said. “The laboratory awaits.”

The sound laboratory was a brightly lit stone room filled with equipment Alice didn’t recognize, some of it small, some of it large, and Alice’s fingers itched to take every piece apart and examine them from the inside. One wall was taken up by a variety of musical instruments-harp, drum, piano, violin, cello, flute, bugle, trumpet, and more. Another wall was filled with bookcases and books. Simon led Gavin to the instrument wall.

“Do you know why we’re excited to have you, Gavin?” he asked.

Gavin shook his head. He was still staring at the Impossible Cube.

“We suspect you have a musical talent of a type that appears perhaps once a generation,” Simon explained. “Or even less often.”

“How did you know he has such a musical talent?” Alice interrupted.

“Our agents heard him play in Hyde Park, and we suspected,” Phipps said. “But before we could move to find out more, he inexplicably vanished. We couldn’t find him anywhere. You can imagine our reaction when Agent Teasdale got your letter and he turned up at your home, Miss Michaels, especially since we’ve been investigating your aunt.”

“ Have you?” Alice said in a chilly tone.

“Of course. She falls under our jurisdiction. We learned of your aunt’s condition several weeks ago and sent agents to investigate. When our people arrived, they found her house in a difficult state. A trap near her front door instantly killed one of my people. His name was Franklin Mayweather, and he had a wife and two children.”

Alice remembered the puddle of dried blood on the floor. Guilt stabbed her stomach, even though she’d had nothing to do with the trap or Franklin Mayweather’s death.

“My people tried to capture the woman Edwina,” Phipps continued, “but she eluded them and vanished. Her house was heavily trapped, and after some investigation, they decided the place was too dangerous for further exploration, so they left.”

“Then who demolished her laboratory?” Alice asked.

“I couldn’t say. However, apprehending Edwina is still a high priority. She has already killed Franklin Mayweather, and we need to stop her before someone else pays the same price. In addition, the clockworker who controlled those plague zombies and wreaked havoc the night of the Greenfellow ball is still at large, and we have a number of cases on the Continent we’re overseeing. In other words, we need all the agents we can lay hands on.”

“And musical talents such as Gavin’s are useful in the extreme.” Simon sat at the piano and played a single key. “What note is this?”

“B,” Gavin said, tearing his gaze away from Dr. Clef’s cube. “I have perfect pitch. You don’t need to test that.”

“Indulge me.” Simon played several notes, all of which Gavin named perfectly. Then he played chords, and Gavin named those as well. Occasionally he played one chord with one hand and another chord with the other, which Gavin helpfully pointed out. “Good, good.”

“This young man is pleasing to me,” Dr. Clef called from his worktable. “How well do you remember the music?”

“I learn fast,” Gavin said, taking out his fiddle and tuning it quickly. Alice leaned forward on her stool.

“How fast?” Dr. Clef asked.

“I’m running the tests, Doctor Clef,” Simon said. “I thought you had work to do.”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Dr. Clef bent studiously over his cube, though Alice could see him peering at Gavin, despite his goggles.

“Play something,” Gavin said.

Simon played in a minor key. Gavin listened through one verse and one chorus. Simon stopped playing, and Gavin played it through perfectly. Simon joined back in again, and Gavin played harmony. They played other songs back and forth, songs Alice couldn’t identify. Gavin’s fiddle swooped and spun, though every note echoed off hard stone. Dr. Clef gave up all pretense of working and listened. Alice heard a quiet longing in the music, a wish for every note to fly free, and it brought a quiet tear to one eye.

“That was perfect,” Simon breathed. “Can you sing, Gavin?”

“Yes.”

“Sing something for me, then. Your favorite song.”

“ ‘The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies,’ ” Gavin said. He raised his fiddle for accompaniment and sang.

There were three gypsies a-come to my door,

And downstairs ran this a-lady, O!

One sang high and another sang low

And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!

Alice stared. She had never heard Gavin sing. His light, clear voice arrested her. His white-blond hair shone in the bright electric light, and his lithe body moved with the fiddle. He played and sang with his entire soul, and Alice wanted to get up and dance.

Then she pulled off her silk finished gown

And put on hose of leather, O!

The ragged, ragged rags about our door

She’s gone with the wraggle taggle gypsies, O!

Gavin’s voice and fiddle tugged at Alice. They sang of adventure, of new places, of casting off rules and conventions. In that moment, she would have followed Gavin anywhere. Dr. Clef had abandoned his work and was now sitting at Gavin’s feet like a small child. Gavin’s blue eyes met Alice’s brown ones, and she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to.