Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“As I was discussing with Agent Ennock, Miss Michaels, I’m torn,” Phipps said when Alice sat down. “On the one hand, I’m upset that you created such a spectacle in the City streets and called attention to our organization in a way that cost me enormous amounts of money to keep out of the newspapers. We don’t do things that way in the Third Ward, and Agent Ennock here knows better than that.”

“Oh,” said Alice, nonplused. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“Granted. Unlike Mr. Ennock here, you didn’t go through Ward training. But that brings me to my other point. I do find myself impressed with you. No training, no plan, no support, and you still managed to bring in a clockworker on your first outing for the Ward.”

“I don’t work for the Ward,” Alice replied primly.

“Not yet,” Phipps shot back. “And I do want to hear your version of what happened. You can speak freely. Your fiance and everyone else outside these walls will never read the report, and as I already pointed out, I’ve arranged for the newspapers to remain silent.”

Alice glanced at Gavin, who nodded, and told the story, though she left out the true function of Norbert’s machines. The transcription device clattered and thumped, and every word appeared on the paper scroll.

“Very well,” Phipps said when she finished. “Now I need to show you something downstairs. It won’t take a moment.”

Before Alice could protest, Phipps swept her and Gavin out of the office and into the lift they had used last time. The cage sank into the stony fortress beneath the mansion, and Alice shifted her weight from one foot to the other, partly interested and partly wanting to get home. Norbert was no doubt worried, or furious, or both, and her first duty was to him.

“While you were freshening up, we brought Patrick Barton down to the clockworker level.” Phipps exited the lift with Alice and Gavin close behind. The chilly corridors stretched out in several labyrinthine directions. Clanks and thumps and shouts echoed against the stones. “Miss Michaels, you reported encountering Barton at a ball approximately one year ago.”

“That’s right.”

“And he exhibited no strange behavior?”

“Not unless you count coming to the Greenfellow ball in a badly cut coat.”

They passed the Doomsday Vault, and the four armed guards came to attention.

“Did you notice any markedly increased intelligence, heightened reflexes, an increased interest in music, or sensitivity to poorly played or off-key music?”

“No, but I barely noticed him at all. He asked Louisa to dance, not me. Why are you asking all this again?”

“Because.” Phipps stopped at a particularly heavy door and extended her metal hand toward it. The first two of her six fingers extended with a sharp sound and created a key, which she inserted into the lock. “The laudanum has fully worn off, and this is the result.”

The door opened into a small cell with stained mattresses lining the walls and floor. Patrick Barton sat on the floor. He wore a dingy straitjacket. His hair stuck out in a dozen directions, his eyes were wild, and his straitjacket was chained to the rear wall. When the three of them entered, he shoved himself backward.

“My Boadicea has fallen,” he whimpered. “Money and machines, cash and mechanics. You sold your soul for coins, and now you walk with an angel who fell from the sky. Are you here to pull me into a velvet pit or fling me into unforgiving air?”

“He’s insane,” Alice whispered.

“The earth travels through the sky and the sky pulls the earth.” Spittle ran down Barton’s chin, and words flowed in a waterfall. “The earth thinks it moves in a straight line, but the eye of God warps space, so the earth travels in a circle, a spiral that grows a little smaller each time, moves us closer to hell, even though we think we’re moving toward heaven.”

“He’s in the final stage,” Gavin breathed. “How?”

“We don’t know,” Phipps replied.

“Final stage? What’s going on?” Alice demanded.

Barton screamed and threw himself at them. Alice leapt back with a cry. Barton didn’t get very far. The straitjacket hobbled him, and the chain brought him up short. He growled and snarled like a dog on a leash.

“Out!” Phipps ordered.

Alice fled with the others right behind her. They slammed the door just as Barton began to howl. The heavy door cut the sound off. The trio stood in the hallway a moment, silent. Alice’s knees were weak.

“I don’t want to do that again,” she whispered at last. “I can’t.”

“How long before he dies?” Gavin asked.

“Three days, perhaps a week,” Phipps said. “And that’s puzzling. I don’t know how much you know about clockworkers and the clockwork plague, Miss Michaels.”

“Not much,” Alice admitted uncomfortably. “They don’t teach about it at finishing school, and clockworkers are. . well, you know.”

“Insane, yes,” Phipps said. “And people fear and dislike them, often with good reason, so they don’t discuss them in polite company. All right, listen-the Third Ward has made an extensive study of clockworkers and their pathology. Every case is different, but most follow a general pattern. When someone who is going to be a clockworker first catches the clockwork plague, their symptoms are very different. Most plague victims come down with fever and muscle tremors in the early stages. Those that survive are often scarred.”

Alice clenched her jaw. She remembered with absolute clarity when her father and mother and older brother came down with the fever and muscle tremors that heralded the clockwork plague, and she remembered the helpless terror she felt as her mother and brother worsened and died. Father had worsened as well, and then recovered, more or less. He never walked again, would never lift Alice above his head so she could see the Queen.

“The ones who don’t die right away or survive with scarring almost have it worse,” Phipps continued heartlessly. “Their symptoms intensify until they include delirium, loss of muscle tone, thinning of the skin, pustules, and sensitivity to light, which result in what the public likes to call plague zombies. Eventually they die as well.”

“I know how that aspect of the clockwork plague works,” Alice said icily.

“Your family is well acquainted with it,” Phipps acknowledged. “But clockworkers are different. People who will, through a mechanism we do not yet understand, become clockworkers, begin with different symptoms. The plague seems to work with their brains instead of against, at least for a time. In the first phase, which lasts three or four months, they show increased intelligence, insomnia, an interest in good music, and a strong dislike for bad music. They are not contagious, and we still don’t know why. In the second phase, their intelligence increases vastly, often within one or two specialties, such as biology or art. Their sensitivity to bad music leaps to include a sensitivity to tritones. They sleep very little, and they gain heightened physical endurance, as if their bodies were burning up future resources all at once. This allows them to work tirelessly on their strange machines and abstract mathematics. They also begin to think differently from normal people, which lets them commit acts of great brilliance or stunning cruelty. This stage can last anywhere from fourteen months to three years. The longest time on record that a clockworker in this phase lived was three years, two months, and four days.”

“Until your aunt Edwina came along,” Gavin added. “We’re still looking for her.”

“The third and final phase,” Phipps said, “is the one you just observed. The disease seems to devour the clockworker’s brain all at once. He loses all touch with reality.”