Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“But why ?” Alice cried again.

“Could we discuss this sitting down?” Edwina asked. “I have tea. You can still shoot me whenever you like, Mr. Ennock.”

Gavin thought about it, then gestured with the pistol. Only now did Alice notice how tight his face was, how stiff his movements. He was angry, too. But of course-Aunt Edwina was the Red Velvet Lady who had drugged him, tested him, and locked him in a lonely tower. Seeing Gavin in distress brought her a twist of pain, and Alice wanted to comfort him, to put her arms around his shoulders, but this wasn’t a good time.

Edwina led them around the edge of the laboratory. It was equipped with glassware and the newfangled Bunsen burners. Three microscopes stood on a table surrounded by notes and glass-topped dishes. The strange musical instrument she had used to control the plague zombies hung on one wall.

“None of this is about automatics,” Alice observed.

“No,” Edwina said. “I’ve moved on to other fields. Come, sit.”

A long laboratory table held tea things, including a tray of cakes. Aunt Edwina poured tea into three cups, then took hers and a cake to the far end of the table, where she sat down, still wearing her long brown coat. Alice sat opposite her. Gavin, in an understandable display of bad manners, half sat on the table itself, his pistol trained in Edwina’s direction. Neither he nor Alice touched the tea or cakes, though Alice was glad of the chance to sit down.

“Much better.” Edwina sipped her tea, and Alice saw her friend Louisa in her movements. Strange grief touched Alice’s heart. In a way, Louisa had died. “All right. You know I suffer from the clockwork plague.”

“You’re a clockworker,” Gavin said flatly.

“I don’t care for that word, or for the term zombie ,” Edwina said. “These people are infected with a deadly disease, and they deserve compassion, not fear or scorn.”

“How did you survive it for so long?” Gavin asked.

“Through a great deal of research and hard work, Mr. Ennock. You might say the clockwork plague has allowed me to survive the clockwork plague.”

Alice stiffened. “Your work with zombies. All this medical equipment. You’re working on a cure.”

“More than that, darling. I’ve found one.”

The words hung in the air for a long moment. Finally, Edwina took a bite of cake and washed it down with tea. The gesture seemed so prosaic. After a pronouncement like that, the earth should move or thunder should roll. Instead, there was only the click of china. Finally, the last bits of strength drained out of Alice, and she slumped again. “I think you need to start at the beginning, Aunt Edwina.”

“Which one, darling? Genesis has two accounts of the creation, which-”

“Not that beginning,” Alice interrupted. “Are you. .?” She trailed off.

“Mad?” Edwina flicked a crumb away. “Of course, though some days are worse than others. That was a small joke to break the tension.”

“We like tension,” Gavin said in a flat voice. “Just explain.”

“No one appreciates me,” Edwina complained. “All right. Eight or nine years ago, not long after your dear mother died, Alice, I came to myself in the middle of my own house. The place was a wreck. Clockwork devices were everywhere, including a new valet who told me his name was Kemp. I had built them all in a mad fugue. I realized the disease that plagues our family had turned me into a rare genius, and I was enjoying a rare moment of lucidity after a prolonged period of madness. I managed to turn my newfound intelligence toward two areas-keeping my finances in good order so I could continue to build whatever I wanted, and finding a damned cure.”

“And succeeded at both,” Gavin said.

Edwina nodded. “It didn’t happen all at once, of course. I learned that the plague is caused by a type of bacterium, to use the word coined by Doctor Ehrenberg. It’s an organism so small, only a microscope can see it. It’s actually a kind of plant, and very pretty, with tiny-”

“Aunt Edwina,” Alice interrupted. “The cure?”

“Right.” Edwina rubbed her forehead. “I fear I’m heading for another bad spell. I still get them. After a lot of work, I gained some control over the plague. I could speed its course, or slow it down. The latter meant I wouldn’t die, but it was only a treatment, and it was difficult and time-consuming to make. I was spending nearly all my time just keeping myself alive. But then I made a breakthrough. An actual cure. And that’s why I’m on the run, darling.”

“I don’t understand,” Alice said, but that was a lie. Terrible understanding was growing like a mushroom inside her, pushing out everything else she’d been feeling and filling her with airy decay.

“At this point, the Third Ward broke into my home. They came looking for me, and I had to flee.” Edwina produced a handkerchief and wiped delicately at her eyes. “I had only a few moments’ warning, just enough time to nip out. The cure was locked in my laboratory safe.”

“But the Third Ward found it,” Gavin said, and Alice remembered the wall safe that had been ripped open in Aunt Edwina’s basement workroom.

“They did”-she gave her eyes another delicate wipe-“and they destroyed my laboratory so I couldn’t continue my work.”

“So Phipps lied,” Alice said. “She said the Ward left after your first trap killed one of its agents, and she said the Ward didn’t know who demolished your laboratory. Why did she lie?”

“You know the answer to that, darling,” Edwina said.

“Because,” Alice said slowly, “Phipps didn’t want me to know the cure existed.”

“Or because you’re lying now, Edwina,” Gavin pointed out.

“Why would I lie now, dear boy?” She sipped her tea again and made a face. “Cold.” She reached over to a nearby table, pulled a Bunsen burner over, lit it like a pet dragon, and held her cup over it. “The Ward left me little to work with-a few drugs, some rudimentary equipment, and the early stages of my research. I built a second laboratory down here and lived as Louisa Creek up there.”

“I want to know why you grabbed me off the street,” Gavin growled. “What did I ever do to you?”

“A perfect segue, Mr. Ennock,” Edwina said. “This is exactly the point where you came in. My plan to create and disperse a cure wasn’t working quite right, so I had to expand it. I needed Alice.”

“That’s not an explanation about me.” Gavin’s face was hard with a hatred Alice had never seen before, and it chilled her.

“I’m trying to stay chronological, Mr. Ennock, as Alice requested. We’re arriving at you.” She shut off the hissing burner and added a sugar lump to her tea. “I needed a way to get my cure back from the Third Ward. But Ward headquarters are tightly guarded, and the Ward knows how plague geniuses think. My only hope of getting at it was to draw out my dear niece, Alice.”

“Draw me out?” Alice came upright again. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“You were so timid after the clockwork plague struck the family down, darling.” Edwina got up to pace, and Gavin tensed. “No, that’s not the right word. I think the Americans call it hidebound. You wouldn’t budge outside the safety of traditional society. All that talent gone to waste. My dear, stubborn brother wouldn’t let me see you because he thought-quite rightly-that I’d try to corrupt you into Ad Hoc society, but he decided a few presents couldn’t hurt, and he let my little automatons through. I had already been working on you for your own good, hoping those little machines would stimulate you enough that you would start to chafe and finally break free of your father. I didn’t send you help of the monetary sort because then you would have had no need to break free. My hope was to starve you into the open. By sheer luck, the groundwork for furthering my plan was already there. I just needed to act on it.”