Steven Harper - The Impossible Cube

He took another sour gulp of red Luxembourger ale. It swirled like pale blood, though it was only red malt and vinegar that reflected red light from the lamps. The ale was more like wine than beer and would have fetched a pretty penny back home in Boston as an exotic treat, but Gavin was slugging it down like water. It made him feel light, as if he might float away. The other patrons in the bar seemed strangely happy, too. They were all happy, despite the plague around them. A small group sang a cheery tune in one corner, and laughed uproariously at every chorus. The noise floated up, taking Gavin’s pain with it. It was a fine thing to be drunk and happy in Luxembourg. For the moment he felt like he had just escaped Purgatory and was now staring at a set of fine gates made of gold.

Gavin tapped the mug on the table, creating vibrations on the surface of the liquid. Everything slowed, and he tracked the tiny motions like chaotic imps that danced across the redness. Fascinating. He tapped again, muscles moving slow as granite, now able to predict where each wave of vibration would appear. Each rose and rippled precisely where he foresaw-or commanded. He tapped yet again, tilting the mug to get a different pattern, and then another and another, a sorcerer making demons dance. A machine, the right machine, would produce the same patterns, and those patterns could be used to-

A hand grabbed his arm. The spell broke and the world snapped into normal speed. Alice was standing next to him. Near her, hovering like a brown butterfly, stood a woman Gavin didn’t know. He felt the literal iron in the grip beneath her glove and instantly knew she was exerting five pounds and six ounces of pressure on his biceps.

“I knew you’d come back,” he said, and tried a grin, but it came out a sloppy grimace.

“Come along, darling,” she said with a wide smile and without moving her lips. “We’re leaving.”

“I paid for this. I’m finishing it,” he said. Around them, other drinkers pointed and winked. A few jeered. The henpecked husband and his domineering wife. Feng was nowhere in sight. He had apparently found a heaven of his own.

“Oh, good heavens.” Alice snatched up the mug and drained it. A number of customers burst into applause. “There. Let’s go.”

He should have been annoyed, but a mild haze had descended over him and nothing could bother him now. “What the hell,” he muttered, catching up his fiddle case. It weighed two pounds, nine ounces. The silver nightingale in his pocket weighed three ounces. “I’m out of money anyway.”

She towed him to the door and outside. Light, laughter, and the woman in brown followed them. He felt a little less muddled in the cooler air but not entirely himself.

“Where’s Feng?” Alice asked.

“There’s a hotel across the street.” Gavin gestured vaguely with the fiddle case. “He got a room with someone. Wanna do the same?”

Alice made a disgusted sound. “Do you do this often?”

“Argue with a pretty woman or get drunk?”

“Never mind. At least you’re coherent. I need to show you something. This is Madame Nilsen. She doesn’t speak English.”

The woman, who was carrying a lantern, smiled shyly at the mention of her name, and Gavin gave her a lopsided grin. “Hi. I’m dying, you know. Not that she cares.”

Mme. Nilsen shook her head. Alice spoke to her in French, and the other woman led the way with her tin lantern. Gavin said, “Do you think the clockwork plague will let me learn French? Or Chinese? It sure as hell won’t do anything else useful.”

“You’re maudlin. I’ve never seen you maudlin.”

“Yeah.” He rumpled his hair. “Imagine.”

“Just keep walking,” Alice said. “It’ll sober you.”

“I don’t want to be sober. I deserve to be drunk.”

“But I don’t deserve you to be drunk. Keep walking or I’ll show you how sharp these claws can be.”

Gavin almost sat on the street in a childish pique, but changed his mind and continued walking with his arms folded instead. After some time, they arrived at the top of a winding street. The climb put Gavin a little out of breath, and, as Alice predicted, cleared his head a bit. On the hills below and above, the city had darkened completely. Street- and houselights made a field of stars on wrinkled velvet, as if the night sky had fallen and shattered on the ground around them. Mme. Nilsen selected a tall, narrow house, knocked, and called out. After some time, the door opened, and a man and woman, both middle-aged, appeared. They wore nightshirts and caps. Mme. Nilsen spoke to them in rapid French, and Alice joined in. The couple looked mystified, then hopeful. At their gestured invitation, everyone entered the long, narrow house that smelled of bread and ashes.

“What’s going on?” Gavin asked as they climbed a steep staircase. In Luxembourg, they were always climbing.

“There’s plague here, but they don’t want anyone to know,” Alice murmured. “If word of it gets out, the house will be quarantined until the family throws the victims into the street.”

“Why do I have to be here?”

“I want you to watch what I’m doing.”

Now puzzled, Gavin followed the group into a bedroom. A boy lay on a bed, twitching in fever sleep. Loose hanks of pale blond hair lay on the pillow. Automatic fear touched Gavin when he recognized the clockwork plague, even though he was already dying of the disease in his own way. The boy’s parents looked on with worried expressions as Alice pulled off her glove, revealing the spider. Its eyes glowed red when she touched the boy’s bare arm. Then she swiped his skin with the claws, drawing blood and spraying a bit of her own. The parents gasped as one, but Mme. Nilsen talked to them and they calmed, though they remained watchful. Alice touched each of them in turn, but the spider eyes glowed green. The mother sat on the bed and stroked her son’s forehead, her cheeks wet with tears. Gavin’s throat thickened as he felt her sorrow, fear, and love.

“There,” Alice said. “Now we wait.”

Mme. Nilsen slipped out to go home. Gavin rocked on his feet, waiting uncertainly.

“Perhaps you should sing, Gavin,” Alice said.

He stopped rocking. “What?”

“Sing. It’ll pass the time.” She turned her brown eyes on him. “Sing the moon song for me. Please.”

Argument or no argument, he couldn’t refuse her any more than the sun could refuse to rise.

I see the moon, the moon sees me

It turns all the forest soft and silvery.

The moon picked you from all the rest

For I loved you best.

As Gavin sang for Alice and the boy, a boy who struggled to heal as Gavin himself had done so many weeks ago, something inside him broke, shifted, and re-formed. The plague hurt a great many people, more than just himself, and Gavin, flying high above the earth or wrapped in music, had forgotten that. He pulled out his fiddle to accompany himself for the second verse.

I once had a heart as good as new

But now it’s gone from me to you.

The moon picked you from all the rest

For I loved you best.

The leering eyes and sticky blood of Madoc Blue faded a little. The sharp memory of Tom Danforth’s lifeless corpse falling from the rigging dulled around the edges. The opaque stone walls that trapped him in Edwina’s tower thinned. And then another memory came back to him. He himself was lying sick in bed, hot with fever. A woman-Ma-bent over him, bathing his face with a cool cloth. A man with pale hair played the fiddle and sang just for Gavin, his voice rich and low and perfect, and Gavin felt better, enveloped in the soft love of both parents.