Steven Harper - The Impossible Cube
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- Название:The Impossible Cube
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- Год:неизвестен
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- Рейтинг книги:4 / 5. Голосов: 1
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“You won’t,” Phipps said flatly, and moved to strike the forks.
Gavin ran straight for her, trailing flame. Phipps leaped backward, her eyes wide with fear, an expression Gavin had never seen on her before. Alice recovered herself and bolted after him with Feng right behind her. A bit of blazing curtain flapped behind them, preventing the oil-soaked Phipps from pursuing right away if she wanted to avoid bursting into flame. Smoke and heat scorched Gavin’s face and heated his hands. The clerk stared at the trio from behind his desk as they fled outdoors.
The sun shone on the bright, cobblestoned street. In the distance, calliope music played and people applauded. Traffic and pedestrians were currently giving the hotel a wide berth, though, because Glenda was standing on the sidewalk in one of the big mechanicals.
“Wotcha,” she said, and reached for Gavin and Alice with big metal hands.
“Shit!” Gavin flung the flaming ball of cloth at Glenda’s head. It bounced off the clear bubble encasing her, but the woman jerked out of reflex, which gave Gavin, Alice, and Feng a chance to dodge around the machine.
“This way!” Gavin grabbed Alice’s hand and ran.
Glenda recovered quickly and spun to face them. Gavin jumped into a nearby cab, pulling Alice with him. The startled driver didn’t even have time to protest before Gavin shoved him out with a “Sorry!” and snapped the reins. The horses, already nervous about the mechanical, leaped forward. Feng managed to leap aboard as well, despite the rucksack that weighed him down.
The cab jolted down the street with the mechanical in pursuit. Brass footsteps thundered behind them. Alice shouted at people to get out of the way, and Gavin grimly steered the frantic horses. Glenda swiped at the cab, missed, and gouged a chunk out of the street. People and horses screamed and scattered. Other automatons skittered out of the way. Fear gripped Gavin’s heart. Even if they got away now, their situation remained dire. Phipps was a bulldog, willing and able to track them, and Gavin’s conspicuous airship made the situation worse. They had to escape, not only now but in the long term.
“Where should we go?” Alice cried, echoing his thoughts. “How do we get away?”
And then he knew. It came to him in a flash of inspiration, and he had no idea whether it was inspired by the clockwork plague or his own imagination, but either way, it might work. Hope replaced some of the fear.
“I have an idea,” he said. “But we left my fiddle.”
“I have it,” Alice said, brandishing it. “Didn’t you notice?”
“God, I love you.”
“Faster!” Feng shouted behind them.
Glenda swiped at the cab again, and this time she clipped it. The cab yawed sideways, and Alice clung grimly with her free hand. Gavin hauled on the reins, turning the yaw into a full-out left turn around a corner. The cab tipped on two wheels, then righted itself with a crash that slammed Gavin’s teeth together. The move caught Glenda by surprise, and she had to back up to make the turn, which bought Gavin a bit of lead. He shouted at the horses, but they were already going flat out.
“Glenda!” Alice called over her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this! The Third Ward is dead!”
But Glenda either didn’t hear or didn’t care. The mechanical came after them with implacable determination. The horses were slowing, tired, allowing Glenda to make up the lost time. Gavin listened. The streets here were nearly empty and the calliope music was growing louder. He pulled the horses to a stop and jumped out of the cab.
“Jump!” he said as Glenda brought both mechanical hands down. Feng and Alice leaped free as the mechanical smashed the cab to pieces. The panicked horses galloped away, dragging the remains with them. Glenda turned to face the trio, her expression stony.
“What are you doing?” Feng demanded, but Gavin was already moving.
“Come on!” He dashed down a side street, giving Alice and Feng no choice but to follow. There were still no people in evidence, but the narrow street was cluttered with front stoops, carts, piles of coal, and other street detritus. The trio leaped and twisted around it all, but Glenda was forced to slow a little.
“I’ll catch you eventually,” she shouted. “You can’t keep running!”
Gavin burst out onto a main street and into a crowd lining it. The calliope music leaped into full volume. Coming up the street was a man in a red top hat and a red-and-white striped shirt with garters just above the elbows. He wore a cloak flung back over his shoulders and he carried a silver-topped cane. Behind him lurched a great brass elephant, puffing steam from its tusks. Its gait was oddly uneven. Scarlet signs on the animal’s sides spelled out Kalakos Cirque International du Automates et d’Autres Merveilles in graceful, garish letters. Behind that came a horse wagon with an calliope on it played by an automaton, followed by the rest of the circus-clowns and acrobats and lion cages and girls on mechanical horses, all waving and smiling. The crowd that had gathered to watch stared, unsure if Gavin’s actions might be part of the show.
Without a pause, Gavin shoved through the crowd and made for the ringmaster at the front of the parade. He snatched the man’s hat off, revealing sandy hair.
“What the hell?” the ringmaster said, then blinked. “Gavin?”
“Great to see you, Dodd.” Gavin flicked the cloak free. “Just go with this and I’ll explain later.”
“Gavin, what are you-?” Alice began, but he shoved the top hat on her head, tossed the cloak around her shoulders, and ran around the other side of the lurching elephant without looking to see if Feng and Alice followed him. They did, however, and that was fortunate. Glenda reached the mouth of the side street, but her view of her quarry was blocked by the elephant, who bumbled along as if the people didn’t exist. Up top, the mahout looked down at them warily.
“Take off your goggles and scarf and your shirt,” Gavin whispered to Feng, keeping pace with the elephant. “The circus has Chinese. You’ll look like an acrobat. Give me the rucksack.”
“What about you?” Alice buttoned the cloak and drew it around herself, hiding her body and Gavin’s fiddle case. “And how do you know these people?”
Feng handed Gavin the rucksack, pulled off his shirt, and wrapped it around his head in a crude turban. He had a build that could pass for acrobatic, at a distance. Several people in the crowd had noticed Glenda’s mechanical, but they seemed to think it was part of the parade. They pointed and gasped with amazement. Glenda was momentarily stymied. She couldn’t move forward without crushing people or sweeping them aside and hurting them, which Gavin didn’t think she’d be willing to do.
A clown in white makeup, orange wig, and blue nose hurried up with a broom and a bucket. “What are you three doing? Do you speak English?”
“Bonzini!” Gavin said. “Remember me?”
“Gavin?” the clown gasped. “What in-?”
“I’m looking for two men and a woman!” Glenda boomed from the mechanical. “They just came this way. There’s a reward!”
“That’s torn it,” Alice said.
“No,” Feng said. “The crowd speaks French and German.”
“Thanks, Bonzini.” Gavin plucked the wig and nose from the clown, jammed them onto his own head and face, and grabbed Bonzini’s broom and bucket. The pack with the firefly cure in it went on Gavin’s back.
“Hey!” Bonzini protested.
But Gavin was already moving farther back, now using the calliope wagon and then a lion cage for cover. Alice and Feng came with. Glenda gave up on the crowd and was now nudging people aside so she could move onto the street. The calliope continued to hoot out something in D-major.
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