Steven Harper - The Impossible Cube

“Perfect,” Dr. Clef said. “Everything matches.”

“We have an hour before a train comes,” Gavin said. “So let’s hope this works.”

He put his hand over the green button on the newly mounted box on the deck, the one with half-carved ivy leaves on it, and paused. Several moments passed, and Alice finally said, “What’s the matter?”

“I hate to do this to her,” Gavin replied quietly. “It feels like I’m crippling my sister or my mother. But it needs to be done.”

He slapped the green button. In the rigging, all the automatons instantly came to attention. The spiders rushed over the ropes and the whirligigs spun into action. Under the new instructions Gavin had spun into their memory wheels, they unfastened the Lady ’s outer envelope. Their tiny fingers popped seams with quick precision, and the sides of the envelope peeled away like petticoats to reveal a glowing wire corset beneath. Alice realized she felt a bit embarrassed, as if the Lady were undressing in public, and she told herself not to be silly. The spiders dodged into the endoskeleton’s framework, and got to work on the interior balloons. As the last pieces of the envelope drooped away, the four interior ballonets deflated with an unhappy sigh, leaving a pile of cloth inside the curlicue endoskeleton. The outer layer of cloth dropped to the deck, and Alice found herself buried in silk. She struggled out of it and found Gavin emerging as well. His expression was sad.

“My ship,” he said.

But Alice could only manage a curt nod.

The endoskeleton, meanwhile, continued to hover, and the whirligigs rolled it up like an enormous piece of chicken wire with the deflated ballonets inside. It was still powered by the generator, however, so the roll hovered high above the deck. Without the additional lift of the envelope, the skeleton didn’t have the strength to lift the Lady ’s hull, and the ropes kept it from floating away. Gavin swept silk away from the generator and powered it slowly down. The wire roll, which was the same length as the ship and about five feet in diameter, sank slowly to the deck, drooping ropes as it came. The whirligigs and spiders rode it down, and Alice could swear they were silently cheering. She and Gavin pushed the roll a little to one side so it wouldn’t land on the helm and finally eased it down to the starboard side of the deck. The hull creaked and settled as the weight shifted. Nathan snapped his reins, and the four horses jerked forward. It took them a moment to get started, but at last they moved ahead, pulling the newly wheeled airship smoothly down the tracks.

“We’re not done,” Gavin said to the whirligigs, which rushed down to the wagon and, working as teams, hauled up two large canvas signs. Gavin hung one over one side of the ship and Alice hung the other over the opposite side. In garish letters, they read Kalakos Cirque International du Automates et d’Autres Merveilles.

“It’s like putting whore’s makeup on a queen,” Gavin muttered.

Alice was sure she wasn’t meant to hear that comment, so she ignored it. She climbed down a rope ladder, dropped to the ground, and trotted a short distance from the tracks to get a good look. The airship’s gunwales looked like the railings that graced the top of most circus wagons. Silk covered the name The Lady of Liberty painted across the stern, and the banner signs completed the trick. The airship looked like a tall wagon or high train car being hauled somewhere for repairs or a bit of publicity. Alice climbed back up. Kemp was back on deck, along with Gavin. Nathan and Dr. Clef drove the horses below. Click had disappeared, but Alice was confident he would show up again. He always did.

“Go below and hide, Kemp,” Alice said. “You’re illegal here. Take the little ones with you.”

“Shall I bring tea first, Madam?” Kemp said.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Alice replied.

Kemp withdrew. The horses were making good time on the tracks. Already they were nearing the boundary of the city. The fields and trees were nearly dark, and the sounds of the city-voices, horses, clattering machinery, laughter, music-floated past in snips and pieces beneath shy stars. A faint breeze from the country brought smells of earth and hay. Alice drummed her mechanical hand on the gunwale with little clicking sounds.

“I tried to warn you,” Gavin said quietly. “And I’m not going to fall all over myself apologizing.”

“Don’t expect you to.”

He shrugged casually, but Alice could see the stiffness in his posture. “I didn’t bring the plague on myself, and I don’t like it that you’re treating me as if I did.”

The anger flared again. “What are you talking about? I gave up everything for you, Gavin Ennock. I gave up a marriage and abandoned my position in society and, God help me, I even destroyed the British Empire, all to save you.”

“You wanted to watch me work and whatever you saw scared you.” Gavin flung his cap away and spread his arms. “Get a good look, Alice. I’m the monster your dear aunt made me.”

“Don’t you bring Aunt Edwina into this!” Alice cried. “She was just as insane as… as…”

“As I am?” Gavin finished for her. “Go ahead. Blame me. Blame her. It doesn’t matter. In a few months I’ll be dead. Then you can rush to England and see if Norbert will take you back.”

He stalked over to the other side of the deck and stared viciously out at nothing. Alice turned her back on him, stiff with fury. The city slid past with a faint rumble and scrape of train wheels. The Lady swayed a little. It felt distinctly odd, the familiar rhythm of a railway car on the open deck of an airship. Some of Alice’s anger gave way to nerves. Somewhere out there, Glenda and Simon and Phipps were looking for her. For all she knew, they were one street over, or just around the corner. She shivered and glanced back at Gavin. The anger came back. It didn’t matter that it was the plague that-

Yes. It did matter. She looked back at the streets and buildings, now only lit by occasional streetlights and yellow lamps in windows. This part of the city was mostly residential, and there was little street traffic at night. Three of the doors each had ragged red P’s painted on them. The deserted sidewalks and cobblestones suddenly seemed an echo of her life. The plague definitely mattered. It was all that mattered. It had stolen her entire family and her future, turned her into a fugitive, and forced her to make choices that would change the entire world. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right . And it made her so angry.

Movement caught her eye. A tattered, gaunt woman shuffled along the sidewalk as the airship glided past. She wore a battered straw hat and sores split her skin. The light from a streetlamp made her flinch. Plague zombie. A lifetime of reflexes made Alice flinch away, but once she recovered, she turned to tell Gavin, but then thought otherwise. What business was it of his?

Alice scuttled down the rope ladder. The airship moved slowly, and Alice easily dropped to the street. Nathan and Dr. Clef didn’t see her and continued on with the horses. She didn’t want to shout and call attention to herself, so she simply dashed over to the zombie woman, pulling off the glove that covered her left hand as she went. It would be easy enough to cure the poor woman and catch the ship back up. She couldn’t save her family, but she could save this woman, and so many others like her. She had to do it, or what was the point of everything that had gone before?

The zombie woman barely reacted when Alice slashed her, but straightened fairly quickly. Much of the misery left her face, replaced with relief. She blinked and looked around, like a blind person seeing color again. Alice’s heart lightened. Every life she changed for the better made her own existence a bit more worthy. The zombie-now a full person again-wandered away with an expression of wonder.