Steven Harper - The Impossible Cube

“What on earth is that?” Alice exclaimed.

Alice’s voice sliced through the terrible need, and it faded. Gavin shook his head hard. “What’s what?”

She pointed. “There.”

Gavin followed the line of her finger. Along one wall was a row of cages with square bars, ten cages at a fast count. Inside each was a child. Some were boys, some were girls. All were under the age of twelve, some were as young as three or four. They sat or squatted within the bars, eyes listless and downcast. Each had a dog bowl of water.

“Good heavens,” Alice whispered. “Oh, Gavin.”

Gavin felt sick again. He didn’t resist when Alice took his hand and pulled him over to the horrible enclosures. Some of the children looked up and scuttled backward in fear. Most didn’t respond. A girl in a tattered gray dress reminded Gavin of his sister Violet back in Boston, and it made him want to tear the cages free of the walls.

“We have to get them out,” he said. “Now.”

“Look at that one,” Alice said, “and that. Their faces are flushed and their lips are cracked. It’s the clockwork plague.” She held up her spider gauntlet, whose eyes were glowing red. “I need to help them. I’ll cure them and we’ll take them out.”

Gavin hesitated. He glanced around the great room uneasily, feeling torn and not a little helpless. “Alice, how are we going to get them out of here?”

“What are you talking about?”

“We can probably get these cages open with minimal work,” Gavin said reluctantly, “but what then? How will we get all these children upstairs and past all the people and automatons in the house and over the wall outside? We’ll get caught, the children will end up back in here, and everyone will be worse off.”

Alice’s expression darkened and she looked like she wanted to argue. Then she nodded once, hard. “You’re right of course. But we’ll find a way later.”

“We will,” he agreed.

“And I can still do this.” She reached through the bars with her gauntleted hand and scratched one of the sick children before he could shy away. He barely whimpered, though he did shuffle to the rear of his cage, the scratches dripping blood. The others, seeing this, also drew back out of reach.

“Poor things,” Alice said. “I wish I spoke Ukrainian so I could explain what’s going on. At least the first one will infect the others with the cure.”

One of the children began to cry, and Gavin caught something that sounded like “Mama.” In that moment, Gavin nearly violated the good sense he had just quoted to Alice. He had to force himself to avoid tearing at the cages with his bare hands. His rubbed at his face and realized his cheek was wet with salt water. Damn it. He had been beaten half to death by pirates, locked in a tower by a madwoman, and infected with a disease that was killing him by inches, but this brought a tear to his eye?

“Let’s go,” Alice said, “before I pry these bars open myself.”

Gavin nodded around a thick throat and, feeling wretched, forced himself to turn his back and walk away from the children. He swore to himself that the sun wouldn’t set on another day before he came back for them.

“We need to concentrate,” Alice said briskly. “How are we going to find Feng in all this?”

Gavin did his best to push thoughts of the children aside. Alice was right-he needed to concentrate on the mission at hand. “I already know how.”

He took the silver nightingale out of his pocket. Alice reached for it, but Gavin moved it away from her. “Don’t. It returns to the last person who touched it. Feng sent it back to me when the song I recorded for you in Berlin turned out not to help.”

“So he was the last one to touch it,” Alice finished. “Brilliant!” She paused. “Why didn’t you use it when we were looking for him in the city?”

He gave her a strange look. “I didn’t need to.”

Alice pursed her lips, then muttered something that sounded like “Clockworker logic.” “Just toss it, then. Quick!”

Gavin flung the little bird into the air. It sprang to life, fluttered in a circle, and headed for one of the staircases across the main floor. Gavin and Alice hurried to follow, dodging giant mechanicals and ducking whirligigs, feet thudding on worked stone. They dashed up the staircase with a wall on their left, just barely able to keep the little streak of silver in sight, and hurried down an arched hallway. Electric lights glared down from the ceiling.

The hallway abruptly widened into a large, dark room. Even Gavin’s clockwork-enhanced eyes couldn’t make out details, though he got the sense the space was round. It was certainly large enough to echo. A single beam of light from high up stabbed down to illuminate a small circle in the center of the room. In the center of the circle was a square cage six feet tall, and in the cage huddled Feng Lung. Or, Gavin assumed it was Feng. A blanket wrapped his body and head like a tattered cloak. Between the blanket and bars, Gavin could see only part of his face. It seemed to be Feng, and the nightingale zipped into the cage to land on his shoulder. The figure in the cage didn’t react. Gavin wanted to run over and pull the cage open, but he also felt suspicious.

“Does this seem strange to you?” Alice whispered as they entered the room. The place was cold, almost icy. The duo stopped about twenty feet from the cage. “I mean, stranger than it should be.”

“Very,” Gavin whispered. He raised his voice a little. “Feng? Is that you?”

In response, the figure in the cage raised his head. The blanket fell back, revealing his face. Alice gasped. Gavin’s heart jerked and nausea oozed through his stomach, though he also felt a strange and exciting fascination. Feng’s hair had been shaved off, leaving nicks and cuts behind. A brass spider the size of a hand sprawled across the right side of Feng’s head, its body covering his ear and its legs framing his eye, nose, and mouth. Four of the legs drilled into his skull and neck. Gavin’s hand went unconsciously to his own skull, and he bit his lip. Scar tissue puckered Feng’s cheek and his right eye drooped. A line of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth. He shivered with cold.

“Oh, Feng,” Alice said. “What did she do?”

Feng didn’t answer. He simply stared at them with his good eye. The nightingale perched motionless on his shoulder. Alice sniffled and, with a low cry, ran to the cage.

“Don’t touch!” Gavin cried.

Alice halted mere inches from the icy bars. “Why?”

“It might be a trap.”

Lights exploded to life all about the room. A barred gate crashed down to block the exit. Gavin flung up a hand to shield his eyes against the painful and blinding brightness. Alice cried out again.

“Really, Gavin,” came the voice of Susan Phipps. “I’ll have to have a word with Simon. He should have trained you better.”

Gavin’s heart sank. When his vision cleared, he saw the room was actually an operating theater, with Feng’s cage in the bottom and high, circular walls all around. Above and out of reach, a circle of chairs ringed the room, set so anyone sitting in them could observe the events on the floor. Perhaps a dozen people in lab coats, work clothes, and formal dress occupied the chairs, including Ivana Gonta in her pink tea gown. All of them wore copper collars with buttons on them. Among them sat Susan Phipps, flanked by Simon d’Arco and Glenda Teasdale.

“Shit,” Gavin said, and not even Alice admonished him.

“Indeed.” Phipps still wore the scarlet dress uniform and gold sash, though now she had added a matching hat with gold braid on the brim. “I’m actually disappointed in you both. You should have known it would be child’s play to connect you with the circus and follow you here. The Countess Ivana was pleased to be involved. She has a new experimental subject, and I have you.”