Steven Harper - The Impossible Cube

“You’re traitors, Susan,” Alice said. “All three of you. You don’t even see it, do you? You’re traitors to every human alive, and you live in hell.”

“You’re imprisoned in the circle,” Glenda pointed out. Her blouse was a deep yellow. “Not us.”

“Simon,” Gavin said, “you were my best friend. Help me, instead of stabbing me in the back!”

Simon looked at Gavin and swallowed. His fingers clenched and unclenched. Then he looked at Phipps, set his mouth, and straightened his black jacket without saying a word. Gavin’s heart dropped.

“What did you monsters do to Feng?” Alice demanded.

“Very important experiment,” Ivana called down. She was sitting behind a console similar to the one Gavin had seen on her bird the night before, her hand on one of the levers. “You should be proud that he has become part of Gonta heritage.”

“And Zalizniak,” put in a man sitting near her.

“How did you do anything at all?” Alice continued in the same demanding voice. She shook her parasol angrily up at them, drawing every eye to her. Gavin slowly slid his rucksack off, his eye on the lever in Ivana’s hand. “You didn’t even have him for a full day.”

“That is Gonta-Zalizniak way,” said the man who had spoken earlier. He wore a lab coat with red-brown stains that Gavin didn’t want to think too closely about and a whirligig with spikes on its tiny feet sat on his shoulder near his copper collar. He pointed to himself. “Danilo Zalizniak. Our sister was not the only one to work on him. We all worked on him together.”

“That’s what you tell everyone,” Alice huffed theatrically. “But we know clockworkers don’t work together. They all want their own way and eventually tear each other to pieces. Quite literally, in some cases.”

For a moment, Gavin flashed on the conflicts between himself and Dr. Clef. How long before one of them tried to kill the other? Assuming Gavin survived the next few minutes.

“Ah, that is for normal clockworkers,” Danilo said. “We are not like them. We serve the family.”

And Gavin saw the pattern. “That’s what the collection is,” he said. “You don’t think of yourselves as individuals. You don’t even call yourself I. It’s always we. I’ll bet you weren’t born with the names Danilo and Ivana, either.”

Danilo grinned a demon’s grin. “You have good brain. We would like to see it.”

“He and the baroness are mine,” Phipps said. “You have the Oriental boy. As we agreed.”

“So, so.” Ivana removed her hand from the lever and waved it negligently. “Perhaps we wish to change the terms of our agreement.”

“What do you mean?” Glenda demanded. Simon remained silent.

“Do you think that you are the only ones who know of this cure your Alice carries?” said another woman. Her voice echoed about the chamber. “It interests us very, very much. This cure is already destabilizing Europe, and we approve. We predict that within five years, all European clockworkers will be gone because cure will destroy plague. China’s machinery will continue to grow, and she will easily take all of India and Africa and possibly west coast of America before cure reaches her empire and stops creation of more dragon men. By then it will be too late. China will reign supreme.”

“No,” Phipps said flatly.

“Feng,” Alice whispered. “Can you stand up?”

The young man stared blankly, and Gavin couldn’t tell if he had understood her or not.

“Feng,” Alice whispered again, “you have to stand up. Stand up!”

Feng instantly got to his feet. The blanket fell away. He was shirtless. Corded muscle moved under ivory skin recently scored with a series of terrible scars that ran across his chest and abdomen. Tiny, neat stitches held the edges together. Gavin’s nausea returned. Hadn’t the spider on his face been enough? What else had they done?

“Like or not like, Lieutenant,” Danilo said. “It will happen. We want it to happen.”

“Why would you want that?” Simon burst out. His voice was hoarse with stress. “It would destroy your family. Already, Alice is spreading the cure through your city. Who will become the next generation of clockworkers?”

“Is nothing, nothing,” said an old man who sported a set of steel teeth. “We have our own supplies of plague. You are truly stupid man if you think that we Gontas and Zalizniaks could not manipulate plague when it started here, in our own city.”

“You can cure the plague?” Alice gasped. She grabbed Gavin’s hand with her bare one. “But I’d heard you couldn’t.”

“Of course we can,” said the old man. “It is our secret. And we can infect people with it, and we have ways of increasing chances that victim will become clockworker. Is why we need children.”

“Can you cure clockworkers?” Alice blurted before Gavin could ask the same question.

Ivana gave her a scornful look. “Why would we look into such things? Stupid English. Even if we wanted to destroy our clockworker family, plague changes itself when it makes clockworker and becomes quite incurable. Waste of time.”

“Enough discussion,” Phipps said. “I will take my prisoners and leave now.”

“Nah, nah,” said Ivana. “If lovely baroness fails to reach China, Chinese Emperor will rule most of world, and probably hurt Ukraine. This is bad for Gontas and Zalizniaks. Lovely baroness must reach China to spread cure more quickly and destroy Chinese Empire as well. We have agreed.”

Gavin gasped. The Gontas and Zalizniaks were on their side?

“But we still think curing China is a bad idea!” Danilo Zalizniak protested. “We think that baroness must not reach China. Britain’s weakness will let Ukraine expand west.”

Ivana touched a button on her collar. Danilo cried out and clutched at his own collar with both hands, his face a rictus of pain. “We believe we came to agreement,” she said mildly as Danilo rocked in his chair. “Is this not so? Speak English for benefit of our guests.”

“No!” Danilo howled. “No! We- You are wrong! You Gontas are-”

Ivana touched a button on her collar again, and Danilo screamed. Alice put a hand over her mouth. Gavin stared, both sickened and transfixed. The other clockworkers watched in complete silence, though some of them-presumably Zalizniaks-looked unhappy or angry. Phipps sat in the center of them all, clearly trying to swallow her outrage. Gavin suppressed a mean smile. For once, she had miscalculated, overplayed her ability to persuade clockworkers.

“Baroness must reach China,” Ivana said. Her tone was quiet and kind. “Do we agree, brother?”

“Yes,” Danilo whimpered.

“And we should give her all aid necessary. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

Another tap on Ivana’s collar, and Danilo’s face instantly relaxed. He slumped down in his chair. Glenda and Simon exchanged startled looks.

“What did we agree, brother?” Ivana asked, her finger still hovering over the copper at her throat.

“That… that the baroness should reach China,” Danilo whispered. “And we should help her.”

“Just so.” Ivana touched a different button on her collar, and Danilo arched his back with a great gasp, but this time the expression on his face read pure pleasure instead of pain. His mouth fell open, and he groaned. Ivana released her collar, and Danilo relaxed.

“There we are,” she said. “We may clean ourselves up and change into different trousers, if we desire.”

“We are grateful, sister.” Tears streamed down Danilo’s face. “Grateful.” He got up and stumbled out of the observation area.

“We are sorry you had to see that,” Ivana called down to Gavin and Alice. “This is why experiment with Oriental boy is so important. If it works, we have no more arguments.”