The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) (27 page)

“Fine, then
you
go.”

“Not by myself.”

“Well, I ain’t going with you.”

While they bickered, Rector cringed. He took Angeline’s elbow with one hand and Zeke’s with the other, drawing them back closer against the wall—farther into the shade, and farther out of earshot.

“But I want to see them,” the princess hissed.

“Trust me.
Please,
” he begged.

Houjin gave him a glare that said
Not a chance,
but he followed him a few yards back and joined the huddle. “What is it? And why are we supposed to trust you, again?”

Rector held up his hands for quiet because it was his turn to talk—and for once, he had something true and important to say. He leaned forward, and when all their heads were practically touching, he told them what he knew.

“I don’t recognize the one fellow who hurt his leg, on account of it’s hard to see when people are wearing masks. But the other one’s name is Isaac West—I’d know his voice anyplace. He’s a chemist from Tacoma who’s been moving sap under his own brand, calling it
ambrosia.
I heard Yaozu didn’t like it much, and I also heard West wasn’t planning to change his behavior any. And that Otis fellow they’re looking for—I bet it’s Otis Caplan.”

“Who’s that?” Zeke asked, bonking his forehead against Houjin’s mask.

“Used to be in the army. The Union, I mean. He was a scientist. He invented some kind of gun that everybody liked, and it made him a mint. Then he switched from dealing arms to dealing sap a year or two ago, and now he’s making another mint. Bought a big house in San Francisco, but he comes up here pretty regular.”

“What about the other two, the ones we followed up here?” Angeline asked.

Houjin said, “One of these guys called them Jay and Martin.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know everybody. Give me a break.”

Zeke’s voice was low with awe. “I heard of Otis, back before I came in here. Every time there was a rumor going ’round that Minnericht was dead, or missing, or gonna retire, or anything, people used to say Otis Caplan was coming to take over the operation.”

“I don’t think he ever discussed it with Minnericht,” Angeline said wryly. “And anyway, Yaozu beat him to it. Do I even want to know why you know of these men, Red?”

“Probably not, ma’am.”

Zeke sat back on his heels and asked, “I think my filters are stuffing up.”

The princess sighed, and looked at the boys one at a time. Seeing the same thing on each face, she relented. “I think we’ve done enough mischief for now. My mask is starting to chafe me, too. Let’s turn around,” she started … but whatever she’d planned to add was drowned out by the sputter of something loud, and coming closer.

Everyone tensed and retreated, and soon all four backs were pressed up against the wall—as close as they could get, as if they could melt right into the rocks that formed it.

The rumbling, roaring sound grew louder, approaching from behind them, back the way they’d come. Rector desperately shuffled through his moth-eaten memories, hunting for some idea of what the noisemaker might be. The closest he could come was the steam-powered works at the old sawmill, but that wasn’t quite right. The volume was correct, and the mechanical rhythm of it was absolutely right, but the timbre and tone were all wrong. This was something smaller but still impossibly heavy. The close-pressed air made the rattling feel like an assault, and the vibrations were a personal insult as they butted and shoved. The ground beneath his feet quivered like it wanted to fall.

“What
is
that?” asked Zeke.

Houjin replied, “It reminds me of something I saw in New Orleans.” And he might’ve elaborated, except that the persistent clank drowned out every other sound, and everyone had the good sense not to shout, in case it suddenly stopped. Instead they covered their ears and watched as a machine came crawling up the hill and into view.

It rumbled and rolled, a war carriage without a war horse, riding on enormous wheels that were spiked with great nubs for the sake of traction. The rear of the carriage was covered with canvas in an old-fashioned wagon style, but the front was sealed up with glass to create a compartment for the driver. The driver himself was a wide-set man sporting glasses and a bow tie. He was not wearing a mask, a fact that Houjin called attention to by pointing at the one he wore and gesturing back at the transport machine.

Angeline nodded, and everyone frowned. The machine’s cabin must have air filters, or carry its own air supply for clean breathing. Rector could see the wheels in Houjin’s head turning, calculating how on earth it could’ve been done … and wondering how he might be able to repeat it.

Rector tapped Angeline’s arm and drew her closer. Right into her ear, he said, “That’s Otis. I never seen him before, but I heard he was a tall fat man who’s always dressed nicer than he ought to be. They say you can’t mistake him for anybody else.”

“Not a lot of fat men around these parts.”

“Not a lot of bow ties, either,” Zeke observed. “Nobody dresses up like they’re going someplace fancy.”

“Yaozu does,” Houjin muttered, and Rector realized it might be true. He didn’t know what a Chinaman wore to dress up and go out someplace fancy, so it was hard for him to say one way or the other, but it made sense to him that rich men ought to dress like rich men, and act like rich men, too. How else would anybody know they had any money?

And in Rector’s experience, people didn’t often take orders from men without money.

“I wonder what’s inside that wagon,” Angeline said. Rector barely heard her—the noise of the machine’s engine made everything sound shaky and faint.

“Supplies for making sap?” he guessed.

The engine cut off, and the mayhem of its clatter died down. It settled into near-silence, except for a few pings and whistles as the motor cooled.

Caplan reached down to the seat beside him and picked up a mask, then put it on and opened the door to let himself out. He stepped down to the ground and slapped the door shut again, then stomped forward to shake hands with Isaac West and his companion.

“It’s about time,” West greeted him. “What do you think of the place?”

“I think it’s a shithole if I ever saw one,” Caplan said disdainfully, and if he weren’t wearing a mask, Rector thought he might’ve spit on the ground for emphasis. “But if Yaozu can make it work, we can, too. I won’t be outdone by no goddamn yellow Chinaman who thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

Angeline snorted quietly. The snort spoke volumes, so Rector was unsurprised to hear her mumble, “This one dresses real nice, but he talks real trashy. Says everything I need to know about him, don’t it?”

“I expect it does,” he agreed.

Otis Caplan said, “Anyone else around, or just you two?”

“Jay and Martin are upstairs.”

“Go get ’em. These things are heavy, and I can’t leave them sitting in the back. That part ain’t sealed, and the air will corrode them ’til they’re useless.”

Isaac West ordered the man with the scraped-up leg upstairs with a bob of his head. He sighed, but didn’t argue—not in front of Otis Caplan. Instead, he slowly turned and went through the white gate. Just out of sight, Rector heard a door open and shut with a soft scraping noise. It made him think of the seals on some of the underground doors. This impression was confirmed as he eavesdropped further and Caplan asked, “How’s the tower coming?”

“We got the interior drained, cleaned, and closed up. It’s practically a fortress in there, and it goes down to a basement level we didn’t know about. We got that dried out, too, and we’re checking its integrity now.”

“But is it airtight?”

“Not yet, but we’re working on it. Up top, we almost got it sorted—all we need is a little more glass and some better sealant. Then, of course, we gotta find a way to pump the bad air out, and pump good air in. We can get it as tight as we like it, but that won’t do us no good if we can’t breathe what we’ve trapped.”

“The people who live here have got something figured out.”

West nodded. “They got pumps, coal-fired or steam-powered. They send these big waxed tubes up above the Blight line and pump down fresh air that way.”

Otis Caplan struck a pose for pondering, with his hands on his hips and his head cocked to the side. If he could’ve reached his beard, he might’ve stroked it in a villainous fashion. “Could we swipe one of those tubes?”

“I doubt it. They’re awful big to make off with. Besides, the tube’s no good without the pump.”

“Could we steal a pump?”

“No idea,” West told him.

Angeline said to Rector, “Now
that’s
a man who’s lying. He’s just afraid of telling his boss no too many times in a row. Any damn fool knows you can’t steal a pump. They’re as big as a whole room.”

Rector said, “Otis ain’t never seen a pump. For all he knows, one might fit in a wheelbarrow.”

From within the tower came the sounds of footsteps and grumbling, descending the spiral within—and using more caution on this trip than they’d shown before. Rector heard, “Watch out for that step. It’s broke,” as the creak of decaying metal made a straining sound that squealed all the way out into the park.

“Here they come. Help me unload,” Caplan ordered West. Together they went to the wagon’s rear, and Otis released a latch that dropped the back end open. “I’ve got the glass you asked for, and the closest thing to a sealant I could find, which is tar. I hear nothing works better against this gas, but it won’t be pretty. As for the rest of the stuff, I brought enough to start a war.”

He reached into the cargo area and withdrew a crate. It scratched across the floor until he had it in his arms, then, with some help from West, he put it on the ground. Isaac West said, “Too bad we ain’t got an army. You can bring us all the guns you want, but without anybody to shoot ’em, they don’t do us much good.”

“It ain’t all guns, West—though if it matters to you, I’ve got more fellows coming tomorrow night. We don’t need an army to bring this place down to the ground. Or … farther into the ground. I don’t know, I guess we can send it straight to the devil with what I brought.” Caplan pulled a pry bar out from the wagon and gave it a twirl, then jabbed it into the top of the crate. “Get a gander at that, would you?” he suggested proudly.

Angeline, Rector, Houjin, and Zeke all craned their necks.

“Hot damn, Mr. Caplan. That’s a lot of dynamite, ain’t it?”

“This? This is only
some
dynamite. I’ve got a
lot
of dynamite packed up in the back along with the guns. I’d like to think of the guns as a last resort, really. It’ll be less trouble if we can just plug up the holes, cave in the tunnels … less work for us, and nobody on our end gets hurt.”

West turned his attention to whatever else was inside the wagon, shrugged, and said, “Sounds like a plan to me.”

The gate swung open. Jay and Martin exited the tower, joined by the man who’d fetched them.

“Over here, boys.” West waved them out to the carriage.

Angeline sat back on her heels and everyone else slumped over as well. Rector saw naked horror in Zeke’s eyes, and something he couldn’t quite pinpoint in Houjin’s. At a glance it looked like anger, but it might’ve been fear.

The princess said, “Back to the Vaults now. All of us. We wouldn’t have time left on these filters to do those men any damage—even if we weren’t outmanned and outgunned.”

“We need to tell my mother,” Zeke said tightly.

“Your mother, and Mr. Swakhammer, and anybody else who might be helpful.”

Houjin said, “I’ll tell Captain Cly.”

Angeline looked hard at Rector and told him, “And you’ll take the news to Yaozu, because I’m not going to do it. Come on, back around this way.” She led them around the rear of the tower, leading them in the hard, dark places between the bricks of the water reservoir and the stones of the wall.

“But we need to go downhill, not up!” Rector objected.

“I know, but we’ll avoid ’em better over here. The wall heads farther north, see? Cuts across the cemetery, like I said. And I know a secret or two inside that cemetery.”

When they were far enough to move without drawing attention, they ran as best they could—huffing and puffing through the struggle of their filters and stumbling along in the wall’s shadow, where they could scarcely see the ground in front of them.

Once they were out of earshot, Houjin began asking questions. “Is there an underground entrance near here?”

The princess confirmed this without turning around or looking over her shoulder.

“Is it inside a mausoleum?”

“That’s a real big word,” she said. “What’s it mean?”

“It’s like a house for dead people. They had them in—”

“New Orleans,” she cut him off. “You saw a lot down in Louisiana, didn’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am. And a mausoleum is for burying dead people when you can’t put them in the ground.”

“A house? For dead people?” She shook her head. “Sounds like a waste of time and trouble to me. No, we aren’t going to no house of the dead.”

Instead, they were headed for the keeper’s shack—or that’s what Rector thought it must be. A tiny outbuilding at the edge of the cemetery gates, it was boarded up tight, but Angeline went around behind the thing and lifted a panel, then ushered all three boys through it. They scooted on their hands and knees, and just when Rector thought there was no way they’d all fit, he noticed the ladder.

He also noticed he was mere inches from bypassing the ladder altogether and toppling down to whatever unlit space waited below, so when Zeke crowded into him, urging him to make room, Rector socked him on the shoulder and said, “Watch it! I can’t go no farther.”

“You can if you head down that ladder,” Angeline said from outside. “Go on, move it.”

“But there’s no light!”

“There’s a light at the bottom, and I know where it is. Just stand by the ladder and don’t wander off. You’ll be fine.”

She was right, he was sure, but that didn’t make it any easier to descend an unknown depth into an unknown space, navigating by the feel of the rungs under his hands and feet.