Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium (14 page)

"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," he said. "You've lost me."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I must be explaining the premise poorly."

"No, you aren't. It's beyond me," Jeremiah admitted spreading his hands out helplessly. "I never thought I would be saying this, but you understand the fundamentals of my own theory better than I do."

"You're just saying that to be kind," Abigail said.

"No." Jeremiah narrowed his eyes. "I am not a kind man, Abigail. And I do not hand out compliments lightly."

Abigail hesitated, setting the chalk aside and staring at the dense knot of tangled equations she had scribbled down. "I cannot explain it. It almost feels as if I am merely learning something I already knew—reminding myself of ideas that I had once been acquainted with, but had long forgotten."

Jeremiah rose from his seat. "My mother says it was the same way for my father."

"You rarely speak of them," she said, hesitating. "Your parents, I mean."

"My father is missing, and my mother is quite mad,"

Jeremiah stated rather dourly.

"I've heard stories of your mother. Terrible stories," she said, but her voice possessed no trace of fear—rather, it had a dash of excitement. "They say that she was a monster in her youth; that she terrorized cities in the seat of mechanical monstrosities."

Jeremiah chuckled. "Oh, yes, she most certainly did. I wasn't aware that you were interested in 'mad' science, Abigail."

"Not at all!" Abigail quickly replied, a swell of heat breaking across her cheeks. "I mean, I am merely curious, is all."

Jeremiah steadied his hands on the back of a chair, leaning over to look up at Abigail. He dropped his eyelids low, wearing a most unwholesome smile. "Are you, now? Perhaps you would like to terrorize a city with me, Madame?"

Abigail scowled, her face red. "Stop being absurd."

"I'm not hearing a no," Jeremiah said, laughing. "I've got a giant mechanical spider stored in the basement. I could have it up and running in under an hour."

"I am most certainly not interested," she snapped, although she was quick to add: "You have a mechanical spider in your basement?"

"And more. Some inventions are mine, some are my father's, some are my mother's," Jeremiah said. "All are quite dangerous." He waggled his eyebrows. "Would you care to see?"

~*~

The air in Jeremiah's basement was pregnant with forgotten secrets and passions long left for dead; countless projects were contained beneath cases of iron and glass, neatly labeled and organized. Abigail sprang between display after display, her fingers soon smeared with dust.

"These machines," she said, breathless. "Some of them are wondrous."

"Be careful," Jeremiah warned her, and then added: "I've been working on continuing a few of their projects, but I haven't had time what with the work we're doing on the probability engine."

"What is this?" Abigail asked, leaning forward to inspect a rusty silver pocket watch. It had been gutted and refitted with a myriad of glass bulbs, dials, and wires.

"That's my father's project," Jeremiah told her. "It was supposed to have been a time machine."

"Do not tease me, Mr. Daffodil," she said, glaring.

Jeremiah laughed. "I'm not teasing," he said. "It doesn't work, though. Not correctly, anyway. Far too unpredictable to be safely experimented with. Ends up stealing time rather than letting you move through it."

"I'm sure," she said, obviously not believing him. She moved to another device. It was one of the few projects not stored away beneath a frame; it consisted of a segmented lead encased sphere approximately the size of a fist, with various valves and pumps attached to it. "And what function does this serve?" She reached out to touch it.

Jeremiah was upon her in an instant. The force with which he seized her wrist gave Abigail a dreadful fright. "Don't touch that," he shouted, and at once it was clear that he regretted his ferocity. "I apologize." He released her, stepping back. "But that project is particularly dangerous."

Abigail rubbed her still-aching wrist, watching Jeremiah and the sphere warily. "Why?"

"It was an invention of my mother's," he said, clearly reluctant to explain the device's function. "Even she was sane enough to stop working on it once she realized its implications."

"What does it do?"

"She called it the radium generator. Under the right circumstances, she discovered certain very rare particles can exert an immense amount of energy for an untold length of time,"

Jeremiah explained. "For weeks, or years, or decades—perhaps even forever. My mother found a way to recreate those circumstances and harvest the energy."

Abigail's eyebrows shot up. "She created a way to produce a stable source of unending energy?"

"Yes," Jeremiah began. "A machine that creates a spontaneous explosion—"

"Remarkable!"

"—that might never stop," he finished.

The light in Abigail's eyes quickly dimmed. "I see." She shuffled uncomfortably, turning to look at the assortment of machines and struggling to find some way to change the subject.

"Is there anything in here that is yours?" She asked tentatively.

Jeremiah grinned. "A few of these things here are mine, but my favorite invention is upstairs. It‘s not all that amazing, but I‘m actually quite proud of it."

"May I see it?"

"On one condition," he replied.

~*~

The highest peak of Jeremiah's home brought them well over the roofs of the other houses in the neighborhood; Abigail stared down at the sight, shifting nervously.

"I have reservations, Mr. Daffodil," she admitted.

"Do not worry," Jeremiah said, standing on the roof's edge with his stylized umbrella in his hand. "Your arm, if you will."

Abigail shuffled. "You said you wanted to show me your invention," she pointed out. "But all you have in your hand is an umbrella."

"The umbrella
is
my invention. Please, Abigail. You gave me your word that you would trust me."

Abigail hesitated, squirming with displeasure. "You asked me to trust you before you brought me up on the roof," she said, wringing her hands.

He laughed, still holding out his arm. "Yes, well, that's often how it goes, isn't it? Please, Abigail. I won't harm so much as a hair on your head; you have my word."

At long last, Abigail submitted; she held out her hand to Jeremiah, who took it into his own, drawing her close.

"Hold my waist tightly, Madame," he told her, and then he lifted the umbrella high above their heads.

~*~

~*~

Being dead, Snips decided, was a lot like flying.

There was a strange sense of weightlessness along with the peculiar feeling that came with having one's heart dive straight into the belly, only to change its mind at the last moment and slingshot back up through the throat. There was also very little to see.

"I think that you may weigh a little more than a hundred and ten pounds, Miss Snips."

Snips realized that she had her eyes shut. Despite her brain warning against it, she opened them.

She was not dead.

She was soaring.

"Funny," Snips said with a dry and breathless rasp. "I don't recall having ever possessed the power of flight."

"We are not flying, Miss Snips."

"I mean, that seems like something you'd remember," she continued, licking her dry lips. "'Oh yes, I can fly, silly me'. Or something like that."

"I must repeat: We are not flying."

"At the very least, it seems like something you'd tell mum about. 'Oh hey mum, by the way, I can fly.' And I know for a fact that I never told my mum any such thing."

"Miss Snips!" William's voice was strained to the point of snapping. "We are
not
flying!

Below Snips' feet was the smoldering carcass of the burning apartment; all around her was the night sky. William, his face filthy with soot, was holding her firmly about the waist, their arms linked together. Above them was his umbrella.

It had opened and unfolded, exposing a heavily reinforced iron frame that served as an anchor for the massive canopy that extended above and around them. The sturdy weave was catching the air, dragging across the sky like a cat's claw slowly ripping down a curtain.

William Daffodil reveals his father's invention to Arcadia Snips.

"Neat," Snips said, scarcely able to produce any other sound.

"A simple matter of air resistance and velocity," he said. "A draft of heat drew us high into the air—far higher than I intended.

But we should remain safe until we touch down."

"I didn't know they could do that."

"Yes, it‘s a rather curious design feature my father added long after the initial design," William said. "By the way, how did you know that the umbrella is fire retardant?"

Snips squirmed in William's grip. "I, uh. Well, you know.

Lucky guess."

"You guessed."

"Heh, yeah. Good guesser, huh?" Snips said, grinning.

They floated over the Rookery in silence. Below them were the maze-like streets, the crooks, the tricks, the anguish, the laughter—but from here it all looked like nothing more than a bawdy theater play. Gas-lanterns glimmered like pin-pricks of light in a vast and dark blanket, shining over the unfolding tapestry of city drama. Shouts and cries rose up, distorted by distance and rock until they became nothing more than a collectively mumbled complaint.

But it was William that Snips was watching from the corner of her eye. For a moment, the mathematician's nervous tension had slipped away beneath the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. He was watching the cityscape unfold beneath them with bright and curious eyes.

"Have we met before?" The question escaped Snips before she had a chance to think about it; she wasn’t sure why she asked it, but some distant familiarity nagged at the back of her brain.

"I don’t know," William confessed, and then added: "I thought so at first myself, but I do not think so. I doubt I would fail to remember a woman such as yourself, Miss Snips."

"Fair enough," she said. She was about to say something else, but William suddenly interrupted her.

"Miss Snips, look! The fire department has arrived."

At last, the pair was coming close to the ground; they were descending within sight of the burning apartment. As they came closer, they caught sight of a massive wagon pulled by a team of horses rushing toward the scene. A giant iron pump was mounted on the center of the carriage. Men in long orange coats and steepled metal hats held on for dear life as the contraption swerved through the narrow alleyways, accompanied by a screeching siren.

"Bah," Snips said. "They're here already."

"So they'll put out the blaze," William said.

"Not before they get their cut."

"Pardon?"

They landed within a block of the apartment. Unbuckling Snips' arm, William gave the belt back and ran off in a swirl of smoke to view the situation for himself. Snips sighed and followed after. As they rounded the last bend, they could see the engine had reached its destination. One of the firemen—a grizzled one-eyed goat of a man who resembled a brigand more than a firefighter—

was involved in a heated exchange with a soot-covered woman they soon recognized as Marge.

"—hell we will!" Marge snarled to him just as Snips and William came within earshot.

"If you act now, we'll throw in a Gold membership for half our usual rate," the fireman said. "A quarter off all your gas bills!"

"We'll put the bloody thing out ourselves!" Marge roared, turning back to the throng of tenants who were struggling with buckets and shovels against the fire. "Back to the front lines, you lazy gits! Someone fetch more buckets!"

People darted off to carry out her orders. The firefighter shook his head and tsked. "Wasting precious collateral," he said.

"What on earth is going on?" William asked.

"Business as usual in the Rookery," Snips replied. "Gas company's trying to buy the apartment off her."

"While it's burning?!"

"Yes," Snips said, addressing William much like a parent might speak to a child. "While it's burning."

"But that's—that's—"

"He'll keep dropping his offering price as the fire gets worse," Snips spoke as she found herself a seat on a nearby wall.

The blaze gave off a bright light, giving everything it touched a metallic orange glow. The color sparkled off her silver-toothed smile, adding a demonic mien to the thief’s expression. "If they can't put it out themselves, they'll have to sell it to get anything back."

"We can't let them do that!"

Snips shrugged. "It's legal."

"But it's wrong!"

"Wrong, right, up, down, back, forward—doesn't change a thing."

They were interrupted by the sound of another siren. A clockwork nightmare stumbled out of a nearby alleyway, awkwardly clambering over the street by means of long, clumsy pincers; it was the very same mess of plates and skillfully crafted spider legs that Snips had ridden earlier that day in the Rookery. Its pilots crawled over it, stoking the flames of the furnace while attaching hoses to valves located along the pump attached to its backend.