The League of Seven (5 page)

Archie would just have to find them again.

Talent cards were big, heavy brass slates with holes punched in them for Tik Tok clockworks to read. Archie had to stand on his toes to tip the card into the slot, but it slid in with a click.

Mr. Rivets straightened and stood tall. “Protector card engaged. I am ready, Master Archie.”

For the first time in his life, Archie was glad Mr. Rivets had his Babysitter card in.

Archie pulled his goggles down to keep the rain out of his eyes as they rode the elevator basket down into the swirling gray sky. Below them was a marshy green swamp overgrown with ferns and vines, and shrouded by trees with broad, sloping roots. Tall grasses swayed in the wind as the basket settled on a soft, muddy patch of land. Something nearby sloshed into the water.

Archie pulled the aether pistol out from under his shirt and activated the aggregator.

“Where in Emartha's name did you get that?” Mr. Rivets asked.

“It was in a saltine tin in the galley.”

“It looks like your grandfather's. I always wondered where that had got to. Have you any idea how to use it?”

“Well … you just point it and shoot it, right?” Archie said.

“Essentially, yes. The gauge on the side tells you how much aether has aggregated. At partial strength, the ray it generates will only stun your target. At full strength, it can kill.”

“How do you tell when it goes from stun to kill?” Archie asked. He wiped rain off the round glass window on the gauge so he could read it, but there didn't seem to be any marks for that kind of thing.

“I'm afraid it was something of an art with aether pistols from that era, sir.”

Oh, that's just brass,
thought Archie. “Which way do you think they went?” he asked over the howling wind. If there had been any footprints to follow, they were washed away by the driving rain.

Lightning flashed in the near distance, bringing daylight to the nightmare around them.

“That way,” Mr. Rivets said.

It was slow going. Having a thousand-pound machine man next to you in a fight was a good thing; getting him through a mucky marsh was another. Mr. Rivets sank in past the tops of his riveted spats, and had to use all his clockwork strength just to pull each foot free and take another step. Archie kept winding Mr. Rivets as they went with the key on his back so he would stay at full strength.

The marsh gave way to firmer ground, and the soft earth began to rise away from the water. Not very high, but they were definitely climbing what amounted to a hill in the Everglades.

“It is unusual for any place in this region not to lie at sea level, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets said, noticing the same thing. There could be any number of reasons there was a hill here, but Archie knew Mr. Rivets was thinking the same thing he was—that this was where a Mangleborn had fallen millennia ago, and was buried alive.

Lightning crackled and boomed close enough for Archie to taste the metallic tang of it in the air, and he and Mr. Rivets pushed their way through a last thicket of mangrove trees toward where it had struck. They emerged into a bright, mossy clearing filled with activity. The light came from glowing glass bulbs atop tall metal stands. Archie had never seen anything like them. They blinded him if he looked directly at them, even with his goggles on. Beneath the lights, perhaps a dozen people worked—some Iroquois, some Powhatan, and some Yankees like him, from what Archie could see through the rain. They wore long leather jackets and goggles like his own, doing what they could to stay dry in the driving rain while they ran a big steam-powered engine and worked at metal consoles filled with dials and switches. Thick black rubber hoses ran from the steam engine to the lights, and from the consoles to the giant dripping metal tower that stood high above them—the one Archie had seen peeking up through the clouds from the
Hesperus
.

Lightning struck the top of the tower again,
kazaak
ing down a central shaft into the ground. The blast made Archie's hair stand on end. It wasn't just the lektro-static discharge that gave him goose bumps. He suddenly understood where that lightning was going. He had seen it in his dream. He didn't know how, but he knew this was what he had seen from underground. From inside the prison the Ancient League had built.

“They're feeding it, Mr. Rivets. That lightning. They're funneling it down into the hole where the Swarm Queen is trapped. They're making her stronger so she can get out.”

Mr. Rivets pointed. “Master Archie—there.”

Archie's parents were the only ones without jackets, goggles, or hats, their good city clothes already drenched through to the skin. They looked like the bookworms they were—two skinny scholars totally out of place outside their observatory. They didn't belong here. Archie hurried after them, Mr. Rivets calling to him to wait. But nobody was paying Archie any attention. They were all more worried about their work. Archie hid behind a console near his parents and peeked around.

“Thomas Alva Edison,” they said together. “Thomas Alva Edison. Thomas Alva Edison.”

“What is it?” said a man flipping switches and turning dials at one of the consoles. He wore a long black cloak, rubber boots, and rubber gloves.

“Thomas Alva Edison. Thomas Alva Edison,” Mr. and Mrs. Dent said.

The man Archie figured was Edison pushed his goggles up into his thin black hair. “What what what? I'm busy here! Who are you?” He turned to one of his workers. “Take over here.”

Mr. Rivets clicked up behind Archie. Archie motioned for the machine man to be quiet and peeked out again. Edison was short and pudgy, with a distracted look in his eyes. Behind him stood a tall black machine man unlike anything Archie had ever seen before. It wasn't made to look human like Mr. Rivets was. Where Mr. Rivets had broad shoulders that tapered down to a thinner waist, all of which was molded to look like he was wearing a servant's vest and tie, the black machine man had a long, thin, unadorned body like a test tube, with abnormally long arms and legs. Its face had no human resemblance either. Mr. Rivets' head was shaped like an upside-down bucket with a bowler hat on top, and his wide round glass eyes and brass handlebar mustache gave him a friendly working-class look. The black machine man, on the other hand, had a head like an upside-down bowl, and a blank face whose only features were two glowing red eyes. The thing scared the steam out of Archie.

“We are the Motasalat Hamad,” Mrs. Dent said.

“The Overbearing Mother-in-Law?” Edison said. He turned her to see the bug on her neck and frowned. “Why have you come here?”

“Malacar Ahasherat calls,” said Mr. Dent.

“We will go through the puzzle traps to her,” said Mrs. Dent, still smiling.

Lightning crackled and boomed down the tower, making everyone jump except Edison and Archie's parents.

“We've tried that,” Edison said. “Nobody we send in there ever comes out. I'll get the Swarm Queen out my own way. The Archimedes Engine is working. By the full moon she'll be powerful enough to break free.”

“We will go through the puzzle traps to her,” Mr. Dent said.

“These bloodfoods have the knowledge,” said Mrs. Dent.

“One, two, buckle my shoe,” said Mr. Dent.

Archie pulled back behind the console. “One, two, buckle my shoe. That's what Mom said to me on the
Hesperus
, when we got the bug out of her long enough for her to talk. It must be the code to getting through the puzzle traps in the prison. Mr. Rivets, they know enough to set the Mangleborn free!”

“Continue your work,” Mr. Dent told Edison.

“Malacar Ahasherat grows stronger. You are a drone in the swarm. Together we will free the queen,” said Mrs. Dent.

Archie's parents turned and walked away from the tower, toward the darkness.

“I don't need your help,” Edison said once Mr. and Mrs. Dent were gone. “
I
will be the one to free the Mangleborn. Me, alone. And once they're free, science will finally advance.
Humanity
will finally advance.
I
will be the one to take us out of the dark age of steam and into the bright, shining Age of Lektricity. The future!
A drone in the swarm
. Ha. I'll be a hero. The world will worship me! Build statues of me! They will sing songs about me!”

Edison went back to the console and pushed one of his assistants out of the way.

“Though I hate to speak ill of any person,” Mr. Rivets said, “I do believe that man's mainspring is sprung.”

“Forget that,” Archie said. “What do we do about Mom and Dad, Mr. Rivets?” Archie's parents were almost beyond the light generated by Edison's machines.

“Edison's work here must be stopped, Master Archie. We cannot allow him to free this Mangleborn or any other. Nor can we allow him to continue his experiments with lektricity. But the more immediate threat, I'm afraid, is your parents. They know too much. Enough to free the Swarm Queen on their own. They cannot be allowed to enter the complex that imprisons the Mangleborn.”

“But how do we stop them?”

Mr. Rivets looked down at the raygun in Archie's hand.

“Shoot them?”
Archie pulled the aether pistol out of Mr. Rivets' reach. “You want to shoot my parents?”

“My programming forbids me from purposefully causing injury to human beings, Master Archie. I cannot do it.”

“Oh. But
I
can. That's what you're saying. You want me to shoot my own parents, Mr. Rivets? That's clinker!”

“Language, Master Archie.”

Archie growled in frustration and ran after his parents. They were headed for a rock wall that stood up from the hill in the darkness.
Shoot his mom and dad?
Mr. Rivets must have slipped a cog. Archie couldn't do that! But his parents did seem to know some code to get through the puzzle traps the ancients had left behind to keep anyone from getting to the Mangleborn they'd imprisoned. What if Malacar Ahasherat used his parents to get all the way in and let her out? The Swarm Queen would be loosed on the world without a League of Seven to stop her. Thousands of people would die. Hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. And then more and more Mangleborn would get free and take over the world. Maybe if he just stunned them. He flicked the raygun's aggregator off and on and watched the dial reset and begin to rise again.

Archie caught up to his parents just outside Edison's circle of light. “Mom! Dad! Please! You can't do this.”

His parents kept walking. He checked the aggregator—still not to halfway.

“You have to stop. I know you're in there! You have to fight it. You can't set the Mangleborn free!”

His parents kept walking. The dial kept rising. Archie couldn't be sure what was enough aether to stun them, and how much was enough to kill them.

He raised the aether pistol.

“Stop. Stop, or I'll shoot! I will!”

Archie shrank to the ground as his parents came closer in the dark, and suddenly he was a little boy again, waking to the same nightmare he always had, the one where he was a statue, where he was helpless and couldn't move, and all he could do was cry out for his parents. And there they were, both hurrying to him in the night, his mother to run her fingers through his hair, his father to whisper that it was all just a bad dream. The way they had always come to him, whenever he needed them. The way they loved him.

Archie's parents were on top of him. They weren't going to stop. The raygun needle was right at the halfway mark. All he had to do was point and shoot. It was now or never—

And it was never. Archie lowered the raygun, and his parents walked mindlessly past. He was never going to shoot his parents. He couldn't take the chance that he would hurt them. Mr. Rivets was a Tik Tok. He saw it as a logic problem: shoot two people, save millions. But Archie wasn't a machine man. He was a human being, and those two people were his parents, and he loved them.

Archie turned to see where his parents were, and found Edison's tall black machine man looming behind him, its red eyes blazing in the dark.

“Gaaaa!” Archie cried.

Something glinted in the machine man's hands—a long, curved sword. The Tik Tok slashed it at Archie's chest.
Shink!
Archie fell backward onto the wet ground, dropping the aether pistol. His jacket and shirt were sliced clean through, but the sword must have just missed cutting him. The black Tik Tok loomed over him in the darkness, sword held high to strike again, and there was Mr. Rivets.
Clang!
The two machine men grappled over him like steambots in a Tik Tok prizefight.

“I thought Tik Toks couldn't hurt people!” Archie cried.

“Obviously this machine man was not built to the same exacting standards,” said Mr. Rivets.

Archie snatched up the aether pistol and ran to where his parents had been, but they had disappeared. Wherever the entrance was to the Mangleborn's prison, they had gone in.

“Mom! Dad!”

The black Tik Tok rolled backward and kicked Mr. Rivets—all one thousand pounds of him—over its head and off into the darkness. He landed somewhere with a rattling
thump
. Archie aimed the aether pistol at Edison's machine man, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
Bwaaaaaat
. The Tik Tok dodged the ruby red beam and jumped over Archie, knocking him down again with its sword as it passed. Archie kept his finger on the trigger and swung around.
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
. The red beam missed the black Tik Tok again and hit the lightning tower instead. Its metal beams turned red hot and began to melt.

Archie felt his skin prickle. Blue-white lightning flashed in the clouds, and a bolt struck the top of the buckling tower.
Shhhh-kooom
. The tower lektrified, and white-hot tendrils of lightning jumped from the broken tower to the consoles on the ground—