The Impossible Cube Read online

  “Oui?” The woman had straight brown hair and tired, blue-gray eyes. Her hands were red and swollen from work, and she wore a limp brown work dress.

  In her halting French, Alice said, “Is someone ill?”

  “Why do you ask?” the woman responded. “Who are you?”

  “Someone in your house has la peste de l’horlogerie, yes?”

  “Non, non.” The woman moved to shut the door. “You are mistaken.”

  Alice, not quite believing her own temerity, blocked the door open with her foot. She could smell the dripping paint. “The doctor marked your door for all to see. Now everyone will avoid you and your house. I can help.”

  The woman paused. “Who are you? We have nothing to steal.”

  “I am a friend. I can help. Is it your child?”

  “I… I am…” The woman licked her lips, then suddenly opened the door wider. “Enter, please.”

  The door led into a pair of rooms that were part of a much larger building. The front room had a stove and a few pieces of furniture. Alice assumed the back room was used for sleeping. A single candle provided the only light. On a pallet on the floor huddled a little girl, perhaps nine or ten years old. A thin blanket covered her, and her face was flushed with fever. Her hair was already falling out, and her limbs twitched as if possessed by little demons. A smell of sickness hung in the air. Alice’s heart pounded behind her ribs. For a moment, she was looking at her brother in his sickbed, watching the fever make him quiver. Eventually he convulsed and died. Many victims of the clockwork plague didn’t survive this early stage, and those few who did were often scarred or crippled. Most went on to become zombies. At least the early stage didn’t seem to be contagious, though the victims were often shunned as a matter of course.

  “My husband is working, and my other children are asleep in back,” the woman said. “Please do not wake them. My name is Theresa Nilsen. This is Josette.”

  “I… would prefer to keep my name to myself,” Alice said, remembering Phipps. “Did the doctor say Josette has the clockwork plague?”

  “He did.” The woman’s voice choked. “He would not touch her, and he left. I do not know what to do. She will become a monster and die. My little Josette.”

  “She will not.” Alice stripped off her leather glove and laid her gauntleted hand on the girl’s forehead. The spider’s eyes instantly glowed red, confirming the doctor’s diagnosis. “This may be difficult to see, Madame Nilsen, but it is necessary.”

  Before Mme. Nilsen could say anything else, Alice slashed Josette’s arm and sprayed a bit of her blood over the wound. The girl whimpered in her fevered dreams.

  “What did you do?” Mme. Nilsen demanded. “You hurt her!”

  “It is a cure for the clockwork plague,” Alice said softly. “Now that Josette has it, she will spread it whenever she coughs or sneezes, but I should give it to you and your other children anyway. Let me check you. It will not hurt.”

  Mme. Nilsen hesitantly held out her arm, and Alice took it. The spider’s eyes glowed red.

  “You have the plague,” Alice said, and Mme. Nilsen cried out in alarm. “But you are not showing symptoms yet. Do not worry—I have the cure.” Alice slashed and sprayed. “I should check your children.”

  “How—?” Mme. Nilsen began, but Alice was already moving to the back room, where four other children were sleeping piled together on a large pallet of their own. Alice checked, but none of them had the plague.

  “They are healthy,” Alice said, and strode back to the front room to check on Josette. Already her fever had lowered. When Alice touched her, the spider’s eyes glowed green, indicating a lack of clockwork contagion. Josette opened her eyes, and Alice backed away to let a tearful Mme. Nilsen take her place.

  “Mama,” Josette whispered. “I want water.”

  Mme. Nilsen hurried to bring a cup. Josette drank and fell back asleep. The fever flush was gone and her breathing was more even. Mme. Nilsen looked at her for a long moment, then burst into tears. Alice didn’t know how to respond. The emotional display made her uncomfortable, but she was so very glad to have helped. Her heart felt lighter, knowing the child would grow to adulthood.

  “There are no thanks,” the woman cried. “I will give you everything I have!”

  “Just some water, and something to eat, if you have it,” Alice said, remembering what happened the last time.

  Mme. Nilsen gave her water and cheese, and then said hesitantly, “Can you do this to anyone?”

  “Yes.” Alice swallowed the last of the water. “Until my strength runs out.”

  “You must come. I have a friend who also has a child.”

  Alice dusted crumbs from her hands. “Quickly, then, while your children sleep.” She paused. “But I need to do something else first.”

  Chapter Four

  Feng abandoned Gavin after his second pint. “The angel over there can provide me with far more pleasure than you,” he said, and slid away. A moment later, Feng and his laughing female companion were strolling out the front door, arm in arm. Gavin ignored them and took a pull from his third pint. The ale here was stronger, and it hit Gavin a little harder than he was used to, but that was fine with him. Last spring, he had watched his friends die on the airship Juniper, a pirate had tried to rape him, and the first mate had flogged him senseless for fighting back. Now the high-and-mighty baroness was pissed at him, and he was sick with the clockwork plague. In a few weeks, he’d lose his grip on reality, spiral into a fascinated trance while studying a ladybug on a grass stem, and die in a ditch as his brain liquefied into sludge. If all that didn’t deserve a few drinks, nothing did.

  He took another sour gulp of red Luxembourger ale. It swirled like pale blood, though it was only red malt and vinegar that reflected red light from the lamps. The ale was more like wine than beer and would have fetched a pretty penny back home in Boston as an exotic treat, but Gavin was slugging it down like water. It made him feel light, as if he might float away. The other patrons in the bar seemed strangely happy, too. They were all happy, despite the plague around them. A small group sang a cheery tune in one corner, and laughed uproariously at every chorus. The noise floated up, taking Gavin’s pain with it. It was a fine thing to be drunk and happy in Luxembourg. For the moment he felt like he had just escaped Purgatory and was now staring at a set of fine gates made of gold.

  Gavin tapped the mug on the table, creating vibrations on the surface of the liquid. Everything slowed, and he tracked the tiny motions like chaotic imps that danced across the redness. Fascinating. He tapped again, muscles moving slow as granite, now able to predict where each wave of vibration would appear. Each rose and rippled precisely where he foresaw—or commanded. He tapped yet again, tilting the mug to get a different pattern, and then another and another, a sorcerer making demons dance. A machine, the right machine, would produce the same patterns, and those patterns could be used to—

  A hand grabbed his arm. The spell broke and the world snapped into normal speed. Alice was standing next to him. Near her, hovering like a brown butterfly, stood a woman Gavin didn’t know. He felt the literal iron in the grip beneath her glove and instantly knew she was exerting five pounds and six ounces of pressure on his biceps.

  “I knew you’d come back,” he said, and tried a grin, but it came out a sloppy grimace.

  “Come along, darling,” she said with a wide smile and without moving her lips. “We’re leaving.”

  “I paid for this. I’m finishing it,” he said. Around them, other drinkers pointed and winked. A few jeered. The henpecked husband and his domineering wife. Feng was nowhere in sight. He had apparently found a heaven of his own.

  “Oh, good heavens.” Alice snatched up the mug and drained it. A number of customers burst into applause. “There. Let’s go.”

  He should have been annoyed, but a mild haze had descended over him and nothing could bother him now. “What the hell,” he muttered, catching up his fiddle case. It weighed two poun
ds, nine ounces. The silver nightingale in his pocket weighed three ounces. “I’m out of money anyway.”

  She towed him to the door and outside. Light, laughter, and the woman in brown followed them. He felt a little less muddled in the cooler air but not entirely himself.

  “Where’s Feng?” Alice asked.

  “There’s a hotel across the street.” Gavin gestured vaguely with the fiddle case. “He got a room with someone. Wanna do the same?”

  Alice made a disgusted sound. “Do you do this often?”

  “Argue with a pretty woman or get drunk?”

  “Never mind. At least you’re coherent. I need to show you something. This is Madame Nilsen. She doesn’t speak English.”

  The woman, who was carrying a lantern, smiled shyly at the mention of her name, and Gavin gave her a lopsided grin. “Hi. I’m dying, you know. Not that she cares.”

  Mme. Nilsen shook her head. Alice spoke to her in French, and the other woman led the way with her tin lantern. Gavin said, “Do you think the clockwork plague will let me learn French? Or Chinese? It sure as hell won’t do anything else useful.”

  “You’re maudlin. I’ve never seen you maudlin.”

  “Yeah.” He rumpled his hair. “Imagine.”

  “Just keep walking,” Alice said. “It’ll sober you.”

  “I don’t want to be sober. I deserve to be drunk.”

  “But I don’t deserve you to be drunk. Keep walking or I’ll show you how sharp these claws can be.”

  Gavin almost sat on the street in a childish pique, but changed his mind and continued walking with his arms folded instead. After some time, they arrived at the top of a winding street. The climb put Gavin a little out of breath, and, as Alice predicted, cleared his head a bit. On the hills below and above, the city had darkened completely. Street- and houselights made a field of stars on wrinkled velvet, as if the night sky had fallen and shattered on the ground around them. Mme. Nilsen selected a tall, narrow house, knocked, and called out. After some time, the door opened, and a man and woman, both middle-aged, appeared. They wore nightshirts and caps. Mme. Nilsen spoke to them in rapid French, and Alice joined in. The couple looked mystified, then hopeful. At their gestured invitation, everyone entered the long, narrow house that smelled of bread and ashes.

  “What’s going on?” Gavin asked as they climbed a steep staircase. In Luxembourg, they were always climbing.

  “There’s plague here, but they don’t want anyone to know,” Alice murmured. “If word of it gets out, the house will be quarantined until the family throws the victims into the street.”

  “Why do I have to be here?”

  “I want you to watch what I’m doing.”

  Now puzzled, Gavin followed the group into a bedroom. A boy lay on a bed, twitching in fever sleep. Loose hanks of pale blond hair lay on the pillow. Automatic fear touched Gavin when he recognized the clockwork plague, even though he was already dying of the disease in his own way. The boy’s parents looked on with worried expressions as Alice pulled off her glove, revealing the spider. Its eyes glowed red when she touched the boy’s bare arm. Then she swiped his skin with the claws, drawing blood and spraying a bit of her own. The parents gasped as one, but Mme. Nilsen talked to them and they calmed, though they remained watchful. Alice touched each of them in turn, but the spider eyes glowed green. The mother sat on the bed and stroked her son’s forehead, her cheeks wet with tears. Gavin’s throat thickened as he felt her sorrow, fear, and love.

  “There,” Alice said. “Now we wait.”

  Mme. Nilsen slipped out to go home. Gavin rocked on his feet, waiting uncertainly.

  “Perhaps you should sing, Gavin,” Alice said.

  He stopped rocking. “What?”

  “Sing. It’ll pass the time.” She turned her brown eyes on him. “Sing the moon song for me. Please.”

  Argument or no argument, he couldn’t refuse her any more than the sun could refuse to rise.

  I see the moon, the moon sees me

  It turns all the forest soft and silvery.

  The moon picked you from all the rest

  For I loved you best.

  As Gavin sang for Alice and the boy, a boy who struggled to heal as Gavin himself had done so many weeks ago, something inside him broke, shifted, and re-formed. The plague hurt a great many people, more than just himself, and Gavin, flying high above the earth or wrapped in music, had forgotten that. He pulled out his fiddle to accompany himself for the second verse.

  I once had a heart as good as new

  But now it’s gone from me to you.

  The moon picked you from all the rest

  For I loved you best.

  The leering eyes and sticky blood of Madoc Blue faded a little. The sharp memory of Tom Danforth’s lifeless corpse falling from the rigging dulled around the edges. The opaque stone walls that trapped him in Edwina’s tower thinned. And then another memory came back to him. He himself was lying sick in bed, hot with fever. A woman—Ma—bent over him, bathing his face with a cool cloth. A man with pale hair played the fiddle and sang just for Gavin, his voice rich and low and perfect, and Gavin felt better, enveloped in the soft love of both parents.

  I have a ship, my ship must flee.

  Sailing o’er the clouds and on the silver sea

  The moon picked you from all the rest

  For I loved you best.

  The memory vanished when the song ended. The boy’s twitching eased. His breathing evened out, and the fever faded. He opened his eyes and looked straight at Gavin for a long moment. A connection between them held for a second that lasted an age, and Gavin felt that the boy somehow understood what had just happened. Then the boy smiled and dropped back into sleep. Tears wet and refreshed Gavin’s cheeks, and he felt both exhausted and exhilarated. The boy’s mother flung her arms around him, weeping with joy, and his father swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. He said something to Alice in a choked voice, and she answered gracefully. They spoke at some length, and Alice nodded.

  “What’s going on?” Gavin wiped his own face and put his fiddle away as the father padded quickly out of the room.

  “He knows of someone else who has the plague,” Alice said. “Do you think I should refuse?”

  Gavin put a hand on her shoulder. “I never wanted you to stop helping, Alice,” he said. “I just don’t want you to get hurt because you don’t know when to stop. Look at you—you didn’t even take a wrap, and you’re shivering.”

  Even though she didn’t speak English, the mother seemed to notice the same thing and with a firm gesture that she was to keep it, gave Alice a quilt to pull around herself. Alice accepted.

  “You have to watch yourself,” Gavin added, “or I’ll tell Kemp on you.”

  Alice gave a little bark of laughter at that. “Then come with me.”

  “Anywhere. You know that.”

  The father returned, dressed, and led Alice and Gavin outside to another house, where two adult brothers were down with the plague. Alice, the quilt still pulled around her, cured both of them while Gavin played, and one of them begged Alice to go to his niece’s house. Along the way, they encountered a pair of plague zombies rooting through a rubbish heap, and Alice swiped at them as well. At the niece’s house, Gavin stopped Alice and demanded that she be given food and drink, which the newly cured niece was happy to give before asking Alice to visit yet another house. And so it continued. As the night wore on, Alice hurried from home to home under cover of darkness, her quilt drawn around her like a cloak while she cured a number of people with the clockwork plague, and each one seemed to know someone else who was sick. The chain of people took them all through Luxembourg, to homes rich and poor, lonely and crowded, wood and stone. Gavin made sure Alice was given a bite to eat and a sip to drink in every household. Alice cured priests and drunkards, bankers and thieves, doctors and patients. Some offered money, always hesitantly, as if they might offend. Alice tried to turn them down, but Gavin stepped in and accepted.
r />   “If they can spare it, we can take it,” he said, fiddle in hand.

  “I won’t turn down someone who can’t—”

  “Of course not,” Gavin said. “But even saints have to eat. And get to China.”

  When dawn checkered the eastern sky, they left the final house. The air was crisp and clean and bright. Morning noises—horse traffic, food sellers, factory whistles, doors opening and closing, people shouting and talking—filled the street. Housewives and storekeepers swept the cobblestones in front of their homes and shops. Gavin noticed with a start that Alice was pale and shaky from the slow but steady blood loss, and she kept the quilt wrapped tightly around her body and head. Gavin himself didn’t feel tired in the least—clockworkers entering the later stage of the plague often went days without sleep—and he mentally kicked himself for not remembering earlier that Alice did need rest, especially after everything she’d been doing.

  He flagged down a cab and gave directions back to the pub where he’d been drinking the night before. Alice leaned against him and dozed off, and he was surprised at how light she felt.

  The pub was closed, but Gavin found the cheap hotel where Feng had gotten a room and used the money Alice had earned to get them a room while Alice collapsed into a lobby chair. At the last second he remembered not to give his real name and signed them in as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Danforth, in honor of his late friend. He had no intention of actually sharing a room with Alice—Feng’s room would have to do when Gavin finally felt a need for sleep and he would have to hope Feng didn’t have a woman with him—but it was easier to fabricate a married relationship than explain to the clerk, who only spoke a few words of English.

  They met Feng, alone, on the way up the dark and creaking stairs, which saved Gavin the trouble of tracking him down. Explanations followed, and Alice went into her room without further discussion.

  “You will not follow her?” Feng said. He was wearing his scarf and goggles and on his back he wore the pack with the precious jar of fireflies in it. “My lady friend last night enjoyed herself immensely, and I can give you advice, if you need it.”