Whitechapel Gods Page 21

“How’s it coming along?”

  “Jus’ about done, suh.” He shifted uncomfortably. “But Ah got some bad news.”

  “I’d say I’m getting a taste for it,” Oliver said, then gestured for him to continue.

  “Well, suh”—Heckler showed a few of his translated pages, coated in scribbled notes and freehand diagrams—“Ah’m almost done with the translation, but there ain’t no way Ah can build this here contraption.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ah don’t have the tools it’s gonna need, suh. I don’t have the materials. And…” He placed the papers neatly back on the table. “Ah just wouldn’t know how, suh. This ain’t no gun and ain’t no trap neither.”

  Oliver sighed. “Finish it anyway. At least that much will be done.”

  Heckler nodded and slipped the pages back into their proper place in the manual, then bent to work without another word.

  The poor young man had been slaving on that one task for six hours now, though Oliver knew he was desperate to be part of the planning. Heckler was the only one among them who had any kind of mechanical aptitude. Except for Bergen, perhaps, but Oliver wasn’t about to let him lay hands on the tape.

  “Suh?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that really Bergen Keuper upstairs?”

  Oliver looked at his young crewmate curiously. “I have no reason to doubt it.”

  Heckler fiddled with his pen. “Ain’t that something else, eh, suh? Even back in Williamsburg, Ah’d heard of him. Is it true he took a lion through the eye at three hundred yards?”

  “I have no reason to doubt that, either.”

  “Hot damn—beggin’ pardon, suh. Do you think he would teach me if Ah asked?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Oliver. “But let’s just wait until after the ruckus dies down to ask him, eh?”

  “Oh. Of course. Sure thing, suh.”

  Oliver left him to his work and climbed the curly staircase about Sherwood’s trunk towards the lounge. He found Hews standing at the top, hand slipped into the pocket of his plaid vest, pipe smoking from between his teeth. His hair was roughly combed, his muttonchops ragged, his face downcast and sullen.

  “Damnable shame,” he said. “I served with Bailey in Afghanistan. There’s never been born such a natural soldier as he.”

  “You have my condolences,” Oliver said.

  “Don’t pretend you’re too choked up, lad. You’ve hated the man since you were fifteen.”

  Oliver sighed and joined Hews in silent contemplation of Sherwood’s random support beams. “I never hated him, Hewey, but I won’t pretend now that he treated me well.”

  “I can’t fault you for your honesty, lad,” Hews said. “But he was a great man, and I’ll go to my grave saying nothing less. He took me for a collaborator at first, you know; couldn’t get past the fact that I owned a factory.”

  Oliver smiled at memories. “You might have called it a poorhouse, or an orphanage.”

  Hews shrugged. “I did my bit. The cloaks never caught on that my efficiency came from feeding my workers more than gruel and oil. Well, until recently.”

  Oliver turned to search Hews’ face. “What do you mean?”

  “A cloak came by last week,” Hews said. “Told me I’d have to join up and take my vows or step aside. I’d love to believe they’d let me take my retirement in the country, but we both know them better than that.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The older man shrugged. “Nothing anyone can do about it. The canaries know me too well.”

  “But Bailey might have been able to sneak you out on the airships. And we could still hide you here.”

  Hews gave him a wise, fatherly smile. “After tonight it might not matter, eh?” He left the rail. “Shall we?”

  They entered the parlour, finding Bergen brooding over the main table. Maps and lists carpeted the room, stealing spaces on chairs, end tables, and great expanses of floor, some pinned on the walls concealing the nameless portraits and their disapproving glares. The one on the main table was a detailed map of the Stack, specifically, the terraced rings of factories, train stations, and chapels that coated its outer skin.

  Bergen acknowledged their presence with a nod. His midsection had been expertly repaired by the doctor. Bergen had hidden the bandages beneath a loose shirt and now affected perfect health.

  Oliver greeted both of them, then planted his knuckles on the table and leaned over it.

  “We found an entry, no doubt,” Hews said. “The Stack is actually fairly accessible. We’ve five entrances via cable car, four via rail, and walkways from Aldgate and Commercial Towers.”

  “Your American says the device will work only from within the Chimney,” Bergen said.

  Oliver nodded. He’d feared as much.

  The map was bewildering in its complexity, a twisting maze of hallways, walkways, lift shafts, staircases, chambers, and rooms and massive engines, pistons, and constructions arranged in no sensible order. The Work Chamber dominated the Stack’s centre, at the base of the monstrous shaft from which the Stack took its name. There, in that dark place, the crows toiled endlessly on Mama Engine’s Great Work. The Chimney paralleled it on the south side, much smaller and fifteen storeys down from the Stack’s surface.

  “Do we have an ingress yet?”

  Hews traced a route on the map as he spoke. “I can get us to the freight lift that runs down the southeast edge of the Work Chamber. Only thing is, there’s a large gold chapel three storeys down, so we’re likely to be spotted.”

  “We will go in disguise, then,” Bergen said from behind crossed arms.

  “Won’t do us a mite of good,” Oliver said. “We can dress up all we please, but the canaries know their own.”

  Hews sucked his pipe. “I’m still waiting on telegrams from a few of my acquaintances. I might be able to get us down a steam pipe on the north side. It’s all ladders and we’d need masks, but there’s not likely to be any golds, at least.”

  “A long march around to the Chimney, as well,” Bergen said.

  Oliver scowled, his patience already wearing. “I didn’t think you would balk at a little hike, Keuper.”

  Bergen glowered. “You mock me.”

  “You’re the one moaning about it. Stiff upper lip, as we say here.” He looked to Hews. “How long, do you think?”

  Hews shrugged. “No more than a few hours, one would hope.”

  “Smashing. Keuper, you’ll go out and get us supplies.”

  The German’s face flushed. “I am no one’s errand boy.”

  Oliver straightened to his full height. “You’re irritating me, Kraut. This will be difficult enough without your obstructing us at every step.”

  Bergen looked a bit surprised, as if he was realising for the first time that he was not the tallest man in the room. “You accuse me of hindering you.”

  “Yes, Keuper, I do,” Oliver said. “I need the support of all my men on this. If you have some problem being necessary, we can discuss that at a later date. Besides, of all the ones here, you’ve likely been through the most hostile of environments, and presumably know how to prepare.”

  Bergen was slow in his nod.

  Oliver bent back to the map. “Good. Get some money from Heckler and return in a half hour.”

  “So soon?”

  “I expect more cloaks will be coming after me, and I am not difficult to find if one asks the right people.”

  Bergen nodded again. He uncrossed his arms. “You’re more prudent a man than I thought. I apologise for my behaviour.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bergen strode out.

  Hews had watched the entire exchange without a word. He lowered his pipe. “You realise those were the same words Bailey said to you just yesterday.”

  Oliver lowered himself into a chair. Suddenly his bones and his brain ached. “They worked on me, didn’t they?”

  “I must say,” Hews continued, “that I, myself, wouldn’t have kno
wn how to handle that man.”

  Oliver shrugged. “He needed to know I was strong enough to be followed. That was all.”

  Hews turned to wander, idly examining maps and portraits.

  “You’re becoming more like the boy I knew, who was always brazenly stealing my wife’s Bundt cake but never any of my money or valuables.”

  “She made a good Bundt cake, rest her soul.”

  “I’m just glad to see you coming back into your own.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Hews smiled and waved the question away.

  Oliver took a moment of silence to run down the mental list of things that needed to be done. “Hews,” he said. “I need to know more about Aaron Bolden.”

  Hews scrutinised a portrait of a particularly sad-looking woman. “Doesn’t seem to be much point now, eh?”

  “I need to know what comprises these abilities of his. I need to know what he is capable of doing.”

  “Bad form,” Hews said, “to speak of the dead as if they’re still around.”

  Oliver couldn’t quite bring himself to assert that Aaron was not, in fact, dead. The hesitation stretched long enough that Hews turned from the portrait and raised a fuzzy eyebrow.

  “My, my” was all he said.

  Another minute passed before Hews began speaking. He wandered the room’s perimeter as he spoke.

  “Aaron had a gift, lad, apparently since his younger days. He didn’t tell too many people of it, you understand, because of accusations of Spiritism and so forth. He said he could see the inner essence of a thing, whether person, animal, building, or machine. I never think I quite wrapped my mind around it.”

  Oliver leaned forward. “What did he see of Whitechapel?”

  “Patience, lad,” Hews said. “Aaron was born in Manchester, but he’d always felt a draw towards London, he said. He came here at the age of twelve. That was in 1877, just after the Boiler Men put up the wall and drove out the last of the British Army loyalists. They’d been fighting for eight or nine years before that. You’ve never seen them use their lightning guns, have you? What they could do to a man—to a battalion even—with a single shot…Such things shouldn’t be allowed.”

  “Hewey…”

  Hews chuckled. “Right—Aaron. He described Whitechapel as one might a garden or a reef. He spoke of Mama Engine’s breath coming in and out of the Stack and the beams and pipes and all the larger things as her garden. He thought of the towers, that is, the floors, buildings, cable cars, and so forth, as Grandfather Clock’s domain.” Hews puffed his pipe, and finding it empty, tapped the ashes out in the small bowl provided for that purpose. “He said they weren’t territories, as a normal man might govern, but rather limbs and organs. He viewed Whitechapel as two immense systems of biology intertwined.”

  “Only two?” Oliver asked.

  Another pause. “My boy, you are full of interesting intelligence this morning, aren’t you?”

  “Did he ever talk of the other one, the one that lives in the downstreets?”

  Hews considered. “Not as I recall. He did seem to have an intimate fear of looking down off tall heights, though.”

  Oliver sighed. He likely knows more about that one by now. He considered pouring himself a drink, just to have something to do with his hands. It’s ten o’clock in the morning, chap. Tea might be more appropriate, don’t you think?

  “Must I beg for clarification, lad?” Hews said. He’d returned to the table and seated himself while Oliver was distracted.

  “By the bye, there’s a third god in Whitechapel,” he said.

  “I gathered.”

  “I think we may be able to turn it against Mama Engine. I just need to talk to Aaron again to arrange it.”

  Hews grunted. “You might start with prayer, or a ´ance.”

  Mercy. How shall I begin to explain this? Oliver pushed his scraggly hair back from his forehead. “Well…I suppose if you were going to think I’m mad you’d have already come to that conclusion.”

  “Long ago.”

  “Aaron isn’t dead, Hewey. Rather, I don’t think he is. He’s a prisoner or guest of the third god. He’s connected to it in a way that at least allows him to speak to it, and he may have intelligence about these creatures that could be helpful. He said he would be gathering information.”

  Hews rubbed his muttonchops. “All right. That rapping and séance nonsense aside, I wonder how one speaks to the, shall we say, nebulously dead?”

  A sound ticked at Oliver’s ear. Not a noise, so much as a pregnant silence hovering at the door. He straightened and cocked his head. “I wonder who it is that’s standing in the hall, listening to us.”

  Hews started. They both turned their heads.

  Missy stepped into view, bashful and charming. “You’ll pardon me, of course. I was passing by on the way to the kitchen and found your conversation irresistible.”

  Both men stood. Oliver offered her an empty chair. “If it wasn’t impolite to say so, I’d have to call you a sneak, Miss Plantaget.”

  “‘A woman of many talents,’ will suffice, Mr. Sumner.” Missy slipped herself onto the cushion with a cat’s grace. “You know, I met a man once who was a Spiritist. He said the dead can speak through a special board with letters on it.”

  Hews chuckled. “I doubt that this one would, lass.”

  “All ideas are welcome at this point, I think,” Oliver said.

  Missy set her elbows delicately upon the tabletop. She had chosen gloves of a deep red this morning. Funny that Oliver hadn’t noticed them before.

  Missy drew a cigarette from her bag and held it out for Hews to light it. He did so, with an air of importance about the action. Missy then turned her dyed lips and huge, glittering eyes on Oliver. “Correct me if this is a woman’s simplification of what is certainly an important and complex situation, but couldn’t you return to the place you met this dead man the first time?”

  You’re playing me, girl. I wonder what you want.

  Oliver mused a bit. “That would be a mite difficult. I’m not entirely certain I was anywhere at all.” Again that brandy tempted him as the memories of those horrible vistas stirred. “I don’t think they can be anywhere, as you or I define the term.”

  “Poppycock,” Hews muttered. “A body has to be somewhere. We just need to find the route, is all.”

  “There isn’t any way to walk to this place, Hewey.”

  A voice from the door: “There’s a way.”

  They all looked up to find Phineas at the door, sunk in his ulster coat and hidden beneath his hat.

  “Sorry f’r eavesdropping, Cap’n, like some fool housebreaker,” he said. “But there’s a way, aye.”

  “Tick, tick, tick.”

  Irregular footfalls echoed down the long hallway. Windows of red stained glass in unknowable geometric patterns measured the wall space between arches. Clocks of brass and chrome gazed down from the ceiling. The floor shook with the rumble of the Stack’s constant eruptions. These things passed in and out of John Scared’s senses as he walked to his death.

  Someone had betrayed his location. It was the only explanation. Some dishonest underling had turned informant and led the baron to him. He wondered how much money the baron had offered him, or what religious claptrap.

  The cloaks had shown up on his doorstep. It could not have been accidental, as he had made an entirely new residence—in addition to his usual hides—at the side of a theatre, down an alley, in the most crowded and confusing level of Commercial Street Tower. They’d walked right up and knocked.

  “Baron Hume, the First Favoured, requests your presence, sir.”

  Of course, Scared had presented his most congenial smile and informed them that he was glad they’d come, and that he had intended to give a report to the baron in the near future, in any case.

  “I have information I’m certain will be of great use to him.”

  A quick train and lift ride later they had deposited him at the entranc
e of the Long Hallway, as it was called. The two cloaks who had fetched him still stood guard just beyond the bronze entry doors. There was no need for them to provide an escort, as the hallway had only the one exit.

  He took another step, leaning heavily on his cane.

  What bothered him was that the baron must know his intentions by now. The British agent they had captured two nights previous could not have held back any information about the designer of the god-killing device. Scared had to assume he was being brought here as a prisoner; yet if the baron had wanted information, he would have had the Boiler Men haul him to the Chimney and there would be no need for any personal meeting.

  Scared did not like unknown variables.

  “Tick, tick.”

  Hmmm, perhaps it is a nervous habit after all, my dear.

  But perhaps Baron Hume was ignorant of who had asked Scared to design the weapon and then given him the intuitive knowledge to do so. Such information might be used as a bargaining chip. All he needed was to barter passage out of this hallway. Once back inside the Stack, a thousand avenues for escape presented themselves.

  The Long Hallway led from the Stack to Baron Hume’s personal chapel. Both hall and church hung in the air without any apparent means of support. An escapee, breaking through the stained glass, would find not even a beam to shimmy down to freedom. And given the proximity to the Stack’s burning maw, the air would likely kill him before he managed to descend anyway.

  The hall ended at another set of bronze doors, smaller than the hall’s entry but set with greater detail. Gears and springs of all shapes and sizes covered both doors, churning faintly away. Scared studied for an instant the pattern of their movement, tracking motion from gear to gear; one spring wound another, which unwound and coiled yet a third.

  Above these doors a silver clock ticked its regular time. Of all the clocks in Whitechapel, this clock alone told only the proper time and nothing more.

  The doors ceased their motion, and steam blew out of their hinges as they swung outward.

  You’ll see me through, won’t you, lover? he thought. Half of the man belongs to you, after all.

  The heated tickle at the top of his spine, so long an indicator of the Mother’s attention, had faded all too rapidly over the past few days.