The Clockwork Century: Fiddlehead Part 31

LEAD DEVELOPING RE HAYMES IN MISSOURI STOP DETAILS TO COME STOP MAY NEED TO ARRANGE TRAVEL ON SHORT NOTICE STOP UNTIL THEN REMAIN IN DC WITH WELLERS STOP APINK.

COURIER PACKAGE RECEIVED STOP ARRANGING MY OWN TRANSPORT STOP DO NOT ASK FOR DETAILS AND I WILL NOT INVOICE YOU STOP I WILL WANT A VERY NICE COAT STOP PERHAPS ALSO AN EXPENSE ACCOUNT STOP MB.

IF THE RIDE IS FREE THE COAT IS YOURS STOP APINK.

Twenty-three.

Three Weeks Later To the west of St. Louis, Missouri, was a small outlying town known to few who did not live there. Ballwin, it was called, and it boasted little of interest-no major industry remaining, no famous hometown sons or daughters, not even a site of former military action. The only thing worth mentioning at all was that it seemed to be the only city named Ballwin on the entire continent, a point of trivia that Maria Boyd found a little pitiful.

But Maria knew something about the town that few others did, even those who lived there-who'd spent their lives within a ten-mile radius of the place.

Which was: At the edge of this town on the edge of a city on the edge of a river was a large compound built of brick and stone. It had begun its career as a foundry; and when the foundry closed it'd become a storehouse; and now that the storehouse had packed up and moved on, it hosted a factory that made very dangerous things under the direction of a very dangerous woman, who had thus far altogether escaped the justice she so richly deserved.

Katharine Haymes still roamed freely, which surprised no one who had any idea how money worked. Haymes had more money than any other woman in the freshly reunited country, so far as Maria knew. She might well have been one of the richest people in the world.

HAYMES AND SONS INDUSTRIES, read the sign over the gate, and the office that bore Haymes's name was empty when Maria carefully peered inside, a gun in one hand and something more unusual in the other.

Croggon Hainey had given it to her before he'd set her down in the woods outside, with a promise to pick her up again at dusk. He'd said she was going to need it.

He'd asked if she wanted help, or company, but she'd told him no. He was supposed to be going straight. It was her turn to be the pirate.

Even though she knew that the factory had been shut down-at least, officially-she hadn't expected it to be so empty, populated only with ma.s.sive machines that hadn't been fired up for weeks. She hadn't antic.i.p.ated that there would be no exterior lights, no workers, no guard dogs to keep trespa.s.sers like herself away.

She had not expected to feel like a ghost, haunting a place she'd never been.

In the rooms without windows, the factor was dark as a tomb, but only half as silent. The place pinged with stray drips of oil and settled with the creaks and groans of old floors holding heavy things; and the rooms echoed every small sound into a bigger one that said someone, somewhere, might be home after all.

Allan Pinkerton had provided Maria with architectural drawings, including schematics of the bas.e.m.e.nt, which had received a great deal of restoration following a flood six years ago. The restoration details had been filed with the county, as is the way of such things; they had been stamped and approved by someone, somewhere, and left in a cabinet for a man like Mr. Pinkerton to find, once Maria had thought to ask about it.

As soon as she'd seen the schematics, Maria had known where Katharine Haymes was hiding. Oh, but there was no one there!, the policemen told her. The factory had been investigated!

But she doubted they'd gotten to the underground level, the expansively renovated bas.e.m.e.nt with the unmarked entrance strategically hidden by an industrial vat that looked too heavy and too rusted in place to have serve as a door. Surely that wasn't the case. That would be ridiculous.

No, ridiculous would've been hoping for the architect to note the entrance in pencil before filing the work order away.

Maria praised G.o.d for ridiculous men.

She examined the vat, running her hands along its rough contours, its rivets, bands, and bolts. To one side she saw a scuff on the floor that gave a hint in which direction it may have been moved. She got a good grip and leaned against it with her shoulder and thigh. It moved aside with only the faintest sc.r.a.pe, much more easily and quietly than she would've expected.

And descending below the vat, she discovered a narrow set of stairs. At their bottom a dim light glowed, from a source that was either feeble or quite far away. She readied her gun again and put Croggon Hainey's gift inside her skirt pocket. It barely fit, but it nestled against her leg in a comforting fas.h.i.+on. In a way, it was more comforting than the gun.

Down the steps she went, slowly and carefully, letting her eyes adjust to the lessened light. It was the color of muddy water, and it showed her mostly shapes and angles, but little detail. She had an electric torch in her bag, but such things were hot and unreliable, and would only call attention to her presence.

And she didn't need it yet.

She'd committed the schematics to memory, so she knew where she was. Under the old storage room floor. Proceeding toward an open area beneath the center of the factory, part.i.tioned off into sealed rooms that locked from the outside.

She pa.s.sed a huge door that looked ready to be shut in case of emergency, capping off the entire wing and trapping any threat in place. The sort of thing that might be a safeguard against fire, though Maria knew better than to think that the door-or doors, for here was another one-were installed to save the building or protect its inhabitants. These doors were a safeguard against the weapons themselves, the very products that were being developed in the cavernous, secret place below.

She heard a weird, unsettling buzz from down there, no louder than a whisper. A faint, mechanical drone on a frequency so low that her ears could barely detect it. The timbre made her shudder; it sent s.h.i.+vers up and down her arms, though the underground level was almost too warm for her preference.

A clatter. A shuffling thump.

Maria held very still and listened. It came again, uneven and slow, the stuttering motion of something mindless that wanders.

The corridor ended in a T, offering her the option of proceeding left or right. Left would lead to a series of chambers that might be offices. Right would send her to an open area without cover, an unmarked s.p.a.ce that looked to be a testing center.

Maria went left.

The hazy murk of light grew stronger, and soon she knew why: along one side of the hall, there was a series of doors with small, square windows fixed at face height. The rooms were lit from within, and what spilled out into the corridor gave plenty of illumination, none of it rea.s.suring.

The dull thumping sound grew louder; it came from the second door. She stood on tiptoe to peek inside, and at first she saw nothing-only a yellowish fog too thick to scry. The fog wavered, swirled, and settled, disturbed by the movement of something ponderous and grim. She finally spied a shape at the far end of the smallish room: a figure like a man, but it didn't move like anything human, like anything alive.

Transfixed, Maria watched as it ambled and roamed, stumbling forward, toppling back, but never falling. Always catching itself, as if the last systems still working were the ones that kept it upright.

Then it saw her.

It pivoted, almost smoothly-and without a pause, without a hesitation of recognition, without any mindful awareness, it ran toward the door. If it knew anything, it knew only that Maria was on the other side of it, and that she was alive.

And it knew that it was hungry.

It slammed against the wood, flinging itself again and again at the barrier, as if by pure persistence it might bash its way through.

Maria recoiled in horror. When she was confident that the thing could not reach her, she stepped back to the window and forced herself to watch it. She took it all in: the smashed, b.l.o.o.d.y face with yellowed skin; those bulbous, jellylike eyes that made no true contact with her own-no understanding, no moment of knowing. The creature was naked. Its skin was loose and sagging; here and there, it split like an overripe tomato, revealing grayish tissue and oozing gelatinous pus.

The thing was lifeless, and yet it lived.

She shuddered, gagged, and turned around, closing her eyes and opening them again, wanting to wipe the image away. But in the next room was another shambling ruin of skin and bones; and in the next room down, another pair of them.

Her stomach lurched, and lurched again as she proceeded, and the dim, golden light took on a weird, offensive odor halfway between sour well water and a sun-bloated corpse.

She hugged the far wall as she walked, confident that the doors were secure, but still wanting as much distance from them as she could muster. She hurried along, knowing that the hall opened up before long-and it did, and then there was more light, and another emergency door.

Maria leaned against this door as she paused to catch her breath. She noticed that it was treated with some waxy or rubbery substance, and around its edges were flaps to complete the seal.

A big picture formed in her mind. It was horrific.

On the other side of the fire door and at the end of a corridor was a room that looked like a laboratory. When Maria found a way inside, her suspicion was confirmed. It was filled with recording equipment-advanced cameras and electrical printing devices not altogether unlike the one attached to the Fiddlehead, which Gideon Bardsley had been kind enough to show her before she'd left the District. Freshly restored and churning out its facts and figures, the machine was a marvel once more. Now it occupied a new position on the first floor of the Jefferson building-in a jumbled room full of fumes and noise, papers and equipment.

But this room was white and clean, and so was everything inside it. This was an observation room, designed to observe in a clinical fas.h.i.+on whatever occurred in that central s.p.a.ce.

From what felt like a place of relative safety, Maria looked outside the laboratory and observed vents near the ceiling, connected to a system of fans, tubes, and unmarked tanks. She noted a collection of detritus in a corner that might've been a pile of bones, or might've only been trash. Dark stains spread across the floor. She did her best to imagine that they were oil, grease, dyes, or anything other than the most likely fluid, though the stain drooled in runny streaks toward a drain in the center of the room.

While she watched, a light came on, revealing that yes, the stain was an incriminating shade of brownish red.

This light had all the cold brilliance of a surgical lamp. She briefly winced against it, but there was no time to close her eyes. Along with the light came the sound of footsteps-the determined, hasty sort of someone who had someplace to be. It was not the pace of a dead thing, but that didn't mean it was friendly.

Maria went to the observation room door and shut it. She was relieved to see that it locked from within, unlike the cells she'd pa.s.sed before. She was furthermore glad to observe that it was sealed like the emergency door, for the safety of its occupants.

She returned to the window just in time to see Katharine Haymes arrive, stop, and stand beneath the brilliant overhead light. Their eyes met through the gla.s.s, and locked.

Haymes carried a carpetbag and was dressed for travel, in a smart brown suit and gloves. The bag was unfastened, as if there was one more thing she needed to stuff inside it before she was on her way. One last item she simply couldn't leave without.

Maria broke eye contact first, but only to look down at the console before her. Lying beside it was a short stack of files. She looked up again, and this time she smiled.

Haymes glared murderously at Maria. "Open that door," she said. Maria couldn't hear her, but she could read the woman's lips clearly enough.

She shook her head in response, and in doing so, she saw a b.u.t.ton out of the corner of her eye. It was labeled, "Control Room Communication." She pressed it, and a small panel slid open, revealing a round black screen.

"Open the door!" Katharine said again, and this time Maria heard her. The little circle of mesh transmitted her voice quite well, pa.s.sing along the enraged tone with perfect clarity.

"Oh, no, I don't think so."

Haymes stood stiffly, ramrod straight, as if she were so filled with anger that the smallest movement would cause her to shatter on the spot. "You don't know what you're doing. You don't know what you're playing with."

"I have an idea, thanks to you. This is where you did the rest of your research? After Tennessee, I mean," Maria asked coolly, gliding her fingers over the a.s.sorted b.u.t.tons and making some guesses about what they did and did not do. "After you killed all those prisoners."

"I know what you mean. And yes, this is ... my laboratory."

"You say that like you're some kind of scientist."

"I am some kind of scientist," Haymes objected.

Maria disagreed. "You paid people to do your dirty work."

"Who doesn't?"

"Real scientists," she countered. "Did they even know what they were doing? Or did you lie to them?"

"Eventually they knew. Some secrets are hard to keep." Haymes's grip on the carpetbag's handle tensed.

"By then, I suppose, they were in too deep to leave even if they wanted to. I understand that's your preferred method for keeping people in line."

"One of several. Now, open that door. I won't ask again."

"Good. Though if you mean that you'll come and open it yourself, I doubt that very much. I see there's a spot for a key," she said, glancing over at the door to make sure. "But there's a handy-dandy dead bolt, too. Very secure, this room. Practically a tiny, clean castle."

"Get out of there."

"No." Maria sighed heavily, with great dramatic effect. "I really am tired of saying that. So why don't you tell me where you're going? Or where you think you're going?"

"I'm leaving. And there's not much you can do about it from in there," Haymes said smugly. "You can keep me out, but that's the sum of it. I want the last of the research notes, but I don't need them."

"You're arguing awfully hard for something you don't need."

"I paid for them. They're mine, and they should come with me."

Maria took her time responding, as if considering the possibility and then discarding it. "It's funny ... You set me up to say something clever, there. I ought to have replied that all of it-you included-would be coming with me instead. But I don't want to take you with me. I don't have to. In fact, the warrants for your apprehension read *dead or alive'-did you know that?"

"No warrant reads that way."

"Not the usual kind, no. You were tried in absentia and found guilty, and sentenced to death. You must know that."

"So this is your plan? Bring me back to Was.h.i.+ngton to see my sentence carried out?"

"That's someone's plan. Maybe when I left the District that was my plan, but it's not anymore. If you ride with pirates, you get ideas."

"Ideas?" Haymes asked, raising an eyebrow as if she sensed an opportunity.

She sensed wrong.

"You see, over the last few weeks I feel like I've really ... gotten to know you. Uncomfortably well, if you want the truth. And if I take you back to face justice, you'll only writhe loose, or buy your way free of it."

"You have great faith in me."

"Faith? Of a sort. I have faith in your bank accounts and your wiles. I have faith that you will absolutely do the most awful things necessary to have your way. I don't know how you became such a monster, and to be frank, I do not care." Maria's hand settled on a checklist beside a lever.

"Then why are we still talking? You're awfully chatty for someone who doesn't want information or conversation."

"Oh, you know. Just killing time while I figure out this ... system."

The checklist read: a Activate overhead light source.

a Close control room communication vents.

a Seal observation door.

a Close emergency doors.

a Pull to release gas.

A second checklist beside it read: a Before exiting, close off gas.

a Turn on fans.