Текст книги "Fiddlehead"

Автор книги: Cherie Priest

Соавторы: Cherie Priest
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

He opened his arms toward them and cried, “Gentlemen! I am Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey, and I bring you the services of my ship and crew.”

Gideon was taken aback. “Hainey? Of the Macon Madmen?” Well, that accounted for the accent.

Captain Hainey performed a little bow. “At your service! Are you the renowned doctor, Gideon Bardsley?”

“I am.”

“Then it’s a pleasure!” He came forward, hand extended, and vigorously shook Gideon’s hand. “From one old criminal to a young one: I’ve heard great things about you—great things indeed!”

President Grant came forward and gave the next handshake. “I’ve heard many tales of the Macon Madmen. You’re the last of them, aren’t you?”

“So far as I know,” the captain confirmed. “I was innocent of all those crimes, but I’ve since committed plenty I could be convicted for more fairly. Perhaps I can talk a pardon out of you before the sun comes up.”

“You’ve got one whenever you want one,” the president assured him. “That was some amazing shooting. What sort of gun is it?”

“Oh, that?” he said casually. “That’s the Rattler. It’s a Gatling conversion. I’ll show it to you, if you like. But first…” He turned his attention to Lincoln.

Lincoln sat serenely, a peaceful and knowing expression on his face. “Do I have Kirby Troost to thank for your intervention?” he asked.

“You know Troost: The man’s a miracle, but he can’t be every place at once. So, yes, you owe it in part to that strange little fellow, and in part to those strange little ladies.” He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, where Mary and Polly were descending the dirigible steps with caution.

“Wait … how?” Gideon began to ask, and then he shouted to the women, “You’re supposed to be in the attic!”

To which the captain said, “I found them on the roof, which is close enough. They flagged me down, and good on ’em for doing so! I wasn’t sure I could find the place; there’s not a ray of light anywhere for a mile. The weather’s done a number on the District, taking the power and taps alike—but your missus was up there with a lantern, waving it around on the widow’s walk like … like a little maniac,” he grinned.

Nelson Wellers gasped. “Mrs. Lincoln, you could’ve been shot!”

“But I wasn’t!” she hollered back. Then, in an ordinary voice, she said, “Thank you, young man,” as a tall, slender negro with long, braided hair took her elbow and helped her down the last step.

“That’s my engineer,” Hainey told them, as the man saluted. “And the first mate’s inside. Mr. Lincoln, I want you to know: It was yourname that brought me here. I would’ve done it for the scientist, here … but youwere the reason we came so fast. It took us twenty hours of wild flying through storms and darkness, and I don’t mind telling you we’re just about spent … but you were the man who said the truth the loudest, and made it law: You were the man who reminded the world that we are free.”

Twenty-two

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 herturn 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 massive machines that hadn’t been fired up for weeks. She hadn’t anticipated that there would be no exterior lights, no workers, no guard dogs to keep trespassers 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 basement, 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 basement 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 God 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 scrape, 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 fashion. 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, partitioned off into sealed rooms that locked from the outside.

She passed 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 shivers 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 space 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 reassuring.

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, bloody 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 fashion whatever occurred in that central space.

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 passed 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 glass, 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 button 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, passing 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 assorted buttons 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 amsome kind of scientist,” Haymes objected.

Maria disagreed. “You paid people to do your dirty work.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“ Realscientists,” 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 amtired 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 needthem.”

“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 Washington 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:

• Activate overhead light source.

• Close control room communication vents.

• Seal observation door.

• Close emergency doors.

• Pull to release gas.

A second checklist beside it read:

• Before exiting, close off gas.

• Turn on fans.

• Wait for window to clear.

Maria didn’t know what it meant about the window clearing, but she understood everything else well enough to proceed.

“What are you doing?” Haymes asked, as Maria closed the communication portal, cutting off the last word. She said something else, but Maria didn’t hear it.

“They’d hang you,” she muttered, staring down at the controls and making sure she knew what came next. “Or shoot you. Either way, it’s better than you deserve. This is more fitting, I think.” She looked over at the door and saw that yes, it was sealed. She couldn’t close the emergency doors from within the control room, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t matter.

Katharine Haymes dropped the bag and ran to the window, hitting it with her fists. She shouted, but Maria couldn’t hear her; the glass was uncommonly thick. She wondered if even a bullet would break it. It was almost like the windscreens of a big airship, and maybe that’s what it was. Something very similar, at least.

Haymes had thought of almost everything.

Maria pulled the lever. She pulled hard, and it drew down slowly. She did not hear the hiss of gas spilling through the tubes and out of the tanks, but she could see it: a yellow jet of air, puffing, curling, and falling to the floor like syrup.

Katharine Haymes stopped pounding on the glass. She took a step back away from it, collecting her composure as the room began to fill. Stoically she stood as the gas pooled at her feet, hiding her boots and the hem of her skirt. She remained there without budging as it crawled up her thighs, and covered her to her waist, then her breasts. Her breathing faltered, but she stayed strong, holding back the coughing fit that her body begged for until the last moments, when the poisonous air flowed down her throat.

Maria could still see her through the murky air, a shadow of a well-dressed woman, standing stock-still save for clenching and unclenching her fists, until she fell to her knees, then to her hands and knees.

Then to the floor, where she writhed and twisted.

And then stopped moving altogether.

When Maria had asked the Fiddlehead how many people would die from the gas, and how many would turn into shambling fiends, the machine told her that 70 percent would die but keep walking. Maybe Haymes was in that fortunate 30 percent who’d stop for good. Maybe she’d poke her head up again momentarily, as the noxious fumes tugged at her nervous system and puppeted her into cannibalism.

Either way, Maria had a gun. Hainey said she should shoot for the head.

And she had a mask. She pulled it out of her pocket and drew it over her face, exactly the way Hainey had showed her, making sure it fit without any gaps or leaks. “When it hurts to breathe, you know it’s on right,” he’d assured her. He should know. He’d worn them in Seattle.

The air she drew through the filters tasted like mildew and charcoal, but that was better than sulfur and blood.

She glanced out the window one last time. The image of Katharine Haymes wavered and wobbled as if it were surrounded by rainbows—distorted by the window itself. Ah, so that’s what the note had meant. The glass didn’t just protect observers, it detected the gas as well. The whole thing must be polarized, which must’ve cost a fortune.

But Katharine Haymes had a fortune.

Maria seized the research files and stashed them in her bag. She readied her gun, tested the mask one last time … and opened the control room door.