The Doomsday Vault

continued to twist the eye.

“What the hell was that?” he gasped.

“Very interesting,” Dr. Clef observed. “Try this one.” He struck another fork-D-sharp-and before Gavin could stop him, he pressed the base against one side of the cube and cranked the handle himself. A cone of sound blasted from the prongs of the fork and gouged out a section of stone wall. Chunks of rock crashed to the floor.

“I like that one,” Dr. Clef said. “How about this one?”

“Stop it!” Gavin shouted, but Dr. Clef struck an A-flat and pressed it to the cube.

With a pop, the cube vanished. It left behind a severed electrical wire.

“Nicht!” Dr. Clef exclaimed.

The workroom door banged open, and Lieutenant Phipps rushed in with two agents behind her. It was the first time he had seen her since the Ward had captured Edwina several days ago. “What the hell was that?” she demanded. “I think everyone within a mile felt it.”

“Which one?” Gavin said. “The soul sound or the explosion?”

“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Agent Ennock. Doctor Clef? What happened?”

Dr. Clef’s wide blue eyes were filling with tears. “My cube! He is gone! Months of work, gone!”

“It’s true,” Gavin said. “It vanished. Right after it did that to the wall.”

“Huh. Maybe it’s for the best, then.” She turned to leave, along with the agents. Gavin ran to catch up with her.

“Lieutenant,” he said, “I wanted to ask you-”

“If it’s about your supposedly secret airship, Agent Ennock, you know we encourage our agents to-”

“No.” He shook his head as the other agents withdrew and Dr. Clef continued to sob over his worktable. “Nothing like that. I wanted to ask about the clockwork plague. Edwina claimed to have a cure, and-”

“That’s enough, Agent Ennock.”

“But-”

“Shut it, boy!” she snapped. Then she closed her eyes for a moment with a sigh and put her metal hand on his shoulder, the most human gesture he had ever seen her make. “Listen, Gavin, I know a cure is important to Alice, which makes it important to you. But I’ve interviewed Edwina extensively and have personally gone through all her research. She’s completely mad. There is no cure and never has been. And we can’t afford to start rumors of one. You can imagine how the public would react.”

Gavin nodded, aware of the weight of her hand on him.

“Good. Don’t speak of this with anyone.” She straightened and dropped her hand. “Get Doctor Clef calmed down and help him clean up.”

“I am on holiday, Lieutenant,” Gavin said. “I just came down here to check on Doctor Clef.”

“There’s no such thing as a holiday in the clockworker holding area, Agent Ennock.”

When she was gone, Gavin went back to the table, where Dr. Clef remained dissolved in tears. “Months and months of time,” he sobbed. “Time flowing like water out of a basket made of gravity. The gravity of my life is pulling me into a sinkhole and warping my space until I can’t escape.”

Uh-oh. He was moving into a bad phase. He’d be worthless for several days. He’d certainly be unable to help clean up. Gavin picked up the A-flat tuning fork with a sigh and accidently smacked it against the table. The moment the note rang out, the Impossible Cube reappeared on the table with another pop.

Gavin jumped, and Dr. Clef instantly snapped to himself. “Wonderful! I should have thought of this myself!”

“Where did it come from?” Gavin asked. His heart was pounding.

“Time, I think,” Dr. Clef told him. “The cube is truly unique, you know. Do you remember when Viktor von Rasmussen found a way to bring his parallel selves from other universes into this one?”

“I heard about it,” Gavin said, “but that was before my time at the Ward.”

“He is dead now. But he started me thinking. I built the cube to be absolutely unique. It actually exists in all the other universes, you see, but they are all the same cube. This gives it many strange properties.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Yes. When you give the cube different energies, it changes them. I think that one”-he gestured at the A-flat tuning fork-“has something to do with time. The cube can’t travel through time, you see. The cube can’t travel at all. I think what happened was that the entire universe-all the universes-moved backward and left the cube in the same place. When you struck the fork again, the cube matched itself to the vibration and pulled the universes back to where they should be, but since we are in the universes, it appeared to us that the cube moved, when actually we did.”

“That’s im-That’s not poss-That. . makes my head hurt.”

Dr. Clef waved a hand. “So, so. This is my masterpiece! A wonderful thing, yes?”

“Yes. I mean, I think so.” Gavin felt off-kilter, and looking at the Impossible Cube didn’t help. “Doctor Clef, you stay here and I’ll be back.”

“Yes, yes.” He waved a hand. “I have more tests.”

Gavin locked the workshop door carefully behind him and dashed down the stone hallway and past the extra-heavy door where Edwina was being kept. Her door had three powerful locks on it, and Gavin didn’t have any of the keys. Only Lieutenant Phipps ever went in, even with food. He also passed the Doomsday Vault with its four guards, and, deciding not to wait for the lift, hurried up the spiral stairs to the office of Susan Phipps.

“I’m going out, ma’am,” he said, poking his head inside, “since I’m still on holiday. But you’ll want to check on Doctor Clef again. He found his cube.”

“Did he?” Phipps got to her feet behind her desk. “And what does it-”

There was a muffled boom. All the lights, including the oil lamps, went out. Shouts went up all over the house. Phipps made an exasperated sound.

“I never liked that thing,” she said, fumbling in the dim moonlight for matches. “I think we’ll have to put it into the Doomsday Vault first thing in the-ouch!”

“What’s wrong?”

“The lamp is still lit. It’s just not giving off any light.”

“I don’t even want to know how that works,” Gavin said. “Do you need me? Alice rented a new house with her bonus, and I’m supposed to help her. . uh. .”

“Go, go.” The lights abruptly came back up. More shouts from the halls and rooms. “But I want you on hand in the morning when we put that thing in the vault. An hour before sunrise. You know the ceremony.”

“Ma’am.” He fled before she could change her mind.

Alice met him at the front door with a kiss. “You’re just in time,” she said.

“For what?” He couldn’t help smiling.

“For moving furniture. It’s too heavy for me, and Kemp is cranky.”

This row house was small but newer-well built and free of drafts. The living room had a fireplace and the kitchen had a good stove, which meant the place stayed warm. A sofa, chair, divan, and several end tables were scattered about the front room. Click perched on the back of the sofa, and Kemp was in the kitchen with tea things. Little automatons crawled, whirred, and scampered everywhere, like autumn leaves at play.

“I like this place,” Gavin said. “It’s very much you.”

“I suppose I should hire a maid-of-all-work,” Alice said, “but I think it would make Kemp unhappy, and the little ones sometimes get nervous around too many people.” She spread her arms. “It’s freeing to be here, Gavin. I’m renting it with money I earned myself, and that means I can be myself. Whyever do you stay in those tiny rooms at the Ward?”

“Most of my money has gone toward the ship, and my family,” he said. “But I’m glad you found this place. It’s more private.”

“That it is.” She slid her arms around him, and his heart jumped. “No one to interrupt us here.”

“Tea?” Kemp said, entering with the tray. Click chose that moment to leap at one of the flying automatons. It squeaked and shot higher. The clockwork cat missed and crash-landed on one of the tables, which tipped over and