The Impossible Cube

“The Gontas and Zalizniaks aren’t exactly a family, strictly speaking, strictly speaking,” Harry said. “They are a… collection, really.”

“Collection,” Gavin said. “What does that mean?”

Harry puffed on his cigar and cast a sidelong look at Alice. They were talking in what was euphemistically referred to as the Black Tent, though it was neither black nor a tent. It was actually a boxcar outfitted as a laboratory, with tools hanging on the walls, a portable forge heating up one corner, and half-finished machines littering the tables that lined the walls. It belonged to Dodd, who wasn’t a clockworker but who did have enough of a facility with machines to repair or even build basic clockwork designs, though nothing on the level that Alice could do. It was here that he had tinkered together the windup toys for Gavin and Tom when they were children, visiting the circus with Captain Naismith. The place smelled of machine oil, bitter coal smoke, and metal shavings, and made Gavin think of a time when he was still learning his way around an airship. Dodd called it the Black Tent because the work area had once been a blacksmith’s tent. When the circus became wealthy enough, Dodd had bought a boxcar for everything, but the original name had stuck.

Gavin was feeling restless again, and as happened on the train in Dodd’s car when he guarded Alice’s sleep, his hands went to work without him. A spool of Dr. Clef’s alloy sat in his lap. He wound more of it and snipped rings free of the dowel. He had quite a collection now.

Harry continued to hesitate. Finally Alice spoke up. “If you’re worrying about offending my delicate sensibilities, Mr. Burks, please stop. We don’t have time for nonsense. You must speak plainly.”

The rotund man moved his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Very well, very well.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know how much Ukrainian history you know—”

“Maksym Zalizniak was a Cossack who rose up at an outbreak of the clockwork plague,” Alice said crisply. “He used Ivan Gonta and other powerful clockworkers to construct machines of war that forced out the Russians and the Poles—and then the Jews and the Catholics—so they could take back Ukraine and form their own empire. Get on with it.”

“Yes, well,” Harry said, “it didn’t stop there, of course. The Zalizniak clan took the left bank, or western half, of Kiev and Ukraine, while the Gonta clan took the right, or east. At first they got along very well, but things devolved very quickly, very quickly. Cossacks fight as a way of life, you see, and once they didn’t have the Russians and Poles to kick around anymore, they turned inward. The two clans bickered and sniped and fought all the time, all the time, their clockworkers ran rampant, and the people of Kiev were caught in the middle. They especially fought over the dam—and the power it generates.”

“But the house we saw had the two Cyrillic letters in the gate,” Gavin said. “A g and a z. They seem to be getting along fine now.”

“That’s the mystery,” Harry said. “Clockworkers don’t cooperate. Fifty or sixty years ago, the Gontas smashed the Zalizniaks flat, but instead of killing their rivals, they merged with them. How, no one knows, no one knows. Now, instead of having two collective families, they have just one, just one.”

“How do you get a family of clockworkers?” Alice said. “They don’t… they can’t…”

Gavin held his face impassive over the growing net of rings. He knew very well what Alice was trying not to say, that clockworkers, including him, died within three years of contracting the plague. Family relationships were cut unfortunately short. A sudden longing to see his own children filled him, made all the worse for the fact that he knew it could never come to pass, and he had to turn his face away for a moment to get himself under control. China. China would have the cure, if only they could get there.

“That’s the delicate part.” Harry coughed and reddened. “You see, the Gonta-Zalizniaks operate on a process of… assimilation.”

“I don’t understand,” Alice said.

“Nor should you, nor should you. The clans use a sort of forced adoption, you see. Any clockworker who appears in Ukraine is quickly snapped up by the Gonta-Zalizniaks and indoctrinated. I hear that by the time the process is over, they truly believe they are Gonta or Zalizniak.” He coughed around his cigar. “They also engage in experiments on… younger folk. There’s a belief that children are more likely to survive the plague and become clockworkers, so…”

Alice’s face paled and she staggered back against one of the tables. “You mean they deliberately infect children with the clockwork plague in an attempt to create more clockwork geniuses?”

Harry looked unhappy. “It’s only rumor, only rumor,” he said quickly. “People are always looking for explanations about why Kiev seems to have more clockworkers than a city its size should.”

“Numbers,” Gavin put in, though he was speaking through greasy nausea. “If you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that somewhere has to have the highest percentage of clockworkers. Kiev is simply it.”

“Of course, of course.” Harry chewed his cigar. “It’s a difficult rumor to unseat, however, when it couples with the fact that the plague got its start here.”

“Is rumored to have gotten its start here,” Alice corrected. “No one knows where the plague started. Kiev just has the first recorded cases. The eighteenth century kept very poor records, unlike modern times.”

“This isn’t getting us any closer to Feng,” Gavin interrupted. He wound more wire around the dowel and snipped. “What is Ivana going to do with him?”

“Who knows?” Harry sighed. “He’s not a clockworker, so he won’t be indoctrinated. Clockworkers have free rein here with anyone they capture, and Ivana Gonta can do as she wishes with him. Kievites have been forced to become adept at avoiding clockworkers, so there’s a shortage of subjects these days. I hate to sound harsh, but she’s likely experimenting on him right now.”

A silence fell over the trio. In the distance, the calliope hooted a cheery song in B-flat, keeping time for one of the acts rehearsing in the Tilt. An idea stole over Gavin.

“How many clockworkers are in that house?” he asked. His fingers moved faster with wire and pliers, creating what looked like a framework of chain mail. He was adding to what already existed, which was currently the size of an evening cloak. On the floor nearby sat a framework and pack and machine parts that awaited assembly.

“No idea, no idea,” Harry said. “Could be two, could be two hundred. And all of them made to specialize in instruments of war. I’ve said it before—it’s a pity they don’t turn their efforts toward a cure for the plague. They