The Impossible Cube

“You couldn’t let go,” Simon said in a flat voice. “She died because you went back for Gavin.”

“Madam. Madam. Madam.”

“Simon,” Gavin said dangerously, “be—”

The words landed on her like stones. “No. He’s right. I’m so sorry. She died because of me.”

“You’re not being fair to yourself, Alice,” Gavin told her quietly. “The Cossacks gave her the clockwork plague, and if you hadn’t stepped in—”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now.” Alice wiped her eyes. “Damn it. There’s too much to do. We need to take care of the other children and we need to destroy that generator.”

“Alice—,” Gavin began.

“Not now, Gavin.” She got up, still holding the girl’s body. The other children stared, both fearful and uncertain. “Feng, get the children down to the ground, please. Simon, help him.”

When the surviving children were safe on the ground, Alice climbed down herself, the girl’s body slung over her shoulder. She refused to let Gavin take it down for her. Blood smeared Alice’s blouse. Disorder continued to simmer through the circus and a curious crowd had gathered to watch, though as before they stayed outside the marked boundaries. Just as Alice reached the ground, Dodd trotted up to them, his collar undone and his hat askew. He was so agitated, he didn’t even notice Simon and Feng.

“What the hell did you do?” he demanded. “Jesus and God and Mary. Everything was fine until you got involved.”

“What do you mean?” Gavin asked.

“Ivana threw us out, and without paying me the rest of what she promised,” Dodd growled. “And what the bloody hell happened to the elephant? What happened to you?”

“It’s complicated,” Gavin said. He shot a glance over his shoulder at the streets leading back to the Gonta- Zalizniak house. “The short version of the story is that Ivana Gonta captured Feng and all these children. We had to rescue them, but we found out it was all a trick to… Well, never mind.”

He wet his lips. Alice understood his nervousness. Even as they spoke, the Gonta-Zalizniaks were pouring paraffin oil into their deadly mechanicals and moving them up from underground.

“Look,” he finished, “we have to get out of here. All of us. You, too. The whole circus.”

“I don’t understand.” Dodd looked puzzled.

Gavin looked ready to shake him. “Weren’t you listening? The whole thing—the invitation to perform, Ivana pretending to want you there—was just a trick to get me and Alice into that house. Except we escaped, and now they’re angry. They’re going to destroy the circus in revenge, and they’re on the way right now.”

Dodd stared, then turned and bellowed, “Scarper! Now, now, now! Scarper! Scarper!”

The word rippled through the circus. At first there was a sense of disbelief. The Kalakos Circus was enormous and well respected, not some gypsy sideshow, and most of the performers hadn’t been run out of a town in a dozen years or more. The idea that it could happen now caught them off guard. Once it sank in that the order was real, the general disorder from before blew into full-blown chaos as people tried to gather family, snatch belongings, and decide whether or not to leave beloved animals—both living and mechanical—behind.

Dodd started to run off, but Gavin caught his arm. “We need to find Harry. He speaks Ukrainian, and he can help us find the children’s—”

“I don’t know where Harry is,” Dodd snapped. “I’m glad you got these children out of the Gontas’ house, really I am, but right now I’m more worried that my own people will end up in it.”

“Why don’t you put everyone on the train? It’s faster,” Gavin asked.

“The boilers are stone cold,” Dodd snapped. “We’d never get everything heated up in time. Though I’m going to try, for the sake of the animals. Everyone else will have to run on foot or horseback and hope for the best. Maybe if we scatter in different directions, the Cossacks won’t catch many of us. Oh!” He put his hands to his head. “Charlie! He can’t run! Linda will have to hitch up her wagon. I have to find Nathan. Perhaps he can help her.”

“Good heavens.” Alice’s knees felt weak and she leaned against the elephant’s pitted side with the dead girl in her arms. The elephant felt uncomfortably warm, and it sighed steam. This was too much to take in. “I’m sorry, Dodd. I didn’t know this would happen.”

“Sorry? Sorry?” Dodd was nearly shouting. “You destroyed this circus. You destroyed our lives. Thank you, Baroness, for bringing my people into all this.”

He whirled and stomped away.

Gabriel Stark, called Dr. Clef, stood on the deck of The Lady of Liberty and stared through a spyglass at the mechanical elephant. Time jerked and jumped. Some moments rushed ahead so quickly that his limbs moved like glaciers. Other moments slowed, froze even the daylight into clear, sweet ice. In those slow moments, he could see the entire world, perhaps the entire universe, caught in a single painting. When nothing moved, Dr. Clef saw every secret of the physical world, of time and matter and energy, as plain as an artist’s brush stroke. Then the universe jerked back into motion, and an ocean of paint splashed over what he saw, obliterating it. Even his memory of it vanished. He only knew that he had known. Some flotsam did stay with him, however. Stray numbers, unified concepts, vibrating strings, the final piece of an irrational number. Concepts no sane mind could grasp. Fortunately, his mind was falling apart, and this allowed him to hold a few secrets together.

Another thing he held on to was the mission. The boy needed more time. That became plainer with every passing, precious moment. The boy’s movements as he climbed down from the elephant betrayed this need. The clockwork plague altered his gait, his gestures. Only someone as brilliant as Dr. Clef could see the pattern of the plague’s progression toward madness, dissolution, and death. Although Dr. Clef calculated a decent 62.438 percent chance that China’s Dragon Men could cure a clockworker, he gave the boy only a 19.672 percent chance of living long enough to see it, and the largest problem came from the fact that he wouldn’t have enough time.

Steam curled from the elephant’s tusks, and Dr. Clef simultaneously saw the droplets both condense and