evaporate. He hadn’t yet gotten around to naming the minuscule particles that made up matter. He himself hadn’t had the time, and he was running out. The plague was eating at his body even as it sharpened his mind. But there was a remedy to his problem and to the boy’s.
A wave of affection swept over him. The dear, dear boy. The son he’d never had. Or perhaps he did have a son, or even a dozen. He didn’t know for certain. Dr. Clef’s memories of his own past grew more and more hazy every hour. He had vague recollections of fishing in a blue river with another boy while it rained, and another of kissing a pretty girl in a blue dress, and both colors were the same electric blue as his beautiful Impossible Cube. He remembered working in his stone laboratory in the Third Ward, but couldn’t recall how he’d come to be there in the first place. He recalled the boy, whose eyes were the same electric blue as Dr. Clef’s beautiful Impossible Cube, and how the boy had held the Cube and sung his way through solid stone. But then the Cube had vanished. Every day when Dr. Clef rose, he felt the pain of its loss, like a man who loses a leg might still feel pain in his missing foot. It was impossible to re-create the Cube’s perfection. There was only one in all the universes and all the time they contained.
And then the dear, dear boy with the electric-blue eyes had handed him that lovely paradox generator, with its audible, irrational, and intoxicating double square root of two. Paired with his own alloy, which cycled the thrilling new power of electricity back and forth between the square root of two, the generator would give him his Cube back, and once he had both Cube and generator, he could give the boy all the time he needed. Dr. Clef needed only an enormous amount of electricity at the right frequency. And for that…
Dr. Clef turned the spyglass upriver. The dam strained against the current, tamed it, forced uncounted trillions of droplets around turbines and rotors. He could feel the magnets moving within their coils, changing the flow of water to a flow of electricity. Exciting! Thrilling! The key to the universe lay within the grasp of these little people, and instead of taking advantage, they scurried about gathering up foolish possessions, clumps of matter that mattered not at all. Their current existence had no point, and only Dr. Clef could change it. He
He swung the spyglass back to the elephant. The girl seemed upset by the dead child in her arms, and the boy seemed upset that the girl was upset. He made the connection easily enough. The child had died because of something the girl had done, most likely save the boy, and now she was upset. Foolish. The boy offered the world quite a lot more than a stray child. But the fact that both of them were upset meant that they had probably…
Yes. The paradox generator was still on board the elephant, forgotten by everyone.
Except Dr. Clef.
Chapter Thirteen
Gavin stood in the center of chaos beside the hissing elephant and amid a whimpering crowd of children. Feng was deformed, Alice was upset, Simon was a turncoat, Kemp was beheaded, one of the children was dead, and he had no idea what to do next. He wanted to crawl under a blanket and let someone else handle everything. Even the clockwork plague seemed to have abandoned him. Irrationally, he wished for Captain Naismith’s presence. The captain would know what to do and would tell Gavin how to go about doing it. Gavin wouldn’t have to plan, think, or worry. Unfortunately, Felix Naismith was gone, leaving no one but a former cabin boy in command. That was always the way of it. Father, captain, mentor—it didn’t matter. They always abandoned you. He squared his shoulders.
“All right,” he said. “Alice, where are your little automatons?”
“Still on the ship.” She was looking at the face of the dead girl in her arms.
“We need them to reassemble the—”
“Papa!” one of the children, a boy, shrieked. “Papa!”
A dozen yards away, a man in the crowd turned, and the boy flew toward him across the stones, arms outstretched. The man stared incredulously, surprise and disbelief writ all over his face. Then he cried “Pietka!” and opened his arms wide. Pietka leaped into his father’s embrace, and the man rocked when the boy slammed into him. The man held his son tightly. Tears streamed down both their faces and mingled together as the father pressed his cheek to his son’s. “Pietka,” he said.
“Papa,” Pietka snuffled.
Gavin discovered tears were leaking from his own eyes, and he wiped at them with his fingers.
“Well,” Simon said beside him. “Well.”
Pietka said something to his father, and the man trotted over to Gavin with Pietka still in his arms. Alice stepped back with the dead girl in hers, creating a tragic mirror image. The man said something to Gavin in Ukrainian, but Gavin could only shake his head.
“He wants to know if you’re the one who rescued his son,” said Harry, who came up at that moment. “Hello, Gavin. You’ve caused quite a fuss, quite a fuss.”
“Tell him we all rescued Pietka,” Gavin said.
Harry translated, and the man abruptly snatched Gavin into a rough one-armed embrace, tangling him with Pietka for a moment. Then he backed away, looking embarrassed.
“You’re welcome,” Gavin said, also feeling embarrassed.
The man spoke again, and Harry said, “He’s asking about the other children. He wants to know if you need help finding their families. He doesn’t know the Gontas and Zalizniaks are coming.”
“Tell him yes,” Gavin said. “Harry, can you—?”
“Yes, I’ll go along to translate,” Harry said, before Gavin could make the request. “I’m used to moving about on my own, and a few people in Kiev owe me a favor, so I can scarper off. I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll go with them, too,” Simon said. “And then I think I’ll disappear myself.”
“We could use your help, Simon,” Gavin said. “You saved us once in there.”
Simon shook his head. “You don’t need me. And frankly, my friend, it’s too difficult being near you.”
“Oh.” Gavin nodded. “Where are you going?”
“The least said, the better,” Simon replied, “in case Phipps gets her hooks into you. I won’t be welcome in England, but the world is wide.” He stuck out his hand. “Good-bye.”
