The Impossible Cube

sitting down like a toddler who had lost its balance and landed on its backside. Phipps had kept her feet, but she had lost one of the tuning forks. That was one good thing, at least.

“That is called a warning shot,” bellowed a voice from above. “I believe my energy cannon can manage another. The boom may not be so large or exciting, but it will suffice.”

Over the road and just above the trees hovered a familiar dirigible the size of a generous cottage. A gondola shaped like an unmasted sailing ship hung from a cigar-shaped envelope that was clearly too small to provide enough lift for such a mass. A lacy blue endoskeleton Gavin had forged and bent himself glowed like captured sky beneath the envelope’s thin skin, and a long rope dangled from the stern, which sported the words The Lady of Liberty. Leaning over the gunwale was a portly man in a white coat and heavy goggles over a bulldog face. He was pointing a small cannon down at the road. Phipps, Glenda, and Simon didn’t move. A river of relief swept over Gavin.

“Dr. Clef!” he shouted. “You’re my favorite German.”

“Very glad to see you are safe, my boy.”

Alice looked calm and unruffled, but Gavin read a symphony of strain holding her upright. “I don’t suppose,” she called up, “that you could provide a ladder?”

Seconds later, one end of a rope ladder tumbled down. Alice clambered up first, and Gavin followed with Click. The whirligig flew.

“We can still follow you,” Phipps shouted up at them. “We found you now, and we’ll find you again!”

Ignoring her, Gavin pulled himself over the edge to join Alice. His shoes came down on solid planking, and he felt some of the tension drain away. The airship, the Lady, was his place, his home. Wood and hemp made their familiar creak as the envelope strained against her ropes, trying to pull the ship higher while her lacy skeleton gleamed a magnificent azure blue. The generator that ran on paraffin oil muttered and mumbled to itself on the deck, emitting steam and feeding a steady stream of power to the Lady’s skeleton and to her propellers. Dr. Clef, a clockworker once captured by the Third Ward, had developed the alloy that pushed against gravity when it was electrified, but Gavin had been the one to put it into the envelope of a dirigible.

At the helm stood a stocky, sharp-faced Oriental dressed in a pirate shirt that suited him perfectly. He was just over eighteen. His trousers were tucked into his boots, and like Alice, he kept a glass cutlass sheathed at his belt. He saluted Gavin with a rakish grin that made him even more handsome than before.

“No, no,” Dr. Clef was calling down. He continued to aim his power cannon at the ground. “Don’t move, please. My finger trigger, it itches.”

“That’s trigger finger,” Gavin said. “And you let Feng pilot the Lady?”

“It was that or give him the cannon,” Dr. Clef replied mildly. “I did consider pulling apart the clicky kitty’s brain and using it to create a wireless device that would allow me to control the ship from a distance, but the young woman wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Bloody right.” Alice picked up Click and let the whirligig land on her shoulder. “Feng, get us out of here!”

“Which way?” said Feng Lung with a trace of China in his words.

“Any way, as long as it’s east,” Alice said.

Feng swung the helm around. The propellers on the Lady’s nacelles hanging from the outer hulls whirled to life, and she picked up speed, still trailing the rope. Alice set Click down and pulled it in.

“You slid all the way down that to get into the greenhouse and rescue me?” Gavin said. “I must be awfully special.”

“Indeed you are, Mr. Ennock.” Alice coiled the rope on the deck, then turned and collapsed into Gavin’s surprised arms. Her body shook against his, and wet, sloppy tears dampened his shirt. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, you… you cad.”

His own throat thickened and he held her, clumsily at first, then tightly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” After a moment, he added, “What did I do?”

Alice gave a hiccupping laugh and straightened. “Oh, Gavin. Dear God. You scared me half to death, that’s what.”

“So true,” Feng said from the helm. “After you went missing from the hotel, she went mad. Berserk. She would not sleep; she would not eat. When we tracked you to the greenhouse, she almost rammed it with the ship. I insisted to be pilot then.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said again. “Should I write letters in the sky to warn you when I’m going to be captured?”

“Certainly.” Alice pulled off her leather gloves, revealing a metal spider wrapping her left hand from forearm to fingers. Its legs ended in claws that tipped Alice’s own nails, and tubules running up and down the spider’s legs flowed scarlet with her blood. The dark iron gleamed, and the spider’s eyes glowed red, indicating that she had just touched someone infected with the clockwork plague—Gavin, in this case. It was another of the daily reminders that he was dying, and it was inextricably linked to the woman he loved. The thought made him both sad and angry, and he wanted to wrench the spider off her, even though he knew it wouldn’t work. The spider’s joints squeaked slightly as Alice fumbled at her sleeve for a handkerchief, and then she remembered she wasn’t wearing a woman’s blouse. She reached into her pocket for one instead and dabbed at her eyes. “I’ll kill the next one who captures you. I swear it.”

“There’s going to be a next one?”

Alice cuffed him lightly on the shoulder, then knelt in front of him to pull up his pant cuffs. “If Phipps has her way, there will be.”

“Uh… what are you doing?”

“I need to check your ankles. Those horrible chains Antoine kept you in couldn’t have been good for them. This will be easier if you sit down.”

He sank into a deck chair and let her pull off his shoes, wincing as the leather came away from swollen flesh.