The Impossible Cube

“We have to warn them.” Alice looked increasingly desperate. “They need to abandon everything and run.”

“We cannot run fast enough to warn them, either,” Feng said.

Gavin glanced about. If they made for the dam, the Gontas would kill everyone in the circus, including Dodd and Nathan and Linda and Charlie. If they warned the circus, Dr. Clef would be able to stop time forever. Save a few people, or save the universe. More numbers ran through his mind, painting new realities behind them. The choice was obvious.

“Come on, Alice,” Gavin said. “I’ll need your help.” And he ran straight toward the Cossack mechanicals.

Chapter Fourteen

Alice’s heart stopped. The plague’s driven him completely mad, she thought. Now what do I do?

“Come on, Feng!” she shouted, and ran after Gavin. Feng twitched once and followed with Alice’s automatons. Gavin had a decent head start, however, and he wasn’t wearing a skirt, so he kept his lead.

“Gavin!” she yelled. “What are you doing?”

But he ignored her. The narrow street that led into the square was packed with a single-file line of large mechanicals, the same ones Alice had seen in the dungeon below the Gonta house. She remembered counting forty, and it appeared that nearly so many thumped down this street, cracking the cobblestones with the sound of angry gods. The smallest was twice as high as she was, and most of them were at least two stories tall. All of them bristled with weaponry—swords and launchers and rifles and objects she couldn’t discern. Alice remembered the clockwork revolution headed by the Gontas and the Zalizniaks that had ended the Russian and Polish occupation of Ukraine, and she began to understand why the occupiers hadn’t stood a chance. Most of the mechanicals were topped by a glass bubble, and in each sat a Gonta. The machinery spewed ashy clouds of smoke and fumes. The streets were only wide enough to allow one mechanical at a time to pass, which was why they came in a deadly single file, heading for the circus. Once they reached the square, they could spread out and follow the river. Dodd’s little collection of automatons and fragile wagons wouldn’t stand a chance, and when the Gontas crushed them into meat and metal matchsticks, it would be Alice’s fault for bringing them here. More death on her head.

Gavin ran lightly up the street to the lead mechanical, which was close to eighteen feet tall. Danilo Gonta sat in the bubble, his expression cool and calm, his white lab coat stained with blood. Then he saw Gavin, and his face twisted into an animal snarl.

“That’s right, Danilo!” Gavin shouted. “You want me, not them!”

Inside the bubble, Danilo spun something, and a rifle on the shoulder of his mechanical turned. It fired a burst of bullets, but Gavin was already moving, diving away from the gunfire and toward the mechanical. He shouldn’t have been able to dodge the hail, but the plague was clearly working on him, and he flicked around almost faster than Alice could follow. Her heart climbed into her throat, and she desperately cast about for something— anything—she could do to help him.

Gavin reached Danilo’s mechanical, which had stopped in its tracks to fire at him and thereby blocked the progress of the other Gontas behind it. They stomped their feet, and a few of them made BEEP sounds Alice had never heard before. People from the surrounding buildings fled into the streets and away. Clearly they’d seen altercations before.

Alice stayed close to a brick wall with Feng, Click, and her automatons and forced herself to remain calm, to think as frightened people streamed past her. Even from here, she could trace the workings of the lead mechanical, see the way it moved and how it fit together. Was there a weak spot she could exploit? If only she could figure out what Gavin was—

Gavin jumped onto one of the mechanical’s broad feet and climbed like a monkey. In a flash, Alice understood what was going on. Brilliant! She hoped it was Gavin’s idea, and not something dreamed up by the clockwork plague. She very much wanted to feel pride for his intelligence instead of fear for his sanity. With a quick motion, Alice snatched up Click and turned to the whirligig mechanicals hovering behind her.

“You carried Aunt Edwina when she tried to steal the giant war machine outside London last summer,” she said to them. “Can you carry me?”

They squeaked and bobbed up and down in midair with obvious enthusiasm.

“Feng,” she said without thinking, “wait here with my spiders. You, you, you, and you,” she continued, pointing to different whirligigs, “carry me to that mechanical. Quick!”

The whirligigs took Alice firmly by the shoulders and back of her dress and lifted. Their propellers spun madly only inches away from Alice’s face, but they lifted her handily from the ground.

“Wait!” Feng cried. “Alice, I cannot—”

But Alice was already rushing toward the big mechanical with Click in her arms. The sensation of flight swooped through her, filling her with exhilaration despite the danger. Why had she never tried this with her automatons before? Gavin had managed to skitter up to Danilo’s bubble. The Gontas behind them were becoming angrier and angrier, but they were still hemmed in by the narrow street and unable to do anything. Gavin clambered up to the very top of Danilo’s bubble. One of Danilo’s hands swiped at him. Gavin leaped over it. When he landed, he made a face at the Gonta behind Danilo, a plump man in brown leather.

“Good thing I killed Ivana!” Gavin shouted at him. “They can feed China now! She had more rolls than a bakery!”

Alice held her breath. Danilo swiped at him again, like a man swatting at a fly, but Gavin nimbly leaped away. The Cossack behind Danilo was getting angry. Alice could see him turn red and purple, and it would have been funny if Gavin hadn’t been dancing with death. She was almost there.

“You could stand to lose a few pounds yourself,” Gavin taunted him. “Gain any more weight, and planets will orbit you.”

The arm of the mechanical behind Danilo tracked around and its fingers revealed themselves to be rifle barrels.

“You don’t have the guts,” Gavin yelled. “It’s all lard!”

Too late Danilo realized what was going on. “Ni!” he shouted into the speaking tube, but his fat brother Cossack had already fired. Gavin dropped down to the chest piece of Danilo’s mechanical and hung there by his fingertips just as the fat Gonta’s ammunition slammed into Danilo’s bubble. The glass exploded.