they’d known where to find Uncle Tully. What had she said to Robert, and did she even know she’d done it? I glanced at my uncle, who had evidently never stopped working. His fingers were flying, coiling wire, and he was muttering, repeating the same words over and over, “Not to touch, not to touch …”
“… told them to watch the church!” Ben was still yelling. “No one to come but her!” He swung around to Lane.
“You! Why did you come back here? This has nothing to do with you anymore!”
“I disagree,” Lane said quietly. “This has everything to do with you and me.”
“Shut him up!”
These directions were being yelled at Robert, who had at least some English, because he was trying to do as Ben asked. The gun swung its aim from Henri’s head to Lane’s. Henri let out a breath.
“Not to touch, not to touch, not to touch,” Uncle Tully muttered.
I met Lane’s gaze, my head humming. He was dusty and dirty from the tunnel, making his skin even darker, and in contrast his eyes were almost startling, beautiful and possibly dangerous, like the sea. He held me with his look, as if the cavern had narrowed to the size of the tunnel, as if there were no one else in the room, and then his gaze slid once to the side.
“Shut him up!” Ben ordered, only now I realized he was speaking of Uncle Tully. Robert didn’t seem to be sure where he should point the gun. I looked hard at Lane. Where were Joseph and his pistol? The gray eyes made the movement one more time, and I realized with a start that my body, the body of Mary’s young man with the swiveling gun, and the entrance to the cavern all made a straight line. And that there were six barrels of guncotton directly behind me. I gave Lane one almost imperceptible shake of my head.
Henri was staring at my uncle as if transfixed, his nose bleeding freely, but he’d slipped one small step closer to Robert, who seemed to have settled on Lane for his target. I remembered the knife he had somewhere in his clothes.
“Not to touch, not to touch, not to touch …” Uncle Tully muttered.
Lane had turned back to Ben. “It’s time to settle this.” Ben actually laughed, and the gray eyes caught mine, and again slid to the right. I shook my head.
“Settle what? Do you want a share of the money? A sliver of the glory? You should talk to dear Katharine. Ask her what I’ve offered.” Ben glanced once at me, grinning like a shark. When he did, Henri took another small step toward Robert, whose eyes were trained on Ben, waiting for instruction. “Tell him what I am giving you, love,” he said.
I didn’t answer, my uncle’s voice mixing with the humming in my head and the blood pumping in my ears. I shook my head again at the movement of Lane’s eyes, wondering if he could somehow tell Joseph not to shoot.
“I’m going to give her everything. And what can you give her?”
The gray gaze bore back into Ben. “Nothing much.”
“That’s right. I am going to give her everything that you can’t, and she will take it. … Stay where you are!”
Lane had taken two quick steps forward, risking Robert’s shaking hand. Robert had followed and Ben stepped back, while, unnoticed, Henri moved closer to Robert. It was like watching a mad dance, a dance that had nearly gotten Lane shot. But it had taken me out of what I guessed must be Joseph’s line of fire. I slid back, again aligning myself with Robert and the entrance. If Joseph’s shot hit the guncotton, we were all going to die, perhaps along with the people in the streets above us. I saw Lane’s gaze take in my movement, then lift to the barrels behind me.
“Not to touch, not to touch …” said Uncle Tully.
“If he moves again, shoot him!” Ben said. “Do you understand me? And make him be quiet!”
This last order had been to me. My uncle worked frantically, paying no mind to any of us, deep in his own world. I wiped the blood from my mouth and, keeping my eyes on the scene in front of me, curled the fingers of my other hand around a small wrench. It would not hurt anyone, not much, but it might cause a distraction if needed. Ben was straightening his jacket, adjusting the cloth around his neck to its position before the scuffle.
“I don’t know exactly what either of you think you are going to accomplish down here, Mr. Moreau. You’re not getting them out. In fact, I think it rather likely that Miss Tulman will not go. She might ask you to stay, though. You’ll have to decide what to do with Marchand. Wait and see if she …”
Lane moved forward, two quick, long steps that again had Robert following and me gasping in terror. But Robert did not shoot; I could see the fear all over his face. Who he should have been fearing was Henri. Henri had again moved closer, deliberately staying silent, still out of reach, but now with something gleaming held just below his right shirtsleeve. Lane was going to have to risk that move again to get Robert out of line with the barrels of guncotton.
“… not to touch, not to touch, not to …”
“What I expect to accomplish,” Lane said, deadly calm, “is making certain that bloody machine and nothing like it ever sees the light of day …”
“Not to touch, not to touch …”
“… and to leave this place with all of them. The question is whether you wish to be alive or not when I do it.”
Ben grinned, stretching the arms of his well-cut suit, looking heavenward in mock exasperation. “You realize I’m about to have you shot, don’t you?” I glanced at the gun shaking in Robert’s hand. “You know that I will be the one walking out of here with Mr. Tully and his niece? And that she is going to come willingly?” I gripped the wrench in my hand. “Because she knows I can give her what I promised.”
“You can give her nothing that’s good enough,” Lane said, his voice very low.
“Not good enough? Not good enough!” he yelled. “That, coming from you, to a Bonaparte? You are nothing! What can you do that I cannot? Name one thing I cannot give!”
“Not to touch, not to touch, not to …”
The gray eyes were all for Ben now, and they were stone. Lane put his hands in his pockets. I think he’d forgotten everything else, including the gun pointed at his head. “Give her Davy back,” he said. “And Mr. Babcock.”
“And John George,” I whispered.
“Not to touch, not to touch …”
“Give her back the last eighteen months. Can you do that?”
“Not to touch, not to touch, not to touch …”
“Shut him up!” Ben screamed.
“Give Mr. Tully back his old workshop, and all the things he made there. Give me back the Lower Village.”
It was as if the world had again narrowed, making it impossible to look away. Lane was furious, and there was something mesmerizing in the evenness of his rage.
“It is you who are nothing,” he said. “You were always trying to make it not so, even when we were children. Only it still was.”
“Stop it,” Ben said.
“Not to touch, not to touch, not to touch …”
“Everything you’ve tried to accomplish, every foul thing you ever did, all to fawn over a man who will not even give you his name, and instead of more, you were less.”
“Shut him up!”
“And you are still less.”
“Not to touch, not to …”
“So I ask you, when we leave here, do you wish to be alive, or not?”
“Stop it! And shut him … What is he doing?”
I broke from my trance and looked properly at my uncle. And suddenly I knew exactly what he was doing. The crate beside him, full of his things from the attic workshop, the wires running down to the glass jars in the crate, the hum that was not really in my head. And Uncle Tully, repeating and repeating his odd phrase at the parts that had taken shape on the table beside the fish, the blue-white spark reaching up and between two
