The Flux Engine Read online

  Maybe if she could get her weight off the rug, she could just pick the whole thing up and run.

  No good; the bottom of the rug was stuck to the floor.

  Panic rose in Robi’s breast and she began to hyperventilate. The old man’s voice sounded in her ears. Stay calm. Take deep breaths. Think.

  It had to be Pemberton. The clever bastard had laid a trap for thieves and she’d quite literally stepped in it.

  Stay calm. Deep breaths. Think.

  The goop must have been in the carpet all along. Maybe as a powder. It had been activated somehow when she opened the safe. The empty glass. Pemberton must have dissolved something in it that filled the safe with an invisible gas. As soon as she opened the door, it flowed out onto the carpet.

  Great, she knew how he did it but not how to free herself.

  Stay calm. Deep breaths. Think.

  With her left hand, she unlaced her soft shoes. One at a time, she pulled her feet free, carefully putting them down well away from the sticky rug. This left her bending over at an awkward angle with her right palm still stuck.

  She moved her feet into position on either side of the rug and pulled with all her strength. The rug gave a little, but her hand remained stuck fast.

  Panic gripped her again and bile crept into the back of her throat. Pemberton would be back any minute. She’d heard of thieves doing a coyote in similar situations, but the thought of cutting off her own hand just to escape made her sick.

  The sound of heavy feet on the stair froze the blood in Robi’s veins. Maybe if she crouched down, the desk would hide her. Before she could work herself into a better position, however, the door swung open.

  A tall, dapper man with gray hair stood framed in the opening. He wore a maroon suit coat and vest with gleaming silver buttons topped off with a bowler hat. A pair of spectacles hung on a tiny chain from his topmost buttonhole and he raised them to his brown eyes as he caught sight of Robi. He looked her up and down for a moment and his thin, shrewd face split into a delighted grin.

  “Well, well,” he said in an amused voice. “What have we here?”

  Chapter 3

  The Enforcer

  John wasn’t conscious of being dead. But then, he wasn’t conscious of being alive either. In fact he felt nothing at all as his mind seemed to drift in a great black emptiness. Absently he wondered if he would be called up to the Builder’s workshop or condemned to the Forge of Souls.

  Fire erupted in his throat, tracing a line of fire down to his gut and choking him as it went. With a horrible tearing sound filling his ears, John’s mind was wrenched back to consciousness. Searing liquid filled his mouth and burned his tongue. Gagging and spluttering, he swallowed hard, forcing the molten stuff into his stomach. Catching the feel of air again, his lungs surged, gulping in. As his rib cage expanded, it tore at the bullet wound, sending daggers of pain deep into his chest.

  As he cried out in mortal agony, the rim of a glass bottle was forced between his teeth and more of the torturous liquid streamed into his mouth. John choked and swallowed, trying to turn his head away, but something had him in a vise-like hold. He couldn’t see and the sound of his own pulse was like thunder drumming in his ears. He wasn’t sure if his eyes weren’t working or if they were simply closed, but either way his vision remained dark. As another gout of burning liquid gushed past his lips and down his throat, John heard a voice, coming to him as if from a great distance.

  “Drink it all, boy,” it said, drifting into his awareness. “It’ll keep you alive.”

  He felt the liquid run down his throat again, but this time it seemed to bring emptiness with it. Everywhere it touched, from his mouth to his stomach, seemed to disappear from his mind. The numbness flowed outward from his gut, erasing his chest and the fiery, burning wound, his torso, and finally his arms and legs.

  John’s mind drifted, freed from the link to his tortured and dying body. He could hear things, voices and strange sounds. At first, they were distant, incoherent sounds, like the buzzing bees in a hive, but gradually they resolved themselves into strings of syllables that demanded John’s attention.

  “ … Did the right thing,” a man’s voice said in a twangy, territorial accent. “Get him into the chamber.”

  There was a sound of water and a splash.

  “Is he going to survive?” a second voice said. John recognized it from before, when he’d been forced to drink the horrible liquid.

  “Not if you don’t get out of the way,” the first voice said. “Hit him with this and then shut the lid.”

  Before John could wonder who was speaking or what they meant, something cold formed where his gut used to be. He could feel it moving, twisting and flowing, as if seeking a way out. The pressure built until finally, the liquid in his gut ignited, bursting into a raging inferno. Waves of heat expanded outward like an explosion, bringing back the sense of his stomach, his organs, bones, and skin—and burning as it went. His eyes snapped open at last and his whole body went rigid. Every muscle in his arms and legs locked into place, quivered like over-taut piano wires.

  Floating above him in the fog of his newly restored vision, was a small window in a wall of brass that hung just over his body. It looked uncomfortably to John the way he imagined the inside of a coffin lid would look. The only difference was the window that now framed an unfamiliar face. It was haggard and rough, with an immense, salt-and-pepper mustache and two ice-blue eyes that regarded him through the glass.

  “Hold on now,” the accented voice said from somewhere beyond the window. “It gets a bit rough from here on out.”

  Pain lanced through John’s body so quickly that he didn’t have time to react. His wound burned as if he were being branded with a hot iron.

  He screamed.

  John thought he’d felt pain before. Once his arm had been burned by a steam leak. Another time he’d smashed his finger in a flywheel. None of that had prepared him for this. It felt as if his ribs were being pried apart by a steam jack, one notch at a time. His body jerked and spasmed and his lungs were on fire. The bullet wound in his chest pulsed rhythmically and he could hear a wet, tearing noise issuing from it.

  Looking down at the wound, John blinked his eyes to clear them. A metal arm extended from a small hole in the brass coffin lid. A round, metal device was attached to its end with three long, finger-like appendages and a glowing orange crystal at their center.

  The crystal blazed with light and the arm moved over John’s chest.

  The slug had hit him in the left side, just above the heart. The hole it left slowly began to bulge outward, leaking blood like a fleshy volcano. The sickening tearing noise got louder, reaching John’s ears as vibrations transferred through his body rather than through the air. He watched in horror as his chest spasmed and the protruding wound suddenly spat out a wad of clotted blood.

  Pain hit him again, like someone digging in his open wound with a blunt instrument. Tears flooded his eyes and he threw his head back, grinding his teeth against the urge to scream.

  When the pain subsided enough he looked back at his wound. The orange crystal hung just over it now, the light from it pulsing in rhythmic bursts. His chest was even more distended than before. It gave a tremendous jerk and suddenly John saw a lump of smoky crystal emerge. Immediately the brass fingers clamped down, grabbing the slug and pulling it away from the gaping wound. Blood flowed freely now and John could feel himself getting lightheaded.

  Something stung him and he saw a second metal rod sticking into his forearm trailing a tube of amber liquid. More arms emerged from the brass lid, each with a different tool. Some had short, straight blades on their ends, other needles with spools of thread, still others with barbs attached to tubing with strange colored liquids in them. One of the barbs lashed out, striking like a scorpion into John’s neck.

  His vision began to fade, but before he lost consciousness, he watched in horror as the metal arms began to spin and dance, tearing into his wounded chest like
a ring of rattlesnakes, striking and retreating only to strike again. A terrible keening wail filled his ears, the sound of a crystal engine at work, mixing with the unmistakable sounds of his own screaming.

  He looked up, locking eyes with the face outside the little window. He tried to cry for help, for an end to his suffering, but his strength had left him and he drifted away again into darkness.

  O O O

  “Is he dead?” a strange voice asked from what seemed a great distance.

  “’Course not,” a western accent replied. “The Rectification Chamber’s done its work. Now you just let the boy heal up for a few days and he’ll be good as new.”

  John managed to open one eye and an unfamiliar room swam lazily into his vision. It was round and white with a large brass box, like a coffin in the middle. At each end a nest of metal arms stood still and unmoving and a control crown hung from a stud protruding from the box’s side.

  “That’s too long,” the first voice said. “He didn’t do this on his own. I want to know who his partner was.”

  “Probably the same one that shot him,” mustache mused.

  “There’s no helping it,” accent said. “If you wake him up now, you’ll kill him for sure.”

  The voices went on talking but John could no longer understand what they were saying. A face drifted through his memory. The tattooed face of a young woman with a smoking pistol.

  Get up.

  Nothing.

  Get up and find her.

  Every minute he lay there she got farther away with his mother’s crystal. He had to find her. He had to get up, he just couldn’t remember how.

  O O O

  He was aware of being carried, then of lying on a bed with a thick blanket over him. There were people too, like ethereal ghosts, drifting in and out of his consciousness. Mustache and the stranger were there, along with other voices he didn’t know. Sometimes he would hear the voice of the woman with the gun and see her beautiful features twisted into a satisfied smile as she shot him. In the end, John couldn’t be sure what was dream and what was real.

  When he finally managed to force his eyes open, he found himself in a snug room with well-worn furniture and yellow-and-white striped wallpaper. Muffled and incoherent sounds of music and conversation seeped up through the floor, accompanied by the fragrant aroma of pipe tobacco.

  A soft ticking noise drew John’s eye to the wall near the bed. A large glimmering bug sat there, as big around as a silver dollar. Beneath its colorful carapace of brass washers, a watch gear clicked as it turned above black legs made of wire.

  John hated scraproaches. The little insect-like creatures originally came from the blasted lands of Maryland and Pennsylvania, out of the destruction wrought by Franklin’s Doomsday device. Ten thousand Britannic dreadnoughts set to march on the beleaguered Colonials were obliterated in a single instant of unimaginable devastation. The energies released by Franklin’s device imbued the dreadnought fragments with a crude kind of life. Everywhere in the Alliance one could find washers, gears, escapements, springs, and bits of random metal and wire scrabbling along walls or baseboards looking for new parts to add to themselves.

  They gave John the creeps.

  He tried to smash the metal insect back into its component parts, but his body wouldn’t obey his commands. He tried to sit up, but that didn’t work either. A cold fear crept into his brain. He’d been shot in the chest. He should be dead. What if he’d been saved but left a cripple?

  John pushed away the rogue thought as soon as it came. There simply wasn’t time for him to be crippled. He had to get his crystal back. Every moment he lay here in bed the beautiful woman with the homicidal tendencies got farther away. If John didn’t get on her trail soon he might lose his only connection to his mother forever.

  Gritting his teeth, he focused all his will on moving his arm. Slowly, almost grudgingly, his hand rose up and pulled the bedcovers down. His chest beneath was bare and John stared in wonder at the criss-crossing lines of stitches forming an X in the center of his chest. It seemed insufficient to close such a terrible wound; yet even now he could see the edges turning pink, fresh with healed skin.

  The rattling of a doorknob drew John’s attention to the room’s single door and he looked up just in time to see it open. Framed in the space beyond stood a broad, blocky man with square shoulders and a chiseled jaw. The man’s eyes were pale blue, like ice on fire, and John had the uncomfortable feeling that they could see right through him.

  “Oh, good,” the man said, stepping into the room. “You’re awake.”

  As he turned and shut the door behind him, John could see the polished hilt of a flux pistol jutting out from under the long, leather duster he wore. The man fastened the door and turned back to John. His bushy salt-and-pepper mustache turned up in a smile. John remembered the mustache.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Weak,” John said, his throat rasping.

  The man took off his fancy coat and hung it on a peg in the wall. The coat was dyed purple and embellished with an elaborate, embroidered symbol in the center of the back, a sword pointing upward over a gear. Decorative brass plates were attached on the shoulders and forearms of the coat. The brass was dull and the embroidery faded with wear, but the coat was clean and recently brushed. Beneath the garment, he wore a sturdy, loose-fitting white shirt, black trousers, and purple waistcoat that matched his duster. A short sword hung from the left side of the leather gun belt that encircled his slim waist. On the right, the belt held the long flux pistol he had seen earlier high on his hip, cavalry style.

  The sight of the sword made John nervous. It was broad-bladed with a well-worn handle and its crosspiece was round, shaped like a gear. He recognized it now; it was the symbol of the Enforcer Corps, the Alliance’s top lawmen. Enforcers were rumored to be efficient, tenacious, dangerous, and extremely deadly—exactly the kind of men decent folk wanted no part of.

  The Enforcer crossed to a side table where a pitcher of water stood beside a tin cup and several brown glass bottles. He poured some water into the cup, then added a few drops of dark liquid from one of the bottles.

  “Drink this, slowly,” he instructed, offering the cup to John.

  “What is it?”

  “Something to help you get your strength back,” he said with an easy smile. Despite the intensity of his gaze, the smile felt genuine and reassuring.

  John tipped the cup back, draining it quickly. A strong, bitter taste coated his tongue and lingered there long after he’d drained the cup. The stranger refilled the cup with water twice before John’s thirst was quenched.

  “Better?” the stranger asked.

  John nodded, still not trusting his throat.

  “Why am I alive?” he said at last.

  The enforcer pulled a small bottle from his pocket and handed it to John. A brightly printed label depicted a black cross over a field of red.

  Doc Terminus’ Emergency Stabilizer, John read. Guaranteed to retard the death process resulting from poison, impalement, serious injury, knife or gunshot wounds. Seek immediate medical attention after use. WARNING: Do not administer a second bottle of Emergency Stabilizer under any circumstances. Death will occur immediately.

  “I always carry some, along with Doc Terminus’ All Purpose Tissue Regenerator,” the enforcer said.

  “The machine,” John said, handing the bottle back to the enforcer. “What was it?”

  “You mean Doc Terminus’ Rectification Chamber,” he said. “You’re very lucky the Doc was here in town. If I’d had to take you out to his surgery, you’d have died for sure. As it was, you died on the table. Twice. Doc revived you, but we didn’t know if you would make it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did I save you?”

  John nodded. The enforcer picked up a chair from the table, moved it beside the bed, and sat down.

  “My name’s Hickok,” he said sticking out a rough, callused hand. “Bill Hickok.”


  John shook it tentatively. Something about the name sounded familiar.

  “John Porter,” he introduced himself.

  “Well, John, I’m not the kind of man to beat around the bush, so I’ll come straight to it. In about ten minutes, the sheriff is going take notice that I’ve been gone too long and come up here. When that happens, he’s going to arrest you.”

  “Why?” John said, trying to give himself time to think. There was no way Hickok or the sheriff could know about his experiment, it simply wasn’t possible. Yet the woman had known, hadn’t she? Somehow she had known.

  Hickok watched him closely and John had the uncomfortable feeling that he could hear the thoughts turning in his head.

  “That was quite the trick,” Hickok said. “Doctor Shultz assured me that there’s no way that handler box you used could have affected Tommys all the way out at the mine.”

  “If it’s not possible, what makes you think I did it?”

  Hickok smiled. His face seemed open and honest as if he liked John and wanted to help him.

  “It’s no use denying it,” he said. “Shultz’ lab is dead center, right in the middle of the disturbance. Not to mention those burned out crystals in the handler box. Doctor Shultz said it would take a lot of power to do that. And then, there’s the matter of the missing resonator—you know, the crystal that goes right in the center. We couldn’t find the one you used anywhere.”

  John tried to keep his expression blank. So far, Hickok was just guessing, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t enough to arrest him on. Still, he could feel pinpricks of nervous fear running up and down his back.

  “So,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “I figure you had a partner and when things went bad, he took the crystal. You objected and he shot you.”

  He paused, regarding John with his penetrating gaze.

  “So, how am I doing?” he said with an easy smile.

  “I’d have to be some kind of Architect to do any of that,” John said. Architects were mad geniuses, men and women capable of inventing new crystals and building fantastic machines. There hadn’t been a bona-fide Architect since Ben Franklin died. Hickok shrugged and sat back in his chair.