Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium Part 2

"The pleasure is mine."

A pistol barrel hovered several inches from the reflection of her tanned nose.

It was held by a one-eyed thug who had to hunch over to fit inside the upstairs quarters. He and his companion had emerged from behind a bookcase; both were built from a wide variety of large-bodied ruffians and animals-in fact, the st.i.tches still looked quite fresh. The one with the gun had been cobbled together from parts of an ape, and wore a tiny red fez on his head. The other one had a wide-brimmed hat and the head of a jawless jackal, his tongue dangling out from the base of his muzzle. They were dressed in very sharp and high-cla.s.s suits; a pair of metal bolts jutted from the sides of their necks.

But the one who spoke was directly behind them-he was a gentleman in an expensive cream-colored vest, charcoal black dress coat, and matching top hat. His eyes could quiet jovial laughter with but a glance, and his muttonchops were thick enough to qualify as tusks.

"Oh Lord," Snips said, staring at the pistol with her eyes crossed. "Is it Tuesday already?"

The bearded man presented a most unpleasant smile. "My name is Charles Peabody. The gentleman with the pistol-I apologize for the implicit threat-is Mr. Cheek. His companion is Mr. Tongue."

"Pleasure to meet you," Snips tipped her hat up with the rim of the beaker.

Mr. Cheek grunted. Mr. Tongue gurgled.

"You don't say," Snips replied.

"Now that we have completed the pleasantries," Mr. Peabody said, stepping forward. "My employer wishes to speak with you."

"Is this about the duck?" Snips asked.

Peabody tilted his head. "Duck?"

"Duck? Did I say duck? I didn't mention any duck," Snips said. "Why do you keep bringing up ducks?"

Mr. Peabody scowled. "Enough of this. Miss Snips."

"Hey," Snips said, turning to Mr. Cheek. "Did you know that rotgut can cause blindness?"

Mr. Cheek blinked his eye. "Eh?"

"Oh, yeah. Especially when applied directly."

In one smooth motion, Snips slapped the pistol to the side and threw the contents of the beaker into his face. Mr. Cheek roared, dropped the gun, and ground a pair of meaty mismatched fists into his eye sockets. Snips hurled the gla.s.s at Mr. Peabody and sprang out the back window.

Peabody swatted the gla.s.s aside, cursing. "Get her!"

Snips slapped her palms against the next building's wall, pushing herself off and diving into a roll that left her crouched in the alley. She flew to her feet and ran down the narrow street, heading for the heart of Dead Beat Alley.

As Snips moved, she unraveled a length of twine from her leftmost pocket and looped it over her hat, tying it down. "Soar," she whispered.

And then she sprang into the chaos of the Rookery.

The front door to her apartment exploded from the inside.

Mr. Cheek emerged with his fists swinging like sledgehammers, his eye as red as an overripe strawberry. The wolfish Mr. Tongue soon followed. He threw his head back and sniffed at the air, then dragged Mr. Cheek on after Snips' scent. Mr. Peabody soon ran out behind them, disappearing down the street.

With a twist of her shoulders, Snips flowed through the crowd like a pebble through a stream; she sprang over the head of a thieving ragam.u.f.fin (busy picking the pocket of a plump fruit-mongerer) and brought her hands down on the shoulders of the victim, shoving hard and vaulting herself to a windowsill. As her feet met the mantle, she kicked back and landed on the roof of the clockwork puppet show. Below her, its hook-nosed mascot had moved on to beating a policeman until the officer's head popped off with a comical boing, spurring the audience to applause.

"That's the way you do it!"

Mr. Cheek hit the morning crowd like a rolling boulder smashing into a heap of Christmas pudding. People rolled out of his path, desperately sweeping aside as he swatted away anyone dim enough to stand still. His eye was starting to clear up, and locked on Snips-who even now was leaping from the puppet show to the leg-joint of the pa.s.sing mechanical spider, swinging up and clambering into the gondola.

"Stop!" Mr. Cheek roared, stepping straight into the giant machine's path. "Halt!"

The spider's vents hissed as the vehicle ambled forward, its foot nearly squashing Mr. Cheek flat. The thug cursed and jumped back just as its leg slammed into the ground. Inside the gondola, engineers were yelling and waving their tools at Snips, who was now on top of the furnace that powered the device-watching the balcony of an approaching apartment.

In the meantime, Mr. Tongue had managed to hug one of the mechanical spider's back legs and was slowly inching his way up towards the first joint with each step it took. Mr. Cheek followed the machine, batting people out of his way and engaging in a shouting match with the engineers above.

Snips counted the feet between her and the balcony. Sixteen feet, fifteen, fourteen...

"Stop the machine!" Mr. Cheek roared.

Thirteen.

The spider came to a lurching halt; Snips leapt.

Her belly and knees smacked across the wall-but her fingers brushed up against the balcony's rim. Curling her hands into tight fists, she pulled herself up.

A small group of spectators had been drawn away from the puppet show by Snips' antics, and were now cheering the thief on.

Snips dragged herself up to the railing and perched on it like a cat on a fence; she threw a grinning shrug at the crowd and turned to the door.

Charles Peabody stepped out from the doorway, pistol in hand.

"An excellent display of your craft, Miss Snips. But ultimately futile. Now, if you will come with me-"

Snips sprang back on the railing, landing in a crouch.

Peabody sighed. "Really, Miss Snips. Now you're just being childish."

She looked over her shoulder; the mechanical spider was lumbering out of reach. But one of the airship vendors had been coaxed over by the cheering, and was swinging in for a closer look.

Mr. Peabody followed her eyes. His disapproving stare melted into an outright scowl. "Don't be an idiot."

It was too high for her to reach, but one of the anchor cords was dangling low. It was fourteen, maybe fifteen feet away. If she could get the right angle, maybe she could grab it.

"Miss Snips. Please." Mr. Peabody now sounded frustrated.

"If you cooperate, I a.s.sure you that no harm will come-"

That clinched it. Snips gave him a silver-toothed grin. And then, with every last bit of force she could muster, she turned and leapt over the heads of the people below, reaching for the dangling strip of hemp.

She almost made it.

CHAPTER 4: IN WHICH WE MEET THE SCION OF THE DAFFODIL LEGACY, LEARN THE TRUTH CONCERNING NEGATONS, AND DISCOVER JUST WHO IT IS WHO ENSURES THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME.

William Daffodil resembled what you would get if you dressed up a scarecrow and taught it to act polite; he wore his clothes as if they were an ill-fitting burden. Though he was very quick on his toes, the young mathematician had the sneaking suspicion that one day he'd visit Napsbury Asylum only to discover that they weren't going to let him leave.

The inst.i.tution remained one of the few mental health facilities that actually had a success record. This was credited in large part to the ground-breaking theories of its founder, Louis Napsbury. One of these theories centered around the existence of invisible, soundless, and scentless clouds of evil impulses known as 'Negatons'. Having studied the Negaton menace for quite some time, Napsbury perfected his three step program to their complete annihilation. This program included: 1) A healthy diet of fruits, vegetables, and meats. There was very little a Negaton disliked more than a well-fed victim.

2) Regular exercise. Negatons, Napsbury explained, absolutely hated exercise. It was like nails on chalkboard to them.

3) Most important of all, routine salt baths. Negatons loathed salt baths with every last unseeable molecule in their being, and would run screaming (silently) into the night at the first whiff of salt in water.

As none of these steps were any more invasive than a hot meal followed by a dip into a sodium enriched tub, the asylum had a certain appeal for William. He had much preferred their crazy-talk to the crazy-talk of the places that wanted to drill holes in his grandmother's skull and see what would happen.

William arrived in the lobby of the criminally insane wing; here, male and female patients were occasionally allowed to mingle under the watchful eye of several thick-shouldered orderlies. The room had the look of a sterilized prison; furniture had been stripped of everything that could feasibly be used as a weapon or fashioned into some manner of doomsday machine, leaving everything with a look of spa.r.s.e functionality.

Sitting in one of the chairs was one of his grandmother's fellow patients, Mr. Brown. His obscenely thick spectacles and long flaring eyebrows gave him the appearance of a very confused owl. When William saw him, he immediately stepped back in expectation of the worst.

"I seem to have invented something by accident again," Mr. Brown said, looking rather dejected. He glanced down at the large and innocuous bra.s.s box that sat on the table in front of him. On top of it was a bright cherry-red b.u.t.ton with a note scrawled in grease-pen above it: PUSH ME. "I'm not quite sure what it does."

"I understand, sir," William said, although the young mathematician certainly did not. He looked about for one of the asylum's orderlies, but could find none in sight. "Have you considered trying to disa.s.semble it?"

"Oh, yes, I could do that," Mr. Brown agreed. "That's a very good idea."

"Definitely."

"...unless I thought of that while I was building it, and equipped it with some manner of trap."

William gave Mr. Brown a blank look. It was quite a bit of time before he could properly enunciate his reaction: "What?"

"I've been fairly depressed lately," Mr. Brown reasoned in a surprisingly affable tone. "I think that my subconscious might be trying to kill me."

William blinked. He had not come prepared for this level of madness. "I-I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Well, you see, it's all quite simple. My therapist explained it to me in detail," Mr. Brown said. "Apparently, I have a deep and desperate need to do unspeakable things to my mother, while simultaneously hating my father. And thusly, I subconsciously hate myself." He sighed, shaking his head. "What a ghastly affair."

"Oh, Mr. Brown, do stop trying to scare the poor boy,"

Gertrude Daffodil said, rolling in behind William on her wheelchair. William's grandmother had a short curly mop of iron-gray hair and a quilt that seemed to miraculously manifest in her lap regardless of where she was or what she was doing. She glared at Mr. Brown as she took her place besides William.

"I'll probably just put it with the others," Mr. Brown said.

"Come on, William. Take me for a walk, would you?"

William was happy to do just that; he pushed his grandmother out of the lobby and into the hallway. As they walked, he began telling her all about what was happening at the Steamwork and the big important project he was now working on.

"That's all very nice William," Mrs. Daffodil agreed. "I've been working on sewing myself, you know. I even st.i.tched you a little something in my last cla.s.s." She reached beneath her quilt, withdrawing a lump of misshapen twine. William took it, trying to reason out what it was for. It had three sleeves and two necks.

"It's, erm, very lovely," William said, placing it across the back of her chair. "I'll try it on when I get home, most certainly."

"Wouldn't you wear it next time you come? I'd love to see how it looks on you."

"I, uh, of course," William said. He quickly aimed to change the subject. "I'm glad to see you're trying to distract yourself from your, uh, condition."

"I wish you wouldn't call it a 'condition'," she replied, crinkling her eyebrows together in consternation. "What I have is a gift, William. Your grandfather had it, along with your father. You have it, too."

William sighed. He had been through this before, and wasn't interested in renewing the argument. "I'd rather just stick to maths, you know. Much safer."

"But much less interesting!"

"Well, it depends on your perspective. Mathematics can get quite dangerous, you know. Why, just the other day, while calculating a polynomial, I almost stabbed myself with a pencil!"

Mrs. Daffodil looked back up at William.

William smiled sheepishly: "Uh, you know. Lead poisoning."

"Right," she said. "But come now. When was the last time someone was horribly maimed by Pi?"

"You might be surprised." William's voice dropped off.

"Grandmother, what is this?"

"Eh? Oh," she said, following William's eyes down to the base of her seat. A crude battery produced from inserting two metal strips into a potato was stashed away under her chair. It even had a small gauge jammed into the side of it, apparently to measure power output. "That's just, you know. Something to keep me busy."

"I thought we talked about this," William said, trying to sound as stern as he could manage. "None of this nonsense. It's why they won't let me take you home."

"It's just a potato," Mrs. Daffodil said with a disdainful sniff.

"Oh, yes, just a potato," William agreed, frowning. "It always starts small, doesn't it? Today, just a potato, tomorrow, a lemon. And then before you know it you're riding an armored dirigible and threatening to disintegrate half the city with your death-ray- again. "

"Well, I asked you what you wanted for your birthday, and you said you wished that awful boarding school you attended would burn down," Mrs. Daffodil responded huffily. "Don't blame me for wanting to spoil my only grandchild."

"I was fourteen years old! Grandmother, please. This is the sort of thing that's made it so hard for me to get an ordinary job.

Everyone hears my last name and they instantly think, 'oh no, we can't hire him, he'll likely wall himself up in his office and emerge a week later in a steam-powered suit made from spare paperclips'."

"Well, it would be nice if you showed some interest in the family tradition, you know," Mrs. Daffodil said. "Just a little bit. I mean, after all, you owe your life to it!" She reached up, tapping right above his heart with meaningful ire.

William gently pushed her hand aside. "I'm a mathematician, grandmother, not a mad scientist. Why can't you just accept that?"

Mrs. Daffodil sighed. "I can, I can. It's just that I sometimes get the feeling that you're fighting who you really are, William."

William shook his head. "I have to go. There's a lot of work to do at the Steamwork; Mr. Eddington wants me to finish inputting the new figures into the engine later this evening. I need to get a head start on the final touches."