Read Online Brass and Bone by Cynthia Gael - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Cynthia Gael
Tags: Fantasy
Ads: Link
mechanical. All that I leave to Abigail. My talents are elsewhere.
Off to one side of the hanging mass several men sat, using bales of hay as a table and with sheets of paper spread out before them, murmuring among themselves. But I could not see Abigail, which surprised me. Ordinarily, in matters of this sort, she would be in the middle of things, covered in grease and reeking of oil, happy as a clam.
“Your pardon,” I said to the murmuring men, “but can you tell me where Lady Abigail might be?”
“Simon, you old slacker,” came the most familiar voice I know. “Finally decide to crawl out of bed, did you?”
Since by my pocket watch it lacked several minutes of seven in the morning, I did not deign to reply. Instead, I tried to find where her voice was coming from. With Abigail, one never knows. I once discovered her in the bottom of one of those massive holes near Baker Street where they’re putting in the underground trains; she was having tea with a pair of Irish navvies.
But this time I could not see her, though her usual tuneless humming echoed throughout the barn. She was happy, I could tell by the humming, but she was invisible.
Finally, I could stand it no longer. “Abigail, where in the name of all that’s holy are you?”
A sort of trembling went through the mass of sticky, greasy metal hanging from its half-dozen straps, each quite as wide as my waist. Then a hatch popped open at the very bottom and swung free. An instant later a face appeared in the hatchway, upside down, covered in filth, dripping with sweat, and grinning with the kind of joy I, for one, only feel when contemplating a new waistcoat.
“Abigail, what are you doing inside that…that…thing?” I asked in some concern as I hurried over. “Get out at once, do you hear me?”
Of course, she did not get out; she simply laughed and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box wound in reverse. Her disembodied voice boomed from inside the thing: “Never fear, Simon old thing. Eli has sent me some rather tasty new additions to Grandpapa’s engines. I’m just installing them with Herr Tesla’s assistance.”
“Wait a minute!” I called, looking for something to bang on the thing with—I was not going to dirty my hands unless it was a matter of life and death. “There’s another person in there with you?”
“Two others, actually, sir,” said one of the gentlemen who was previously at the hay-bale table. He’d appeared beside me, a small grey metal device about the dimensions of a cigar box in one hand. He took a spanner from his overall pocket and tapped on the side of the engine.
The hatch reopened, and Abigail’s oddly inverted face reappeared. “Ah, the power source. Thank you, Smithers.” She grabbed the device, disappeared, and I could hear more sounds inside. I shall not describe them; a lady may be reading this.
Finally, the hatch opened a third time. Abigail slithered out in the boneless way she has. She wiped her filthy hands on her filthier coverall and nodded at me, her grin still firmly in place. “You will be delighted to know,” she began to me, and I prepared myself for a lecture, “that Sir Eli has provided us with an experimental and quite amazing new power source. Oh, never fear. It is quite safe, and we’ll still carry coal for the boilers in case of emergencies. But if it works as Herr Tesla assures me it will, we shan’t have to stop for refueling nearly so often. And our speed, Simon! Our speed!”
Then she went off into one of those mathematical fugue states I cannot imagine ever being able to comprehend, something about trajectories and azimuths and, for all I knew, processions of the equinox—or is it Esquimaux? Still, I nodded and looked as if I understood until she ran down at last.
In the meantime, her two companions inside the engine had also clambered out, neither of them with near her grace, and stood conferring with the one who’d handed in the grey box. Herr Tesla, his hair
Off to one side of the hanging mass several men sat, using bales of hay as a table and with sheets of paper spread out before them, murmuring among themselves. But I could not see Abigail, which surprised me. Ordinarily, in matters of this sort, she would be in the middle of things, covered in grease and reeking of oil, happy as a clam.
“Your pardon,” I said to the murmuring men, “but can you tell me where Lady Abigail might be?”
“Simon, you old slacker,” came the most familiar voice I know. “Finally decide to crawl out of bed, did you?”
Since by my pocket watch it lacked several minutes of seven in the morning, I did not deign to reply. Instead, I tried to find where her voice was coming from. With Abigail, one never knows. I once discovered her in the bottom of one of those massive holes near Baker Street where they’re putting in the underground trains; she was having tea with a pair of Irish navvies.
But this time I could not see her, though her usual tuneless humming echoed throughout the barn. She was happy, I could tell by the humming, but she was invisible.
Finally, I could stand it no longer. “Abigail, where in the name of all that’s holy are you?”
A sort of trembling went through the mass of sticky, greasy metal hanging from its half-dozen straps, each quite as wide as my waist. Then a hatch popped open at the very bottom and swung free. An instant later a face appeared in the hatchway, upside down, covered in filth, dripping with sweat, and grinning with the kind of joy I, for one, only feel when contemplating a new waistcoat.
“Abigail, what are you doing inside that…that…thing?” I asked in some concern as I hurried over. “Get out at once, do you hear me?”
Of course, she did not get out; she simply laughed and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box wound in reverse. Her disembodied voice boomed from inside the thing: “Never fear, Simon old thing. Eli has sent me some rather tasty new additions to Grandpapa’s engines. I’m just installing them with Herr Tesla’s assistance.”
“Wait a minute!” I called, looking for something to bang on the thing with—I was not going to dirty my hands unless it was a matter of life and death. “There’s another person in there with you?”
“Two others, actually, sir,” said one of the gentlemen who was previously at the hay-bale table. He’d appeared beside me, a small grey metal device about the dimensions of a cigar box in one hand. He took a spanner from his overall pocket and tapped on the side of the engine.
The hatch reopened, and Abigail’s oddly inverted face reappeared. “Ah, the power source. Thank you, Smithers.” She grabbed the device, disappeared, and I could hear more sounds inside. I shall not describe them; a lady may be reading this.
Finally, the hatch opened a third time. Abigail slithered out in the boneless way she has. She wiped her filthy hands on her filthier coverall and nodded at me, her grin still firmly in place. “You will be delighted to know,” she began to me, and I prepared myself for a lecture, “that Sir Eli has provided us with an experimental and quite amazing new power source. Oh, never fear. It is quite safe, and we’ll still carry coal for the boilers in case of emergencies. But if it works as Herr Tesla assures me it will, we shan’t have to stop for refueling nearly so often. And our speed, Simon! Our speed!”
Then she went off into one of those mathematical fugue states I cannot imagine ever being able to comprehend, something about trajectories and azimuths and, for all I knew, processions of the equinox—or is it Esquimaux? Still, I nodded and looked as if I understood until she ran down at last.
In the meantime, her two companions inside the engine had also clambered out, neither of them with near her grace, and stood conferring with the one who’d handed in the grey box. Herr Tesla, his hair
Similar Books
