Read Online The Impossible Cube: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire by Steven Harper - Free Book Online Page B

letting anyone know where the ship is hidden. And don’t forget about the jar. Alice, you find a supply of paraffin oil and bargain hard.”
    “What are you going to do?” Alice asked.
    “Earn money. Back away.” He whipped out his fiddle, sprinkled a few coins into the case on the ground before him, and began to play. The merry music on the crowded corner attracted attention fairly quickly, and even as Alice watched, a few people tossed coins of their own into Gavin’s case. He winked his thanks atthem and continued the song. Alice let the golden song wash over her. Though the violin was playing to the crowd, the musician was playing for her. He smiled at her, and her breath caught.
    Feng plucked at her elbow. “We have much to do.”
    She reluctantly let him lead her away. A few moments later, he dodged down a less crowded side street and opened his rucksack. “We should do this first.”
    “Oh!” she said. “A good idea.”
    From the rucksack Feng took a largish jar, the sort that might store pickles. It held a bunch of grass and twigs and bits of food. Amid all this swarmed a large number of little fireflies. They winked green in the shady side street and cast odd shadows into the corners.
    “They seem to be reproducing,” Alice observed. “That’s good. Let me.”
    She took the jar from Feng and carefully opened the lid just enough to allow perhaps a dozen of them to escape and fly off before she clapped the jar shut again. For a moment, she was back in London, in Hyde Park. Aunt Edwina’s shriveled corpse had just collapsed to the ground and the cloud of fireflies was pouring out. Gavin swept the jar through the cloud, capturing a number of them, while the rest descended upon London to sting and bite. Each firefly carried a tiny organism—a virion, Aunt Edwina had called it—that attacked and destroyed the bacillus that caused the clockwork plague. Eventually the hardy little fireflies would spread throughout the world and cure or inoculate the entire human population, but it would happen faster with help.
    One of the fireflies landed on Alice’s neck and bit her. Normal fireflies didn’t bite, of course, but these were different. She only just stopped herself from slapping, allowing it to fly off instead while Feng shoved the precious jar back into his pack. “Now, let us see what we can find for food and oil,” he said, sounding more like his old self. “And perhaps female company.”
    “Feng,” Alice warned.
    “Male, then.”
    “Feng!”
    He pulled down his scarf and grinned rakishly at her from beneath the goggles. It wasn’t an expression Alice associated with Orientals. “That was a joke. Maybe.”
    “Let’s just do our—” Alice cut herself off. In an alley nearby, a shadow shifted with a small groan, and two figures shuffled into view. They were both male, and dressed in rags. Blood and pus oozed from a dozen sores on their hands and faces. In several places, skin had split, revealing red muscle. Their bodies were thin, almost emaciated, and they smelled of rotting meat. One of them reached toward Alice and Feng, but flinched from even the indirect sunlight afforded by the side street.
    Feng drew back with a hiss. “Plague zombies.”
    But Alice was already moving. She strode forward, stripping off her left glove. One of the zombies had enough brain function left to look a little surprised. Most people shunned or fled plague zombies—anyone who touched one was at risk for coming down with the clockwork plague and joining their ranks, steadily losing brain and body function until they dropped dead.Only one in a hundred thousand victims became clockworkers, and no one wanted that, either. Plague zombies lived as pariahs, turned out and spurned even by family. They usually survived by scavenging garbage in the streets. Most of them starved to death before the plague finished them, and their corpses rotted in alleys and sewers because police and other city workers refused to touch