“Now hold on a sodding minute, Jenny,” protested Looks Away. “Don’t lay this on me because I’m trying to respect the privacy of a good and decent man. And moreover, this isn’t about me being British. I’m a Sioux—.”
“—and the Sioux took back their nation, didn’t they? Or are those the American Sioux? The ones who still have their balls?”
Grey winced.
Looks Away turned livid. “Fine! You want me to commit larceny? Absolutely. Follow me, you daft cow.”
The Sioux spun on his heel and stalked angrily toward a large shuttered barn on the edge of town.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Jenny let her stern face melt away to be replaced by a bright but devious smile. “Good. That was even easier than I thought.”
She set off in Looks Away’s wake.
Grey lingered a moment longer. Then, grinning, he followed.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Grey caught up to Jenny as she caught up to Looks Away. The Sioux was fitting a strange and elaborate key into the lock of the barn. There were signs nailed above the doors and along the signs:
PRIVATE PROPERTY
DANGER
KEEP OUT
Bolts of blue lightning radiated out from the letters. Eloquent, thought Grey sourly.
“Open it,” urged Jenny.
“I am opening it,” snapped Looks Away. “Give me a bleeding minute.”
The lock clicked and Jenny pushed Looks Away aside and went into the darkened building. Grey paused and leaned close to the Sioux.
“Is she always like this?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” said Looks Away, “sometimes she’s pushy and abrasive. You caught her on one of her good days.”
“Ye gods,” murmured Grey as he followed her in.
Looks Away scraped a match on the sole of his shoe and lit four oil lamps, dialing up the flames so that a great mass of yellow light filled the room.
The barn was not a barn. It had once served that purpose, but builders had been hard at work converting the interior of the big structure into something else entirely. There was a large central space in which several wagons of different size were stored and strange equipment was positioned in the beds of each. The equipment was so arcane in design that Grey could not even hazard a guess as to what purpose it might serve. Around this, a series of small rooms had been built, each of them closed and secured with heavy padlocks on steel hasps. One door stood ajar and Grey could see a simple workbench beyond, covered with dozens of finely-made tools.
Overhead, hung from the beams, were strange devices that looked like suits of armor from the days of King Arthur, but these were mostly made from woven materials unknown to Grey. Many had bulbous metal heads with wire-mesh grilles over glass faceplates. And against one wall was a mass of drilling and mining equipment. Wheelbarrows were piled high with pick-axes, shovels, sledgehammers, and coils of leather hose.
Jenny stood gaping at it all, her lips parted. She turned in a slow circle like a child at the circus.
“What is all this stuff? I thought Doctor Saint was working on weapons.”
“He’s working on quite a lot of different things,” said Looks Away, then he gave an officious sniff. “Percival Saint is a great man, you know. He is an important man. He will be remembered long after we three are dust.”
“Sure,” said Jenny. “Good for him. Where are the weapons?”
“Please understand, Doctor Saint is not primarily concerned with destroying things. Most of his work is intended for the betterment of mankind and—.”
Jenny gave him a sparkling smile that went less than a millimeter deep. “I don’t care if he can cure the common cold or turn chicken shit into gold. We need weapons.”
“How eloquently you put it.”
“Children,” said Grey mildly, “don’t make me cut a switch on both of you.”
For that joke he received identical lethal stares that he was certain burned two full years off his life. He held up his hands and retreated.
“My point,” said Looks Away with asperity, “is that not only don’t we understand the nature and dangers of most of this equipment, but we also run the risk of destroying crucial experimentation that could in very real point of fact benefit all of humanity. There is, after all, a world beyond Paradise Falls.”
Jenny jabbed him in the chest with a stiffened finger, emphasizing each word. “I. Don’t. Care.”
“Well, I bloody well do.”
The ensuing argument slid down the side of a privy slope and soon the two of them were slinging words that made even Grey flinch and flush.
He tried not to listen — though he was mildly impressed that Jenny Pearl seemed to have the greater vocabulary when it came to descriptions of disgusting liaisons with livestock and mishaps of the water closet. Looks Away was losing ground very quickly and clearly hadn’t brought the right bullets to this gunfight.
Grey wandered over to the mining equipment, bent over to examine the tools, and selected a straight-pane sledgehammer with a twelve-pound steel head. He nodded to himself, hefted it, found the balance point, walked over to the first locked door, and while the argument raged behind him, raised the sledge and brought it down with a savage grunt.
The padlock was undamaged but the hasp was torn from the wood with twin shrieks of protesting metal and timber. Splinters flew and the heavy padlock dropped, bounced once, and skidded to a stop by Looks Away’s foot.
The argument stopped as surely as if he’d backhanded them both — which, in truth, he had considered — and they turned on him like scalded snakes.
“Enough!” he barked before they could open up on him. “Enough talk. Enough bullshit. It’s been too long a night and I’m too exhausted to listen to you two squabble like cats. Looks Away, I’m sorry that we might be breaking Doctor Saint’s rules, and I’m almost sorry that we may mess with some of his inventions. But there are people dying in this town, and as far as I see it that trumps everything. And don’t even try to give me a speech about posterity or benefiting the future of humanity. It may be true but we don’t have the luxury to care about it.”
Looks Away opened his mouth, but Grey turned to Jenny.
“I don’t know you very well, ma’am, but I know you well enough to know that sometimes your mouth gets ahead of your horse sense. Whatever. Stop it. We don’t have time for that either.”
He brandished the sledgehammer.
“I’m going to knock every damn one of these locks off. That’s not an option and it’s not a discussion. It’s what is going to happen. Looks Away, I want you to go through every room and find whatever you can to help us. Jenny, you’re going to help him.”
“Who,” asked Looks Away coldly, “the bloody hell put you in charge?”
Grey raised the sledgehammer and brought it whistling down so that it smashed a hole in the floor between Looks Away and Jenny. They both cried out and jumped backward.
“I did,” said Grey into the silence. “Now let’s get to work.”
They got to work.
Grey was so deeply exhausted that every time he swung the sledge he felt ten years older. He kept at it, though, and after only a small hesitation — perhaps for good form’s sake — Looks Away began invading the rooms as they were opened.
By the time Grey had smashed all eighteen of the locks off, he was sweating and trembling. Jenny had run outside and returned with a bucket of cold well water, and she handed a full ladle to Grey.