“Thank you, darling,” Alice said with satisfaction. “And now. .”
With a magician’s flourish she opened the box. Everyone crowded around to look. The phosphorescent light gleamed off a pile of jewels.
Lady Orchid gasped and pulled the box to her. “My jewels! Where did they come from?”
“That may be difficult to explain.” Gavin cleared his throat. “For a while, the Third Ward housed a clockworker named Viktor von Rasmussen. He discovered that there are different universes that exist side by side with this one. We can’t see or hear them, but they still exist. Dr. Rasmussen even found a way to bring different versions of himself from those universes into this one.”
Phipps shuddered at this. “Took forever to persuade him to send them back.” she said. “Caused no end of trouble, and a long line at the privy,”
“This box was created somehow like the Impossible Cube,” Gavin said. “It bends time and space around itself and creates. . a gate into other universes. Though I don’t understand how it works without a power source.”
“Anything you put into the box doesn’t actually exist in our universe anymore,” Alice put in. “When you set it to oh-one-eight, anything you put inside goes into a. . a piece of universe number eighteen, for want of a better way to put it. Change the lock to another number, and you’re looking into a different universe. You have a thousand universes to choose from-more than that, if you count the half spins and quarter spins that seem to affect the box as well.”
Gavin rose and said vaguely, “I’ll be right back.” And he went below.
“I am not worthy to understand,” Li said with a shake of his head. “This is very confusing.”
“Let me demonstrate.” Alice picked up Click and dropped him into the box. He yowled with surprise and disappeared inside, even though he was a bit larger than the box and the box was already filled with jewelry. Alice shut the lid on him before he could jump back out, noted the latch-it was still set to 018-and spun it at random. The numbers landed on 365. The yowling ended. Alice opened the box again. It was empty of both cat and jewels. Lady Orchid made a sound of protest.
“It’s all right,” Alice told her. “Click is still here, but he’s also gone elsewhere. You could say that he exists and does not exist at the same time.”
“How much material will fit in there?” Kung asked.
“I’m not sure, though it looks to me like this box is the embodiment of an infinite set. You can add an infinite set to an infinite set any number of times and still have room for more infinite sets, so I think you could add an infinite amount of material to this box and still have room.”
“Fascinating,” said Lady Orchid tightly. “Please bring back my jewelry.”
“Of course.” Alice reached for the latch.
“When you do,” Phipps put in, “point that thing away from me. I have a feeling your cat won’t be very happy.”
Alice reset the phoenix latch to 018. It belatedly came to her that she might be wrong and that she might have condemned Click to a terrible destruction. Her rash actions were almost like a clockworker’s, and she didn’t enjoy that thought in the slightest.
She opened the box. Click sprang out and rushed away with another yowl. He fled belowdecks past Gavin, who was coming up with the Impossible Cube, its lattices still dark. He set the Cube on the table opposite the Ebony Chamber. The Chamber was still filled with jewels. The Cube was filled with empty space.
“What are we to do with this?” Li said.
“I’m not sure,” Gavin said. “I just. . wanted it nearby.” He paused a moment. “Who created the Ebony Chamber?”
“Lung Fei,” answered Kung. “The same Dragon Man who created the Jade Hand and the salamanders. They are all connected.”
Lady Orchid, meanwhile, carefully tipped the jewels out of the Ebony Chamber. They made a gleaming hoard of stiff beauty on the tabletop. She was setting the box down again when she froze. “Connected. No.”
“What is wrong?” Kung asked, looking worried again.
“They are all connected. Kung, I know why the Chamber was empty, why there was no paper proclaiming the heir’s name.” She put her hand inside the box to feel around, then withdrew it with a sharp gasp. “What-?”
“It feels odd, yes.” Alice leaned toward her. “What did you mean just now?”
“I have seen Xianfeng open the Ebony Chamber more than once. But whenever he did so, he placed the Jade Hand over the phoenix latch. Like so.” She put her palm over the latch, covering it completely. “I thought it was to hide the numbers from the eunuchs. But now. . if the Chamber is connected to the Hand. . I wonder.”
“The Hand creates another infinite set,” Gavin said with a nod. “There’s oh-one-eight and oh-one-eight-A.”
Lady Orchid shut the box and tried other numbers-009, 005, 000. Every time she opened the Chamber, it was empty. This only seemed to confirm what she was thinking. “I believe he did declare an heir-my son-but we need the Jade Hand to open the Ebony Chamber to the correct. . place.”
“All of which only reinforces our-your-need to lay hands on the Hand, so to speak,” said Alice. “We became rather sidetracked.”
“Yeah. An infinite set in an infinite set.” Gavin slowly turned the Ebony Chamber open again and held the Impossible Cube over it. “So, what would happen. .”
Electricity arced blue from the Chamber to the Cube. It snapped and hissed like a nest of snakes. Alice’s hair rose, and she felt it prickle across her neck. A low rumble built swiftly into a high whine, and air moved through the stable.
“Gavin!” Alice cried. “Stop!”
But Gavin seemed caught in a trance. He lowered the Cube closer to the box. The whine grew louder and more shrill, a dragon screaming its own death. Power twisted and writhed around Gavin’s hands and spilled onto the table. The cups and dishes shattered. Jewelry flew in all directions. Everyone, including Phipps, seemed stunned. Alice moved. She shoved the table hard. The Ebony Chamber went flying, and one of the table legs caught Gavin’s thigh. His hands jerked, and the Impossible Cube bounced across the deck in the opposite direction. The whine faded and the electricity stopped. The Chamber remained dark except for the limned dragons dancing across it, and the Impossible Cube carried a soft blue glow except for a few dark places where the lattices crossed one another. A blanket of silence dropped over the deck.
“Goddamn it!” Phipps pounded the table with her brass fist. “And damn it again! Ennock, if you ever do that again, I shall rip your bollocks off and stuff them up your arse!”
Alice flushed at the dreadful vulgarity, the worst she’d heard in her life. “Lieutenant! There’s no call for-”
“Not the time, Michaels.” Phipps had lost her hat yet again and cast about for it. “Is everyone all right?”
Everyone reported that they were, including Gavin. Kung and Orchid gathered up the jewelry and piled it on the table again. Li scooped Phipps’s hat from the deck where it had fallen and returned it to her with something in Chinese that no one bothered to translate for Alice. Phipps responded from her chair, and Li bowed to her. He stayed bowed for a little longer than strictly necessary, or so it seemed to Alice, and Phipps gave him a long look with an expression Alice had never seen before as she put her hat back into place. Then she caught Alice looking at her, and her expression went wooden again.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin said. “The plague was. . I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”
He wouldn’t meet Alice’s eyes, and she knew they were both thinking the same thing-three fugues in one day now. Her stomach felt cold and sick, and more than anything she wanted his arms around her for just a moment, but not in front of all these people.