Alice’s heart sank, though she didn’t dare loosen her grip on Gavin to defend herself. Still, it was too much. “Damn you!” she shouted back. “Kill us, then! See if it makes you feel better.”
“Phipps!” Gavin cried. “Don’t!”
Phipps fired—straight at the top of the turbine. A red beam lanced through the air and struck the spot where the shaft met the generator. Smoke formed and was pulled into the boiling arc. Then the generator shaft jumped away from the turbine shaft with a terrible grinding noise. Deprived of its energy source, the generator powered down. The arc’s glow faded, the eye and the boiling water vanished. Gavin dropped on top of Alice as the force abruptly ceased. The Impossible Cube trembled for a moment, went still, then released a burst of red energy. Alice braced herself for another slamming, but the energy went through her with only a strange sensation, as if something briefly crawled over all her bones at once. The Cube darkened, though it continued to give off a faint phosphorescent blue light.
Alice lay panting beneath Gavin. His weight was both welcome and crushing at the same time. Her arms had the strength of wet string, and she couldn’t even summon the energy to ask him to move. At last he heaved himself aside and dragged himself upright on trembling limbs to face Phipps, who was calmly untying the rope from around her waist and winding her hair back into a twist.
“If you had done that from the start, none of this would have happened,” Phipps said. “For all your talent, you’re still a rookie, Agent Ennock.”
“Why?” Gavin gasped, echoing Alice’s thoughts.
“I don’t answer to you,” Phipps replied coolly. “And you are welcome.”
“Er… thank you.” Alice felt like an admonished schoolgirl.
“We shouldn’t stay,” Phipps added. “I don’t think it’s safe.”
Alice summoned the strength to sit up. “Oh, come now! After everything you put us through, you owe us an explanation and you damned well know it!”
Phipps sighed and thawed a little. “If I can make the great Alice, Baroness Michaels, curse, I suppose I can offer an explanation.” She looked away for a moment. “Into the Doomsday Vault, I’ve put clockworker inventions that could uproot islands, let people move instantly from place to place, and make the human race immortal. But an invention that would stop time…” She shook her head. “I was so worried about justice itself that I lost sight of whom justice was for. What justice is there in letting clockworkers seize destiny from mankind? The time of the clockworker needs to end, and it needs to end now.”
“What does that mean to us?” Gavin was weaving, but kept his feet.
“It means, Mr. Ennock, that I am personally going to escort you and the baroness to China to spread her cure. It is fair.”
“Goddamn you, Lieutenant!” Glenda Teasdale appeared in the door to the stairwell with a pistol of her own. “After all this, you turn out like Simon? I’ll see you in hell!”
“Agent Teasdale!” Phipps barked. “Lower your weapon!”
“Michaels stole everything from me!” Glenda moved farther into the room, her pistol still trained on Alice. “She stole my profession and my life! She has to pay.”
“It would not be just, Agent Teasdale,” Phipps said. “She’s already paid, and paid, and paid. And so have we. It’s time to stop. For both of us.”
Glenda was breathing fast. Alice was so tired, she could barely move, but from somewhere she found a reserve of strength that let her come to her feet. “Glenda,” she said, “you’ve done so much for me. You were an exemplar to me, and without you, I would never have struck out on my own. I did a terrible thing to you in return. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I wish I could take it back. If you want to shoot, I’ll understand.”
And she moved in front of Phipps. Gavin tried to stop her, but she shook him off. She stood there, unarmed but for her iron spider, her arms spread wide. Too many people had died for her. She could die for someone else now.
Glenda took aim. Alice held her breath but refused to close her eyes. Glenda lowered the pistol.
“Goddamn you,” she said again, but this time to Alice.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said, and was surprised at how disappointed she was that Glenda hadn’t pulled the trigger.
“What am I to do with my life?” Glenda asked bitterly.
“If you can control your impulse to curse,” Phipps said, “perhaps you should go into politics. I can give you a letter of introduction that will go over quite well with the Hats-On Committee in Parliament.”
Gavin, meanwhile, staggered over to the table where the arc stood. Silently, he picked up the Impossible Cube. A lump formed in Alice’s throat. She joined Gavin and took his hand. Click clicked across the floor as well and sat at Alice’s feet. He looked at the arc as if waiting for something. Alice’s remaining automatons limped over to her and crawled into her skirts or fluttered to her shoulders. They all stood in a moment of silence before the arc, now a gateway to the world of the dead. Alice fought back tears.
“Feng gave his life to save ours,” Alice said. “I hope that will be enough for his father—and his family.”
“The plague took Dr. Clef,” Gavin said. “I knew it would happen, knew he’d leave, but I didn’t think he’d try to kill us.” He sighed heavily and wiped at his eyes. “In his own twisted way, he was like a father to me, and now he’s gone. He and Feng both.”
Alice embraced him and let her own tears wet his shoulder. They both wept for loss and unfairness while Glenda, Phipps, and the mechanical stood by in mute sympathy. At last Alice stepped away and fished in her pocket for a handkerchief.
Gavin said in a heavy voice, “His remains went into the past, you know, to a time before the dam was built. Did you see the water boil?”
“Oh!” A shock of realization went through Alice and she put her metal hand to her mouth. The Dnepro River boiled in the center of Kiev and the plague rose up like a dragon and devoured the city. “Do you think… Did Dr. Clef start the clockwork plague?”
“I don’t know,” Gavin admitted. “Clockworkers don’t spread the plague, but Dr. Clef was pulverized and his blood was dragged into several places in the past. Maybe that did something to the disease.”
“Good heavens. Good heavens,” was all Alice could say. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief in her metal hand.
An alarm blared, and red lights flashed all over the room. Click jumped straight up. Alice started as well, and her automatons jerked.
“Oh no,” Gavin said.
“We need to leave,” Phipps said. “Now.”
“What—?” Glenda began.
Gavin was turning the Impossible Cube over and over in his hands so quickly it made Alice dizzy to look at it. “I think that last burst of energy from the Cube did something. Didn’t you feel it? The way it dragged over your bones.”
“I did feel it,” Phipps said. “Singularly unpleasant, too.”
“The Cube was connected to the dam, and it wrenched something inside. Deep down within the stones. At the level of… of the tiny things.” Alice could see Gavin was floundering for words. “The bits aren’t holding together anymore. Can you see the cracks?”
“No,” Glenda said nervously, glancing around.
“I can.” Gavin tapped his forehead. “They’re small, but spreading fast. The structure isn’t sound.”
Fear stabbed Alice as the implications hit her. “How much time before it fails?”
“Less than an hour, I think. It’ll destroy a good part of lower Kiev.”
“How do we stop it?” Glenda asked.
“We can’t. Not in an hour,” he said. “We have to evacuate everyone we can.”
They ran for the stairs—or tried to. Gavin and Alice could manage only a fast walk. Alice winced at the pain in her shoulders and her thighs, but she grimly kept going. It got better the more she moved. Gavin’s jaw was also set with pain. Alice thought about having her automatons carry her, but the thought of being lifted by her arms made her shudder, and in any case, most of her automatons were as bent as she was.