Somehow, they made it up the stairs and out the main doors, where they found the wrecked elephant still standing by the two mechanicals Alice and Gavin had stolen from the Gonta-Zalizniaks. Near them, however, also stood the Gonta-Zalizniaks themselves. Nearly forty of them. All in mechanicals.
“Good lord,” Phipps said.
A hundred weapons clacked, whined, and chattered as they trained on the little group.
Chapter Sixteen
“Give us sound generator,” boomed one of the Cossacks. “And then we kill you.”
“Shouldn’t that be or we kill you?” Glenda shouted back.
“No.”
The alarms continued to blare discordant notes in a mocking parody of the paradox generator’s siren song. It was a day for loss. Gavin had destroyed his own invention, his pinnacle of perfection, and then watched his mentor and his friend die painful deaths. He had lost a chance to find out what had happened to his father, and nearly died himself. He looked at the Cossack mechanicals, and a terrible calm came over him.
“I don’t have time for you,” he said. “The dam is failing. You need to save your people, the ones you took responsibility to rule. If you don’t, I will destroy you. This is your only warning.”
The Gonta-Zalizniaks laughed as one, and the sound echoed over the warning sirens. Then their voices merged into an eerie unity. “You think we are fools. Now you die.”
The weapons moved. Gavin placed one hand on top of the faintly glowing Impossible Cube. It looked heavy, but felt light and springy. Gavin opened his mouth and sang. A clear D-sharp reverberated in the air. The Cube glowed electric blue, and it amplified Gavin’s voice to a rumble, a boom, a half-tone detonation. The cone of sound flattened the mechanicals like tin soldiers. Several of them fell into the river with spectacular splashes and sank from sight. The sound poured from Gavin, shattering windows and smashing doors on both sides of the river. The mechanicals twitched and shuddered. Glass bubbles cracked and broke. The Cossack clockworkers within clapped hands to bleeding ears and screamed in pain. Alice finally jerked Gavin’s hand from the Cube, and the note died, leaving groaning, half-conscious Cossacks in its wake. The Cube darkened completely.
“Enough,” Alice said. “They’re down. The rest of their fate is up to them.”
“You’re more merciful than I,” Phipps observed. “They did experiment on children, after all.”
“And you sided with them,” Alice said.
“That was before I knew. Can you still drive that mechanical? We’re in a bit of a rush.”
“How are we going to evacuate everyone?” Glenda said. “There’s just the four of us.”
A booming crack thudded against Gavin’s ears. Gavin’s stomach tightened. The dam was failing faster than he had originally calculated. Once it gave, the river would smash through the lower city. Most of Kiev was built on hills, but the lower sector past the dam would be wiped out, including the square that housed the Kalakos Circus.
The circus.
“I have an idea,” Gavin said. “Lieutenant, can you drive a mechanical?”
Phipps gave him a withering stare.
“All right, good. You take this one. Alice, if you and Glenda can use the other one to run ahead and tell Dodd we’re coming, I think we can save the people. But you’ll have to hurry.”
“What do you intend to do?” Glenda asked.
“You’ll see. Just go!”
“You drive,” Alice said to Glenda. “I don’t think my arms are up to the task.”
In moments, Glenda and Alice had run off, picking their way through the tumbled army of Cossack mechanicals. Some of the Gonta-Zalizniaks were groaning softly in their shattered bubbles, but Gavin spared them little pity. He had given them every chance, and he had other worries.
“Let’s move, Lieutenant,” he said, and hoisted himself into the mechanical he had stolen from Danilo Zalizniak. Lieutenant Phipps followed, and took up a position next to him. It was distinctly odd sitting near Phipps on a padded bench instead of facing her across a desk—or the barrel of a gun. Inside the machine, Gavin pulled part of the control panel apart until he located a rubber-coated live wire. He yanked the wire loose and jammed the business end against the darkened Cube. Instantly, it glowed electric blow.
“Go!” he said. “Walking speed.”
Phipps put the mechanical into a stately march upriver, toward the circus. Gavin put his hand on the Impossible Cube and sang. This time, the note was a G, blue and pure and clean. The Cube glowed, and the note flowed out like liquid silver, washing over the streets and into the factories and houses and shops. The people, who had hidden inside the moment the mechanical army had marched past, emerged and blinked beneath sooty clouds. They listened to the wondrous sound and, unable to resist, followed it. On both sides of the river, people followed it. They poured out of the city and followed. Those who could walk helped those who couldn’t. And they were happy. They laughed and chattered among themselves and pointed at Gavin, pale blond and blue-eyed as he sang on the marching mechanical.
And then the plague zombies came. They slid out of the shadows and into the street by the river, unbothered by the dim sunlight. The people didn’t seem to notice or care. In the world’s strangest parade created by the world’s strangest music, everyone moved without panic, without fear, down the river toward the circus.
“How long can you keep this up?” Phipps asked. She seemed unaffected by the note, perhaps because of the amount of machinery in her nature.
Gavin shrugged, took a quick breath, and kept on singing. He was already tired from the events down by the turbines, and now the Cube was taking more energy from him. He felt like a water glass with a hole in the bottom, but he kept singing. The crowd followed along. It wasn’t the entire city, thank heavens—only those who could hear the note, the ones who were in danger of the impending deluge. When they encountered a bridge, the people on the far side of the river crossed over to Gavin’s side. Gavin was becoming seriously tired now, and the intervals between breaths were growing shorter. He forced himself to keep up the volume, and Cube glowed like captured sky in his hands.
A booming crack in the distance behind them, louder than thunder from an angry god, told Gavin the dam was beginning to fail now. Cracks were racing through its structure. Once it went, a swath of downriver Kiev would be washed away, and his clockwork was automatically calculating the path, volume, and velocity of the water. His voice wavered, tainting the purity of the note. The Cube’s glow dimmed, and a wave of fear swept through the crowd. They heard the thunder and saw the plague zombies in their midst. Screams and knots of panic broke out. Sweating, Gavin forced his voice back to the G. The Cube’s blue glow steadied. The crowd calmed and continued. Phipps shot him a worried look, but she didn’t dare speed up and outpace the crowd.
Gavin’s body was starting to shake from the effort now. Every bit of concentration he had poured into holding that single, silver note. The vague memories of his father loomed up. He had to hold the note perfectly, with absolute precision, or Dad would—
No. It was nothing to do with his father. He needed perfection in this time and in this place because these people needed it to live, and he would do it. He would be the voice they needed. For them. Not his father.
A new strength came over him, and he sang and sang and sang. The note held steady—and perfect. The crowd came quickly and happily and in an orderly fashion.
And he realized the mechanical was kneeling beside the circus train. Alice and Glenda were in the engine compartment wearing ear protectors, and a wave of relief swept over Gavin when he saw a healthy cloud of smoke puffing from the stack. Dodd had said he would try to get the boilers going, and Alice had warned him not to stop. The circus people who hadn’t managed to flee joined the crowd, their expressions also happy and calm. Linda wasn’t among them, but Nathan and Dodd were, to Gavin’s relief. Click and the little automatons were perched on the engine’s roof, not bothered by the heat of the boilers.