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He was too loud, and Angeline shushed him. But she answered as she gathered them to her like a mother hen. “This way, boys. Stay close to the wall. Zeke, that’s the old water tower they was building when the Blight came. It’d look bigger if it weren’t standing in front of the wall. ”
The tower looked plenty big enough. Perhaps half the wall’s height, the water tower was a cylindrical, very tall turret made of bricks and capped with a metal roof like a boy’s hat. The roof was rusting, and red-rimmed holes both large and small were eating their way through the original material, but Rector could see that someone had tied flaps of canvas down over one pitted segment. Another large sheet hung loose, having lost its moorings. It flapped against the building like a ghost clapping slowly.
From within the smooth brick tower came the noises of men at work.
Rector picked out snippets of conversation and the occasional hoot of laughter. He heard heavy things being lugged and lighter things being thrown, or hit. He detected metal on metal, and the scrape and whine of wooden crates being shoved about and pried open, their nails squeaking against the wood that held them.
Spiraling up the tower ran a series of tall windows, too narrow for a man to crawl through but big enough to let light inside. Now they let light out, and beneath the rust-ragged cone that topped the structure, the brilliant electric buzz of man-made bulbs and high-powered lanterns made the top floor glow.
At the tower’s base, a white-painted gate had been left unfastened.
Rector watched Angeline out of the corner of his visor. She was eyeing that gate, and he knew she was probably calculating the value versus the trouble of pulling it open and investigating.
She caught him watching her and she winked. “Don’t worry. I won’t go for a climb without you. ”
“Stairs?” Houjin asked, keeping his chatter to a minimum for once.
“Stairs. Spirals of them, bottom to top. There’s two ways in, I believe. The one you see right in front of us, and one on the other side. ” She was still thinking about it. Rector knew the look of someone weighing a bad idea, and knowing it was a bad idea, and thinking maybe it wasn’t the worst idea in the world—all evidence to the contrary.
But she was as good as her wink and her word. Maintaining their best efforts at utter quiet, the four of them edged back behind the tower, between it and the wall.
There, the shadows were thicker than the fog, and it felt like night.
Rector shivered, but hid it by adjusting his satchel. “Now what do we do?” he asked. In truth, he wanted to go back to the Vaults. Badly. He itched all over, gloves and long sleeves and tall socks be damned; and his ribs were on fire from the stress of breathing so hard through such sturdy filters as the ones he now kept in his mask.
“I just want to watch. Just a few minutes,” she told them.
From their new vantage point, they could see both entrances. They were closer to the “front,” but it’d be difficult for anyone to leave the tower via the other door without walking past them, so Rector felt like they had everything covered. Apparently Miss Angeline did, too. She crouched down and urged them all to do likewise, squatting behind the detritus of old gardening equipment and the rubble of decorative benches that had never been assembled.
Soon the clang of footsteps on metal echoed through the tower and oozed out with the fog-diffused light. Then they heard a crunch and a loud stream of profanity, followed by, “We need to fix these goddamn stairs!”
“What do you expect? They’re metal. The gas is hard on metal. ”
“So we should replace ’em, or repair ’em. ”
“Or you should be more careful. ”
“Go to hell. ”
“This isn’t it?”
The front gate slammed open, ricocheting against the tower and kicking up a puff of dust that might have been brick and might’ve been rust. A man emerged, stomping and waving his right leg as though it was hurt and he was trying to shake off the pain. The gate’s metal bars cracked and creaked on their hinges, and as the portal slowly rocked shut, a second man pushed it open again.
“You all right?”
“I’ll survive. Went straight through the stairs, did you see that?”
“You did it right in front of me. ”
“Stop being so all-fired smart, would you?” He patted down his leg, and Rector saw that his pants were torn and there was a smear of blood above his ankle. The man was not badly injured, and he knew it, but nobody liked to have an open cut outdoors where the Blight could get to it. He planted the hurt foot down on the ground and stood up straight, looking around.
The four voyeurs all ducked down lower, not that it mattered. What their position didn’t hide, the wall’s shadow obscured well enough.
“Where’s Otis? Ain’t he supposed to be here by now?”
“What time is it?”
“Don’t know. My watch stopped working yesterday. The gas seeped inside it and rotted out the innards. ”
“Son of a bitch, this place is miserable. Can’t believe anybody lives here—I don’t care how much money there is to be made. ”
The man with the bloodied pants leg snorted. “If you really didn’t care, you wouldn’t be here. ”
“I don’t plan to move inside and set up a homestead. I’m not a goddamn fool. And I don’t know if Otis’s late or not, but he might be. Maybe he got lost. ”
“It ain’t six blocks from the hole to the tower. If he got lost, he ain’t got the sense God gave a speckled pup. ”
“It’s hard to see,” the other fellow insisted. “If you ain’t used to running around in a mask, it can mess you up. Gets you all turned around. Maybe we should go down the hill and look for him. ”
“Maybe you should kiss my ass. See if Jay and Martin will go. ”
“They just got back from pissing down by the side of Denny Hill. Nobody wants to climb that thing twice. ”
“Fine, then you go. ”
“Not by myself. ”
“Well, I ain’t going with you. ”
While they bickered, Rector cringed. He took Angeline’s elbow with one hand and Zeke’s with the other, drawing them back closer against the wall—farther into the shade, and farther out of earshot.
“But I want to see them,” the princess hissed.
“Trust me. Please,” he begged.
Houjin gave him a glare that said Not a chance, but he followed him a few yards back and joined the huddle. “What is it? And why are we supposed to trust you, again?”
Rector held up his hands for quiet because it was his turn to talk—and for once, he had something true and important to say. He leaned forward, and when all their heads were practically touching, he told them what he knew.
“I don’t recognize the one fellow who hurt his leg, on account of it’s hard to see when people are wearing masks. But the other one’s name is Isaac West—I’d know his voice anyplace. He’s a chemist from Tacoma who’s been moving sap under his own brand, calling it ambrosia. I heard Yaozu didn’t like it much, and I also heard West wasn’t planning to change his behavior any. And that Otis fellow they’re looking for—I bet it’s Otis Caplan. ”
“Who’s that?” Zeke asked, bonking his forehead against Houjin’s mask.
“Used to be in the army. The Union, I mean. He was a scientist. He invented some kind of gun that everybody liked, and it made him a mint. Then he switched from dealing arms to dealing sap a year or two ago, and now he’s making another mint. Bought a big house in San Francisco, but he comes up here pretty regular. ”
“What about the other two, the ones we followed up here?” Angeline asked.
Houjin said, “One of these guys called them Jay and Martin. ”
“I don’t know. I don’t know everybody. Give me a break. ”
Zeke’s voice was low with awe. “I heard of Otis, back before I came in here. Every time there was a rum
or going ’round that Minnericht was dead, or missing, or gonna retire, or anything, people used to say Otis Caplan was coming to take over the operation. ”
“I don’t think he ever discussed it with Minnericht,” Angeline said wryly. “And anyway, Yaozu beat him to it. Do I even want to know why you know of these men, Red?”
“Probably not, ma’am. ”
Zeke sat back on his heels and asked, “I think my filters are stuffing up. ”
The princess sighed, and looked at the boys one at a time. Seeing the same thing on each face, she relented. “I think we’ve done enough mischief for now. My mask is starting to chafe me, too. Let’s turn around,” she started … but whatever she’d planned to add was drowned out by the sputter of something loud, and coming closer.
Everyone tensed and retreated, and soon all four backs were pressed up against the wall—as close as they could get, as if they could melt right into the rocks that formed it.
The rumbling, roaring sound grew louder, approaching from behind them, back the way they’d come. Rector desperately shuffled through his moth-eaten memories, hunting for some idea of what the noisemaker might be. The closest he could come was the steam-powered works at the old sawmill, but that wasn’t quite right. The volume was correct, and the mechanical rhythm of it was absolutely right, but the timbre and tone were all wrong. This was something smaller but still impossibly heavy. The close-pressed air made the rattling feel like an assault, and the vibrations were a personal insult as they butted and shoved. The ground beneath his feet quivered like it wanted to fall.
“What is that?” asked Zeke.
Houjin replied, “It reminds me of something I saw in New Orleans. ” And he might’ve elaborated, except that the persistent clank drowned out every other sound, and everyone had the good sense not to shout, in case it suddenly stopped. Instead they covered their ears and watched as a machine came crawling up the hill and into view.
It rumbled and rolled, a war carriage without a war horse, riding on enormous wheels that were spiked with great nubs for the sake of traction. The rear of the carriage was covered with canvas in an old-fashioned wagon style, but the front was sealed up with glass to create a compartment for the driver. The driver himself was a wide-set man sporting glasses and a bow tie. He was not wearing a mask, a fact that Houjin called attention to by pointing at the one he wore and gesturing back at the transport machine.