Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century #1) 4

“Trouble’s fine, darling. We get trouble all the time, and if he wasn’t giving us grief about you, it’d be something else. So how about this? Let me holler for Squiddy. We’ll see if he’ll take you down to the old bank blocks. He knows his way around that place better than anybody else, I’ll tell you what. If there’s any sign of your boy down there, he’ll be the man to find it.”

Briar’s eyebrows pinched up into her forehead. “Really?” She tried to remember which patron of Maynard’s they were discussing. “The thin man with the muttonchops and the goatee?”

“That’s him. He’s a mad old boy, but we all are, down here. Now, listen: Squiddy used to be a small-time crook, when he was Huey’s age and younger. Back before the walls, he was making a big plan to break into the banks himself. He drew up all sorts of plans, and he learned all the nooks and crannies real good… and I think it made him madder than hell that the Boneshaker took the block first.” She moved her arm again and winced. “But don’t get me wrong; he’s all right. He’s sharp, in his own way, and he likes to look helpful. He won’t screw you up or leave you stuck.”

“How reassuring,” Briar said.

“Oh, don’t I know it. Here now—you’d better hurry up. It’ll be getting dark before long. It hardly stays light at all up there, this time of the year, so go get Squiddy and take your look around while there’s still time for you to do it. He knows to expect you. I already told him he was going to show you the sights, and he said he was all right with it.”

Briar found Squiddy playing cards with Willard and Ed.

Squiddy folded his hand and tipped his hat at Briar, who wasn’t sure if she should tip hers back or not. So she nodded and told him, “Hello. Lucy said you’d be kind enough to show me around the bank blocks for an hour or two real quick, before sundown.”

“That’s right, ma’am. I’ve got no trouble working on the Lord’s day. Let me just get my gear.”

Squiddy Farmer was a narrow man from chin to toes, dressed in skinny pants and a buttoned jersey that fit so close you could count his ribs. He threw a wool sweater over the whole ensemble; and although the sweater was large enough to hit his hips, its neck hole was small enough to squeeze his head. The salt-and-pepper puff of his balding scalp and fluffy sideburns popped through the opening.

He smiled, showing a mostly full set of teeth that didn’t often see a brush. From a side table behind the spot where cards were being shuffled, he picked up a bubblelike helmet with a portal on the front.

When he saw her looking at it with frank confusion, he said, “It’s one of Dr. Minnericht’s models. He said I could have it, because no one liked it very well and it was just collecting dust.”

“Why?” she asked. “Does it work?”

“It works. It works real good, but it’s real heavy—and I have to cut my own filters for it. I don’t mind it, though. I like being able to see almost all the way around, you know?” He showed her the way the curved glass wrapped from ear to ear, and she had to admit that it looked convenient.

“Maybe someday he’ll make a lighter version.”

Squiddy said, “I heard he was working on it, but if he ever made a new one, he didn’t let me near it. Are you ready?”

She held up her mask and said, “Sure am.”

He donned his globe-shaped mask and it gave him the look of a lollipop. “Let’s go then.”

Briar strapped her own mask onto her head as she followed him. It seemed like she’d only just pulled it off, but she understood the necessity and—against all expectations—she was almost growing accustomed to it.

Through a dark warren of corridors she hiked, down another stretch of poorly repaired staircases and deep into a grated level where the hum of machinery filled her ears.

Squiddy wasn’t a man who was often asked to play tour guide, so he didn’t give much in the way of highlights. But he did think to mention, “We’re putting more filters down here.” He gestured at the metal latticework under his feet. “It’s an experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“Well, see, right now if we want to keep clean air in the safe spots, we have to pump it down from all the way up over the walls. But that China-boy said maybe we didn’t need to do that. He says maybe we can clean the dirty air as easy as we can pull in clean air. I don’t know if he’s right or not, but some of our people think it’s worth a try.”

“Pumping down all that air must be a real chore.”

“So it is, so it is,” he agreed.

The grates beneath their feet clanged under their steps, and before long they gave way to a landing with three equally barricaded doors. Squiddy adjusted his massive headpiece and reached for one of three levers that were fixed in the floor.

He told her, “This is as close as we can get from inside, so here’s the end of the line. We leave and come back through that one in the middle.” He pointed at the door. “You can’t see any of these doors from the outside. We were real careful with it. It all had to be sealed real tight, because the gas is worst over here.”

“Of course,” she said. “It would be worse, here at the center.”

“Are your filters new?”

“I changed them out just before we left the Vaults.”

He gripped the lever and leaned against it. “Good. Because that eight- or ten-hour rule? It’s not so helpful over here. Those filters won’t work longer than a couple of hours, maybe two or three. We’re going down close to the crack.”

“We are?”

“Sure we are.” The lever bent all the way back, almost to the floor. With it, a chain was drawn somewhere out of sight, and a crack appeared around the center door. “It’s right underneath the old First Bank. That’s as deep as the Boneshaker ever got, and that’s where the worst of the Blight seems to be. That’s the bad news.”

“You say that like there’s good news,” Briar observed as the door grinded back, out into the crushed old blocks where the banks used to be.

“There is good news!” he insisted. “The good news is that there aren’t half so many rotters down here as there are farther out. The gas eats them right up, so they stay away—or the ones that don’t, don’t last too long. That reminds me. You might want to fasten up that coat. You’ve got gloves, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, wiggling her fingers to show them.

“Good. Pull your hat down tight, too. Over your ears if it’ll fit. You don’t want any skin showing if you can help it. It’ll burn you,” he said solemnly. “Just like knocking your hand on a stove. It’ll turn your hair, too, and you’ve already got a bit of gold in it.”

“It’s orange,” she said dully. “It used to be black, but it’s getting those orange stripes from all the rain with Blight in it.”

“Tuck it down into your collar if you haven’t got a scarf. It’ll protect your neck.”

“Good plan,” she said, and she did as he suggested.

“Are you ready?”

“I’m ready.”

His sharply carved face wobbled behind the imperfect curve of his mask’s glass front. He said, “Let’s go then. Keep as quiet as you can, but don’t worry yourself too bad. Like I said, we’ll mostly be alone.” He gave her Spencer a pointed stare. “Jeremiah says you’re a real good shot.”

“I am a real good shot.”

He said, “Good. But just so you know, odds are good that if you’ve got to shoot out here, you won’t be shooting at rotters. Minnericht’s got friends; or he’s got employees, anyway. Sometimes they patrol down here. This is the edge of the turf between the Chinamen’s quarters and the old transportation depot. You know how they were building a new train station, when the walls went up?”

“Yes,” she said, and then she headed him off. “I heard that Minnericht lives out there, under the half-built station.”

“Right. That’s how I heard it too.” He leaned against the door to open it another foot or two, and it opened up almost as much as it opened out. It wasn’t until it fell to the side that Briar realized she’d be climbing up from underground.

“Have you ever seen him?” she asked. “Dr. Minnericht, I mean?”

“No, ma’am,” Squiddy told her, but he didn’t look at her.

“Really? Is that so?”

He held the door for her, and she emerged up into a spot that was still underground, but with a perilous canopy of broken street looming over their heads. The afternoon drizzle of sun cut around its edges to illuminate the pit.

He said, “Yeah, that’s so. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It’s just that you said he gave you the helmet. And I heard you might owe him money sometimes, that’s all. I thought maybe you’d seen him. I’m just curious. I wondered what he looked like.” She figured he’d heard the rumors—it seemed everybody had—and since Squiddy didn’t know of her chats with Swakhammer and Lucy, he wouldn’t know that she’d already made up her mind about the mysterious doctor.

Her guide scrambled up behind her and let the door drop down. Once it had closed, it was all but impossible to spot; its exterior had been fixed with detritus, and when it swung out on those croaking hinges, it must’ve looked like the earth itself was opening to let them out.

Squiddy finally said, “I’ve owed him money once or twice, that’s a fact. But really I just owe his men. I used to run with them, a little. Not much,” he added fast. “I never worked for him proper-like. But I’d run an errand or two for some extra food or whiskey.”

He stood beside the door and looked as if he’d like to scratch his head, if he could reach it. “When the walls first cut us off in here, we didn’t have it all figured out right away. Times was hard for a few years. Aw, times is hard now, too. I know. But it used to be you could die for breathing. It used to be, you were fighting the rotters for spoiled fruit peels and rat meat.”