B00DW1DUQA EBOK (27 page)

‘Don’t smudge your lines as your draw. Rotate the paper if you have to.’

‘OK.’

‘Check that angle is ninety degrees. If you draw it wrong they’ll construct it wrong.’

‘OK.’

His third attempt, when he finished it, looked perfect to Finn. The woman - Ciara - cast a glance over it and nodded her head. It would do. Finn rolled up the design into a tube and a runner came to take it from him. Finn heaved the great blue book back to the shelf and typed in the code to return it to its correct slot.

His next design was more complicated, a spiral-shaped structure, part of a pump, perhaps. This time he only took two goes to copy it accurately and Ciara only had to correct him once. He worked like that for eight hours, the only respite the walk to and from the bookshelves. He soon learned to make the most of that, walking slowly, taking his time to wait for the shuttle. Back at the table, he worked methodically and was soon copying the blueprint designs without mistakes.

Occasionally, he looked up from his work and flexed his right hand to relieve the cramping pain from holding the steel pen. He took the time to study the others around him, just as he had back in the Valve Hall. Apart from Ciara and Aelth, three others worked at their table: a woman and two men, all of them much older than Ciara and Aelth. They looked like they’d worked there for many years. Aelth had introduced them as Maeve, Garvin and Colm. Maeve looked up to meet his gaze now, her eyes narrowed as if trying to remember something. She seemed to study Finn for a moment. Then she scowled and looked back down to her plan.

They all kept themselves to themselves as they worked, never speaking, only stopping occasionally to stretch fingers or backs. As far as Finn could tell, they each copied their designs flawlessly. Ciara, despite her age, appeared to be responsible for all of their work. Each time one of the others completed a piece they would show it to her and she would approve it or tell them what needed fixing. Clearly she was a in a position of some power. Finn thought about that as he worked. If one of the others introduced a deliberate flaw into their work, she would know about it. If, on the other hand,
she
made a mistake, deliberate or otherwise, no-one would know. No-one checked her designs.

He also noticed she and Aelth communicating silently, flashing glances full of meaning at each other, indicating someone or something with a nod of a head. One of the masters strolling by or some detail of a diagram. It was subtle, but clear if you looked carefully. Perhaps they were just a couple. Or perhaps they were scheming, waiting for the opportunity to act. Perhaps they were wreckers. On the other hand, they might have been placed there by the masters to keep a close eye on everyone. He had to bide his time, find out more about them all.

One evening, trudging back to the side-room where their wooden beds were laid out in a line, Finn found himself walking alongside Aelth once more.

‘So, how long have you worked here?’ Finn asked, trying to sound as if he wasn’t really that interested. He stretched his fingers, staring at them as if they were what really occupied him.

‘Oh, a year or two now.’

‘Were you somewhere else before this?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

Finn shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. ‘Just wondered. I used to be in the Valve Hall; I wondered if you’d been there too.’

‘No, never. I think Maeve said she’d been there once.’

Finn glanced around, No-one else was near. Over the clatter of the shuttles, no-one else would be able to hear them.

‘Assembling the valves?’

‘No, delivering a blueprint. Sometimes when there isn’t a runner handy we have to take them ourselves.’

‘But in the Valve Hall they just assemble the parts already made by someone else.’

Aelth shrugged. ‘Maybe they wanted to check something was correct, then.’

‘So Maeve and the others, Garvin and Colm, they were already here when you came?’

‘Yeah. Been here years those three. So long they’ve become sloppy. That’s why the masters made Ciara their supervisor.’

‘You mean they make mistakes? In the diagrams?’

Aelth looked at him for the briefest moment, eyes narrowed. Finn could see he was wary. ‘There was trouble some time back, some mistakes were made. That’s when they appointed the table supervisors.’

‘Ciara.’

‘Yeah, Ciara.’

‘She seems very smart.’

‘Yeah. I suppose so.’

Weeks went by. They gave Finn more and more complex diagrams to copy out. Ciara rarely had to correct him at all. He began to settle in. At first he constantly expected the Ironclads to come for him and drag him away. Either that or he feared one of the boys from the Valve Hall arriving, Graves or Croft or Bellow. In the lead flashing of the skylight, outside on the roof, he had scratched a message.
Don't believe the masters. The postern gate is the escape
. Sometimes he regretted that, fearful that one of the others would see it and follow him. He wasn’t sure which would be worse: that or the Ironclads.

But no-one came and, slowly, he became more relaxed. Ciara, Aelth and the others were friendly enough, although no-one talked that much. They weren’t like the boys back in the dormitory at least. Most of the time he was left alone, which suited him fine.

As he worked away each day, he thought more and more about what he was supposed to do. It looked like Connor had gone out of his way to ensure he, Finn, worked in the Vault
. You will be shown the way, boy. Do what you are supposed to do and all will be well.
Wasn’t it likely, then, that he’d placed Finn at
this
particular table for a reason? One or more of the five must be wreckers. Finn studied them all as casually as he could, but came to no conclusions. He longed to talk to one of them about it, but didn’t dare. Not yet. One word to the wrong person and the Ironclads would come for him. He surely wouldn’t be able to escape again.

He sometimes thought about making a deliberate mistake, something small but dangerous. But the problem was knowing what change to make. They transcribed plans for individual components of the machinery so it was hard to know what was a vital piece and what wasn’t. Also, it was impossible to know which were real, working components and which were dummies like the valves. And what would Ciara do if he did introduce a fatal flaw? Would she correct him or let his mistake through? But if she did that she’d be just as much to blame as he was. He tried to catch her eye as he showed her each completed plan, to hint that he was ready to act, but she never appeared to notice.

Eventually, he stopped paying so much attention to the others’ work, stopped looking for deliberate mistakes, and consigned himself to waiting for the right moment. He saw Connor occasionally, sitting on his wooden platform, or strolling round the room. They didn’t speak. But perhaps there would be a sign when the time was right. He just had to be patient.

He could see Connor, now, if he glanced down the hallway, discussing something with the older master in the white robes. It had been a busy day in the vault, runners scurrying around constantly, carrying completed plans off into the workings. Thankfully Finn’s shift was nearly over. He felt light-headed with hunger.

He rolled up the plan he’d just finished, an intricate locking mechanism with some very detailed slots inside. Somewhere in the room, presumably, was the design for the key that fitted it. He looked around for a runner to take his design, but none was there. Ciara, rolling up her own scroll of paper, saw his confusion.

‘No runners around,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to take them ourselves.’

‘Where to?’

‘Both these need to go to the Foundry.’

‘I don’t know where that is.’

The truth was, he didn’t want to go outside. He hadn’t left the Vault since he’d arrived. He felt safe there. He didn’t want to meet up with any more Ironclads.

‘I’ll show you,’ said Ciara. ‘Then you’ll know for next time.’

She turned and strode off, away towards the stairs. Finn looked around, unsure whether he was even allowed to follow her.

Maeve watched him from across the table, seeing his confusion. ‘Go on, go after her. Then you’ll know the way.’

‘But is it allowed? To go outside?’

‘Of course. If you’re delivering plans from the Vault you’re allowed to go anywhere. You go wherever the plans are needed. Now hurry before you lose her.’

Finn, turning away, scurried after Ciara.

They climbed the spiral stairs back up to ground-level. The two Ironclads guarding the doors stood aside as they emerged into the open air. Finn looked around, amazed at how bright the light was. It was towards evening, the sun casting long, slanting shadows from the wheels and domes and towers. An electrical crackle filled the air. Squinting upwards, Finn could see the walkway he’d come along the night he’d arrived. It looked no more substantial than a mesh of fine threads, hanging up there in the sky.

Ciara nodded up to it. ‘We’ll take the walkway.’

‘Isn’t where another way?’ Finn asked.

‘Afraid of heights?’

‘No. I just don’t want to go up there again.’

Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, but she didn’t ask for details. She shrugged. ‘OK. There’s a tunnel we can take instead. There’s an entrance in the Hub.’

‘Can’t we just walk on the surface?’ It was good to be outside, in the open air. He suddenly didn’t want to be back underground.

‘Too dangerous. There’s a lot of fast-moving machinery around here.’

She led him past the wheel and the flight of stone steps he’d descended when he’d arrived. An area of the machine he hadn’t seen before lay ahead. Either he’d been too preoccupied to notice it, or it hadn’t been illuminated that night. Now he saw a vast cube of a building, perhaps the biggest single structure he’d seen in Engn. Each side of the cube was pierced by one of the big, horizontal shafts. The top, too, had a shaft pressing down on it, connected to the arm of a huge beam-engine he’d seen. A great many of the chains and belts and cables led to the wheels powering these shafts, but none of them appeared to be in use any more. The mechanism was rusted and silent.

Ciara led him directly towards it. With each step, the scale of the cube became clearer. It loomed over him, growing and growing as he approached. The horizontal shaft penetrating the nearest wall of the cube was easily fifty feet above him. Finn felt wary walking beneath it. It must weigh hundreds of tons.

Ciara pushed open a door in the cubic building and stepped inside. Finn followed her, then stopped to take in the sight before him.

Light filtered into the vast, echoing space through the circular holes cut in the walls. He could see, now, that
six
shafts entered the building, one also rising up through the floor from some underground engine. As the shafts approached the centre of the cube they gradually tapered. By the time they touched, what had been a shaft wider than a tree-trunk was now as fine as a steel pen. Finn knew enough about mechanics from his father to understand that the pressures exerted on the tiny point in the centre would be absolutely vast. If the machinery was operating.

‘What is this place?’ he asked.

Ciara shrugged. ‘It’s the Hub. They say it marked the middle of Engn, once. But now it’s not used.’

‘But what was it for? What were they trying to crush in the middle?’ There was surely only room for the tiniest, dice-sized cube between the tips of the six shafts.

‘Don’t know,’ said Ciara. ‘We never have to work on the blueprints for any of this. Just some old part of the mechanism.’

They walked directly across the echoing hall, around the shaft rising up from the floor. This, too, was marked with lines of rust. Peering upwards, Finn could just make out a grey cube of something held pinched between the shafts. But everything looked corroded and broken.

Nearby was a square opening in the ground. A flight of metal steps led down, presumably allowing access to the buried engine. Ciara carried one of the light-globes and she cranked it into life. Finn followed her down the steps. The light threw off a flickering purple glow as they descended. The air smelt of damp and mould. At the bottom of the steps stood a riveted iron door, locked, but Ciara ignored it and instead turned to head into a tunnel that led away into the darkness of the underground. They moved along in a bubble of light, Ciara’s shadow shifting and leaping on the walls around them. Drops of water tapped and plipped on the stone ground as they walked.

Now that they were alone together, he wanted to say something to her. Surely no-one would hear them down here. He was more and more sure she was part of the plot, that she had worked her way into a position of control for a reason. She and Aelth still spent a lot of their time whispering over diagrams, drawing phantom lines on them, nodding or shaking their heads and looking thoughtful. If they caught him watching them they scowled and returned to their work. They
must
be debating which was the right diagram, the right component, to introduce their vital flaw into. And he wanted her to know she could trust him to help when the time came.

They walked for long minutes, neither speaking. Occasionally the tunnel branched or came to a crossroads. At each junction, arrows had been painted onto the stone walls, each with a number underneath. Even the rooms in Engn, it seemed, had unique codes. E-0001 seemed to be the Hub: all the arrows pointing back the way they’d come bore that number. But there were countless other codes as well, far too many for him to remember. Apart from the numbers, and the occasional lifeless, glass orb, the walls were completely featureless.

‘What number are we looking for?’ he asked.

He thought she wasn’t going to reply. She wound up the light-wand again, the purple light snapping back into brightness.

‘District ZN, then room 1211.’

‘Is it far?’

This time she didn’t answer but tapped an arrow on the wall by her left shoulder. The writing underneath said ZN-1001. Presumably they were near.

‘It’s all so complicated,’ he said. ‘Engn I mean. It’s amazing the machinery carries on working at all.’