B00DW1DUQA EBOK (29 page)

He padded across to the bed where Aelth slept, just a shock of hair in the low light. Finn touched his shoulder and roused him, very gently.

‘Hmm? What is it?’

‘Aelth, it’s Finn. It’s OK. But I’m going to do it now.’

‘Do it? Do what?’

‘Show you. You and Ciara. And Lud. I’m going to show you I’m on your side. I’m going to show you how to destroy Engn.’

‘What? Finn?’

Aelth, still fuddled by sleep, was having trouble understanding. Finn stood and left him there. They would know it was him at least. He crept to the doorway and peered around the corner. Out in the Vault, a few lamps burned up above the tables but there was no-one in sight. The steam shuttles were silent, their boilers cold.

He made his way along the foot of the towering bookcase, red for wiring, and peeped around the next corner at the raised platform where the masters sat. The chair was bathed in a pool of light but no-one sat there. Finn stood and listened. Perhaps the masters walked the Vault at night, keeping an eye on all the precious books. He stood for a minute or two, straining to hear footsteps on the hard stone floor. Finally, resisting the urge to just go back to bed and forget the whole thing, he set off through the main hall.

He’d decided the blue books would be best. No-one slept anywhere near them. No-one apart from he would be in any danger. The others would be able to flee in time. There were several exits back up to the surface. He had seen it all in his mind, how it would work. There was no need for anyone else to get hurt.

He reached the blue bookcases. He stood for a moment beneath the shelves, looking upwards, considering. Then he began to climb.

The books took up most of the width of each shelf giving him only a thin toehold to stand on. His left foot slipped off one of the low shelves, but he held on with his hands. If he placed his feet sideways he could get more purchase. It made climbing awkward, an effort, but no worse than some of the trees back home. He worked his way upwards, pulling himself higher by grasping the edge of each shelf above him. He tried not to think about what would happen if someone back on the ground started up the shuttle and sent it skittering along its rails. Instead, as he climbed, he talked to himself, telling himself over and over he was doing fine, he was going to be OK.

He stopped when he was near the top, level with the wires that fanned out to support the naphtha lamps. He held onto the nearest cable. It was thicker than he’d imagined, bolted onto the metal frame of the bookcase so that it couldn’t come loose. A small pipe, running down from the roof, recessed into a slot in the bookcase frame so the shuttle didn’t hit it, led out along the cable, strung underneath by a series of metal clips.

Waiting for his breathing to return to normal, Finn looked around. The hall beneath him was still deserted. Each of the great tables was illuminated by a single lamp, but otherwise the floor lay in shadow. For a moment he remembered the day, long ago, when he’d helped his father in his workshop. He’d stopped at the top of the ladder then, too, enjoying the strange perspective of looking down on the world. He liked the fact that someone walking through the hall might not even see him up there, high up in the gloom, clutching the metal frame. He liked the feeling of being detached from the world.

Still, he couldn’t stay here for ever. The longer he delayed, the more likely it was he
would
be discovered. He would never get this chance again. Hooking one arm around the frame of the shelf, he leaned out to undo the first clip on the naphtha piping.

‘Finn! What are you doing?’

He’d thought it possible that Ciara and Aelth would come and find him. But to his surprise, someone else stood in the shadows at the foot of the bookcase, calling up to him.

‘Maeve? What are you doing here?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you.’

‘I’m showing everyone how to destroy Engn, of course.’

‘You can’t, Finn.’

‘I can. It’s easy. You don’t need to introduce a flaw in some vital diagram. You don’t have to do anything so clever. The answer was here all along.’

‘Come down, Finn,’ said Maeve. ‘This isn’t the way.’

Was she one of the wreckers after all then? Or was she working for the masters? It didn’t matter. He just had to act before anyone stopped him.

‘Where are Ciara and Aelth?’ he asked, still working away on the metal clip.

‘I told them to stay behind. No point endangering them, too. Climb down, Finn, before any real harm is done.’

‘So they take orders from you?’

The metal clip was stiff. He had to work it loose with his nails. It gave, skinning the tip of a finger as it sprang loose. A moment later, he heard it tinkle to the floor. He reached out to the next clip, having to reach out further along the cable. It swayed and thrummed under his weight but he thought it would support him. He reckoned he’d need to remove three of the clips altogether.

‘Ciara and Aelth are young and headstrong,’ said Maeve. ‘Full of wild ideas. I try to keep them from harm. Their hearts are in the right place but they’re too impulsive. Like you.’

The second clip jumped loose, shooting away to bounce off the books and down to the ground.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Finn. ‘I’m about to destroy everything.’

‘And what if your plan doesn’t work, Finn?’

‘Then at least I’ll have tried.’

By reaching right out he found he could just touch the third clip. He had to stretch farther to be able to work it loose. He hooked one leg around the metal upright of the bookcase and let go with his arm. He stretched right out along the cable, supporting his whole weight on one hand, his body at forty-five degrees. Now he had a spare hand he could use. He tried not to think of the gaping fall of air, the hard ground down there beneath him.

‘Finn, listen to me,’ said Maeve, calling up to him, ‘We believe you, now, OK? You’re one of us. But can you just come down so we can talk about this? This isn’t the way, believe me.’

He glanced down at her, her upturned face visible in the light now. For a moment, he thought about agreeing. He had made friends, won them over.

‘No,’ said Finn. ‘It’s too late. I’m nearly there. You should get away while you can.’

With a
ping
, the third clip sprang free. The pipe sagged down from its wire. There should be enough play in it now. He pulled himself back and began to flex it backwards and forwards. It was some soft metal, lead in it, malleable for bending around corners. It wouldn’t take long to fracture.

Down on the ground, Maeve turned and hurried away.

The pipe cracked where he was creasing it and a thin spray of pressurised liquid naphtha fanned out from it, its smell pungent. He tried to make sure none of it got on him. Working the end of the pipe free he held it out and sent a stream of fuel spraying out over the books. The pressure was enough to send the naphtha ten or twenty feet, spreading out in a fan. He worked for a minute or more, until he was sure all the paper he could reach was soaked. Then he let the free end of the pipe gush down the wall of books to the floor.

He stepped sideways, away from the pipe. He couldn’t avoid getting the oil all over his hands. When he was far enough away he tried to rub it off on his trousers so that he didn’t slip as he descended. The air was rich with the smell of the naphtha now, thick and dangerous, filling his lungs and his head. He felt dizzy, felt the world lurch and reel about him. He had to get back down to the ground.

He reached for the next lower shelf and found it with his toe. Gradually he worked his way back to the ground, his eyes shut as he descended. The bookcase seemed to go on forever. More than once he opened his eyes to see how much farther he had to go.

Finally back on the floor, he found himself surrounded by a widening pool of naphtha. He had no choice but to step through it to get to the book-engine.

He didn’t need to fire up the boiler. That would take too long anyway. But there was a priming mechanism built into the base of the unit that would suffice. He’d studied the mechanism carefully over several days. The spark from a sprung flint trigger ignited a fine jet of naphtha fed from a reservoir, with a fire valve making sure it didn’t ignite the whole pipe. The flame heated the coals in the machine’s boiler. Once they were hot enough, they boiled the water that sent the shuttles whizzing up and along on jets of steam.

Making sure his fingers were dry and as free of naphtha as possible, Finn turned on the jet of oil in the priming mechanism. He shut his eyes once more. If any naphtha was touching the mechanism, the flame would shoot along it in a moment, engulfing him and all the books. He would have no chance. He wasn’t even sure whether the air, now heady with fumes, wouldn’t itself burn once he made the machine spark. Perhaps, if something like that did happen, it would be quick.

Taking a breath he flicked the trigger with his thumb. Nothing happened. He probably hadn’t pressed hard enough. He tried again. This time, the jet of oil from the priming tank took, burning with a tongue of orange-yellow flame. There was a valve to adjust the amount of air being burned. He turned it carefully, a tiny cross-hatched brass wheel, until the flame roared an angry blue. He swung the arm holding the burner around to let it play across the coal in the machine’s boiler.

He waited. All he needed was a single red-hot coal and he could carry out his plan. He needed only a few minutes without someone coming. The future of Engn depended on this. The coals began to fume and give off lead-grey smoke. Finn looked around. He knew he would be easily visible to anyone looking into the Vault now, but he could only wait. A few more moments and he would be ready. He wondered where Connor was, whether he had seen what was happening.

The coal nearest the flames was starting to glow orange. He had only to ignite the naphtha and it was done. Finn fished it out with the tongs that hung on the side of the machine’s boiler. He stepped backwards, holding the flaming coal out at arm’s length. He made sure he stood outside the widening pool of naphtha on the floor. He stamped his feet to shake off as much of the oil as he could. He had to hurry. The coal was already darkening back to grey. It had to be now.

He hurled the smouldering coal into the middle of the pool of naphtha on the floor.

For a moment he thought it wasn’t going to take; that it had all been for nothing. Then with a
wumph
the pool of oil on the floor caught fire. He felt the blast of heat from it on his face. He stepped backwards. A flame-devil whipped and whirled on the surface of the naphtha, green and blue, spreading and growing. He stepped further back until his legs pressed against the square table. The table where he worked. Coils of heavy, dirty smoke in the air made him cough and retch.

The flame found the cascade of oil from the fractured pipe. A line of blue fire shot upwards, up to the high shelf where Finn had perched. It was a living beast, sniffing out the naphtha trail left for it. It pounced on the books with glee, growing to engulf all the volumes he had sprayed with oil. Soon, all the blueprints began to burn.

He had done it. The plans for Engn were being destroyed and no-one, surely, would ever be able to recreate them. Whatever happened to him now, his plan, Connor’s plan, had succeeded. Succeeded where so many others had failed.

‘Finn!’

He turned to see Maeve standing twenty yards away. Her face glowed in the light from the fire.

‘It’s done!’ Finn shouted to her over the roaring of the fire. ‘We’ve done it. You see?’ He couldn’t hear her reply but he could see her shaking her head in the shifting air.

‘No,’ called Maeve. ‘I told you. This is not the way.’

Another noise came to him then: an angry hissing noise, loud, from somewhere up above. He peered up through the roiling smoke. He could see a sheet of something like glass up there. He stepped around the table to gain a better perspective. Not glass, a milky liquid. From other pipes strung out along the cables, it sprayed onto the burning books. Where it struck, it fizzed and thickened into a white foam, coating every surface, smothering the flames. Plumes of steam hissed off the blue volumes where the foam clung. But the fire would surely win; there couldn’t be enough to douse all the flames, could there?

The foam continued to spray out, thicker and thicker. Now it filled the air, raining down like heavy snow, the taste of it acrid. It began to cover the floor, blanketing the pool of naphtha. Soon the whole bookshelf was coated. All around, the smothered flames licked and writhed and died, leaving behind only black smoke and silence.

The foam continued for a few moments longer then cut out. After a pause, the clicking of some mechanism, torrents of water began to spray out instead. The water washed away the foam, sending it pouring down the books in an avalanche to the floor. Finn peered up through the spray, desperate to gauge the extent of the damage. The fire hadn’t burned for long but surely he must have destroyed a lot of books. And even
some
would be enough, if they contained vital designs.

But as the foam sluiced off the shelves he saw the familiar wall of blue leather. A few volumes looked singed brown, but there they still were. Alarm thumped through him. The books were fireproof. Or they hadn’t burned for long enough. In any case, they were undamaged. He stared upwards in stunned silence.

‘Finn.’

Maeve still stood there, watching him rather than looking at the books. She scowled.

‘I thought I could destroy the blueprints,’ said Finn, uselessly.

‘No,’ said Maeve. ‘You can’t.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘There isn’t anything you can do,’ said Maeve.

‘Why have you come back? Where did you go?’

‘I went to get help.’

‘From the wreckers?’ said Finn. ‘If Lud learns what I’ve done perhaps he’ll take me in, now, hide me from the masters.’

Maeve turned away from him and began to pace up and down, as if pondering some deep mystery. Occasionally she glanced back up the hallway. ‘Lud isn’t going to do that. And Lud already knows all about you and what you’ve done.’

‘He does?’