The Custodian of Marvels (34 page)

Three more shots fired close behind me.

Jeremiah’s eyes snapped open. His arm made a sudden twist. My finger flicked from the trigger guard to the trigger itself. He lurched back. I took a breath. Then he turned, amazement on his face and his hands held before him, unharmed.

The mirrored door had begun to swing away from us, inch by inch.

“It’s open!” I shouted, snapping around, searching for Yan, who would surely lead the charge.

But he lay on his back, unblinking, a small bullet hole in his cheek, a spreading halo of blood on the stones. Lara knelt next to him, clutching her own bloodied forearm. Fabulo, Ellie and Tinker were taking cover.

I beckoned to them. “To the Custodian! Bring the guns!”

The great door had swung deep enough to clear its frame, revealing darkness in the room beyond.

There was no time to weigh the danger. We were running, diving through the widening crack into the clean air of the newly opened room. Fabulo was the last through.

I put my back against the huge door and pushed. The others joined me. It slowed and stopped. Then it begin to inch the other way, accelerating until it came up hard against its housing. The boom of it closing echoed back from distant walls.

The blackness was sudden and complete. I was aware of movement next to me. Jeremiah’s hand pushed me aside. I could hear him working along the width of the door.

A match flared, revealing Tinker’s face. He reached out to the wall next to him. There was a faint pop and white light flooded down from the ceiling.

Fabulo cocked his gun. “Come out!” he shouted.

I turned to look where he was aiming and saw the vastness of the room for the first time. It was filled with a maze of grey cabinets, connected here and there by what looked like grey shelves. I knew instantly that it was a machine, though unlike anything I’d encountered before. There was no engine, no firebox or funnel, no regulators or valves. One thing only in the room was familiar – a mass of brass pipes on the wall, identical to the ones Richard da Silva had shown me in the courtroom far above. There, I’d seen but two pipes. These were more than I could take in at a single glance.

“Show yourself!” shouted Fabulo, his voice echoing back from the room.

No one emerged.

I glanced back to the others. Jeremiah had been fitting wedges of wood under the door and up its side, hammering them in place with the butt of his musket. “I’ve no other way to lock it,” he shouted.

I nodded to show him that I’d heard and that the gunfire deafness was leaving me.

Ellie was ripping strips from her own skirt to bandage Lara’s arm. Tinker stared blankly over the machines. We all knew that Yan was lying dead on the other side of the door. But none would speak of it. Not yet.

As in a trance I stepped towards an indent in the nearest of the grey cabinets, where buttons were set out like the keys of a stenotype. Behind and above them, embossed on a grey metal plate, I read the letters
C.O.M
.

“This is it,” I said. “The Custodian of Marvels is a machine.”

CHAPTER 31

1.25am

There are two powers in every secret: that others do not know it and that others may be told.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

Fabulo had walked off in a daze. He meandered between the grey cabinets, ducking under the connecting shelves, finding his way gradually deeper into that vast room. His flimsy plan had collapsed. There was no person to be held hostage. John Farthing would be outside the mirrored door already. Wooden wedges would not hold them back for long.

Each of the stenotype keys had been printed with a letter of the alphabet or a number. To one side of the recess was a hopper, containing a great stack of cards. I took the topmost, examined both sides, which proved blank, and flexed it. It was perhaps nine inches by four and no more stiff than a playing card.

Jeremiah came to stand beside me. “I want to thank you,” he said.

“You’ll be hanged because of me,” I told him. “If they don’t shoot us all first.”

“I picked that lock. It’s the greatest thing I ever did. You were right in what you said before. I would have been running forever. But this way I’ll die knowing…”

“…you’re the greatest locksmith of the age.”

He chuckled. “Maybe I am.”

“Then tell me,” I said. “What does this machine do?”

I handed him the card. He examined it as I had done, then stepped to the side and held it against a slot in the machine. The width of the card matched perfectly.

“The cards move through here,” he said. “If you look at a low angle, you can see small wheels. They’re rubber coated for better grip. They shoot the cards along. See those shelves between the cabinets? They’re about the same width. I’m betting the cards will travel through them.”

“But why? And where’s the engine to power it?”

“I’m stronger on the how than the why,” he said, then pointed to a small lever on the machine, next to the
C.O.M.
nameplate. “Doesn’t that look familiar?”

It was of the same design as the wall-mounted levers that had operated the lights. I reached out and flipped it down.

The lights in the room dimmed for a moment and a low whirring noise began. It emanated from the cabinet in front of us, but also from other cabinets around. The entire room was humming with it. I had barely time to react before the hopper juddered and a card whisked along the slot, where it came to an abrupt halt. A vent in the metal was blowing air against my leg.

Fabulo was running back between the cabinets. The others stepped closer, fearfully, as if they were approaching a bomb.

“What does it do?” asked Lara.

“Shall we find out?”

I pressed the stenotype key marked “E”. A chatter and thud from the slot made us all jump. A neat rectangular hole had been punched in the card, and the letter “E” had been printed, though I’d not seen it happen.

Fabulo reached us, panting for breath.

I pressed the keys: L I Z A B E T H B A R N A B U S. On each press, an arm sprang out and stamped the letter. And each time another hole had been punched in the card. I could make no sense of the pattern.

We all stared.

“What now?” asked Fabulo.

“What do you think that might do?” asked Jeremiah, indicating a button set apart from the others. Rather than a letter, it was marked with a word:
SEND
.

I pressed it. Immediately, the card shot away along the slot, disappearing into the machine. There were new sounds now. A rattling and a whirring that started close, but moved quickly on to the next cabinet, and the cabinet beyond. Then an answering chatter began somewhere deep in the room, rushing back towards us, hopping from machine to machine. With a click, two new cards shot out of a slot nearby, coming to rest in a shallow tray.

Ellie picked them up and passed them to me.

They were pale blue, but the same size as the card we’d sent. And they were punched with holes, much as it had been. But these were printed with type front and back.

Subject: Elizabeth Barnabus

Category: Person

Date of Birth: Unknown

Year of Birth: 1989

Family: Gulliver Barnabus, Father. Felicia Barnabus, Mother. Edwin Barnabus, Twin.

Class: Informer and Suspect

Status: Wanted for Questioning

I turned the cards, scanning the text, finding lists of names – my friends and people I’d associated with. Finding also a great list of case numbers, among them surely the reference to the court case that had ruined my family, killed my father and sent me over the border in exile. Against each case was a filing reference. All began with IPC. All had Roman numerals – references to the rooms we’d passed, the doors we’d not opened.

“It’s a filing machine,” I said. “An index.”

Fabulo snatched the cards from my hand. “But if it’s the Custodian of Marvels…”

“Don’t you see? We’re talking about the Patent Office. For them that’s just what this is. They’re not interested in the things themselves. They’re fixed always on the knowing. On who knows and who isn’t allowed to know. This machine – this great index – it gives access to knowledge. It is the custodian.”

So focused had we been on the cards and the machine that, for minutes, none of us had turned to look at the great door. And under the whirring of the machine, small sounds were lost.

“Elizabeth Barnabus!” barked Agent Chronis, behind us.

I froze, expecting a bullet, my guts clenching.

Fabulo raised his hands above his head. Lara followed his lead. But Tinker turned to face the door.

“Attention, Elizabeth Barnabus!”

Tinker tugged at my sleeve. “It’s the speaking tube,” he said.

We all turned then and found the door wedged closed as we left it. “Someone go speak to him,” I said. “Buy us time.”

Lara was the first to move. She ran to a grille on the wall. I hadn’t noticed it before.

“Who are you?” she asked, pressing the button.

“You know who I am!”

“But I’m not sure I do.”

Knowing we were in good hands, I turned to the machine once more, trying to filter out Chronis’s angry questions. Jeremiah had taken some of the cards from Fabulo.

“It talks about me,” he said.

I nodded. “They know we’re associates. They’ve been following us.”

“Give the machine my name,” he said.

“No,” said Fabulo. “Ask it about Harry Timpson.”

“For what? There’ll just be more references to files in rooms we can’t get to!”

Chronis’s voice barked behind us. “We know the door is unlocked. We will be able to force it open. Remove whatever is blocking it.”

“Why would we do that?” asked Lara.

“If you fail to comply, we will use lethal force once inside.”

“You’ve done that already,” she said, her voice bitter.

I bent over the stenotype and started pressing keys. A blank card shot through and the hole punch chattered.

B A R R E L B R E E C H

I pressed SEND and the card shot away. I listened to the humming and clicking of its progress. Then, as before, the sound rushed back from across the room and a card shot out into the tray.

Subject: Barrel Breech

Category: Terminology

Class: Restricted. Agents only

Operation Code Name: Clean Start

There was a great list of case numbers that spilled over onto the other side. My hands were back on the stenotype keys.

C L E A N S T A R T

As I sent the new card shooting off into the machine, a terrible creaking noise began behind me. The door shuddered.

“Keep it closed,” I shouted.

They all ran to lean against it, bracing themselves.

“Just give me time!”

The answering card shot out into the tray.

Subject: Clean Start

Category: Operation Code

Class: Restricted. Agents Only

Related Terms: Napoleonic Weapons. Breech Loader Musket. Converter Musket. Battle of Waterloo.

My fingers flew across the keys, printing each of the phrases. This time I didn’t wait for a return card before sending out the next. The noise of the machine grew. But louder still was the grinding and creaking of the door beginning to open, fraction by fraction, forcing the wooden wedges to scrape across the floor.

A response card shot into the tray, others following rapidly after it. I picked out the top one and read:

Subject: Waterloo

Category: Historic Battle

Class: Expunged from History. Agents Only

Date: 18th June to 20th December 1815

Casualties: 3.19 million

Combatants: France. Prussia. Belgium. Netherlands. Britain. Russia.

The list went on over to the other side and to three more cards after it. I stared at them, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the revelation. The great halls of guns and ammunition suddenly made sense. There had been a terrible conflagration. A battle of a scale beyond understanding. Many people dead for each of the guns we’d seen in that vast storeroom. And all of it had been wiped from history. Expunged by the Patent Office.

I remembered Professor Ferdinand’s terror, not at the thought of history being changed, but at the possibility of proof existing. The Patent Office had gone beyond its authority, beyond the provisions of the Great Accord. The Patent Office had broken the law.

The great door juddered and screeched, inching its way towards us.

“We can’t hold it,” yelled Lara.

“Tell them we’ll give up!” I cried.

Lara threw herself towards the speaking grille and pressed the button. I gathered up the cards and ran towards the brass pipes on the wall.

“We give up!” she shouted. “We surrender!”

The scraping noise stopped. Chronis’s voice was cold. “Remove your barricade. Then lie face down on the ground. Hands spread. Anyone who disobeys this simple instruction will be shot.”

CHAPTER 32

October 13th

Applause is the reward of the bullet-catcher. But the con artist will be far away by the time his trick is seen.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

On the third day after my arrest the cell door opened and Agent Chronis stepped inside. He waited until the jailer had relocked the door and walked away. I sat up from the narrow bed, clasped my hands on my lap and waited.

“Are you being treated well?” he asked.

“It’s not the worst prison I’ve been in.”

“The food?”

“Adequate.”

“Good. Good.”

He stepped to the window and went up on tiptoe to look outside. Then he turned, hands clasped behind him. I waited, sensing that the balance of our interaction had shifted in my favour.