The Gravity Engine (7 page)

Michael considered playing dumb for a moment and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. ‘The building’s made of metal.’

‘And?’

‘And I’m my father’s son. I could dismantle the entire building in less than five minutes.’

The King turned back to speak to the spirit. ‘Is there a building in this city that isn’t made of metal?’

The spirit smiled slightly, and when he spoke his voice was warm and rich. ‘No. I’m one hundred per cent silver, except for the parts that are glass.’

The King turned back to Michael and concentrated for a moment. Five huddling, terrified demons came out of the kitchen.

‘Go up and get the young one
and bring her down here,’ the King ordered without looking at them.

‘No, wait. Why do you want her?’ Michael said.

‘No bamboo here, I’ll have to stick slivers of wood under her fingernails.’

Michael reeled back, nauseous. ‘Don’t hurt her! Why would you want to do that?’

The demons stopped halfway up the stairs.

‘Will you vow to remain in this building?’ the King said.

‘I give you my word,’ Michael said. ‘I won’t leave the building. There’s no need to hurt either of them!’

The King waved the demon servants away, again without looking at them. ‘Good.’ He gestured behind him towards the spirit of the city. ‘
Semias, this is Michael. Michael’s visiting from the Asian Heavens, he’s the son of the spirit of their western heavens. I want you take him to see the gravity engine.’

‘He just vowed never to leave the building,’
Semias said.

The King gestured with frustration. ‘He can leave it to go to the engine!’

‘Very well,’ Semias said. ‘Michael, was it? Come with me.’ He held his thin, pale hand out to Michael.

Michael took his hand and
heard the Demon King say, ‘Wait, what?’ as the mansion disappeared.

The room around them changed to a vast hall, fifty metres high and three times that long,
nearly filled by an enormous shining brass cube. Michael’s mouth fell open; they were standing on a walkway halfway up the building that circled the hall and gave a good view of the cube. Lights sparkled and sank around the structure, and the glass-tiled floor around it rippled in expanding circles. He sent his sense out to check where they were and found himself deep underground. No tunnels led into the room; it was only reachable by teleportation.

He jerked back as
Semias moved right up into his face to challenge him, the spirit’s expression rigid with anger.

‘What the hell is going on here, young man?’ the spirit said. ‘Why are there Asian demons here
, what are those two poor women doing here, and more than anything what the hell are
you
doing here?’

Michael opened and closed his mouth a few times then pulled himself together. ‘I was hoping you could tell me that.
Why are you working with them?’

‘I’m not. They’re forcing me to c
ooperate.’ The spirit sagged and turned to face the machine, leaning on the railing. ‘I need answers.’

Michael leaned on the railing next to him. ‘So do I, sir.’

‘How did you travel up here? Our world is blocked off and nobody should be able to enter.’

‘
The Asian Demon King brought me. I have no idea how he did it. The gateway was a cathedral in Rotterdam.’

Semias
banged his hand on the brass railing. ‘This should not have happened!’ He turned to Michael and jabbed a finger in his face. ‘If you’re the son of one of the Asian spirits, you shouldn’t be working with him.’

‘I’m not. I
came to investigate, and discovered that he’s holding my mother and fiancée.’

‘And he threatened to torture them if you don’t
cooperate.’ Semias sagged and leaned back on the railing. ‘Do you know what he wants?’

‘Mostly he wants control of the Asian Heavens.
It looks like he’s already invaded the European ones. Why didn’t the Shen here stop him?’

‘Shen?’

‘God? Spirits?’ Michael shook his head. ‘It’s what we call ourselves in Asia.’

‘Calling them
Sidhe would be close enough. They’re gone. It’s just me here, guarding the empty Heavens.’

‘So why didn’t
you
stop them? They’re demons and they should not be here!’

‘You think I didn’t try?’
Semias said, his voice fierce with anger. ‘I have no idea how they made it up here. When they came to my city I blocked them, I closed my gates and made my walls slippery and unclimbable – and that bastard took a huge mechanical
battering ram
to me. He broke the glass and framework on my eastern gates …’ He dropped his head and shook it. ‘Do you have any idea much it hurts if I’m dismantled without any preparation or proper care? It was agony. Torture. I fought them, but they broke into me.’ He raised his head and glared at Michael again. ‘And when you took a piece out of the palace’s ceiling it gave me a massive headache.’

‘Sorry
,’ Michael said. ‘But we need to find a way to stop them. How many demons are here in the European Heavens? Are there more than a hundred?’

‘
Three thousand.’

‘Holy
shit
.’

‘
But that’s just the big ones. There are six thousand small ones as well.’

Michael was speechless.

‘You’re a Sidhe yourself, I can see it. Kill yourself now and go home and warn them. Tell them what’s happening here.’

Michael gestured towards the
cube. ‘What if the demons work out the secret of the gravity?’

‘We’re
underground, a hundred feet below the city, and nobody but me can travel here. There’s no other way in. Go now while they’re waiting for us to return.’

‘I can’t leave my
mother and fiancée. I have to take them back with me.’

‘They’re demons, lad. Leave them.’

‘Are you sure?’

Semias
hesitated.

Michael turned away. ‘Yeah. Neither am I.’

‘It’s hard to tell,’ Semias said. ‘Your fiancée isn’t from my region, and your mother has an unusual part-demonic nature. She may be a descendent of the ancient Serpent people.’

‘
What Serpent people? I’ve heard that before. Tell me about them, I think it’s important.’

‘
We don’t have time. The Demon King just pulled your fiancée down to the entrance hall and is threatening her if we don’t return immediately. We need to go.’

Semias
teleported them back to find the Demon King in the mansion’s foyer, yelling at a terrified Clarissa, who was being held by two guards. When he saw Semias and Michael he rounded on them. ‘Next time do what I tell you!’

‘
I did exactly what you told me to, I took him to see the engine,’ Semias said.

Michael ran to Clarissa and pulled her out of the demon guards’ grasps. ‘Did he hurt you?’ He held her close and brushed his hand over her hair. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I didn’t touch her. She broke down herself, the coward,’ the Demon King said.

‘Leave her alone!’ Michael pulled back to see her face, and his heart broke when it mirrored the
haunted Clarissa back at the Western Palace. ‘Clarissa, honey? Talk to me.’

‘
Where’s Rhonda?’ Clarissa clutched him. ‘Can I go back to my room? I want to be away from here.’

Semias
disappeared, then reappeared with Rhonda. She ran to Clarissa and Michael released his fiancée into his mother’s arms. Rhonda led Clarissa, still dazed, up the stairs to their rooms.

‘Next time don’t take anyone anywhere without my permission or I’ll put you back in your cell,’ the Demon King said
to Semias with venom. He turned to Michael. ‘Did you see the gravity engine?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does it look like?’

Michael hesitated. ‘You won’t believe me.’

‘Try me.’

‘It’s a brass cube. Featureless. N
o external moving parts.’

The King nodded, unsurprised. ‘All right. Now both of you listen carefully to me. Michael
, if you can map the internal workings of the engine and provide me with a blueprint, I’ll let you and the women go back to the Asian Heavens, free and unharmed. Semias.’

‘I know,’
Semias said. ‘If I give him the information you’ll leave me here in the city and I won’t be kept locked up and separated from myself any more.’

‘That’s the deal. Will you both cooperate?’

‘I will,’ Michael said.

‘Very well, I will as well,’
Semias said. ‘Let the boy eat and rest, he’s falling over on his feet. I’ll take him back this afternoon and we’ll map out the internal structure for you.’

‘Provide me with an incorrect blueprint and I will knock every tower in this city down, one by one.’ The Demon King glared at Michael. ‘And if I don’t produce a working identical engine from the blueprint you g
ive me, I will hunt down everybody you love and I will torture them to death myself.’

Michael slept through most of the day and went out to the dining room as dusk was falling, feeling dehydrated and exhausted. Neither of the women were there, and he went up to their rooms and rapped on their doors. He sent his senses into the room, searching for them, and didn’t find them. They weren’t anywhere in the building. He stormed back down to the kitchen and yelled at the cowering demons.

‘Wh
ere are Rhonda and Clarissa?’

‘The King took them, my Lord,’ the small female demon said. ‘He said to pass on the message that he will hold them safe until you produce what he wants.’

‘Where’s Semias?’

‘Who?’

Semias appeared next to him. ‘I’m all around you, lad, I am the city. Eat something …’ He looked around. ‘Not good enough.’ He concentrated, and the kitchen glowed into life. Preserved meat, smoked and netted, hung from the hooks on the sides of the walls, and baskets of vegetables appeared next to the stove. ‘Feed the boy and then we’ll get to work.’

He led Michael into the dining room, which gleamed with even more splendour while the spirit was present, and sat him at the table.

‘Can we do this?’ Michael said.

‘We can,’
Semias said, sitting next to him. ‘Do you think they’ll keep their side of the bargain?’

‘There’s a small chance they will,’ Michael said.

‘Can you find the women and teleport to them? Take them out now and leave.’

‘I don’t know where they are.
Do you?’

‘They’re not within the city.’

Michael rubbed his hands over his face with defeat. ‘I don’t have any choice. I have to help him. I just hope he doesn’t find too many military uses for the technology when we unlock it for him.’

‘Don’t worry, he won’t.’

The demons emerged from the kitchen with plates of food. Suddenly Michael was starving and Semias remained silent as Michael wolfed the meal down.

After he’d eaten
they returned to the gravity engine room and stood on the walkway. Michael turned his metal senses into it and stood for a moment, bewildered, as he watched it work. It appeared to be clockwork; cogs and springs worked in jerky mechanical motion within it, but there were places inside the engine where the mechanics didn’t mesh. It was like looking at the interior of a clock through a shattered window.

‘What the hell is going on in there?’ he said.

‘You can see inside?’ Semias said.

Michael nodded a reply, moving along the walkway to get a view from a different angle. Some of the
pieces appeared to be only half a cog, but still turning as if they were circular. The nature of the interior was giving him a headache.

‘It’s four
dimensional,’ Semias said. ‘All of the movement is in three dimensions, but it’s bent through four. That’s where the weird interior joins are.’

‘I see,’ Michael said. ‘The
Sidhe could work in four dimensions?’

‘Can you teleport, lad?’

‘No,’ Michael said, confused at the sudden change of topic. ‘I’m stuck here. Something about this place screws my head up.’ He rubbed the back of his skull, which was still tender. ‘Or there’s permanent brain damage from being smacked around too much in the last week or so. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘Could you teleport before you arrived here, though?’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘That’s moving in four dimensions. You lift yourself above the flat piece of paper that is our reality, and drop yourself somewhere else, moving through the fourth dimension. You do it yourself.’

‘But …’ Michael shook his head. ‘Okay, if you say so, all this advanced physics is beyond me. But I can’t manipulate things like the interior of that machine.’

‘No, I do that
. I have multi-dimensional control within my city. All the parts were built by our artisans, and then I put it together.’