Black Mercury

Chapter Three-2

Hildy opened up a locked box and brought forth a can of something. Cas couldn’t tell what it was in the dim light, but he guessed that it was water because she was pouring it into the boiler of his autocarriage. Why would she drain it only to refill it again? It had been working fine before. He opened his mouth to pose this question but Hildy interrupted.

“In you get, Cas!” she shouted, closing up the boiler again. Til cranked up the engine and the autocarriage began again the process of heating up, getting ready to move off. Caspar approached, feeling wary.

“What’s going on?” he said as he caught up with Hildy.

“Just drive,” she smiled. “A lap or two. But let’s put this on first.” She held up an unidentifiable contraption made from metal and padded with leather and some other soft things.

“I’ve no idea what that is.”

“It’s for your neck. Hold still.” She slammed shut the lid of her box and slid it over to Cas’s feet. Standing on it for increased height, she did something complicated with the metal thing, snapping it shut around his neck. It hurt.

“Ouch,” he protested weakly.

“Well, now it won’t hurt as much when you drive.” Hildy stepped off the box and away. The device prevented him from moving his neck much; he could swivel his head from side to side, but that was about it. He had to admit that it helped; he didn’t have to do the work to hold his head and neck still anymore.

“Thanks,” he said, but Hildy had already moved out of hearing. So he got into the driver’s seat instead and waited while Til strapped him in.

“I don’t suppose you know what this is about?” he asked without much hope.

Til grinned at him. “Your carriage has had an upgrade,” he said gruffly. “A note of advice: drive carefully.”

“I don’t—” Cas started, but Til was backing off. The autocarriage was almost ready to go, and Hildy had got someone to operate the track’s lights system. Coloured lights began flashing at him and the starting shot sounded.

Cas swore.

“Fine, fine. I’m driving.” Ordinarily he would start cautiously, mindful of the several other cars that always began ahead of him. But this time he was alone on the track. Grinning, he pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor.

The autocarriage shot forward fast; too fast! The vehicle hurtled down the track with enough speed to slam him back against his seat, hard. Despite the bracing contraption, his neck screamed with pain and his heart raced with sudden fear. What the hell? The first turn loomed far sooner than it should have, and only quick reflexes saved Cas from slamming into the wall. He wrenched the steering wheel around and made it through the turn, only to be thrown into the next turn before he was ready. He fought the machine through three more turns, trying to ease off on the accelerator, but it seemed that once in motion, nothing could hold it back.

He was screaming his way through the tight turn halfway around the track when he lost it. Two bends in quick succession did it for him; he swung left and then tried to recover right, but the autocarriage was going far too fast. He slammed into the wall.

Again.

He sat still for a few moments, dazed, until he realised that the vehicle still hadn’t stopped. Half the front end was crushed, but the engine was still roaring, trying to carry the thing through the wall if it couldn’t go around it. The wheels were grinding against the track boundaries, slowly turning the car in the direction of the open track to the right.

Cas swore a few times, suffering a moment’s blind panic. He hurt in several places and he could feel the warmth of blood on his forehead, but he couldn’t find a way to stop the car. The brake squealed in protest and was repeatedly overruled by the extreme ferocity of his engine. What had Hildy done to his autocarriage?!

Voices shouted from somewhere behind him, but he couldn’t twist far enough around to see who approached. In the end it was Til’s voice that rose to a bellow that he could hear over the engine.

‘OUT OF THE CAR!’ Til bawled.

Cas tried, but his shaking hands fumbled the straps and he couldn’t get the second one off. Sweating, he tried again, but then Til was there. The bigger man didn’t bother with the clasp: he just grabbed the thing in one huge hand and hauled. It snapped. Til dragged Cas out of the driver’s seat, heedless of injury, but Cas’s protests died before he’d uttered them. He was barely pulled clear before his autocarriage fought its way around the turn and went roaring off down the track.

Nobody spoke.

A few seconds later, the sound of another impact split the night air.

Cas let out a long, shaky sigh. Til was still holding him up, and he was grateful because his legs felt like rubber.

“You okay, lad?” Til said quietly.

“Um,” said Cas.

“Just sit down a minute,” Til advised, and guided him to the floor. Cas sat, stretching his legs out in front of him. He didn’t seem to have broken anything, but he hurt plenty anyway.

Hildy caught up with them a moment later, trailed by Clara and two others he didn’t recognise. To his surprise, Clara went straight to him and dropped to her knees beside him. She wasn’t nearly so composed as she had been earlier in the day.

“Cas,” she said breathlessly. “Are you hurt?”

“My head,” he said, gesturing vaguely.

Clara investigated. Her touch was gentle but it still stung horribly. “Twice in one day,” she sighed.

“You have to admit,” he said, wincing, “this one was not my fault.”

Clara didn’t reply to that. “Looks like something flew up and hit you here,” she reported, lightly touching his forehead above his left eye. “It isn’t deep, though it is bleeding quite a lot.”

“Right,” he said faintly.

Hildy had walked off in the direction his carriage had gone, but she was soon back. She looked white-faced and shaken, though not angry as he might have expected. His car had just been wrecked for the second time in one day; why wouldn’t she be angry?

“Upgrade?” he asked, trying to look up at her without straining his neck. “That’s what you call an upgrade?”

She gave a sudden, fierce grin and crouched on her haunches beside him. “A huge upgrade, I’d say. Any lasting damage?”

“Clara says not.”

Hildy glanced at Clara for confirmation of this, but Clara wouldn’t look at her or speak. She continued her self-appointed task of checking Cas for wounds, maintaining a tight-lipped silence as she did so.

“You’re right,” Hildy said with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have used Cas, but I honestly didn’t expect it to be this powerful.” Her voice was brimming with excitement, and in spite of her expressed regret, her eyes sparkled with glee. She managed to sober herself enough to offer a proper apology.

He patted her hand. “You’re forgiven for almost killing me, of course, but can I ask why…?”

“I expected that the carriage would be faster,” she admitted. “I was hoping for quite a lot faster, though nothing like that. Til offered to drive, but if I was right I knew I’d need an experienced autocarriage driver—you’ve got the reflexes to handle it. If I’d let Til do it he’d have crashed at the first corner.”

Cas grunted. “Could you at least warn me next time?”

Hildy had started grinning again, but she sobered at that and nodded. “You’re right, I should have involved you better.”

“A thought, Hildy,” Clara said, standing up. “There are lots of autocarriages and, I daresay, a lot more of that fuel you’ve been using. But there is only one Caspar.”

Hildegard looked shocked at this speech, and Cas was more than a little surprised himself. He’d never known Clara to be angry with his aunt before. In fact, he’d rarely seen her angry at anybody. Other than himself, anyway.

“Hey,” he protested, trying to get his legs under him. “Let’s not fight. I’m perfectly fine.”

“Not perfectly,” Clara muttered, but she didn’t say anything else. She grabbed Cas’s left arm, and Hildy, looking stricken, rushed to take his right. Between them they got him on his feet again. Only then did he notice that Til and the other two of Hildy’s people weren’t there. Probably they had gone in search of his wayward autocarriage.

“So, my good aunt,” Cas said once he was stable. “What exactly did you do to it?”

Hildy was silent for a moment, obviously struggling with herself. She stared at him with troubled eyes, then looked to Clara.

“I think he’s earned it,” Clara said coldly.

Hildy nodded once. Digging in her trouser pockets, she produced a small vial and handed it to Cas.

“I put that in the boiler,” she said softly. “We applied a few modifications to the carriage to adjust for the extra speed, or so we hoped. That’s really it.”

Cas stared at the vial. A dark black liquid moved sluggishly when he tipped the container, and around the cork stopper his nose caught wisps of an acrid, unpleasant smell with a coppery tang.

“What is it?”

Hildy shrugged. “Nobody knows. Max gave it to me. He said he got it from Hans.”

“Hans Diederich?”

Hildy nodded, and Cas only felt more confused. Hans owned Diederich Enterprises, one of Eisenstadt’s biggest mining companies. Goldstein Industries bought a lot of their materials from him, and he and Cas’s father had been friends for years.

“Hans has been running some new type of operation out at the lake,” she said. “I don’t know what’s involved, but somewhere along the way they dredged up some of this stuff.”

That was stranger still. Lake Sherrat was an enormous body of water around which the city of Eisenstadt was built. It was easily a mile wide, and deep. And this remarkable fuel had been lurking beneath the waters all this time?

Hildy’s ferocious grin escaped her control again. “You realise the possibilities, don’t you, Cas?”

He did indeed. With speed like that, he could win any autocarriage race—assuming Hildy could modify the vehicle to handle it without careening out of control. “The possibilities are interesting,” he allowed. “But doesn’t this belong to Hans?”

Hildy shrugged that problem away. “Max asked me to test it. They have no idea what it is or what it does.”

Cas began to grin too. “You aren’t going to tell them, are you?”

“Not a chance. But I’m thinking I will need a much bigger sample from Hans to make sure I’ve tested every possibility.”

“Like several gallons?” Cas guessed.

“At least five, maybe more. Hans thinks it’s just a waste product. He gave some to Max as a point of interest, and Max asked me to test it ‘just to make sure.’”

Cas nodded soberly. “It’s a shame that you haven’t discovered a use for it.”

Hildy chuckled. “Isn’t it? But I don’t think Max will be too disappointed. He has plenty of other exciting new ventures to deal with. This one is going to be mine.”

“If you’re finished,” Clara interrupted, “I think Cas needs to go home.”

“Oh, right,” Hildy said, backing off. “Of course. I’m sorry about the new bruises, Cas, but don’t worry about the autocarriage. I’ll get it fixed up.”

He hoped that ‘fixed up’ would include redesigning it to take the enhanced speed, but he didn’t push. Instead, he said, “Which part of the lake is Hans working on?”

“North side,” Hildy said with a small smile. “Near the train station. You can’t miss it.”

“Just asking,” he smiled.

“Come on, Cas,” Clara interrupted again. “Stop thinking about driving and start thinking about resting.”

“Ma’am.” He nodded to Hildy and allowed himself to be led away.

This time, Clara didn’t abandon him to make the journey alone. She escorted him all the way back to his house, cleaned up the wound on his head, fed him, and made sure he was comfortable. Being fussed over was pleasant, he decided, and Clara was good at it. She tucked him up in bed with some new painkillers to ease the aches and sat down in a chair near his bed.

He opened one eye to peer at her. “Staying?”

“For a little while. Just to make sure you sleep.”

“This is me sleeping,” he assured her. “You should go.”

Clara just shook her head. He was about to drift off when she spoke again. “You live a charmed life, Caspar Goldstein.” This was uttered with a sigh. “Can you promise me something?”

“Mmph?”

“Take better care of yourself, please? You aren’t eighteen anymore. No more collisions, no more injuries. Promise.”

“Anything for you, schatzi,” he muttered sleepily.

She snorted faintly. “Good enough. Now sleep.”