Engn

XVII

XVII“The ironclads,” shouted Finn over the whir and click of the clock mechanism. “They're after me.”

The old man waved his arm dismissively. “Not allowed in here, boy. Delicate machinery.”

Did the old man mean he, Finn, wasn't allowed in or that the ironclads weren't? Finn stood by the door, expecting his pursuers to start hammering on it at any moment. “I'm … I'm not even sure I'm supposed to be in here,” he said.

The old man didn't reply. He adjusted something in the great clock's mechanism, delicately positioning a weight on a balance that rocked backwards and forwards. He glanced repeatedly at the oblong clock he'd set down on the floor. Finally, satisfied, he took out his black book and began to write.

“Clock seventy-two, Western Grand Tower, synchronized to master time.”

“I came through the postern door,” said Finn, not knowing what else to say. “Through the passageways. I got lost. I don't know where I'm supposed to go.”

The old man kneeled and heaved the clock back onto his back. He stood on shaky legs and began to walk away from Finn.

“I mean, why me?” said Finn. “Why was I given the Sixth Bell duties? Was it deliberate?”

“Think you're special?” the old man said, not looking back.

“I just thought, maybe, someone picked me out. Because of the tests.”

The man paused. “Tests? What tests?”

Was this the same man? The clock-winder and the gatekeeper? He couldn't be sure.

“I don't know,” said Finn. “The gatekeeper mentioned them when I arrived.”

The old man snorted but said nothing. He continued walking away.

“I brought you this back,” shouted Finn after him. The man stopped again and glanced around. Finn strode forwards, holding out the small brass alarm that had woken him each morning. He held his left arm, the one with the chain locked around it, behind his back, not wanting the old man to see.

The man raised a caterpillar eyebrow. He held out his hand. Finn worked his way between the cogs and spinning shafts to reach him. He had to duck under a silver chain that buzzed through the air at head-height. He handed over the brass clock. The man examined it and held it to his ear. He nodded at Finn, as if he'd done the right thing.

“What sort of ironclads?”

“What do you mean?”

“What company were they?”

“I don't know. I thought they were all the same.”

The old man sighed in an exaggerated way. “Come with me.”

Despite his age and the weight on his back, the man was nimble. Finn had to break into a trot to keep up with him as they worked their way through the clock mechanism. They reached what looked like a wooden cupboard door set part way up a wall. The old man twisted a clasp and opened it. Crouching, he stepped through. The clock on his back banged against the top of the frame and he had to resort to crawling on hands and knees. Finn followed him, squeezing his shoulders through the narrow gap, to find another passageway, its floor two or three feet higher than that of the clock room. He recalled how the old man had vanished halfway up the spiral stairs to the dormitory. Perhaps there were secret doors like that all over Engn.

They set off now down a flight of steep steps, turning through ninety degrees every seventeenth. There were no windows visible but incandescent bulbs flickered at each turning. There were more of the unlit silvery orbs half-embedded in the walls. He asked the old man about them but received only a dismissive grunt as a reply.

Finally, they stood on a circular red-tiled floor, highly polished as if worn smooth by the passage of many feet. A set of wooden doors stood in front of them. The old man found another key from his jangling collection and unlocked them.

Inside was a round, echoing space, with a large gold circle painted upon it like the dial of some sort of clock. A great many symbols Finn didn't recognize were marked around the ring at irregular intervals, along with the standard numerals for the hours, one to thirty-six. He watched, amazed, as a vast pendulum swung across the space with a whoosh of air. The gold disc on the end of it must have been twenty feet across. Finn could feel the rush of it on his face as it swept past. The pendulum paused at the end of its arc then cut back through the air, across the middle of the room. The old man, not breaking his stride, walked directly across its path. It missed him by inches as it roared by, but he appeared not to notice. Finn, wary, followed the old man. He waited until the pendulum was at the very far end of its cycle before hopping across the gold line that marked its passage. If it hit him, it would swat him away like a fly.

They stopped outside a smaller door. The old man picked up a triangle of cloth from a peg next to it and tied it around his nose and mouth. He held out a second triangle for Finn. Finn took the cloth and copied the old man. It had the warm smell of dust. The old man unlocked the smaller door and they walked through into a room that clicked and clattered with the ticking of thousands of clocks.

Finn looked around, dazzled by the array of shining, whirring mechanisms, brass and iron and glass. Whichever way he looked the movement of some or other device flickered away in the corner of his eye. What were they all doing there? Some were in pieces, being repaired, but most looked to be in perfect order.

High up above his head hung something that wasn't a clock: a large, metal sphere suspended from the ceiling, spiked with hundreds of tiny tubes. Black cables led off in all directions from the spikes to disappear through the walls or ceiling. Against the background cacophony, he thought he could hear a deep hum coming from the sphere. He walked beneath it warily, half expecting it to drop on him. As he passed underneath, the hairs on his head lifted, as if the sphere were trying to suck him upwards.

The old man, meanwhile, had stopped at one of the benches. With infinite care, he lowered the regulator clock he bore into an empty space among a jumble of dismantled mechanisms. At home, their most accurate clock had been Mrs. Megrim's. The Switch House received a message on the trunk line each day at exactly twelve o'clock. If anyone else in the valley needed to know the precise time, they could ask the Switch House. Which meant that the whole world followed the time on a master clock somewhere in Engn. Was it one of these? Was it even the one carried around on his back by the old man? Had Finn lived his life by that clock's time without knowing it?

He tried to ask, his voice muffled by the mask he wore over his mouth and nose. The old man waved a hand at him, urgent, instructing him to be quiet. He turned and, free of his burden, walked on through the room of clocks. Finn followed, picking his way over broken cogs and chains and digits strewn about on the floor.

Then, with a vast clatter, all the clocks in the room began to whir and chime at the same moment, all of them reaching the twenty-seventh hour. The sounds clanged in Finn's ears, coming at him from all angles, seeming to echo around inside his skull. The noise was incredible, but the old man didn't appear to mind. He looked around at the clocks, nodded in approval, then unlocked a farther door. He walked through, and once again Finn followed. Outside, the old man took off his mask and indicated Finn could do the same.

“One breath in the wrong place in there and all the timings get disrupted,” he said.

“What would happen then?” asked Finn.

The old man only shook his head in reply.

They stood in some sort of library. Books, sheaves of paper, and rolls of parchment cluttered every surface: shelves, desks, the floor. Pools of candle light illuminated the scene here and there, leaving most of the room in shifting darkness. The smell of dust and paper and age tickled Finn's nose, making him want to sneeze.

The old man crossed to a desk and sat at a stool. A large book lay open on the desk, each page the size of a child's cot.

“Your number?” he asked.

“My number?”

“Yes, your number, boy. Are you stupid?”

“I don't have a number.”

“Nonsense. Everyone and everything in Engn has a number. How else could we possibly keep track of it all?” The old man indicated the snowdrifts of paperwork surrounding him.

“I'm sorry. I don't know,” said Finn. “No one told me.”

The man sighed and shook his head in amazement. “Name then? Do you recall that at least?”

“Finn,” said Finn. “Finn Smithson.”

“Very well.”

The old man took out his glasses and, his nose almost brushing the paper of the book, feeling his way across the lines of text with his fingertips, began to read.

Finn smelled freshly baked bread. On a low table next to the desk, a meal had been set out for the old man. A jug of water and a glass stood next to a dome of silver mesh. The old man, seeming to sense what Finn was thinking, waved a hand towards the food without looking up, telling Finn he could eat. Finn needed no more prompting. He was lightheaded with hunger, his mouth dusty with thirst. He poured himself water then began to consume the bread, dipping it in a beef stew that had also been provided. It was good. Very, very good.

As he ate, he studied the old man. He was more and more sure this was the gatekeeper. It was surely the same bushy grey beard he'd seen inside the little hut. He replayed the memories in his mind. And now, as well as gatekeeper and clock-winder, the old man appeared to be some sort of record-keeper, too. The masters gave him no end of menial tasks. Was he being punished for something?

The old man continued to read, his fingers spidering along the lines of tiny black letters. Occasionally he shook his head and a plume of powder billowed out of his shaggy hair to drift down to the table, as if his brains were slowly crumbling to dust and falling from his ears.

With a thrill of alarm in his stomach it occurred to Finn that perhaps this was Lud. Perhaps he'd been meant to come up here and find the old man. Finn suddenly wanted to tell him everything. Connor, the pact, all of it. He'd walked alone in darkness for too long. He'd had enough of secrets and of hiding; he couldn't keep them all in his head. He wanted to ask what he should do. Whether he was on the right path. Whether he was passing or failing the tests. What he was being tested for. How to join the wreckers.

He was about to speak when the old man, with a snort, finished his reading. He looked up at Finn. His eyes were so lifeless and cold that Finn suddenly couldn't speak. If this wasn't Lud, he might be condemning himself by even saying the name. The old man stood and crossed to a shelf of smaller ledgers, bound with red-leather. Finn said nothing. The old man's back was slightly crooked as he walked, bent forwards, as if he were still carrying the clock. With a practiced heave he pulled one of the books off the shelf, carried it back, and slammed it onto the desktop in a small explosion of dust.

“Here you are,” said the old man. “Interesting.”

It was the word he'd used the first time, by the gate. If it was him.

“What's interesting?” asked Finn.

“Thumb.”

“Pardon?” asked Finn.

“Show me your thumb, boy.”

Finn held his thumb out and the man began to inspect it closely, screwing a brass eyepiece into his eye to do so. Finally, he grunted, looked at Finn, and said, “Yes, you're definitely you. So, bright spark, are we?”

Finn wasn't at all clear whether the old man thought this was a good thing or a bad thing. He examined his thumb but could see nothing different about it.

“I don't know.”

“Quick-witted. Clever with your fingers. Good head for heights. Punctual too, apart from this morning.”

“That's all written down in there?”

The man held up his hand to quiet Finn. “Brave. Understands the line-of-sights. Smart. Definite potential. Definite potential. But where are you to go, that's the question, eh?” The old man peered up at Finn, as if expecting an answer from him.

“I thought, perhaps, I should have gone down the spiral staircase, not up. Down to the mines I mean.”

“Ah, you want to go to the mines, do you? That could be arranged.”

“No, I … no. I just thought maybe I'd taken the wrong turning. I don't know if I've done the right thing coming up here.”

“People your age never do the right thing. You're all as bad as each other, dim-witted and confused. It's a wonder any of you survive.”

“I thought you said I was smart?”

The man grunted and stood, the legs of his wooden chair making a sharp, grating sound on the floor with the sudden movement. He plucked a candle from a sconce and crossed the room. He began to study yet another book. Looming shadows danced around him as he read. Then he returned to Finn, his face screwed up into a scowl of disapproval, beady eyes like those of a bird perched on the chair. He studied Finn through his eyebrows.

“Do other people come up here?” asked Finn. “I mean, through the postern gate and up the spiral stairs? Have there been others before me?”

“Think you're the first do you?”

“I don't know. I just wondered. There was a boy recently. Very tall and thin. Did he find his way up here?”

“No idea,” said the old man.

“Then tell me this,” said Finn. “How do people become masters?”

“Eh?”

The idea had come to him at some point in his wanderings through the tunnels.

“Is that it? The tests? The masters need to find new masters so they give people useless tasks to perform to see who questions it. Perhaps they find out who would make good ironclads at the same time too, people who obey orders without question?” He didn't add that they might also be weeding out wreckers by looking for deliberate acts of sabotage.

“Oh, you think you're going to become a master, do you?”

Perhaps. Was that Connor's plan? But Master Owyn clearly hadn't understood about the valves, so maybe there was more to it. Maybe you had to reach a certain Wheel to be told the truth. And if the old man was Lud, Finn saying he wanted to become a master was not going to help his cause.

“I don't know,” said Finn. “I just thought.” How could he tell what he should do? It had all been so simple back in the valley. Join the wreckers, destroy Engn. But how did he actually do any of that? It was much more complicated in reality. He could only do what seemed to him the right thing at the time.

The old man was still peering at him, as if reading all the thoughts in Finn's mind. Then he opened a drawer in his desk and took out a wad of yellow papers. With a metal pen he wrote something, very slowly, on the top one, before tearing it off and handing it to Finn.

“You're to go to the Vault. Take this to them. They'll know what to do with you.”

“Is that what the masters said I had to do?”

“It's what the book says.”

“But who writes the book?”

The old man ignored his question. “You'll have to look out for the ironclads on the way. Hide from them. If you can't hide, I'd suggest running.”

“But can't you just tell them to leave me alone?”

“Me? I just wind the clocks. They don't take orders from me, boy.”

“What is this Vault? I don't know where it is.”

“Don't know much, do you?”

Finn shook his head.

“Three miles away,” said the old man. “Towards the Hub.”

“I don't know the way.”

“Take the Grand Junction Walkway. That goes straight there. Obviously.”

“But I don't know even what that is.”

“It's a walkway, isn't it, boy? A big one. Dear, dear, dear, the people they send us these days.”

“Can you at least tell me which way I need to go?”

“That door, that door! Up the Drop Tower. Take the lift. Now leave me in peace.”

The old man returned to examining his book. Finn looked across the room in the direction the old man had indicated. He could dimly make out several other doors over there. He thought about asking the man if he could wait until tomorrow. Sleep there, safe from the ironclads. Weariness weighed him down.

“Hurry along,” said the old man. “You're running out of time.”

What did that mean? Was he supposed to perform the tests by a certain hour? Why would no one explain the rules to him?

He stood. At least he was being spared the mines. Unless the Vault was the mines. Before he set off, he hesitated, then grabbed more of the bread from the table. He gulped down more water. He didn't know when he'd have chance to eat again. The old man appeared not to notice.

Finn picked his way between teetering piles of books and papers to the distant doors. There were three the old man could have meant, each a different size, each heading off in a different direction from the angled walls. Finn pushed open the middle one. A narrow, curving room lay beyond, with yet another flight of stairs leading upwards.

He was about to step through, but he couldn't leave without asking the old man one more question.

“Please,” he said, shouting through the gloom to the bubble of flickering light where the old man worked at his desk. “Did a master called Connor tell you about me? Was it he who told you what I was supposed to do?”

The old man didn't reply, simply waving his arm again without looking up. Finn sighed and stepped through the door.