The Impossible Cube by Steven Harper

Author:Steven Harper [Harper, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Steampunk
ISBN: 9780451464507
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2012-04-30T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Kiev was the opposite of Luxembourg. Funny how two places could be populated with human beings but be so completely different, Gavin mused as the train puffed and growled through town. Although the city was built on a series of seven hills with a winding river at the bottom of the valley, the place had no greenery in it whatsoever. Not one tree, flower, or blade of grass grew anywhere. Stone and steel, smoke and sludge hemmed Gavin in. Street after street of blocky buildings crouched low over cobblestoned streets. Gargoyles clung to rooftops and intricately carved monsters crawled across archways. Forests of chimneys belched out clouds of smoke or flashed plumes of yellow flame. Pipes urinated endless streams of waste into the river. A crowd of workers huddled outside a factory, hoping to be called in for a job. More people moved up and down crowded sidewalks. The men wore gray shirts, and the women wore brown dresses and head cloths, and they kept their heads down as they walked. Bright colors seemed to have been outlawed, and the lack pulled Gavin’s spirits lower and lower with every passing moment. Something else bothered him about the crowds, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Mechanicals ruled the streets. Skittering spiders and brass horses and hovering whirligigs clogged the pavement and the air above it. Automatic streetcars rattled down their tracks, drawing iron boundaries behind them. They all pumped out steam and coal smoke, turning the air thick with white mist and yellow sulfur. Gavin turned away from the window with a feeling of nausea. The something he couldn’t figure out continued to bother him, and it gave him a slight headache.

“How can people live here?” he said.

“People live in all kinds of places,” Dodd said philosophically from his own chair near the table. “Many of them can’t go anywhere else. My usual thought is to be grateful I don’t have to stay.”

Gavin thought of his ship, his graceful Lady, now being hauled inexorably into this stony trap by an iron demon, and wondered how grateful he should be. He sighed. Once Alice had finished distributing the cure here, and once they were reasonably safe beyond the reach of Phipps, they could reassemble the Lady and fly for the Orient. As it was, he felt restless and out of sorts after days of inactivity. They had arrived in Berlin to find reward placards with Gavin’s likeness on them plastered over nearly every empty surface and a notice about him that circulated daily in every local newspaper. Alice, who hadn’t been with the Third Ward long enough to be photographed, had escaped such treatment, but her description had been bandied about, as was Feng’s. This forced Gavin to stay hidden either aboard the Lady or in Dodd’s car during the circus’s entire time in Berlin. Alice and Feng risked slipping out to spread the cure around and brought back reports that underground stories of a woman with a demon’s hand and a man with an angel’s voice were already circulating.

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