More than once, memories of what had transpired during the night intruded on Shea’s thoughts—dark images, like the whisperings of the ducts and the cleaners and the man Tindall called Steel Toe. But each time he was quick to tamp them down. Thinking on the nightmare of last night was not something he wanted to do even now that he was safely away from it.
Although he did pause long enough to remind himself never to let Rocan Arneas talk him into anything like that again.
When the carriage finally drew to a halt and Shea climbed down from inside, he knew at once where he was. It was the warehouse Rocan had brought him to that first night after they had escaped from Federation commander Zakonis and his men to find a new safe haven. It was in here that Annabelle was housed, high up on the second level in a room roughly the size of a small village.
Tindall stumbled out of the carriage behind him, rubbing his eyes and looking around. “Ah, home again!” he announced. “Now we’ll see!”
He did not bother to reveal what, exactly, they would see, but Shea didn’t ask because he didn’t care. He walked over to Rocan instead, who was tethering the horses in place. “What happens now?”
The Rover gestured toward the entry doors. “We go inside, of course.”
Shea glanced at the horses and carriage. “Seelah will see to those,” Rocan said. “She borrowed them yesterday and now feels an obligation to return them. It won’t take long. You and Tindall could both use a bath and some rest. It’s been a long night. Come along.”
He released the locks on the entry doors and they went inside, leaving the horses and carriage tethered outside. “Won’t someone steal them?” Shea asked, glancing back as the doors closed behind them.
“Not likely. This district is dangerous, as you know from personal experience, but nowhere near as dangerous as Seelah.”
Rocan and the boy walked side by side down the hallways to the stairs leading up, with Tindall trailing along behind, back to grumbling about one thing or another.
“So even though she wasn’t able to go inside Assidian Deep, she could climb its walls without it affecting her?” Shea asked. “It is only the iron of the prison that weakens her and makes her sick? You planned for her to come get us all along? But couldn’t Tindall have gotten out that way without me going in? Couldn’t Seelah have placed the compound on the bars from outside the cell—or given him the substance to do it himself—and then simply pulled him through the window once it was open?”
Rocan glanced over. “Full of questions this morning, aren’t you? Well, I like a young man who doesn’t just accept events and wants to know the reasons behind them. So ask yourself this—how in command of himself, physically and emotionally, do you think Tindall is? How does he seem to you?”
“A few oars shy of a full boat,” Shea answered at once. “And I am already sick of him griping about everything. Is he always like this?”
“Pretty much. But he gets away with it because he is so smart. There’s no one else like him; no one even comes close. His ability to create and build is astounding, Shea. It hasn’t always brought him happiness or wealth, but it gives him immense satisfaction to solve problems other men and women would simply consider unsolvable. His mind works differently than any other mind I’ve encountered. He looks at something from inside his head, takes a road no one else would have even thought of taking, and comes up with a way to make the impossible possible.”
“Like with Annabelle?”
The Rover shrugged. “Not exactly. But if you want to know about Annabelle, you’ll have to ask Tindall.” He shook his head. “No one else can tell the story like it demands to be told.”
Shea nodded. “I’d like to hear that story if he can stop calling me ‘boy’ for five minutes and stop grumbling about everything.”
The Rover nodded. “Well, you’ll have your chance. I’m going out for a while. We need to leave this city. And with Annabelle, if we want to keep her.”
And with a smile and a wave to Tindall, he was out the door and gone.
* * *
—
Left alone with the old man, Shea decided to wash up first before talking to Tindall about Annabelle or anything else. He was feeling grungy and rank from crawling through the sewer ducts of Assidian Deep, and he wasn’t sure when he would get a chance to clean up again if Rocan planned on leaving soon. So he made his way over to the small washroom that the Rover had indicated earlier, entered, and closed the door behind him.
Soon enough, he had steaming water in the tub and was soaking himself in a half-catatonic state, letting the warmth ease the aches in his muscles and erase the stench of sewage from his body. When he was finished he washed his clothes in the bathwater, then hung them on a series of pipes, hoping they would dry before it was time to leave. Lacking another outfit, he wrapped up in the cloak Rocan had given him and went back out to find Tindall.
The old man was sitting on a bench, looking up at Annabelle in a speculative way, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” he said to the boy without looking over.
“I guess so.” Shea sat down next to him.
“Took me ten years to build her.” The other’s tone suggested he was mostly talking to himself. “Ten years of trial and error, of fighting off interference from officials who thought they knew better than I did how it ought to be done, of working not just openly but in secret, of scrounging for credits and equipment and supplies and all the rest. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you.”
“Doesn’t sound it.”
“Mostly, in this world, when you come up with an idea for an invention, you go through a few stages. There’s the stage where you question yourself because the idea’s still too new and seems too preposterous. Then there’s the stage where you come to believe fully and completely, and commit yourself body and soul to the proving of it—only no one else believes in it. Then there’s the stage where, even if everyone comes to believe and gets behind the idea, you find that the execution will be more difficult than you had thought possible. Things don’t work the way you hoped they would. The parts don’t hold up to the strain or don’t serve their purpose. The credits dry up. Testing fails over and over. Patience grows short and time becomes an issue.”
He paused, turning to look at Shea. “But the worst stage is the one when you finally complete your work and realize that those you thought supported you are only interested in doing so because they want control over what you have invented. They want it for their own private, selfish reasons and have no intention of seeing it used for the betterment of Mankind. That one is the worst stage—the most depressing and despicable.”