"What?"
He shook his head. "I'm just afraid. And that's rare. That's so very rare."
He sounded lost and uncertain, the way he sometimes did when the disease began to take hold - but this was different. This was the real Myrnin, not the confused one. And it made Claire afraid, too.
She reached out and took his hand. It felt like a real person's hand, just cold. His fingers tightened on hers, briefly, and then released.
"I believe that it's time for you to learn some things," he said. "Come."
He pushed off from the wall, and led her at a brisk walk toward the portal, flip-flops snapping with urgency.
Chapter Five
Myrnin's actual lab was a deserted wreck.
Whether it was Bishop's goons, vandals, or just Myrnin being crazy, there was even more destruction now than the last time Claire had seen the place. Virtually all the glass had been shattered; it covered the floor in a deadly glitter. Tables had been overturned and floor in a deadly glitter. Tables had been overturned and splintered. Books had been ripped to shreds, with the leather and cloth covers gutted and empty, tossed on piles of trash.
The whole place smelled foul with spilled chemicals and molding paper.
Myrnin said nothing as they descended the steps into the mess, but on the last step, he paused and sat down - more like fell down, actually. Claire wasn't sure what to do, so she waited.
"You okay?" she finally asked. He slowly shook his head.
"I've lived here a long time," Myrnin said. "Mostly by choice, as it happens; I've always preferred a lab to a palace, which Amelie never really understood, although she humored me. I know it's only a place, only things. I didn't expect to feel so much . . . loss." He was silent again for a moment, and then sighed. "I shall have to rebuild again. But it will be a bother."
"But . . . not right now, right?" Because the last thing Claire wanted to do was get a broom and a dump truck to pick up all that broken glass when the fate of Morganville was riding on their staying focused.
"Of course not." He leaped up and - to her shock - walked across the broken glass. In flip-flops. Not even pausing when the glass got ankle-deep. Claire looked down at her own shoes - high-top sneakers - and sighed. Then she very carefully followed him, shoving a path through the glass as she went while Myrnin heedlessly crunched his way through.
"You're hurting yourself!" she called.
"Good," he shot back. "Life is pain, child. Ah! Excellent." He crouched down, brushed a clear spot on the floor, and picked up something that looked like a mouse skeleton. He examined it curiously for a few seconds, then tossed it over his shoulder. Claire ducked as it sailed past. "They didn't find it."
"Find what?"
"The entrance," he said. "To the machine."
"What machine?"
Myrnin smiled his best, looniest smile at her, and punched his fist down into the bare floor, which buckled and groaned. He punched again, and again - and an entire six-foot section of the floor just collapsed into a big black hole. "I covered it over," he said. "Clever, yes? It used to be a trapdoor, but that seemed just a bit too easy."
Claire realized her mouth was gaping open. "We could have fallen right through that," she said.
"Don't be overly dramatic. I calculated your weight. You were perfectly safe, so long as you weren't carrying anything too heavy." Myrnin waved at her to join him, but before she got halfway there, he jumped down into the hole and disappeared.
"Perfect." She sighed. When she finally reached the edge, she peered down, but it was pitch-black . . . and then there was the sound of a scratch, and a flame came to life, glowing on Myrnin's face a dozen feet down. He lit an oil lamp and set it aside. "Where are the stairs?"
"There aren't any," he said. "Jump."
"I can't!"
"I'll catch you. Jump."
That was a level of trust she really never wanted to have with Myrnin, but . . . there was no sign of mania in him, and he watched her with steady concentration.
"If you don't catch me, I'm totally killing you. You know that, right?"
He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but didn't dispute that. "Jump!"
She did, squealing as she fell - and then she landed in his strong, cold arms, and at close range, his eyes were wide and dark and almost - almost - human.
"See?" he murmured. "Not so bad as all that, was it?"
"Yeah, it was great. You can put me down now."
"What? Oh. Yes." He let her slide to the ground, and picked up the oil lamp. "This way."
"Where are we?" Because it looked like wide, industrial tunnels, obviously pretty old. Original construction, probably.
"Catacombs," he said. "Or drainage tunnels? I forget how we originally planned it. Doesn't matter; it's all been sealed off for ages. Mind the dead man, my dear."
She looked down and saw that she was standing not on some random sticks, but on bones. Bones in a tattered, ancient shirt and trousers. And there was a white skull staring at her from nearby, too. Claire screamed and jumped aside. "What the hell, Myrnin?"
"Unwanted visitor," he said. "It happens. Oh, don't worry; I didn't kill him. I didn't have to - there are plenty of safeguards in place. Now come on, stop acting like you've never seen a dead man before. I told you, this is important."
"Who was he?"
"What does it matter? He's dust, child. And we are not, as yet, although at this rate we certainly may be before we get where we're going. Come on!"
She didn't want to, but she wanted to stay inside the circle of the lamplight. Dark places in Morganville really were full of things that could eat you. She joined Myrnin, breathless, as he marched down an endlessly long tunnel that seemed to appear ten feet ahead and disappear ten feet behind them.
And suddenly, the roof disappeared, and there was a cave. A big one.
"Hold this," Myrnin said, and passed her the lamp. She juggled it, careful to avoid hot glass and metal, and Myrnin opened a rusty cabinet on the wall of the tunnel and pulled down an enormous lever.
The lamp became completely redundant as bright lights began to shine, snapping on one by one in a circle around the huge cavern. The beams glittered off a tangled mass of glass and metal, and as Claire blinked, things came into focus.
"What is that?"
"My difference engine," Myrnin said. "The latest version, at least. I built the core of it three hundred years ago, but I've added to and embroidered on it over the years. Oh, I know what you're thinking - this isn't Bab bage's design, that limited and stupid thing. No, this is half art, half artifice. With a good dash of genius, if I might say so."
It looked like a huge pipe organ, with rows and rows of thin metal plates all moving and clacking together in vertical columns. The whole thing hissed with steam. In and around that were spaghetti tangles of cables, tubes, and - in some cases - colorful duct tape. There were three huge glass squares, too thick to be monitors, and in the middle was a giant keyboard with every key the size of Claire's entire hand. Only instead of letters on it, there were symbols. Some of them - many of them - she knew from her studies with Myrnin about alchemy. Some of them were vampire symbols. A few were just . . . blank, like maybe there'd been something on them once, but it had worn completely off.
Myrnin patted the dirty metal flank of the beast affectionately. It let out a hiss from several holes in the tubing. "This is Ada. She's what drives Morganville," Myrnin said. "And I want you to learn how to use her."
Claire stared at it, then at him, then at the machine once again. "You're kidding."
And the machine said, "No. He's not. Unfortunately."
Claire had seen a lot of weird stuff since moving to Morganville, but a living, steam-operated Frankenstein of a computer, built out of wood and scraps?
That was just too much.
She sat down suddenly on the hard rocks, gasping for breath, and rested her head on her trembling palms. Distantly, she heard the computer - that was what it was, right? - ask, "Did you break another one, Myrnin?" and Myrnin answered, "You are not to speak until spoken to, Ada. How many times do I have to tell you?"
Claire honestly didn't even know how to start to deal with this. She just sat, struggling to keep herself from freaking out totally, and Myrnin finally flopped down next to her. He reclined, with his arms folded behind his head, staring straight up.