Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (15 page)

The Doll thought
this over, smiled widely, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. I felt
like death but somehow my face managed to smile back. I reached out and petted
her on the head, then remembered that I had a present for the pretty girl.

“Here,” I said,
taking out the collapsed turnkey. “I believe this is yours.”

“Ah!” the Doll
said. “Thank you for holding onto it.”

I went limp and
for a moment pretended that I didn't know I was a wanted man.

“Thank you for
feeding the cats,” I murmured.

We rode the
backstreets for a few hours, trying to lay as low as possible. I argued that
zipping around in an electric carriage was a poor way to achieve this, but Kitt
seemed resistant to give up our ride. Eventually, however, the ride gave up on
him and came puttering to a slow death.

“So what's the
plan now?” I said. I was leaning on a wall with my hands in my coat. The Doll
was still in the back of the carriage and Kitt was hunching under the wheels,
wafting smoke away from something box-shaped that was attached.

“I think it's
broken,” he said.

“So do I.” I
tensed my shoulders a little. “But that's not what I asked.”

“Hand me my
wrench.”

It was by my feet
so I kicked it to him, careful not to spring a blade out into my heel. The Doll
sat patiently for a little while then leaned out of a window at me.

“Is he fixing it?”
she asked.

“He's trying.”

“You don't sound
very confident.”

I shrugged. She
leaned her head further out the window.

“Kitt-Kitt?” she
called out.

“Yeah?” he
replied, scrambling around beneath the vehicle.

“Are you fixing
it?”

“I'm trying.”

“How much do you
know about fixing?”

“I'm not sure. I'm
kind of just feeling my way through this.”

“Lovely,” I
muttered. The Doll shot me a sour look.

“Don't be cranky!”

I faked a grin.
Her face further soured and she dipped her head again down at Kitt.

“Kitt-Kitt?”

“Yeah?” he said
after a loud clank.

“Are you okay down
there?”

“It's not
terrific. But I'm okay.”

I remembered the
Marin boys and their steam inductor. “Do
you
know anything about these
contraptions, Doll?” I asked hopefully.

“No,” she said,
boggled. “Why would I know that?”

“I don't know.
Earlier. The steam inductor.”

“Oh. That is a
completely different thing.”
“Oh. So you don't have, I don't know, some imprinted catalogue of mechanical or
mathematical information hardwired into your—”

“That would be
silly,” she said. “Like something from a story.”

“Oh,” I said,
getting sick of the word. “You hear a lot of stories, Doll?”

She surprised me
with a childlike face. “I love stories.”

Another clank,
another billow of black smoke. Kitt gagged and started sputtering. I hurried to
the ground and offered my hand. He took it and dragged himself out. His face
was dirty.

“You look
ruffled,” the Doll said.

“I couldn't fix
it,” Kitt said with a cough. “I don't know how. But I got it off.”

He held up a dingy
little box, covered in wrench whacks. Kitt coughed once more and a puff of
black smoke came out of his throat.

“You don't see a
lot of black smoke anymore,” I commented. “With the steam and all. Reminds me
of my childhood. Used to come funneling out of everywhere. It's kind of
nostalgic.”

“But it's dirty,”
the Doll said.

“Dirt can be
nostalgic.”

Kitt coughed up
another puff of black and stuck out his tongue. “You can have it!”he said,
wiping his forehead. “I think steam vapor would taste better.”

“Did you learn
anything down there?” the Doll asked.

“Well...it's
electric.”

“We know,” I
added. “It says so on the side.”

“Yeah, well, there
was smoke and this box thing is pretty singed. I'm guessing some spark caught
fire.”

“How do we fix
it?” the Doll said.

“I don't know. I'm
not really a mechanic.”

“Fix it! Fix it!”

“I'm sorry!”

“I say we ditch
it,” I offered. “I mean, we can only ride around for so long in a stolen
carriage until someone takes notice. I mean, with those big letters on the
back.”

“LEWELLEN'S
ELECTRICS,” Kitt read aloud. “Huh. Now that I say it, I feel a little sorry for
this Lewellen chap.”

“Don't,” I said.

“Hmm...okay. Let's
ditch it. It's empty enough back here. Probably be awhile before someone comes
across the thing. Get your belongings.”

“So we're just
going to leave it behind?” the Doll said.

“Yeah,” Kitt said.
“Why not?”

“It just looks so
sad sitting there. All alone and broken.”

“We don't have
many options,” I told her as I reached into the vehicle for my bottle on a
sling. She clenched her teeth on the puffed bit of synthetic that constituted
her lower lip and mulled it over.

“I suppose...” she
said at last.

“Then let's go.”

“Where?” Kitt
said.

“Out of the city.
We can't stick around while this hunt is on.”

“Pocket, we are
marked enemies to
Britain.
That's
all
of Britain! I'm sure
they'll be looking for us outside of New London.”

“Not as quickly.
They think we're in the city now, don't they?”

“Yeah. Jonesy was
pretty adamant about—”

“Then we need to
get out.”

“Pocket, if they
think we're in the city, then they're probably going to start guarding the
exits, right?”

“Damn...yeah. Most
likely. We'll need disguises or something.”

“Yeah. Wait. No.”
“No?”

“They don't know
what we look like. Not yet.”

“True, which means
the first thing they'll do is try to find out.”

“Okay. So what' s
our next move?”

We thought in
silence. It was the indispensable genius of the Doll that struck first.

“Breakfast?” she
said.

Food is an amazing
thing if you take the time to stop and think it over. It really is. Sure, it's
a necessity, it fuels our simple bodies, pushes us through each day. And sure,
it's pleasurable. Men dying in the street and men sitting in grand dining halls
will both salivate when offered the right bit of it. But there's something more
to it. Prime example. I once told a love story about a lost sailor and a pair
of mermaid sisters to this lonely old woman who was so affected by the telling
that she gave me a quarter of a Christmas ham. Swear on my life. Said she had
no others to share it with, could I spread it around. I nearly proposed
marriage on the spot. Perhaps if she had been a bit more my type...eh, I joke.
The lady had eyes,
real
eyes, eyes deep and full and aged. Any lady with
eyes like that would have no need for a young fool like me. I graciously
accepted the ham and told her I'd send a good amount of it to the old sailor
should we cross paths. She smiled and said she would like that and to be sure
give her regards. A year later, 'round about Christmas, I'm trying to forget
how hungry I am in some bar, and a doorman asks if my name's Pocket. I say it
is, and the gent hands me an envelope, tells me it's from an old lady who knew
I'd be there. I've got to stop announcing my drinking habits. Anyway, I open it
up and inside's just this letter that says: “Seasons wishes to you and yours
and the gentleman sailor. I do hope he enjoyed the ham.” And as I thought about
it, the taste of that ham suddenly re-entered my mouth. The sweetness of the
glaze over the salty flesh. I thought of those aged eyes that must've watched
it cook, that must've tended to the meal with such delicacy. And I realized
that it was perhaps the greatest ham I would ever taste. Such a fitting gift
for a fictional sailor. I told the man who relayed the message to return the
following response: “Your kindness has touched him. He no longer roams.” I
thought it sounded pretty, but the doorman looked at me as if I were mad and
said that it was not his duty to deliver letters. So it's not the best ending
to the story. Still, food can take on—

“Pocket, a
question.”

“Yes, Alan.”

“If you were in a
bar trying to forget hunger, why didn't you simply use your drink money for a
meal? Or were you leeching?”

“You're missing
the whole point of this, but no, I never leech! Yes, I was penniless, so I was
just sitting around sipping soda water, pretending it was something with more
of a kick.”

“And you never got
a message back to the woman?”

“Afraid not. Never
saw her again.”

“Tough story. Also
kind of...makes you hungry.”

“Exactly! That's
just what I'm saying!”

Food can take on a
mysterious significance if you let it. Even the thought of it brings about fond
feelings. It's appetizing, it wets your tongue. Another nice thing about eating
is that it makes you take time out of your day and just
stop.
Stop, and
sit down, and have a bit of this, and take a swig of that, and just chew for a
while, you know. Chew, and keep your mouth closed, and just sort out all of
your problems in your head.

Which is good,
because what I needed most in the world after finding myself suddenly on the
lam in London was a moment to think. There was just the matter of acquiring
something to chew.

The wind slapped
me in the face as I asked the obvious question.

“Are you sure
about this, Kitt?”

“Just let me
handle it,” he said.

Kitt had led us to
a rather exposed street dotted with shops. I was a bit nervous, but he was more
confident, repeatedly telling me, “They don't know what we look like yet. It's
too soon.”

He had led us to a
dingy little shop of questionable repute, a place called South Street Mechanics
and Services. Inside was a lot of rust and a lot of grease and a lot of man
sitting pudgy on a high stool behind a counter. He was coatless and his
suspenders dug deep into his stained work shirt.

“Mornin'...” he
exhaled through the side of his mouth.

“Hiya!” Kitt said,
jogging up to the counter. Dolly and I stood cautiously back by the front door.
“Do you remember me?”

“Were you the
fella in last week with the bathtub?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

“I have something
for you to look at.”

“Is it a bathtub?”

Kitt looked about
the room, as if wondering how in Creation he might have snuck a bathtub into
the front room without the proprietor seeing it.

“No,” Kitt said.
“It's not a bathtub.”

“That's good, boy.
We don't deal in bathtubs.”

“All right.”

“Fella come in
last week with a bathtub, I say to him, 'Fella! What do you expect me to do
with a bathtub?'”

“Can you please
take a look at this?”

“I mean, unless
it's a
mechanical
bathtub or something of the like! Not that such a
thing exists, but the idea of dragging the thing down from his mother's to a
bleedin'
mechanical
merchant, why it just...hey, hey. What's that you've
got there?”

“I pulled this off
of an electric carriage. What can you give me for it?”

“Oooh...not a lot,
kid. Not a lot. It's all knotted and burned to Hell. Doubt it still works.”

“True...it
probably...doesn't. But can't you give me
something
for it? I mean, for
the scrap?”

“Sorry. It's
pretty much worthless.”

Kitt took a deep
breath and looked back at me and the Doll. I could tell he was considering
something he had hoped not to.

“Okay,” Kitt said
to the man in a lower tone. “I've got one other thing for you to look at.”

He took from his
jacket a piece of equipment. It was shaped like a tin can and had a few tubes
hanging off of both ends. The proprietor made a long whistle.

“Now
this
...”
he said, inspecting the piece. “This I could use, I could sell! Does it work?”

“It should,” Kitt
said quietly.

“Fantastic! Very
nice! Where'd you get this off of, eh? Old biplane? Airship?”

“Zeppelin,” Kitt
said.

Air turned to
thick cement in my throat.

“Very nice, very
nice!” the man in the suspenders said, his hammy, clammy hands squeezing on the
tubes. “I can only spare a few pounds, but they're yours, kid.”

“Thanks...” Kitt
muttered quietly.

I watched, stunned,
as the man paid Kitt and the clever fox awkwardly stashed the money in his
jacket. Without making eye contact, Kitt passed me and Dolly and exited the
shop. We followed and I was soon quickening my pace down the brick-lain street.

“Hey!” I said,
grabbing Kitt's shoulder. “What was that about?”

“I got us food
money,” he said without tone. “You want to complain about it?”

“You're damn
right, I do! Where did you get it?”

“You heard it
inside.”

“I heard
zeppelin.
And I'm waiting for you to correct my poor hearing.”

Kitt crossed his
arms and gave me a deadpan stare. After a minute, he said, “You going to keep
waiting?”

My blood boiled.
“Are you
insane,
Kitt?!? The zeppelin, the sirens, that was you?!? The
panic and the 'don't worry, Pocket. I'm sure it'll all work out.' We could've
been killed! The whole damn flock of tourists could have.”

Kitt scoffed the
insinuation away. “No one was in danger.”

“You made the
balloon ship upset?” the Doll asked, joining us. “Why would you do that?”

Kitt's defensive
stare turned into a frown.

“I didn't want you
two to know. I found the engine room of the ship while stretching my legs. It
was unguarded so I helped myself.”

“Kitt-Kitt...” the
Doll said, sounding slightly betrayed.