Vox Humana - Part 2
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Five kept darting nervous looks back to the clock tower, still clearly visible from where they were, as they set up the pry bar under the first battery. Two gave a satisfied nod when it toppled with little effort.
It wasn't long before they got a few more on their sides and ready to be rolled back to the cathedral; she and Five each took one, with Two following along holding her weapon, and in this way they were able to make several passes before the others needed to take a break.
"This is going to take us all day," Five said wearily, seating himself on the ground amongst their haul. Two wasn't faring much better.
"I'm getting Eight to help us," she said. "There's no reason why he can't."
Five said something she couldn't hear.
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
Seven shook her head and left them there, making her way over to the ropes that held the bucket lift. Next to them was a smaller rope. She pulled on it, heard the small bell ringing overhead, and tipped her head all the way backward toward the platform high above. After a moment, just visible in the distant shadows, Eight's face appeared.
She waved.
He disappeared.
She waited. Minutes passed.
Fine, then.
Taking a running start, she jumped, caught hold of one of the pulley ropes, and began climbing up. Making use of whatever beams and ledges she could, she made her way quickly enough, resorting to the ropes again when there was too much empty space, and it wasn't long before, with one last heave, she had herself up on the platform.
Eight had apparently not been expecting this. He gaped at her as she stalked over to him. "Don't leave me standing there again," she said evenly, tilting her head back to look him in the face. "If you know what's good for you."
"What's going on over there?" came One's voice from the other side of the platform.
"Nothing," she called, not taking her eyes off Eight. "Now, come on," she said to him. "We need your help."
He crossed his arms, his expression turning stubborn. Time for a different tack.
"Thank you so much!" she said brightly. "I can't believe you just volunteered to spend all day helping us move those heavy things." She chucked him genially on the arm. "What would we do without you?"
As he blinked at her, One came sweeping over, cape fluttering behind him. "Hmm. Well, I suppose it's all right," he said a bit grudgingly. "But be back before dark. And you," he said, turning to her, "be sure to keep an eye out."
"Of course," she said.
Eight, who had finally caught up to what was going on, was shaking his head frantically at One. "No – what? No, " he said.
"Go on, it's all right," said One. "Go. Off with you."
As they got into the lift, Eight gave her a terrible, ferocious, furious scowl. She made it very clear that she was not impressed.
With another pair of hands, things went noticeably faster. Predictably enough, after he had gotten over his initial anger at being tricked, Eight seemed to be having a pretty good time. It wasn't hard to understand why.
Before the sun was too low in the sky, they had twenty-one batteries lined up in the main hall of the ruined cathedral, below the space in the roof where the aircraft was lodged – and with it, the engine that would power the generator. If they ever got it working. Seven, once more shouldering her weapon, ventured out to get the last battery with Eight. They walked in silence for a little bit.
"Thanks for your help today," she finally said.
He gave a casual shrug, as if to say, don't worry about it. They walked on a bit further. He was staring at her. Why was he staring at her?
No, not at her, she saw as she looked up at him. Her staff. "Hey," she said, hefting it by its wooden handle. "How come you don't have one of these?"
He shrugged again.
"Don't you want one?"
He seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then nodded.
"Well, you should have one. We all should," she said. He looked uncertain.
Later, in the candlelight of the workshop, she again leaned on the bench while Two and Five made some final tweaks to their strings of glass bulbs. The twins stood next to her, trying to stay out of the way – that is, until Two approached the battery, at which point they were no longer able to contain themselves. They scurried up behind him, peering curiously over his shoulders, flashing their lights as he fixed one end of the wire to the first connector.
"Here goes," said Two, and motioned for Five to do the honors.
Chuckling a little at the twins, Five approached with the other end of the wire. He seemed to fiddle with it for a moment – she couldn't quite see his hands – and then attached it to the other connector. All at once, the glass bulbs began glowing brightly, filling the room with light. "It worked!" he said excitedly, as Two laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "I can't believe it!"
The twins were beside themselves, swooping circles around the battery, tapping on the glass bulbs, taking note of all of it with their chattering beams. For once, she didn't blame them.
"Now we just have to get that engine working," said Two.
"What if we can't?"
"Then we're no worse off than we started, are we? But it would be a shame to let all of that fuel go to waste. In the meantime, of course, we can use what's left in these," he said, patting the battery again. He pulled the connection loose, and the room returned to its dim yellow glow. "We'll rig these bulbs up so only a few light at a time. That way we don't waste them. Seven, if you see any more of them out there, can you let me know?"
She nodded.
"When are you going back out?"
"In the morning," she said.
"What?" Five broke in. "Already?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Um... no reason." He exchanged a look with Two.
"What? What's the matter?" She looked from one to the other. To the twins, who looked strangely subdued all of a sudden.
After a moment, Five turned to her. "Uh..." Again he looked at Two, something seeming to pass between them. He shook his head. "Never mind."
"No, tell me. What's going on?"
Two came over to her, patted her hand, and smiled. "Nothing," he said. "It's nothing."
She departed at dawn. One saw her off.
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Stay low. Stay quiet.
In a half-crouch, back pressed to a chunk of fallen stone, she listened. Waited.
There. Again.
In a moment, she would turn to look. Just long enough to get a glimpse, and then back.
Ready – now.
Her head darted out and back again. There it was. Just as huge and monstrous as she remembered, if not more so. It had not seen her.
What was it doing?
Unable to resist, she looked again. Longer this time. Its back was to her.
It was... digging?
No, not quite. Not digging.
Digging through. Searching.
Searching through the deep wreckage. Its long, ungainly limbs squeaked and rattled as it moved. As it pulled things, turned them out, looked inside them. As it hunched, face low to the ground, turning, pacing this way and that.
Searching.
In her half-crouch, eyes full of the tormentor, something inside her surged. Opened up.
She knew that she shouldn't. She knew this. That wasn't why she was here. And yet, out in the open now, silent on the teetering wreckage, she crept, weapon held aloft, the tooth of a savage creature poised to close upon its longed-for kill.
You will not find what you are looking for.
Surged. Blur of motion as she rushed. Leaped.
Wind in her face. Rushing.
Crack!
Metal on metal, a spark.
Again!
And from nowhere, swift as falling, a blow plowing into her like a wall. Falling, back and back, away. A snap of wood, the breath knocked from her.
A shadow closing. Gleaming metal. Glowing red eye, closing.
Claws in the earth, a second too late.
She ran.
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"I'll need another weapon before I can head out again," she said, mostly as an afterthought. It was strange to be giving such news on a day like this, a rare sunny one that had the clock tower positively glowing with light.
"What did you say?" One, who had received her report somewhat more stoically than she had expected, now looked at her in disbelief.
She frowned. "Well, I'm not about to – "
"You cannot possibly think you're going back out there."
"What?"
"That's it. You've had your fun. Now it's gotten out of hand."
"Fun?"
"Yes, fun," he snapped. "Do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't know you? You were supposed to be tracking that beast, not engaging it!"
"I wasn't – "
"You were. I am well aware of your proclivities. I knew it was only a matter of time. And now I can no longer trust you to act in a reasonable fashion."
"But I didn't – "
"Enough! Do not make me out to be a fool! This may be nothing but a game to you, but to the rest of us – "
"What?"
" – it means our lives! Your recklessness will be the end of us all!"
They stared each other down. Seven struggled to control herself. "It wasn't recklessness," she said, much more calmly than she felt. "And that thing is getting closer. We can't just hide in here anymore. If we're going to keep it away, then we need to arm ourselves, we need to – "
"What you need to do," said One, "is think about someone other than yourself. You need to settle down. You need to follow your orders."
She clenched her fists.
"And those orders are now to stay inside these walls. We'll keep watch from the tower."
"That won't be good enough to – " she stopped as One held a hand up. His expression was adamant. He wasn't listening. What was the point?
After a moment, One sighed, and his expression softened. "I know this is difficult for you," he said. "And you've done well. But things have changed. We simply can't risk having any more encounters with this menace." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "In time, you'll come to understand."
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As it happened, he had been listening – somewhat. And now, he was making them listen. At great length. How could anyone possibly talk so much about anything? If he was trying to punish her, he was doing a very good job. More than a few times she found her mind wandering far away from the workroom, with only the occasional distant noise jerking her back to attention.
"But bear in mind – and I cannot stress this enough – " One finally said, looking pointedly at her, "that this is only to be in case of unforeseen circumstances. We are not to go looking for trouble."
"Of course," said Two. "Of course. We're doing the right thing. Now, you just leave everything to me."
One grunted and surveyed his surroundings with some disdain. "Fine." As he parted the curtains, he called over his shoulder, "I'll send Eight back down shortly." His footsteps echoed down the hall.
"Great," Five said, not quite under his breath.
Two patted his arm reassuringly, then bustled over to one the side tables. Before she could remark on this, Two called, "What happened to all those papers that were under here?"
"Take a guess," said Seven. "The twins were just complaining about it yesterday."
"Could you go and get some back from him? I need to draw up some plans."
She caught up with One just as he was approaching the bucket lift, where Eight awaited to take him back up to the tower. "So," he said to her as they settled back, "you must be pleased."
Anything she might have said at that point would have just gotten her into trouble. They rode the rest of the way in silence, save for the squeaking of the lift and the grunting of Eight at his efforts, turning the crank with his powerful arms and massive shoulders. Apparently that was his contribution.
Stepping out onto the platform of the clock tower, Seven found something surprising.
Books. Piles of them. What were they doing up here?
One gave her a lofty smirk, as if daring her to ask. Again she fought to control herself. Whatever was going on up here, it wasn't as important as what was going on in the workshop. She turned her back on him and strode purposefully over to the alcove nearby, a shadowed area formed in a hollowed-out section of wall. As she approached, she heard the familiar sounds of a tune being hummed – slightly off-key – and the scratching of pen on paper, but not until she was directly upon it could she make out the figure on its knees, hunched in the semidarkness, utterly intent on its work.
Would it kill him to light a candle?
"Six?" she said softly, not wanting to startle him.
At the sound of his name, his head jerked around to look at her. He blinked.
"We need some paper."
Six's expression brightened. He jumped up, handing a piece out to her happily.
"Blank paper."
Oh. His shoulders slumped. He pointed to the large pile of hoarded paper nearby.
"Thanks." She gathered a few sheets and rolled them up. As she made to leave, he again attempted to hand her his drawing. "It's very nice, but we really can't use it right now," she said as she walked past.
"The beast."
The sound of his voice brought her up short. He rarely spoke, and even more rarely said anything that made sense. She turned back around. "What about it?"
Saying nothing, just looking at her expectantly, he again held out his drawing. This time, she actually looked at it. Jagged ink splotches in the shape of –
Huh. This wasn't what he usually drew, was it? Behind him, in his shadowy alcove, a few other papers were pinned to the wall, all bearing similar swirling patterns, none of them anything like this one. It really did look like the creature, in an abstract sort of way.
"It's very nice," she said again, more sincerely this time. "You should pin it up there with the others."
Defeated, he dropped back to the floor, pulling one of the fresh sheets over to him. By the time she was three steps away the scratching had started up again.
Eight was waiting for her by the lift, smiling cheerfully.
"About time, isn't it?" she said. He nodded happily.
On the way down, he actually hummed. It was too bad Six couldn't hear him.
Coming back down the hall to the curtained-off workshop, they could hear Two talking animatedly to Five – "so here, depending on the design, you might have a lever that pulls it back, or a crank, like the one on the – oh, good, you've got it," he said, as they entered with the paper. Seven brought it over to the worktable, now cleared, save for a small scrap of paper with a hasty drawing scribbled in graphite. "I've got a few ideas I've got to get out." He tapped his head and smiled.
"Nothing that complicated for me," she smiled back. "I was fine with what I had."
"So..." Five said, seeming unable to stop himself, "you really fought it?" His voice, though timid, seemed loud in the suddenly quiet room. "You really fought the... thing?"
All eyes were on her. She nodded.
Two sat down on a nearby stool and passed a hand over his eyes.
"It wasn't that bad."
Five was shaking his head in awe. Eight just stared.
"It wasn't! It was out in the open, it couldn't get a hold of me. I led it through a..." she made some motions with her hands. "Something. A tube, but square. And I kept going in the wrong direction, so when it got free and started chasing me again, it would be away from here. I led it a long way off before I circled back around."
"And what happened to your weapon?"
Now everyone turned to Two, who was fixing her with a level gaze. "What?" she said.
"Your staff. What happened to it? How did it break?"
Leave it to Two. "I dropped it."
"You said it broke."
"I dropped it, and it broke." It was the truth...
Silence stretched in the workshop.
Eventually, with a shake of his head, Two relented. "Well, then," he said, slapping his knees and standing up, "we'll just have to build you a better one, won't we?" And with that, they all made their way over to the rear of the workshop, and the large pile of bits and pieces that had not yet been sorted or put to use.
"We'll have to work with what we have, now that our outings have been put on hold," he went on, "but there are plenty of things we can use. Pull out anything you think might serve as a handle. Blades are over there." He pointed to a second, smaller pile in the corner. "Come to think of it, that might be our next project," he said to Five, "after the generator. They'll get dinged up lying around like that."
Together, they began sorting through the pile of salvage. Eight, in an unusually congenial mood, was quite helpful, moving the larger pieces aside so the rest could get to the smaller ones. Seven was determined to find something better than the pitiful wooden handle she had carried before. Of course it had seemed fine before it had been put to any real use, but now...
It didn't take long for Eight, once he had gone over to the blades, to find something he liked: an enormous knife, its blade alone longer than Seven was tall, with a splintering wooden handle. He hefted it and smiled appreciatively.
"Yes, that could work," Two said, sizing it up. "Not too heavy for you? You'll need a different handle on it, obviously. We'll see what we can do."
Eight, apparently mistaking Two's gestures as a request to hand him the knife, did so – and Two accepted before he realized what was happening. He toppled to the floor, pinned underneath it. Seven shook her head and, with some effort, hoisted the thing off of him.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," he insisted as Five helped him up. "Well, I think I'll definitely keep this one for you, then." Eight smiled jovially back at him and clapped him on the shoulder, nearly sending him to the floor again.
The search continued, the pile of rejects building up next to her. Too short. Too flimsy. Too stout. "How about this?" Five said, propping up a metal v-shaped object with a loop at one end. "We could take it apart."
"No, too long. And too square. So what are you looking for?" she asked.
"Oh, uh..." he looked embarrassed. "I'm going with something a little... different, actually."
This sounded interesting. "Like what?"
"You'll see. Two and I are going to build it."
"I can't wait." As he reached back into the pile, shifting aside a wooden beam, something caught her eye. It was a flared triangular point that looked like an arrow. She took hold of it and pulled. "Here, hold that up for me," she said to him.
With Five taking some weight off the beam, she was able to carefully extract the object from the pile, a long, black, sturdy piece of metal, almost as tall as she was. It was very interestingly shaped. Sort of flattish, narrowest at the center, flaring out into a slightly wider, looped base at the bottom, and the arrow-point at the top. Very much like a spear. Right below the arrow was a pointed crosspiece with a small hole in the center. She hefted it. A little bottom-heavy, but strong and light enough, and slim enough to get a good grip on.
Contemplating this, she started a little when she felt a hand on her arm. Two had come over and was peering at her find with growing excitement. "Wait," he said, patting her arm. "Wait right there. Don't move!" he called, searching among the blades now strewn haphazardly across the floor. She exchanged a look with Five.
"Ah! Here!" Two bustled back over with a knife blade almost the length of her arm, longer than the one she'd carried before, from which the handle had already been stripped. "Now, hold it up," he told her, indicating the metal piece. "Straight up, like – good. Five, hand me that – no, that longer one, right there." As they watched, he lined up the hole in the tang of the blade with the hole in the crosspiece, and lashed the two pieces together tightly with the twine he had taken from Five. He stepped back and surveyed the result.
It was beautiful. She took it in her hands. Nice and balanced now, with the addition of the blade, and a delightful spiky effect where the points of the arrow and crosspiece stuck out. "It's perfect," she said.
"And right here," said Two, indicating the hole, "we'll put a bolt to reinforce it." He gave her a meaningful look. "It'll take quite a bit of punishment."
Yes. It would.
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Night, in the watchtower.
If there was a point to pretending she could see anything through a grainy lens under a half-moon, she didn't know what it was. Even during the day it was all but useless.
This couldn't possibly go on for much longer. Not knowing where it was or what it was doing had to be taking its toll on him. He would have to realize, however grudgingly, that the risks taken to get the information were not nearly as great as the risks of not having it. But how much longer would it take?
Again, to pass the time, she turned to her new companion. Swung it experimentally. Felt its weight in her hands. And for a moment, as she leaped from the spyglass pedestal and brought its blade down on an imaginary neck, she felt a ghost of the glorious surge that had taken her in the ruins.
How much longer?
Three and Four came to relieve her at dawn. The twins looked uncharacteristically melancholy as they climbed up onto the pedestal; she wondered about that, but stayed with them a while in companionable silence as they took turns every few minutes at the glass. It was simple with them. Easy.
As she made to leave, about to seat herself on the lift that would take her back down, a thought struck her. She went back over to the twins, who were staring out into the distance. "Hey," she said.
They turned to her.
"Are you... helping One with something?"
They exchanged a look, clearly confused, and shook their heads.
"Aren't those your books down there in the clock tower?"
Those melancholy faces again. They nodded.
In that moment, several things clicked into place. Now that she thought about it, she had remembered hearing the lift going up and down a few times when One had been briefing them in the workroom.
A strange calm came over her. "What happened?" she asked.