Inside was a little room with a little table, and a very plain cot with clean white sheets. There were lamps, and in the dim light Claire made out tapestries on the walls. He’d put some colorful rugs on the floor, too. It looked oddly . . . nice.
“Is this your bedroom?” she asked, and turned to look at him. Myrnin straightened and jammed the big red floppy hat back on his head. The feathers waved back and forth.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he said. “I’m far too young and innocent for that kind of thinking.”
He backed out, closed the door, and she heard the lock snap shut. Panic kicked in immediately; no matter how nice it was, this was a prison. Myrnin held the key, and she didn’t trust Myrnin to remember tomorrow that she was still here. Claire dumped the food and drink on the table and rushed to the door, banging on the wood. “Hey!” she yelled. “I said I wouldn’t run! I promised!”
She didn’t think he’d answer, but he did. “It’s for your own good, Claire,” he said. “Eat, rest, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
No matter how much she shouted after that, he didn’t answer.
Claire finally ran out of fury, although the fear seemed there to stay. She went back to the table, sat down, and took out the burger and fries. She didn’t really feel hungry until the first bite, and then she was ravenous and ate everything, even the pickles. She was getting sleepy even before finishing the Coke, and had time to wonder what exactly Myrnin had done to her drink, then stumble to the bed, before she collapsed and fell into a deep, dark sleep.
SIX
The next day started with breakfast, provided by Myrnin again. He set it on the table while she was still lying on the bed, blinking at the lights. Claire said, “You drugged me.”
“Well, only a little,” he said. He was wearing a violent-looking Hawaiian shirt, all pinks and yellows and neon greens, a pair of checked pants that had probably been ugly when checks were in style, and flip-flops. “Did you sleep?”
“Don’t drug me again.”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate in any case. You won’t be able to sleep, you know. Not until we’re finished.”
“Don’t remind me.” She got up, stretched, and wished she had fresh clothes. These were wrinkled, and starting to smell funky. Not that Myrnin would notice, probably. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Doughnuts,” he said cheerfully. “I like doughnuts. And coffee.”
Claire was doubtful about the coffee, but he’d provided some cream and sugar, and the chocolate-covered doughnut helped wash the taste away anyway. She drank it all, with plenty of sugary bites to help; she was pretty sure she’d need all the caffeine she could get.
Breakfast didn’t last nearly long enough.
She couldn’t have said what made her aware that something had changed; she’d developed a kind of sixth sense for these things, being around Myrnin for a while. Maybe it was just that he’d fallen silent for what seemed like too long. She looked up and saw him standing in the doorway of the room, watching her with big, liquidly dark eyes that seemed . . . wistful? She wasn’t quite sure. He could have moods about the oddest things.
He smiled, just a little, and it seemed very sad. “You reminded me of someone just then.”
“Who?”
“It wouldn’t make you feel better to know that.”
She could guess anyway. “Ada,” she said. “You had that thinking-about-Ada look.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You look like you miss her,” Claire said. “You do, don’t you?”
His smile faded, as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it anymore. “Ada was my friend and colleague for a very long time,” he said. “And there was . . . a great deal of respect between us. Yes, I miss her. I’ve missed her every moment that she’s been gone, strange as that may seem to you.”
He pushed away from the doorframe, as if he was about to leave. She couldn’t stand to see him walk off with that lost expression, so Claire asked, “How did you meet her?”
That brought him, and the smile, back. It seemed less wistful this time. “I heard of her first. She was brilliant, you know. Brilliant and charming and well before her time. She understood the concept of computing machines from the very beginning, but not only that—she was a student of a great many things, including people. That was how we met. She spotted me in a crowd one night in London, and the next thing I knew she was demanding to know what I was. She could tell, you see. It fascinated her. No surprise, because her father and his friends were the original Gothic crowd, you know.” Claire must have looked blank, because he sighed. “Really, child. Lord Byron? Percy Shelley? Mary Shelley? John Polidori?”
“Um . . . Frankenstein?”
“That would be Mary’s work, yes. Dr. Polidori became famous for a similarly dark work of fiction . . . about a vampire. So Ada was much more perceptive than one would have thought. And terribly persistent. Before long, we were . . .” He stopped himself, looked sharply at her, and said, “Close friends.”
“I’m not five.”
“Very well, then; call it what you like. We became intimate, and we’ll leave this discussion there, I think.” He cleared his throat, looked away, and said, “Thank you.”
She was gathering up her grease-stained doughnut bag, and stopped to stare at him. “What for?”
“For making me think of that,” he said softly. “I do miss her. I really do.” He seemed a little surprised about it, then shook out of it with visible effort. “Enough. Let me show you what I’ve accomplished while you were out getting yourself in so much trouble.”
“I didn’t—”
“Claire.” He gave her a long, reproachful look, and put his finger to his lips. “Silence while I am speaking. We don’t have time for you to quibble.”
He did have a point, sort of. She nodded, and he led her over to the nearest lab table, which held undefined lumps of things under a gray canvas. Myrnin whipped the canvas off like a magician unveiling a trick, complete with, “Ta-da!”
It looked worse than it had when she’d last been here. It looked like a completely insane, random collection of parts, cobbled together without any sense of reason. Wires went everywhere, looping into snarls, and he’d used so many colors of wire that the whole thing had a strange rainbow look to it that made even less sense.
There really wasn’t much to say, except, “What is it?”
“Oh, Claire, it’s my latest attempt to bring up the barriers around the town; what do you think it is? Look, I added vacuum pumps here, and here, and a new gear assembly, and—”
“Myrnin, stop. Just . . . stop.” She closed her eyes for a second, thinking, I’m going to die, and finally forced herself to look at him again. “Let’s start from the beginning. Where’s the input?”
“You mean the point at which energy enters the system?”
“Yes.”
“Here.” He touched something in the middle of the device, which made even less sense. It looked like a funnel made of bright, shiny brass. In fact, it looked almost like a horn.
“And then where does the . . . ah, energy go?”
“Isn’t it obvious? No? I weep for the state of public schools.” He traced two wires, one that split off into a tangle of tubes, and one that went into what looked like a clock, only there were no numbers on the dial. “It draws power during the daytime hours, but it’s at its most powerful at night, under the influence of the moon, which is why I’ve made certain parts of it from elements that resonate with the lunar cycle. I tried to balance the effects of the different elements, day and night, to achieve a perfect oscillation. It’s obvious.”
If you were insane.
Claire sighed. “We need to start over,” she said. “Just start from scratch and build it again. One thing at a time, and you explain to me what it does, okay?”
“There’s no need to start over. I’ve been perfectly—”