I don't think anyone had bothered with these papers for the longest time. They were yellowed and poorly filed, and the dust did not shower from them but rolled in tumbleweeds onto the floor. I also noticed, while down in the musty chamber, that some sort of winged insect had taken up residence amid the moldering dreams of the great Drachton Below. After the early morning rush out on the street had abated and there were no longer the sounds of footsteps and coach wheels, these six-legged interlopers sent up a chorus of chirping that often drove me to distraction. In all, my time there had been wasted.
I was loath to think that I had basically sat through two whole days. Of course, I kept up with my official duties and went on coach rides through the entire city every night searching for any signs of Calloo. I wanted more than anything to return to Aria and Ea with news of their deliverance, but it was too risky to go for a visit without some definite plan for escape. I had made a vow that when next I returned to them, I would take them away with me. I wished I had more time, a commodity I was quickly running short of. It was now less than a week until the executions were to take place.
My next brainstorm was a gift from the beauty. I was riding through the city the evening after I had given up on the Ministry of Information, looking out the coach window into all the shadowy doorways and as far down the alleys as I could. The driver had been instructed to drive slowly and to keep a lookout himself for a big hulking man, moving slowly.
I had not had time that day to catch a fix of the beauty and the symptoms of withdrawal were plaguing me worse than usual. Right there in the coach, I took a vial full and sat back for a few minutes to think. I saw the crystal bubble of the false paradise in my eye's-mind as if at a distance. Then I began to wonder how it had been put together. Aria had said that they had built it around the two of them.
If it was not blown, like a glass bowl, than it must have been constructed in pieces and fitted together, which meant that there had to be a seam somewhere. I kept drawing a blank when it came to envisioning the plans for it, but I did see in my daydream, from a great distance, men at work on it, like a colony of ants swarming over an egg.
I banged on the ceiling of the coach and the driver answered me. "Your honor?" he said.
"Drive me around to the south side of the park, to Engineer Deemer's residence," I said. "Do you know the location?"
"Very good, sir," he said.
Pierce Deemer had been the Master's head engineer throughout the years of the construction of the Well-Built City. Some said he was every bit as brilliant as Below. He was an old man now, but still very active in working on municipal projects for the City. I knew he had children and that his children had children, and I was counting on the fact that he cared for them.
Engineer Deemer was a wiry, severe-looking man with short white hair. He allowed me into his house but was not pleased by my presence. We went into his study, a small comfortable room with a drawing board and books lining the walls. He was a powerful figure in the City, but even his influence, I knew, could not supersede my authority to detain and read him or any member of his family. I did not play coy but went straight to the heart of the matter.
"I need some information," I told him as I sat down in one of the plush chairs attending his desk.
"Everyone needs information," he said snidely.
I took out a handful of appointment cards and threw them on the desk. "Give one of these to each of your grandchildren," I told him. "I hope for their sakes they are all excellent physiognomical specimens. Have you heard about what the Master has planned for the park in a few days?" I asked.
He stared at the cards and then eventually nodded. "Are you threatening me, Cley?" he asked.
"Their heads will pop like grapes," I said. "All of those towheaded little minchs of yours, exploding for the glory of the realm. It will certainly be a spectacle," I said.
"The Master will hear of this," he said.
"Very well," I said and got up to leave.
"Wait," he called just as I was going out the door.
I turned and walked back to the desk. "The crystal sphere that houses the false paradise, how was it constructed?" I asked.
"You know of it?" he asked. "It's supposed to be a secret."
I pulled out another appointment card and threw it on his desk. "Have your wife come by my office also," I said.
"It was not constructed," he told me. "Crystal grows. The Master grew it in an elliptical mold that was made of a substance of his invention that eventually, over time, turns to pure oxygen. The solution was poured into the mold, the crystal grew, and the mold then disintegrated. A very rapid process," he said.
"Are there entrances or exits?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"Can it be cracked?" I asked.
"We tested it with flamethrowers, bullets, hand grenades. They didn't make a scratch. But why do you need to know?" he asked.
"It's a secret," I said.
"Has this been sanctioned by the Master?" he asked.
"No," I said. "If he hears of my visit to you, you can plan on your family line being snipped short."
"You're one of us, aren't you?" he said, and then held up his hand and made the sign of the O.
I nodded and gave him an O in return.
He smiled and showed me to the door. "If I can think of anything, I'll let you know," he said.
As I rode away from the park, I felt uneasy about having exposed my position to Deemer. I could only hope that he really was part of what appeared to be a City-wide conspiracy. ' These unknown allies might be my last and only salvation at the end," I thought. But things were rarely what they seemed in the realm. On my way back to my apartment, I continued to search the streets for the only person I could definitively trust—a gear-work giant with a pinprick of paradise in his head.
"An egg waiting to hatch," was how the Traveler had described the sphere. In my mind, I hit that egg with a hammer, kicked it with my boot, rode over it with a coach wheel, and sat on it like a hen, but nothing could crack it.
Finally, I gave in to the comfort of the beauty for the second time that evening. Corporal Matters of the day watch appeared in my bedroom, flailing away at a crystal egg with the monkey-headed cane. When he reached a state of near exhaustion, he rolled the dice on the end of my bed and announced, "Zero."
"The conspiracy is real," I told myself as I stepped out onto the street the next morning and, scanning the horizon, saw that there was no longer a top to the Top of the City. The long column that was the enclosed elevator that led to the domed restaurant had now a jagged end. The dome was absolutely gone and there was smoke issuing from the open shaft. I stopped the first person who passed me and asked what had happened.
"Explosion last night," the man said. "There and over at the Ministry of Security—a whole wing was taken out."