The Tinkery

Chapter 14

“For what?” June asked. She kept her voice low.

Vernon drew a breath and the breath cost him something. She could see it in the tightening around his eye, the slight compression of his lips as the cracked ribs on his left side registered the expansion of his chest.

He let the breath out carefully, in a controlled exhalation that minimized the movement.

“The Parsons,” he said. “I told the Parsons everything.”

June looked at him. “Preachers did this to you?”

Something moved across his face that was not quite a smile. “Parsons. A family. From Boston.” He paused for the next breath, managing it. “Old money. Very old.”

She had heard the name, she thought, in a roundabout indirect way in newspaper society pages and financial columns or something equally peripheral. She was not certain she had heard it in any specific context.

“Tell me what happened,” she said. “From the beginning.”

He looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then he looked at her.

“I sell information,” he said. Each sentence came out separately, divided from the next by the careful management of his breathing. “I am a broker. Of a kind. I find things that people want to know. I find people who will pay to know them.”

June kept her face still.

“I sold them information on the Polk design.” Another careful breath. “Their interest is in personal flight vehicles. Urban transport. They want to be in that market before it exists. They want to control it” He paused. “The Polk design is not good. It barely achieves lift in testing. They were not satisfied.”

He turned his eye to look at the window. The sky outside was fully grey now, the color before color arrived.

“They wanted more,” he said. “Something that worked. Something they could take to market.” He looked back at her. “I started researching you. And Silas.” A breath. “I told them I could acquire the complete design. The prototype. Everything.”

He stopped.

“For how much?” June said.

“Two hundred thousand dollars.”

The number sat between them. June looked at it, at what it meant set against the fifty thousand he had offered her across the workbench in the Tinkery with his hat placed on her worksurface and his expression arranged into warmth and generosity.

He had been going to pay her fifty thousand for something he intended to sell for two hundred thousand, and pocket the difference, and the Parsons would have had the Skiffer for a fraction of what it would be worth when the urban flight market opened, and Vernon would have had his commission, and June Hughes would have had just enough to pay her mother’s hospital bills and put food on the table for her brothers for a few years, until the money ran out and the Skiffer’s potential had made someone else wealthy.

She felt the anger rise and she pressed it back down. Not now.

She kept her face neutral. She offered him a small nod of encouragement.

“Go on,” she said.

He looked at her for a moment with an expression she could not fully read -- something between gratitude and shame at the gratitude. he did not deserve the patience being extended to him and was receiving it anyway and his face tried to acknowledge that fact.

“When they found out I couldn’t deliver on my timeline,” he said, “they sent men. I was taken.” Another managed breath, slower this time. “I woke up in a basement. Their house. Their mansion, rather. I was tied to a chair.”

He stopped for several seconds. June waited.

“They beat me,” he said. “Both of them. They took turns.” The eye was distant, focused on something that was not the hospital room ceiling. “And between… between rounds, they spoke to each other. About other things. A girl they had known at university. They couldn’t remember her name. They argued about the name for a while.” He paused. “Between blows.”

The room was very quiet.

“They asked about you,” Vernon said. “And Silas. And the Tinkery. And the Skiffer. How far along it was. What systems were working. What wasn’t finished.” He looked at her directly. “I told them everything I knew. Everything I had observed. Every detail.”

“I’d been watching you,” he said. “For weeks. I knew how far you’d gotten.”

She thought about the weeks of work in the Tinkery. The bus bars, the turbine discs, the rewound motor. The tethered test and the polygraph chart.

All of it observed. All of it reported. All of it now in the possession of two men who had beaten this information out of Vernon Byle in a basement.

“Why would they let you know who they were?” she said. “If they intended to use the information.”

Vernon gave a short exhalation that was the outline of a laugh without any of its content. The cracked ribs converted it immediately into a wince. “I don’t think they intended for me to leave that basement.” He waited for the pain to pass. “And even if I did… even if I went to the police tomorrow with everything I know… it would be my word against the Parsons of Boston. One of the oldest families in New England. Against a man who brokers stolen information for a living.” He looked at her. “You understand what that calculation looks like.”

June understood what it looked like.

She sat for a moment with everything he had told her, turning it over, looking at the pieces and how they fit together.

The Parsons wanted a flying vehicle because they wanted to own the urban flight market. They had paid Vernon for information on the Polk design and found it wanting.

Vernon had offered them the Skiffer and its complete design for two hundred thousand dollars and had been unable to deliver it on schedule, and the Parsons had responded to this contractual disappointment in a very short and direct manner.

“They didn’t even ask for the money back.” Vernon’s voice carried the incredulity of that statement.

“You said you told them everything,” she said. She kept her voice even. “Did you tell them about my family?”

Vernon’s eye filled. The tear did not fall immediately, it first welled at the inner corner and held there, and he looked at her with an expression that was the answer before the words were.

“I’m sorry, June,” he said. “It hurt so much.”

She looked at him. She looked at the water glass on the bedside table and picked it up and held it where he could reach it. He took it with a hand that was not steady and drank from it in careful sips and she held it while he drank and did not say anything, because there were things she wanted to say, needed to say. But they were destructive thinhs and she was not going to say them here.

She heard a sound at the door and looked up quickly, a small spike of fear rushing through her chest.

Silas was in the doorway. He had his coat on and his walking stick in his hand. He was looking at Vernon with a dark look of indeterminate direction.

She did not know how long he had been standing in the doorway.

He cleared his throat. “Who do they work for?”

Vernon turned his head slowly toward the doorway. “Work for?” He made a noise that could have been a scoff. “They’re Parsons. They don’t work for anyone. They employ people. They invest. They acquire.” He managed another careful breath. “They’ve been doing it for a hundred years.”

“When did this all happen?” Silas said.

“A week ago. I’ve been trying to find a way out since then.” He paused. “They were not as careful on the third day. A door was left with insufficient attention. I took the opportunity.” He looked at June. “I came to the Tinkery because it was the only place I could think to warn you. I didn’t get very far inside before…” He stopped. “I didn’t get very far.”

June looked at him lying in the hospital bed, the bandaging white against the pillow, and thought about him making his way through the Grisham streets in the condition he had been in, one eye swollen shut and two cracked ribs and the cuts across his chest and abdomen, and getting as far as the Tinkery’s front door.

“I’m sorry, June,” he said again.

She looked at him for a moment. Then she said: “Rest. We’ll talk more when you’ve slept.”

He nodded, once, and closed his eye, and inside two minutes his breathing had settled into the slower rhythm of sleep.

---

Silas was in the corridor when she came out. He had moved away from the doorway to a position further down the hall where their voices would not carry back to the room, and he was standing with his walking stick in both hands, looking at the floor.

June pulled the door most of the way closed behind her and went to stand beside him.

He told her about the side loading door -- the handle that had turned without resistance, the absence of the expected rust and stiffness, the arc swept clean through the dust on the floor inside the threshold, the overlapping boot prints. He told her in the methodical sequence he used for all technical information, each fact in its place, the conclusions held until the facts had been laid out.

June went through the past week in her head. The schedule of the build. The times the Tinkery had been unoccupied. There had been one window, the afternoon Silas had gone to the machinist’s supply to collect the files for the conductor trimming, and she had left two hours later to see her mother at the hospital. The Tinkery had been empty for perhaps three hours.

“They came while we were both out,” she said. “The afternoon you went for the files.”

Silas nodded. He had reached the same conclusion.

“They would have seen everything that was in the Tinkery at that point,” June said. “The frame. The components. The notebooks.”

“Yes.”

“But not the bus bar,” she said.

Silas looked at her.

“When they came, we didn’t know about the bus bar yet,” she said. “We thought the original conductor was solid copper. We didn’t find out it was copper-clad aluminum until the third day of trimming, and the trimming started after the files came in.” She worked through the timeline. “They would have recorded the original conductor specification. Solid Copper, oversized. Any design they built from those notes would replicate that conductor.”

She watched Silas work through it. She could see him checking her reasoning against the sequence of events, verifying the timeline.

“A copper conductor of that cross-section,” he said slowly, “in the final configuration, with everything else we’ve trimmed --”

“Would put them over the lift limit,” June said. “They’d build a Skiffer that couldn’t leave the ground, at least not well. And they’d have no idea why, because as far as their notes are concerned, the conductor is correct.”

Silas was quiet for a moment.

“We need to go back,” he said. “The notebooks. The notes about the bus bar casting, the reason we cast it, the copper-clad aluminum discovery. If those notes are still at the Tinkery…”

“They’re in the secondary workbench,” June said. “Under the polygraph paper. I put them there after the last session.”

“Then whoever they sent last night, if they got in again, they’ll have them now.”

June felt the cold move through her that she had felt in the alley when the revolvers came out. Not panic. The cold that came before decision.

She reached into her coat pocket and took out the revolver and the loose cartridges. She held them out to Silas.

He took it, checked the cylinder. Six rounds plus the loose ones she handed him. He put the cartridges in his waistcoat pocket and the revolver in his coat pocket.

A small adjustment occurred between them, some minor transfer of weight. Not trust exactly, the question of trust between them was more complicated than a single gesture could resolve, and they both knew it. Something more specific than that. A mutual recognition of the situation they were in and the resources available to address it.

“Watch Vernon,” he said. “Don’t leave him alone. And check on your mother before the morning rounds start. there will be more staff moving through the wards in an hour and it will be harder to watch who is coming and going.”

She nodded.

“And June.” He looked at her steadily. “The doctor says Vernon needs to go up to the Lewis. There is a specialist on the airship who handles rib injuries better than anyone at the ground hospital. They will move him this morning.”

“I’ll be here when they do,” she said.

He turned and went down the corridor without hurrying, his walking stick marking the tile in its familiar rhythm, and turned at the stairwell door and was gone.

---

Her mother was asleep when June put her head into room seven, the slow breathing of someone genuinely resting, the face relaxed. June watched her from the doorway for a moment and did not go in.

She went to the telephone in the nursing station.

The operator put her through to the Prospect Hill exchange and the phone rang twice before Mr. Jerry answered with the alert readiness of a man who had been expecting a call.

“It’s June Hughes, Mr. Jerry. I’m sorry to call so early.”

“I’ve been up since five,” he said. “The boys are still sleeping. Everything is fine here, Miss Hughes.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” She paused, choosing her words. “Mr. Jerry, I need to ask you to do something for me, and I’m going to ask you without explaining all the reasons for it, and I want you to know that I would explain them if I could.”

A pause on the line. “Go on.”

“Keep the boys close to home today. Inside the building if possible, or the immediate street if they need air. Don’t answer the door for anyone you don’t recognize.” She stopped. “If someone comes asking about me, or about the family, don’t engage with them. Send them away and then call the hospital. Ask for Eleanor Hughes’s room and leave a message.”

The pause this time was longer.

“Is this trouble, Miss Hughes?” His voice was calm.

She thought about how to answer that. “I think it may be trying to be,” she said.

He was quiet for a moment. When he came back his voice had not changed in register but something in it had settled into a different kind of steadiness. “Then whoever comes asking,” he said, “will find this building a disappointing place to make trouble. You can count on that.”

She thanked him and meant it fully and hung up before he could tell her again not to worry, because she was going to worry regardless and she did not want to waste his time with the ritual of it.

---

She was back in the chair beside Vernon’s bed, watching him sleep, when the orderlies arrived.

There were two of them, efficient and practiced, with a wheeled hospital bed frame that they positioned beside Vernon’s with precision. A nurse came in behind them and checked Vernon’s chart and nodded, and the process of transferring him to the transport bed began.

Vernon woke during the transfer -- his eye opened, found the ceiling, found the faces of the orderlies above him, registered the movement and its purpose. He did not resist. He looked at June once, briefly, and closed his eye again.

The orderlies wheeled Vernon’s bed into the corridor. June stood back and let them work, following at a distance as the procession moved toward the roof access, the nurse ahead with the chart board, the two orderlies managing the bed frame around the corridor’s corners with practiced economy.

The roof was bright with early morning -- the sky had gone from grey to a pale, clear blue, the sun not yet above the eastern roofline but its light already present in the air. The Lewis Hospital Airship was above them, its enormous hull catching the morning light on its upper surface, the floodlights that had been trained downward through the night now off, unnecessary in the daylight.

A Lark-class airship sat on the platform near the cable terminus, its cabin door open, the interior configured for patient transport with a fixed berth along the left and right walls. It was a compact vessel, purpose-built for the vertical transit between the rooftop and the Lewis, its lift cells minimally sized for the weight it would carry on the short trip.

The orderlies transferred Vernon to the Lark’s berth with the same efficiency they had shown throughout, the nurse completing her chart notes and handing the board to the airship’s medical attendant. The door closed. The Lark rose straight up, steady and controlled, rising toward the Lewis.

She watched him go. Then she turned toward the south corner of the platform where the Skiffer sat in its shadow, its surfaces damp with the morning’s condensation.

She reached into her coat pocket and took out the crystal.

She seated it in the converter housing, felt the ceramic holder accept it, felt the slight click as it seated fully. She pulled on her helmet, buckled the chin strap, and swung into the pilot’s seat. The controls were cold under her hands from the night air.

She ran the startup sequence.

The relay clicks of the converter, the accumulator pressure climbing, the sparker arming. The boiler thump, the temperature rising, the turbine spinning up to its operating speed. The generator output stabilizing. She checked each instrument in order, reading the gauges in the clear morning light, and everything was within specification.

She raised the collective.

The Skiffer lifted from the hospital roof and she climbed, straight up, faster than she had climbed before because the Lewis was above her and she needed altitude. She passed the height she had flown at the farm and kept climbing. The city spread below her as she rose, the grid of Grisham’s streets, the dome of Inspiration Station, the harbor beyond the city’s western edge with the morning sun beginning to touch the water, the maglev line threading between the buildings with a car moving along it that from this altitude was a small dark shape.

At a thousand feet the city was a map.

At fifteen hundred feet the air was colder and the wind was present in a way it had not been at street level, a steady pressure from the northwest that she compensated for with a continuous stick input that became automatic within the first thirty seconds.

At two thousand feet the Lewis was close.

The airship was enormous in a way that the word enormous did not adequately describe. From the hospital roof it had been a large presence above; from two thousand feet, approaching it, it occupied a substantial portion of the sky. Its hull was six hundred feet long, the lift cells arranged in the characteristic double-row configuration of the Lewis-class hospital vessels, the cabin structure extruded below the hull extending the full length of the ship and several stories deep. The receiving platform on the gondola’s lower level was marked with guidance lights that were still illuminated from the night operation, a clear rectangle of amber lamps indicating the landing area.

She brought the Skiffer in slowly, reading the wind at this altitude, which was different from the wind at the hospital roof and different again from the wind at street level. She compensated, adjusted, compensated again, the Skiffer tracking true on its approach to the platform.

She set it down on the marked area with a contact she felt through the seat and set the collective to zero.

She sat for a moment with the rotors spinning down and looked at the platform around her -- the amber guidance lights, the Lewis’s structure rising above her on three sides, the open sky on the fourth, the city two thousand feet below.

She did not look at the city for long. Two thousand feet was a distance that her mind had opinions about when she was not actively flying, and she respected those opinions. She shut down the systems in sequence and reached under the panel for the crystal and pulled it free.

She put the crystal in her inside coat pocket and buttoned the pocket.

She climbed out of the Skiffer, and stood for a moment with her hand on the frame.

Below, on the street that ran along Meridian Avenue’s western side, two figures stood at the corner. One of them raised a small brass telescope to his eye and trained it upward. He held it there for a moment, tracking.

The figure beside him looked up at the Lewis.

The first man collapsed the telescope with a single practiced motion and put it in his coat pocket.

“All three in the same place,” he said. “Like fish in a barrel.”