Lazarus Machine, The (A Tweed & Nightingale Adventure): 1 (14 page)

“You sound like you're on their side,” said Tweed.

“I'm not. I had to get out. I knew that if I stayed there much longer I'd come to think that the greater good was the most important thing. More important than
people
. I'd seen it happen, and I didn't want to be like…”

Horatio trailed off, his eyes cast downward. Finally, he looked up at them. “The Ministry is cloaked in shades of grey. There is no black and white. Everything can be explained. Everything can be justified if you try hard enough. I just couldn't live like that.”

The cab trundled to a stop. Horatio opened the door and climbed out. Tweed followed next, then Octavia stepped out onto the ground.

She looked around. They were in a rundown area, a small side street with three-story buildings hemming them in on either side. To her left, about thirty feet away, the side street fed into a busier road. People walked past, as did automata, carriages, and cabs.

But in this side street they were alone.

She frowned at the trash: old newspapers, sodden and sticking to the curb; pieces of old fruit crates, smashed to pieces by bored street children; all now turning black with rot.

“Why are we here?” she asked, turning her attention to Horatio.

The man stood before a wall. “Because I want to show you something. Follow me.”

Horatio took a step to the side—

—and simply vanished. At least, that's what it looked like. Octavia stepped forward and saw that what she'd at first thought was the wall of a building was actually something of an illusion. There were in fact
two
walls, one slightly behind the other. But the brickwork, and even the painted insults daubed
on
the brickwork, flowed across them both in such a way that it looked like a single wall. Anyone looking in or even walking up the side street wouldn't be able to see the gap. It was only when you turned around and looked back from the bricked-up end of the alley that it was visible.

She and Tweed entered the dark opening and found themselves in a dingy corridor. Horatio waited for them at the top of a flight of stairs.

“Come on,” he said. “We have to be quick.”

They followed him down the steps. There was a dim light coming from somewhere, but when Octavia looked around she couldn't find its source.

They walked for about five minutes, all the while descending beneath the streets of London. Finally, the stairs leveled out and they found themselves on a tiled platform. The dim light had a slight green tinge to it that tinted the white tiles a sickly bilious color. The light throbbed, stronger and weaker, stronger and weaker—almost as if it were breathing.

Octavia walked forward to the edge and looked down onto a set of train tracks.

“What station is this?” she asked in surprise.

“A secret one,” said Horatio. “It was abandoned about thirty years ago. Never used. At least,” he corrected himself, “never used by the public.”

The platform was distinctly eerie. It wasn't just the light. Every station Octavia had ever been to was filled with people—angry
people, happy people, rushed people, bored people—but here it was empty of life. Even the walls were bare. At all the other stations, every available space was covered with advertisements for something or other. Here there was just…
nothing
.

Horatio hopped of the edge of the platform and straight onto the tracks. Tweed followed Horatio, and Octavia jumped down last. The tracks receded into a dark tunnel. Octavia eyed them nervously, but she had no choice. She'd come this far, and she certainly wasn't going to show any kind of fear in front of Tweed.

Horatio led them only a short way along the tunnel before coming to stop. He folded his arms and waited for Octavia and Tweed to catch up.

“Why have we stopped?” asked Tweed.

Horatio nodded over Octavia's shoulder. She turned around to find another door, this one made of solid-looking metal. There was no handle on it, just a slightly raised panel.

“What's this?” asked Octavia.

“A way into the Ministry,” said Horatio. “If Barnaby is being held by them, you'll find him somewhere in there.”

Octavia's eyes widened. She stared at the door hungrily. It was possible her mother was somewhere in there, too, then.

“How do we get in?” asked Tweed.

Horatio reached into his dirty jacket and pulled out a tatty cardboard file. It was thick with papers, tied closed with an old piece of leather. He handed it to Octavia.

“What's this?” she asked.

“The layout of the Ministry compound beneath London. All twenty square miles of corridors, offices, prisons, rooms, laboratories…everything, really. Plus intelligence on security. You'll need that.” Horatio shook his head. “It's a suicide mission, mind. But that might help you.” He started to walk back along the track.

“Wait,” called Tweed. “Why are you doing this? You put yourself in danger by bringing us here.”

“I told you,” said Horatio. “I want Lucien dead.”

“No,” said Tweed. “There's more than that.”

Octavia could just make out Horatio smiling in the darkness. “Smart lad, aren't you? Fine. I'm helping because I used to be friends with your father, boy. The man you call Barnaby Tweed? He used to be a Mesmer. Just like me.”

Tweed paced back and forth in the front lounge of Jenny and Carter's house. He had shoved the table and couch against the wall so he could get a good stride going while he tried to assimilate what he'd read in the file and what he'd been told by Horatio.

His father, a Mesmer.

His father, a Ministry lackey.

He couldn't understand it. Barnaby
hated
the Ministry. Hated it with a fierce passion. And now here was this Horatio fellow telling him he used to work with Barnaby
inside
the Ministry?

Perhaps Horatio was lying, but why? What would he have to gain?

Nothing.

It had the ring of truth.

It would explain why Barnaby had always insisted they keep a low profile; why they never strayed from the overcrowded Whitechapel. Because Barnaby had been in hiding. All this time he had been scared the Ministry would track him down. And it looked like his fears had finally come true.

Tweed heard the front door open and close.

“Darling,” called Jenny, “I'm home!”

She and Carter entered the front room, tossing jackets and scarves onto a chair. Carter glanced around at the rearranged furniture. “Not sure I like what you've done with the place, old chap.”

“Never mind that,” said Jenny. “Did you meet up with him?”

“Did you know Barnaby used to work in the Ministry?” asked Tweed.

Jenny and Carter exchanged confused looks.

“What on Earth are you talking about, dear boy?” asked Jenny. "Don't be absurd.”

“This Horatio fellow says he used to work for the Ministry, said Barnaby did as well.”

Tweed went on to tell them everything they had learned from Horatio. Octavia joined them as he was doing so, adding in details he missed.

When Tweed finished, Jenny and Carter looked dazed.

“We had no idea,” said Jenny. “We met Barnaby when you were just a babe. He's never said anything…” She frowned and turned to Carter, waving a fist in his face. “He better not have told you about this on one of your gentlemen-only pub crawls.”

Carter raised his hands. “This is news to me, my love! I swear!”

Jenny narrowed her eyes and stared suspiciously at him.

“I promise! I didn't know about this.”

Jenny pursed her lips and nodded. “Fine. I believe you.”

“You can all talk this over with Barnaby himself, once we get him out of the Ministry prison,” said Octavia. She nodded at the file in Tweed's hands. “You've been reading that thing for hours. Is it going to help us?”

Tweed hesitated. “It's…It's not going to be easy,” he said reluctantly. “I mean, for obvious reasons, yes? It's the Ministry. They take their security seriously. Plus, we're talking about breaking into the Ministry
prison
.”

“Tell us,” said Carter.

Tweed ran his hands through his hair and started to pace again. He stopped and turned. “Right. Our first problem is simply getting
inside
. The Ministry has made it difficult, even for their own people. They have a Babbage terminal at every door. For an employee to gain access to the building the Babbage takes a photograph of the employee's eye and compares the iris against a detailed record stored in its database. Then the terminal reads the fingerprints of the employee, and finally, if he passes the first two tests, he has to repeat
his name into a recording device so the Babbage can compare the voiceprint to one stored in its system. Only if all three of these are perfect matches will the door unlock.”

The others exchanged worried glances.

“Oh, there's more,” said Tweed, noting their expressions. “Everyone in the Ministry knows each other. At least by sight. The Ministry makes sure of this so that, should a stranger ever gain access to the Ministry complex, one sighting should be enough to raise the alarm.

“There are over twenty square miles of corridors, offices, warehouses, and laboratories down there. The place is a maze. One wrong turn and you could be stuck wandering around for days.” Tweed held up the file Horatio gave them. “There are maps in here, but they're years out of date. Who knows what's changed since then?” He dropped the file onto the table. “Then there's the prison itself. The prison cells are buried a
mile
underground. Their positioning and shape are…unique.”

“I don't like it when you say ‘unique’ like that,” said Octavia.

“Neither do I. The prisons are situated in a circle around a huge central shaft. Basically a massive hole in the ground. There are a hundred levels, one beneath the other, and fifty cells on each level. The only access to the cells is by a single elevator that is operated from the top floor of the prison complex. But before we even
think
about that, we have to somehow find out which cell Barnaby is in, and check if Octavia's mother is being held there as well.”

Tweed glanced over at Octavia as he spoke. He could see she was surprised that he'd thought of her mother.

“We have to find out which cells they're being held in, which means we need access to the Ministry's Babbage computing network. The problem with that is that it's all internal. The serving machines that feed the network are all situated right in the middle of the Ministry complex. So we need to somehow access the serving machines
before
we go off looking for the cells.”

Tweed folded his arms, looking at their worried faces, and said, “I'm afraid we're going to need some help.”

“No kidding,” replied Jenny.

“Right, listen up,” said Tweed, as the four of them stood before a rundown house on Norfolk Street. “You're about to meet someone called Stepp Reckoner.” Tweed held up his hands to forestall any questions. He was already dreading this. He knew it was going to end badly. “Not her real name. An alias she came up with. Stepp is the one who helped me program the spiders. She's an expert on analytical computers, on Babbages, on Adas—anything computer-related, she knows about it. But the government doesn't like that. They like to control everything about computing machines. Babbage himself isn't allowed to talk about how they work.”

“And you think she can help us get into the Ministry?” said Jenny.

“She's the only one who
can
. With the amount of Babbage security we're facing, we're finished if she doesn't agree to help. But you have to be careful not to offend her. She's very…touchy.”

“I don't see why we can't just get our old crew together and fight our way in,” said Carter.

Jenny put a hand over his mouth. “Shush, dear, the grown-ups are talking.”

Tweed stepped around the rusted gate hanging from its hinges and approached the chipped and damaged door. Appearances were very deceptive, however, and as he knocked, he heard the dull echo of the thick metal sandwiched between the wood.

Octavia came to stand next to him. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.

“You want to find out if your mother is in their cells, don't you?”

“Of course I do.”

“And I want to get Barnaby out of their hands. But I don't think they're just going to hand him over. This is the only—”

He was interrupted as the door was opened by an eleven-year-old girl. She was thin and sickly looking, her head shaved to the scalp. She stared suspiciously at them.

“Um, hello there,” said Octavia. “Is—” Octavia glanced uncertainly at Tweed—“your sister in? Or your mother?”

The girl stared scornfully at Octavia, then turned her dark, shadowed eyes to Tweed. “Who's she?” she asked in an Irish accent. “Your new girlfriend?”

“No,” said Tweed. “But a friend. So behave.” Tweed frowned at her. “You don't look so good, Stepp. Are you sick?”

Stepp waved his concern away and scratched her head. She turned the scratch into a tap. “This is from the lice. The rest…well, I've had a bit of the flu is all. What you want, Tweed?”

Tweed tried to ignore the astonished look Octavia passed between he and Stepp. He also tried to ignore the chuckling from Jenny and the rather confused questions Carter was asking her.

“Need your help. The Ministry has Barnaby.”

“Then say your goodbyes and move on. No way you can get him back.”

Tweed held up the file. “Ah, but we have inside information: security protocols, maps, Babbage model numbers…everything you need to crack the Ministry wide open.”

Tweed grinned as Stepp's eyes lit with gleeful excitement. She stepped aside and swept her hand wide in a theatrical bow.

“Ladies and gentlemen—and you,” she said, glaring at Octavia. “Welcome to my center of operations.”

Stepp's “center of operations” was the basement of the rather rundown house she lived in with her alcoholic father. The man was barely aware of the passing of time, never mind the fact that his daughter was one of the foremost computing mechanics—“mechs”—in London.

Tweed lounged on a tatty couch while Stepp scanned the files. Every now and then she would giggle to herself. Tweed had seen it all before, but the other three, huddled in the opposite corner of the room, looked vaguely worried.

Tweed nodded at a small viewing terminal attached to a brass and copper keyboard. It seemed to be one piece of equipment, instead of the usual separate keyboard and viewing screen. “That's new,” he said.

Stepp glanced up. “Oh, It's the new Ada. Not even on the market yet. Wanted to get into it before everyone else. It's what I use when I'm cutting a system. Very fast.”

“How did you get it?” asked Octavia.

Stepp looked her way. “I have someone who works in the factories. Someone who owes me a lot of favors.”

“So what do you think?” asked Tweed. “Is your reputation as the best cutter in the city well-earned?”

“You know it is, Tweedy.”

Tweed sighed. “What I'm asking, Stepp, is can it be done?”

“Possibly.”

“Then my next question is, will you help?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether or not you agree to leave my punchcards in the Ministry serving computer when you sneak inside.”

“Why would you want me to do that?”

“So I can gain direct control over their systems whenever I want to.”

“Ah, I see. Then I agree.”

Octavia straightened up. “Tweed! You can't do that!”

“Why not? I'm sure Stepp will be a good little girl and use her power responsibly, won't you Stepp?”

“Call me a little girl one more time and I'll chop your fingers off,” growled Stepp.

Tweed sat up on the couch. “Apologies. Slip of the tongue. So, are we on?”

“We're on.”

“When do we get started?”

“What's the time frame?”

Tweed glanced uncertainly at the others. Octavia shrugged.

“Tight,” said Tweed. “Very, very tight.”

“Then we start right now. Here's the first thing you'll need to do…”