“The Builders’ machines must place counter-spells to protect themselves. How else would they still be working after so many years?” Kara leaned head and chest out over the edge. Snorri beat me to the job of holding her legs. “There are rungs set into the stone of the wall, just like in the shaft we came down.”
She inched back, shook her legs free, then spun around to back over the edge, feet questing for the holds. With the strong suspicion that the clanging noise was the bars back along the tunnel surrendering to Cutter John, I slipped over the edge directly behind her.
A minute or so later all four of us stood on the chamber floor, feeling like ants, both in scale and significance. Snorri led the way to the alcove in the base of the machine. The towering silver-steel engine, through which the black core of the Wheel passed, occupied most of the chamber but a good twenty yards stood between the wall of the chamber and the outer skin of the machinery. The thing looked like no engine I’d ever seen. There were no wheels or cogs, no moving parts, but the structure seemed to be built of many sections and various pipes snaked across its surface, meeting and separating in complex patterns. The whole edifice hummed with power—not a comforting hum but an ungentle sound that carried within it unsettling atonal harmonies that could not have come from any human mind.
“It’s that man from the sign.” Hennan walked at Snorri’s side, a large knife that the Viking must have given him ready in his hand.
“Professor O’Kee,” Kara said.
He stood, frozen as Taproot had been, studying one of the glass panels and the pattern of lights glowing from it. Also in the alcove, somewhat surprisingly, was a messy pile of dirty bedding, a scattering of books, halfeaten food on a plate, and a stained armchair. Just before him, perhaps knocked by the hand resting on the semi-circular desk that ran along the length of the alcove, a small object, a slim cylinder, narrower and slightly longer than my finger, had been captured just after falling from the flat surface. It hung in mid-tumble about three feet off the ground.
I drew my sword and moved forward to prod it in the old man’s direction. I ran into the invisible wall well before I’d expected it, almost smashing my face into it as I’d only just begun to raise my blade.
“It’s big!” I said, to cover my embarrassment.
“Taproot called it stasis,” Kara said. “A stasis field.”
Snorri set his hand to the smoothness of the boundary between time and no time. “Use the key.”
“He’s not frozen,” Hennan said.
“Yes he is.” I patted myself for the ever-elusive key.
“That . . . thing . . . falling from the table is lower down now.”
I looked. The stylus did look a little closer to the ground, but it could easily be a trick of the eye. “Nonsense.”
“He’s right.”
It took me a moment to realize that I didn’t recognize the voice backing Hennan’s opinion. I turned to find that Snorri already had his axe uncomfortably close to the newcomer’s neck. “Who are you?” A Viking growl.
“You don’t recognize me?” The man wore the same long and closefitting white coat as O’Kee, with black trousers and shiny black shoes beneath. He was in his twenties, perhaps a few years older than me, dark hair in disarray, standing up in tufts as if he was in the habit of tugging on it, and thinning at the crown. His wide eyes sparkled with amusement, certainly more than I would show with a barbarian’s axe just inches from my face. Something about him did seem familiar.
“No,” Snorri answered. “Why should I recognize you?”
Kara stared at the man, brow furrowed. “You’re a Builder magician.”
“Oh come on! I’m staring you in the face.” He waggled his fingers under his chin and gestured with the other hand toward the alcove. “See?”
O’Kee had his back to us so it was far from obvious, but that was where the familiarity came from. He looked a bit like the older man, or at least how I remembered him from the picture. “You’re his son? Brother?”
“Son. In a manner of speaking.” A broad smile. “Call me Larry. In any case, your lad is right. Look, the pen has reached the floor.”
We all turned, expect for Snorri, too much the warrior to fall for simple misdirection. The cylinder had indeed hit the floor and was perhaps in the process of bouncing.
“It’s slo-time,” Larry said. “A year spent in there sees a century pass out here.”
“We need to speak to the professor,” I said.
“You could ask me?” He smiled.
“It’s a pretty big question,” I said. “We really need to talk to the man in charge. We’re going to turn it off.”
“What are you going to turn off?” Larry asked.
“This.” I waved my hand at the machine, which was nearly as big as a castle keep. “All of it.” I gestured toward the tunnel mouths at either side of the chamber. “The Wheel.”
“The professor can do it for us.” Snorri’s voice left no room for choice. “It’s his creation.”
Larry shrugged. “It’s the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of the brightest minds of his age, but yes, he oversaw the project. He’s been working at turning it all off for the past thousand years—ten years in his time—but without success. There are a great many processes that must be exquisitely balanced for a successful termination of the operation. The smallest mistake in calculations could see the effect accelerate . . . or worse.”
“Even so, we will talk to him.” Snorri set a palm to the surface where the professor’s time met ours.
“Be my guest.” Larry opened his hands toward the professor. “But you’ll need the key. And if you don’t have that I’m afraid I’ll have to see you out.”
I glanced at Snorri, his face set in a grim frown, then back at Larry. Most people find an enormous Viking intimidating. Larry somehow conveyed the impression that he considered us all to be naughty schoolchildren.
“I have the key.” I pulled it out and was rewarded with the smallest hesitation from Larry before his grin broadened.
“Marvellous! Really marvellous. You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting to see that again.”
“Again?” I shook my head at his nonsense and turned to the professor. “Open!” I jabbed the key at the barrier . . . and found no resistance. The “pen” bounced once more and rolled under the armchair. Professor O’Kee tutted. He tapped the glass plate he had been looking at—across which lights and lines and numbers were moving in bright and colourful confusion—and turned, bending to retrieve the fallen pen, only to be arrested halfway through the action by the sight of three heathens from the savage north and a prince of Red March.
“Oh thank God!” he said. “Larry, put the kettle on.”
“We’re here to turn the Wheel off,” Snorri said. “Will the kettle help with that?”
“Of course you are.” The professor offered us a genial smile and nodded toward my still-outstretched hand. “You’ve brought back my key.”
“Your key? This is Loki’s key. It was made in Asgard.” Snorri bristled.
“I’m sure it was.” The professor nodded and hobbled to his armchair. He didn’t look well. “I’d offer you all a seat, but I’ve only the one I’m afraid. Age before beauty and all that.”
Larry, who had been standing at the desk back in the alcove now returned with a cup of steaming brown liquid. He offered it to the professor who took it in a hand that quaked with old-man’s palsy, threatening to slop the contents over first one side, then the other. He got it to his lips without incident and took a noisy slurp.
“That’s tea!” I said. The others looked at me.
“Well done, lad.” The professor took another slurp and made a satisfied “ah.”
I nodded my head curtly, accepting the praise. My mother brought the leaves of the tea plant with her from the Indus, dried and pressed, and used to drink an infusion of them in hot water.
The old man looked up at Snorri. “There’s no kettle, just a hot water dispenser and very old teabags. It’s an expression—language clings on to things long after we’ve forgotten what they were.”
“You say it’s your key,” Kara challenged.
“In a manner of speaking. In several manners of speaking in fact.”