The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [47]
Skinner didn’t move. “I can hear fine from out here.”
“Please. I…” The young man tried to bite his tongue, but couldn’t. “I’m not…you know I’m not as smart as you or Beckett. I need you with me.”
The knocker threw up her hands. “Fine. But if I get shot, or something, you’ve got to explain how you lost the Coroner’s only knocker.”
“Heh. I’m sure I could afford to hire a new one.”
“You wish.”
Valentine helped the young lady down from the coach. “Besides, I can’t understand your damnable tapping code anyway.”
“It’s easy,” she said, resting a hand on his elbow and waving her cane precisely in front of her. “There’s a heavy tap and a light tap. The sequence of taps will stand for a letter, except when they stand for numbers. Then they’ll be preceded by a single simultaneous tap. A simultaneous double tap means yes, a simultaneously triple tap means no…”
“See, you’ve already lost me…”
“And then it counts. Four light taps followed by a heavy tap is one, or ‘A,’ three light taps followed by one heavy tap and then one light tap is two, or ‘B,’ three light taps followed by two heavy taps is three, or ‘C’…”
“La la la, I don’t understand, la la la…”
“Valentine, you’ll never learn if you don’t pay attention.”
Inside the address on Corimander Street, the two coroners found a heavy wooden desk, behind which sat a young man of rather ordinary features. Valentine estimated that he was a gentleman, owing to his youth and bearing—as a more common young man would have surely been sent to the war already—and that he was of Rowan or Czarnecki relation, owing to the long, straight nose. Behind the desk was an iron door with a little window in it. Standing next to the door were two blood-and-bone armored Lobstermen.
“Hallo, chum,” Valentine said to the young clerk. “Can you tell me, what’ve you got behind that door?”
The clerk looked at Valentine, then at Skinner and the silver plate across her eyes, then back at Valentine. “Well…no. I’m afraid I can’t.
“Robert?” Skinner asked, suddenly.
“You two know each other, splendid!” Valentine exclaimed. “Skinner, have him open the door for us.”
“I don’t…” the clerk seemed confused. “I don’t think we do know each other.” He shook his head. “This is a highly-restricted area. I’m afraid that if you don’t have authorization from the Academy, I’m going to have to ask you both to leave. Immediately.”
“Huh,” Valentine said. He unfolded his Writ. “The Academy? You mean, the Royal Academy of Sciences? Because it just so happens I have a Writ here…well, you can read it just as well as I can explain it.” He handed it to the clerk. “I suppose that’ll do. Open the door, chum.”
The clerk read the Writ and swallowed nervously, then gestured to one of the Lobstermen, who used an alarmingly dense array of keys to open several locks on the iron door.
“I hope they don’t decide to lock us in,” Valentine whispered to the knocker, as the door creaked open and the two coroners began to descend a steep, stone staircase. They passed through another iron door at the bottom of the stairs, this one thicker and stronger-looking, but ajar.
Beyond it was a very large, round room. At its outside edges burned small phlogiston lamps. They failed to cast enough light on the huge, still shape in the center. Whatever it was, it was nearly two storeys tall and at least fifty feet long. It was covered by a white sheet, and loomed menacingly in the dark.
“That…” whispered Valentine. “Is that what I think it is?”
“What?” Skinner asked. Her telerhythmia moved quickly along the walls before it found the shape in the center and began rattling on the sheet. Each rap threw up a tiny cloud of dust and made a faint, metallic ringing sound.
“The Excelsior,” the clerk told them, his voice hushed. Valentine hadn’t even realized they’d been followed.
“He took something…” Valentine said to himself. “The cylinders from the flight recorder. Where are they?”
The clerk gestured to yet another iron door, set into the curving wall. Valentine ran to it and threw it open, only to find that it was indeed full of etched copper recording