“It was an honor getting to know you, my dear,” he murmured into her ear. Then he helped Cade maneuver her through the hatch and into the penstock. The professor watched her vanish into the darkness below.
Cade reappeared at the hatch. “I could use a light.”
“Yes, of course.” The professor passed him the taper. “Know that you were always my best student, Cade.”
A smile flickered on the young man’s face. “Do what you need to do, then follow after us. We’ll wait in the boat.”
The professor nodded. “Hurry now!” and he replaced the cover on the hatch to forestall anymore painful leave-taking.
The basement was dark, but he knew his way well. At the base of the stairwell he found and lit another taper and examined the door. It appeared to be buckling, even with the steel reinforcement. The hinges were giving way. He hastened up the stairs to the second floor and threw the lever to illuminate the room. There were barrels he kept near the entryway in which he stored phosphorene to keep the lights functioning, but also it was there in case of an emergency. An emergency like the one he now faced.
He rolled the barrels to the center of the floor and unplugged them. The clear viscous fluid that was phosphorene flowed onto the floor, rather like the molasses he sometimes liked on cornbread. The dry mill floor soaked the phosphorene right up. The fumes drove the professor back.
The barrels of phosphorene were not the only precautions the professor had taken. He had feared this day might come to pass, and so he had planned. He could not allow his precious artifacts to fall into the hands of Ezra Stirling Silk, much less the emperor, so among the shelves on the third floor he had stocked smaller barrels of black powder. Silk may have rounded up most of the blastmen in Mill City, but what he hadn’t known was that Bryce Lowell Josston, imperially licensed professor of archeology, was also versed in the art of blasting.
He shook his head sadly and made his way to his big desk. He sat down, and from the drawer removed his pistol and his grandfather’s chronosphere. He opened the sphere and watched the little mechanical man inside pick out the time with his walking stick. Half past the morning’s first hour. In all the excitement, he had not heard the city bell toll. He snapped the sphere shut and waited.
• • •
When the doors finally crashed open—first on one end, followed shortly by the door on the other end—the professor consulted the chronosphere once more. It had taken them approximately ten minutes to break in since he had last checked. That meant his doors had held up remarkably well under the onslaught, and he congratulated himself on their design, which, he hoped, had also provided Cade time to make progress down the tailrace.
Voices and stomping feet echoed up the stairwells, and he simply waited. He listened as they cleared the basement—apparently not finding the hatch in the penstock or the trapdoor to the underground—and moved on to the first floor. There, he knew, they found little more than discarded scraps of machinery.
When they all clambered up to the second floor and swarmed through the doors with arms drawn, the professor stood, picked up his taper which he’d kept burning, but left his pistol on his desk. Each movement was followed by the muzzles of firearms and the lensed eyes of Enforcers.
“Gentlemen,” he said as he strode to the center of the room so they could all get a good look at him. “To what do I owe this intrusion of my property?”
“You are under arrest,” one of the Inspectors announced. The local commander.
“Whatever for?”
“For suspicion of anti-empire activities.”
“That does not sound very specific.”
“It does not have to be,” the commander replied. “As we all can see, you have been keeping secrets. I’m sure we’ll find all the evidence we need in this building.” Already there were Inspectors looking over Cade’s collection of practice weapons. Enforcers scanned the walls and his bookcases.
One Enforcer tip-tapped toward him and stepped in the phosphorene. It lifted its foot gingerly, like a cat that has stepped in a puddle. It issued a warning bleep. Meanwhile, two Inspectors conferred with the commander.
“. . . smell of phosphorene,” one was saying.
“Gentlemen,” the professor announced, and they all looked his way. “I do not think you are going to find anything. Not a thing. Your masters are going to be woefully disappointed.” He let the taper tumble from his hand onto the phosphorene soaked floor. Its bulb broke baring the flame. “Oh dear,” he said with false contrition. “I seem to have dropped my light.”
Flames whooshed up from the floor. The professor leaped away from the sudden heat. Men and machines bolted into action, calling for water, to retreat, shouting, Fire! as they ran.
The professor backed away from the flames and returned to his desk. He warred with every fiber of his being not to run, to escape to safety, but by sheer will forced himself to sit. Sit at his desk in his precious library of forgotten books. His people would lose all these bridges to the past, all the objects which he, and others before him, had found and lovingly preserved. Better this than what the emperor would do with it all.
The professor coughed on the hot smoke that was quickly filling the room, obscuring the panicked Inspectors and Enforcers from sight. The fire would spread fast, fed not only by old, dry wood soaked in phosphorene, but by the machine oil that had dripped and been absorbed into floorboards over the many decades the mill had been active.