The Inexplicables (The Clockwork Century 4)

His small question worked. A smile spread out over Huey’s face. “Yaozu had a great idea, but he didn’t know how to make it happen. So I figured it out—it was easy as pie. ”

“Well, what is this great idea?” They reached the first floor, and Houjin was nearly at a run, so it must be something good.

“We’re going to take their dynamite, and use it against them. ”

Houjin stopped and faced him, and held out his hands like he could make his point better if he could gesture. “How much do you know about dynamite?” he asked.

“It blows things up. ”

“Right. It blows things up, but you don’t want it

to blow things up while you’re standing there holding it. You want to be a long way away when it goes off,” he said patiently. He’d lapsed into teacher mode.

Rector didn’t care for being talked down to by somebody younger than him, but he was the one who’d asked, and now he had to take the explanation however he could get it. With a minimum amount of disdain, he said, “Obviously. ”

“Obviously, yes. You obviously knew that. ”

“Just tell me, would you?”

“Fine. In order to control it, you have a couple of choices: You can either give it a very long fuse, and light it, or you can take a very long wire, and use that wire to send the dynamite an electric spark. It’s usually generated by one of those pump boxes: You shove the plunger down, it makes a spark, the spark goes down the line, and boom! But we don’t want to use wire, and we don’t want to use a fuse. ”

Rector tried to look like he was following, but he was lost. “Then what would you use?”

Houjin beamed, with a tiny, unnerving edge of mischief that was made sharper by Rector’s irritation. “Time!” He took off again, Rector trailing behind him.

“Time?”

“You heard me! Don’t ask me to explain yet, ’cause it’ll be easier to show you. But for now, you’re on dynamite duty with me—and you have to listen. I’ll show you how to take care of it without blasting yourself to pieces. ”

Since this qualified as a noble goal so far as Rector was concerned, he listened hard and promised to do what he was told. Ordinarily he’d make no such vows, but the prospect of blowing himself to Kingdom Come made him infinitely more responsive to instruction.

“But why are we in such a rush?” he asked, and asked it quickly, when Houjin paused to take a breath.

“Because we’re going to the tower. ”

“You told me that already. Why are we going back there, when all the action’s at the Station?”

Houjin pushed all his weight into moving the big Vault door, then stepped outside into the main body of the underground. “Because, like you said—all the action’s at the Station. Yaozu just gave the word: His spies are watching the Station and all its entrances, keeping track of the men who are planting the explosives. ”

“They ain’t stopping them?”

“No, just watching for now,” he said. From out of his pocket he pulled two scraps of glass the size and shape of spectacle lenses. “Take one of these. They’re polarized. I don’t want to wear those glasses—they look crazy, and they’re too small for me. So I went back down to storage and picked up a different set. ”

“Good idea. ”

“Thank you. ”

Slipping the scrap of glass into his pocket, Rector asked, “Why the tower, though? What are we supposed to do there?”

“Get inside, get a look around, and steal as much dynamite as we can carry. But no more than that,” he added. “We want to leave plenty inside. ”

“But why me?”

“Why you?” Huey stopped and turned around, as had become his habit when he wanted to make sure Rector was paying attention. “Because if you get caught, there’s a good chance you can talk your way out of it. You know some of these men, and they know you—they might assume you were sent along by Otis Caplan or one of his people. If I were you, that’s what I’d tell them, anyway. If we get caught, that is. ”

“And what would I tell them about you?”

“Tell them…” He thought about it. “Tell them I don’t speak English, but I hate Yaozu and I’m here to kill him. Or something like that. ”