“Practice some restraint,” Julian said tightly.
“This is absolutely restraint,” Ezra returned, prompting a scraggly plant in a tin can to sprout shiny new leaves.
Despite the early hour, we weren’t the only ones on the street. Vendors were pushing carts laden with trinkets and apothecary bottles. They were likely making the long trek over the bridge to the park where crowds would be gathering to admire the buildings constructed for the Continental Exposition. Well-dressed tourists emerged from boarding houses, looking flea-bitten and sleepless. A scrawny boy who reminded me of Henry ran by, chasing after an even scrawnier goat.
Every so often, I spotted posters protesting the House of Industry. Some were half torn, and others had obscene words painted over them. I couldn’t recall seeing anything like them before, but then again, every time I’d traveled around Sterling City as a student on assignments, I’d been told to keep the carriage curtains drawn. And when I’d been out in the open, I’d lowered my gaze, hating the way people stared.
Here in the Far Bank, Julian and I were as good as invisible. Children played on front stoops, paying us no mind. I liked it.
It was a cool, foggy morning. We made our way past the towering Far Bank bridge house, down a slight incline to the warehouses that lined the Sterling River. Here, barges collected and deposited goods. Workers moved like bees in a hive all along the riverfront, loading and unloading with a series of radiance-powered cranes that looked like skeletal birds. Nikola led the way to her workshop confidently.
“Are you worried we’re being followed?” I asked, out of breath from keeping up with her long-legged pace.
She stopped in front of an unmarked warehouse. “My spies are following us, and they’ll handle anyone wedon’twant following us.”
A broad-shouldered woman with dark brown skin sat on a pile of pallets. She looked us up and down, not bothering to hide her suspicion. “These your friends, Nik?”
Nikola handed her a rumpled pack of cigarettes. “We’re making strides toward that,” she said, drawing a key from the ring at her hip and unlocking the warehouse door. “Anyone who comes by this morning should have the watchword. If they don’t, signal Lisbeth. Stars know she’s aching to fry someone up.”
“Tensions are high,” the woman agreed, lighting a cigarette with a match and exhaling like someone who hadn’t taken a full breath in a week. “Wouldn’t mind frying someone up myself.”
Nikola led us into a warehouse far cleaner than the street outside. The floor was hard-packed dirt, but in the middle of the room, a wooden platform served as a workspace. On it, canvas tarps covered what looked like machines roughly the size of wagon carts. Long worktables were covered in tools and machine parts I recognized, along with things I didn’t—glass tubes and bulbs in odd shapes. On the far side of the long warehouse, what looked like a conduction coil surrounded by a metal cage towered nearly to the roof. A slender antenna protruded from the top. Another shorter, thinner coil stood nearby.
Julian began touching things immediately, sorting through tools on the table. Ezra followed him, observing warily.
I pointed to the caged coil. “What is that?” I asked Nikola.
“Oh,” she said absently, glancing to see what I was asking about. “It makes lightning, more or less. Well, not as powerful. Showy, but a little too disconcerting for a public demonstration. Also impossible to move. And I haven’t named it yet.” Grunting with effort, she pulled the heavy tarps off the closer machines, one at a time.
I’d been right about the machines being roughly the size of wagon carts. They even had sturdy wheels and hitches. Sorting out what I was looking at felt like trying to recall a dream. I could make out the generalbones of a smaller conduction coil, but there were too many additional cables and twists and turns.
“This is a portable generator,” Nikola said proudly.
The name startled me, but of course—of course, a machine that created electricity would share a name with the Children of Industry who were used like machines to create radiance.
Ezra had drifted over to us to examine the machines. “When I sayportable,I’m typically referring to something the size of a suitcase,” he said. “These will take four horses to move.”
“Eight horses,” Nikola corrected. “When I sayportable,I mean they’re not a permanent installation. Full electricity stations will be the size of entire houses.”
“We have to get these to the exposition grounds by tomorrow?” Ezra asked dubiously.
“Yes.” Nikola sounded unbothered. “It takes five hours. We’ll leave at midnight.”
Julian approached her with the springy gait of an excited child. “It works?” he asked, unspooling a coil attached to one of the machines. Without needing instruction, he fastened it to the other machine.
“Better than we imagined,” Nikola said. “By basing our early prototype on radiance, we failed to consider that power can flow in more than one direction. Radiance is a direct current. I don’t believe it can flow back into a Conductor or Generator without harming them. I’ve been testing an alternating current.”
“I’m not certain of that,” Julian said, opening a little metal door to examine smaller cables that wound back and forth like miniature city streets. “About radiance, I mean. I have a few hypotheses regarding alternating flow. With Josephine’s help, I can test them.”
“I don’t recall volunteering for that,” I mentioned, despite the fact that the notion intrigued me. Could radiance flow into another person for a purpose other than injuring or killing them? If so, I certainly wanted to know.
“You will,” Julian said with maddening certainty. He turned back to Nikola. “This will allow us to transmit over much longer distances without needing additional stations?”
Nikola smiled proudly. “That’s my thinking, yes.”
Ezra appeared at my side. “Do you understand what they’re talking about?”
“Marginally,” I admitted, feeling as out of my depth as I had in my first machinist class. But I wasn’t ten anymore. I’d pick up the language of science. I’d ask questions and I’d learn. Oh, I wanted to learn.
