Tightrope (Burning Cove #3)(46)

A huge metal figure loomed in the shadows. Amalie stopped to examine it.

“This thing must have been an early version of Futuro,” she said. “It doesn’t look anything like the one that Pickwell demonstrated at the Palace.”

The mechanical man was an awkward assemblage of parts that had evidently been salvaged from a variety of other machines. The face bore a striking resemblance to a toaster.

Matthias glanced at the figure. “An early version, all right.” He paused and took a second look. “A very early version.”

He opened the door of a small room and pulled a cord that dangled from an overhead fixture. A weak bulb came on, illuminating an office that was nearly buried under years of clutter. Papers, notebooks, manuals, and catalogs advertising engineering and scientific supplies were stacked on the floor and piled on top of an old metal desk. The bookshelves that stood against one wall were crammed with heavy manuals and thick tomes.

“Are you responsible for this mess?” Amalie asked.

“No, it was like this when I got here the first time,” Matthias said. “I don’t think anyone, except me, searched the place. There’s a thick layer of dust on the stacks of books and the drawings. Norman Pickwell was not a man of neat and orderly habits.”

Amalie turned on her heel. “Where do we start?”

“I’ll take the desk. You can start with the papers and drawings piled on the floor.”

“What about the filing cabinet? Isn’t that where most people put important papers?”

“We’ll save the cabinet for last. Judging by the condition of the workshop, it’s a good bet that Pickwell was the kind of inventor who would have kept anything related to a current project conveniently at hand.”

“Good point. You’ve had some experience with this sort of thing, haven’t you?”

Matthias opened a desk drawer. “Some.”

“What am I looking for?” she asked.

“We’re interested in any papers or notes that look new or recent. Ignore anything that has turned yellow with age or has a coat of dust on it.”

“That means we can ignore ninety percent of the stuff in this office.”

“Yes, I think so,” Matthias said.

Amalie hefted a copy of Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook and picked up the drawings that it had anchored on the floor. The title of the first one was “Ball and Roller Bearings.” The next one was “Spring Relief Valve.”

“This is going to take a while,” she said.

“We’ve got time.”

Twenty minutes later Matthias closed the last drawer in the desk. He had a large envelope in one hand.

“This looks new,” he said.

He dumped the contents of the envelope onto the desk. A familiar stillness came over him.

“Now this is interesting,” he said softly.

Amalie moved closer to the desk and watched Matthias flip through some drawings.

“That’s Futuro,” she said, “the robot that shot Pickwell. Those drawings don’t look anything like the robot out there in the workshop.”

“No, they don’t. I wonder what inspired Pickwell to change the final look so drastically.”

“Maybe he was a fan of some of the science fiction magazines, like Astounding Stories,” Amalie suggested. “They feature robots and alien monsters on the covers all the time.”

Matthias looked around. “There’s no evidence that Pickwell read fiction of any kind.”

“Well, he could have gotten his inspiration from a cover of Popular Mechanics, I suppose. Regardless, this version of Futuro is a lot better-looking than the original.”

“There is nothing in this workshop that indicates that Pickwell cared about design,” Matthias said. “He was not particularly creative in any way, as far as I’ve been able to determine. So what could have made him devote so much energy to a fancy new look for Futuro?”

Glass shattered somewhere in the workshop. Amalie yelped in surprise. She looked through the open doorway and saw a small, rounded object rolling across the floor.

Matthias wrapped a hand around her upper arm and hauled her out of the doorway.

“Under the desk,” he ordered. “Move.”

He shoved her into the open area under the metal desk and squeezed in beside her.

“Someone threw a rock through the window?” she asked.

“Not a rock,” Matthias said. “Fingers in ears. Do it.”

She obeyed.

The explosion boomed in the adjoining room, so loud and disorienting that Amalie knew she would have been deafened if she had not obeyed Matthias’s orders to block her ears.

The shock of the blast reverberated through the walls and floors. The entire building shuddered. More glass shattered. Some of the flying shards came from the pane set into the office door. She and Matthias would have been lacerated, quite possibly blinded, or even killed had they not been wedged into the space under the desk.

An eternity passed before an eerie silence fell. Matthias took his fingers out of his ears and reached inside his jacket for his gun.

Amalie lowered her hands and discovered that even though she had managed to partially block her ears, they still rang. Cold chills sent shiver after shiver through her.

“What just happened?” she managed.