Read The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) for Free Online Page B

far away for him to see anything if he were dumb enough to look down.
    He looked down.
    As predicted, he saw nothing, except for a big circle of vivid brilliance cast by the lantern above. It hit the ground someplace below, illuminating only grass, gravel, and the edge of a fire pit that hadn’t seen any cooking action in years.
    His stomach did a quick lurch, but there was nothing inside it to slosh or heave, so he didn’t even burp at the sudden realization of how high up he’d come, and how quickly. Was he climbing so fast? It was hard to tell. His hands and feet guided themselves, or maybe what was left of the sap churning around in his head was shielding him from the facts of the matter.
    Forty feet or more. Straight up. A gate into someplace like hell.
    He was half that distance before the Chinaman called down, “You got a mask?”
    “Yes, I got a mask,” he panted.
    “You put it on. The seal here not so good.”
    “I will. Put it on. When I get. Closer.” He puffed out the words in time to his climbing.
    “You put it on now . There gas up here. You smell it?”
    “Sure, I can smell it,” Rector admitted. You could almost always smell the gas if you were within five miles of the city and if the wind was canted just right. It was easy to forget the low-level stink because you never smelled anything else.
    But this was worse.
    There was a leak, as though someone had drilled a hole in a barrel and the contents were oozing free. It came from above, from the gate. It drooled down onto his head and up his nose, the yellow-fire stench of Blight slipping through the compromised wall.
    Briefly Rector wondered who’d ever thought it’d be a good idea, this gate cut into the place where poison billowed and spilled day in and day out.
    “Three cheers for bad ideas,” he wheezed, knocking his forearm against the next rung and wincing hard as the closest rope dragged a thick red mark along his wrist. He seized the knots, got a better grip, and kept climbing. His palms ached from the squeezing, the dragging, and the slivers of hemp and twine wedging themselves into the small wrinkles and cracks of his hands.
    But he was almost there.
    Maybe another dozen feet. That’s all he needed. He braced himself with one knee locked and crooked around the rope and one arm twisted and holding likewise, and he withdrew his mask from the blanket-bag. One-handed and gracelessly, he yanked it over his head and kept on climbing.
    The light swung back around and caught him in the eyes once more. He yelped and cried out, “What are you doing, man? I can’t see when you point that thing right at me! You trying to make me fall?”
    “Naw, sorry. Just looking at your progress. You’re almost here.”
    Before Rector could wonder about the particulars of “almost,” a hand jutted down into his face, smacking him between the eyes.
    “Here, come on. Get up here, would you?”
    “Yes sir,” he said, flailing about until he’d successfully snared the hand. A combination of his own wobbly inertia and the man’s help got him up onto a wood platform that felt rickety, looked rickety, and sounded rickety when it groaned under the added weight of Rector’s body. He stayed on his hands and knees until he shook off enough of the vertigo to stand. When he did, he was very, very careful to make eye contact with the gatekeepers. It was better than looking down at the ground.
    He was right: Both of them were wearing gas masks—the slim-fitting kind that hugged the face without a lot of unnecessary valves, cogs, filters, and levers. These were lightweight, practical devices that wouldn’t help anyone survive long inside the city—the filters would clog in a couple of hours down at street level—but up high and half outside, they’d suffice.
    Rector had heard enough from the chemists about how people rationed their filters and planned their masks. There was a science to it—a science everyone learned eventually, or else they joined the ranks