The Dark Flight Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

who had shown Boy how to pick locks. So, he reasoned, they only had themselves to blame.
    He leant down to the lock of the bottom drawer, and twisted the metal around inside, feeling for the tumblers.
    Boy usually sprang a lock in a few moments, but he was not surprised that Kepler, a man of invention and mechanism, should have superior devices to secure his property. The lock resisted.
    Boy got out of the chair and knelt down at eye level with the lock, determined not to be beaten.
    On the other side of a finger’s width of oak lay the book, waiting to tell Boy everything.
    He jiggled the metal pin inside the lock once more. He struggled with the lock frantically. He could sense the book only inches away, could sense its power, but the lock defeated all his attempts to open it.
    He sat back in the chair, angry now, and kicked the desk.
    He looked around, and his eyes rested on the fireplace. There was a heavy iron poker by the grate.
    Boy stood.
    He would smash the stupid desk apart, and take the book. He and Willow had agreed to meet by the fountain later that day, and so he would, but with the knowledge of his past and his future revealed. Kepler would be angry, but that wouldn’t matter—Boy would never see him again.
    Boy reached the fireplace and grasped the poker by its twisted handle.
    As he turned to make for the desk, the door swung open, and Kepler walked in.
    For a second a hateful vision of violence passed through Boy’s mind, as he saw himself bringing the poker down on Kepler’s head, spilling his brains onto the red carpet of the study floor.
    But it was gone in an instant. If anyone was in the
mood
for violence, it was Kepler. No doubt as a result of the absinthe, he was in a strange frame of mind. Boy saw the turmoil in his master’s eyes, and the sudden craving he had felt for the book disappeared. Boy had seen absinthe do this to people before. Normally calm people might practically murder each other when recovering from the strange hallucinations that the wormwood-ridden drink could induce.
    “Boy!” Kepler snapped. “It’s perishing cold. Why aren’t the fires lit?”
    “I’m just doing them,” Boy said quickly, waving the poker. “The house will be warm soon.”
    Kepler ignored him, and staggered to the desk, where he sat in the chair. He was too hung over to notice either that Boy was poking a fire that had not yet been lit, or that the papers on his desk and the chair were not where he’d left them.
    “You are not to see those people again,” said Kepler. He meant Georg and the others from the theater.
    Boy was about to argue, but thought better of it. He would be gone by this evening, and what Kepler thought or said would not matter. He could be angry about it then, could laugh about it then, so for now he just nodded and went on preparing the fire.
    “I need you to do something for me,” said Kepler thickly. “I need you to fetch something for me, this morning.”
    Boy stood and looked at Kepler, whose head was still in his hands. Now he lifted it, but slowly.
    “I need you to fetch something for me, from the Yellow House.”
    Boy froze. The Yellow House. Valerian’s house.
    “I—” began Boy, but Kepler was in no mood to argue.
    “Just go,” he said. “I need a lens from the camera. It’s the only one of its kind in the City, and cost a fortune. I want it back. I built that thing, it belongs to me now Valerian’s gone. I want it to project an image. . . .”
    Boy wondered what he was talking about, but said nothing.
    “You must unscrew the bottom section of the brass tube and the lens will drop out. Don’t break it! And come straight back.”
    Boy was used to being told what to do. It was all he had ever had from Valerian. He would help Kepler with this last thing. It wouldn’t take very long, and anyway he would have to wait now for another chance to look at the book. Once he had, he could disappear to be with Willow.
    Kepler had saved his life, after all, by