The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 12.2

It was in his twelfth year, when the creeping itch of manhood had begun to make his life difficult, that he first saw her.

The Helg mansion, seated as it was in the center of Kammerend, was an old house built on even older foundations, and its cellars connected to the Undercity by way of a purpose-built hatch. The body of the house was post-Rehabitation, which meant that there were records of the building plans. Key had found them and searched them for any reference to existing structures in the foundation, and had found what he was looking for in footnoted reference to a quantity of cement that had been poured to seal something off.

The location was marked clearly on the schematic: a perfect square of gray cement, fresher looking than the rest of the ancient stone basement, set in one corner beneath an arched alcove.

A few hours work with hammer and chisel opened up a new world for him, a needed escape from the strictures of life under the watchful eyes of Valkin Helg.

Far from sating his interest in the sciences, which had been his father's hope, the grudgingly bestowed microscope had only awakened a passion that began to consume his young mind. It wasn't long before Valkin called an end to it, prohibiting further experimentation outside of work assigned at school or by tutors. In addition to the basic curriculum he received at his academy, his father had hired private tutors to supplement his education. Which would in no way have bothered Key, had they wanted to teach him anything of interest. But their lessons focused almost entirely on economics and the mercantile trade, a field that, in addition to being what his father wanted him to study and therefore not an acceptable option, was the polar opposite of what actually brought his mind to life.

They taught him economics and maths, finance and statistical interpretation, but to Key it was all just dead numbers on a page. It was in the living, breathing mechanisms of life that he found his passion: the creation that lay all around them, beautifully formed and constantly evolving, interdependent and miraculously complex.

Defying his father openly was not yet an option. Even at twelve, Key was mature enough to realize that. And when he was at home, Valkin concerned himself with his only son's business education, often sitting in a nearby chair reading the newspapers while Key finished his homework.

But the nature of the business he was in, the one in which Valkin wanted his son to follow after him, was all-consuming. The factories ran day and night, three shifts working around the clock, and despite having the privilege, as the boss, to set his own hours, Valkin often worked well into the night, only trusting his managers to take the reins of his nascent empire when exhaustion threatened to overcome him. There was thus a period of several hours each day, between coming home from school and his father's nightly return, when Key was expected to be hard at work or already abed, that he could devote to his own investigations.

His mother was kind-hearted but not vigilant, and in any case not up to the challenge of defending anyone against the irrepressible personality of someone like Valkin Helg. But what she lacked in aggression she made up for in passive resistance. Key had often felt that Marika Helg's unmindful permissiveness was a direct rebellion against her husband's obsessions, and the only way she had to show her love for her son. He loved her for it, and had privately vowed not to waste what was undeniably a sacrifice. For if Valkin Helg was not an evil man, neither was he an attentive husband, and his interest in his wife stretched only as far as her utility to his own goals.

At the back of a wide stone basin, long dry but once most likely used as a large overflow chamber with smaller pipes leading to the drains on the Wall, Key built his first lab. The limitations placed upon him by his father's oversight forced him to construct it slowly, piece by piece. He spent no small number of dull afternoons lugging abandoned furniture from the basement of his house and others into his new sanctum, moving his scientific equipment only when there was a suitable place to put it.

By that time he'd acquired, in addition to his microscope, a decent dissection kit, a set of magnifying goggles with interchangeable lenses, two full cases of discarded glassware, and a couple of grimy oil burners that he'd pilfered from the workers' kitchens at one of his father's factories. His main project table was a massive oaken dining table that he'd found in a neighbor's cellar beneath a dusty drop-cloth. Key had spent an absurd amount of hours removing its legs, sneaking it out of a convenient bulkhead, and dragging it foot by arduous foot through a wider sewer line that connected, eventually, to his lab. It was grueling work, but the importance of a flat, level workspace could not be overemphasized.

The tales children told of what lurked in the Undercity made the place sound like a bustling underground metropolis, but the simple truth of the matter was that the majority of it was usually uninhabited, particularly the parts lying beneath the nicer neighborhoods, which had been mostly sealed off where they were accessible from the rest of the city. He saw a few transients from time to time, usually when he ventured outside the perimeter of Kammerend, but for the most part he stayed to his little laboratory, content in his seclusion.

So it was with some surprise that Key discovered, one lazy afternoon, that he was not alone in his hideout.

The wetter parts of the Undercity were crawling with all manner of reptiles and freshwater crustaceans, most of which were small and quick. On this afternoon in particular, however, he'd managed to trap a type of large red lizard known as an adeks. To celebrate his first large subject, Key had decided to forego his usual practice of putting a pin through the animal's skull and had merely dosed it with a cloth soaked in chloroform. It was to be his first vivisection, and the prospect of examining a beating heart made his fingers tingle with anticipation.

He had placed the limp form on his dissection tray, having marked his first incision, and was about to press the blade of his scalpel to the adeks' red flesh when he heard a muffled squeak followed almost immediately by the sound of breaking glass.

Key was a perceptive boy in a very narrow sense: he could focus his attention very powerfully and and very specifically when a subject interested him, such as in the case of exploring and understanding the anatomy of a small vertebrate. But outside of this specialized talent, he was somewhat absent-minded—a trait which, were his father, in turn, more observant of his son's strengths and weaknesses, should have made it obvious that Keynish's abilities did not lie in business. Which is a drawn out way of saying that it took him a moment to pull his focus, keen and razor-edged, from the lizard in front of him and apply it dully to whatever fracas had come to disturb his work.

When he was finally able to cogitate at a more general level, he realized that a large glass flask had fallen off of his work table and smashed on the stone floor of the basin. The sound of incoming footsteps and a low, feminine growl then caused him to reconsider that hypothesis, particularly in combination with the round stone he had now noticed in the pile of shattered glass. Not fallen, then, but knocked off.

The young woman—the girl, really—who was approaching him from the direction of the eastern culvert was short, beautiful, and angry. She wore a simple, dun dress and ankle boots that clicked on the stone. Key had a moment to swallow before she drew up to his work table and glared at him.

"What are you doing to that lizard?" she demanded. Key, confounded, responded literally.

"Opening its abdominal cavity to examine its internal organs."

"Is it dead?" she asked, looking down at the adeks.

"Not yet," said Key.

"Well, stop it," she said.

"Why?" Key asked.

She rolled her eyes. "Because it's not nice, you idiot!"

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