Steampunk! Part 3

"Yes," I said, and I kissed him back.

I thought about that day while me and the Glory Girls collected the blue nettle, and I thought about it, too, while I extracted them tiny beats of lightning and placed 'em inside the Enigma Apparatus. While I watched them light strands p.r.i.c.kle and inch toward the serum inside the gla.s.s vial, some new hope stirred in me, too, putting me in mind of Master Crawford's vision, the messenger who would come and liberate us from our time-bounded minds. Maybe the Glory Girls were the ones to set us free. And the Enigma Apparatus were the key. Them thoughts about sliding through past and future come p.r.i.c.kling up again, only I didn't push 'em away so fast this time, and the only prayer that left my lips was the word "Please . . ." while I waited for the spark to set things in motion.

The blue nettle connected with the vial. The serum pulsed inside its cage. The second hand on the clockface ticked. I shouted for the girls to come out quick. Soon, they was crowded 'round me in that workshop while we watched the Enigma Apparatus hum with new life.

"Girls, I think we've got ourselves a timepiece again," Colleen said.

I were supposed to have a rendezvous with the chief.

I missed it.

We tested it on a mail train the next day. It were just a local, steaming across a patch of plains, but it would do for practice.

"Here goes," Colleen said, and my nerves went to rattling. She bent her arm and aimed the clockface at the train.

I've had me a few thrills in my sixteen yearn, but seeing the Enigma Apparatus do its work had to be one of the biggest. Great whips of light jump out and held that train sure as the One G.o.d's hand might. Inside, the engineer seemed like he were made of wax - he weren't moving that I could see. The Glory Girls boarded the train. There weren't but bags of letters on it, so they didn't take nothing, only changed 'round the engineer's clothes till he wore his long johns on the outside and his hat 'round backward. When the light charge stopped holding and the train lurched forward again, he looked a might confused at his state. We laughed so hard, I thought the miners would hear us down below. But the drills kept up their steady whine, oblivious. And the best part yet? Somehow in my tinkering, I'd drawn out the length to a full eight minutes. I'd made her better. I'd bested time.

The pigeon were on the windowsill of my workhouse when I get back. I unrolled the note tucked into her mouth. It were from the chief, telling me when and where to make our rendezvous, saying I'd best not miss it. I tossed the note in the stove and got to work.

By the time we hit the 6:40 the next Friday, I'd taken her to a full ten minutes.

The Right Reverend Jackson used to say there were a fine line between saint and sinner, and in the long days I spent with the Glory Girls robbing trains and falling under the spell of the Enigma Apparatus, I guess I crossed well over it. Before long, I'd almost forgot I'd had one life as a Believer and another as a Pinkerton. I were a Glory Girl as much as any of 'em, and it felt like I'd always been one. Truth be told, them were some of the happiest times I'd had since I'd walked with John Barks. Like being part of a family it were, but with no Mam to sigh when you forgot to burp the baby and no Pap to slap you when your words was too sharp for his liking. Mornings we rode the horses fast and free over the dusty plains, letting the wind whip our hair till it rose like crimson floss. We'd try to best each other, though we all knew Josephine were the fastest rider. Still, it were fun to try, and n.o.body could tut-tut that we was unladylike. Fadwa worked on my marksmanship by teaching me to shoot at empty tins, and while I weren't no sharpshooter, I done all right, and by all right I mean I managed to knock off a can without shooting the horses. Josephine taught me to dress a wound with camphor to draw out the poisons. Amanda liked to sneak up on each a-one and scare the d.i.c.kens out of us. Then she'd fall on the ground, laughing and pointing: "You shoulda seen your face!" and hold her sides till we couldn't do nothing but laugh, too. At night, we played poker, betting stolen brooches against a stranger's looted gold. It didn't matter nothing - if you lost a bundle, there were always another airship or train a-comin'. The poker games went fine till Amanda lost, which she usually did, bein' a terrible card player. Then she'd throw down her cards and point a finger at whoever cleaned up.

"You're cheating, Colleen Feeney!"

Colleen didn't even look up while she scooped the chips toward her lap. "That's the only way to win in this world, Mandy."

One night, Colleen and me walked to the hills overlooking the mines and sat on the cold ground, feeling the vibrations of them great drills looking for gold and finding nothing. Stars paled behind dust clouds. We watched a seeding ship float in the sky, its sharp bra.s.s nose glinting in the gloom. "Seems like there ought to be more than this," Colleen said after a spell.

If John Barks were there, he'd say something about how beautiful it was, how special. "It ain't much of a planet," I said.

"That's not what I meant." She rolled a dirt clod down the hillside. It broke apart on the way down.

It come about by accident that first time. I'd been experimenting with the Engima all along, stretching out the time by seconds, but I couldn't break past ten minutes. It were all well and good to lock the Engima on a train and stretch the Glory Girls' time on it; what I wondered were if we, ourselves, might could move around in time like prayer beads on a string. Inside the Enigma were the Temporal Displacement Dial. I'd scooted its splintery hands 'round and 'round, taken it apart, put it back together twelve ways from Sunday. Didn't come to much. This time, I got to looking at the tiny whirling eye that joined them hands at the center. I cain't rightly say what gear it were that clicked in my head and told me I should take a thin, pulsing strand of blue nettle and settle it into that center, but that's what I done. Then I pushed that second hand faster and faster 'round that dial. With my hand tingling like a siddle-bug bite, I aimed the Enigma at myself. I felt a jolt, and then I were standing still in the shop listening to Josephine ringing the dinner bell. I knowed that couldn't be right - it were only two o'clock in the afternoon, and dinner weren't till six most days. Long shadows crept over the shop floor. Six-o'clock shadows. I'd lost four whole hours. Had I slept? I knowed I hadn't - not standing up with my boots on, anyways. A tingle twisted through my insides till I felt as alive as a blue nettle. I'd done it.

I'd unlocked time.

That night, Colleen brought out a bottle of whiskey and poured us each a tall gla.s.s. "There's a train coming soon. The four-ten through the Kelly Pa.s.s. It's the best one yet. I've seen the pa.s.senger list. It is impressive. You can be sure there'll be pearls big as fists. And rubies and diamonds, too."

Josephine let out a holler, but Amanda scowled.

"Gettin' tired of gems," she said, reaching for the bottle. "Nowhere to wear 'em. Nowhere to trade 'em in much anymore."

Colleen shrugged. "There'll be gold dust on this one."

I couldn't hold it back no more. "Maybe we're goin' about this the wrong way. Maybe we should be looking at the Enigma App . . . Appar . . . the watch as our best haul," I said. I weren't used to whiskey. It made my thoughts spin. "You ever think of using it on something other than a train?"

Amanda spat out a stream of tobacco. It stained the hay the color of a fevered man on his deathbed. "Like what?"

"Say, for going forward in time to see what you'll be eatin' next week. Or maybe for going back. Maybe to a day you'd want to do over."

"Ain't nothing I'd want to go back to," Josephine said.

"What about all them tomorrows?"

"I'll likely be dead. Or fat," Amanda said, and laughed. "Either way, I don't want to know."

The girls commenced to teasing Amanda 'bout her future as a farmer's fat wife. Maybe it were the whiskey, but I couldn't let it alone. "What I'm sayin' is that we might could use the Enigma to travel through time and see if there's anything out there besides this miserable rock - maybe even to unlock bigger secrets. Ain't that a durn sight better than a pearl?" I slammed my tankard down on the table, and the girls got right quiet then. I hadn't never been much of a talker, much less a yeller.

Colleen played with the poker chips. They made a plinkety-plink sound. In the dim light, she looked less like an outlaw, more like a schoolgirl. Sometimes I forgot she weren't but seventeen. "Go on, Addie."

"I done it," I said, breathing heavy. "Time travel. With the Engima. I figured it."

I had their attention then. I told 'em about my experiments, how I'd jumped ahead hours just that afternoon. "It's just a start," I cautioned. "I ain't perfected nothing yet."

Fadwa licked her fingers. "I don't understand. Why do we want this?"

"Don't you see? We wouldn't need to rob trains then. We could go anywhere we wanted," Colleen said. "Perhaps there's something better ahead, something we can have without cheating."

Colleen and me locked eyes, and I saw something in her face that put me in mind of John Barks. Hope. She put the chips back on the table. "I'm in for the ride, Watchmaker. Do the Glory Girls proud."

"Yes'm," I said, swallowing hard.

"In the meantime, we'd better get ready for the four-ten."

The next morning, Fadwa and me saddled up the horses and headed into town for supplies. It'd been a year since I'd gone off with the Glory Girls. The Believers were setting up their tents along the Pitch again. I were waiting by the horses when somebody clapped a strong hand over my mouth and jerked me around the back of the Red Cat brothel, upstairs, and into a bedroom, where I were forced into a chair. Two big goons stood by, their arms folded but ready to grab me if I so much as looked at the door. In a moment, the same door opened and the chief walked in and took a seat across from me. He'd put on weight since I'd seen him last and was sporting some right furry muttonchops. He wiped his spectacles with a handkerchief and put them back on his face. "Miss Adelaide Jones, I presume. You've been gone a very long time, Miss Jones."

"Lost track of time, sir," I said, and he didn't laugh none at my joke.

"Allow me to inform you: a year. An entire year with no contact."

My stomach churned. I wanted to yell out to Fadwa, warn her. I wanted to jump out the window onto my horse and ride like I was racing Josephine all the way back to the camp and to the Enigma Apparatus.

"Do you care to tell me how the six-forty out of Serendipity came to be robbed by the Glory Girls? Or the eleven-eleven airship from St. Ignatius?" He slammed a fist down on the table, and it rattled the floorboards. "Do you care to tell me anything at all, Miss Jones, that would keep me from clapping you in irons for the rest of your natural life?"

I picked a burr out of my pants. "You're looking well, sir. I'm right fond of the muttonchops."

The chief's face reddened. "Miss Jones, may I remind you that you are a Pinkerton agent?"

"No, sir, I ain't," I said, my dander up. "You 'n' I both know ladies don't get to be agents. We end up like Mrs. Beasley, bringing tea and asking if there'll be anything else."

The chief went to open his mouth, then he closed it again. Finally he said, "Well, then, there is this to consider, Miss Jones: there is the law. Without it, we slip into the void. You are sworn to uphold it. If you do not, I'll see you prosecuted with the others. Do you take the full import of my meaning, Miss Jones?"

I didn't answer.

"Do you?"

"Yessir. Am I free to go?"

He waved me off. But when I got up, the chief grabbed hold of my arm. "Addie, which train are they aiming for next? Please tell me."

It were the please almost got me.

"Fadwa's just coming out. She'll be missing me. Sir."

The chief looked a might sad then. "Tag her," he said.

The goons held me down tight, and one of 'em brought out an odd rounded gun with a needle on the tip. I struggled but it didn't make no difference. They brung that gun up against the back of my neck, and it felt like a punch going in.

"What - what'd you do to me?" I gasped, and put a hand to my neck. There weren't no blood.

"It's a sound transmission device," Chief Coolidge said. "Agent Meeks is responsible for that invention. It transmits sound to us here. We can hear everything that is said. There should be enough to hang the Glory Girls, I should think."

"That ain't fair," I said.

"Life's not fair." The chief glared. "Tell us about the train - everything we need to catch them - and you'll go free, Addie."

"And if I don't?"

"I'll take you in now and throw away the key."

It weren't a choice.

Fadwa were waiting impatiently when I come down to the hitching post after my conference with the chief.

"Where were you?" Fadwa asked.

I rubbed at the back of my neck. I wanted to cry, but it wouldn't help none. If I were a better girl, I'd've told her to run and taken my chances with the law. But I couldn't stop thinking about the Engima. I was so close. I couldn't just walk away.

"Just some old business I had to take care of," I said, and helped her load up the horses.

That night, I drank more whiskey than I should have. I would've drowned my sorrows in the Poppy, but I knew that were no good. The Glory Girls was in good spirits. Tomorrow they'd take on the 4:10 in the Kelly Pa.s.s. They made their plans then, where they'd hide out, what kind of train the 4:10 was and where it were best to board - all of it being transmitted right back to the Pinkertons. A cold trickle worked its way through my insides. It were like I looked up to find the moons and stars gone to flat pictures painted on muslin.

"You all right, Addie-loo?" Josephine squinted at me like she weren't sure if she should make me a poultice for fever.

"Yes'm. Tired," I lied.

Colleen clapped a hand on my back. "You just have the Enigma ready to greet the 4:10 tomorrow, and I'll show you a haul, Addie, that will make you forget all your troubles."

They toasted me then, but the whiskey tasted sour and my head was hurting.

When everybody else was sleeping, I took myself for a walk up into the mountains. I looked down on the revival tents, at the shadowy mystery snaking through the basin, where folks left their sins and come up with a vision. John Barks told me it were choice, but I weren't so sure.

The day they baptized John Barks were terrible hot. The sky come up a gloomy orange and stayed that way. We'd gathered at the river with the young penitents. John Barks had been scrubbed pink. His black hair shone.

"I'll take you to wife, Addie Jones. Just you see," he whispered, and went to stand with the others.

My gut hurt. I wanted to tell him not to do it, to pack up his kit and run away with me on the next airship. We could see for ourselves if there were anything 'sides rocks spinning out in that vast midnight. But I wanted him to prove me wrong, too. I needed to be sure. So I watched as the aldermen dressed him in the white robes, and Mrs. Jackson balmed up his eyes, and Reverend Jackson slipped the Poppy under his tongue. When his body went limp, the women commenced to hymn singing, and the menfolk lowered John Barks's body into the Pitch. The dark river come over him like a living thing, devouring legs, arms, chest. Finally, his face were under and I counted the seconds: One. Two. Three. Ten. Eleven. Twenty.

A hand broke the surface, followed by John Barks's tar-stained face. He gagged and gasped, fighting the Poppy in his blood. He wouldn't lie still. It were like he'd been caught in one of them ecstasies you read about in the One Bible, where saints and chosen shepherds saw things beyond dust and weak moons and miners' toothless grins. He cried, "Oh Holy! There are stars newborn and great ships with searching sails set against pink-painted ribbons of eternal clouds - oh Holy! Oh Lamb! - the electric blood of the most heavenly body, oh sweet warm breath - kiss of a girl you love! What more? What more?"

The aldermen looked to Reverend Jackson for what to do. Sometimes people got too scared and had to come up from the Pitch before their time. But n.o.body had ever done like John Barks. And I could see in the Reverend's face that he were frightened, like there weren't no commandment to explain this.

"Reverend?" an alderman named Wills whispered.

"The sin fights him!" Reverend Jackson shouted. "He must be held still to accept the One G.o.d's vision. Let us come to his aid!"

The women lifted their arms in fervent hymn singing, and the Reverend Jackson spoke in tongues I didn't know. I kept listening to John Barks calling out wonders, like a madman on the mountain. The men took hold of his arms and legs and held him under, waiting for him to still, to accept the darkness and the One G.o.d's grace that allows us to see what comes next. But John Barks fought with everything he had in him. I screamed out that they was a-killin' him, and Mam told me to hush-a-bye and turned my face to her breast. The song rose louder, and it were a terrible song. And when John Barks finally went quiet, it were for good. He drowned in that river, his lungs full of Pitch and his vision stilled on his tongue.

The authorities come and p.r.o.nounced it an accident. They took cider from the church ladies while John Barks's body lay on the scrubby bank under a sheet, the dried Pitch on his long arms gone to peeling gray scales. "The One G.o.d moves in His own way," Reverend Jackson said, but his hands shook. The aldermen dug a grave right there in the basin and buried John Barks without so much as a wooden stake to mark it. They said later he were too old for obedience. That were the problem. Or he might've gotten too much Poppy and seen the glory of the One G.o.d too soon, before he'd made his confession. A few folks believed he were chosen to receive a vision and die for all our sins, and we should honor John Barks on the feasting day. Still others whispered that his sin must've been too great for the One G.o.d to forgive or that he weren't willing to give up his sin, and I thought about our kiss under the blue nettle tree, what we done there with the lightning pulsing around us. I wondered if I hadn't d.a.m.ned John Barks with that kiss, sure as if I'd poured the Pitch into his mouth myself. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, and that not knowing haunts me still.

The first streaks of graying orange come up in the sky when I walked down from the mountains and wrote my last note to the chief. Then I set about my work. The lamp burned through the night, and by the time the two moons was as pale as a skein of ash against the hot orange glow of the day, I'd done what I aimed to do. The Enigma Apparatus was ready.

"It's time, Addie," Colleen said.

The 4:10 puffed right into line. I pressed the b.u.t.ton on the side of the clockface, bracing myself for the recoil as the train ground to a stop, floating in a blue light cloud. Amanda let out a loud whoop. "Let's go, Glory Girls! Time's a-wastin'."

They patted my back as they went, told me I done good. I grabbed Colleen's arm.

"Addie!" she said, trying to shake me loose. "I've got to go!"

I wanted to tell her everything, but then the chief would hear and swoop in too fast. "Mayhap there's something better up ahead, in the tomorrows," I said. "Strap yourself in good."

She gave me a strange look. "You're an odd one, Addie Jones."

And then they was across the light bridge and on the train. It took a few seconds longer than I figured for them to realize there weren't n.o.body on the 4:10, just a bunch of sawdust dummies. Weren't no treasures, neither. No comforts to keep in a pocket or a drawer. The Pinkertons had seen to that after I'd let the chief know the plan. Even from where I was, I could see their confusion. The sound of hoofbeats told me the agents was near. They were just coming over the ridge in a cloud of dust. Colleen saw it, too. The leader of the Glory Girls looked at me through one of the train's windows. In the blue light, her face had a strange, haunting beauty to it. She'd cottoned to what'd happened and who'd done it. And I think she knew her time had run out. She nodded at me to do it. I clicked the tiny switch that bled blue nettle into the whirling eye at the center of the Temporal Displacement Dial. With my index finger, I pushed that second hand 'round and 'round, the devil racing you through the woods and gaining fast. Colleen Feeney was yelling something at the others and they strapped themselves in. The cloud over the 4:10 sparked with angry light. I can't say what the Glory Girls felt then - wonder? Amazement? Fear? I just know they never stopped looking at me. Not once. And I wondered if it would be the last time I'd see 'em or if I'd ever make it to where they was going. The cloud crackled again, and the train car disappeared in a shower of light that brought a mess of rain over the basin. The recoil on the Enigma were like a punch then. Knocked me clean out.

Chief Coolidge weren't none too happy with me when I come to. He paced the floor while I sat in the one uncomfortable chair in his office. He'd had me sit there special. "We were supposed to catch them alive, have a trial, Miss Jones! That is the way of law!"

"Something must've went wrong with that contraption, Chief. Time's a tricky proposition."

He scowled and I tried real hard not to twitch. "Yes. Well. At least we were able to salvage what was left of the Enigma Apparatus. With effort, we'll get it running again."

"That's real good news, sir."

"I would be happy to know that you were working on the Enigma project, Miss Jones. Are you quite certain you won't stay with the Agency?"

I shook my head. "My time's up, sir."

"I might be able to recognize you as a deputy agent. It isn't full, you understand, but it is something."

"I 'preciate that, sir. I do."

He saw I weren't budging. "What will you do, then?"

"Well. 'Spect I'll travel some. See what's out there."

The chief sighed, and I noticed his mustache had more gray in it these days. "Addie, do you really expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with what happened to those girls?"