Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded Part 27

"Remarkable woman," Balfour said.

"Yes," Lord Carmichael agreed. "It took her some time to convince me that you two might be in need of aid, but she managed. And just in time, I'd say."

"Perhaps," Meriwether said. "The battle is not yet won."

The beast had paused, its head shifting from one side to the other like a bird considering its prey. The new arrivals had given it a sense of caution, but it had not abandoned its purpose. Instead, it seemed to taste the air and prepare itself to slaughter four rather than two. Meriwether put a hand to Balfour's shoulder, paused, and pulled it back. Balfour's tumble had left his coat sticky with grime and grit.

"You'll need a cleaner for that, old man," Meriwether said, displaying his blackened hand. He then glanced knowingly at the exposed gears of their enemy. Balfour frowned at the mess on his companion's palm, tilted his wide head, and then, understanding his intention, grinned.

The beast attacked again, but instead of blades and bullets, Balfour and Meriwether leapt to the meeting like boys in a schoolyard. They slung double handfuls of railway muck into the gorgeous machinery. With every third step, Meriwether stooped to sc.r.a.pe his hand along the ground, and drew up more of the black mixture of earth and old food, rat droppings, pebbles, and bits of newspaper that a living city produces as body does sweat. Quickly, the fine bronze gears, lacking as they did their former protective plates, began to suffer. The great knife-like fingers began to bend more awkwardly. The deadly swings came more slowly. With a shout of delight, Rachel Cohen joined in as well, and then, with a sigh, Lord Carmichael.

When it became clear that the thing could no longer turn to the left, all four howled out in sheer animal delight. No four civilized throats had ever shared a hunting call of such simple human pleasure. At last, the beast froze, its gears fixed in place, its wires taut, but immobile. It teetered and fell to the ground, its replacement eye shattering, and the light within it fading forever out.

"You're injured," Lord Carmichael said.

"A scratch," Balfour said.

"There isn't time," Meriwether said. "Lord Carmichael, the city's water supply must be rerouted to fill the underground. If it is not, all of London will be in flames by morning."

"Is it possible?" Rachel asked. "Can so great a task be accomplished in so little time?" Her arms were mud-encrusted to the elbow, her hair had come loose, and the wound on her shoulder had reopened, sluicing her side with fresh blood. No garment model had ever been lovelier.

"My dear Miss Cohen," Lord Carmichael said, "this sort of thing is what I do."

And indeed, the following morning was an unpleasant one for the residents of the great city. The drinking water usually supplied by the mighty Thames was in short supply, more than forty thousand workers were kept from their normal schedules due to a ma.s.sive failure of the underground rail system, and just as the first light of dawn appeared in the east, Scotland Yard closed several streets to traffic owing to huge geysers of superheated steam coming up from the underground's ventilation shafts.

There was a great deal of complaint, a bit of bitter humor at the expense of the government bureaucracy, and the city went on for the most part as usual. London did not burn. No one lost lives or freedom. Human civilization failed to collapse.

In King Street, Mrs. Long set out a simple breakfast of eggs fragrant made with rosemary and b.u.t.tered bread still hot from the baker's oven. Balfour, a sticking plaster on his cheek, ate with slow deliberation, as if the eggs had offered him some insult which he was avenging with his molars. Meriwether read the morning paper distractedly, the cheap paper rustling whenever he moved, and glancing up often to watch the sunlight burning off the fog. And Rachel Cohen, wrapped in one of Mrs. Long's good housecoats now that the bleeding of her injuries was under control, sipped tea and gave herself over to small sighs.

"It was good fortune that you found us when you did," Meriwether said to her. "It could easily have been a much less pleasant night."

"I must disagree, sir," she said. "In my experience there have been very few nights less pleasant than that. Though in the light of morning, I can recognize some virtues that have come from it."

Balfour cleared his throat and, to Meriwether's delight and surprise, blushed furiously. Mrs. Long appeared at the door, a fourth plate in her hand. She placed it deliberately at the table, drew silverware from her ap.r.o.n to make the setting, and with a satisfied smile announced Lord Carmichael.

His Lordship looked both exhausted and pleased with himself. Soot and stone dust marred his usually impeccable clothing, and the thick smell of algae followed him like bad fish. Even Meriwether didn't complain. Lord Carmichael swung a burlap sack onto the center of the table.

"A gift from the British Museum," Lord Carmichael said. Fatigue slurred his words slightly. "Apparently Mr. Olds has no use for the thing."

Balfour raised a bushy brow, and Meriwether leaned over to tug the bag open. The great bronze head lay bare before them, the gears and axles forever stilled. Rachel brushed the brow of her conquered enemy, compa.s.sion in her face.

"I can't imagine what it must have been," she said, "to have come so very far and come so very near the redemption of its race, and yet to have failed. Had its success not meant my own destruction, I should feel moved by it, I think."

"Indeed," Meriwether said. "I imagine it must have been in anguish in those last moments, to the degree it felt anything at all."

Balfour's chewing slowed and he nodded toward the head.

"Then why's it smiling?" he asked.

Whatever the historians choose to believe, I know that the age that has begun to take the name of Industrial Revolution was born that night. Or if not born, at least it found its wings. In the automobiles and flying machines, the factory and the forge, Mechanism has returned to the world as slave instead of master. Rather than spreading desert, the fields and farms of England are producing more than ever before. And likewise on the continent. Rather than end the reign of humanity, machines are raising us beyond our dreams.

And still, I am haunted in these, my failing days, by the dread Emperor's smile. I imagined when I was young that it must have lain inert within its tomb all the lost thousands of years until Lord Abington's ill-fated enthusiasm revivified it. And yet what if I am wrong? What dark, deep, subtle fancies might such a mind create in so very long a time?

In dreams, I hear again the chatter of the machine gun. When I wake, it is to the great columns of smoke rising from our factories. I wonder if there is not something we have overlooked.

As Recorded on Bra.s.s Cylinders: Adagio for Two Dancers.

James L. Grant & Lisa Mantchev.

JAMES L. GRANT is best known as the artist half of the duo that creates "Two Lumps," a cartoon about cats. Just to prove that he can do more than doodle, his funky fiction has appeared in various magazines in the last six years, and he has sold two novels. He is currently living in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and co-creator, Mel Hynes, and working on selling his third novel. His collaborator, Lisa Mantchev, is the author of Eyes Like Stars and the forthcoming Perchance to Dream, the first two novels in the Theatre Illuminata series. She has also published numerous short stories in venues including Strange Horizons, Fantasy, Clarkesworld, and Weird Tales. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state with her husband, daughter, and hairy miscreant dogs. Of "As Recorded on Bra.s.s Cylinders," Lisa writes that it began with a story prompt after she returned from Norwescon one year, asking readers of her journal: "Make up a story about me at the convention." James based the opening paragraphs on a photograph of Lisa in her steampunk costume (taken at, of all things, the Weird Tales party!).

IT WAS THE kind of American city that hadn't been around for very long, not in the manner it presented itself. The town had existed when Colorado had become an official state, true, but for hundreds of years it had been little more than a place for ruffians and ne'er-do-wells to trade furs, gold, and goods. For a very short period, Denver had thrived on great inventions. Angelus remembered the first time he'd been sent here, to speak with a brilliant man named Nikolai. The Fifth Empire had been young. Its request had offered the young madman gold, riches, power; Angelus had made the presentation in person. But the brilliant Serb had declined, and eventually the quiet generals had resorted to merely pilfering the inventor's notebooks after his death. A dishonorable endeavor, true, but the Fifth Empire's needs had trumped the poor judgment of Tesla.

Many years later, the G.o.ds of Steel, Electricity, and Gla.s.s had changed the city forever; where once a mere trading town had bubbled away, the skyline now rose in towering spires of light. Asphalt covered the ground for millions of kilometers.

Fortunately, it was the kind of city that attracted those people society still considered "eccentric." If the citizenry saw a bald man in black piloting an automobile over a century old, they would smile and wave. If that same man, whilst walking through a "mall" (such a barbaric word-the kind of monosyllabic, swallowed moan that one found befitting for this current decla.s.se iteration of human existence), perhaps paused and drank an entire Orange Julius in one long swallow, n.o.body even noticed or cared.

There were, as was the case with any society (no matter how uncultured), shining gems in their repertoire. A chilled drink with a mixture of citrus, dairy, and egg proteins whipped to a froth? Divine. It was easily digested by the metal vat of artificial zymogens in his belly and resulted in no waste material whatsoever. Affordably priced at the rough equivalent of a Florin or two in his youth. And quite delicious!

He wasn't the kind of person who felt a pressing need to catalogue each separate individual in a room-fortunate, as the food court was enormous. He watched the crowd in batches of five, ten, or fifteen at a time, his eyes taking in postures, body language, and quickly identifying those who didn't easily fit into a modern mall archetype.

When his gaze finally settled, it was on something red.

Not cherry or tomato, not fire engine or lipstick. This was the color of a horse-drawn carriage in Germany a hundred years before. The lacquered patina of the trim on Chinese temples when it had still been fresh. A British soldier's uniform after it had been soaked in blood in India.

And it was the color of two stripes in her hair. Not a tone you'd naturally see on a woman's head. The rest was burgundy, nothing terribly special in this day and age, striking but not as unique as the two streaks.

Not as unique as the peculiar corset and trousers of black denim and lace visible under the tattered excuse of a bustle skirt. Not as unique as the boots, which looked like they'd been st.i.tched together from seven different time periods, two of which had yet to occur.

Also not as unique as her bra.s.s aviator's goggles, the lenses smoky. Even though he couldn't see her eyes behind them, he could tell she'd caught him staring. It was the kind of day where that could happen, blast it all, and he ducked behind an escalator as fast as possible.

Where did he go?

She'd had him in her sights, not figuratively, but literally tagged in the duplex crosshairs etched into her ocular reticle (an upgrade from the less reliable one of wire, damaged in the retreat from the Battle of Maiwand, which she still maintained-on the record and off-was the biggest bit of political skullduggery she'd ever seen).

That battle had also cost her 9 percent of the peripheral vision in her right eye-not enough to warrant a replacement but certainly enough to aggravate. She had to turn her head to scan the groups of indolent but gaily dressed young adults and wet-nurses pushing children in fabulous perambulators. On the main floor, enormous sheets of gla.s.s safeguarded sparkling storefronts. One level above, a centrally located gilt lift began its descent. Just behind a cart filled with smoked-gla.s.s spectacles was the mechanical staircase. Her eyes scanned beyond the whirring motors, rubber belting, and gla.s.s part.i.tions to locate the one that spoke poetry with a single, sliding glance.

Ah! There he was, behind a teetering display of cheap scent and jewelry that would turn the skin green. The biorhythms were correct, despite the elevated pulse...

She swallowed.

He'd kept his human heart.

She thought of the years that had gone by, the upgrades he'd endured to become a Collector. How had he convinced Them to let something so weak and fragile as a human heart to remain at the center of his mechanical being?

Not that it mattered. The Company now required the retrieval of his bra.s.s memory cylinders. She licked her lips, and wondered.

Wondered if he'd recognize her.

Wondered if he was going to come along quietly or if she'd have to "persuade" him.

One thing was for certain: if he ran, and forced her to chase him in these cursed boots, he'd pay for it thrice over.

Of course, this would be the one time he'd forgotten to wind Doctor Gillen-heimer's Royal Clockwork Mesmerizer, Mark IV. Of course. The d.a.m.nable contraption had lain in his pocket for decades, a lump made to protect him from her kind should he ever need it, and had he ever set foot outside his flat without making sure the little bra.s.s key in its back was wound a full ten clicks? Not once, no, but that morning he'd somehow glossed over it. It was one of those kinds of days, indeed.

Running was out of the question. Any woman of her breed who wore such boots could doubtless sprint like a gazelle in them if necessary. Or, more to the point, a cheetah. A very angry cheetah in a corset.

He could attempt to wind the d.a.m.ned thing, but its noise would likely draw her attention even faster. b.l.o.o.d.y useless. Doctor Gillenheimer's benefactors had poured finances into his research, paid bills that would bankrupt a sultan, in order for this little blob to exist, and it was as pointless in his hand as an Orange Julius would have been.

No, wait. He could have drunk the Orange Julius.

Not long now. Nothing to be done for it. Had he sweat glands, he'd have doubtless mopped his brow. A quick check showed everything was in order. Dress slacks, turtleneck, tuxedo jacket, leather loafers, all the color of a brand-new piano. Not a speck of dirt or lint, nor a hair out of place.

A quick decision was made. He put on Smile #45 (Greeting from a Strange Window Washer in August, 1956, in Perth at 7:16 a.m.), ducked out from behind the escalator, and thrust his hand forward in greeting.

The origins of the handshake are unclear, though Bascom Octavius speculated in his 19 - work The Social Rituals of the Empire that it might have originated with Sir Lucien Osborne. It had less to do with polite salutation and everything to do with self-preservation, as Sir Lucien liked to a.s.sure himself that the man opposite wasn't holding a sword in his right hand. As Sir Lucien was renowned for his predilection for married women (and their daughters, and-if rumors were correct-the prettier of the n.o.ble-born sons as well), this practice worked out very well indeed for him until he bedded the fraternal twins of the Duke of Craighinn, who happened to be left-handed.

It also explained why most bounty hunters thought of a proffered hand as an opening to "slip a mark the Sir Lucien," but she didn't have a sword on her and, in any case, They wanted him alive, if possible. There was a brief moment in which she took in his impeccable attire-the man always did know how to wear a dress jacket-and the smile that threatened to undo her all over again before she had him by the wrist.

The last time I saw him in that coat, she remembered, I still had a human heart, too.

Over her more-practical trousers, she wore a bustled overskirt he should have recognized, but what was once virginal white silk with hand embroidery was now tattered and oil-stained. She'd dyed it black with the darkest India ink she could find, torn it apart with a pair of tiny, gold scissors, and st.i.tched it back together with tears and curses as clockwork whirred inside her.

"You don't look the least bit surprised to see me," she told her prey as she twisted about, intending to put him on the floor for long enough to cuff him and arrange for transport. "Have you missed me, darling?"

His smile dropped like a handful of surprised scorpions.

"Unpreparedness is not part of my chit-cog library, and neither is desire increased by temporal longevity," he said, worrying about the grate in his tone. He hadn't oiled his vocal cables since September 8, 1963, because he so rarely used them. "But you know that, of course. I suppose you'll be wanting to wrap up these matters?"

One of the screw-records in his skull (one of the few authentic bones left in his body, a process accelerated by a terrible attack in Constantinople, 1922) ticked its needle into a groove he hadn't used since before the end of the American Civil War. Motes of dust parted as the bra.s.s spike read information long, long disused.

It was the kind of information one had to keep quiet about. Allow no outward reaction. Do not let others perceive. But in a powder-flash of inspiration, he realized there might be a way out of this mess.

"If you take my head right now, madam," he said evenly, "there will be witnesses. How many people here, do you think, can capture photographic permanent impressions via their aethergrammic telephone devices? And then the hunt will be called, will it not?"

He had a point, b.u.g.g.e.r it all: all matters of the Empire were to be kept sub rosa. Though the patrons of the curious establishment had yet to take notice of her recent actions or her threat to his person, they had noted with various levels of disapproval, condemnation, appreciation, and arousal both her hair and her choice of apparel. Since entering this place, she'd been subjected to stares, catcalls, whistles, and various offers of a dubious nature, all of which had been only moderately less appealing than the stench of food grease and the press of sloppy, imperfect humanity.

Sloppy and imperfect they may well be, but they all carried the aforementioned slim, threatening communication modules equipped with pictorial capabilities. Deactivating him in public wouldn't help matters any. One set of onlookers might preserve the moment in their curious version of a magic lantern show while the others called for the local law enforcement.

Local law enforcement never helped, in her experience, no matter the time or place.

And there was the problem with his scent. Close enough now to catch the metal-tang of his inner workings, she thought her sense-memory might have betrayed her. While this was indeed her quarry, she couldn't be absolutely certain this was the man who had left her, if not at the marriage altar then certainly close to it, more than a hundred years before. The tilt to his head, the cut of the coat might be the same, but too much of him had been replaced with machinery over the years to be sure.

I was so certain I'd found him, when They sent me the brief.

"You are going to start walking," she told him, "and not make a fuss, or I will take just your head back to Them and apologize for leaving the rest of you folded in a heap in Housewares."

"Very well," he said, and chose another smile (Prim Closed Mouth #14: occidental lady in train to Peking, 1908). He bowed at the waist, just a fraction of an inch, then proffered his right arm in a most proper manner. "Angelus A. Morphew, at your service."

A gla.s.s bead the size of a printed period fell into its tiny hole in his chest. Four more holes, four more little beads awaited. Lies were not becoming of a true gentleman, not even lily-white ones, and he'd agreed to Doctor Gillenheimer's Weighted Miniature Artificial Morality Tabulator, Mark III without any real fuss. He made a note to check its calibration-his nom de guerre should not have registered as a mistruth.

She stared at him in a manner that caused another disused part of his workings to tick into action for the first time in countless ages. Truly, this one was a formidable opponent; her mere presence gave his internals a more thorough congruity check than any in even the most austere German labs ever had.

"My apologies," he said after a half-second's pause. "We have met before, yes? You will understand if I do not recall. As a man you may be acquainted with once said, Zwar wei ich viel, doch mochte ich mehr wissen."

"Es mu sich erst noch zeigen," she retorted, the bra.s.s German-translator punch card having slid into the correct slot without so much as a by-her-leave, "if you don't mind my saying so... Herr Morphew."

She didn't owe him the courtesy of using a human t.i.tle; he was at least 75 percent mechanical or she wouldn't be here. Yet she took his arm as though they were about to enter a dim Victorian parlor, or the Grand Ballroom at Neuschwanstein. It made sense, primarily because she wanted to keep him close and there were several lovely pressure points along the inner arm that she could use, if necessary, to interrupt his artificial bloodflow.

Her boots also pinched her toes, and it was nice to lean on someone for a change.

Fatigue clambered up her skirts with cold fingers, trying to pull her back into a near-coma that would allow her inner workings to run a diagnostic. Shifting always took it right out of her, but this time was different.

Tick... tick... tick....

Her heart's tiny balance springs and staffs, regulators and wheels had already slowed to a near-standstill. She bit the inside of her cheek and tried to figure out what the h.e.l.l was happening, because she shouldn't have been synching to match Morphew's leisurely and debonair-and human-pulse. Still, now wasn't the time for the cheap theatrics of a ladylike swoon.

"Corentine Reilly," she said as they headed to the double doors at the front of the store. "Collector Retrieval Squad, Division 3. Please do me the courtesy of accompanying me somewhere more secluded and appropriate to continue this conversation."

"A pleasure," he said as another gla.s.s bead slipped into its appropriate hole.

They were seventeen steps from a large pair of double gla.s.s doors. Once upon a time, he would have categorized the style of such a portal-Cla.s.sical Revival, Second Empire, Italianate-but society had eschewed such details for decades, favoring now these artless, flat structures with no real spirit or craft in their manufacture. Rectangles set in bland steel or, heaven forbid, aluminum.

The needle barely ticked over a simple line in its read cylinder: May 9th, 1988, Costa Mesa-this portion has been reallocated. Nothing remained of what had once been a hefty collection of bra.s.s data records regarding architectural style. They'd been wiped clean, then grooved again in order to accompany his growing need for more s.p.a.ce on Observation and Investigation No. 644-J-92.

His investigation had been ongoing for long enough that many other segments of bra.s.s had been marked with the same note. His head could only carry a finite amount of blanks. Sometimes he wondered what he'd overwritten.

Nothing too important.

"I must confess," he began, and stopped. She turned to him and waited, the lenses of her goggles reflecting his own visage in tandem, a shrunken version of his face. A gaggle of teenagers in bright colors parted around them (giggling over some cra.s.s and impolite joke, no doubt). "Many are the rumors that fly about your branch of the Company, madam. Perhaps you will find me an easier companion to deal with if you would be kind enough to answer a few questions?"

Her head inclined after a moment. Not an explicit nod, but he took what little succor he could and barreled ahead.

"Is the Fifth Empire truly coming to an end? Have collectors of information, such as myself, been relegated to the Great and Terrible Warehouses in favor of silicon and plastic constructs?"

One of the teenagers jostled her roughly; his various belts, chains, and piercings clanked and jingled like a sleigh- ...a Russian troika. Nestled in furs and surrounded by snow, they skimmed the surface of the world gone silent, save for the bells that announced their presence. Two of the horses always turned to look back at the past year, and the center looked ahead to the unknown future. She-who-would-be-Corentine had laughed at the idea that tomorrow held anything but possibilities.

But that was long ago, and that Empire had collapsed and burned as so many of the others before it. Now the Fifth Empire was at a close, and They wanted the information imprinted on the cylinders; doc.u.mentation used to forge the success of the Rising Sixth.

"Yes," she said shortly. "And that is the only answer you'll get from me. For now. This is no fairy tale. There are no riddles three."

She took another step, but was held fast by the vice of his arm which pinned hers against his side. Rough conversations, the sounds of filthy lucre changing hands, the wail of a despondent infant couldn't quite mask the whirring in Corentine's ears as she glared at him.