Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded Part 30

I shall not dwell on describing for you the details of an aerial journey, which writers and reporters, poets and novelists have treated, in fact exhaustively mined, in every possible way since the first flying vehicles came into regular service. You have made a few short journeys yourself, and the air ocean's numerous phenomena, its mirage-like vistas of clouds with their many optical illusions, will be completely familiar to you. Since I am also aware that you know only too well from grievous experience the terrible agonies of air-sickness, it will perhaps interest you to learn that in normal conditions on this new ship, one is not particularly subject to its effects, so that the very dubious chloroform sleep or the even more dubious hypnosis, which is otherwise employed on more than half of the pa.s.sengers, can be easily dispensed with.

The Flying Fish moves so smoothly, so steadily, through its surrounding medium that it is tempting to believe that you are completely at rest, were it not for the wings' buzzing beat loudly announcing that you are actually in motion. One reason that the terrible malady is more readily avoided on board the Prometheus is likely to be found in the excellence of the machinery and the use of the balancing apparatus to cushion the jolt each time the wings lift themselves for the downstroke, but the main reason, however, I would credit to the fact that Captain Bird can go much lower than any other air-captain, which alleviates all the sufferings caused by an extended stay in the thin air.

As on the other air-ships, life on board is never very comfortable since you cannot move around as on the sea, and you are largely reduced to being just so much weight on the machinery. In addition, I had brought the latest polemical pamphlet along and was so rash as to venture into its battle of Being and Non-Being, which, as you know, has split our philosophical academy and the public into two camps that are ready to devour each other. Philosophical concepts these days are so sharply expressed, dialectics and argumentation so endlessly refined and rarefied, that one often feels there is nothing left to fight over but pure air. Even this air is as a rule so thin that the blood rushes to the head, breathing stops, and one is seized by the same nervous fear that is precisely one of the most agonizing effects of air-sickness. So I tossed the book aside when I noticed the first symptoms, let being and non-being be what they were, and proceeded to look down through the skylight, glad that I could still consider myself among the being.

It was a lovely moonlight night. The island of Fyn with its woodlots, villages, estates, and market towns lay outstretched beneath our feet like an enormous map. Down below, shining like glittering stars, were one little light and one red flame after another, while smoke from towns and factories slowly rose into the air, billowing under our feet like an enormous carpet of fog. Through its loose weave, I caught a glimpse of life below. Sounds occasionally rose up to us like the calls of birds. Now it was the church bells' rumbling ba.s.s tones, then a lively horn tattoo, then the shrill shrieks of steam whistles from the trains that, like coal-black snakes with fire-spewing heads and green and red eyes, wound their way through the depths beneath us to disappear in the darkness. Soon both Zealand and Fyn with their bustling life were out of our view. We cruised onward over the dark, brooding pine forests that cover Jylland's former heath and took a look down at Viborg's rebuilt cathedral. Then we flew over Skagen's cape where numerous guano factories shone and sparkled in the darkness. From them we heard the pounding of the heavy steam hammers as they pulverized the North and Baltic Seas' rich bounty of seaweed and sh.e.l.lfish.

In our unceasing flight we continued on our way over the North Sea. Its waves rolled and foamed far beneath the Flying Fish's bow, and we were obliged to climb several thousand meters to avoid flying into the whirling of the storm that was just now raging below us. I was watching through my spygla.s.s how a magnificent three-masted, propeller-driven steamship rode out the storm with close-reefed topsail and half-reefed foresail when I heard Captain Bird's voice through the speaking tube asking me if I had a desire to see the ruins of London. Twenty minutes later we were hovering over the remains of the once so proud and now so desolate and unfortunate city.

The effects of the Americans' air-torpedoes, and especially of their dynamite catapults with which they could reach into the heart of the city, were more than appalling. Entire large quarters lay not in ruins but in dust, which the night storm whirled into the air each time it blew over the Thames's deathly empty surface. Captain Bird showed me the courtesy of allowing the Flying Fish to pause for several minutes over the burned-out city so I could convince myself of the ghastliness of the devastation, but when the vibration of the triply increased wingbeat became intolerable for me, I asked him to go on even though I could well understand the triumphant feelings with which he as an American looked down on his annihilated rival. Oh, in our days the expression "old England's wooden walls" has lost its meaning!

A quarter-hour went by, during which we sank so low that it often appeared to the pa.s.sengers' great fright as though we would run into the rocky peaks with which Wales' western coast is so rich. We raced over the water at a height of some five hundred feet above the proud three-masters that sailed below, most of them flying the American flag. But soon we would also see it wave over what had been formerly so mighty Albion's land; for half wrapped in mists, rising out of the sea like an enormous, seaweed-overgrown whale, old Hibernia, now Fenianland, lay before us in the moonlight. The American Union flag flew from every fort, every harbor we pa.s.sed. Fortification followed fortification on every halfway exposed point, the strains of the American freedom anthem rose up to us carried on the night wind, bayonets gleamed below, but the villages and farmers' houses looked deserted. It will be a long time before Brother Jonathan can get Paddy back on his feet since John Bull completely cleaned him out before help could arrive from the New World.

Soon we heard a roaring in the far north. It was the surf breaking against the Hebrides' rocky coast. From above, it looked like thin hands edged with billowing sleeves of foam reaching out. Captain Bird showed me the place where Fingal Cave had been. Now the waters had finished their work of destruction; only some black basalt columns rearing out of the foam marked its place. Meanwhile, we began to feel as though we were nearing the Atlantic's enormous expanse. There was no more soft, warm air from the ground and the sea air now made itself felt in all its piercing freshness. Now and then we noticed slight vibrations in the Flying Fish's hull, which showed that we were moving through agitated air ma.s.ses. I remembered the storm that had been reported to us by the telegraph station in Koge, and asked Captain Bird if he was afraid of it.

"Don't know the meaning of the word," he piped back through the speaking tube. "We fly faster than the storm!"

Rea.s.sured by this categorical statement, I started to close the skylight cover. As I did, I took one last look through it and saw that we had already climbed so high that there was nothing more to see, neither sea nor land. Huge moonlit clouds raced beneath our feet, first like shoals of gigantic silvery gleaming mackerel, then like jagged black mountains that the Moon's light could not penetrate. Suddenly a sparkling, flaming flash shot out of one of those airy crags and lit up the sky around us so brightly that it almost outshone the lantern on board. Naturally, we didn't hear any thunder, but to judge by the brilliance, the electric cloud-mountains had to have been fairly near, and you know how dangerous the discharges of these clouds can be, especially for a ship constructed entirely of aluminum.

A little frightened, particularly in regard to Miss Anna, I looked again down through the skylight and was astonished by how swiftly these colossuses sped in advance of the storm to the northwest. Then a single blast of the hurricane wind struck right in their midst, scattering them almost like a bursting fireworks display, and they whirled away until they disappeared in the distance like the fireworks' many-colored shining stars. From the ship's angle I could tell that we were steadily climbing, the air pressure was decreasing, and my aerometer already showed eighteen thousand feet above the surface of the ocean.

"It's a fine alt.i.tude to fall to the ground from!" I remarked through the speaking tube to Captain Bird.

"No worse than sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean through four thousand fathoms of water, sir!" came the laconic answer. "Rest a.s.sured! Tomorrow the Sun will shine for you over the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Good night and sleep peacefully, sir!"

Somewhat put at ease by the certainty with which these words were spoken, I slid the rose-colored gla.s.s plate in place so that the light streamed through the door like a soft dawn. I then threw myself on my bed, rolled a nicotine chloroform cigarette, lit it using the t.i.tle page of Being and Non-Being as a splint, and prepared for the night that was surely coming. I was not afraid. When one is separated from death by only a panel, it is basically a matter of indifference whether that panel opens to a smashing fall to the ground, where all will be done in a second, or onto the ocean's waves, where the struggle will endure for minutes. "Death is absolute rest, the pure negation of Being," I thought, recalling the concluding chapter of Being and Non-Being, and tried to find rest in the arms of sleep.

Soon I had to admit that these were not as soft as otherwise, and that they seemed to have a crushing and oppressive, even frightening force. I awoke with a start after a short doze, not really knowing whether I had slept or not but with a feeling that some enormously heavy presence sat on my chest and bored its long, pointed fingers so deeply into my ears that my eardrums threatened to burst. I felt something warm and wet dripping from my bed-it was blood that was unstoppably gushing from my nose. In addition came a biting, cutting cold that seemed to force its way through the ship's sides and filled its interior with an icy breath that refused to penetrate the lungs and warm the blood. I tried to speak but no sound came from my mouth; not even sound waves could move through this ethereally thin air. The electric lantern burned with a refracted ghostly radiance, the ship worked powerfully, and through the slits in the skylight I saw one bluish flash after another.

I could just barely make out the aerometer reading-twenty-eight thousand feet, a dizzying alt.i.tude, four thousand more feet than even the Condor, the best flying machine, could reach. Even so, it was clear that the ship was maintaining its steep angle, a sign that we were still climbing, and now air-sickness with all its unspeakable agonies suddenly came over me. I felt a hammering in my head, I saw flashes in front of my eyes like a thousand tiny lightning bolts, there was a rushing and roaring in my ears as though my brain had been transformed into the great ocean, and at the same time I was seized by a such a terrible fear that I would have gladly cried out had it not been completely useless.

I pulled myself together and put my mouth to the speaking tube-no sound, and of course no reply. I then tapped on the needle-telegraph and stared with tense expectancy at the plate just over my head. The tiny pinheads started moving, arranging themselves into lines and then into letters, and I read: "Severe electric storm two thousand feet below us. Violent hurricane to north northwest. Thunder clouds rising!"

You can take it from me, old friend, that it is no joke to get a telegram like that when one is at such a great alt.i.tude. I opened the skylight halfway and looked down-never have I seen such a terrifying sight. Gigantic coal-black, leaden ma.s.ses of clouds overran each other as though they were desperately trying to flee, and from out of these mountains streamed electric fire, now positive, now negative, now red like molten lava, now bluish like blazing sulfur. If I hadn't known better, I would have believed that I was looking down into a seething volcanic crater where t.i.tans and Giants played their frightful games. Blinded and numbed by the sight, I turned my gaze upwards to the open overhead skylight. There the Moon stood cold, pale, and clear against the night sky's black background-it struck me as a self-luminous death's head flung to the vast arching coffin lid of the sky.

I looked down again, and Captain Bird's telegram had been all too accurate. The cloud ma.s.ses really were rising. Lightning was coming ever closer, growing brighter and more distinct, and if we were to be engulfed by that electric current, we would be hopelessly lost. I could sense from the ship's motion that both Captain Bird and the crew were aware of the danger and doing all they could to avoid it. The machinery operated at full power, the wingbeat was increased to the maximum possible, but in the thin air the downstroke had no effect and the combustion in the engine was feeble due to the lack of oxygen. I felt that we could not force the ship to a greater alt.i.tude than that we had already attained. A moment later, my aerometer showed a tendency to rise, and two minutes after that we had already sunk three hundred feet.

Under such conditions, my friend, it is dreadful to be on board an air-ship. Above or below, there awaits only a transition to the pure negation of being, as the philosophers of today might put it, but I much prefer to battle the elements on the sea. There, everyone gathers on deck, pushes and pulls, pumps and hauls, in joint fellowship, unified in the cause, in the struggle for life. If at length the ship cracks apart beneath our feet-well, then we go to the bottom with the stars overhead and a consoling word as we take our leave. But on an aerial vessel like the Prometheus, everything is different. No shouts of command are heard, no heartening song, no encouraging word-everywhere reigns the silence of the grave. Aerometers show with grim precision the ship's gradual descent, the trembling telegraph indicator whispers its command: a single m.u.f.fled bell confirms that it's understood, two bells if more detailed orders are desired. Here, the main thing is not to leave one's place. Even in the fateful moment, everyone must remain in his cramped, stifling cell until the alarm signal sounds and you fall out through the emergency hatch with a parachute on your back and steering fans in your hands. The slightest clumsiness would cause the vessel to lose its balance, and the most incalculable consequences could ensue.

It was these musings that gave me a death-scorning stoicism and even motivated me to arrange with a kind of calm the cords from the parachute that dangled over my head. I thought of Miss Anna, thought of how rich our short acquaintance had been, and vowed to give my life if I could save hers. Meanwhile, the lightning increased in violence, the aerometer rose constantly, and from out in the corridor I heard a sleep-drunken wheezing and snorting. That would have to be Hr. Knoll, brought out of his hypnotic state by the thinning of the air. One thing became clear to me in that moment. If that huge, hulking reporter for The Caloric Howler lost his presence of mind for just a moment and in his semiconscious condition left his place, he would throw the ship off balance, cause the crew and pa.s.sengers to panic-and our fall would be inevitable.

Just as I realized all this, there was a horrible, deafening thunderclap that made the ship heave and shake as though it was a bird that had been shot and was in its death struggle. A blinding bluish lightning flash forced its way through every crack, every c.h.i.n.k, and filled even my cabin with a strange, sulfurous air in which I was close to choking. The Flying Fish listed so far to leeward that I nearly rolled down the floor, and I had to hang on to the ceiling-straps with both hands to remain in place. We listed more and more. Suddenly the machinery came to a stop, the entire ship vibrated, then one of its wings fell heavily back and crashed against almost the entire length of the hull. In that moment, I lost all my composure and self-control. Despite the fact that not two seconds before I had solemnly promised myself to stay where I was, I kicked the door open, stumbled over The Caloric Howler out in the corridor where he was crawling on all fours, tossed a couple of crewmen to one side when they tried to block my way, and in two leaps I was on the deck at Captain Bird's side.

Here I now saw for the first time the disaster in all its terrible scope. In the far distance, lashed by the hurricane, a Hexalator tumbled away. I could still see its six fluttering wings, its red and green lanterns, and the sparks spewing from its smokestack. There was no doubt that, blinded by the lightning and whirled about by the violent winds, it had crashed into us shortly after we had been struck by lightning, since our starboard wing was broken. The crew was a.s.siduously at work cutting it off as well as pulling down the ship's great parachute, which swelled over us like a huge canopy.

My gaze swept across the deck. I saw Captain Bird, tied to the nose rigging so that he was not torn overboard by the terrible hurricane blast, and to him, fearful and desperate, a slender young womanly form was clinging, which I immediately recognized as Miss Anna. The situation was dire. The ship's oil-slick metal surface was as slippery as an eel's skin, the storm winds were so powerful that they had bent one of the two smokestacks, but nevertheless I hurried forward, grabbed the rope that the captain tossed me, and tied Miss Anna as securely as I could.

"Cut port wing! Not one soul more on deck!" Captain Bird signaled over the needle-telegraph. A moment later, the other of the ship's proud wings fell away and disappeared like a huge arrow into the air ocean.

Just then, our oversized reporter showed his ma.s.sive upper body in the main hatch and made the ship list so far to one side that I had a well-founded fear of going overboard.

"Down, sir!" Captain Bird exclaimed, waving to him.

Hr. Knoll paid no attention, however, and worked his way further upwards with two parachutes on his back.

Then Captain Bird raised his hand and fired. The revolver only gave a weak bang; I saw the flash and heard a m.u.f.fled cry, and the unfortunate reporter tumbled overboard and quickly disappeared from my view. Still, I don't believe he was struck since his parachutes had opened, he still held his body upright, and he had thrust the steering fans back between his legs, but when and from where he will write his next correspondence, the G.o.ds only know-I have since not been able to uncover the slightest trace of him.

An air-captain's behavior in such circ.u.mstances must be forceful and determined, but I still felt a chill when I saw the unfortunate reporter falling away like a meteor. Nor could I suppress a faint horror as Captain Bird cold-bloodedly looked up at the main parachute, and concerning the terrible incident merely remarked, "Well, that lightened it!" Would I perhaps be the next unfortunate victim, or even Miss Anna? Again my gaze swept over the ship, but what met my eye unfortunately only showed me all too clearly that the situation was hopeless. Three of the crew had flown overboard, and none of them had parachutes on.

Along the lowermost deck, the emergency hatches had opened, and hanging on to those frail panels only by hooks were the ship's pa.s.sengers, pale and terrified, ready to leap into the air in the disastrous event that the great parachute could no longer withstand the hurricane's fury. I looked up tensely at the huge silken dome in which rested our only hope, our only salvation. Then I looked at Captain Bird. His expression was calm, cool, and determined, but even so he was in the process of rolling out his parachute as much as was possible in the circ.u.mstances so he could secure its hangers under his arms. I did the same, addressing a few comforting words to Miss Anna and adjusting her parachute as I said a last farewell to her. Completely composed, she asked me in a soft voice not to forget her and gave me a medallion with her photorelief on it, which I was to deliver to her mother if the worst should happen.

Filled with dread as to what I might see, I looked up once more at the ship's parachute-unfortunately, my fears were only too justified. The hurricane was so powerful and the parachute's surface and thus its air resistance were so great that we were not falling, but we were instead being driven unceasingly hither and yon by the violent gusts, and soon we were turning in large circles around our own axis. Now we listed to leeward, then to windward with such force that I had to hang on tight to the signal whistle so I wouldn't fall over the end. Several pa.s.sengers were already overboard: some had leaped in insane desperation, others had been torn away by the storm's force because they had been so imprudent as to open their parachutes at the wrong time. I saw them disappear far beneath us as white, silver-glinting specks, like snowflakes tumbling in the storm-tossed air. Losing them only made the ship lighter, so the hurricane gripped us ever more tightly and blew us along in great, dizzying swings, and we were in effect merely a ball for the wind and a toy for the storm.

Then with a screeching sound, the four aft parachute ropes suddenly broke, and like an enormous mainsail that had been cut free, the rearmost portion of the silk canopy rose up against the storm. A howl of terror, a veritable death cry came from the remaining crew, and suddenly I saw the dagger flash in Captain Bird's hands. A new gust from the hurricane and the great parachute's middle ropes snapped as though they were sewing threads, and the whole ship rolled, rising up like a rearing horse. I heard another cry of terror and saw Captain Bird cut the ropes for Miss Anna and himself. Then I felt myself lifted, carried, hurled away, swung around in huge circles, whipped, flung about, and chilled to the bone until I lost consciousness.

How long that terrible state of affairs lasted, how long and where the hurricane carried me, how many of my companions perished and how many were saved, of all this I have not the slightest idea to this day. When I awoke from my long deathlike swoon, I was hanging high up in a tamarind tree, my clothes torn and my body battered, and some naked, tattooed natives were giving me a sign that I should come down to them. My fear that I had alighted in the interior of New Zealand, and so risked being devoured by the few Maori tribes still remaining, fortunately turned out to be unnecessary. I was on Madagascar, near its capital city of Tananariva, where I was most hospitably received by Rakota Radaman the Seventh, who listened with great interest to my account of the disaster that had befallen me. He spoke excellent French and boasted of having killed the Hovas' last Chief Ramavalona. The island is entirely Christian and the inhabitants, especially the upper cla.s.ses, have a thoroughly European culture, but since staying at the court bored me, mainly because I had to tell my tale of woe at least a hundred times a day, I decided to accept Bishop King's hospitable offer until Wednesday, when the English steamship departs. He has an excellent library and is quite free of the old-fashioned dogmatism that easily infects English clergymen.

I have found so much care and concern here, so much kindness and friendliness, that I would have completely forgotten my misfortune and the wreck of the proud ship, had not the loss of Miss Anna daily reminded me of it. In all, seven of the pa.s.sengers and four of the crew, including Captain Bird, have come down in various places, often four to five hundred English miles from one another, but her name I have not yet encountered in the daily incoming telegrams. I don't wish to describe my sorrow to you, since you and yours at Sukkertoppen will of course sympathize with me. Goodbye for now- you'll soon hear from me again when I reach Calcutta.

Yours sincerely,

William Stone.

P.S.

I am wild with joy! I have here in my hand a telegram from her, sent from Calcutta. She came down on the top of Kanchanjunga in the eastern Himalayas, and after many great ordeals, which she plans to describe in New York Magazine, she reached India's capital, where she was generously received by the Russian government. We intend to be married in Calcutta in the little church where we first became acquainted. Our honeymoon will take us up the Brahmaputra and from there to Martaban or Tena.s.serim, where we have the intention of spending the winter with the Russian governor. Anna is a skillful hunter and an excellent shot with a rifle and pistol, and enjoys a good tiger hunt just as much as I do. She will also enjoy a cobra hunt, that elegant hunting excursion where one lures the animal out with the notes of a flute and then tosses strychnine pills into its maw. I am certain that she will manage it quite deftly. Farewell! Goodbye! I am now, as they used to say a hundred years ago, "the happiest man on Earth."

Yours,

W. S.

DWIGHT R. DECKER, Bergsoe's translator, spent twenty-five years in cubicle land as a technical writer in the telecommunications field while moonlighting as an occasional translator, and currently lives in the Chicago area. He translated a few volumes in the German Perry Rhodan series for Forrest J. Ackerman and Ace Books, and later innumerable European-produced Disney comic stories from several languages into English for publishers in the United States and Denmark. Lately he has been reading obscure old European stories and novels for J. J. Pierce, a science-fiction scholar writing a history of science fiction. When Pierce tracked down "Flying Fish Prometheus," it turned out to be still fresh and funny even after 140 years, and once Decker had translated the story, finding a good home for it seemed like the natural thing to do. Decker would like to thank Ja.n.u.s Andersen, Freddy Milton, and Kim Thompson for answering questions about Danish historical references and odd meanings of words. Many of the more puzzling mysteries were solved by consulting information published about the story by Danish science-fiction scholar Niels Dalgaard. A further tip of the chapeau goes to Mark Withers for suggesting in the first place that the story might qualify as a kind of steampunk, precipitating the train of events that led to its appearance here.

The Anachronist's Cookbook.

Catherynne M. Valente.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE is the author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan's Tales series, Deathless (forthcoming in 2011), and crowd-funded phenomenon The Girl Who Circ.u.mnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Spectrum Award, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 2007 and 2009, and won the Andre Norton Award in 2010. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner and two dogs. Of "The Anachronist's Cookbook," she writes, "I was asked by a friend to contribute a steampunk story to his anthology and I just couldn't bear the thought of it. While the aesthetic of steampunk is appealing, I had so many political and intellectual issues with it that I couldn't imagine writing a story that merrily went on its way without addressing them. Hence Jane was born, because you can't have Victorian England without Levelers, Luddites, and angry young women."

IN THE SUMMER of 1872, a confederation of pickpockets plagued the streets of Manchester, swiping purses and leaving a series of pamphlets in their places. Only one child was ever caught at this, a girl by the name of Jane Sallow, aged fifteen, who managed her thievery though she had lost three fingers to a mechanical loom-her remaining seven were not quite nimble enough to evade notice by her last victim, who s.n.a.t.c.hed her by the wrist and dashed her arm against a lamp-post. During questioning, Jane wept piteously, tore at her dress, propositioned three bailiffs most lasciviously, and pleaded in the dulcet tones peculiar to young women for a prisoner's bread and water, being starved half to wasting. Her arrest is a matter of public record: little else in her life can be held to so high a standard. One of the bailiffs, called Roger Smith-G.o.d save his soul-succ.u.mbed to her wiles and embraced the wastrel child when the Constable finally gave her up for feral. When her bodice was unb.u.t.toned, the hidden, incriminating pamphlets peeled loose from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, still hot and molded to her body, and little Jane laughed in the face of the bailiff's desire.

Long Live the Levelution!.

Come, Brothers and Sisters of the Undercity, invisible Insects scurrying along the bra.s.s Baseboards of the Master's House! Do as your nature compels you! Chew! Gnaw! Tear! Bite! When your Lord descends from on high to present to you your Replacement, gleaming in Copper and Teak, do not simply Bow your Head and agree that the Programmable Home Tailor and its unholy Kin are your Superiors in Every Way. Do not accept the Whirring of its Punchcards as your new Hymns, do not Marvel at the perfect, soulless Cloth it spits out like some dumb Golem! Instead, while your Master sleeps, seize Implements and Smash that clicking, gear-spangled Beast of Magog, Rend it Cog from Cog! It is Your Self you will Preserve by this Wanton Leveling, and your Master's overstuffed Pride you will deflate! Fear not for your Souls, my Brethren! It is No Crime to destroy the Devil! And I say the Devil Dwells in those Devices that Grind and Cut and Crush and Hiss. Nay, they do not weave Thread, but Sinew and Blood and Bone, and of These they make a Cloth of Infamy, which shrouds Mankind in Sin.

To Those who would call me Anarchist, Daemon, Commune-ist, I shriek to the Heavens: Call your Selves Happy now? Happier yet than those who Toil in honest Labor, who feel the Earth in their Fists, who Drink of the Fountains of Fraternity? Does that Jacquard-Cloak warm you more than your Mother's Own St.i.tching? No! Yet you would put your Mother in Chains for the sake of your Master's Economy! Your sweet Mother labors in foul Factories conceived in h.e.l.l, in Fire and Black Iron. Her tears Moisten your Bread, her sweat Salts your Meat, and still you turn from her, and like Peter Deny her Once, Twice, Three times. The Science of Rich Men does not Elevate all Mankind, but only Them Selves, for they need not Break their Backs on the Rack of Industry, but merely Sip their Tea and watch us die for their Enrichment.

Brothers and Sisters, Stand with me. We who are the Slaves of those in velvet Waistcoats and Golden Goggles, we who wash their mechanized Clothes, polish their Floors, rear their Wailing Brats, cook their Lavish Suppers-it is in our Power to Level the Unequal World that raises them above us. Crush their Dread Devices! Level their Palaces of Infernal Science! Take my Hand-for there is a Poker Clutched therein, and with it we will Stoke the Flames of Righteous Action, and the Steam of OUR virtuous Engines will Expel every Slavemaster in England.

In her statement, Jane claimed to be an orphan. The Constable noted a resemblance to a certain elderly member of Parliament well-known for his dalliances in Bengal Street, but the shape of a nose is no evidence, and he could not be sure. She was too well-spoken to be a gutter worm, he would later tell the pulp novelists who fastened onto Sallow as their Manchester Pimpernel. Her features, he would insist, were too fine for the lower cla.s.ses to own. And Jane wept copiously as she told of her mother, scalded to death in a trainyard explosion, and her father, rotted of syphilis. The Constable snorted. If truly she were a Parliamentarian's b.a.s.t.a.r.d and no orphan, at the least half that lie would one day be true-G.o.d save the souls of all lecherous legislators.

Jane refused to give up the other pickpocket-pamphleteers or the author of the offending literature even when Bailiff Smith gripped her by the hair and whirled her about to press himself against her tattered bustle. She howled like a wolf-child in heat, but in the police offices concerned with urban annoyances such as pickpockets, shoplifting, and children, there is little enough help for the anti-social orphan bellowing out the injustice of the world. Her face turned to the cell wall, she growled: "I have been a wh.o.r.e before now, and will be again, but my c.u.n.t is all you can have of me, never my soul, nor the souls of my brothers and sisters in servitude."

When he lifted her skirt, papers plastered her thighs, their loud ink leaving echoes on her skin.

Break the Bonds of Masculine Tyranny!

Is this not a marvelous World we live in? Such Wonders manifest, every day, before our Eyes, as though Britain were a Circus, and we dumb Children awed by Elephants. The New Century is upon us, and All things are Possible! Like G.o.ds in their Workshops Men with Wild Hair churn out Miracles: Phonographs and Telegraphs and Seismographs and Thermographs, Oscilloscopes and Paleoscopes and Chronoscopes and Clioscopes to Spy even upon the Music of the Spheres. Why, the Duke of Cornwall toured Mars but last week in a Patented Rolinsingham Vacuum-Locked Carriage! In every Madman's hands are Implements of Modernity, to Calculate, to Estimate, to Fornicate, to Decimate. The Earth is a great golden Watch, and it is Polished to Perfection by the Minds of our Grand Age.

How wonderful is this world-for the Men who Made it.

Yet still Women struggle against the Foe of Simple Laundry, burning their Flesh with Lye and going Blind from Fumes so that their Dandy-Lords may have silk Cravats for another Meeting of the Astronomical Society Fellows. Yet still Woman dies in Childbirth more often than she Lives. Yet still the Working of a House occupies all her Hours, till she is no more than a Husk, a Ghost, an Angel in the House for true-for the Dead are Angels, and hers is Death in Life.

How fine are all those Scopes and Graphs-how well they free Men from labor!

What, no such Succor for the Fairer s.e.x?

Where is the mahogany-handled Meta-Static Auto-Womb? The Copper-Valved Hydro-Electric Textile Processor? The Clockwork Home, which requires its Mistress simply to Wind it each Morn? I see none of these things, yet more Airships launch by the Hour, and the Streets are littered with Steam-Wagons smashed into Lamp-Posts by some Baronet's careless Son. I see none of them, yet bra.s.s Guns shine atop automated Turrets, ready to Slaughter with Cheer.

Rise up, Children of Mary and Eve!

You have not the Vote, but you have Fists! How can they Dare take the Whole World for their own and still call you Wicked? They are not your Betters, only Bullies with Sticks. Deny them your Breast to Suckle, your Arm to Labor, your Womb to Fill! As you might Poison a Rich Stew, Sprinkle their Children with Knowledge of their Fathers' Hypocrisy! Let him clean his Cravat with a Chronoscope!

Rise up Maids and Cooks, Nurses and School-Mistresses, Prost.i.tutes and Grocer-Wives! There shall be a Revolution of Flower-Sellers in our Lifetimes!

Jane Sallow shewed herself no modest maiden. Bailiff Smith reported her a wildcat, snarling and biting at him, all the while laughing and moaning like one possessed. When he had spent, she kissed him, and then spat upon him. He ran from her as from the devil.

No matter her parentage, some slim doc.u.mentation of Jane's previous life resides in the logs of the HMS Galatea, an airship captained by the Prince Consort himself-and even so, Jane is a common name. A child such as her can be counted upon to lie. Miss Sallow claimed to be but five years of age at the time of her indenture, and worked in the bowels of the ship-little hands are certainly useful in the delicate pipe-work and mechanisms of airships. The prisoner was even so brazen as to demand three years retroactive military pay at the rank of Specialist from the Constabulary, who of course could not help her, even if they wished to aid such a wanton horror of a girl. (It is true that the Galatea was involved in exercises in the Crimea during the period in question, but exercises are not a war, no matter what the courts at Yalta might say.) Bailiff Smith, being as honorable as one might hope such a brute to be, took the prisoner's clothes to be cleaned the morning after their dalliance. In her shoes were more pamphlets, folded small and compact beneath her heel.

Death and Fire to All Airships and Their Captains!

Look up, ye Downtrodden! Look up into the great, flawless Sky. Those are not Clouds, but silk Balloons in Every Color, striped Lurid and Gay. We grind our Bones to Dust in the Streets, but above us Zeppelins soar on perfumed Winds, and fine Folk in Leather, Feathers, and Buckled Boots sip Champagne from Crystal, staring down at us with bra.s.s Spygla.s.ses, making Wagers on which of us will Perish next.

Even the sons of the most Strident Workers, the great Thinkers and Laborers in the Mines of Freedom dream of Captaining Airships. A fine Life, full of Adventure and Diverse Swashbuckling! Each Boy wants a Salinger Photo-Pistol of his own, longs to feel the Weight of all that sheer golden Death securely in his palm.

But an Airship is no more than a Floating Engine of Oppression, and all that Champagne and Crystal and Leather is Borne upon the Backs of those very Boys-and yes, Girls, even Maids too Young to mop a Floor-who Longed so to Fly.

What you do not see are the Children who wind the Gearworks, stoke the Fires, load the Aerial Bombardments, pack Powder and sc.r.a.pe Bird Offal from the Engines. Children who release the glittering Ordnance that shatters the Earth below. You do not see their bruised Bodies, their broken Knuckles, their lost Limbs. You do not hear the cry of the ruined Innocent over the roar of the great shining Zeppelin. There is not Room enough for their Pipe Organs and Scientifick Equipment and Casks of Rum and also a belowdecks Crew-so Children, small and clever as they are, are surely drafted. No need to pay them, what could they buy? And if a Child should be crushed in the Pistons, if a Child should faint from Hunger, if a Child should be seized with Despair, well, they simply fall from the Sky like little Angels, and the Gala abovedecks need not even pause.

Ask not after the Maids who serve that Champagne. Aristocracy is no Guarantor of Virtue.

Come, my small Army. My gentle Family of the Air. Do not simply serve out your Time. Block the pipes, grind the Gears. Keep your Ships grounded. Shred those Balloons with a Laugh in your Heart. Do not let them use up your Youth without a Price! Be like unto Determined Locusts-invisible until too late, Devouring All!

After the Great War, some few Manchester spinsters and retired barristers came forward and admitted their involvement in the pickpocketers' activities of the summer of '72. It seemed unlikely that they would be punished, they said-the world had other concerns than what they had done as children. Their story caused a minor media frenzy, such as media frenzies were in 1919. Who wrote them? Cried the public.

Jane wrote them, the spinsters answered. Of course she wrote them. Who else?

Why did you follow her? Demanded the newspapermen.

She told us a new world was coming, the barristers answered. We believed her. And she was right-but it was not the world she thought.

Where are the rest of you? Asked the novelists.

Look up, said the lot of them, and grinned in the way that mad old folk do, so that the public and the newspapermen and the novelists laughed and shook their heads.

The Honorable Charles Galloway, who admitted to pickpocketing and pamphleteering when he worked as a newspaperboy in Manchester, gave an extensive interview to a certain popular novelist who went on to write Queen of Bengal Street, a salacious version of Jane's life. Galloway grew up rather a successful businessman for one of such humble beginnings.

"We were starving," he said. "She found us food. She fed us and cradled us in her arms and while we ate bread from her fingers she told us of a new city and a new earth, just like in the Bible. It's powerful stuff, it goes to your head, even if your head isn't addled by hunger and this beautiful girl with torn stockings whispering in your ear while she dangles salvation in the form of a hank of ham just out of your reach. We worshipped her. We would have done anything for her. And you know, it wasn't a lie, anything she said. I thought about those pamphlets a lot during the war. Stinking in the mud and rain and urine, I remembered what she said about the science of rich men. She knew how it all worked long before I did. Back in those days, all those wonderful machines seemed so innocent. But not to her. She lost her fingers in a textile mill, and her sight in one eye on the Galatea-didn't you know? Oh, she was entirely blind in her right eye. The sun seared off of the Captain's medals and stung her, and she never quite recovered. The eye was a little milky, I remember, but I thought that made her even more beautiful. Romantic. Like a pirate's eye-patch."

The novelist asked if Mr. Galloway was sorry that the revolution Jane preached never came. Charles chewed the stem of his pipe and frowned.

"Well, if you say it didn't, it didn't. I suppose you're the expert." It was from the Galloway library that further pamphlets were recovered and reprinted widely.

The Moon Belongs to Us!

They already own the Earth, and eagerly they soil it! Where is left for us, the Salt of the City, those few of us to whom the Future truly belongs?

Look up, I say again. Look up.

Does she not shine for you? See you not the face of a new Mother, free of her chains, dancing weightless in a field of lunar poppies?

The Moon is Our Birthright!

But already they scheme to rob us, as they have always robbed us, to make themselves richer, more powerful, to pile still yet more Crowns on their Heads. It is a Year and more since Lady Lovelace's Engine carried the Earl of Dunlop to the Sea of Tranquillity-our Homestead! Our Workers' Zion!-and you may be sure the most useful thing he did there was to powder his wig with moon-dust. How the steam-trail of his rocket streaked the sky like a Dragon heralding Ragnarok! Among you, my Brothers and Sisters, I looked to Heaven and my Anger burned. Is there any World not theirs to squat upon and gorge upon and chortle in their Gluttony?

The flag of Their Britain is already planted there. We have been too slow.

But not too late!

Imagine the Lunar Jerusalem! Imagine what Might Be! Workers laboring in the rich fields of the Sea of Fecundity, sharing their Fruits, singing Songs of the Revolution, now a distant Memory, sharing Fire and Fellowship, st.i.tching honest Cloth at Hearthside, crafting simple Pots and Rivets and Nails on Just Anvils, riding hardy Moon-bred Bulls through the blue Earthlight to till their Righteous Fields. In such a Place no Man would stand above Another, or slave his Child to a smoking fiend of a Ship. In such a place no petty Peer, no Kinglet in the House of Lords would abandon his child to the Golgotha of the Gutters for the mere crime of having been born to the wrong Mother. In such a Place, all would be Loved, and equally, there being enough Love in the Worker's Heart to Embrace all the Orphans of the World.

I will tell you how to become Midwives to this City of Heaven.

Become my Invisible Army. Creep among the Rocket-yards and cut the Veins of their Engines. Spill their Hydraulic Blood onto the Soil, may it feed the Worms well! Slip Sugar into the oil of every Horseless Carriage. Begin the slow Poisoning of your Oppressors-for you Feed and Clothe the Tyrants of the World, and may also Starve them, and leave them Naked. Smile with one side of your Mouth and snarl out of the other. Be Sweet when the Oligarch deigns to speak to you. Be Fierce when his back is turned. Smash all his Machines, the jewels of his Heart, and yet weep for their Loss when questioned.

And last I tell you this great Commandment, my Brethren: Grow Up.