The Mammoth Book Of Steampunk Part 20

"Wire recording." Eszterhazy strode to a support strut and slapped a switch. The radios all died. "A little talk I prepared, being broadcast to the ma.s.ses. Radio has been scandalously under-utilized as a tool of governance."

Amelia's response was casual even, Radio thought, a bit dunderheaded technologically. "But radio's everywhere," she said. "There are dozens of public sets scattered through the city. Why, people can hear news bulletins before the newspapers can even set type and roll the presses!"

Eszterhazy smiled a thin, tight, condescending smile. "But they only tell people what's happened, and not what to think about it. That's going to change. My people are distributing sets to every bar, school, church and library in the city. In the future, my future, everyone will have a bank of radios in their home the government radio, of course, but also one for musical events, another for free lectures, and perhaps even one for business news."

Radio felt the urge to speak up and say that fixed-frequency radios were a thing of the past. But she suppressed it. She sure wasn't about to hand over her invention to a b.u.m the likes of which Eszterhazy was turning out to be. But what the heck was the matter with Amelia?

Amelia Spindizzy put her hands behind her, and turned her back on her longtime archrival. Head down, deep in thought, she trod the edge of the abyss. "Hah." The word might have meant anything. "You've clearly put a lot of thought into this ... this ... new world order of yours."

"I've been planning this all my life," Eszterhazy said with absolute seriousness. "New and more efficient forms of government, a society that not only promotes the best of its own but actively weeds out the criminals and the morally sick. Were you aware that before Lycurgus became king, the Spartans were a licentious and ungovernable people? He made them the fiercest warriors the world has ever known in the s.p.a.ce of a single lifetime." He stopped, and then with a twinkle in his eye said, "There I go again, talking about the Greeks! As I started to say, I thought I would not be ready to make my move for many years. But then I got wind of certain experiments performed by Anna Pavlova which proved that not only were the Naked Brains functionally mad, but that I had it in my power to offer them the one thing for which they would give me their unquestioning cooperation death.

"In their corruption were the seeds of our salvation. And thus fell our oppressors."

"I worked with them, and I saw no oppressors." Amelia rounded her course strolling back toward Eszterhazy, brow furrowed with thought. "Only nets of neurological fiber who, as it turned out, were overcome by the existential terror of their condition."

"Their condition is called 'life', Millie. And, yes, life makes us all insane." Eszterhazy could have been talking over the radio, his voice was so rea.s.suring and convincing. "Some of us respond to that terror with useless heroics. Others seek death." He c.o.c.ked a knowing smile at Amelia. "Others respond by attacking the absurdity at its source. Ruled by Naked Brains, humanity could not reach its full potential. Now, once again, we will rule ourselves."

"It does all make sense. It all fits." Amelia Spindizzy came to a full stop and stood shaking her head in puzzlement. "If only I could understand-"

"What is there to understand?" An impatient edge came into Eszterhazy's voice. "What have I left unexplained? We can perfect our society in our lifetimes! You're so d.a.m.nably cold and a.n.a.lytic, Millie. Don't you see that the future lies right at your feet? All you have to do is let go of your doubts and a.n.a.lyses and intellectual hesitations and take that leap of faith into a better world."

Radio trembled with impotent alarm. She knew that, small and ignored as she was, it might be possible for her to be the wild card, the unexpected element, the unforeseeable distraction that saves the day. That it was, in fact, her duty to do so. She'd seen enough Sat.u.r.day afternoon kinescope serials to understand that.

If only she could bring herself to stand up. Though it almost made her throw up to do so, Radio brought herself to her feet. The wind whipped the deck, and Eszterhazy quickly looked over at her, as though noticing her for the first time. And then, as Radio fought to overcome her paralyzing fear, Amelia acted.

She smiled that big, easy Amelia grin that had captured the hearts of proles and aristos alike. It was a heartfelt smile and a wickedly hoydenish leer at one and the same time, and it bespoke aggression and an inner shyness in equal parts. A disarming grin, many people called it.

Smiling her disarming grin, Amelia looked Eszterhazy right in the eye. She looked as if she had just found a brilliant solution to a particularly knotty problem. Despite the reflexive decisiveness for which he was known, Eszterhazy stood transfixed.

"You know," she said, "I had always figured that, when all the stats were totted up and the final games were flown, you and I would find a shared understanding in our common enthusiasm for human-controlled-"

All in an instant, she pushed forward, wrapped her arms around her opponent, and let their shared momentum carry them over the edge.

Radio instantly fell to the deck again and found herself scrambling across it to the edge on all fours. Gripping the rim of the flight decking with spasmodic strength, she forced herself to look over. Far below, two conjoined specks tumbled in a final flight to the earth.

She heard a distant scream no, she heard laughter.

Radio managed to hold herself together through the endless ceremonies of a military funeral. To tell the truth, the pomp and ceremony of it the horse-drawn hea.r.s.e, the autogyro flyby, the lines of dignitaries and endlessly droning eulogies in the Cathedral simply bored her to distraction. There were a couple of times when Mack had to nudge her because she was falling asleep. Also, she had to wear a dress and, sure as shooting, any of her friends who saw her in it were going to give her a royal ribbing about it when next they met.

But then came the burial. As soon as the first shovel of dirt rattled down on the coffin, Radio began blubbering like a punk. Fat Edna pa.s.sed her a lace hanky who'd even known she had such a thing? and she mopped at her eyes and wailed.

When the last of the earth had been tamped down on the grave, and the priest turned away, and the mourners began to break up, Radio felt a hand on her shoulder. It was, of all people, Rudy the Red. He looked none the worse for his week-long vacation from the flesh.

"Rudy," she said, "is that a suit you're wearing?"

"It is not the uniform of the oppressor anymore. A new age has begun, Radio, an age not of hierarchic rule by an oligarchy of detached, unfeeling intellects, but of horizontally structured human cooperation. No longer will workers and managers be kept apart and treated differently from one another. Thanks to the selfless sacrifice of-"

"Yeah, I heard the speech you gave in the Cathedral."

"You did?" Rudy looked strangely pleased.

"Well, mostly. I mighta slept through some of it. Listen, Rudy, I don't want to rain on your parade, but people are still gonna be people, you know. You're all wound up to create this Big Rock Candy Mountain of a society, and good for you. Only you gotta be prepared for the possibility that it won't work. I mean, ask any engineer, that's just the way things are. They don't always work the way they're supposed to."

"Then I guess we'll just have to wing it, huh?" Rudy flashed a wry grin. Then, abruptly, his expression turned serious, and he said the very last thing in the world she would have expected to come out of his mouth: "How are you doing?"

"Not so good. I feel like a ton of bricks was dropped on me." She felt around for Edna's hanky, but she'd lost it somewhere. So she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "You want to know what's the real kicker? I hardly knew Amelia. So I don't even know why I should feel so bad."

Rudy took her arm. "Come with me a minute. Let me show you something."

He led her to a gravestone that was laid down to one side of the grave, to be erected when everyone was gone. It took a second for Radio to read the inscription. "Hey! It's just a quotation. Amelia's name ain't even on it. That's crazy."

"She left instructions for what it would say quite some time ago. I gather that's not uncommon for flyers. But I can't help feeling it's a message."

Radio stared at the words on the stone for very long time. Then she said, "Yeah, I see what you mean. But, ya know, I think it's a different message than what she thought it would be."

The rain, which had been drizzling off and on during the burial, began in earnest. Rudy shook out his umbrella and opened it over them both. They joined the other mourners, who were scurrying away in streams and rivulets, pouring from the cemetery exits and into the slidewalk stations and the vacuum trains, going back home to their lives and families, to boiled cabbage and schooners of pilsner, to their jobs, and their hopes, and their heartbreaks, to the vast, unknowable and perfectly ordinary continent of the future.

"It followed that the victory would belong to him who was calmest, who shot best, and who had the cleverest brain in a moment of danger."

Baron Manfred von Richthofen (18921918).

The People's Machine.

Tobias S. Buckell.

Inquisitor, warrior and priest Ixtli's fast-paced journey by airship began in Tenocht.i.tlan, facing the solemn row of white-robed pipiltin. The rulers of the grandest city of the world had roused him from his house, burly Jaguar Scouts with rifles, throwing open his doors and shouting him awake.

"I'm to go to New Amsterdam?" Ixtli could hardly keep the distaste out of his voice. The colonies were cold now, and filthy, and smelly.

Mecatl, the eldest of the pipiltin and rumored favorite of the Steel Emperor, explained: "There has been a murder there."

"And have the British lost the ability to police their own?" Ixtli had little love for the far north.

"The murder is of a young man. His heart has been removed in what looks like an Eagle sacrifice. Find out the truth of the matter, and whether apostate priests have immigrated to New Amsterdam."

This was news to Ixtli. Followers of the sacrifice usually inhabited border lands between cities, scattered and un-united. None of them tried to keep the old ways in any Mexica city.

But in the chaos of a savage, foreign city like New Amsterdam, maybe they could rebuild their followers.

"And if I find it's so?" Ixtli asked the pipiltin.

"Find the truth," they told him. "If it is true, then we will have to root out the heresy from a distance. But if it is not true, we need to find out what is happening."

And seven hours later Ixtli was pa.s.sing out of his father country and into the great swathe of territory the French called Louisiana, the large airship he'd booked pa.s.sage on powering hard against the winds. After a refueling stop at the end of the first day's travel it was over the Indian lands, and then finally, they touched down on the edges of New Amsterdam airfield. Two days. The world was shrinking, Ixtli thought, and he did not know if that was a good thing.

Pale faces looked up at Ixtli, colonials dressed in little more than rags, tying off the airship's ropes as they fell down towards the trampled gra.s.s. They shouted in guttural languages: English, Dutch, French. Ixtli knew many of them from his days along the Mexica coast, fighting them all during the invasions of '89.

The airship's gondola finally kissed the earth, and ramps were pulled out.

Ixtli walked off, porters following with his suitcases. The cold hit him and he shivered in his purple and red robes, the feather in his carefully tied hair twisted in the biting wind.

A bulbous-nosed man in a thick wool cape and earm.u.f.fs strode confidently forward, his hand extended. "Gordon Doyle, sir, at your service!"

Ixtli looked down and did not take the man's hand in his own, but gave him a slight nod of his head. "I am Ixtli."

"Splendid, what's your last name?"

"I am just Ixtli." He stared at Gordon, who rubbed his hand on his cape and fumbled around with a pipe.

"Well, Ixtli, I just arrived from London the day before it happened. Scotland Yard needed me over here to find the Albany Rapist. Bad series of events, that. Poor urchins, bad way to end it, very sensational, all over the papers."

Gordon was a jittery man. "Did you solve it?" Ixtli asked.

"Um, no, not yet. But come, I have a hansom waiting."

The murder site was in the Colonial Museum, a ma.s.sive neo-Dutch structure embedded in the east side of New Amsterdam's Central Park. The driver whipped the ma.s.sive beast of a horse up to speed and took them down the Manhattan thoroughfares.

"It's such a vibrant city, this," Gordon said, the acrid smell of his pipe wafting across over the smell of horse s.h.i.t and garbage. The city, as packed and heavy with people as it was, placed its garbage on the streets to be picked up.

At least the city had sewers.

Ixtli leaned back, looking up at the buildings. This island was denser than Tenocht.i.tlan. Large buildings, some over ten stories high and made of brick, lined the road on his left. Greenery and park, with cook fires and shantytowns that dotted it, lined his right.

Gordon noticed Ixtli looking. "Revolutionaries. This year's batch anyway. The Crown recently seized the land of the 'Americans'. Think they would have learned their lesson from the last time. d.a.m.n terrorists."

"You let them camp on your public lands?"

"Well, the homeless are always a problem in the big cities. They skulk around here hoping one day to rise up again."

The cab lurched to a stop and the horse farted. Ixtli leapt down into the mud and walked up to the giant, imposing steps of the Colonial Museum. He was chilled to the core and wanted out of the wind. "Have you investigated any of the revolutionaries in the park?"

Gordon cleared his throat loudly. "Dear G.o.d, man, what do you take me for, a simpleton? Of course."

Ixtli ignored the reaction and stepped through the bra.s.s doorframes and into the museum past waiting policemen. Come see the original colonial declaration of secession, the poster proclaimed, next to an encased poster that showed a snake cut into thirteen pieces.

"Let's see this."

The young man in question had been left for two days at the request of the Mexica via telegraph. There was the telltale sign of faint bloating. Both Gordon and Ixtli held handkerchiefs to their noses as they approached the body.

Ixtli peered in at the corpse, then looked around. "The room has not been touched, or the floor cleaned? Was there blood on the floor apart from what the body pooled out?"

"None of that nature," Gordon confirmed.

"The manner in which the chest has been split, while similar, is done in a much more calculated manner than any normal ceremonial practice. And then there is one other thing."

"Entrails are still in his body." Gordon stabbed the air with his pipe. "Usually both are burnt, are they not?"

"There is also no blood on this floor, from ripping them out. This was done in a surgical manner, with the heart being removed and taken out in a waterproof container. No doubt to sensationalize and excite people in New Amsterdam," Ixtli said. "This is not the work of a warrior priest."

And that was a relief.

Gordon did not look as relieved, however. He made a face. "Well, I guess that rather leaves it all up in the air."

"Do you have any other leads?"

"Nothing of any particular sorts," Gordon said. "You were our best, as it would have allowed us to start questioning around certain areas."

Ixtli shook his head. "Round up the brown-skinned?"

Gordon at least had the decency to look somewhat embarra.s.sed. "One of the guards saw someone."

"Dark-skinned."

"Red, is actually what he said." Gordon hailed a hansom. Ixtli looked over at the curb, where a small group of dirty urchins had melted out of the bush to stare at them. Cold hard stares, devoid of curiosity.

One of them held a small, stiff piece of paper in his left hand, fingering it reverently.

"Red like me?" They melted back into the bushes of Central Park under Ixtli's stare.

The hansom shook as Gordon stepped in. "We didn't pull out an artist's palette and paints. When your emba.s.sy found the headline and details, and said they were sending you over, we had hoped they might know something. The method of death is ... unique." Gordon tapped the driver perched on the rear of the cab and gave him directions to the hotel Ixtli would be staying at.

"Ah, you talk about the past, Mr Doyle, and nothing but the past. You should know better."

And on this note, Gordon smiled. "And yet you are here, sir. So speedily. So sanctioned by your country. It suggests that there may have been something."

The man, Ixtli thought, didn't miss much. "Do you know what I am, Mr Doyle?"

"I have my suspicions."

"I am no spy. I am an inquisitor. It is my job to find heretics. It is my job to find them and stop their heresy." They clip-clopped their way down into the maze of New Amsterdam's chaotic business. "When your people invaded ..."

"The Spanish, sir, the Spanish, not us."

Ixtli shrugged. To him one European was just as another. "... they had several advantages against us. Guns, steel, disease, but most importantly, the numbers and fighters of Tlaxcala who hated our taxes and loss of life to the blade of the priest. When Cortez took our leader hostage and Moctezuma stood before our city and told us to bow to the Spanish, we stoned him to death and elected a new leader, and drove the white men from our city. We fought back and forth, dying of disease, but fighting for our existence.

"We'd already killed our emperor. We were bound by tradition, and religion, but it kept hindering us. The living city leaders decided only radical new ways of thinking could save us, and the first was to renounce our taxes on tributary cities, and claim that we would no longer sacrifice the unwilling to our G.o.ds. And we made good with actions. It was b.l.o.o.d.y and long, Gordon, but an idea, an idea is something amazing. Particularly when it spreads.

"So what I do, is help that idea. That blood sacrifice isn't required, that people are equal under the Mexica, and that we are an alternative to the way of the invaders. And those who want the old religions, the old ways, I hunt them down, Mr Doyle, I hunt them down and exact a terrible price from them."

"And you are here to make sure your image as past savages isn't continued?"

"Something like that." The Mexica made a point of stealing the brightest heretics from Europe over the last 300 years. You wouldn't get burned in Tenocht.i.tlan, you could print your seditions against European thought there, and anything useful, anything invented, all benefited the Mexica.