Of Stations Infernal

by Kin S. Law

  “What I saw…” And now Albion fell speechless, as if he wanted desperately to put the sight into words, but could not. Whatever had been in that room, behind the door in the water plant, Albion had brought it with him. It seemed to haunt him, as much as the specter of the Grimaldi did Hargreaves.

  Instead of saying anything, Albion drew one last thing from his bottomless pockets; a package wrapped in waxed paper, the light, airy kind they used at photogram developing shops.

  Hargreaves took them, and looked through them in the firelight. The first were of rooms full of steamcrafts, tinning machines, die machines and conveyor belts, meaningless churning cogs connected to powerful dynamos lurking in the backgrounds. Another was of stacks of cans piled high. Then she leafed through the great cauldrons, the holding pens seen from catwalks, each full of ragged, destitute people. She leafed through the photograms, and as she came to the rooms full of hooks in the ceilings, her gorge rose, and her eyes watered. The last photograms showed things that shouldn’t ever exist, not so much charnel houses as the long, empty passageways of the soul made flesh.

  It was funny, she thought, there had not been a single beggar or panhandler in those shining streets. There hadn’t even been people sheltering in the dank tunnels, when she looked on them from the warmth of the ’Berry.

  Suddenly Hargreaves had a vision of industry, that special efficiency capable of processing people by the pound and loading them in barrels onto Hallow’s Ghost Train. People disappearing off the streets, being carted off in the dead of night, boxcars of the damned rattling away behind those beastly engines…All the rumors she had heard were falling into place like some terrible jigsaw puzzle. She imagined the huge manufacturing cars she had seen on the Ghost Train, crafting ranks upon ranks of dark metal sentries. Each one gutted and emptied, awaiting the impregnation of a meaty spirit twisted by the Cook box.

  In the pictures, the machines were separating the bits into two conveyors. One led into barrels that looked industrial, probably bound for Hallow. The other led to a can packing machine, and the labels were shockingly familiar. She’d eaten from one of those cans. She’d been eating them ever since Appleton, at every diner and waystation. And after she retched, feeling the bitter tincture stick in her craw, she flipped to the last picture. The familiar cog-and-cam of Ubique was no surprise. The stars, stripes and eagles emblazoned on the cans were.

  That morning found Hargreaves extinguishing the last embers of their campfire, as Albion slept on a pile of blankets on the hard ground. Though Hargreaves was sore, the morning dappling through the leaves seemed to cleanse her, and she took a walk toward the rails. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but it felt good to stretch her healing body. Hargreaves walked a good mile, following the unwavering line of the rails. She kept a keen eye for Hikawa, who may have escaped or been thrown off the train. Bu she was wholly unprepared for what she actually found.

  She turned on her heel and hurried back to Albion, trying not to run. He would not be roused until Hargreaves flipped him into the river. They trotted back to the rails, Albion leaving a trail of droplets.

  When they reached the spot, they could scarcely believe their eyes. The Ghost Train had ejected its detritus as it passed through. Workmen had likely tossed everything not of use out of the moving car, leaving a trail of garbage along both sides of the track. Now the rail beds were scattered with broken crates and empty barrels. Lying amongst the wreckage, the Cook box sat, a tombstone jutting out of the shiny clinker.

  Hargreaves walked up to it, and when she laid her hand on the smooth riveted surface the panels fell apart. She yelped, and jumped back. Between the Cook box’s hermetically sealed sides, something had been hidden, and now the morning sunshine gleamed off its smooth length. They stood gaping at it, not quite believing what had been hidden with the box’s contents. Albion stepped forward ran his hand across the object’s surface, but jerked back as if scorched.

  “Is it hot?”

  “No, it…it’s like it knows me…” said Albion, confused. He fumbled at his sodden hips, coming up with the Red Special, and tapped the butt against the surface. The aeon pistol rang a clear note. Hargreaves thought she saw a ripple of blue spread from the spot, in waves and patterns, like the surface of a still pond that had been disturbed.

  “Do you know what this means?” asked Hargreaves. “That sly fox knew what I would do before I even thought of it myself!”

  “Now that is hardly any way to speak of your matriarch,” Albion said. Hargreaves covered her mouth. “Besides, it is too little, too late. Without Alphonse, you can’t use this. Even Dragonwell wasn’t built for something this large, he would never fly.”

  “Enough of your cheek,” said Hargreaves. “Her Majesty predicted everything. To what other purpose is this if not to correct a potentially grave, catastrophic error?”

  She gazed upon the gleam of its carving, at the words inscribed upon it, and the light glinting off the strangely opalescent surfaces. The etched words read “A Contrario” in a flowing script—Her Majesty’s own handwriting, writ huge. This was meant for her, for Hargreaves alone. Maybe it wasn’t a sign from God, but it was a sign from some higher power, the only one that mattered to Hargreaves.

  Finally, Albion had to lay out the problem for her.

  “Well then you tell me. How are we going to pull a ruddy, big sword taller than Dragonwell from a rock the size of Camelot? This thing is bigger than Rosa’s butt.”

  Station 12

  Clean Slate

  Vera Jasper knew she ought to be ecstatic, despite her cuts, bruises, and two broken fingers. It was no worse than practicing for the circus tricks she had done since beyond memory. Because of her unique assets, she could pull or wrench most of her hurts back into shape, but cuts were another matter, and the cold stung sharply. So she clasped her veil and her baffled goggles tighter across her face, against the gale winds howling into the observation deck of their Conqueror Worm. As the blazing sunset fast approached, her wounds inflamed, bloody and sore, she couldn’t deny something had gone terribly wrong.

  “Ugghhh…”

  The pained groan snapped Vera out of her meditations. She turned, and seeing their prisoner awake, closed the observation deck’s window. It hummed shut on smooth bearings. The groaner lay on a smooth metal bench, and he did not try to move. On the other side of the deck, his weapons had been neatly stacked. Vera did not begrudge the swordsman his betrayal; the man impressed her, as all men of skill did. He regarded her calmly. Though he had beaten her, his body was badly hurt.

  “We don’t really have cells,” said Vera. “All the holding pens feed into the meat grinders. But if you try to escape from here, the sides of the car are smooth and round. You’ll fall and be ground up by the tracks instead. Nod if you understand.”

  The swordsman nodded. Vera gave him a skin of water and some dry rations, before heading down the stairs at one end of the observation deck. She locked the heavy riveted door at the bottom.

  Vera left the Oriental alone, and walked through the cars of their Conqueror Worm. The train’s bulk was starting to bother her. It had started as metal and bolts, but at some point begun to develop an almost organic quality. The shadows crawled with writhing shapes. She passed the manufactory cars, stuffed to the brim with machinery. They took barrels of raw stock and processed them, pumping it to the storage cars further ahead. Vera didn’t need to look up to see the scaffolds and holding pens that stored some of the fresher ingredients. They cursed and spat at her, the few who were awake.

  In the storage cars, she passed row after row of insectoid carapaces, traveling through their mass on a catwalk path. The boxcar was packed full of them, top to bottom. The creations’ limbs sat folded and compressed into asterisks, as if they were dead. Arachnid, mostly, with eight legs and glassy eyes. Their joints sprouted cogs and cams. Beneath their glass eyes they were hollow. Barrels marked with the cog and cam of Ubique lay stacked in the corners of the room, tapped to rubber nippl
es that fed into the pipes of the car. Vera shuddered, then passed from the storage cars into the deployment car. It took a long time.

  On board the deployment car, the active automata had sat with pilot seats behind their eyes. The Scotland Yard woman had released them all. Vera passed these and continued to march forward, until she reached the car where the Grimaldi and Jean Hallow rested.

  The room was currently being redecorated, but Vera ignored the workmen, marching straight up a short ramp to Grimaldi’s collar. From this vantage point, she could see into the chest cavity, a dark pit she did not want to look into for long. Soft clicks and gushing noises bubbled up from it, in combinations too vivid to dare imagine. Jean Hallow’s face peered from a den of madness.

  “You let him live?” asked Hallow. His voice was but a wisp on the wind.

  “This man posed as one of ours,” said Vera. “I let him live. As you wanted.”

  “Yes,” said Hallow. His face was parchment, impossibly paler than before. His shoulder was lost in an adder’s nest of writhing shadows. “Who sent him?”

  “He is to be bait?”

  “Yes,” whispered Hallow. “No. Maybe. I am not sure they will come for him.”

  “The derailment was likely their work,” said Vera.

  “Did you think I would overturn a train with myself inside it?” asked Hallow. “No, this kind of chaos could only have come from those wretched, scurvy-ridden Incognito.”

  His hate was palpable. Vera ran her agile fingers, tiny Lilliputian steps, over the intricate designs etched into the Grimaldi’s helm. It shone a blazing opalescent in the arclight, but did nothing to soothe Vera’s feeling of unrest. What lay beneath the shining façade made her the scarred skin of her back crawl. She knew a mask when she saw one.

  “I would understand if it were a diamond, a painting, or a valuable aeon artifact like the Cicero Knife,” said Vera. “The Incognito are pirates, thieves. What would they want with our Grimaldi?”

  “They fancy themselves the shapers of their own destiny,” answered Hallow. “And this is a shaper of worlds.”

  At that, the Grimaldi shuddered, and its chest groaned open. There was a cloak hanging nearby. For a brief moment Vera thought she saw a heavily muscled arm emerge, as if there was a strongman inside the machine. The arm was pulsing red. But then there was only Hallow, standing there like a scarecrow that had been slotted into an overlarge umbrella.

  “I don’t see how they can change anything,” said Vera, recovering. “Without your investment and Burgess’s connections, they would not be able to build any more. Only this train has been able to evade them all this time, keeping your creations hidden.”

  “My Conqueror Worm is an impenetrable fortress,” said Hallow. “But they are bent on stopping us. In ancient times, the bow and arrow was the peak of the war artificer’s talents. An army of those made Genghis Khan. The powder rifle carved out these lands below for the white man, and the steam engine netted the skies for the lone entrepreneur. What might have happened if none of these things were ever made?”

  “What do you intend to do?” asked Vera. In all this time, Hallow hadn’t trusted Vera with the fullness of his plan.

  “This is about change, pure and simple,” said Hallow. “This world has no place for our kind, so I will carve out a place for us. I am simply lighting the way.”

  A shiver ran across her back. There were, indeed, many things that changed in war. Vera might be brown as a nut, but if she acted in any way but English it was a facade she used to deceive those full of prejudices. Like that airship captain, Zampano, thinking her part of a gypsy band merely because she looked the part. Within her breast beat a heart green with Britain’s merry land, a complex she recognized in nearly every Englishman who did not look English. It was a love-hate relationship, a desire to conform and a destiny of never fitting in.

  Vera didn’t want to put England into a war.

  The twilit America passing outside the broken boxcar door confounded her with its rolling mountains and wild, free rivers. She didn’t wish it ill either.

  “A Balaenopteron’s cannons can wipe out even an army of Grimaldis in an instant,” Vera attempted to protest.

  “Would you like a demonstration?” Hallow asked.

  Without waiting for her reply, the Grimaldi’s hand stretched out, a skeletal finger pointing outside through the broken car door. There was a hole in the palm of that hand, and from it shot a long, thin instrument, tapered at the end. A wand?

  But before Vera could look at it more closely she got a fleeting sense of something terrible, like the smell of pain, or a feeling of red. There was the cobalt shock of a sparker going off, a thrumming like a plucked string in her belly. Trees outside shuddered at the passing of something immensely fast, and then a hillock outside exploded into a fountain of loam, a momentary landslide that set the birds and beasts howling into the night. Vera dashed forward, leaning out of the boxcar to watch the holocaust pass into the Conqueror Worm’s rattling wake.

  “Lord Almighty,” said Vera.

  “Perhaps,” said Hallow, his voice softer than ever. “But it does not need to be divine. It merely needs to have the power to put things right.”

  “Right?” answered Vera.

  “Come, my Orb Weaver,” said Hallow. “It is time to see what has been growing in this cocoon of secrecy you’ve helped me weave.”

  Jean Hallow walked past Vera, past the workers who seemed a little bit afraid of their shadowy employer. Was he taller than before? Vera could not be sure. They walked through the storage car and back down the train.

  “We are born into this world expecting to have choices. Why do we tell our children they can be aeronauts, or doctors, or discoverers of strange new lands?” continued Hallow. “We are not born into a world with choices. We are born into a world enslaved to the arbitrary rules of those who came before us, walled into a city of false hopes and dead ends.”

  Vera Jasper drew in a sharp breath as the forest in the train windows behind them immolated, lighting a bright orange to rival the sunset. They were going around a bend, and the sight of the Grimaldi’s power struck Vera dumb.

  They passed through the barracks and the various mundane areas of the Ghost Train. In the manufactory cars, the great engines that churned out sheet metal and cut delicate components were silent. Vera and Hallow crept through the tangled tightness of the pipes. At last, they reached the storage boxcars behind the manufactory cars, where the silent ranks of Hallow’s host lay waiting. Their path led along a catwalk through the middle of the host, so they were surrounded on all sides, top and bottom by the creations. Vera felt, not for the first time, that she was inside an enormous egg sac. If so, then these were their brood; Vera’s and Hallow’s.

  Innumerable asterisks of metal surrounded them in groups of eight, one set for each of the creations’ eight legs. Vera had never liked how they were stored. They looked like enormous dead cockroaches. Each leg was a stake of metal, very sharp. Hallow reached out from beneath his cloak. It was his left arm, and it was very thin. He pressed his wrist to a sharp point, drawing a dribble of blood. The drops glittered like rubies in the half-light, then disappeared as they fell to the dark shapes of the creations below.

  Hallow walked the length of the boxcar, casting his arm about as if he were blessing the car with holy water. Blood fanned out in droplets, smearing the perfect carapaces with gore. For a moment nothing happened. As Vera followed, she began to hear the groan and scrape of a thousand cogs turning, cables springing taut to life, and eight thousand legs begin to scrabble awake.

  “They want us to play the game their way, because with their rules they always win,” said Hallow. “I say, fuck them. Fuck their game. Let’s kill them all and start over.”

  That was when Vera knew for certain Jean Hallow was insane.

  Station 13

  Dragonslaying and Fried Chicken

  Though Dragonwell could bear the weight of the sword A Contrario, there was no ques
tion about flight. Plucking the tip out of the loam was a tremendous effort. Steam spurted from its vents in billowing clouds. Finally, with a great sucking pop, the tip of the sword came free, flying up over Dragonwell and cleaving a bough off a stately elm to embed itself in the ground.

  “This sucker is sharp!” Albion declared. He sheltered Hargreaves from the falling bough with one of Dragonwell’s greaves.

  “What an astute observation,” Hargreaves said dryly as a sepia weir of autumn leaf threatened to bury her. “It would be a useful weapon, if it were not so unwieldy.”

  The sword was indeed unwieldy. Nearly twenty feet long, the pommel topped Dragonwell’s head when they stood the blade straight up. It measured three feet across at the ornate hilt, carved with seven steel wings. The metal swam with whorls of layered colors, as if they had been poured in, folded together laboriously in some gigantic, infernal smithy. Dragonwell’s oversized cutlass looked woefully inadequate next to it.

  “This was made to slay dragons…” Hargreaves murmured.

  Albion was dismantled his clothesline, and with the aid of a torn piece of balloon canvas, wrapped up A Contrario until it looked like a piece of mast wood. He threw the ropes over Dragonwell’s shoulders so the automata could haul the heavy bundle onto its back. At zero lift, Dragonwell left deep dragging footprints in its wake. Even at full lift from the aeon engine, they were barely able to scale the great trough of the slope to the tracks. Unfortunately once there they did not know where to go next. The Ghost Train might be anywhere by now, and Hargreaves feared its unholy cargo.

  “And where might we be going, Inspector?” Albion asked, once they were free.

  “Why, Captain, I would have thought it obvious,” answered Hargreaves, adjusting her scarf more tightly. Under her driving goggles, she dabbed a little grease from Dragonwell to protect her cheeks from the wind. It gave her the appearance of actually knowing what she was doing. “We go to call on Messrs. Hallow and Burgess.”