by D. J. Butler
He checked the combination lock, finding it locked and the dials in the 0-0-0, 0-0-0 position he’d left them in. But the hair was gone.
Roxie. His mind rebelled at the accusation, but it must be her.
No, you idiot, he thought. You feel guilty because you have broken your troth, but that is no reason to suppose that Roxie is a thief or a spy. She’s only a woman, after all, beautiful and clever and oh so dangerous and sweet in the way she moves, beneath that red crinoline or without its veiling—
he cut off that train of thought.
No, it could have been anyone. The cabin had been locked, but Captain Jones or someone in his crew must have another copy of the key, and someone could have stolen it. Or simply picked the lock.
It could have been Fearnley-Standish, the little weasel. He was the reason Burton had put a hair in the attaché case in the first place—he hadn’t wanted his ostensible colleague to steal the letter to Brigham Young and cut Burton out of the mission, as he seemed constantly to be trying to do with his bizarre pretensions to authority. That must be it; Fearnley-Standish had bribed a truck-man to give him the key, he had let himself in at some moment while Burton had been away, and he had opened the case.
Though whoever had done it had also been able to open the combination locks on the attaché case. That was no mean feat; Burton was certain his combination was a safe secret, not a birthday or some obvious number, but 8-5-3, 0-9-1, which, reordered into 09/1853, made September, 1853, the month Burton had entered the Kaaba, the first kaffir, he believed, ever to have done so, and almost the first European. No one would think to try those digits as a combination, surely, so whoever had opened the case had done so by some other means—had picked the lock.
Was Fearnley-Standish capable of such a thing?
Burton’s eyes flickered to the crystals in his tumbler. He stifled the doubts in his heart as he choked back the memory of white ankles. No, he told himself again. Not Roxie.
He opened the case. Inside, everything looked all in order. The three letters were there, inside a large, flat, leather wallet, and nothing unexpected had been added.
Or had it? He picked up the sealed envelope addressed to Mr. Brigham Young, President of the Kingdom of Deseret and hefted it. It looked like the same envelope, but whoever had opened the case might have switched envelopes, or might have steamed the envelope open and switched out its contents. Might have, he considered, but to what end?
He might be played like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from Shakespeare’s play. Hamlet had swapped their sealed letter for another, hadn’t he? And where the original letter instructed the king to kill Hamlet, the substitute instructed him instead to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Bad way to go, that. Embarrassing.
“Bhishma’s buttocks!” Burton cursed darkly. He was going to have to open the letter. It wasn’t contrary to any explicit direction he had received, but it definitely went beyond his affirmative instructions, and it smacked of underhandedness and shady ethics. Burton had no qualms about raiding the enemy by stealth, but sneaking about to get around his allies, or worse, his superiors, was unmanly and dishonorable.
On the other hand, he could not risk the possibility that the Yankee Clemens was somehow responsible, and was sending Burton in to meet Brigham Young bearing a letter that read Dear Sir, please commence aerial raids on Richmond and Savannah at your earliest convenience. Sincerely, Victoria. P.S., have the bearer of this letter staked to the ground in front of the nearest coyote den. The tools that he and Fearnley-Standish had removed (that he had removed, he corrected himself with a rueful grin, Fearnley-Standish hadn’t done a damned thing) from the Jim Smiley the previous night and stowed in the hold of the Liahona hadn’t been here this morning, when Burton had made a point of checking. If Clemens hadn’t got his tools back, then someone else had got them.
Burton sighed. There was no good way around it; he would have to look.
It was easy to steam the letter open, using a jet from the convenience steam hose (usually used to make scalding hot tea or iron clothes or clean filthy boots) below the hot spigot in the cabin’s little brass sink. Burton unfolded the letter inside with trepidation, sitting again at the table to read it. He knew that he was doing what he had to do, for the sake of the mission, but he still felt like a thief, a trespasser, a blasphemer.
It didn’t look as official as he had expected, nothing like the credentials—no seal, no formalities, just a simple note on the Palace’s headed paper with a signature—but then, Burton reflected, it wouldn’t. The official mission was his; the note was a personal communication, an assurance of personal interest and sincerity from one head of state to another. He read the note with fear in his heart and a mounting paranoia in his aching brain.
Dear President Young,
To the formal documents credentialing my envoy, I wish to add my personal statement of confidence. Captain Burton is a man of proven merit in many extraordinary circumstances, and I trust you will find him as capable, as bold and as interesting as I do.
I trust also that we will be able to reach agreement. All parties declare themselves to be against the outbreak of hostilities, but you and I mean it sincerely, and I believe that between us your Kingdom and mine can ensure that the American squabbles regarding membership and secession are resolved in a way that does not compromise our nations’ prosperity. Captain Burton is authorised to make certain promises to you in order to clarify that our interests are aligned; I will honour those promises.
Cordially Yours, VRI
Post-Script. Captain Burton is a man of action. If you have need of him in that capacity, please show him this letter as my instruction to him that he is to cooperate fully with your requests.
Ha! Burton thought. Again no mention of the tiresome little Foreign Office man, and the Queen’s note was all about Captain Burton and his mission. So Fearnley-Standish was a liar, just as he’d thought.
But what in blazes did that post-script mean?
He closely scanned the letter again, not for meaning this time, but to look at the letters and the paper for any sign of inauthenticity. Forgery and its detection were not his métier, but he thought of himself as an astute and perceptive man, and the letter passed his smell test. The sheet’s heading and watermark looked official, and the handwriting throughout looked consistent. Before the gum on the flap could dry, he refolded the note, replaced it, and re-sealed the envelope.
He held it in his hands and considered what to do. Someone, he thought, had likely read the letter, and he couldn’t know who. Possibly, though he thought it unlikely, someone had tampered with the letter.
Still, its contents were consistent with what Burton knew of his own mission, although he wondered what Her Majesty could mean, suggesting that Brigham Young call upon his services as a man of action. Well, he harrumphed to an imaginary audience, he was a man of action, after all, and if President Young needed to call on his assistance in some matter, Burton would do what was necessary, for Queen and country.
On reflection, Burton decided that this episode had given him a salutary warning. It seemed likely that some rival, some enemy even, had looked into the official correspondence of which he was the appointed bearer, but there was nothing compromising in those letters, nothing that would give away Burton’s bargaining position or weaken him or make him vulnerable in any other way. The true core of Burton’s mission was locked away in his own memory, unassailable. And because it could have been worse, Burton was now duly warned that his attaché case, even locked in his cabin and sealed behind a combination lock, was not a sufficiently safe place for the letters.
He’d have to carry them on his person. Burton tested his frock coat and found that, by tearing only a couple of stitches to either side of the mouth of its inside breast pocket, he could make the pocket wide enough to swallow the document wallet. He put all the letters into his coat, and was about to put his coat on when his eye caught the loose sheets of paper and the Self-Ink
ing Stylus on the folding table.
He sighed, sat, and took up the Stylus.
My Dearest Isabel, he wrote after dating a clean sheet. I am a terrible correspondent, and though I know that you deserve a thousand times better, I find that all I can do is write to say that I think of you daily, that I consider myself pledged to you and that I shall do my utmost to serve out this commission for Her Majesty in a fashion that will bring honour and respect to you and your family.
Vishnu’s hairy belly, he thought, setting the Stylus down and grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. Could Roxie have drugged him?
* * *
“Behold the hypocephalus!” Poe cried, and Jed Coltrane, leaning against the wall near the rear door of the stateroom, resisted snorting out loud. At least, he thought, the poor bastard wasn’t coughing up a lung. He wondered how much time the Richmond doctors had given Poe to live—he didn’t think it could have been very long.
It was a bally, in the end, a free show. At least it was free from Jed’s point of view—the entire price of admission was two cents, and Captain Dan Jones took both of them. But a free show now would mean better word of mouth for the paid show later. Even a carnival without a secret mission put on ballies from time to time.
The hypocephalus, which to the dwarf sounded like the name of a particularly nasty strain of a soldiers’ disease, was pinned against an upright display board. It was a complicated circular diagram, full of little drawings of stick figures, thrones, animal-headed people, stars and squiggles, all inked onto a tattered piece of yellow cloth that might have been linen, or something really old, anyway.
It looked Egyptian. Like the scarabs, though, it was bunkum, and Jed knew it. Some Richmond clever-dick had painted it. Poe always called it the hypnotic hypocephalus, but Hunley and his boys were geniuses, and Jed figured you could probably wear the thing over your face and it would let you breathe underwater or spit flame or deflect bullets. Poe probably knew, but he’d never told Jed. Still, bunkum aside, he did his best to look fascinated and attentive, to encourage the audience be fascinated and attentive, too.
Poe stood to one side of the hypocephalus in his full carnival-gypsy-snake oil-doctor costume, on a low platform that looked improvised out of a wooden pallet; for that matter, Jed reflected, he hadn’t seen his boss out of costume since they’d left Richmond. He hadn’t even taken off the fake nose and beard, unless he’d done so out of the dwarf’s sight. To the other side of the hypocephalus stood the Englishman Burton, jaw resolutely clenched and eyes burning like his stare alone could punch through the walls of the steam-truck.
“Behold,” Burton called out his stubborn counter-introduction, “Doctor Archibald’s famous ancient Egyptian pillow!”
The old carny in Jed almost laughed at the big explorer—he’d done such a good job increasing interest and therefore attendance, Jed doubted any shill could have done any better. The stateroom of the Liahona looked like it might have been built to seat twenty for dinner. Whatever table usually filled its floor was gone, though, and in thirty-odd folding wooden chairs, paying passengers sat and stared. Burton’s associate, the diplomat Absalom Fearnley-Standish, was one of them. He sat beside a pair of empty seats, looking lonely and forlorn as he protected them with a battered top hat that was missing part of its brim. No sign of the woman Jed was waiting for, though. That was a shame; it wouldn’t hurt to collect a little cash from the evening’s show, but really, of course, it was supposed to be a distraction. Oh, well, maybe he’d have to be satisfied with just dealing with the Englishmen.
Poe smiled at Burton’s jab and continued. Even in the weak electric light of the stateroom (pulsing blue from glass globes pegged in two rows to the room’s ceiling), he wore his smoked spectacles. If pressed, he would claim that his eyes were weak, but of course the glasses were an important component of his disguise.
As was the show.
“My colleague would describe the great pyramids of Giza as mere tombs,” Poe said with a wise and condescending smile. “The sorcerer-priests of Memphis and of Thebes have long had the practice, handed down to them by their forefathers, who learned the dark arts at the feet of Hermes Trismegistos, the great Ibis-headed Thoth himself, of sleeping with their heads upon cloths such as this.” He locked his eyes upon a pair of spinsterly women in the front row and proceeded to talk to them intimately, as if giving a private lecture, switching his gaze exclusively back and forth between the two. “You observe the great throne at the center, the rightways upper section and the inverted underworld, the stars and the symbols of the great expanse of earth. The hypocephalus is nothing less than a map of the universe, as known to the ancients, and dreaming Egyptian sorcerers drew from it the power to control their dreams… and the minds of their fellows.”
The two ladies gasped a prim objection and a murmur crept through the audience.
“Rubbish!” roared Burton, his face turning purple. “Poppycock! Nonsense of the highest order, and reeking of base deceit and fraud! This man owes you all a refund! There is no basis for any of this hogwash, these explanations are not scientific! What kind of doctor are you, man?”
The front stateroom door opened and the woman Jed was waiting for slipped in, dark hair, red dress, on the plain-looking side. He let no expression cross his face, but felt a satisfying mixture of pride in the success of their distraction and anticipation of the crimes he was about to commit. He discreetly patted the bulges in his jacket to reassure himself that he was appropriately armed. The woman sat by the diplomat, as Poe had suggested she likely would, and Jed continued to wait. He’d give her a minute to settle in before he exited the show, just in case.
The pale Englishman looked disappointed at her arrival—or maybe he was disappointed that he was still holding an empty seat.
Poe bowed in mock deference. “I’m sure we would all be eager to hear a proper scientific explanation of the hypocephalus, sir,” he said in a wheedling, groveling way that again almost made Jed laugh.
“There is none!” Burton barked loudly, his fists clenched and punching at the air. “We don’t know what they’re for!”
Poe affected a look of pitying disappointment. “No?” he said.
“No,” Burton growled. He punched his forehead and jaw forward, like a bull glaring at a matador. “They’ve been found under the heads of a few mummies, priestly mummies, and there is no scientific explanation for them.”
Poe let his spectacles wander out over the breathless crowd in the stateroom. “They lay under the heads of priestly mummies,” he restated the Englishman, “and science cannot explain what they were for!” He smiled puckishly.
The audience laughed.
“Yet!” Burton roared. “Science has no explanation yet, but it will have!” He looked like he might bite the heads off the two ladies in the front row; they shook their heads disappointedly and clucked at him.
The audience laughed louder, and Jed let himself out the door. Just as he shut it behind him, the quiet semi-darkness of the blue-lit iron hallway erupted into explosive racket.
“Shoshone! Shoshone! Beat to quarters!” A crewman of the Liahona burst past the dwarf, shouting at the top of his lungs, and banged at the door of the stateroom he had just left behind.
A bugle squealed out its tantara-tantara-ta! into the night.
Jed didn’t know what beat to quarters meant, but it didn’t sound good. He picked up his pace to a trot, heading for the first of the cabins.
He heard the soft hum behind him of a Brunel gun’s engine warming up, and he threw himself around a corner just in time. With a sharp whine, the rifle fired, and he felt the rush of air on his shoulder blades as its projectile whizzed past him and heard the foomp! of the bullet punching a hole in the iron wall where it struck.
“Dammit,” grumbled Jed as he tucked himself low against the wall, ready to surprise his pursuer. “You can’t go three steps in this country without rubbing eyeballs with crazy people.”
He heard a new whine, lo
uder and sharper, and the pounding of booted feet, and he coiled his body into a tight, tensed spring. When the Shoshone brave ripped around the corner at full tilt, he was majestic, iron plates and finger bones rattling about his chest, streaked paint turning his face into a terrifying apparition. In his hand he waved a vibro-blade cutlass, two-edged, a nasty piece of work that Sam Colt’s factories had started turning out alongside their revolver, trying to compete with the steam- and magnet-powered guns that everyone wanted these days, not to mention the Maxims coming out of Maine. The vibro-blade ran on electricks, and for the fifteen or twenty minutes that its charge lasted, the razor-sharp serrated weapon hummed back and forth with an intensity that let it cut through metal plate like butter.
The Indian warrior ran proud and furious and most of all he ran tall. He never saw the dwarf squatting low in the shadow, had no warning, and when Jed cannonballed into his knees he tumbled to the ground, sinking his humming sword straight down into the floor.
Jed rolled right past the hollering Shoshone and kept running. He hated to leave a dangerous man at his back, but he had a job to do.
Chapter Four
This was the lady’s cabin, Jed reflected as he eased the tumblers into place with his steel picks. He was still breathing hard from his tussle with the Shoshone. A double cabin, though Poe had said he thought the lady was traveling alone. Or was that what Poe had said, after all? Jed wasn’t always one hundred percent sure he understood what Poe said. Shame to have to kill a woman, anyway, but life was hard, and she’d be dead sooner or later of something, whatever Jed did. Hell, it’s not like she’d be his first, and why should he care more about killing a woman than a man?
Besides, Poe had been insistent—he really wanted this woman dead.
The last pin clicked into position and the lock opened. The tramping of boots overhead and the muffled gunshots made the dwarf a little hesitant, but a moment’s reflection convinced him that all the chaos would provide further distraction for his errand. He checked the narrow hallway in both directions and then slipped into the cabin.
