Steamside Chronicles

by Ciar Cullen

  I’d almost expected the worst. Our lives had been falling apart bit by bit. We’d lost both our parents within the space of three years. Dad went shortly after Mom. It’s common, as well-meaning acquaintances were more than happy to remind us. Men either whither or remarry once the wife passes. As our parents were halves of a whole unit, tied in a way I never understood until I met Fen, I knew Dad’s heart would break.

  We weren’t kids, but I for one had the sense of being an orphan. Hard to explain. I still had the carpentry business; Annalise bounced from job to job but always landed on her feet. She’d put so much into caring for our mom, and then Dad, that I think she was confounded when that need passed. We weren’t that unhappy, just a bit unsettled once the grief passed.

  When she learned she had breast cancer, I became the caregiver. Well, Petti didn’t need much from me, just a shoulder. And she moved in with me so when she was weak from the treatments I could help. It brought us closer, all those events. We were both survivors.

  My longtime fiancé (those two words together are man-speak for ‘it’s not happening’) gave me the ultimatum for the third time. I thought she was a bit unfair, maybe even a bit jealous of the time I spent with Petti. Whether Lacey was serious or not this time, I’d had enough. I’d set a date to break it off. I never knew what was wrong with Lacey—nothing really—until I fell for Emily. She wasn’t Fenwick.

  I never had to tell Lacey that she wasn’t the one.

  I explained this to Screw and Barber after waking up alone, after reading Emily’s note, after looking everywhere.

  Petti couldn’t let Cleopatra’s Needle go. She couldn’t let anything go. She had developed this living-life-largely attitude, for good reason, and she swept everyone in her sphere into the flow with her. You either caught her enthusiasm, or she’d kick and scream until you gave in.

  I knew Emily had gone with Petti out of friendship, and probably wanted to talk about her escapades with me, or whatever it is women talk about when it comes to men. Fenwick’s note soothed the initial shock of feeling the empty spot next to me when I woke. More of a gaping hole in my chest. I’d awoken several times, my subconscious telling me I’d done something extraordinary. I’d broken several longstanding personal records in one evening. A few I can even talk about—I admitted I’d never been so in love, I managed to tell Emily about that, and I didn’t worry she felt otherwise.

  It struck me as healthy and out of character. I nearly cried when I realized I might lose whatever sanity I’d found in Emily. And then did cry (just for a moment, of course) later in the day, when we came to the conclusion that the two people most important in the world to me were in another dimension, or somewhere way too far away in our dimension.

  We have a code, and everyone learns it. It’s like the Scouting code of honor. Don’t harm another Punk. Don’t harm anyone in Normal, except in self-defense. When in Normal, act Normally. Don’t waste anything Steamside. Don’t stay in Normal for more than two hours without written permission from the Man, or from Screw in the Man’s absence. If you want to leave Steamside permanently, do the right thing and notify the Man first so the Punks don’t waste time worrying about you. The Original Series 28 rule about interference, which we never managed to follow. Fifty plus items in all, and each Punk could recite them like the Pledge of Allegiance. Our little council agonized over these laws, trying to balance free will and Steamside harmony. Okay, so the founding fathers we weren’t, but we did our best.

  Petti would not break the code, I argued to Screw and Barber. She wouldn’t stay in Normal to sightsee without telling me. We’d scoured Steamside (which took about five minutes), shredded to Normal and checked out our usual haunts, and finally came home. Tired, pissed off, and scared, seven hours later I couldn’t stand another minute of waiting.

  “Could she have figured it out with Fen’s scarab?” Wired on caffeine, nicotine, and delaying any other –ine use, I tried to stay calm, knowing that to flip out would be ineffectual. And I sure as hell wanted my sister and my girlfriend back.

  Screw cursed up a blue streak. “You gave Fen back her scarab?”

  “She took it off my desk. It was hers, after all.” Damn, too touchy over the girlfriend.

  “Don’t you think Petti has the wile to get the scarab from Fen? You gave her the keys to the kingdom. The Egyptian Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom. It has the words on it that allow you to trip.”

  “Go on.” Words? You just said ‘words’?

  “The hieroglyphs on the south side, the one you face from the walkway, way down at the bottom. The scarab matches the obelisk. You say the right words, and let her rip.”

  “Where? Let her rip where? Where did they go? Don’t you think you should have freaking warned me about this?”

  Screw had told me he tripped to every continent during his Ra tenure. The world had never seemed bigger or more threatening to me than at that moment.

  “She’ll be near a Vortex, for sure.”

  “How many possibilities?”

  “We’ve counted at least a dozen, but there must be more. Some of the locations are predictable, in a New Age kind of way—a Mayan observatory, the pyramids at Giza, Macchu Picchu, the Bermuda Triangle. Others are weirder—a spot in Arizona, one near San Francisco, ones without ancient monuments—at least surviving ones. Holy places, I guess you’d call them. Ra decided the ancient cultures probably recognized the vortexes as sacred and marked them with temples and such.”

  “The Bermuda Triangle? That’s a bunch of crap.”

  Screw arched a brow and folded his arms. “You’re living in an alternate dimension of the 1890s and you think the Bermuda Triangle is crap? Jack, I want them both back as much as you do.”

  “Do you really? You love them as much as I do? My new girlfriend and my only living relative?”

  “Right. Sorry. I’m just saying I’m not lying or bending the truth.”

  “This isn’t helping them. Where would Petti go?”

  “Don’t forget Emily can go back to Modern.” My stomach dropped. No, she had said she wasn’t ready to try again. She wouldn’t go after last night. Not without saying something.

  “Well, if she did, there’s not much we can do about it. Ra members never crossed the time barrier. And Petti is missing too. I think they’re in 1890.”

  “Do you get a choice where you’ll go? Dial it up on a GPS?”

  “In a way you do. You use your mental GPS. Some are better at it than others. In fact, a few Ra members never returned. Either they liked where they went, or they’re still tripping around the world, trying to get back. My thought is that Petti would have focused on the Obelisk itself and the inscription. That would take her to Egypt.”

  “Then we’re going to Egypt. Barber, hold down the fort.”

  Screw motioned for me to sit, and pulled a scroll of world maps from my bookshelf, and spread one out on my desk. “We’ll go to the Valley of the Kings.”

  “Not the pyramids?” I imagined the pyramids must be the most mystical spot on Earth.

  “Nope. Valley of the Kings, where Ra members end up every time. I’ve done the trip myself. It’s not a hospitable spot for anyone. We’re talking the desert, Jack. Two women alone in the desert against men who don’t want anyone interfering in their business.”

  “Shit.” Petti, didn’t you trust me enough to tell me? I’d failed her. I knew better than to let one of her fixations languish. I wasn’t sure we could die, but I was pretty sure we could spread to opposite ends of the world and never find one another again.

  My only solace was a page torn out of my notebook, left on my desk next to my watch.

  Jack, I’m keeping a promise to your annoying little sister to shred to Normal for a short visit. I don’t have the nerve to write all I’d like. I’ll simply say thanks for a great night. Yours, Fenwick. Oh, what the hell, just in case—I love you.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hail! O Egypt that nourishes me.

  There�
�s heat, and then there’s Egypt in the middle of the day when you’re wearing ten layers of clothing. And a big stupid hat.

  The shimmering waves of searing air dancing over the sand may not have been our biggest problem, but I knew damned well that we’d keel over if we didn’t find shelter and water soon.

  I resisted the urge to verbally batter the shit out of Petti, who alternated between numb silence and enthusiastic babbling about our success.

  “Success! This is a success? Take a look around!” I kicked at the sand and threw my hat like a Frisbee, then retrieved it immediately as the sun baked my skull.

  “But it worked! The obelisk worked! And we’re here! Where are we?”

  I screamed in frustration. “You’re a nutcase, do you know that? What the hell were you thinking?”

  “You don’t have to take that tone with me. We’ll get home, I’m sure of it.”

  “Oh, are you? Is the great Wizard going to sweep down in his balloon and sail us home? Or you could try tapping your boots together a few times.”

  “Screw did talk about building some kind of balloon, you know, one of those blimp-style balloons.”

  I rubbed my throbbing temples. “Petti, listen to me. Screw is not going to build a blimp and fly to Egypt. I know he’s a genius, but we’re going to have to get out of this ourselves.”

  “Well, if you keep announcing our arrival by carrying on, perhaps someone else will help us. They must have heard us in Arabia, or whatever the next country over is.”

  “So, what do we do to get back? How do you undo what you just did?”

  “Are we really in Egypt?” She fanned herself with her hat and I pulled it out of her hand and plunked it back on her head.

  “Don’t waste energy.” I pointed to a ruined mound in the distance with a few standing columns. “That’s not Palm Springs.”

  “Okay, okay.” Petti took a few deep breaths and nodded. “I can do this. I’ll just reverse the whole Tuthmosis thing.”

  “Reverse it? How do you reverse ‘King so and so built this thing for Ra’?”

  She tapped at her lips and I saw real fear take hold. “I don’t know. Oh, Fen, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it would pull you in, please believe me. You grabbed my wrist and…”

  “I was there, Petti, I remember. Let’s not review. Time to move on, and figure out a way to save our asses.” And that was going to fall on me, because my traveling partner was about as impractical a woman as I’d ever met. Wait for Screw to build a blimp, indeed.

  I scanned the landscape, hand over my eyes to shield them from the blaring sunlight, before remembering my Punk sunglasses were tucked in my holster. I put them on and double-checked that the pistol was loaded.

  We were pretty much in a bowl of sand, with an opening to one side. Cliffs rose hundreds of feet around us, dotted with scrub, and dark patches that might be caves. A mile away, or perhaps several, hard to tell, was the opening of the bowl, a valley that seemed to go on forever. I knew damned well that Petti wasn’t in shape enough to march through this valley in the worst heat of the day without water. I started to feel a bit woozy myself.

  “You don’t have the faintest clue how to get us back using the scarab, right?”

  “No.”

  “Then we have to find shelter, water, and blankets, or something to build a fire.”

  “A fire! Are you insane? It’s a thousand degrees.”

  “It won’t be tonight. Haven’t you been in a desert before?”

  “No, I have not fucking been in a desert before. I’ve haven’t even been west of the Mississippi.”

  “You still haven’t. Follow me.”

  This I could do. Put a meltdown on hold and face an emergency without blinking. I hadn’t done it when I’d first arrived Steamside, but I had my feet under me now. And Jack wandered through my heart and brain, murmuring that he waited for me, that he missed me, that I needed to come home.

  Even if he didn’t love me, though he’d said so, I sure as hell loved him. And I was going to get his sister back to him, no matter what it took. Of course, I had no idea how to do that. Which made me love Jack more, thinking that he’d felt this way for years, with fifty people counting on him.

  “Wait! We need to leave some marker here, in the sand.”

  “To tip off murderers where the two women can be found, or to let the vultures know where our bodies are?”

  “To let your brother know we’re here. Because he’ll do everything he can to get you back. If he can figure out a way to locate us…” I faltered for a moment. Hadn’t Screw said that Ra members ended up all over the world? Maybe they didn’t automatically come to Egypt. God. “He’ll figure it out. What can we use that he’ll recognize as ours? Let’s see, we need all of our clothing against tonight’s cold. And our hats for the day. Come on, Petti, help me think.”

  “How about this?” She pulled a tiny notebook like the one Jack used out of her silk drawstring bag and a tiny pencil.

  “Good! Write him a note.”

  She pulled her glasses from her vest pocket and sat on the sand to pen our SOS to Jack.

  “Can I see it?”

  “Help yourself.”

  I love you. Fen loves you. If you find this, we were here.

  “That’s it?”

  “What’s left to say?”

  Nothing. I held the note down with a rock, pretty sure no one would ever read it. I shook off the dread and pointed to the cliffs. “I think we might get a little relief up there. Do those dark spots look like caves?”

  “Unfortunately enough, they do.”

  “Not a good time to tell me you have a fear of caves.”

  “Makes more sense than a fear of clowns. Lead on.”

  Slow going didn’t begin to describe it. Our clothes weighed us down, and my muscles ached from the heat and thirst. I worried for Petti—she was tough, but not used to strenuous physical workouts. You had to know, deep inside, that you could push past pain and exhaustion. She didn’t know how strong she could be, so I spent my mental energy propping up her spirits.

  It took an hour to reach the slope of the cliffs, but at least we could rest in blessed shade.

  “We’re not going to have to drink our own urine now or eat snakes, are we?”

  “Not just yet. Maybe tonight. Right now, we have to get up there.” I thumbed at the precipice that hadn’t looked so daunting from a distance.

  Petti squinted and I turned to follow her line of vision. A piece of cloth hung limply in the still air near one of the rock face openings. Was it a marker or an old remnant? I weighed the dangers of our own Goldilocks coming home to find us in his quarters against dying under the sun. If someone used the cave as shelter, there might be water, priority numero uno.

  “Right, that’s where we’re headed.”

  Petti shook her head. “Impossible.”

  “You have to trust me now. I’ve done this a million times.” Not. I’m terrified of heights and had bailed on a date that included rock climbing. The guy had been hot, the date a disaster. “We’ll zigzag our way across the rocks, so it’s not like going straight up, see? Now someone has already been there, so it’s doable. I’ll lead the way, and all you have to do is put your feet exactly where I do.”

  “No.”

  I glared at her. “I’m going to save your fucking life, whether you want me to or not. Take a deep breath.”

  “No.”

  I hated to pull it out, but it was my only card. “You owe me for bringing us here. Hell, you owe me for bringing me Steamside.”

  “I liked it better when you were a TAT.”

  “Trust me; I’m a lot more useful to you now. Here we go. Then we can sit in shade, hopefully eat and drink, and rest.”

  Unless someone marked the cave decades earlier.

  It wasn’t as bad a climb as I feared, and despite a few treacherous spots where loose rock made us slide a few feet, we did well. I coached Petti on with encouragement, but she got the hang of it and toward
the end, waved me off as if I were annoying her. My nerves didn’t set in until we were several yards from the opening. The marker, a kerchief tied to a walking stick, seemed fresh.

  “Hello the cave!” I cupped my hands and repeated my call.

  “Hello the cave?”

  “I think it’s the way you call to Normals in this kind of situation. I saw it on Masterpiece Theater once,” I whispered. “Remember, we’re in Normal.”

  “Shouldn’t we have put together a story of why we’re here then?”

  Shit. Of course. Two women wandering the Egyptian desert, one of them with a pistol. “We’re tourists; we wandered off and got lost.”

  “Anyone home?” Anyone who isn’t a fugitive living in the desert, or a gang of thugs, or an insane religious sect?

  “Do you speak Arabic? It just occurred to me that we might run into an Egyptian.”

  “Ya think? I know how to order Mexican food with a good accent.”

  “God, we’re screwed.”

  “It doesn’t seem like anyone is home. Let me go first.”

  Petti rolled her eyes as if to say she hadn’t intended to fight me for first dibs on the cave.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the enclosure that was a bit smaller than our mess hall. The cool musty air carried odors of cooked meat. I glanced around to ensure no one was home.

  “Petti, it’s safe!” I called. She ducked in the entrance and plopped down onto the cave floor. Please God, let there be water. My nose and throat burned from the sand and dust inside the cave, and my lips had started to crack from exposure.

  Now I could see the whole area, I scrambled to a pile of cloth and jugs against the cave wall. One earthenware jug felt cool to the touch and I wrestled the cork from the top, stuck my finger in, and put it to my mouth. An empty flask lay on the ground nearby and I balanced the jug between my legs as I struggled to pour water into the flask. A little spilled, and I prayed the owner would forgive me. I could barely forgive myself.

  I ran to Petti and put the flask to her lips. She didn’t ask if the water was good—we both knew it didn’t matter. Sun or water—pick your poison.