Ganymede (Clockwork Century)

by Cherie Priest

  Briar would not have chosen the station for a romantic walk, but Cly had promised Yaozu a report upon his return, and an accounting of both his money and the supplies it had purchased. So together they ambled, not in any real hurry, down a caged shaft via a mechanical lift, and through passageways that had once been meant to shelter incoming rail cars—which had never arrived, and never would.

  This station, never completed or used for its intended purpose, now served as headquarters for what Briar considered a nefarious criminal empire … or at least the second incarnation thereof. Yaozu might prove better than Minnericht, or he might not. Regardless, to lend credit where it was due, she could be compelled to admit that King Street Station was a surprisingly clean and comfortable place.

  “But that says nothing about the men who keep it that way.”

  “I never said it did,” Cly noted. “It’s nice down here, that’s all. Looks downright civilized—like something you’d find on the outside.”

  “Except for the lack of windows, I’d say you’re right.” Her mask hung off her belt now—affixed to a leather loop she’d stitched in place for the purpose. It dangled against her thigh, tapping her pants as she walked.

  “And Yaozu might not be so bad. In the long run, he’ll be good for this place.”

  “That’s what you think?”

  “Maybe I’m wrong, and you’ll get to say ‘I told you so.’ But he’s helping me stay here. It was his money, mostly, that made the trip possible … and makes it possible to start up the dock I want, there in the fort.” He did not mention that the rest of the money had come from Josephine, who had paid him—good as her word—upon his departure from the delta.

  “Then he’ll want something in return. Men like that, they never give anything away for free.”

  “He’ll get something in return. More commerce. Easier access, coming and going.”

  “Well. I suppose we’ll see.”

  “No one’s asking you to like him.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because I don’t. And I don’t trust him, either.”

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  “More than I ought to,” she said.

  “Good. Then trust me to handle my end of things all right, and to keep the bargain from biting me in the ass later on.”

  “All right. I’ll do that. Whatever it takes.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean, whatever it takes?”

  “I mean, whatever it takes to keep you down here. If all you need is a little bargain with the devil, it’s not the end of the world. Not yet. And anyhow,” she added, with a toss of her hair that was almost girlish, and almost made him laugh, “you’re the one signing in blood, not me.”

  He took her hand so he could hold it while they walked, even though it made him feel big and clumsy to grasp something so small in his oversized fingers. He liked it anyway, how she trusted him, and how she only looked delicate—when he knew for a fact that she was not, and for that matter, had never been any of the things everyone else had assumed.

  He leaned into her like a lion drawing close to a fire. He removed his hand from hers and instead, wrapped it around her shoulder, pulling her against him so he could hold her that way, and be warmed by her.

  She slipped an arm around his waist.

  When they reached the wing where Yaozu lived, Briar extricated herself without any reproach. She said only, “I’ll go back to the vaults, and maybe I’ll see you there in a bit. But I’m not interested in consorting with you-know-who.”

  “Who’s consorting? Good Lord, woman. You make it sound worse than it really is.”

  “Time will tell how bad it really is. Until then, I’ll stick to my concerns, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t. And I’ll be back at the vaults in an hour or two. Is … um. Is Zeke around?”

  She looked at him with a flash of something sharp and bright—a wink of intensity that she didn’t show him for long. She told him, “No, he’s not around. I’ve sent him off to Chinatown with Mercy. His leg’s all but healed up now, and he’s paying her back for stitching him up by helping on her rounds with Dr. Wong.”

  “Helping?”

  “I think he’s sweet on her, and it’s a shame. You can get almost anything down here in the underground, but girls his own age are hard to come by. Mercy doesn’t have ten years on him, so I guess he thinks that’d be all right. Anyway, she’s put him up next door to her father’s place, and I didn’t have to bully him too hard to stay out there with them.”

  “For the night?”

  “For a night or two.” Again, that spark of … invitation? It flashed, and returned to a simmer. “As long as I feel like locking him out. He’s a big boy. He’ll find something to occupy his time.”

  “That’s … good to know.”

  She walked away from him then, and without looking back, she disappeared down the corridor that would take her back into the open areas beneath the streets, and back to the vaults.

  It scrambled his thoughts and made him reconsider how badly he needed to talk to Yaozu, but those reconsiderations were undone when he heard the man’s voice behind him, thereby settling the matter.

  “Captain Cly, I see you’ve returned. I got your telegram. Angeline sent it down a few days ago, though she obviously didn’t bring it herself. You know, I don’t think she likes me much.”

  “She’s … finicky about who she likes.”

  Ignoring the polite deferral, Yaozu said, “Perhaps that’s one more thing I should put on our wish list, when it comes to citywide improvements. A set of taps.”

  “Do you think we can set one up? I don’t know if it’s even possible, down here.”

  Yaozu shrugged, the lines of his clean white outfit shifting and settling again. “I do not yet know what would be required, but I am interested in learning. Is there any chance Houjin would have any idea?”

  “I don’t know. But if you tell him to go find out, he’ll report back within a day or two, putting one together with a couple of tin cans and a drawer full of spoons.”

  “Yes, I hear he’s prone to such improvisations. And how was your excursion down to Texian territory?”

  “It was fine. Brought back all your goodies, and everything on everybody else’s list, too. It weighed us down like crazy, all the things everyone wanted. If we hadn’t been so heavy, we might’ve missed that storm in Denver. But that’s just how it goes.”

  “There’s nothing to be done about the weather,” Yaozu said graciously. “At any rate, if you’re not otherwise occupied, I’d appreciate your company up at the fort. I’ve summoned a handful of men to help with the loading and unloading, but you’re the one who knows what’s what in your cargo bay.”

  Cly echoed his phrasing. “Otherwise occupied? Uh, no. Not right this second. I can take an hour or two to help you get all your gear in order.” That’s what he’d told Briar, after all. An hour or two. Though he determined on the spot that he was not going to hang around and be helpful for even one minute longer than that.

  “Excellent. Walk with me, Captain.”

  “Sure. Listen, there’s something you should know. Maybe you’ll care, and maybe you won’t,” he said, adjusting his pace to walk with the shorter man, whose legs could not comfortably match his long stride. “It’s about the sap, and what it’s doing outside the city.”

  “I already know about the gas, and those Mexicans in Utah.”

  “Sure. But have you heard about the zombis in New Orleans?”

  Seventeen

  Josephine held her breath and aimed.

  She exhaled slowly as the zombi moseyed behind a stack of crates outside the warehouse down at the river’s edge. This was the same warehouse she’d visited once before, following the two Texian officers—and then, of course, she’d been saved from potential disaster by Marie Laveau, may she rest in peace. But Marie could not save her now. Marie was beyond saving anyone anymore, and it was almost as if the zombis knew it.

 
Josephine would not have said it out loud, but it was hard not to notice, and not to wonder at how the riverbanks were more dangerous now than before the Queen had passed on despite Texas’s efforts to the contrary. Patrols ran every night, in three shifts. Texian soldiers and Texian guns picked off the dead men by the score, leaving everyone to wonder just how many of the things, precisely, had been running around all this time.

  Every morning there were more bodies, more corpse-corpses. Some of the zombies were recognized, named, and taken away. Most were not. Most of them were burned down to charred black scraps, and if anything was left, it was buried. Or else, the nasty remnants were dumped into the ocean—where everything eventually rusts, or warps, or is eaten away by carrion-seekers small and large.

  They must be managed now, before they become unmanageable.

  These days, or at least these curfewed nights, Josephine had started lighting candles and praying to no one in particular that it wasn’t already too late.

  Then she’d pick up Little Russia and don unfancy clothes, adding a dark brown cloak. She’d meet her escort downstairs at the door, and he’d flash his badge again and again to see them both past the anxious watchmen who kept the Quarter under lock and key between dusk and dawn.

  Together, they would go down to the river, to the warehouses, to the edges of the territory trawled by the organized boys in brown—with their rolling-crawlers and air support, their well-drilled sharpshooters and lookouts. They worked the fringes as a team, without the tactical advantage of numbers … but between them, they did their part to keep the things contained.

  And to study them, and discuss their theories, their suspicions.

  Tonight, like every night, the warehouse was dark.

  Its huge double doors—built to accommodate ship-repairing cranes and equipment—had rotted and fallen off, and now lay flat and fragmented across the pier, leaving the interior exposed to the elements.

  And to the zombis.

  A pair of them wandered back and forth, wheezing as they shambled, seemingly in search of nothing at all—and, finding nothing, they merely changed their path and searched for nothing once more, in another direction. Josephine could see them from her vantage point atop an old shipping container, upon which she had lain down flat on her belly … all the better to alternately watch the riverbank and its forlorn, collapsing buildings through a spyglass, and over the edge of Little Russia’s barrel. Three other zombis were milling about, lurching and sagging, coughing and hunting.

  She shuddered. She shook her head, braced her elbows, and closed one eye.

  “Be patient,” whispered her companion.

  She scrunched her eyes shut and resisted the urge to hit him. “I know,” she said instead, through gritted teeth. “And I am.”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to get your dander up. I’m just trying to tell you that if you give this one on the left a minute or two, I think it’ll circle back around. You might be able to hit ’em both with one bullet.”

  He was right, and she almost hated him for it—except that the implication of his suggestion was that he believed she was capable of making the kind of shot that could knock down two zombis at once. And that was no small measure of flattery, coming from a Texian.

  She relaxed, very slightly. She returned her attention to the scene before her, illuminated mostly by moonlight flickering off the river, and by two skinny gas lamps that were too far away to do anything but stretch the shadows.

  Josephine said, “I’ll take those two, and you pick off the ones hanging out on the right. If you don’t clip that big one soon, he’s going to topple clean over. That’ll mean a point scored for an alligator, and not for you.”

  “I didn’t realize we were keeping score.”

  “Everybody keeps score, Ranger Korman. Right now, I’m ahead by two. But if you can strike all three of the dead men on your right side, then you’ll only be down by one. I daresay you’ll catch up again, once we move down the block.”

  He made a harrumph noise that wiggled his mustache, and he used his free hand to adjust his hat—lifting the brim up out of the way so he’d have a clearer line of sight. “I think maybe you’ve miscounted.”

  “I think maybe you don’t like the idea of being beat by a woman.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Keep your voice down, Ranger, or neither of us will do any better tonight. Look, here they come around again, like toys on a track. Not a brain left in their heads, I swear to high heaven.” She took another breath, held it in, and exhaled slowly.

  Then, as the zombis staggered into position—that critical point when two were both in the same line of sight—she clenched her jaw and pulled the trigger. Little Russia bucked in her hands, hurtling a bullet between two stacks of industrial crates, straight into the ear of one ambling zombi and out the other … and farther still, to lodge in the forehead of a second dead man right behind it. A big red circle splatted thereupon, and in perfect synchronicity, the two dead men toppled down to the planks. They dropped with a hollow, melodic thunk.

  Before the other three shamblers had a chance to react, Horatio Korman’s revolvers fired—two shots each—and all three went down within a span of as many seconds.

  Both of the lurking shooters, the woman and the Ranger, exhaled happily and sat up. Neither was the type to praise effusively, and neither wanted to heap too much kindness upon the other. Both of them had their reasons. But they exchanged a set of friendly glances, which would’ve surprised anyone who knew either of them.

  Not that anyone knew about these strange dates. No one except Ruthie, who only suspected … and who had obligingly spread a rumor that Josephine Early was being courted by someone in particular, someone who didn’t want anyone knowing about his interest.

  It was practically true.

  Korman said, “Fine. I’m down by one. I’ll catch up to you later. But for now, we’ve already shot down more than I can use in a week of Sundays, and the pier is clean. Let’s watch another minute to be sure, and then I’ve got to get to work. I only have four dry plates on me, so that’s all the photographs I can take.” He sniffed, and pulled out a pouch of tobacco. “Between us, we’ve done the Quarter a favor tonight, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would say that, Ranger. So there’s one more thing we agree on.”

  “If we keep this up, we’ll need more than one hand to add ’em up.”

  “Don’t get your hopes too high. Why didn’t you bring more plates? I thought you were supposed to be researching these things, proving they exist, or whatever it is Austin wants from you.”

  He rolled himself a cigarette and licked the paper to wrap it tight. Then he stuck it in his mouth and talked around it while he answered her question. “For one thing, they’re heavy. For another, they break if I do too much running around. This photography equipment is a goddamn mess. It’s barely worth the trouble, I tell you. I hear there’s a fellow named Eastman who’s working on making something lighter. I hope he hurries up. I look forward to the day I don’t have to tote fifty pounds of spare parts just to get one stinkin’ shot.” He struck a match on the cargo crate beneath his rear end and lit the cigarette.

  “Less trouble than stopping to draw pictures, I expect. You going to keep all that to yourself, or offer a lady a smoke?”

  “By all means.”

  “Hand me the pouch. I’ll roll my own.”

  He passed it over to her and watched as she established her own cigarette. He told her, “I’m not much of an artist. And even if I did take the time to sit around on my spurs, twiddling a pencil around a sheet of paper, everyone would say I’d made it all up. But a photograph—that’s evidence, is what that is.”

  “After a fashion.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means—pardon me, I’ll need a match, thank you—that no one’s believed you so far, despite your photographs.” She inhaled, drawing the smoke deep into her chest and closing her eyes happily. “Your ev
idence doesn’t seem to be working out so well.”

  He argued, “Plenty of people believe me. You believe me. Half of New Orleans believes me, and the other half has its head jammed up its back passage. I know a whole train full of people who believe me—Union soldiers, most of them. I wish to God I knew what they’d told their commanding officers once they got home from Utah.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I can’t get hold of anybody. For one thing, there are political considerations.” He said the last two words with snideness, clearly copying the tone of someone who’d raised them as a concern. “But there’s at least one fellow who I think would have my back, if someone were to fight me on it. A captain by the name of MacGruder. Problem is, he’s been transferred. No one will tell me where he went to, but wherever he is, I bet nobody believes him, either.”

  “Go figure,” she murmured.

  “When I took my leaders back up to the pass at Provo, there was nothing left. Nothing!” he said a little too loudly. “Not a miserable trace of what had occurred, except a shell here and there, or a bullet left lying in the snow. I don’t know who covered it up, but someone, somewhere, did. Someone wants it kept quiet.”

  “But not you.”

  “But not me. And not you either, ain’t that right?”

  “That’s right. Not me either.”

  They smoked together in silence, the woman and the Ranger in civilian clothes, a man who’d still never be mistaken for anything but a Texian. When their cigarettes were nubs too small to hold any longer, they snuffed them out on the roof of the container and spent an awkward span of seconds in silence.

  Finally, Josephine said, “I’m not trying to help Texas. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m not trying to save New Orleans. I guess that makes us about even.”

  “I don’t even trust you.”

  “The feeling’s mutual.”

  She smiled. “It’s just as well. So!” She made a show of standing up and changing the subject as she changed her position. “Do you think it’s safe to go down there and take your pictures? Collect your samples?”