Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  Nothing happened. Both guns had jammed.

  * * *

  “It isn’t firing,” said Gideon. “Let loose the fireballs.”

  “We need to get closer,” said Maria. “They’ll just bounce off. We need to do some real damage to whatever is controlling it.”

  The giant stood with both arms outstretched, and then it moved, more quickly than Gideon would have guessed, and reached for one of the handful of tall redwood trees that grew sparsely among the stumps of its many former neighbors. Gideon said, “If it thinks it can hide in the trees that is to our advantage, yes? We can set that little copse on fire, cause it more damage?”

  “It isn’t hiding,” said Maria.

  The mechanical man took hold of a wide trunk in both hands and began to sway it, tearing it up by the roots from the dry earth. Then it turned its upper torso, its feet still planted on the hillside, and swung the tree trunk at them. Maria pulled Apep up fast, the dragon rocking as the branches of the tree clipped the underside of the flexible tail. Maria winced.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I won’t tell you where that hurt me.”

  There was a huge crack, this time from behind them, and something whistled past the dragon. Gideon craned to look around. “It’s Aloysius, with that bloody gun on the Skylady III. They’re going to have us down if they’re not careful.”

  Apep banked around again for another run. “It’s a fast learner, whatever it is. Can such a thing exist, a mechanical giant, with independent thought?”

  Maria didn’t look at him. “I exist, Gideon. Am I so very different?”

  “I didn’t mean—” he began, then shouted, “Maria!”

  * * *

  “Can’t you get any closer?” shouted Bent, waving smoke away from the barrel of the Hotchkiss. The dirigible was bucking and swaying, and he couldn’t get a decent bead on the mechanical man.

  He heard a reply but couldn’t make it out. “What? What?”

  Hart appeared on the observation deck. “Miss Fanshawe says to hold your fire. You nearly hit the dragon that last time.”

  “If she’d keep this bloody thing still…,” said Bent.

  “She says the crosswinds are too fierce here, and we need to stay out of reach of the Jap guns. Also, the dragon’s whipping around too much. Leave it, Mr. Bent; we’re causing more harm than good.”

  Bent sighed and leaned on the Hotchkiss. “That’s the story of my life.” He gave a salute, though he knew those in the dragon wouldn’t see it. “Best of luck, Gideon and Maria, looks like it’s all down to you.”

  * * *

  Serizawa cast the tree trunk away from him. Jinzouningen was becoming more fluid in its movements the more he exercised its steel joints and bamboo frame. He had almost gotten lucky and brought down the dragon with the trunk; he doubted whoever was inside the creature would make the same mistake twice. He squinted at the tangle of pipes and hoses above him. What had happened to the guns? He risked a tentative touch on the hydraulic connection; it was red-hot. Perhaps they had just overheated. The dragon was coming around again. Serizawa raised Jinzouningen’s arms and hauled both levers down hard. This time the guns ratcheted into life, the force knocking the giant backward, causing him to toggle the leg levers frantically to keep his balance.

  When Serizawa looked up the dragon was skimming downward toward the trees, its wings immobile. At the last moment it raised its long snout and rolled off to the left, the vast wings flapping into life. He had hurt it. He just had to do better.

  * * *

  As another hail of bullets thudded into the underside of Apep, Maria slumped forward, the dragon spinning away over the trees. Gideon was now beginning to get seriously worried. He had put too much faith in the invulnerability of the dragon. Just, he supposed, as he put too much faith in everything. Perhaps he should have taken a leaf out of Bent’s book: Trust no one and nothing other than yourself.

  But that way, surely, lay only loneliness. And after traveling the world in pursuit of Maria, he was not about to resign himself to that. Nor was he going to allow her to die here in the service of the British government.

  “Did you see?” he asked as Maria recovered, bringing Apep around for another run at the metal giant. “There is a man in there, operating it from its belly. If we can take him out…”

  “Then the thing will fall.” She nodded. She was moving with studied, deliberate motions, as though she had to concentrate more and more effort on keeping her facade of humanity complete. He could hear the cogs and wheels grinding within her when she moved. The giant had already caused her serious damage. They could not afford to allow another salvo to hit.

  She steadied Apep and the wings began to beat, bringing the dragon in low over the darkening land, the giant waiting for them with its arms outstretched.

  * * *

  Akiko held Michi close as they peered from behind the tall, open door of the tower at the battle unfolding on the hillside. Science Officer Morioka stood alongside them, his arms folded across his chest. Around them, men in overalls began to lug guns and small wheeled cannons out of the hangar.

  “You are finally going to send men to help my husband?” said Akiko.

  Morioka glared at her. “These men are going down to the town.”

  She gaped. “What? But that … that thing is going to destroy his machine! It will kill him!”

  Morioka turned back to the battle. “Quite possibly. Jinzouningen was not created to fight this metal flying beast. It was not designed for such a conflict.”

  “Then what is it for?” said Akiko. “Haruki spoke of danger threatening Nyu Edo … what danger could be worse than this?”

  “You will see,” said Morioka. “Your husband has failed us.”

  “My daddy is going to save us!” said Michi angrily, pouting from within the folds of her mother’s laboratory coat. “You don’t say those things about my daddy!”

  “Hush,” said Akiko.

  Morioka looked down at Michi as though she were something unpleasant he had stepped in. He shrugged. “It is true. He has failed us and damned us all.”

  As Akiko turned to watch the soldiers heading down the hill toward the town, she felt her child break out of her grasp. “Michi!” she cried as her daughter ran across the apron toward where Haruki was facing off against the dragon. “Michi, come back!”

  * * *

  Serizawa was in trouble. The leg joints of Jinzouningen had completely seized up, rendering him immobile. The dragon’s fireballs must have burned out the hydraulic pumps. And the furnace below him was getting so hot he thought he might black out. Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes, but he had to keep both hands on the levers that controlled the giant’s guns. The dragon was coming at him, low and fast. One more volley of fireballs and he would be lost. He had to make his next shots count. He would go for the head. Sweat blurred his vision, but not so much that he did not see the tiny figure hurtling out of the hangar, waving and jumping at him.

  His heart sank to his boots.

  Michi.

  * * *

  “I am about to fire,” said Maria shakily. “Gideon, I do not feel too well.…”

  “We can do it,” said Gideon. “You can do it. We’re almost there, Maria. You can … wait!”

  He did not believe what he was seeing at first, but the dot on the hillside quickly resolved itself into the unmistakable form of a tiny child, tearing toward the giant, a woman in a kimono and a flapping white coat giving chase.

  There is a man in there, operating it from its belly. If we can take him out …

  What had he been thinking? There was a man in there. A man in there.

  “His daughter,” said Gideon, and abruptly the warm California evening faded to be replaced by the cool night of Sandsend, the cockpit of Apep transforming around him into the cottage of Yorkshire stone that perched on the hillside, facing the iron-gray sea. He looked out not on the mysterious city of Nyu Edo, the forty-foot
mechanical man about to spit death at them, but at the moonlit ridges of the waves that gently broke on the beach of his home.

  He was filled with the ache of loss, the memory of wondering what had happened to his father, lost in the mysteries of the ocean. He was consumed by the rage he had felt when he learned of Arthur Smith’s terrible end at the claws of the Children of Heqet.

  There was a man in that machine.

  “No,” he said. “Not at the pilot.”

  Maria paused, and glanced around at him. “What?”

  Gideon thought fast. “Shoot around the thing’s feet. Can you do that?”

  Maria shrugged, and her hands played over the artifacts. Apep opened its maw and roared, and Maria put the dragon into a tight barrel roll, aiming a quick burst of fire around the soft hillside on which the mechanical man was perched.

  It opened fire with its arm guns, but it was too late. Maria had undermined the ground it stood on, and the burning earth began to slide and give way. Apep pulled upward, avoiding the volley of bullets, as the giant, seemingly unable to regain its footing, began to topple.

  From above, Gideon watched the giant collapse in a cloud of dust. The woman held the child back some distance away. The man inside might still be dead, but he would have more chance than if they’d boiled him alive.

  “Maria, take us down,” he said wearily.

  She nodded, the dragon descending in a lazy spiral, then keeled forward, her head hitting the dashboard as Apep plummeted the last twenty feet and crashed into the hillside.

  27

  THE PRICE OF FAILURE

  Governor Lyle was dancing a merry jig on the observation deck of the Skylady III, waving his stovepipe hat like a maniac as Rowena brought the ’stat in to land as close to the crashed Apep as possible. Springing the hatch on the dragon’s cockpit, Gideon waved to show that he was all right but also that he needed assistance, then he gathered Maria up in his arms.

  The impact of Apep into the hillside had been minimal and Gideon and Maria had been cushioned within the cockpit, so they were unharmed from the crash. But whatever mysterious relationship existed between the clockwork girl and the brass dragon had caused Maria very real and—to Gideon’s eyes—very serious harm. There were tiny tears in the smooth leather skin that covered her metal frame, as though it had been ripped open by minuscule bullets. They exposed the lie of Maria’s humanity, revealing pipes and gears and leaking tubes within her soft, perfect—yet ultimately inhuman—skin.

  Yet, thought Gideon as he stepped down from Apep, casting a glance at the crumpled, smoking remains of the mechanical giant, appearances could be deceiving. He had met more than one man of flesh and blood whose humanity was barely a tenth that of his beloved Maria’s.

  And here was one now.

  “Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith! A tremendous effort!” panted Lyle as he waddled over from the Skylady III, where Rowena, Chantico, and Inez were mooring the anchor ropes to rocks and trees. “Whatever the hell that thing was, it was no match for our dragon.” He gazed admiringly at Apep, curled on the hillside. “What a magnificent beast.”

  Gideon ignored him and laid Maria down on a bed of soft grass. Her eyelids flickered, as though she was asleep and lost in wretched dreams, and that gave him some measure of hope. Her body was clockwork, but her brain was human. As long as that endured, then surely she would be all right…? His hands came away from her slick with thin oil and clear viscous fluid from the torn pipes and tubes that snaked within her. But how much of the machinery was necessary to keep the brain alive and active? He knew so little about her inner workings, really. Despite himself, he smiled. Bent would say that any man felt the same about any woman.

  “Gideon?” It was Rowena, approaching with Bent and the others. Lyle, at last sensing that something was wrong, was hanging back with Jeb Hart. Gideon looked up at her. “It’s Maria … something’s wrong.”

  “You did effing phenomenally up there, lad,” said Bent, brandishing his notebook. “What happened? Did she take a hit?”

  “I’m not sure.…”

  Maria’s eyes flickered again, and she looked briefly at Gideon, smiling. “I feel so very … far away…,” she said softly.

  “Hang on,” he said. “We’ll get you fixed up.”

  “Um, Gideon,” said Bent. “Look.”

  From the tangle of steel and bamboo a man was emerging, helped by the woman Gideon had seen rushing across the hillside. The tiny child, who had been standing some distance away, ran to join them. The pilot was alive, then.

  “He was operating that thing?” asked Bent.

  “Gideon,” said Rowena urgently. “Listen, I need to speak to you.” She lowered her voice. “It’s about Lyle, that letter from London.”

  He held up his hand. “It’ll have to wait a moment, Rowena.” He straightened as the man, supported by the woman Gideon could only assume was his wife, limped away from the fallen giant, toward them. He hailed them. “Hello. My name is Gideon Smith. We are from London.”

  “What are you doing?” hissed Lyle, coming up behind them with Jeb Hart. “You’re fraternizing with the goddamn enemy!”

  The woman scowled at them, and the man held up a placatory hand. He said in halting English, “I am Haruki Serizawa of the Californian Meiji. This is my wife, Akiko, and my daughter, Michi.”

  “How lovely,” said Bent. “Gideon, weren’t you trying to kill each other five minutes ago?”

  “Your weapon is destroyed, Mr. Serizawa,” said Gideon. “I hope you will accept defeat and cease your hostilities toward British interests on the East Coast.”

  Serizawa blinked. “Hostilities? If there have been such things, I have been no part of them. Nor has Jinzouningen.”

  “Jinzouningen?”

  He cast his arm backward. “My creation. It was a weapon of defense, Smith-san.”

  “For God’s sake, Smith, finish him off!” said Lyle. “Or take him prisoner at the very least!”

  “Serizawa!”

  “What now?” said Bent as a tall figure began to hurry toward them from the tall hangar.

  “Science Officer Morioka,” sighed Serizawa. “My superior.”

  The frowning Japanese man stalked to Serizawa and cast his gaze around the others. “British. I will speak in English so the aggressors realize what they have done. They have destroyed Jinzouningen. They have damned us.” He shook his head. “You have failed, Serizawa. I suppose it was too much to ask that you might be equal to your father.”

  “I could hardly have prepared for this…,” he said. “Jinzouningen was not designed to tackle a … a flying dragon.”

  “We aren’t the aggressors,” protested Gideon. “You are!”

  Morioka ignored him. Instead he said to Serizawa, “I told you that the price of failure would be high. You leave me no choice.”

  The older man moved aside his laboratory coat to reveal a short, flat-bladed sword, which he drew and presented, the blade on the palm of his hand, to Serizawa. “Take the tantō.”

  Akiko looked at him, horrified. “You cannot mean … seppuku?”

  “What is going on here?” asked Gideon as Serizawa wearily took the blade.

  “I have failed. I must commit seppuku.”

  Akiko covered her daughter’s ears with her hands. “He means he must disembowel himself. Here, in front of Michi. In front of me.”

  “That’s effing barbaric,” said Bent. “Can’t you just tell him to eff off?”

  Serizawa smiled. “I think I can, but I will be banished from Nyu Edo. My wife and child—”

  “Your wife and child will follow you to the ends of the Earth!” said Akiko angrily. She took the short blade from Serizawa and flung it away from her into the brush. “There is your answer, Science Officer Morioka. Better we renounce the Californian Meiji and Nyu Edo than this.”

  Morioka stared impassively at her. “There is no return from this course of action. You will be disgraced.”

  Akiko spat at him. “We left Japan to start a
new life here. But we are shackled to the old ways. What is the point? We might as well have stayed.”

  Morioka said nothing but turned on his heel and stalked back toward the hangar. Akiko and Serizawa exchanged a glance. “Well,” he said. “I suppose that is that.”

  Gideon put up his hands. “Wait. I have no idea what is going on here but … look, who do I see? Who is in charge in Nyu Edo?” He looked desperately at Bent, then Lyle. “This is supposed to be a bloody war, isn’t it?” He turned back to Serizawa. “You said this metal man of yours was a defense. A defense against what?”

  The alarm wail began to sound again in the deserted town below. Bent tugged Gideon’s sleeve until he turned to face him, then he pointed wordlessly down to the harbor.

  “Yes,” said Serizawa. “A defense against that.”

  * * *

  Against all the odds, she had survived. The first three days had been the worst, her stomach groaning and rumbling with hunger, the muscles in her legs seizing up with the effort of propelling herself forward through the waves, her backbone aching from holding her head above the salty water. Then something had come swimming around, circling her at a distance, closing in, its dark fin slicing through the water, its mouth widening to display rows of pin-sharp teeth.

  It didn’t last five minutes. Her hunger sated, her dominance of this new, wet world assured, she roared into the sky and pushed on, her claws eventually scrabbling on soft sand, pulling her up to a deserted, tiny island where she collapsed in the surf and slept.

  There was no food on the island, but there was a supply of fresh rainwater, pooled in a tiny lagoon fringed with trees. It gave her the impetus to move on, barely hesitating as she waded out until her feet no longer felt the shore and she began to swim again.