Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  He held up a tiny thing between his thumb and forefinger. It glistened in the dying light.

  Gideon said, “Gold. This was all about gold?”

  “Old Lyle did say it takes a lot of effing money to run a city like New York,” said Bent. “And he ain’t getting much help from London. So he decided to go to effing war with the Japanese for the gold that Jeb Hart told him was in the hills. But he couldn’t just go straight in and take the gold; he needed a reason for war. So he cooked up this ninja attack using Chinese criminals from his own prisons, made up this whole bullshit story about a weapon the Japs were making to attack New York—a weapon we’ve just destroyed, which was actually a defense against bloody monsters, by the way—and conned us hook, line, and sinker to do his dirty work for him. And on the side he was selling off the flotsam and jetsam of his city to those buggers in Steamtown until he could get his hands on the gold.”

  “That’s it,” said Lyle. “Hart, take that gun off Smith or shoot the hell out of him.”

  “Yes, Jeb,” said Gideon, locking eyes with Lyle. “Are you going to take this gun off me? Or shoot me? Or maybe you’re going to stop protecting a corrupt criminal who needs to be summarily stripped of his role as Governor of New York and returned to London for trial.”

  There was a heartbeat, then two, then three. Jeb Hart sighed and said, “Gideon, I’m sorry. Lyle is still the Governor of New York, and he’s got more stripes than you. I have to follow orders.”

  Lyle roared with triumph, holding his Derringer above his head and firing into the air. Gideon heard Hart spin the cylinder in the gun that was just a few feet from his head. Was this how it ended? Shot by one of his own compatriots over the criminal deeds of a British governor? Was this really how wrong the world was?

  “Oops,” said Hart. Gideon turned his head a fraction, just in time to see six shiny bullets fall from the chambers in the open cylinder and plummet to the dust. “Gosh, that was darned clumsy of me. Looks like I’m fresh out of bullets.”

  Lyle’s cry of triumph turned to a roar of fury at Hart’s betrayal. Eyes blazing, he strengthened his grip around Bent’s neck and brought the gun down, his finger already tightening on the trigger as he thrust the Derringer to Bent’s temple.

  But Gideon was quicker. In the elongated second that followed, he considered that this was how it must feel for Maria to be at one with a piece of machinery. In her case it was Apep the brass dragon; for him, right at that moment in time, it was Louis Cockayne’s gun. He felt the pearl-inlaid handle, slick with the sweat from his palm, as though it were an extension of his hand. The curve of the trigger sat so snugly against the crook of his forefinger that their atoms mingled, even the very thought of bringing the trigger back acting to move it before the pressure of physical movement did so with satisfying fluidity. The hammer whispered down, oiled to the point that friction was completely nullified: a perfect, pure movement that was almost not of the physical plane.

  And as the hammer struck home with explosive finality, Gideon could have sworn that somewhere in the spaces between each orchestrated movement, Louis Cockayne urged him on.

  Be prepared.

  And if you can’t be prepared …

  Be lucky.

  He couldn’t claim preparation, though perhaps Jeb Hart could. And it wasn’t so much luck as opportunism. The bullet found its mark, right in Edward Lyle’s forehead. It wasn’t clean, but it was quick. Lyle jerked backward, his Derringer flying out of his hand, Bent lunging forward to escape the spray of blood, bone, and brains that geysered out of the gaping black-red cavern where Lyle’s face used to be.

  Perhaps Gideon was finally doing what Louis Cockayne had said he should. Perhaps he was finally being his own man. Maybe, just maybe, he could start writing his own rules for what Rowena called the heroes club.

  Be prepared.

  And if you can’t be prepared …

  Be lucky.

  And if you can’t be lucky …

  Seize the day.

  There was a stunned silence as time twanged back into shape. Lyle sprawled in the dust, a widening pool of blood pouring from the back of his head. Gideon pulled Cockayne’s gun back to his face, breathing in the cordite, and blew the wisp of gun smoke from the barrel.

  “Carpe di-effing-em,” he said.

  “Jesus Christ,” croaked Bent, on all fours and rubbing his jowly neck. “Jesus effing Christ.” He looked up. “You saved my life, Gideon. The effer was going to do for me.”

  Rowena bent down by Lyle. “He’s dead, for sure.”

  Bent hauled himself to his feet and patted his pockets for his tobacco. “Heh, he might have served up a good turkey, but you cooked his goose well and effing proper, Gideon.”

  Gideon turned to Jeb Hart. He said, “Thank you.”

  Hart pulled a bent cigar from his shirt pocket and lit it with a match he struck on his belt buckle. “You just bought yourself a hill of shit, Smith.” He grinned. “Glad I could be of service.”

  “Then we’d better get our stories straight before I go back to London,” said Gideon. “Rowena? I’m sorry. You were trying to tell me about Lyle and the slaves. And Aloysius, too. I should have listened. Made time to listen. It won’t happen again. Being my own man doesn’t mean I have to do everything on my own. I understand that.”

  “Smith-san?” said Serizawa hesitantly.

  Gideon nodded, holstering Louis’s—his—pistol. “Yes. Mr. Serizawa, I would appreciate it if you would start doing what you can for Maria immediately.” He looked over to the Skylady III. “Inez? Chantico? There was mention of a Steamcrawler in the hold?”

  Chantico waved excitedly, and Inez raised her slim sword, dragging her cowl over her head and crying joyously, “La Chupacabras!”

  Gideon allowed himself a thin smile. “Then let’s go and bag us a Tyrannosaurus rex.”

  * * *

  The Steamcrawler chugged down the ramp from the Skylady III’s hold, Inez at the wheel. The armored cover of the vehicle was missing, and it seemed to Gideon that it was pumping out a lot more steam exhaust than a healthy engine should, but he had to admit that they had done a bang-up job repairing the metal tracks. There were two guns—now exposed by the missing carapace—at the front and rear of the cockpit, each fed by a ribbon of ammunition. Whether they would have enough firepower to bring down the tyrannosaur remained to be seen.

  Inez, who insisted on wearing the black cowl, an ensemble to which she had added a black, narrow-brimmed hat with a chain of silver buckles around the crown, smiled. “Chantico repaired the track. Who knew he had an aptitude for things like that? Perhaps he is not so much of an idiot after all.”

  Chantico scowled at her but glowed with pride at the morsel of praise she had thrown him. Bent murmured, “He’s going to have his work cut out with that one, mark my words.”

  Gideon checked the guns Rowena had brought him from the small armory on the ’stat and began to pass them to Chantico to store in the Steamcrawler. It had been agreed that Gideon, Chantico, and Inez would take the vehicle into the Nyu Edo streets and tackle the dinosaur. Jeb Hart, by tacit agreement of them all, had done quite enough; if anyone was going to get into trouble with Walsingham for rank dissent, they decided, it might as well just be Gideon.

  Or, as Bent had said, considering the prone body of Edward Lyle, “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

  It was properly dusk now, and below in Nyu Edo glass balls strung together along the hilly streets began to glow into life.

  “They were my invention,” said Serizawa proudly. “Fully automated. At this time each evening, gas begins to flow into each globe and is lit by a sparking flint.”

  “They’ll help us track the beast.” Gideon nodded, watching patches of the city plunge into darkness, strip by strip, as the dinosaur crashed through the chains of lights.

  “’Ere, Gideon, before you go,” said Bent, plucking his sleeve and taking him to one side. “I just wanted a word.”

  “Quickly
, Aloysius,” said Gideon, but not unkindly.

  Bent nodded. “I just wanted to say … look, you saved my life back there, Gideon. I really thought Lyle was going to kill me. But I know you.… I know what you must be feeling.”

  “Yes,” said Gideon. And Bent was right. Gideon had shot the Governor of New York, and he accepted all the attendant trouble that was going to blow in with that. But more to the point, he had shot a man, in cold blood, right in the head. Eventually he said, “Captain Trigger once said to me that a hero is only as brave as other men, but just for five minutes more.” He smiled crookedly. “It didn’t feel a very brave thing, what I did.”

  “That’s a good thing,” said Bent. “The minute you stop feeling terrible about killing a man, you’re no longer a hero. You’re a villain. You’re going to have to make tough choices in your job, Gideon, and I don’t envy you one bit. But I think you made the right one there. If you hadn’t shot Lyle, he’d have shot me. And God knows how many would have died down there.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Gideon. “Inez? Are we ready to go?”

  “Just feeding the furnace,” she called back. “Two minutes.”

  Gideon took the opportunity to quickly climb aboard the Skylady III. He found Serizawa in the galley, where Maria lay, naked, on the main worktable. Gideon averted his eyes as Akiko and Michi watched from the side.

  “I am sorry I had to shoot that man in front of your daughter,” said Gideon to Akiko.

  She shrugged wearily. “I suppose now that we are cast out into the lawless land we must get used to that sort of thing.”

  “There is a place, quite far from here,” said Gideon. “A new community of people like yourselves. We could perhaps take you there?”

  Akiko smiled. “We will need friends. Thank you.” She looked at her husband and squeezed her daughter tightly. “Our little Pathway. I told you she was well named.” Gideon turned to Serizawa, who was standing, his fingers steepled under his chin, staring at Maria. Unlike Gideon, who regarded Maria as a woman, it was clear Serizawa saw her through an engineer’s eyes, as a particularly complex puzzle.

  “Here,” said Gideon, and placed his hands on either side of Maria’s navel. How he had longed to take her in his arms, to touch her. But not like this. He massaged her stomach until, just as she had shown him on their very first meeting, her torso parted with the slightest click, doors opening on tiny hinges to display her clockwork innards.

  “Fascinating,” breathed Serizawa. “I can see that there are hydraulic pipes that have been severed, and one or two cogs have been smashed.…”

  “You can fix her?” said Gideon.

  “She is very special to you,” said Serizawa. “Important.”

  “Yes,” said Gideon. “She is very special. To me as well as to the country.”

  Serizawa nodded. “Then I will fix her.”

  “Gideon!” called Inez from outside. “We are ready!”

  The little girl, Michi, broke free of her mother’s arms and walked over to Gideon, her face serious.

  “Can you stop the monster, please?” she asked in perfect English.

  Gideon squatted down and ruffled her black hair.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I do.”

  29

  SISTERHOOD

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Gideon. The Steamcrawler was rumbling and shuddering, perched on the crest of a compacted-sand track that led down a steep hill from the complex of warehouses and laboratories toward Nyu Edo.

  Inez opened her mouth to answer, but Chantico got there before her. “Yes,” he said. “We both had a good look at this machine on the flight over. We think we know how to make it go.”

  Inez nodded. “Chantico is right. It needs a lot of coal to feed the furnace and someone to steer it.”

  Gideon sat in the rear of the cockpit, by the two guns that were mounted on the steel carapace. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You are putting yourselves in grave danger. This is not your fight.”

  “It isn’t your fight, either,” said Inez. “You are British. The Japanese are your enemies, yes?”

  Gideon shrugged. “Not really. Not my enemies personally. Besides, it is my fight. I destroyed their only defense against the tyrannosaur. If people die down there, it will be my fault.”

  “This land…,” said Chantico haltingly. He swallowed and tried again. “The Nameless, he said … he said this land is injured. Fractured. It needs healing. I think this is a way for us to help.”

  Gideon nodded. “You are both very brave. You have my thanks.”

  From below, there was a roar. The sky was dark now, and the black patches among the lamp-lit streets marked the progress of the dinosaur. Gideon said, “We should go.”

  Chantico climbed into the space beneath Gideon’s perch. There was coal in the open furnace, already burning with fierce heat. The Steamcrawler pulled against the brakes that held fast its steerable wheels at the front and its long tracks that ran the rest of the length of the vehicle. Inez sat in the sprung driver’s seat and surveyed the leather-covered steering wheel and the array of levers.

  “I think this is the brake—” she began, and the Steamcrawler jerked forward, the tracks spitting dust into a huge cloud behind them, and then began to roll down the hill with a speed that tore Gideon’s breath from his throat.

  Inez raised her gloved fist high above her head, her black hair flowing from beneath her cowl. “La Chupacabras!” she called, as Gideon’s stomach flipped and the Steamcrawler tore into Nyu Edo.

  * * *

  Nyu Edo was all hills, and Gideon was exhausted from holding on to the edge of the cockpit by the time the Steamcrawler had swept at a speed unimaginable for such a heavy metal vehicle down one and up another. Inez whooped and hollered as she dragged the machine around corners, its tracks skidding on the roads. Once the rear of the Steamcrawler smashed into a column holding up a string of gas lamps, and they came crashing down behind them. A small shrine in the middle of the road was plowed through, the stone statuary grinding under their tracks, making Gideon fear they were going to be upended. Periodically, Chantico raised his sweating face from the furnace to gulp fresh air and glance fearfully at the erratic route Inez was taking through the town.

  Once they were in the town, which was eerily devoid of life, it was more difficult to track the tyrannosaur. Gideon begged Inez to stop the Steamcrawler; she did so by hauling on the brake lever, causing the vehicle to skid outward, rear first, into a fence bordering a block of small wooden houses with pagoda roofs.

  Trying to push away the chugging of the steam engine, Gideon clambered up onto the metal shell of the Steamcrawler, listening to the night. A roar suddenly split the air, close enough to make Gideon throw his hands to his ears. Ahead of them was a patch of darkness between two large houses. Gideon held up his hands for quiet, peering into the blackness, just as a small group of men came running from the far right.

  The first of them glanced with puzzlement at the Steamcrawler but urged the rest on. Gideon counted a dozen, all wearing black armor composed of metal scales and plates, joined together by rivets and lengths of silk. They had metal plate helmets with broad neck guards and carried long swords. Gideon searched his memory and came up with a name for the weapon: katana.

  “Samurai,” he said quietly. He had read of them—in World Marvels & Wonders, of course—but never thought to see them.

  Inez stared at the backs of the men as they jogged in formation into the dark street. “They have only swords?”

  “The samurai are fearsome warriors,” said Gideon. “But even so…”

  There was a volley of shouts from the alley, then a terrible, high-pitched scream. The first of the samurai came running out, eyes wide and shining with terror, followed by two more. There was a rhythmic beat of thunder, or an earthquake that shook Nyu Edo, the Steamcrawler rattling as it bounced upon the dry, compacted earth.

  Then the beast stepped out of the shadows. It let the r
agdoll shape of a decapitated samurai fall from its jaws, and roared.

  “My God,” breathed Inez. “I had no idea.…”

  Gideon stared at it. It seemed even more magnificent here among the incongruous roads and streets of civilization than it had in the jungle of the lost island, as thought it had suddenly become the head of a whole new food chain and knew it. The dinosaur threw back its head and roared again, shaking the glass out of the windows of the houses all around them. Then it bent forward, creating a straight line from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail, and turned its huge head—as big as their Steamcrawler—to one side, regarding them curiously.

  “Inez,” Gideon said softly, calmly. She ignored him, transfixed. “Inez.”

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  The tyrannosaur sniffed the air, its yellow eyes staring unblinkingly at them.

  “Does this thing go backward?”

  The dinosaur took a step toward them, crushing the corpse of the samurai and barely noticing. It straightened, towering above the pagoda roofs, then bent forward sharply, its gore-dripping jaws widening.

  “I think so,” she murmured.

  “The guns,” said Gideon. “They are facing backward. I need you to go back as quickly as you can and turn the Steamcrawler around. Can you do that?”

  Inez nodded. The tyrannosaur took another tentative step and lowered its head. It was barely twenty feet from them. Gideon felt its warm, fetid breath wash over him.

  “Quietly … slowly…,” he said.

  Chantico popped up his head. “Why have we stopped? What’s the—”

  The tyrannosaur’s eyes flickered at the sudden movement, and it reared backward.

  “Now!” shouted Gideon.

  Inez slammed one of the levers, and the Steamcrawler lurched … forward, taking them another five feet closer to the dinosaur.

  “Backward!” shrieked Gideon, pushing Chantico’s head back below. “Shovel coal, for God’s sake!”

  The tyrannosaur roared straight at them as Inez found the right lever and the Steamcrawler began, painfully slowly but with gathering speed, to reverse back up the road they had come down. The dinosaur watched them, almost quizzically, for a moment then put its head down and began to follow in huge, thunderous strides.