by Jean Rabe
“I’ll not do it.”
“You will . . . and I’ll tell you why.” He smiled wide. “I’m the only one here who knows how to get you back East to your fine, cushy life. All this here could be but a bad memory and a hell of a story to tell your little friends when you sit around a fancy dining table some night back in East City.”
She smiled. “I’ll just find Tico. He’d take me back to the border.” She looked around as if expecting to see him waiting for her.
“Sure, just wave a coin in the air. He’ll find you.”
Her smiled faded as the sheriff forced his moustache into a big frown. “What? No money? Oh that’s right, Doc Ocularius took your traveling cash. And if I’m not mistaken, he’s in the Hard Shine right now, transforming it into little glasses full of libation for him and all his new friends.” As if on cue, a round of laughter bubbled out the batwing doors.
She bit the inside of her mouth. Of course she wanted out of the Spoils, but she also wanted the Doctor’s glasses. If she could get those, her future would be set—no dry academic career for her. She could travel, see Europaia, the Far Orient. The world would be hers. . . .
“Alright. I’ll do it. But first I need a sip of that foul water.”
“Attagirl.” He handed her the leather-covered bottle. “Now here’s what we’ll do. . . .”
In her mind Constance replayed her plan, meager though it was, as she crossed the street to the wagon, swinging the leather-bottle canteen by its strap handle. Up close and even in such grey light as Rankton received, the doctor’s old burrowing mine machine was nothing more than a bent, haggard relic—wood and steel, grimy, worn out, and faded. Like everything in this place.
If this withered, bled-corpse of a country had a face, she thought, then it was certainly this toothless crone of a town. What had the sign at the end of Main Street said? “Rankton, Jewel of Abandonia?” Jewel indeed. Get me those glasses and a ride out of here and I’ll not so much as give it a second thought for the rest of my days.
“Well, little lady! Imagine my surprise at seeing you here.”
Constance froze, then turned and looked up, and there stood Doctor Ocularius on the boardwalk, leaning against a faded wood post. The drunk floozy continued to snore, propped at the base of the next post, wearing nothing but one holey brown sock, a tattered under-dress, and two black eyes beneath small brass spectacles with green lenses.
Doc’s head wobbled enough to tell Constance he was inebriated. He held her satchel by the handles, almost bouncing it against his knees. A short, thin man and an even smaller woman, both wearing clothing so begrimed she didn’t know where skin ended and fabric began, walked right by the doctor, close enough that they nearly brushed his arm—and they paid him no heed. And both wore green-lens eyewear in brass frames.
She waited for them to pass, then Constance strode to him and swung the glass-and-leather water vessel hard by the thong handle and caught the doctor just above his left ear. His dented black hat pinwheeled upward, then dropped to the street. He grunted and sagged to a sitting position on the edge of the boardwalk, his back to the post.
She rummaged in the satchel. “My, but you made a mess of my things, Doctor. Shame on you.”
Doctor Ocularius sat weaving and shaking his head.
She pulled a white shirt from the bag, held it up, sighed, and tore at a hem with her teeth, ripping it in two. With one half she tied his hands together behind the post.
His struggles were weak. “What are you doing? Oh, my head. . . .”
She lashed his feet together with the other half-shirt. “It occurred to me, Doctor, that the bounty on you I would imagine is rather substantial. Not to mention what I can do with those glasses of yours.” She smiled and depressed a small button on a polished copper device she’d retrieved from her bag. It was palm-sized and when the click sounded, it split in two, and she pulled the halves apart. Between them stretched a thin, limp thread. “Why go all the way to the West Edge—if it’s even possible—when you represent all I’ve been searching for.”
The doctor swallowed. “What . . . what is that, my dear?”
“I believe I hinted that I was a recent graduate of the Academy? I fear I may have neglected to mention some of the Chancellor’s last words to us all: ‘Bring me the head of Doctor Ocularius and your future is secure!’ Funny thing at the time. We all laughed. But now I know exactly what he meant.”
She pulled tight the device in her hands and the thin wire glowed a vivid blue. “Yes, this little notion heats water, helps with manicures, oh, and did I mention that it’s also useful in . . . slicing? You see, it cauterizes as it cuts. Makes rather a neat job of it, really.”
The doctor swallowed audibly, straightened against the post. “You think you’re the only one to come after me? Every time a new class graduates, it seems at least one fresh face intends to make a quick name for himself by capturing me.”
She raised the wire up and held it at neck level. “Now, I’ll need my money . . . and those glasses.”
She lowered the device and with the back of one hand patted the worn black fabric of his vest. Then, still watching his dark lenses, she reached in a pocket and pulled out a wad of wrinkled circular paper bills. Coins, green with tarnish, spilled to the dirt at his feet.
“And the glasses,” she said.
“N-no, no, I can’t! They are part of me, you see. Attached directly to me, to my skull, in my eye sockets. They can’t be removed. . . .”
“Masterful, Doctor. But I will have them, one way or another—” She pushed the wire closer to his neck, so close that the hairs of his shaggy whiskers smoked and curled. A sound like steam hissing from a touchy valve rose from his mouth.
“I can’t let you do that, missy!”
Behind her she heard the sheriff’s voice, ragged like wind through shredded metal.
She turned her head. “Why ever not, sheriff? You’re going to do the same thing. . . .”
He didn’t respond, but lurched into the street, his pistol drawn and aimed at her, though it wagged in time with his unsteady gait. His hat was gone and she was shocked to see the split purple welt and spatter of blood that covered the side of Rollicker’s face, an unfortunate by-product of hitting him with the water bottle. He’d dropped as if shot, but she hadn’t thought to take his pistol.
“Yes, but I’m a lawman, and you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”
She snorted. “Sheriff, my reasons are as valid as yours. Perhaps more so, considering I have a future—a brilliant career ahead of me as potentially one of the greater minds of my generation. While you are, well, here. A comparison can hardly be drawn, Sheriff.”
“Badmouth me and Rankton all you want, girly.” Rollicker’s voice was right behind her now. “I’ve heard it all before. I got to go through you to get to him, fine by me. You’re both burrs under my saddle anyway. One shot, two burrs gone.” She heard the throaty click of the ancient gun’s mechanism, felt the barrel of his pistol grazing her ruined blue velvet coat.
Constance’s lips drew tight across her straight, white teeth. She stared at the doctor’s unblinking lenses, the fine, beautiful precision work of the thick brass mechanisms surrounding them. And she also smelled the foul, bitter stink of his boozy breath. She wanted nothing more than a long bath in clean water—and she knew there was only one way to get back to that life. With a slight grunt and a strained smile, she pushed the wire forward.
From the sagging balcony of the Hotel Abandonia across the street, Tico saw the sheriff’s knuckle whiten, and he knew that trigger was but a baby’s breath away from opening the ball.
“In for a penny,” Tico mumbled. He took one step sideways, eyeing the scene in the street below, his boot heel clunking soft on the rotting wood, his spur singing like the whisper of a far-off breeze. Then he shot the sheriff in the back.
It all played out as he expected: the sheriff lurched forward, squeezed his pistol’s trigger, the girl’s pretty blue jacket burst apart,
she pitched forward with her hotwire tool straight into Doc’s throat . . . ssup! Clean as you please, the old goat’s head burned free from his body, teetered for a second on the stump, like a coin dropped on a bartop, then it flopped to the ground.
Tico led his horse from the shadows across the street and stood looking down at the unfortunate trio. Doc, he was sagged against the post, belly-blasted and headless, and the other two, their last blood was bubbling up, soaking into the dust. The sheriff’s trigger finger kept curling into the dirt, reaching for the thing that was no longer there.
The girl whimpered something, her mouth moving like a clockwork toy nearly wound down.
“You talk too much, girl,” said Tico, looking at her.
He rolled a quirley, patted his vest for a scratcher. “Aw hell.” Then he saw the girl’s gadget still gripped in her hands, the blue wire arcing small sparks against the dirt. He stepped on her hand and lifted it free, fiddled with it a moment, and worked it back up to a full glow, hot enough to light his cigarette.
Tico heard a scuffing sound, looked up at the dozen or so drawn faces of the diggers trying not to look at him, the dark green lenses of their spectacles not quite hiding their fear. They advanced, hoping, he knew, for a chance at something of value. He stared until they turned and dragged themselves back inside the Hard Shine to whimper about this day for years to come. From her post, the drunk floozy snorted in her sleep.
Tico snatched up Doc’s head by its greasy knot of hair, stared into its taught, shocked face, and worked a grimy couple of fingers on one of the dials surrounding a lens.
“Well, that’s one way to get ahead.” He blew smoke in the dead man’s face, then dropped the head into the satchel. He plucked the wad of cash from the girl’s hand and stuffed it into his vest pocket.
Then Tico looped the handles of the satchel over his saddle horn, climbed atop the waiting Colonel Saunderston the Third, and spurred the clanking horse east, toward the sunrise.
Edison Kinetic Light & Steam Power
C.A. Verstraete
Christine Verstraete is a Wisconsin author who’s written children’s books, short fiction and non-fiction. Her latest story, “A Night to Forget,” appeared in Timeshares, also from DAW. She says she’d love to go back in time to Tudor England, provided she could avoid the fleas. Visit her website at www.cverstraete.com.
Alva Edison realized her life would never be the same once she acknowledged her brother Thomas’ foolhardy idea.
“It can be done. I know it can,” he told her again.
“Thomas, I keep telling you, remember Mr. Franklin? The founding father never signed the Declaration because he foolishly stood out in a rainstorm, with a kite of all things. And stringing a key on the end? How foolhardy. Anyone with common sense knows that you do not want to be near any metal in a storm. No surprise that he was electrocuted. It was such a tragedy that could have been averted.”
“But his idea was right,” Thomas insisted. “The power of those thunderbolts can be harnessed as a new energy source.”
She snorted at that. “Thomas, dear, next you’ll be saying that thunderbolts can do all kinds of things, like that kooky Dr. Frankenstein and his outlandish, sacrilegious ideas about life and death. They took him off to the sanitarium and not soon enough, I say. Please stop such talk. I do not want to lose my only brother to some ridiculous notion.”
The tears that she squeezed out did their trick, just as she’d hoped. She admired her brother’s talents and his amazing imagination, but her job was to keep him safe, especially now. Things had become more dangerous for inventive types like him since The Puritans came to power in the recent election. She tried to keep Thomas focused on small, low-key projects that were unlikely to cause much interest outside his little circle of friends. Some of them, like his Kinetic Clock-Winder, were useful, too. The little cog-driven instrument reset the clocks at the touch of a button. Ingenious.
He had been working on an interesting device using wax cylinders that supposedly would capture music and voices. He described it well enough, but she heard the note of discontent in his voice.
“I’m sorry to be such a killjoy, brother. I really am. I know you feel stifled, but you must be careful.”
“I know, Alva. The Puritan Party’s win has sent all the inventors underground. But we haven’t given up. We’re biding our time. We feel that things will change the next time around.”
She sighed and went from lamp to lamp, dusting the glass, emptying the drippers, and inserting fresh wicks and cotton before lighting them with the taper she kept for just that use. It was a tedious, laborious process that was usually best done by a servant, but given the times, she thought it best they kept visits from outsiders to a minimum. Except for the weekly visit from the laundress and the cook who brought in their meals, she thought the fewer ears to hear, the better.
Luckily, Thomas disassembled and cleaned the lamps every few days, a job she didn’t care to tackle. She hated the smelly oil and the soot they left, sometimes wishing her brother’s ridiculous, blasphemous ideas were true. Harnessing God’s power, right in their own home? Oh, the hours of toil it could save! Such thoughts she kept to herself, of course.
Alva massaged her sore fingers, the knuckles starting to swell. She’d have to rub some camphor or maybe some of that interesting new product called Bag Balm on her hands and take an aspirin. She might even have one more brandy than usual in the hope something, anything, would help ease the pain. If only . . . No, best not let her thoughts wander. What would her brother say if he knew his arguments were beginning to win her over?
With most of the lamps done downstairs, she decided to finish the job later. She ran the hot water and ducked her aching hands under the warmth, if only for a moment of relief.
Her brother came in and caressed her shoulder, the container of camphor in his hands.
“Alva, here let me. Is it getting worse?”
“It’s fine. Muggy days like today make my fingers ache more. I’ll manage.”
Directing her to a chair, he rubbed in the balm and massaged her fingers, then offered her a warm compress. “This should help.”
The stuffed bag provided a steady stream of warmth. She smiled at him. “It is helping already. But what is this? A new invention?”
He shrugged. “I thought of it watching you make rice for dinner last night. I put some of the uncooked grains in a cloth bag and I found that if I put it on the stove to heat for a few minutes, it offers a portable source of heat that lasts for at least an hour. And it can be used again and again.”
“How clever, thank you.”
“Sister, don’t you see how my other idea could make your life so much easier? Instead of the repeated lighting, cleaning, and relighting, you could flick a lever and have a source of light, ready for your use.”
“Thomas, hush! You can’t let anyone hear this. If you want to help, get up and clean the rest of the lamps for me.”
“I’ll do that, but you know there has to be something to the idea if the Puritans are so against it. One of the leaders, Master Dogood, denounced inventing totally, calling it ‘a tool of the devil.’ Hogwash! Why would God give us an imagination except for it to be used?”
Alva paused and held a hand over her pounding heart. “Thomas! Be careful; the walls may have ears.”
“Don’t worry, I am being careful. But you know that I cannot stop inventing, just like I cannot stop breathing. It’s impossible.”
“I know, dear, I know, but take care.”
Not long after, Alva struggled to her feet and tried to grasp the cane in her crippled hand. She winced at the pain that shot like daggers through her swollen knuckles and gnarled fingers. Her condition’s aching progression made contacting the apothecary for an increased morphine dosage more of a possibility. She’d ignored the doctor’s instructions for fear of becoming too dependent on the elixir, but the steady throbbing prompted a change of heart.
The noise that drifted from the c
ellar did nothing to improve her mood. She muttered under her breath and banged on the floor with her cane. Her eyes filled with tears as the action made her nerve endings sing an unwanted tune.
“Thomas! Keep it quiet down there!”
“Sorry, Alva,” he called. “I’m almost done. Soon, I’ll have something to show you. It’ll make all this work and me hiding in the cellar worthwhile.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure it will. As long as it’s quiet.”
Shaking her head, she sat and slipped on the gloves attached to her brother’s recently created hand-warmer. She spun the dial and listened to the steady click of the cogs falling in place. It was a bulky, ugly contraption, but she couldn’t criticize the outcome. Steady warmth flowed over her fingers. She sighed in relief.
The hours Thomas spent working in secret (on what?) still worried her, especially when the walls shook and puffs of dark, evil smoke billowed upstairs, filling the house with a horrible sulfurous smell.
“Thomas!” She gasped and held a scented handkerchief over her nose. “What are you doing?”
He bounded into the room, gave her a quick hug, and opened the windows in an attempt to clear the air. “Sorry, Alva, sorry, but oh, I am so close! The answer is finally near!” With that, he fled back down the stairs. She uttered a most unlady-like curse and vowed to one day make her way to the cellar. She had to see what monstrosity he’d concocted.
Her brother’s secret project took a backseat to more exciting developments as the next election neared. Like everyone else, Alva devoured the news accounts in the paper, and waited anxiously for her brother to bring home the latest reports and gossip. She thrilled at casting her vote, reveling in the chance to not only mark a ballot for the first time, but to choose candidates who valued freedom of expression and artistic vision.
They toasted the new government with glasses of red wine. The future held promise as the Puritans lost to members of the Inventor’s Party who favored a new direction for the country and renewed societal freedoms.
