Steamlust

by Kristina Wright

  If I confided in anyone, it would be Ho Ming. We never talked much, but after two years we were as good friends as could be managed in the circumstances. We worked well together, both of us being women dressing like men, though Ho Ming could pass so well that even I thought of her as “he,” while I made no pretense of being anything I wasn’t. Those who call me “Ruby Lou’s boy” do it with a grin and often a leer, showing they aren’t deceived a bit by my trousers and shirt and short pale hair. I don’t mind what they call me. I’ve always been nobody’s but my own.

  Miss Lily had given me a letter of introduction to Ruby Lou, who had taken me in and given me work as a sort of secretary and assistant. If I expressed my appreciation to her in other ways now and then, that was my own business. Ho Ming did more of the heavy chores and security work. She came from the north of China and was bigger and taller than most Chinamen in California, and would toss a drunken troublemaker out the door with secret moves that nobody else could ever quite figure out. Just as Ruby Lou’s influential notoriety protected me from insults that might have come my way, it shielded Ho Ming from much of the ill will against Chinese immigrants so widespread in the area.

  That night the professor came to Ruby Lou’s and headed right for me. I was keeping an eye on incoming patrons, making sure they weren’t already too drunk. I didn’t look around to see if that deceitful lecturer had come along; the way his dirigible had been heading, by now he’d landed somewhere in Sonoma.

  “What was the name of that quack lecturer on flying machines?” I asked the professor. “Miklos…something? I never quite caught it.”

  “Maddy, my dear, would I take you to quack lectures?” he objected. “Never! Miklos Karvaly is no quack, but a man ahead of his time!”

  I watched him sidelong, trying to figure whether he knew more than he let on. “Sounds foreign.”

  “Hungarian, yes,” he said. “Though I believe he was raised in Los Angeles. Cousin to the Haraszthy family. They do think he’s somewhat on the wild side, I will admit.”

  “Ah,” I said. “The wine people. That would explain why he was heading up toward Sonoma.”

  The professor just looked puzzled at that and swiftly changed the subject to the upcoming event with Mr. Mark Twain at the Bohemian Club, which was so like him that I couldn’t justifiably find it suspicious.

  Some folks call me the professor’s boy, instead of Ruby Lou’s, with an extra snide round of leering, and I don’t deny that he may entertain that fantasy himself at times. But he’s been good to me, and if I repay him now and then with such mild pleasures as he’s able to manage, that’s my own business, too. My scant education has been expanded by his conversation and the books he’s lent me and the lectures and symposiums we’ve attended together, often in places where no acknowledged woman would be admitted.

  Just now, though, I didn’t want any further conversation with him, for fear of saying too much. He drifted off to exchange some words with Ho Ming, as he often did to practice speaking the Mandarin Chinese language. The surprising part was that Ho Ming spoke back to him with uncharacteristic volubility.

  Next morning was clear and fine. I took the wagon to purchase more tanks of coal gas for flying, and all the way from the Tenderloin to the coal plant at Potrero Point and back I was pondering what to do if Mr. Miklos-lying-Karvaly didn’t come back soon to face up to my questions. The fact that my image of such an interrogation involved him being tied to a great cogwheel was just a bit of private entertainment.

  I needn’t have worried. Miklos was right there in front of Ruby Lou’s stable, and as Ho Ming stepped up to unload a tank, he hefted one onto his own broad shoulder with no regard to his tailor-made coat. Ho Ming muttered something to him as he passed, and he muttered something back in Chinese, while I sat there in the wagon stewing in silent irritation that he knew both French and Chinese. Not that it mattered a whit, but I had a strong disinclination to feel at a disadvantage to him in any way.

  With only two tanks left, Miklos came to stand by me. “Miss Brown…Maddy?…do you expect to be needing these to fly today? With such fine weather?”

  I looked at him with what I hoped was a steely gaze. He did seem a bit embarrassed, or penitent, or maybe even shy.

  He tried again. “I must apologize for our near-collision yesterday. I had no notion you’d be flying in such fog, but I should have steered clear of your launch site from the start. I hope you weren’t too greatly frightened.”

  “Frightened?” I paused to keep my voice from rising to a shrill squeal. “Not frightened, furious! Don’t we have something more to discuss than your blundering? Something you hadn’t seen fit to mention to a lowly balloon pilot who happens to be merely female?”

  I saw I’d gone too far when he smothered a smile. “Ma’am, I would never think of a balloon pilot as lowly, or any woman as ‘merely’ female. Someone who can manage being both at once is truly awe inspiring.”

  That was something, however insincere, but not enough to win forgiveness. I pretended to ignore it. “As to making an ascent today, I wouldn’t expect to find paying passengers this early in the season, and in midweek. On Sundays enough folks ride the streetcar out to the park to improve my chances, but we generally don’t see weather this fine until May or June, and I don’t count on it even then.”

  “But you’ll have a paying passenger,” Miklos said, “if you’ll take me. And we’ll have a chance then to discuss all those other matters.”

  I pretended to consider. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have the Prairie Lily on view, getting folks thinking about going up some other day. I’ll take you up for half an hour or so.”

  “I was thinking more of a regular flight, right across the Bay to Oakland. I’ve even brought a luncheon to share.” Miklos gestured toward a wicker hamper on the curbside. “But only if you think the wind’s right for the trip.”

  I figured this was some sort of challenge, so I named him a high price, more than enough to cover bringing the Prairie Lily back over on the ferry, and he paid it right out. I resolved to save his cash and thrust it back at him some day for a flight in his far grander vessel.

  Golden Gate Park had been only sand dunes before the city had greened it up. Through Ruby Lou’s influence with city councilmen, I’d been granted a launch base near enough to the horticultural gardens that most folks would pass by at one time or another, and tethered rides in a hot air balloon became a fashionable enough adventure that what I could earn in good weather got me through the harsh times.

  Miklos acted as crew along with Ho Ming and asked enough questions to nearly persuade me that his education in flight had skipped the finer points of hot air inflation. The look on his face when the Prairie Lily stood suddenly upright, inflated to positive buoyancy, reminded me of just the way I’d felt the first time I’d seen it happen. So did his expression as we rose gently from the ground.

  “I won’t be sure about the wind direction until we’ve got some altitude,” I said, working the gas flow to keep a slow, steady ascent. “If I have any doubts I’ll put us down along the Embarcadero.” I kept a keen eye on the drift of smoke or steam from chimneys, the flight of seagulls, and, once we were high enough, the wave patterns on the surface of the bay. Air currents could be different at different elevations, and change as the sun heated land and water.

  “We’ll do it!” I called over the roar of the burner, as I poured enough heat into the air bag to take us abruptly higher. Miklos grinned like a schoolboy. I smiled back, glad to be sharing the joy of flight with someone who understood, and nearly forgot my grudge against him.

  At my chosen altitude I turned down the burner. We soared along steadily in the near-silence that only comes with traveling with the wind instead of battling it. I leaned over the rim of the gondola to watch the waves immediately below us, then turned suddenly to ask Miklos some serious questions about the structure of his airship. It seemed best to get some solid information before raising the issue of secrecy.

>   “Do you use a single gasbag within a rigid framework?”

  Miklos raised his head with a jerk. He’d been staring at me, not at my face, but well below.

  “What is it?” I looked down to see if something was wrong. I’d dressed warmly, with long johns under my denim trousers, but it’s true that Levi Strauss and Co. doesn’t cut their work pants to fit the female form, and slim though I am they’re a bit snug in the seat, especially when I lean over as I’d just done. “What? Have you got some complaint about my choice of clothing?” My tone made it clear that he’d danged well better not.

  “No! Just the contrary!” His face above the beard reddened, and he looked flustered to an astonishing degree for someone generally so self-possessed. “But…oh, you were asking about the rigid framework. Yes, and in larger machines, we—”

  I broke in coldly. “Let that wait. I’m the pilot in this craft, and I won’t be made game of. Apologize for your rude staring, or explain yourself.”

  “I do apologize,” he said sincerely. “I was just thinking… well, someone like you would naturally not be pleased to be admired in such a way, but I couldn’t help thinking that if the ladies of this town only realized how becoming trousers can be on a woman, you would start a fashion craze.”

  His face had got even redder. It was hard to be angry at a full-grown man who could blush, and very tempting to see how long I could keep him that way.

  “Why would I not be pleased to be admired?” I had a good notion what his misconception was, and thanked my stars I’d never had the tendency to blush myself. “I’m not some simpering damsel who denies having any parts below the waist.”

  “No, of course not! But it’s known that your opinion of men is…is not quite that of most women.”

  Enough fumbling around the issue. “Plenty of women share my opinion that men are boring and overbearing and a bar to our freedom. That doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate them under the right circumstances. Just because I have some appetite for women doesn’t mean I draw the line at men.”

  He brightened a good deal. “And what circumstances do you prefer?”

  “Well,” I said, to jolt him a bit, “back in Wyoming I made the ranch hands let me tie’em to a fence post, and those who objected at first didn’t seem to mind it much later.” Just one ranch hand, a very young and shy one, but close enough to true.

  “And all this time I thought I’d be better off to forget you if I could!” Miklos looked almost angry, until he flashed the smile that always sets off a spark in me. “So all I needed was a fence post to get tied to!” He pretended to look around our cramped space. “But you don’t seem to have one handy, and I didn’t think to bring any of my own.” He spread his arms wide and gripped the ropes connecting the gondola to the balloon. “Would this do, if I promise to consider myself tied?”

  This was both game and challenge, I saw, though I wasn’t at all sure how one would judge the winner.

  Miss Lily had stood just so, while I worked my way through her opulent delights…but with Miklos spread out at my mercy, all other visions faded. Miss Lily would have understood perfectly.

  “We’ll just see how long you can hold that position,” I said, and took time to check our altitude and assess the balloon’s state of inflation. When I finally moved close enough to press against him I could tell through his expensive broadcloth trousers that he was getting to a considerable state of inflation as well. So, in my way, was I, but it would be easier to keep control of the situation if I didn’t let on.

  “Consider your head tied, as well,” I said sternly when he tried to duck his mouth toward me. “I’m the commander of this ship.” Then I stood on tiptoes with my body rubbing against him, set my hands on his shoulders, and touched my lips very briefly to his before running them across his beard. It felt silky and rough both at once. The white streak covered a scar of some sort, more like a burn than a cut; I stroked it so lightly with my tongue that I could feel him shiver.

  “Good god, Maddy, this is harder to bear without moving than a whipping would be!”

  “Well, I didn’t think to bring my whip, so you’ll just have to put up with whatever I choose to do, but if you fancy something harsher I’ll try to oblige.” I slid my hands inside his jacket and around to his shoulder blades, and gripped hard, which thrust his chest against my breasts. He kept his hold on the ropes but wriggled against me, which I allowed until I was enjoying it very nearly too much for self-control, and leaned back.

  “Enough of that! Stay still!” I ran my hands down his back, noting for future reference that he seemed a bit ticklish about the waist, and dug my fingers into his truly fine, firm buttocks. I’d admired those even when I was watching them travel up Ruby Lou’s gilt staircase trailing that saucy French wench.

  Miklos gasped at every savage squeeze, and jerked, and his trousers seemed fit to burst, but he held on. I worked one hand between his thighs from behind. His muffled groan sounded like the wail of a steam engine.

  With both hands busy, I dropped to my knees and applied my teeth to the situation. Practice with women had made me an expert at buttons. It turned out that trousers and underdrawers had six each, and I needed to switch my grip to his thighs to keep him steady enough for me get them undone before there wouldn’t be any more point to it.

  Just before the final button I glared up at him. “Don’t go thinking I’m kowtowing to you just because I’m down here. One wrong move”—I put some upward pressure on his thighs—“and I can topple you over the edge.”

  “You nearly have already,” he gasped. “Maddy, for god’s sake…”

  “All in good time,” I said, and stood, and turned to adjust the gas flow. We’d been drifting downward too far. I felt his presence behind me like heat from a burner, even though he hadn’t moved, and at that point I wouldn’t have minded if he’d lurched forward to press his urgent cock against me from behind and let it all go, but he held on.

  So it was up to me to turn and come at him, ripping open that last button, grasping the ropes below his hands so I could pull myself upward and mount him. I gripped his hips with my knees, ground my still-clothed crotch against his hardness, and felt my pleasure surge until his rasping cries took me right over the edge with him. Then, at last, he let go, and we both crumpled to the floor of the gondola.

  I recovered first, stood up, and looked out over the Bay. “So,” I said, not wanting to assume anything serious about what we’d just enjoyed, “where’s your preference for a landing? I may not be able to steer the Prairie Lily like your airships, but the air currents here are complex, and I can do tolerably well by moving from one level to another.”

  Miklos stood up, his clothing still in disarray. “Just land anyplace horizontal, and preferably private,” he said, still out of breath. Then, looking down at his open trousers, he added hopefully, “I don’t suppose you can do buttons up the same way they got undone, can you?”

  “I can, but I won’t.” Then, as though it were an afterthought, I added, “Not this time, anyway. Now tell me about your dirigible airship.”

  “What would you think,” Miklos said, feeling out his words carefully, “if next time happened to be up north in Sonoma? You could get all your answers there, and some of them on the way. And you might even decide to be part of something that’s going to change our world.”

  “Miklos, tell me straight out what’s going on. For starters, where did you come from when you nearly hit me?”

  He sighed. “Down the coast, traveling mostly at night and early morning. I set down in Golden Gate Park overnight—there was just enough light from the moon and the gaslights along the edge—and was taking advantage of the morning fog to get as far north as I could without being seen. I’d been fetching some materials from Los Angeles for our main base in Sonoma.”

  I wasn’t so much doubtful as puzzled. “If this is all such a big thing, and so secret, how can you be telling me all this?”

  “It’s about time! Maddy, you migh
t as well know that you’ve been watched by one person or another ever since you came to San Francisco and we saw that we’d have to share the sky with you. I finally persuaded the leaders that you could be trusted; you didn’t tell the professor you’d seen me, and you didn’t tell Ho Ming, and there’s no doubt that we need you. Good pilots are hard to come by. Most of us don’t have half your skill at judging air currents.”

  My mind was whirling, but it grabbed on to one detail. “The professor and Ho Ming knew?”

  “They knew.” He saw my stormy face and rushed on. “Here’s the thing in a nutshell, even if it won’t make much sense at first. We’re building airships, and some day not too far off the skies will be so filled with them that you and I might wish they’d never been built at all, but there’s no holding back progress.”

  I must have looked interested, because he went on at a steadier pace. “The secrecy is partly because we don’t want our methods copied, but even more because our chief inventors and engineers are Chinamen who left their country before they could be imprisoned or killed for the ‘impiety’ of trying to conquer the sky. My uncle got to know and respect some of them who were also stone workers, digging caves in Sonoma for the storage and aging of his wines. Most places, though, they’re still in danger because of willful ignorance and bigotry against all immigrants from China. We’ll get past that, once we get to selling aircraft to European countries where there’s already considerable interest, but it will take time.”

  “Speaking of time,” I said, “we’ll be setting down along the Oakland piers in ten minutes.” And I went about my pilot duties still pondering everything Miklos had told me. And not told me. It was clear enough that he’d flown with me today as a final check on my skills before letting me in on the secret, but I was quite sure my additional skills had come as a very welcome surprise. And just as sure that I wanted to be a part of whatever went on concerning flight.