The Shadow Conspiracy II

by Phyllis Irene Radford

  “I have business with the Doctor,” I informed Mme McLoughlin as she turned to leave me.

  “Tomorrow,” she said firmly. Then she bustled her stout body out of the room, ushering her daughter before her.

  The girl, Eloisa, held back. “Do you have news to share?” she asked boldly. “Have you seen the latest fashion magazines?”

  “No. I live quietly with my son on the farm. The Methodists are our nearest neighbours and they have no need of fashion or gossip.”

  “Oh.” She frowned and trudged out the door.

  Her mother closed it firmly, granting me privacy.

  For many glorious minutes I lay abed. The brick and soft sheets soothed my tired body and shivering limbs. I listened carefully as the house grew quiet. Soft voices murmured here and there. A servant trod the plank floors, extinguishing whale oil lamps inside. I followed his progress by the diminished light visible beneath the door of my tiny room. The light from torches at the guarded gates, fore and aft of the fort, slipped around the shutters.

  And still I waited. In the coldest and darkest hours of the night, when all but a few guards slept, I heard the unmistakable sigh and hiss of a steam engine.

  Doctor McLoughlin had forbidden steam at his fort, had forbidden steam anywhere in the Columbia Department. Steam — or rather the coal that fuelled steam boilers — fouled the streams where beaver built their dams; beaver that bore the furs that enriched the Company, and, incidentally himself.

  Who would dare violate this law? I knew of only one man who had the authority to countermand McLoughlin.

  With an eye to exploit an occasion for blackmail, I wrapped a blanket around my silk robe and crept out of my room and down the stairs. My clothes were still wet and therefore useless. Mindful of the creaky floorboards I made my way silently to the central hall. The big brass lock on the front door was no match for my hairpin. The hinges, however, let out a screech worthy of an Irish banshee. I scrambled to make my exit and close the green painted door.

  The icy drizzle drove straight for my bones, despite the thick woollen blanket.

  A flare of light and a gush of steam from behind the closed shutters of a workshop in the far corner beneath the guard tower signalled my target. If I had not been awake and out of doors, I wouldn’t have heard it. Sir George must have found a new and better muffler for the engine.

  I lusted after that muffler. To be able to creep up on my prey, to drop out of a concealing cloud without notice, would improve business mightily. My mouth watered and my belly clenched with greed.

  I pressed myself close to the sides of the big house as I made my way toward the workshop. I circumnavigated the courtyard and pressed my ear against the workshop wall beside a shuttered window. The drizzle had ceased and a crescent moon peeked through the thinning clouds. I could see more, but so could the guards at the gates. I clung to the shadows beneath the overhanging roof.

  Warmth crept through the plank walls from the fires and steam within. Dangerous. If the wood hadn’t been saturated by the spring rains, the fires within would have set them ablaze by now.

  Below the hiss and moan of bellows and the clank of iron gears turning, I heard a faint murmur of voices.

  I worked my fingers beneath the shutter and pried it open a crack. The sight of a half-dressed automaton, lying upon a worktable, with a familiar and expertly painted leather face brought a gasp of horror to my lips. The thing was incredibly life-like and a duplicate of Blind Red, so called John McLoughlin, Junior. If his chest hadn’t been opened to reveal a mass of gears, pumps, and wires, I wouldn’t have known him from a real person.

  I turned away, pressing myself against the plank sides of the shed, trying to blend in with the shadows. After a few moments, I dared breathe. No one had heard me, or paid heed if they did. Even muffled, the steam engine within made more noise than I had.

  I dared peek again, preparing myself for the astonishing sight of a replica of a man who could not, should not be here. By all accounts, the good doctor’s son was a reckless young man who had been murdered by his own men while on brigade in the far north.

  Sir George himself, short and portly, dressed in the height of London fashion, bent over a workbench. All of his attention was riveted on an elaborate machine diagram and a pile of lacy gold codex cards for the automaton. Three artisans, wearing the red bonnets of the HBC, laboured over connecting arms to another machine man. I watched them lace leather to metal, mesh gears, and leverage the metal skeleton into a soft body.

  The half-finished metalman opened its glass eyes and looked directly into my own. Its mouth remained half-open. That part of the mechanism would need the properly coded gold card inserted into its body in order to speak, the last operation in its completion.

  Six other nearly completed automatons stood ranked against the far wall, all wearing the same face.

  I could not imagine Dr. John or his wife allowing that face into their presence, if indeed it looked like their oldest son as the half-blind Métis in French Prairie claimed. What twisted game was Sir George Simpson playing?

  There could be only one use for duplicates of a familiar figure: to infiltrate and influence any votes at the Wolf Meetings. Who looked at faces in a large crowd in a smoky and dimly lit room? They’d count hands or listen for the louder voices only.

  I guessed that Sir George must have brought the golden codex cards aboard the express dirigible, probably shipped directly from the Babbage and Lovelace factories. I hadn’t heard that anyone else had perfected the procedure.

  In the back, three identical red-haired Métis metalmen swivelled their heads as one, eyes open and unglazed by cataracts engaging mine. They looked very alive and aware, as an indefinable spark of intelligence glimmered within.

  And yet they made no move to expose my eavesdropping. Sir George and his minions, intent upon their tasks, paid no heed to any of the metalmen. All three red-haired automata opened their mouths at the same time. They all made the same silent threat, mouthing the words: We will stop you.

  I flung myself back against the planking, breathing hard. My heart pounded in my ears.

  I’d heard rumours. Mostly frightening tales told over a bottle of wine late in the fourth watch on a moonless night when darkness pressed against the envelope and the boilers hissed in patterns that mimicked breathing. Easy to imagine the machines had taken on lives of their own...

  I remembered my harrier dragon the last time I’d flown a scouting mission; how it bucked and fought my controls, needing to soar higher, faster, freer than I wanted it to. I remembered the quirky personalities of Mabel and Gertie aboard the White Swan. And I remembered a missive from my sister, warning me of practitioners of dark magic stealing the souls of naïve girls to implant into steam engines.

  Could the tales be more than late-night imaginings?

  Had these machines found souls? And therefore intelligence independent of their codex?

  I gulped back my questions and my fears. I needed information. I shifted my position, peering into the shadowed corners of the room. No sign of Dr. McLoughlin.

  I could not imagine the compassionate and sensible Chief Factor would take a hand in a subversive plot like this. Or in the duplication of his son...unless he had been promised an immortal residence for the dead man’s soul.

  A heavy hand dropped onto my shoulder.

  I choked back a scream.

  “Captain, you need to be away from here,” a woman with a lilting French accent whispered.

  “Madame McLoughlin.”

  “Oui.”

  “How do you know...”

  “My Johnny and I have been expecting you to make yourself known to us for some time.”

  “I have met your Johnny privately several times.”

  She nodded. “We share many observations about those who wander the Columbia Department. Now, I think you know what you must do.” She beckoned me away from the shed to the deeper shadows near the quiet and deserted smithy.

  “Y
our son...?”

  “Does not live. Those things may look like my lost boy, but they are not him.” She pursed her mouth as anger smouldered behind her dark eyes.

  “You do not approve of metalmen?” I asked when we were away from the centre of Sir George’s plot.

  “Never. The metalmen are a menace to the freedom of ordinary people. Of my people, they benefit only the greedy who must flaunt their possessions. Sir George seeks to anger my Johnny into resigning by recreating our boy. Then only Sir George would rule here.” She spat into the ground.

  “Sir George...I’ve heard rumours.”

  “Yes. He wishes to become a king here, with only a nod to the Company as his overlords. He will drive the settlers and the natives both into starvation. Or to war. A war my Johnny would lead against him, for the insult to our son with those things.” Her hands worried the rich taffeta of her skirts. I heard it rustle in the quiet night, almost louder than the muffled engines across the compound.

  “Your husband would fight Sir George?”

  “He must, to retain his honour. But he does not see a way to stop Sir George without seeming a traitor to the Company.”

  “I know a way to shift the balance.” I fingered the purple crystal on its leather thong.

  “Bon. Fashions change. The beaver, he is no longer master of style. The Company must change direction or die. They plant wheat in French Prairie and ship it to Russia. Sir George, he wants more ships, more food for foreigners. Nothing pour les cultivateurs.” I knew she meant the voyageurs who had retired and become farmers.

  “Yes,” I mused. A plan formed in my mind.

  “I’ll launder the robe and return it.”

  “Keep it. C’est une situation donnant donnant.” A gift for a gift.

  Before dawn, Jimmy and I slipped past the guards and out of the fort through some loose and gaping upright logs behind the smithy. I’d donned my calico dress once more, but left off the damnable corset. I had no intention of being seen by anyone who would be shocked by my lack of restraint. I carried the maroon silk robe in a ditty bag.

  Once free of the fort, we stole a canoe and paddled to the eastern tip of the big island where the Willamette drained into the Columbia.

  We waited to light our own fire until smoke arose from the chimneys of settlers. We used rum, gun cotton, and wet wood, to make the smoke from our fire rise in a wide column, flattening this way and that with the competing winds from ocean and gorge, river, and warming land.

  If anyone noticed us, they’d dismiss us as local fishermen.

  Before we’d had a chance to toast and eat a breakfast of purloined bread and eggs, the faint outline of the newly repaired White Swan appeared to the west. We met my ship on the northern shore of the island and were aloft again before the locals had finished feeding their chickens.

  “When is the next Wolf Meeting?” I asked Grimes the moment my bare feet hit the deck.

  “Tomorrow evening. What’s the plan, Captain?” He followed me to my cabin.

  I pulled breeches, shirt, and waistcoat, from my trunk as I spoke. “Call the crew together on the gun deck. All of them. We need consensus before we proceed.”

  He left me to change out of the hideous calico gown. When I strode purposefully — and decently clothed — onto the open space lined with cannon and the butt ends of the three dragons, twenty men and women waited. The five engine crew, with their grease-stained overalls and faces, and with tools poking out of every pocket, shifted their feet uneasily. They knew engines, not the politics of piracy.

  The twelve gunners didn’t care about politics either, as long as they got to shoot something.

  Grimes and the other two dragon pilots had the bright-eyed expressions of children on Christmas morning. They wanted to fly. So did I. But I was the captain. I couldn’t afford to indulge in the soaring freedom only a dragon could offer a human. I had a different job, a more dangerous one.

  I told them what I had seen and what it meant.

  “Automata!” Jimmy spat.

  They muttered among themselves in anger, fear, and dismay.

  I caught and held the gaze of each one of them in turn. Every one of them nodded in response, the fire of a just cause lighting their eyes.

  “Sir George needs more ships, sea and air, to make good on his deal to send wheat to Russia. He’ll confiscate every independent vessel he can find, including the White Swan. He’ll make slaves of the valley farmers and destroy us. If we fight him and lose, he’ll murder us and them, one and all. He’s got metalmen to do the work. Metalmen who have no will.” I let that statement echo against the bulkheads. “How many of you did I rescue from Chinese or Turkish slavers? How many of you send money to buy the freedom of your loved ones?”

  “How many of you are tired of pirating and want to buy land in the valley?” Jimmy asked quietly.

  I reared my head up. Unspoken questions passed between us. Few pirates lived long enough to retire. Few men with dreams of farms chose the pirate way of life.

  But my crew?

  I wanted the best for them. We were family, after all. Many of us had been together for twenty years or more. I’d taken Jimmy on as a cabin boy when he was only ten — after rescuing him from slavery. He’d lost his entire family to privations imposed upon them by Chinese masters. I’d never asked him what he wanted when he grew up.

  I guess now I knew.

  “Are you willing to fight for your dreams, Jimmy?”

  He nodded.

  “And the rest of you? You have dreams, too. You know in your hearts that men like Sir George kill dreams. For you and for the settlers. I say we take a stand here. We stop men like Sir George from taking our dreams. Are all of you with me?”

  “Aye, Captain!” Jimmy said.

  “Aye aye, Captain!” Grimes echoed.

  “Aye aye, Captain!” the crew joined in.

  I loosed our undulating battle cry. They picked it up and shouted it with rousing determination until the hull vibrated in rhythm with our song.

  I turned and exited decisively, my boot heels catching and echoing our chant.

  I waited until dusk masked the near-silent descent of The White Swan.

  A fine night for pirating, with a half moon to guide us and no rain to impede us.

  An ISSLP cruiser landed across the river only half an hour after us. They came furtively from the west with muffled engines. I’d not have known they’d come if I hadn’t been looking for them with enhanced magnifiers over my goggles. They shipped a dozen men (automata was my guess, considering what I’d seen in the shed two nights ago) by canoe to the town boat landing.

  Only twelve. Twelve additional votes against formation of a local government independent of the Company. Did Doc Newell have enough supporters to carry his vote over the newcomers?

  The men of French Prairie wound their way by ones and twos from their homes through the streets of the town. At each intersection, their numbers increased. Many of the additions walked jerkily, without grace, like sailors too long at sea suddenly dumped on land. Or automata that had not yet learned smoothness.

  I counted and recounted the men as they gathered at the home of William Gray on the ridge above the boat landing. They shifted and moved too frequently for me or anyone else to get an accurate count. Sir George must have planned on confusion to carry the vote against the settlers.

  Time to move in and even the odds.

  Grimes and six of our best fighting men scrambled over the quarterdeck. I led Jimmy and five others — charming talkers rather than fighters — over the starboard side just aft of the gangplank portal.

  The Kinematic Galvatron vibrated with contained energy within the cradle of my arms. The steam chamber felt hot through my leather gauntlets. Not until I reached the ground did I disconnect the steam hose. I loosed the purple Yuenon crystal from the slip knot on its thong, holding it ready to slip into The Gonne. When the time was right. Not yet. Not until I had a target in my sights.

  “How many me
n have gathered?” I whispered to Jimmy as we trod softly across the meadow.

  “Hard to say. At least a hundred.” He peered through the night lens of his telescope. “They’re spilling out of the house into the yard. Lots of knotted fists and waving arms.” We heard the anger in their voices from half a mile distance. Jimmy bit his lip, but kept his eye trained on our target.

  “Halt!” a strange voice called into the night. It sounded odd, tinny, half-strangled.

  Cautiously we froze in place, each of us scanning a prearranged section of the ground around us.

  Silvery moonlight glinted off half a dozen rifle barrels and revealed the outlines of an equal number of men. They stood widely spaced in a semi-circle between us and the meeting.

  A whisper of sound to my left told me that Grimes and his men had circled behind our opponents. I needed them to continue on to the meeting, to identify interlopers and remove them.

  “Who are you to question me?” I shifted The Gonne to the ready.

  “You have no invitation,” one of the men said with little inflection.

  A light breeze pushed at his hat. I caught glimpses of hollow cheeks above a shaved face. The shape of the chin and the rigid spine told me that I face a John Junior replica.

  “Sorry. Didn’t know we needed permission,” I said, slipping the crystal into place and easing the muzzle toward him. A satisfying hum vibrated against my hands.

  “Your weapons are useless against me and my kind,” he stated. “But ours will rip your flesh from the bone.” He raised his rifle.