Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3)

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “But the organic elements of yours, how could they be immortal?”

  “They are not immoral. They do decay, though slowly, I suppose. Uncle Lombard constructed a system whereby our human parts are refreshed with a mix of carbon and electric currents. I have lived through many families, Captain. In my first adoption, cousins of my mother, I was treated as a child, and over time, as one family more distant in relation took me after another, I was handled in different ways: as a baby, a servant, a pet, and even some kind of coat rack providing amusement at parties.”

  “What happened when they came to terminate you?” Buckle asked. “How did you escape?”

  Penny paused as if considering her answer carefully. “At the end I lived with a nice family and they had a little boy. His name was Hallas and I was something of a nanny to him. We were related. He was a descendant of my original family. He was six years old when we heard of the other living machines malfunctioning in such horrible ways, killing people. Fourteen of us, fourteen of the nineteen metal children, fell apart within three months of each other, as if we had all been intentionally set with the same biological expiry mechanism.”

  She turned her head and looked at the viewing window. Buckle heard a sigh, a very human sigh, pass from her metal lips. The neck rotated and she looked at him again. “I was once comforted by the presence of water. But no more. There were leaks in the Pontus dome, small ones that gradually grew larger and larger over the decades we were locked inside. We could not repair the cracks. We did not know how. I remember, I remember shutting myself down just so I would not have to listen to that sound, that sound of the water trickling down the inside of the dome, every day increasing ever so slightly. Tarquinus Lombard had not informed us that our metal bodies were equipped to survive submersion. We assumed that if the dome failed we would drown. It was awful, shutting down to wait to drown.”

  “I am sorry that you had to go through that,” Buckle said. “Losing your family. Everything.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” Penny said, her eyes glowing a touch brighter, the hum of her engine rising a chord higher. “I am sound, Captain. I am not about to malfunction. I shall warn you if ever I sense my mind, my control, slipping away.”

  “I trust that you shall, Penny Dreadful.”

  Penny’s glow pulsed as if she was well reassured. “Hallas, the little boy—when the senate ordered all living machines be taken to the foundries for immediate destruction—that little boy made me promise to him that I would run, that I would escape, that I would live. I promised him. I hugged him and slipped away. I climbed into the ventilation shafts and exited through an exhaust tube. I walked on the ocean floor for, well, for what seemed like a lifetime. I did not know where I was, nor where I was heading. I eventually hit a place where the sea floor rose up and kept rising until it broke the surface of the sea. I had arrived at the coast. I remained in hiding after that.”

  “What of the other living machine who escaped?”

  “I know not who the other survivor was though I suspect it was a boy named Cassius,” Penny replied thoughtfully. “He was always the smartest of us, and our leader, in a way.”

  Penny sighed and sniffed, signaling she was done telling whatever part of her story she was willing to tell.

  “Thank you for telling me this,” Buckle said. “One day I do very much wish to hear you tell of your adventures afterwards.”

  “There were no adventures afterwards, Captain. Just running. Just hiding. Just having nowhere to belong. I cannot say as I blame Atlantis for wanting to destroy us, if the stories of the horrors committed by my companions so long ago are true.”

  Buckle looked at Penny’s metal face. He still had a difficult time believing there was a human child behind it. Surely there was very little human residue left. And where had she been for the last one hundred and seventy-four years? “If you were under an execution order, why did you come back to Atlantis with us?” he asked.

  Penny lifted her hand to her face and rubbed her cheek, absentmindedly, in the fashion a human might do. But what kind of itch might copper skin have? Buckle wondered if the familiar movements were part of the machine’s attempt to appear humanlike or if they were the mouldering scraps of a human brain telling the fingers to wander the way they once did when they were flesh and blood. He heard the cogs gently turning inside Penny’s metal skull, supporting the old remnants of her human brain. She smelled like hot metal because her insides were hot metal. “Because you gave me a home. Because you needed me, Captain.”

  Buckle nodded. She was loyal, though she had not proven much help in finding the underwater city. More of an enthusiastic disher of red herrings, to be accurate. An enthusiastic disher of red herrings who, rather than being perturbed when her suggestions failed, readily offered another with promises of certain success, even though those instructions led them nowhere as well. He was certain her shamblings were well intentioned but he also worried they might be a sign of her impending mental collapse. He felt sorry for the child. He wondered, for a fleeting instant, if she now considered him her father, but that seemed an idea too weird to entertain. “You could have told me what awaited you here.”

  “It does not matter,” Penny replied. “I wanted to see Atlantis again. Now you should get some sleep, Captain. I shall stand watch.”

  “Yes,” Buckle said; though he knew that he would be unable to sleep, he needed to try. He was tired, emotionally drained, and lying down would at least provide some measure of rest, even if his brain refused to stop spinning. He stood, stretched and walked to the chamber basin where he splashed cold water on his face.

  “I hope Sabrina returns soon,” Penny said. “I worry about her being alone in the presence of the Founders.”

  “As do I,” Buckle answered as he dried his skin with a towel. He considered pouring himself a glass of rum from a bottle the Atlanteans had provided but he was too tired to do the work required to uncork it. He sat on the chaise lounge where he would try to fall asleep and fail, considered and rejected the idea of taking a shot at the rum bottle again, and rubbed his face with his hands. Already he had to fight the urge to jump up and pace. He was jealous of Welly, always ready to slumber, snoring softly on his lounge.

  The Atlanteans were going to fold. Buckle was certain of it. For all of their blustering and promises they were going to cut some kind of deal with the Founders.

  But there was nothing Buckle could do for it now. He forced himself to lay back and rest his head on the pillow. The chaise lounge was soft. He crossed his legs, adjusted his scabbard so it rested neatly alongside his hip, folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the dark lines of the luminiferous tubes on the ceiling.

  In his peripheral vision Buckle caught the glimmer of Penny’s two yellow eyes. She had moved into the area of the secret hatch, her manacle chains swinging lightly in the shadows. He scratched his chin through his beard, which seemed to be getting thicker. Was Penny as dangerous as the Atlanteans had warned? He wanted to comfort her, but what was she? The last of the plague children, the Pontus children, a will-o-the-wisp essence of a child in the armored body of a machine, an unknown, a frantically designed hybrid in a state of advanced mental deterioration.

  And now she watched over him as he slept.

  What was Buckle to do? Shut her off? She had stood with them against the Guardians, fought to protect the group. He wasn’t going to do anything about it now. He felt better having her there.

  The main door opened, spilling light from the passageway as Sabrina entered. An Atlantean guard shut the hatch behind her, cutting off the illumination. Sabrina paused, most likely allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark chamber.

  “Good evening, Lieutenant,” Penny said.

  “Good evening, Penny,” Sabrina whispered.

  “How did it go?” Buckle asked, sitting up.

  “The Founders offered nothing but ultimatums,” Sabrina replied. “My sister offered nothing at all. That is the long and short of it.
Nothing more.”

  “Unfortunate,” Buckle replied. He wasn’t surprised but still he felt disappointed.

  “Welly is asleep, I see,” Sabrina said. Buckle could sense her smile as she spoke. She walked to the washroom door and engaged a small, round glass orb, frosted on the interior, which lit up with a faint, soft aether glow designed to not interfere with sleep. Sabrina entered the washroom and shut the door.

  Sabrina didn’t want to talk about her time with her sister, Buckle knew. Understandable. Buckle hoped to have the opportunity to meet with the Founders himself, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. He thought of the Founders zeppelin officer, the man he had saved from the Bellerophon, lying in the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s infirmary. Buckle had very much hoped to have a conversation with him but, according to surgeon Fogg, the man would die of his wounds without ever regaining consciousness. Pity. It was all such a pity.

  Buckle looked out the viewing portal into the dark ocean. Now and again the Founders submarines slipped past in the murk—they looked like they were closer than they had been before. Buckle laid back and took a deep breath. The air was fresh and salty and sweet, freshly pumped down from the surface, tempered by the musky scent of the ever-present ambergris incense. He considered closing the viewing portal but decided to leave it open.

  Buckle thrust his head against the pillow, trying to invite sleep. He ended up gazing at Penny and wondering if those golden mechanical eyes were the last thing the unfortunate Atlanteans saw before their own beloved automatons tore them to pieces in the night.

  XXXIII

  REFUGIO

  Sabrina stood in a dark room lit only by one lantern. Shafts of sunlight filtered through gaps in the rickety wooden plank ceiling, the same gaps that poured water when it rained. The space was full of crates, some opened, some nailed shut, the dirt floor littered with bits of packing hay. Outside in the filthy street the shopkeepers haggled with customers, donkeys brayed, and children shrieked with laughter. Sabrina heard Sato, the neighboring cobbler, arguing with his wife, their voices barking through the paper-thin walls. The smell of the peppered fish-head soup boiling in the pots of the Kaminski’s leaked in from the other side—the Kaminskis always had their big meal at noon and it was always fish-head soup and black bread.

  There was so little privacy in the slums of Refugio.

  Sabrina clenched her teeth and blocked it all out, blocked out everything but the target in front of her, a crude bull’s-eye she’d painted on a wooden pillar. In her hand she weighed her knife, the leather-bound surface of its handle, the balance of its blade. She stepped forward and whipped her arm at the target, releasing the knife in a spinning whirl. The knife struck the target center and stuck there.

  Sabrina walked to the post and yanked the knife free. Two swords, bonecutters far too expensive for a poor spice seller and his twelve-year-old daughter to possess even as pretenders, hung on the wall, one of them two inches shorter than the other.

  “Sabrina,” Vadim said, poking his head around the doorway leading to the shop. “The Master needs your help.” Vadim was nineteen years of age but cursed with the appearance and thin build of a fifteen-year-old boy; he was the fifth son of the Refugio harbormaster and his apprenticeship under Marter was part of a black market trading agreement. It was obvious, however, that Vadim preferred the get-rich-quick schemes of the street hawkers to the slow plod of a semi-honest living. Easygoing on the surface, Vadim never seemed to mind when Marter couldn’t pay him on time but he also had a greedy streak—Sabrina knew that he coveted both the shop and her, though he would never admit such jealousy. He also had a damaged right arm, one which he always kept sleeved, and he did his fine work and handwriting with his left hand. His normally placid face was tight this afternoon, his eyes bright and darting; he was nervous and Sabrina didn’t like it. He was up to something.

  Sabrina nodded, sheathing the knife into a belt hidden under her tunic. She checked herself in a mirror, tucking her black-dyed hair under her bowler hat before she stepped into the shop.

  Marter, a tall, thin man with a balding head, smiled at Sabrina. In front of Marter stood a portly gentlemen of Asian descent who wanted to look wealthy—his silk cravat and amber-topped walking stick aimed to make that impression—but the elite didn’t shop in the Refugio slums. The Asian man was most likely a userer or a high-end criminal.

  “Dear, please bring me the new shipment of saffron,” Marter asked.

  “I want the pure Oriental spice,” the Asian man grumbled, shoving aside a set of display samplers. “No salt-cut garbage cooked up by the Russians. But if you don’t have saffron I’ll take turmeric.”

  “Pure oriental saffron is expensive,” Marter said gently.

  The portly man huffed. “Does it look like money is a concern for me? I have a forgotten wedding anniversary and an angry wife on my hands. Show me the good stuff.”

  Marter smiled at Sabrina. “Get the Yokuni, then.”

  “Yes, father,” Sabrina replied, ducking into the back room. Marter was not her real father but rather a sort of step-father. He’d been the family tutor at the Crystal Palace and he’d carried Sabrina out of the city on the night of Isambard’s purge. After six months of constant running they’d ended up settling in the trader port of Refugio, a backwater town serving the hinterlands of the Spartak Territory. Refugio had a strange Asiatic-Russian feel to it, in its culture and its people, and it was a rough place.

  Marter and Sabrina had lived in Refugio for three years. It offered a life of hard work and always looking over one’s shoulder. Marter paid half-pennies to the local street urchins, with their eyes and ears always attuned to the narrow, crowded lanes which passed for streets in the slums, to be on the lookout for any authority figures. Refugio had very little by way of local government beyond the organized gangs which controlled specific zones and ran extortion rackets for merchant protection.

  Danger never caused Marter to pause. He’d been a soldier—an officer of the Interior Ministry—before he turned his attention to tutoring, though few traces of his military career were noticeable outside of the erectness of his bearing. In the years since the purge he’d taught Sabrina the arts of self-defense and killing with firearms, swords, daggers, rocks and her bare hands. In her soldier’s education Marter never relented, whether the classroom was a barn in the forests of the Palisades or the dingy back room of their Refugio spice shop. Marter’s lessons were serious business and Sabrina bore plenty of little scars on her forearms and fingers to prove it.

  Marter was ever the protector, ever the provider, and he became well invested in the Refugio underworld though it was a side of his operation he worked hard to conceal from Sabrina. If days passed without customers and they got hungrier and hungrier, she could sense a growing rage in him even though he tried to hide it. In the difficult times Marter would put on his cloak and vanish, sometimes for one night, sometimes for a few days, but every time he returned he had money or food or both.

  Where the treasures came from, Sabrina never asked, and Marter never told her.

  Sabrina located a small crate and carried it out to the counter. Marter opened the lid to reveal a dozen glass vials filled with orange saffron and sealed with black wax, nestled amidst packing wraps. Sabrina remembered eating food spiced with the metallic hay-tasting saffron off of ceramic plates when she had been a small child inside Founders City. Now she ate gruel and questionable meats out of a wooden bowl.

  “How many vials do you wish to purchase?” Marter had asked. They’d paid a small fortune—the last stack of coins in the reserve tin can they kept hidden under the floorboards—on the black market for the case of saffron, surely lifted by sea pirates out of the hold of some unfortunate Oriental Compact trader. It would be nice to turn a profit and have some money, perhaps even to buy a chicken for dinner.

  The Asian man lifted a vial to the light and grimaced at the orange powder. “This is one dozen?” he grunted.

  “One dozen,” Mart
er replied. “Twenty-two apiece or two hundred for the set.”

  The Asian man had plunked the vial on the counter. “If this was purple crocus, even red, I would find the price acceptable. But surely you can’t expect much for this weak chaff. I’ll pay half that.”

  “The price is the price, good sir,” Marter said pleasantly. “And it is a very good price for orange.”

  “One hundred or I walk out of here,” the customer said.

  “Fare thee well, then,” Marter replied.

  The Asian man glared at Marter and then at Sabrina and then back to Marter. “This is unfair, for I have given you too much information,” he huffed. “I slipped up in announcing my anniversary.”

  “Would you like these wrapped?” Marter asked.

  “What would that cost me?” the Asian man sighed, digging in his pocket for his purse. “No.”

  “Vadim, watch the street,” Marter said.

  “Yes,” Vadim said, hurrying to the shop entranceway. It was always good to keep an eye out when coins exchanged hands, for the shysters, the rampmen, and the pistol-toting thieves always seemed to be able to sniff out money on the table, and they hit hard. Marter was careful but he also kept two loaded pistols under the counter.

  The Asian man counted out his money—Founders coins, which were the best currency—and handed them to Marter.

  “Thank you for your patronage, kind sir,” Marter said.