The Incorruptibles (Book One, Frankenstein Vigilante): Frankenstein Vigilante: The Steampunk Series (Frankenstein Vigilante. The Steampunk Series.)

by Peter Lawrence

  “There’s nothing like that between us,” said Dalton. But there had been once, hadn’t there? Shelley could feel the remaining connection between them.

  “So you’re the Chavalier leader and she’s…”

  “Not a Chavalier,” Dalton interrupted, irritated. “ She rebelled when we were barely teenagers. Didn’t want to be labelled.”

  “Then what is she?”

  “Does she have to be anything?”

  “No – but everyone around here seems to be in some weird gang. Steamers, Daubers, Revoltistas, Dynamistas.”

  “She’s a warrior. And she’s got her own followers.”

  “No name for them?”

  “No name.” Dalton paused. Looked directly at her. No expression. “All women. Mostly like her. They all go their own ways until she needs them to fight.”

  Dalton was surprised by how fond he’d become of Shelley Mary but soon realised that, no matter how much they enjoyed being together, however passionate their sex life, Shelley Mary missed her own life. For the moment, therefore, he tried to keep her from thinking of that old life, showing her all the strange aspects of Harlesdon Marshes, and taking her to the many parties that the various UnderGrunt sects threw, moments of joy and abandon which defied their miserable conditions.

  Tonight’s party was to be thrown by the Daubers, and its theme was sex in all its varieties. Shelley Mary had assembled her costume carefully: a white blouse with sleeves down to her wrists and a collar up to her chin, as modest as could be except that from her waist to her breasts it was cinched in by a black overcorset, buttoned down the front, cut away around her breasts and reaching up over her shoulders. Crisscross leather straps on her lower arms led down to fingerless lace gloves. At her waist, Shelley wore a wide black belt that drooped diagonally to one thigh, to support a silver and black scabbard. The rest of the costume consisted of a flared skirt made of what looked like black ostrich feathers, set off by lace-up high-heeled boots.

  While she was putting herself together, Dalton was meeting with his two lieutenants, Noemi Galindo and Tilden St. Vincent; something to do with a roof collapse back in the further reaches of the tunnels.

  Shelley Mary checked the mirror. She looked breathtaking. Although her outfit had been hand-crafted by Marshian tailors and hosiers, it would have caused a stir at any Topper ball.

  She gasped – barely controlled a cry of fear – as a figure materialised in the mirror behind her. She spun to face it and Paulina Ellamova stepped forward.

  “If you’re looking for Dalton…”

  “I’m not.”

  Paulina had been thinking about Shelley Mary. Beautiful and clever and apparently not lacking courage, even though there’s something hapless about her. As though she’s never quite in control of her own destiny. All in all, it made for an irresistible package.

  “You’ve been on my mind.”

  Shelley Mary took a step back, almost toppling on her high heels, and tried not to show her surprise of betray her own growing excitement.

  “I’d have preferred it if you’d worn something sexy,” said Paulina drily. She looked around. The floor was strewn with bodices and breeches, boots and shoes, the bed piled with blouses and blousons, in a riot of texture and colour. “Dalton must be smitten. He’s not spoiling you for choice.”

  Yet again, Shelley Mary felt undermined. No matter how hard she tried, she seemed to always be on the wrong foot, now seeming to be no more than a kept woman, some kind of play thing.

  Paulina picked up what at first looked like a scrap of lace, but turned out to be a dress. She held it against herself. Very different from the leather, belts, bandoliers and boots she was wearing but Shelley Mary had a sudden vision of Paulina in that scrap of lace and she felt blood rushing.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked, an attempt to distract herself.

  “Mushka.”

  Shelley Mary headed for the cellar and wondered which of the many varieties and strengths she should choose. In the end, she selected an elderberry flavour at 50% proof, a compromise between the modest 35% blend and the devastatingly disorienting 70% proof premium. She picked up two shot glasses and returned to the bedroom.

  There, she found a very different Paulina from the woman she’d only met twice to date. This Paulina’s leathers were strewn on the floor, replaced by the lace scrap. Shelley Mary busied herself pouring the drinks, hands shaking and heart hammering but from the corner of her eye she saw that while the rear of the skirt dropped almost to the ankles, the front was cut away up to the crotch, revealing Paulina’s long, straight legs. She still wore her own military-style thigh boots. In the short time that Shelley Mary had been gone, Paulina had not just changed her clothes but had put her hair up and coloured her lips in a vermilion slash which only emphasized the whiteness and regularity of her teeth.

  “You like?” Paulina said almost coquettishly and then, to Shelley’s immense surprise, executed an expert little twirl, like a model in one of Bonne Gamage’s fashion shows.

  “Yes, it… uh… suits you,” said Shelley Mary. “I had assumed you were a leathers kind of girl – woman.”

  “Needs must,” said Paulina. “You have to dress down when you’re banging heads together. I could hardly pick a fight in this could I?” A flash at the back of Shelley Mary’s mind: how long would it be before Dalton got back from his meeting?

  “Perhaps I could have that mushka now?’ said Paulina, extending a strong, well-manicured hand. Not for the first time Shelley wondered how these underground-people had access to things like manicures and good dentistry.

  “Yes, of course,” she said and proffered one of the shot glasses. But instead of taking it, Paulina rested her hand on Shelley’s fingerless gloves. “I love your gloves. So elegant.”

  A warrior woman who loves fingerless glove?

  Shelley Mary’s throat seemed to dry as Paulina’s hand slowly opened, her fingers gently gripping Shelley Mary’s wrist, then sliding up her arm. “You’re a very beautiful woman.” She pulled Shelley Mary firmly towards her. Shelley Mary felt the warmth of Paulina’s legs pressing against her and the two women sank towards the fur-covered bed.

  oOo

  23

  A SUCCESSION OF KARRIERS landed at the castle, each carrying a message from Alaina. Cerval had no idea how many karriers she had dispatched and how many had survived the journey, but Evangeline was certain that Brutus should have been among them. She could not control the single tear which rolled down her cheek as she realised that loyal, brave creature might be dead.

  “Why would I care about a bird?” she asked Cerval.

  “Because he’s not just a bird,” Cerval replied. “He’s Brutus. He’s a member of the Frankenstein family.” That comment surprised Evangeline because Cerval wasn’t noted for sentimentality. “Besides,” he continued, “he’s not dead.”

  “What? How do you know that? Are you a bird psychic?” She was angry at her own emotional response.

  “Let’s think it through logically.” Evangeline smiled to herself. The way he spoke, grave and older than his real years. “Alaina is still at liberty. Otherwise, she could not have sent the other karriers. If, indeed, she remains free, she will be investigating – ergo, when she completes her investigations, she will need her most reliable karrier to communicate with us. Which is Brutus – and that’s why she has kept him back.”

  “Makes sense.” Thor’s voice came from behind her and Evangeline turned. She had not heard him approach. Like many big men, he was light on his feet.

  “Are you spying on us?” Evangeline asked, then instantly apologised as she saw the hurt in Thor’s face. “Oh, Thor, I’m so sorry!” She flung herself at him and he wrapped his one arm around her.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “we’re all under a lot of pressure.”

  “I can’t take much more,” Evangeline said. “I’ve got to get back to The Smoke! I can’t just stay here sitting on my hands.”

  “No,” sai
d Cerval. “We’re not going back until we know what we’ll be getting into. We have to know whether we remain anonymous, unidentified, or whether the Commission, the Silencios and their allies know who we are. We have to trust Alaina and wait till she contacts us. She will give us an accurate analysis.”

  “And if she doesn’t? If we hear nothing?”

  “Then we’ll know the Silencios have got her. We’ll also know that they know who and where we are.”

  “You mean they’ll give us up?” Evangeline asked indignantly. “No! Ricardo and Alaina would never give us up.”

  “Anyone would give us up eventually – you, me, even Thor, if Pfarrer got hold of us.”

  “Hudspith? The sadist?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then we have to go back! Find them!”

  “No. They’ll hold out for a few days. We need that time.”

  “Sometimes you can be a cold-hearted bastard!” Disgusted with his response, Evangeline turned to go, then exploded. “Bastard!” and she slapped Cerval so hard that he would have fallen had Thor not grabbed him with his one good hand.

  Evangeline stormed off and Thor looked down into his friend’s troubled eyes.

  “Is it true Thor? Am I a cold-hearted bastard?”

  “Yes,” said Thor, “but someone has to be.”

  Ever since the Silencio thugs had told him to find Shelley Mary Ventura, Rupert Gilchrist Bass had been paralyzed by anxiety; to combat it he resorted to ever-greater doses of VitaBeena and Viper Agua, with a few shots of bootleg mushka thrown in. The stimulants did little to kill the anxiety but they did enable him to function, more or less. Not surprisingly, they also heightened his awareness of everything around him. In this state, when he read the YOU CONSUME! WE STARVE! manifesto, he knew, instantly, that Shelley Mary had written it. Whatever he was now, he had once been a journalist, a writer and an editor. He recognized her style and his newspaperman heart filled with pride. She might be a ball-crushing little bitch but she was his ball-crushing little bitch. Then his heart lurched, and he was a little bit sick in his mouth. If he recognized her style, the Silencios might too – and unable to find her they would surely turn to him.

  Spalding MacAtamney was polishing the News Of The Smoke’s brass doors when he heard footsteps. He turned but could see no sign of anyone.

  “Pssssttt!” Spalding, whose hearing wasn’t the best, could not figure out whether the sound was human or a steam heating misfunction, but eventually he saw R. G. Bass’s reflection in the elevator doors and realized the man was beckoning to him. Spalding placed his polishing materials in his cleaning case and approached Bass. R. G. gave him a fat envelope which Spalding took tentatively. He was known to be illiterate and was never trusted with written materials.

  “Look inside!” Bass commanded and Spalding did, puzzled. He saw that the envelope was tightly packed with currency, and when he sampled a note he found it was a 100 korona denomination.

  “They’re all the same,” Bass told the startled concierge. “And they’re all yours.”

  “What do I have to do?” asked Spaulding suspiciously. Whenever Bass gave him cash, procurement was usually involved. Or pay-off. The last time he had acted for the Managing Editor, he’d handed over a similarly stuffed envelope to a pair of sisters who had convinced themselves that Rupert Gilchrist Bass intended to make their careers. Once they discovered he only intended to make them, Spalding had been severely beaten by their brothers, who assumed he was the perpetrator and not just the messenger. He had only been saved by the girls’ intervention, and swore never to pimp for Bass again.

  “Just warn me if anyone you don’t know asks to see me. “

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. Just pick up the AvCom and tell me.”

  Spalding pocketed the cash.

  Doctor Horst Van Der Hudspith was, to use his own odd phrase, as mad as a meat axe. A specialist in pain, he did not enjoy suffering it himself, particularly the horrible discomfort of piles. That his were playing up was a result, he believed, of his earlier frustration at having Stefan Mueller taken away just as the slicing and dicing was getting interesting.

  Horst lived to hear screams of agony, to feel the orgasmic power of knife and needle. A pristine scalpel, its edge honed to perfection by Horst’s blind assistant, Two-Face Puttick, was an instrument of genius in Hudspith’s hands. He wasn’t a run-of-the-mill sadist, he was a virtuoso of creative cruelty. Awake, he wrote treatises on his techniques and his patients’ reactions; asleep, he dreamed of grotesquely perverted variations. For Stefan Mueller, he had planned some radical and untried resections, starting with a winnowing of facial musculature, and he and Puttick had laid out an elaborate series of bets on Mueller’s possible reactions. Time to first scream. Length of first scream. Time between first and second screams. Time to first loss of consciousness. Time to brain death.

  Pfarrer’s decision to reprieve Mueller and save him for the senate bombing had deprived Horst of these pleasures.

  Like any homicidal psychopath, he had found that he needed his cruelty fixes more and more frequently. Without them he became nervous, irritated and impotent, and so a great joy welled up in his heart when he heard that there was a new prisoner in the Silencio headquarters.

  A suspected Incorruptible.

  A breakthrough capture which would lead to the identification of the hitherto secret members of this new organization which Hudspith’s masters believed to pose a real threat to The Smoke’s status quo. The organization had achieved nothing much to date but the theory was to cut it off at the knees before it was up and running. Now Van Der Hudspith watched through a two-way mirror (and Two-Face listened, deeply frustrated by his ability only to hear and not see pain) as Pfarrer questioned the young man.

  Naked, Ricardo Cullington was rawhide-roped to a stout iron chair, water poured onto the rawhide to tighten it, so that the binding drew blood from Ricardo’s lean body. When Pfarrer nodded to Rod-Carlo, Gerriman took the hood from Ricardo’s head to reveal the young Babbler’s unmarked and handsome face. Ricardo looked around, as far as the bindings would allow him, with what seemed to Hudspith to be mere curiosity, before fixing his eyes on Pfarrer, his gaze profound and apparently fearless.

  “Say nothing for the moment, young man. Just listen,” said Pfarrer to his captive. “You certainly realize who I am and that you are entirely at Silencio mercy. No one knows where you are and no one will come to your rescue. It will, therefore, be futile to refuse to answer my questions and pointless to lie to me. If you tell me the truth and do not waste my time, I will ensure that you enjoy a quick and painless death. If you refuse to speak, or you lie to me, I will put you under the care of Doctor Horst Van Der Hudspith, a man so psychotic, so cruel, that he makes even my skin crawl.”

  Behind the mirror, Hudspith pondered. Was that an insult or a compliment? Either way, Pfarrer was a reliable provider of the patients without whom Horst had begun to realize he might himself die of ennui.

  “Your death will then be unimaginably agonising. It will stretch out over days. And, in the end, you will tell me what I want to know and all that torment will have been in vain. And so, young man, I will ask you just two questions which you may answer in any order. First, are you or are you not an Incorruptible? And, second, what is the name of your leader?”

  It seemed to everyone, whichever side of the mirror, that Ricardo was struggling to control a newfound fear. His face twitched and his throat spasmed but, finally, he spoke:

  “Fuckshitpissbollockdcuntanusarsewankatoastrack!”

  Alaina had only two objectives. To stay free and to find her brother. If she could achieve them, she would be able to send Brutus to Cerval’s estate, provide him with the knowledge he needed to make his next move. Brutus? Ah, a third objective – where is he?

  One step at a time. For the moment, she had no sense that Ricardo was in immediate peril but that was hardly a consolation. If he was in a Babbler trance, even she couldn’t penetrate
that genetic miswiring.

  Before they had even reached adolescence, Alaina and Ricardo had been thrown out by their family, social climbers who couldn’t tolerate Ricardo’s compulsive and obscene outbursts. Life on the streets had been tough, too, the detritus of The Smoke as uncomprehending of the Babbler gene as any affluenzo. Had Cerval not picked them up years ago and taken them to the estate, they probably would not have survived; and when he told them about the Incorruptible crusade, it was natural for them to sign on without hesitation. Once back in The Smoke, Alaina soon demonstrated her remarkable affinity with karriers – indeed with any of the animal kingdom – and Ricardo began to study under Doctor Efrain, on track to become the youngest doctor in The Smoke. Alaina knew it most likely that Ricardo’s search for Efrain had betrayed him and that he had been abducted by Silencios. She needed to confirm that fear before she told Cerval. She knew she had no chance of doing that through any direct contact with the Silencios but she also knew that the Silencios had an unofficial headquarters where liquor and good food loosened lips.

  Spasso was the Silencios’ restaurant of choice, their neutral meeting ground. Anson and Hayden Cloudesley, Spasso’s owners and chefs, would have preferred not to be in the grip of these men, but the arrangement had some advantages. The Silencios had negotiated a monthly fee based on 90% occupancy, six days a week, regardless of whether they ate there or not. In the restaurant business, guaranteed occupancy was found treasure, in this case a vast trove. Nor would they ever have to deal with low-level protection artists, food supply scams, garbage blackmail or the oblivious diners who didn’t show up for their own reservations. The Silencios allowed the proprietors to serve outsiders, as long as they could be hustled summarily away if their table was required.