by Jay Lake
COPYRIGHT INFO
The Steampunk Megapack is copyright © 2013 by Wildside Press, LLC. Edited by Evelyn Kriete and John Gregory Betancourt. All stories are copyright © by their authors, except where public domain.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Over the last year, our “Megapack” series of ebook anthologies has proved to be one of our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The Megapacks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!). For instance, Pamela Sargent’s alternate-worlds story in this issue was suggested by George Zebrowski, after we approached George to reprint “The Eichmann Variations” (which we remembered from its original publication in Michael Bishop’s excellent anthology, Light Years and Dark [1984]).
A NOTE FOR KINDLE READERS
The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your reader.)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
THE MEGAPACK SERIES
The Adventure Megapack
The Christmas Megapack
The Second Christmas Megapack
The Cowboy Megapack
The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack
The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack
The Ghost Story Megapack
The Horror Megapack
The Macabre Megapack
The Martian Megapack
The Military Megapack
The Mummy Megapack
The Mystery Megapack
The Science Fiction Megapack
The Second Science Fiction Megapack
The Third Science Fiction Megapack
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack
The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack
The Penny Parker Megapack
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack
The Tom Swift Megapack
The Vampire Megapack
The Victorian Mystery Megapack
The Western Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
AUTHOR MEGAPACKS
The Andre Norton Megapack
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The Rafael Sabatini Megapack
MIDNIGHT AT VALDOSTA’S, by Jay Lake
Eyes covered with a dark rag, Hemp Cumin rode toward Triune Town on a blind mule named Salt. With him he carried only forty feet of old Manila rope, a ragged hand-forged knife of incredible age, and a burlap sack of mustard seeds with a long gray feather stuck in the top. He had an appointment at midnight at Valdosta’s, a café set deep among Triune Town’s intestinal streets—an appointment it was worth his life to keep.
Triune Town was only a few miles from the south-central Pennsylvania orchard where Hemp had left his Chevrolet Suburban and stock trailer. Even so, Salt’s journey took the better part of the day, through the shadowed afternoon and loam-scented dusk and on into the cool Allegheny evening. On foot with his eyes open Hemp could have wandered for months before finding Triune Town if ever he did, though he had done exactly that one decades-vanished summer in his youth. Triune Town was one of the Dark Towns that lie among the blank spaces on the maps of men, difficult and perilous to reach from the Cities of the Map.
Salt was as pale as her namesake, and her coat glittered, though save that and her blindness she was in all other respects as ordinary as any other mule. She was shod with iron and wore a leather saddle. Salt was uncommon forgiving for a mule, perhaps because she worked but one day a year for her master.
Hemp was a tall man so angular that he looked as if he might be folded into a suitcase at need, with a face that showed his age and wispy yellow-gray hair to match. Both forceful and kind, he’d long made a living selling things to people who didn’t usually need them, never cheating past his reasonable advantage and always delivering the goods. That his stock-in-trade came from the Dark Towns was nobody’s business but his own.
When the muffled thud of Salt’s hoofs turned to the ringing strike of stone Hemp took the rag from his eyes and wiped his face, which streamed sweat in the cool dark of the evening. Stars glittered overhead in patterns that seemed almost familiar while the twisted spires of Triune Town blocked the night before him with fire-toned shadows.
“Well, old girl,” Hemp said to the mule, patting her neck, “here we are again. One more year above the ground. Let’s see if we get another.”
He took the reins which had draped neglected around the saddle’s horn and guided Salt forward. They passed through a narrow gate with posts that spiraled like a seashell and a demon-carved lintel inset with gems that glowered a deeper red than any of the stars in the sky. The mule snuffled as she walked into the deeper shadows, nervous and unsure under her master’s hand.
The city streets twisted and twined in a Gordian knot. Bone-fences, man-high and inlaid with abstract patterns, lined some streets. Tall, dark towers with leathery walls flung arches and pillars into other roadways with callous abandon. Though the edge of Triune Town was deserted save for whispering shadows, the closer Hemp drew to the center—and his appointment at Valdosta’s—the more crowded the streets became.
First it was a slave or two slinking along in their leather kilts and cross-strapped harnesses. Then a furtive, hairy little man darted from an alleyway pursued by three children pale and puffy as grubs. A line of dark-skinned men in flat leather caps and rubber overcoats stepped from the shadows carrying an enormously long pipe that suddenly writhed to form itself into a snake. Every night he had ever spent in Triune Town was Mardi Gras, Carnaval, an eruption of violence and pageantry that made Hemp glad he had never been forced to withstand the days here as well.
Soon he was riding among throngs of automobiles, horse carts, high-wheeled slave-drawn carts, pedestrians, cattle, even a herd of giraffes, their necks hung with lace and candles. This was on one of the main streets of Triune Town. Hemp had always thought of it as Bourbon Street, though as far as he knew the streets here had no names. Bourbon Street was almost straight, a gentle arc that cantilevered through the center of town. It served as a backbone to the pushing, thronging traffic of the city.
Salt balked at the scent of the giraffes, but Hemp was able to gentle her into moving again. They were almost to Valdosta’s. He didn’t dare miss his appointment.
He urged the
mule down a side street and dismounted to tie her to a lamppost curling over the sidewalk like a fern. Orangutan dung was scattered around it. Valdosta’s stood before him, its storefront perhaps twenty feet wide, faded gilt lettering in the window in some alphabet Hemp didn’t recognize. Hemp looked at his watch. It had stopped at 6:06. He took his rope and knife and mustard seeds and shouldered his way into the café.
The door clattered shut behind him to leave Hemp alone in a room lined on four walls and the ceiling with a fractal maze of brass and copper piping, interspersed with valves, taps, gauges, gleaming metal eagles and live rats. The place had the thick, steamy smell of any small coffee shop. The floor was laid with interlocking marble tiles in a bizarre repeating pattern Hemp had once heard called Penrose tiles. Tables seemed to have been salvaged from different eras of history, and the whole affair was dominated by a glass-fronted cabinet serving as a bar at the back of the room, topped by three mummified human heads.
Valdosta’s was empty, not so much as a waiter in evidence, though a cup of steaming coffee was set before a chair drawn back in invitation.
Hemp sat down, laid his knife and sack of mustard seeds on the table, and began to knot the rope. He folded the end into three lengths, leaving a loop, then wound the butt thirteen times around the tripled rope to form a well-practiced hangman’s noose. Hemp checked the solidity of the knot before laying it on the table next to the knife. He took a handful of seeds from the sack and dumped them in a little pile with the noose and knife.
A hidden clock began to strike the midnight hour. “That knife is as old as time,” said a voice behind Hemp. The empty café’s only door had not rattled open since his entrance. It was a rich voice, complex as rare coffee, as layered as fine wine, carrying the deep tones of the earth.
“I took that knife off a boy in Texas,” said Hemp without turning around. The New Orleans accent of his youth ran strong in his voice. “I met him walking naked down a gravel road, covered in blood and flies. He was quite mad. I believe he had committed murder with it.”
“Murder, and sacrifice.”
A light wind whistled through Valdosta’s, the pipes clattering and pinging. From the corner of his eye, Hemp thought he saw the heads over the cabinet swivel and blink, but he did not turn to look. A lifetime of midnights in the heart of Triune Town had taught him when to look at nothing.
“Here we are again,” the voice said. “Have you yet found cause to regret our bargain? Or do you choose to renew it for another year?” Fingers brushed his shoulder.
Hemp discovered he was holding the noose, though he did not remember picking it up. He shut his eyes now, tiny fibers straying from the noose to prickle his fingers as he spoke. “I have brought the three things our bargain calls for.” The long-practiced words ran easily off his tongue. “Death for myself. Death for another. And faith that a new day will come. There is nothing more hopeful than a seed waiting to sprout, that knife has written murder, and my rope…well… It’s my rope.”
Memories, now, of summer’s day in his long-ago youth, some then-tragedy of the heart now lost to time, a hike in the mountains away from Pittsburgh, the noose on the tree. So dramatic, they would mourn when they found him, the world regretful of his passing. Could he ever have been that person so shallow as to find death in the turn of cards and the scorn of a young woman weaker than he?
“You returned my life to me. I give it to you once again,” Hemp finished, eyes screwed shut over watery tears, the noose now somehow prickling his neck.
“Which do you choose?” Lithe fingers tugged at the noose, brushing Hemp’s skin and tugging at his hair. “Death, death or faith?”
“You know,” Hemp said. “You always know.” He opened his eyes to see a short man sitting across the table from him, gray eyes glinting like gun barrels, wearing a leather car coat far too large. Every year it was someone different who came to Valdosta’s at midnight, though they always spoke with the same voice, drew from the same memories. Sometimes they even looked the same, as far too many people did in Triune Town, but they were always different.
The man smiled, lit a dark, odiferous cigarette, and slipped the ragged knife into a pocket. “Tell me,” he said, “some stories of the Cities of the Map. Tell me what you’ve seen.”
This was their true bargain, stories for life, stories to feed the curiosity of the soul of a twisted city. Hemp sipped his coffee. “Last fall I saw a man in Cincinnati get hit by the number 53 bus on Ludlow Avenue,” he began. “The driver got off to help, and a priest came out of a flower shop. Though the man was cursing and crying for his daughter as he vomited his life away, the driver held his head while the priest prayed. A boy stole the driver’s wallet before the police came.”
Another sip, another story. As Hemp spoke, people filed into the café, sat down around him, drinking wine and espresso and dark blends from exotic places.
Every year the people who came seemed more ragged, tired, wounded even, as if the city were decaying with some cancer at the heart of its giant, twisted bones. They listened all as one head with dozens of ears while he picked apart the noose and recounted his travels. The mustard seeds sprouted to uncurl on the tabletop into wrinkled green banners. Hemp talked himself hoarse telling stories of the wide world to the spirit of Triune Town itself. The Dark Town listened through its people.
* * * *
Lips chapped and tongue swollen, Hemp Cumin rode into the dawn. Morning twilight stained the eastern sky above the mountains. Though the night had seemed to last well past its due, it was still the work of an hour or so for Salt to find her way back to the orchard where he had parked. Loading the mule into her trailer Hemp could see the back of the Suburban was filled with odd packages. Another year of strange goods.
“Next year,” he promised himself as he threw the coil of rope on the floor of the front passenger seat, “next year I will not come back.”
It was what he promised himself every year. Hemp started the truck and considered which way to drive, where he might find a murder or a suicide with which to buy another year of life.
THE CASE OF THE PECULIAR SAFECRACKER, by G. D. Falksen
“Well see, this is your problem right here,” Inspector Mueller said, speaking in the manner of a maintenance engineer. “You’ve got a hole in your safe.”
Next to him, Inspector Wilde folded his arms impatiently. “You’re no end of help, do you realize that?”
“Runs in the family,” Mueller replied.
They stood in the vault of the Martins and Wentworth Bank in the heart of Salmagundi’s prosperous Layer Three. The reinforced concrete chamber was square, about a dozen feet long and wide, with a ceiling that threatened constantly to brush the top of Wilde’s head. One side of the room held locked shelves with quantities of money, while the other hosted a row of safes of various sizes. The one that Mueller had been inspecting sat near the middle. Next to it lay the body of a man, now covered in a white sheet to preserve both the condition of the corpse and the dignity of the deceased.
The bank’s manager hovered at Wilde’s elbow, shaking nervously at the prospect of a scandal. His finely trimmed moustache twitched like the nose of a rabbit, and he cleaned the lenses of his delicate spectacles with a handkerchief so vigorously that it seemed they might break under the strain.
“Is that the best you can do?” the manager demanded, frantic over the no-doubt impending destruction of his livelihood and reputation. “You’re supposed to be Salmagundi’s finest!”
The two police officers turned toward him and presented a united front with the chests of their brown woolen uniforms. Wilde and Mueller were both very tall, and though Mueller was willowy, Wilde was an imposing titan of a man with a square jaw and broad shoulders. It was enough to make the bank manager take a step backward and tone down his vehemence.
Wilde kept his expression reassuring, and he placed a hand on the manager’s shoulder. “Steady on, sir. You have my word that we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
/> Mueller was still pondering the safe door. “They cut the lock out of the safe, but they left the vault alone. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t make any sense?” Wilde asked.
“Well, look at it. The thieves break in during the night. They use sleeping gas to neutralize the bank guards—which isn’t a run of the mill tactic, let me remind you—but they somehow leave one man conscious so he can open the vault for them. Then they take him inside, kill him, cut open the safe somehow, take the contents and run off, leaving behind everything else in the vault with the exception of a few handfuls of money.” Mueller folded his arms with great finality. “Tell me how that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t,” Wilde conceded. He turned to the bank manager. “Sir, I’m certain you can clear this up for us. If the clerk had already been forced to open the vault, why would he not have opened the safe as well?”
“It’s quite simple,” the manager said. “The safes in the vault are owned by our clients. We have no control over them save for their placement. None of our employees know any of the combinations.”
“Ah,” Wilde said. He ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed. “Well, that does make some things a bit clearer. No employee could have opened the safe.”
“It’s still odd that only one safe was touched. I mean, yes, money was stolen from the bank’s strong boxes inside the vault, but this looks targeted. Otherwise, why waste time cutting into the safe at all? And if you bothered to bring a torch, why would you stop at just one safe?”
“Obviously they were interrupted,” the bank manager replied. “Poor Mr. Barnaby probably heard the guards coming to and tried to raise the alarm, so the robbers killed him. Then they panicked and made their escape.”
“But not before they emptied out the safe,” Mueller noted. He kept his tone ambiguous, but Wilde could tell that his mind was onto something. “And besides that, why bother with the safes at all? The vault’s own assets would be easier to get.”
Wilde turned to the manager. “Do you know what was in the safe?”
